Grace – Page 54 – AggroChat

Class Mount Quests!

June 8, 2017 by Grace

After how long we’ve had to wait for them to unlock, I was half expecting the quests for the new class mounts in WoW to be epic and complicated and time-consuming. This was not the case, and honestly I’m glad. Leveling up all the alts and finishing all of the broken shore quests to unlock the class mount quest was enough of a challenge. And for those who are dedicated to one class, there are a few extra goodies like spec-specific mounts and bonus pets for unlocking concordance. For me as someone who merely dabbles in all the classes for completion’s sake, I’m happy I get to see this little extra flavor content, and increase my mount stable a bit in the process!

For all classes, you need to complete the “Breaching the Tomb” achievement in order for the mount quest to unlock. It has been a lot of painful busywork doing those quests over the past few weeks, waiting for each new one to open up with the weekly reset. Now that they’re all available you can motor through them on new alts with no waiting. The main things that will slow you down are having to wait for an invasion for one of the early quests, collecting nether shards (I wait to spend any on new alts until after I finish this quest), and completing the broken shore order hall missions (if your champions aren’t leveled and geared yet). That last one was my biggest sticking point on many alts, but now that the requirement has been nerfed from 3 missions down to 1 I can finally move forward.

I haven’t done all of them yet, but much like the initial class hall quests, the mount quests are quite variable. Spoilers and opinions about the specific quests follow.

The monk quest was the first one I did, since that is theoretically still my main. Also because I can use the mount on my baby monk for our level-locked silliness. I was all ready to have more fun times with beer because that was pretty much the entirety of the monk hall quest line, but sadly after buying beer for one Master in exchange for a story there was no brew to be had. The quest has you running back to the peak of serenity to look for the tiger spirit who traditionally serves as mount for the grandmaster. It seems he’s been in mourning since the guy you replaced was killed in the demon invasion, which is why you didn’t know anything about his existence until now. It definitely has a very strong monk flavor even without much beer in it, and the mount is extra cool because he is a sentient being and will occasionally talk to you. Since this is my main I will also be attempting to get concordance eventually so I can unlock the matching tiger pet as well.

Next I did the pally quest. Sadly, one of the first things you have to do is buy a gem from some elf in Suramar. Did I mention I almost entirely skipped Suramar on all my alts? Before I could do the mount quest, I had to do Suramar far enough to unlock the mask so the vendors would even talk to me, and then I discovered I needed 500 ancient mana. My current cap was 300 so I had to first run and find 2 of the items that increase your cap, and then go pick a few flowers in the vineyard until I had enough to buy the gem. After this inauspicious start, the rest of the mount quest was amazing. It is a huge callback to the original paladin mount quest from vanilla. You get to go back to Stratholme and kill a bunch of undead with a NPC all-pally party, and eventually purify Rivendare’s mount to turn it into your sweet new holy steed. I’m not entirely sure how I brought that undead horse back to life but I still enjoyed this quest a lot!

The next class on the list for me was priest. As someone who used to main a disc priest, I have not been happy with the direction of the “class fantasy” or the feel of priest healing in this expansion. This makes everything I do on my priest bittersweet these days. Anyhow, the priest quest premise was intriguing: Magni Bronzebeard, the dwarf who turned into a diamond and now speaks for the spirit of the planet itself, had a vision and sent me off on my quest. After my own heart, the quest sent me deep under the ocean in a submarine to a lost titan vault. Once there I got to see some banter between the Bronzebeard brothers and relive one of the most annoying Wrath-era dungeon fights with snarky dwarven commentary. It could have been obnoxious but I found it really charming. It didn’t feel especially “priest flavored” but it was an amazing quest and definitely one of my favorites. It also helps that I like the look of the priest mount a lot.

After priest, I tackled the mage quest. For that one you chase down a magic flying disc that Antonidas had been working on. It involved tracking down a couple archmages in various places around the world, and then a trial in the Eye of Eternity. I was hoping for some clever puzzles or something here but it was mostly a matter of tracking down the right mage and asking nicely if I could have their priceless artifact, please. The mage quest wasn’t as exciting or nostalgic as some of the other ones, but the trial was fun enough. You get to murder elementals of fire, frost, and arcane, which somehow bleeds off the excess energy from the disc parts and lets you combine them together into something that works. Sure, Antonidas never figured out how to do this and it was part of his life’s work and you knocked it out in 20 minutes. You’ll forget all about that once you’re riding around on your cool new mage frisbee.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten in the past 2 days, but Druid, Warlock, and Rogue are all ready to go and Demon Hunter is not far behind. I’ll have my comments on those quests up as soon as I get through them!

