Elf Nostalgia

As if the RoboSquids project wasn’t bad enough, I’ve gone and started some additional nonsense. I guess this happened because I was in the mood for some WoW nostalgia, but we couldn’t get the RoboSquids together to run a dungeon. Instead, one of my squid-conspirators and I randomly rolled up even more new characters and started leveling. This time around it’s not so much a coherent project with rules as it is a means of scratching the nostalgia itch. I took my freshly-minted blood elf warrior and started leveling through the starting zone with no heirlooms. I sent myself some larger bags because there’s nostalgia and then there’s pointless suffering, but otherwise I’ve been trying to pretend it’s 2007 and I’m starting from scratch again.

I suppose if I wanted maximum nostalgia I’d be leveling a paladin, since that was my first real main all those years ago, and my first character to level 70. Running everywhere on foot, chasing down lynxes for their pelts and getting distracted by copper nodes is enough to spark plenty of good memories even on the “wrong” class. My belf pally wasn’t my first character but it was the first one that stuck, the first one I ran a dungeon with, the first one that joined a guild. Since those days, I’ve become a very different person and the game has changed drastically too. But those TBC starter zones are still locked in a mostly-pre-Cataclysm limbo that lets me travel back to that time for a few hours.

I don’t know how long this mini-squids project will keep my attention. I still have goals in Diablo 3 and FFXIV that are waiting, and very soon Destiny 2 will be here and vying for all of my time. I do know that I am going to keep enjoying this nostalgia trip while it lasts.


Elf Nostalgia

AggroChat #169 – Legendary Nonsense

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

aggrochat169_720

This is another one of those nights when we thought we had nothing to talk about…  but ended up having stuff to talk about.  We start off the night talking some more about our recent experiences in Guild Wars 2.  From there we get into some Robo Squid fun… and talk about how Gnomeregan is still horrible.  From there Thalen and I talk about how West of Loathing has suddenly caused us to start playing Kingdom of Loathing again.  Kodra talks about finally grasping why Tam loves Agricola so much.  There is a brief offshoot conversation that leads us down the path of Magic the Gathering Commander and the game in general.  We finally wrap things up with a talk that starts with painting miniatures and ventures forth into creativity in general.

Featured Topics

  • Guild Wars 2
  • Gnomeregan Is Horrible
  • Kingdom of Loathing
  • West of Loathing
  • Agricola
  • Magic the Gathering Commander
  • Painting Miniatures
  • Creativity

Hunter Mount Quest

I finished this quest before my break from WoW, but only remembered to post it once I resubscribed. Whoops. My hunter was the last alt that is already 110 that hadn’t gotten her mount. My DK and shaman are 100 and 101, and my warrior is not even close, so they will all have to wait.

Hunter is in a strange place for me. I’ve always liked the class, and the archer archetype is second only to spellcaster in terms of my “player fantasy” preferences. In Legion, however, the class has seen some major changes that detracted from my enjoyment of the class. Beastmastery has always been my favorite spec, and even at 110 with all my gold traits on my weapon it still feels like something is missing. I like having pets but I don’t like feeling like I’m useless in comparison to them, and I also don’t like how much the pet survivability has been nerfed this expansion. Marksman is a nonstarter because the optimal way to play involves getting rid of your pet altogether, and while the new Survival spec is more fun than I thought it would be, I will always prefer ranged to melee.

All that grumbling about the state of the class aside, their mount quest was amazing. Unlike so many of the other class’ quests, there’s no gating, gathering, or extraneous running around. Instead you receive an invitation to Odyn’s great hunt and go straight there. The scenario takes place in the wilderness area of the trial of valor, and it’s just perfect. You get to eat and drink at a valajar feast (doing so gives you some nice buffs), and then you set out into the night to hunt the spirits of some great beasts and put them to rest. You have a few rounds of stalking around in the dark and fighting your prey, and then you get to fight the wolfhawk. The fights weren’t bad at all, even in my barely 110-for-a-week gear. If anything they were slightly too easy, but for this kind of content I’m perfectly okay with that.

The mount looks cool, and fits well with the hunter class theme. About the only thing I didn’t like about this quest is Odyn, because he’s a jerk and on principle I don’t want to do anything to help him. If you have a hunter alt laying around I’d highly suggest going for this class mount. It was a lot of fun!


Hunter Mount Quest

August 2017 Gaming Goals

I’m a few days late with this one since I’ve been AFK for most of this week. I had set a few somewhat ambitious goals for July and did a decent job on them. Let’s see what August brings!

July Goals recap:

FFXIV: Clear both EX primals.  Check! I still haven’t done this with a FC group, but I did at least get my kills.

Advance at least one of my Anima weapons at least one step. Nope. I dialed my play time back and mostly focused on current content.

Level my AST.  Not really. I did get a couple levels, but AST is still not 70. The problem here is that they fixed some of the problems with scholar, so I felt way less motivated to have the 2nd healer job.

Figure out how to buy a house. I do know how to buy a house now so I’ll count this as a win. I haven’t actually bought one because I’m still waiting for people to move out to the new zone so I can find open property in Mists.

Diablo 3: Complete the basic season 11 journey with a necromancer. Done! I haven’t gone much past the first 4 chapters but this is still a win.

Complete the challenge rift every week. Nope. I did attempt it every week, but last week’s build was really difficult and I didn’t manage to clear it under the timer.

Master all the crusader set dungeons. Done! I was an overachiever and got monk and witch doctor too!


August Goals:

FFXIV: Level my AST. I’m so close it really is silly that I still haven’t finished this.

Clear at least 1 boss of Omega Savage. This might be a matter of flinging myself at pugs until I smash through, but I’d love to get this done.

Diablo 3: Finish Barbarian set mastery. I’ve only got one barbarian dungeon left to master in order to get my fancy wings. It might mean giving up on much seasonal progress this time around, but I can do this!

WoW: Get back to the Robo-squids project. There’s an awful lot of dungeons left for our little undergeared, underleveled, undersized group to get through, and now that the new game shine is starting to fade from Stormblood I’m ready to jump back in.


I think these are pretty modest goals for the month, and they’re all things that I really do want to get around to. I can’t wait to post about my pretty new wings!


August 2017 Gaming Goals