I have said goodbye to World of Warcraft it's only fair to say a proper goodbye to Crossfire too. It was quite and adventure and we had lots of fun. We conquered many evil enemies and we made a lot of jokes. Not playing WoW leaves me with so much more time to spend on roleplay and on my book, that I really don't want to go back. Guys, feel free to try something new without me, a rogue is easy enough to replace. There's not much of value in the guild bank, but take it by all means.

Here are the posts in which our adventures are described, and below is a post that links to who is who in the WoW Armory.

28 Oct 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/186545.html
01 OCt 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/181095.html
19 Sep 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/177810.html
29 Aug 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/172391.html
22 Aug 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/170110.html
07 Aug 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/165610.html
16 Jul 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/162684.html
18 Jun 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/155688.html
12 Jun 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/154329.html
23 Apr 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/144452.html
29 Mar 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/139640.html
15 Mar 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/137178.html
27 Feb 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/133572.html
13 feb 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/130074.html
10 Jan 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/121352.html
03 Jan 2008- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/119040.html
07 Dec 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/112953.html
19 Nov 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/108179.html
15 Nov 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/107178.html
05 Nov 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/104605.html
23 Oct 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/101472.html
09 Oct 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/98585.html
25 Sep 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/94292.html
18 Sep 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/92139.html
30 Aug 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/89566.html
23 Aug 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/87598.html
16 Aug 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/85684.html
03 Aug 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/81774.html
27 Jul 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/80744.html
19 Jul 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/78666.html
12 Jul 2007- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/77385.html

Crossfire in the Armory- http://nathreee.livejournal.com/108503.html

I can honestly say that WotLK has enriched my life in Azeroth and made the game more fun again. And on that positive note, I also want to extend my gratitude to my guild mates in Solaris Nocturnis, who are all great fun to be around and really nice to each other. Of all those great jokes I've heard and made there not one of them was mean, and sometimes, when needed, the tone is serious and shows that we are all people who care.

But back to the game. I have abandoned my paladin and made her my bank alt. When in a group, I want to heal, so I'm leveling my priest again. And when going out to do silly stuff alone, I love my Death Knight. Right now, my priest is picking up mining and my DK is learning to fish. And soon my priest will be prancing around Outland, accompanied by my favourite gnome Sprockl.

About Crossfire. We haven't played since WotLK came out. I'm pretty sure most of us still want to play together, but we have to figure out when and how. I'm going to assume that December is pretty much a no go with all the holiday fun, though I myself can make time if needed. In January I have no time on Fridays and on some Tuesdays but otherwise I'm free. Please let me know when you are free, guys.

I have been thinking about Crossfire's set up too. I'm just not so wild about the rogue anymore... I'm too slow and overall I have no idea what I'm doing. I could bring in my hunter, who is level 70 right now and has a variety of useful pets. My favourite at the moment is the wolf, because of the party-wide damage buff, but I also have one of those fire-breathing two-headed dogs, and a gorilla for off-tanking. I wish I could bring them all...

My paladin is level 71, so also a candidate to hang out with Crossfire, but I don't want to go Retribution. Nathree can be a healer or a tank, but I don't think I can dps well... Or I could just stick with Albine because it works. Let me know what you guys think.

So we started out with Durn the Hungerer, one of the sons of Gruul, who are all gigantic. After riding around the Spirit Fields in Nagrand a bit, we felt his unmistable earth-shaking footsteps, and we launched our attack on him. Though his hand was big enough to squash us all at once, Crossfire was too cunning for that, and we defeated him without running into any snags. When the gigantic gronn was on the ground and the reward was safely in our pocket, Smokey teleported us to Theramore and we verntured into the Caverns of Time.

After speaking to the poor man who lost his hat, we went into the caves and got a mission to save Thrall, the leader of the orcs. Evil dragons were trying to change the course of history by killing Thrall when he was still a young slave, before he could lead his people to freedom. But we put a stop to that, of course. And we found the missing hat!

Another plot of these evil dragons is to stop the dark portal from being opened, and we bravely ventured out to defend poor Medivh and make sure everything stays the way it was, but the dragons invading the Black Morass were level 70 to 72. That was just too much for us at level 66, though we survived longer than we thought we would. This mission would have to wait...

We teleported back to Shattrah and made our way back to Auchindoun to fight the Arakkoa of Sethekk Halls. And we really showed them every corner of the dungeon. Though they sent their undead spirits at us after they had died, and they sent flocks of attack birds to wipe us out, we defeated every challenge and killed Talon King Ikiss.