Silly Inspiration

June 7, 2017 by Grace

Sometimes you get a weird bit of nonsense stuck in your head and there’s nothing for it but to see where it takes you. Such was the seed that started with a conversation lamenting that WoW doesn’t have level scaling in its dungeons like FFXIV does. This led to a discussion about the Herald of the Titans achievement (for killing Algalon at level and at the proper ilvl), and guilds that level lock themselves to do old content.

Suddenly this seed started taking root in my brain. I would love to do all those old dungeons and raids in a way that still felt meaningful, and let me have fun with my friends. Unfortunately I have no desire to try to find a guild that is already doing this, and I was doubtful that we could wrangle enough interest amongst our circle of friends to make it work. But. With three interested co-conspirators, we could still potentially do something silly and fun with the idea.

Thus a new guild was born. We three buddies would roll a new tank, healer, and dps and try to do all the dungeons in the game at level. Maybe even throw ourselves at the raids too, and laugh as we die horribly without a raid group. I think this will nicely scratch the itch to do something silly and fun with my friends for a little while, and should keep us entertained at least until FFXIV Stormblood gets here later this month.

Since Belghast beat me to the punch blogging about this, make sure to wander over there for his take on this nonsense. Maybe we’ll even stream our adventures!

Reading Challenge #90: The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock

June 5, 2017 by Grace

I read this one while I was traveling, so it took me a little while to write up my thoughts. If you’re following along with my reading challenge this is #90 on the list, The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock. The first Elric novelette was published in 1961, with continuations, sequels, prequels, etc. being published through the early 2000s.

This one was tricky to get started on. There are a lot of Elric stories floating around and I had to resort to a chronological list to try to figure out exactly what I was reading and where it fell in the scheme of things. I ended up reading a collection that contained most of the stories from the 1960s, from Elric’s first appearance through the one in which he meets his end. From what I gather, the stories and novels published later are all meant to fill in the spaces in-between these original tales. While I enjoyed what I read enough to want more, I decided to stop in the interests of moving forward with this challenge, and not potentially ruining a good thing.

Elric appeared on the scene at a time when high sorcery and adventure were in favor and instead gave us a moody, evil, and ultimately weak anti-hero. The stories take place in a place and time that might be future or past but has to exist because the stories of heroes keep having to retell themselves. Elric himself is a long-lived, elf-like being, one of the last remnants of a dead civilization that’s been replaced by younger races. He’s the last of a royal line, but he’s sickly and weak and marked as an outsider by his albinism. The guy should be a giant walking cliche but even though I was rolling my eyes at the start, it turns out that these stories are actually strangely compelling.

There’s a thread of addiction and loss that feels personal even though it is presented in fantasy trope trappings. Elric’s sword, Stormbringer, feeds and empowers him via the souls of those he has killed with it. With it in hand he is nigh invincible, without it he can barely function, but in addition to being outright evil, it also has a penchant for claiming the souls of those closest to him whether he tries to prevent it or not. In the end Stormbringer is a necessary evil because without it Elric would be too weak to fight and chaos would take over the world.

The greater battle in this series is cast as chaos versus law instead of evil versus good. Many of the ideas presented here have percolated their way through so much of the fantasy media and games I’ve consumed, unknowing, over the years. In retrospect it is not surprising at all to me that some of the pantheon from these stories ended up in one of the early monster manuals for D&D. Again and again what was surprising was the quality of the writing itself and its somewhat more literary approach. Sure, some of its metaphors are heavy-handed, but at least there are metaphors instead of beating you about the head with the obvious like many genre works do.

Looking at the covers, the descriptions, and the date of publication of the Elric stories I would have guessed that I would be panning this series. Instead I really enjoyed it, and would recommend checking it out. Something about judging books by their covers I guess…

TL;DR: A brooding anti-hero with a magic sword that manages to be engaging instead of completely cliched.

The Elric Saga by Michael Moorcock

Rating: 4/5 stars

Verdict: I really enjoyed these, in spite of myself. Sword and sorcery isn’t usually my favorite genre but when it is this well written it is easy to see why so many people love it.

Next up: The Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon

AggroChat #159 – Alt Madness

May 21, 2019June 4, 2017 by AggroChat

Featuring: Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, and Thalen

This week we once again have Grace as a medical issue has kept her away a few weeks. Tonight we have a relatively short show, at least as far as AggroChat shows go. Thalen has reached the point where he is doing The Taken King and talks about the shock that happened when suddenly Cayde-6 developed a personality… and is in fact Robot Mal. We get on a tagent talking about the changings coming soon in Final Fantasy XIV Stormblood, and our thoughts about what might be tweaked during the expansion. Grace and Bel talk a bit about their recent alt madness in World of Warcraft, and specifically how Bel has leveled and geared a character in a single week. Kodra talks a bit about Elder Scrolls Legends and why he likes it much better than Hearthstone. Finally we talk a little bit about the recent phone game craze that is Magikarp Jump.

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