Five

After working through Uldaman, Dire Maul, a few other miscellaneous quests, and a whole bunch in Silithus that I’d previously missed, I’m down to five quests to go for the Loremaster of Kalimdor achievement. I’m still not sure where I’m going to find those five, though I know I could get four out of the centaur quests in Desolace. I’d prefer not to have to though, since that means a lot of faction grinding to reverse my current alliance…

And in Everquest news, another group of us from a forum have started a regular group in EQ1. On Sunday we made it through the tutorial (I took a Vah Shir beastlord), and today we did a bit of questing in Crescent Reach and then explored Blackburrow. I doubt I’ll stick with this one though, as I’ve got too damn many MMOs going already.

Blowing My Travel Budget

Today was yet more questing in WoW, of course. I finally got up to neutral with Timbermaw Hold, which let me complete a few more quests there. I found a few more in Razorfen Kraul and Razorfen Downs, even though I’d finished them before. Maraudon also had a few I’d missed, and then I wenyt to Feralas and Un’Goro to finish off a handful of zone quests, including the ‘Linken’ and ‘Larion and Muigin’ quests.

I’m down to 56 quests left for Kalimdor, though I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel looking for them now. I still have to do Dire Maul, and I’m hoping there’s a bunch in Silithus and that some of the unfinished ones in EK will lead to steps in Kalimdor.

A Hot Time In The Old World

On Thursday our regular EQ2 group picked up a couple more HQs, though we couldn’t get very far into them, learned the Druzaic language, and then headed off to Lavastorm. It’s a much more impressive-looking but confusingly-laid-out zone compared to its EQ1 incarnation, and it took us a while to figure out how to get to an NPC we needed. We’ve started the quests there and we’ll surely be back.

And in WoW I’m now down to 102 quests left to go for the Loremaster of Kalimdor, after finishing off a bunch in Tanaris, Zul’Farrak, and Thousand Needles. Still a bunch left to go, though, and they only get harder to find…

Hunting Sucks

My quest for the Loremaster of Kalimdor achievement didn’t progress much yesterday, as I hit the Barrens and tried to scrounge up quests there. I found a few, but a couple of them involved tracking down rare monsters, and I spent quite a while running around and failing to find them. But, I did manage to find one of them when I logged on and checked just before work this morning, at least.

I also managed to get Chillmaw and the champion jousting in front of the Citadel done with some help from guildies, since there’s no way I was doing them on my own. That puts me at…about half the champion seals I need for a minipet…

I picked up quite a few quests for Zul’Farrak, so that’s probably what I’ll work on next.

Questorama

After complaining about the difficulty in finding quests in Kalimdor yesterday, today they practically rained from the sky. I discovered that I’d left a fairly large chunk of Dustwallow Marsh unfinished, and by the time the evening was over, I’d done nearly 50 quests there. That puts me at just under 150 to go in Kalimdor now.

Hopefully some of the other zones there will have similarly pleasant surprises…

*hic*

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly in WoW, where we finally got some dungeon runs going on Sunday. The heroic we tried was a bit messy, especially with the first boss, but we eventually got it sorted out and most of the rest of the place wasn’t as bad. I even got a new pair of shoes out of it.

I also worked on the Kalimdor quest achievement a bit, finding a few unfinished quests in Winterspring, Ashenvale, and Stonetalon Mountains. I’m going to need to find a lot more than that per zone in order to find the nearly 200 I’m still missing, though.

And I also spent some time in EQ2, working on the Brew Day events. Most of them were fairly forgettable, but I did get a nice little flying carpet as a reward from one of them. Even if it is actually a carpet of clover covered in mushrooms…

Being A Champion Sucks

I’m kind of getting tired already of the Argent Tournament quests in WoW. Of the dailies available at the champion level, the jousting gets rather tedious since they take so long, Chillmaw needs a group, and the commanders by the Citadel are just too much of a pain in the ass to bother with. I can earn two Champion’s Seals per day at best, which means it’s going to take a long while to get the 120 needed for the top-end mounts, or even for the minipets that cost 40.