Then Crossfire retired for the night, satisfied with their blood-stained weapons and their rewards.

We started off the evening with the Ring of Blood in Nagrand. A goblin has set up an arena in the Laughing Skull ruins and runs fights there. First up was a Clefthoof called Brokentoe, and we broke his toes alright. Second fight was against the Blue Brothers, who really weren't much of a bother. The third fight pitted Crossfire against the Gigantic Rokdar the Sundered Lord, and guess what? We sundered him good. Then we were challenged by Skra'gath the voidcaller who tried to dispatch with his spells, but all to no avail. Next we faced the Warmaul Champion and pounded him into a pulp. That caused the Hero of the Warmaul Mogrok to become so angry that he challenged us, and he was quite a formidable opponent. When he managed to kill Maglok, he moved on to Marlix, squished him, and then killed me in one blow. Rather painful.

Xasandra had been watching us, and resurrected us so we could try again. Some silly bystander tried to tell us what to do, and joined in the fight when we engaged Mogrok a second time. Too bad Mogrok killed him before turning to us. /evil grin. The second try had a much better outcome, Mogrok still beat the crap out of us, especially after he had resurrected himself, but we defeated him anyway. Much cheering ensued.

Then we moved on to the Auchenai Crypts. Which was a fine challenge indeed with all the mobs being two levels higher than we were. Marlix and I took it upon ourselves to dispatch the ghostly draenai before trying to kill the elite mobs, to prevent the possessors from mind-controlling any of us and the clerics from healing anyone. There were moments when Maglok would go: "A possessor over there! Go... Nevermind you already killed it."

I seem to remember that we wiped twice, but I can't quite recall what caused the first wipe, other than that we're taking on really buff enemies. The fight against Shirrak the Dead Watcher went rather smoothly I think. We definately wiped a little further on in the dungeon when we somehow accidentally aggroed two groups of reanimated skeletons, resulting in 15+ enemies beating down on us, which was a bit much.

The final boss of the Crypts, Exarch Maladaar, was quite a challenge too. Or technically he wasn't, but we were. You see, he summons an evil clone of each one of the party members to fight for him, and evil Marlix plus evil Maglok really managed to blow a hole in our strategy. We had to resurrect and try a second time, changing our strategy to "First Priority: kill yourself! I mean the evil clone. Then the Exarch." And that worked. Sort of. The evil clone of the Exarch himself managed to kill us after we had defeated the Exarch. We had to resurrect to get rid of him and collect our reward, which was a very nice staff for Sna.

For next time, we have to work our way to level 66, wich is still quite a long way, and most of us don't have any time during the coming weekend. We'll plan a date later...

And maybe that's just too low for what we had planned to do. We made our way into the Mana Tombs and were met with lv 65 and higher enemies, who enjoyed resisting our taunts and sheep spells and who easily spotted me no matter how sneaky I was being. Still, we made it. maglok  has the excellent timing down, making sure he only pulled exactly the enemies he meant to pull. sna  noticed that his healing wasn needed a lot more than usual, and Smokey and I died several times, but we made it.

Some of the enemies drained or burned mana, which Sna and Smokey really didn't enjoy, but Maglok pushed on, saying: "Your mana is of no consequence to me!" We made our way to Pandemonius and wiped the floor with him; he wasn't all that scary. Tavarok gave us a bit more trouble, but not much thanks to Marlix' healing when Sna got caught in a crystal prison. When Tavarok fell, and Maglok declared that he would mine his ass, we mused on which part of the rock giant would contain the most precious stones and how much a gaint's ass would fetch at the current market.

Moving along, we encountered some enemies who liked to cast fear spells on us, and one of them frightened me so, that I fled through the wall, fell off the edge of the Outland and died. It took me a while to get back to the rest and Smokey got really impatient; he started to run circles around Maglok, chanting "Kill! Kill! Kill!" and laughing maniacally. Maglok wouldn't have this, and responded by trying to catch him. "Stand still, you puny gnome! I will step on you! Don't you Blink on me! I'll get you!" Much hilarity ensued and I reached them before they killed each other.

Nexus Prince Shaffar was all talk, as usual. His ethereal beacons proved to be far more dangerous than he was himself, so after we had devised a strategy to deal with them properly, the Prince met his doom at our hands. Muhahahaha! Oh dear, I'm starting to sound like Smokey...

We didn't manage to do the quest to escort the engineer back to the entrance, because enemies jumped us from all sides and killed Sna and Marlix before Maglok could get a hold on them. There was no way to try again unless we restarted the whole dungeon, and that was just depressing. We tentatively sneaked a peek into the Auchenai Crypts, but the level 66 enemies there were not something we were ready for. We convened to level to 65 on our own and meet up in Nagrand to do some really cool quest, Maglok said, but I couldn't find it on the wowwiki. Please link! Also, when will we play again? I will post some dates in a comment.

Blowing your own horn gets boring after a while, so I'll be brief about it.

We went to the Slave Pens first. Both Sna and I were a little disappointed that we couldn't actually free the slaves, but the ease with which we slew the enemy made up for it. Smokey had tweaked his build again, and had bought some expensive new gear, which resulted in even more damage. I didn't even know that was possible.

Crowd control is becoming increasingly important at these levels, something I haven't got much experience with because as a tankadin I just rush in and keep all the enemies busy until the party members pick them off me one by one. Crowd control is fun, I must add, but it requires a more level head than I have. Maglok is doing an amazing job dishing out all the right orders; though he can be overly careful, following his lead always gets the job done. And not following it got us killed. I promise I will never pull again.

That was about the only snag we ran into the whole night. Admittedly, Ghaz'an and the Black Stalker were two bosses who really gave us a run for our money and although some of us died, we nailed them without wiping. Some nice loot was got, but we didn't get to level 64, which is a bit of a problem if we want to keep on doing only dungeons. So we decided to level up to 64 by ourselves and then meet up for the Mana Tombs and the Crypt in Auchindoun.

Because Coilfang is not a place you want to go before level 63, we decided to conquer Upper Blackrock Spire. But we ran into a few snags... Smokey and Marlix were busy picking up the quest from the blue dragon in Winterspring when the rest of us came online, and it took a little while for us to figure out that we were too high level to use the summoning stone. Luckily, Smokey can teleport but it still cost us some time. So we walked into the Blackrock Spire and tried to open the door, which didn't work. We tried to form a raid group, thinking that might help, but it didn't. We needed to forge the seal in order to to open the door.

So Smokey teleported us to Theramore and we went to find the black dragon with the smelly hot breath so we could forge the seal with it. After mind-controlling and killing the dragon twice with no effect, we concluded that we were doing something wrong. Maglok started to browse the intarwebz. "Guys? Are we still in that raid group?" Doh! We bonked ourselves on the noggin, and disbanded the raid group. Then everything went according to plan. When the dragon was almost dead, Smokey would control its mind with the magical orb and make it breathe fire on the seal. Nothing hotter in the world that the breath of a dragon, right?

So the generous Smokey teleported us back and we entered the Blackrock Spire once again. The enemies there consist mostly of red dragonkin and their evil orc slaves. Somewhere in the first room we made a slight mistake to let a wounded orc get away to call his friends, and somehow we survived that. Maybe it was the fact that we were a bit higher level than they were.

We reached the famous Leroy Jenkins egg room and Maglok showed us how to navigate that room correctly without getting overrun by baby dragons. We were all quite shocked when we noticed that Smokey was actually casting frost spells, and he was not ready to comment on it. All he said was: "I hate red dragons."

We made our way to the arena without much ado, and there we hoped Nefarian would say something funny while we killed his minions. No dice though... It was all cheesy stuff like:"Your efforts will prove fruitless. None shall stand in our way!" So he sent his flunky Rend Blackhand at us, and we killed him too. (Harvesting some nicely coloured dragonscales, I might add)

After the arena was when things got interesting. And I don't mean that in a good way. We fought our way up to the dark room where the Beast was being kept, and it sort of swept the floor with us. It's a dog. Admittedly it has two heads, it drools molten lava and it's bigger than a tank, but it's still a dog. And apparently it thought we were balls. It took us into its mouth and bounced us around the entire room. Sna was the first to stop bouncing back, Marlix and and Maglok soon followed. I did another one of my disappearing tricks, which left Smokey... Smokey swallowed hard. There he was, all alone, ten times as tiny as the Beast, wearing a dress. Poor Smokey.