And to unlock the best rewards, I need to redo the Valiant quests for the other four city factions, which means even more jousting…

Oh well, at least I completed the Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms achievement today, after finding a lot more quests in Eastern Plaguelands. I also finished off the Explorer achievements for the Eastern Kingdoms. Next up: Kalimdor…

We Are The Champions

I didn’t spend a lot of time in WoW last night since it was the regular EQ2 night, but I did manage to finish getting through the Valiant stage of the Argent Tournament and now I can collect champion seals for actual rewards. My strategy works just as well on the champion opponents; it just takes a bit longer since they start out with level 3 defense.

Then it was off to EQ2, where we managed to polish off three HQs in one evening, netting us the Bag of Sewn Evil Eye, the Serrated Bone Dirk, and the Stein of Moggok. Only the bag is really of any use to me, but the quests are still fun.

No I’m Not Dead

Yes, it’s yet more catching up…

EQ2: I missed a week due to being out of town, but last week we managed to finish off Deathfist Citadel, getting me a few nice chain upgrades and level 45 along the way. We’ll probably be off to either Everfrost or Feerrott next. Not much else to report since I haven’t been spending any spare time in it like I used to.

WoW: As usual, most of my time was in WoW and I’ve done zone quests up through most of Icecrown now, with a lot of the remaining ones being group quests that I’ll need help on. Faction-wise, I’ve gotten to exalted with the Argent Crusade, Sons of Hodir, and the Horde Expedition, with some nice upgrades from them. I’m still working on the Oracles and Wyrmrest Accord, and just started working my way through the Argent Tournament as well. I don’t really like the jousting, but the rewards are nice and I’ve got a tedious-but-reliable method for beating it.

I finally hit 450 alchemy and picked up the rest of the trainable transmutations, though I still have a bunch of other recipes to learn via discoveries. I also hit 450 in cooking and fishing, and picked up a bunch more fishing achievements. I managed to get the giant sewer rat from Dalaran, but that turtle still eludes me, though…

And I’ve also started working on the Loremaster achievements again. I still have a ton of quests to do in Outland, but I’m starting with Azeroth since everything there might change with Cataclysm. I’m working on the Eastern Kingdoms right now, and after going through Silverpine Forest, Hillsbrad, and Arathi Highlands, I only have 43 more quests to go in EK.

Forza 3: I caught up on the DLC packs and fired it up for a bit, completing a few more series, but I’ve still barely made a dent in the total list of events. I also discovered that I have to bump the difficulty down to ‘easy’ for the R2 events right now; they’re just too fast to keep control and fight the AI.

Dragon Age: I finally gave Dragon Age a proper start, picking a dwarven rogue and going through the dwarven noble origin, with a bunch of politicking and backstabbing that the dwarves are apparently infamous for. I’ve now just arrived at the Grey Wardens camp at Ostragar, where the main story will presumably start.

Borderlands: And we managed to squeeze in some time in Borderlands, getting to New Haven and doing the quests there and a bit past it. I’ve picked up the Secret Armory of General Knoxx DLC, but that won’t really be usable until we hit the end of the main plot.

Weekend of WoW

It was a long weekend, and I spent pretty damn near all of it in WoW, trying to get caught up. I did manage to hit level 80, a bit sooner than expected, and finished up the quests in the Zul’Drak and Sholazar Basin areas, also opening up the dailies there. We also did some more Utgarde Keep and Nexus runs, with it being my first time in the Nexus. We’re still a long ways from doing heroics, though.

And speaking of dailies, I should hit exalted with the walrus-guys in the next couple days, so I’ll be able to focus on other dailies instead. It takes a couple hours just to get through the current list of dailies, which gets a bit tiring.

I’m almost done with the Love Is In The Air event, with only a couple more achievements to go, but these ones require a fairly tough fight and entering places like Naxx, which I might not get to this year. The Lunar Festival event also started and I spent some time yesterday gathering the tokens for those, including in the Alliance home cities. I had a bit of trouble getting into Teldrassil for the elder there thanks to continually running into level 80s at the Darkshore docks, but I logged in before work this morning and managed to sneak in when no-one was around, and got the exploration achievement as well. I’ll have to do that again for the Draenei area, too.