But Crossfire wouldn't be Crossfire if we had left it at that. The second time we took on the Beast, Smokey and Sna didn't let the monster bounce them around so much, and Maglok turned on his meanest attitude to conquer the Beast. And we all exploded into the cries of victory when it fell and died. I skinned the ugly bastard, only to find a gnome in a diving suit... "Finkle Einhorn, at your service." Ok, let me get this straight, you were doing backstokes in molten lava to test that new diving suit and this beast came out of nowhere and swallowed you whole? "That's right!" Sigh! Gnomes!

But after we had killed the Beast, the fight was far from over. The groups of dragons and orcs kept getting bigger and meaner. When we nearly wiped on an ordinary group of two dragons and three orcs, because the orc that I had incapacitated by giving it a gentle tap with a sap woke up and jumped down Sna's throat, we decided that we could use some help. Strongwind and Merna responded to our call, but since they had never been to Blackrock Spire, they needed a little help finding us.

When they arrived, we went back into business, Merna and I sapping more orcs and Strongwind doing what he does best in his pretty impressive bear form. One patrolling group of enemies went down particularly well because of some nice simultaneous sapping action of Merna and myself, and Sna blurted out: "And that's why I recommend a rogue familiar for every clothie!" I think he wanted to elaborate, but something made him choke and erupt into screams. I think it was Merna, who doesn't like to be called a familiar.

General Drakkisath was no match for Crossfire and their honorary guests. He croaked. And we rejoiced. It was fun and our guests deserve a big thank you for helping us out. Next time we will be going to Coilfang, so everyone is allowed to reach level 63. I will be making a separate post with a list of the quests. Do we have time next Wednesday?

 Just as Marlix and I were discussing that there are no oozes in any of the dungeons of TBC and Sna would have to expand his fetish to satisfy his needs, Maglok logged on to the TS server to let us know he couldn't get into the game server; the login server was acting up again, it seemed. Luckily it turned out to be a small hiccup and we started to make our way into the Ramparts only fifteen minutes later than planned.

We made a shaky start because not only had Marlix respecced back to being a critkitty, Smokey had tweaked with his powers too, resulting in a rather noticeable boost in his damage per second and therefore his aggro. The shaky start was corrected by some excellent pulling on Maglok's side. Watchkeeper Gargolmar didn't stand a chance; he died screaming for his healers in vain.

Making our way upstairs, Smokey was still having trouble keeping his aggro under control (big fireballs are fun, right?) and we noticed that this was indeed a dungeon that required some skill, as we made a bad pull and almost got ourselves killed by twice as many enemies as we had planned. I guess we should all be thankful for Marlix's return to the feral side, because we would have all died without the bear there.

There were no more mistakes after that, and we defeated both Omor the Unscarred and Vazruden and his pet dragon Nazan swiftly and with skill. We raced back to Honor Hold to deliver the ominous letter we found on Vazruden's body and were sent to the Blood Furnace immediately to investigate further.

The server was getting rather laggy by this time, making us uneasy and careful, but still causing a party wipe on a regular group of fel orc technicians and summoners. We quickly recomposed ourselves, but the technicians remained a problem because Maglok would huff and say things like: "I will not move aside for a bomb! The bomb must yield to me!" And Smokey always likes things that go Boom! Let's just say that Sna had his work cut out for him.

Poor Sna, he has this blind faith in the rest of us. When the monsters make a run for him, he just stands there in his bubble, waiting for us to save him. So when the Maker mindcontrolled me and I went sprinting towards him, he thought I was coming to save him from something nasty, not realising that I could be the nasty that he would need to be saved from. Sna died, but only two seconds before the Maker was felled by the rest, and all was well. (no hard feelings, right?)

After this, Maglok went into expert-mode and guided us through the encounter with Broggok much like a tour guide. "And now I will take this orc with me, don't kill it please, and the gate over there will open, see? Please sheep one of them and save it for last, alright?" And onwards we went to Keli'dan the Breaker, where Maglok warned us to start running as soon as Keli would start yelling something like: "Burn! Burn!" 

We defeated him, of course, and started to count our loot: some nice new things for Maglok, upping his defenses, a shiny ring for Sna, Marlix scurried off with a leather armor and new cloak and I got some nice boots as reward from the guys in Honor Hold. We made a tentative appointment to play again on 11 August and on 21 August. Next on our list are the dungeons inside the Coilfang Reservoir in Zangarmarsh.

The trip back to the Netherlands was swift and without perturbations. We left at seven in the morning and got home at 17.30 just in time for dinner. today, I'm back at work and besides the pile of work mail waiting for me, I also have some other things to take care of, like writing down some stuff for the D&D campaign, and some writing for Kederan.

Then there's of course Crossfire. We will play the 6th, make sure you do the following quests to get ready for Hellfire Ramparts and Blood Furnace: (you are allowed to ding 62) Know your Enemy and its follow-ups.

On the 6th we will do the Ramparts first, and then deliver the heads of the bosses and Ominous Tidings to Honor Hold before we can move on to the Blood Furnace. That should keep us entertained for a bit. For anyone who has never been there, please read the boss strategies as they are all nice challenges that will go wrong if you have no clue what you're doing. No offense of course.  Things that may come in handy: Greater Fire Potection Potions; let me or Marlix know if you need any.

It was a good night for Crossfire and a very bad night for the occupants of the fallen city of Stratholme. Sna and Maglok started off by asking me why I hadn't written anything here about Blackbox, to which I replied that Judge Kaal doesn't blog. Especially about the hush-hush events. Anyway, we met up at the main entrance of Stratholme and started to mow down the undead.

Both Maglok and myself experienced some technical difficulties at the beginning of the instance but these were soon remedied. Some of you may know that when you go to Stratholme, you have to find the bottles of holy water that are scattered around the city in supply crates, but unfortunately some crates contain only vermin and rotten things. Leave it to Smokey to always open the rotten crates; he seemed to be enjoying it. He even managed to pull a rare spawn while he was trying to kill rats and maggots.

Meanwhile, Marlix and Maglok were playing aggro-pingpong even though Marlix denied casting any big spells every time, and Sna tried to remind us not to muck around in the guts of the diseased ghouls lest we catch whatever killed them. Smokey started to wonder why the enemies just kept on coming even when the corpses of everything we had slain reached up to our knees (or waist in Smokey's case). And at the very end of the instance, Sna was thrilled to find out that yes! there is ooze in Stratholme! Bile-spewers have ooze guardians! Yech!


Victory!

It was 11 when we had killed the unholy knight Baron Rivendare and Crossfire retired for the night, tired and covered in rotten entrails yet satisfied. Next time is on 6 August.

Good old-fashioned fun! We decided to do a normal and a tribute run through Dire Maul North. The first run was basically tank-and-spank; we ran in, we killed the ogres, we killed some more ogres and their dogs, then some more ogres and finally (are we there yet?) the ogre king Gordok and his advisor.

No wait, before we got to the king, we had a small troublesome encounter with Captain Kromcrush who used an evil battlecry to send Marlix and myself into a panicked flight, straight into the arms of his underlings, who then mopped the floor with us. But we didn't let that happen a second time! After we pounded him into a pulp, we stood on his belly-plate (can't really call it a breastplate..) and mocked him with a silly dance.

We remembered to pick up the ogre tannin on our way out and we prepared ourselves for the tribute run. I gathered all the ingredients together, and Smokey was miffed that I was going to wear the ogre suit. What's an ogre suit, you ask? Give it a moment.. We made our way back in, a little confused on how to bring tribute to the Gordok Tribe correctly. But after some thinking, and some fumbling around with Guard Fengus, we stole the key to the door from his chest and made our way inside without killing any of the "important" ogres.

Half-way in, we would have to get past Guard Slip'kik, who had convienently built a frost trap in the middle of the hall. And we managed to catch him it the trap, like so:


Then we made our way up the stairs to the throne room where Captain Kromcrush was barring our way to King Gordok. So I donned the ogre suit, like so:

And I told the good captain that Guard Fengus had insulted his mother, so that he would sprint down the stairs to have a firm word with the guard. Then we moved in and killed King Gordok again, sparing his advisor this time, who named us king of the ogres in Gordok's stead!


For a moment, we sat down on the throne and contemplated this. Then we moved on to the loot! Some nice new spellcasting shoulderpads for Marlix in chicken form, a pretty cool new wand with mana regenenation, and a nice trinket for our tank!

Satisfied, we headed home to Ironforge to plan our next move: to Stratholme!

It has been a while since Crossfire met up, so the beginning of the evening had us all going: "I can't get the mike to work... Can you hear me now?" "Ok, how does this class work again? Aha, that button!" etc. We had just entered the instance when Maglok found out that he had forgotten to buy new arrows, so he decided that he would just have to throw himself at the enemey to get their attention. That usually works for my paladin, I remarked.

The only thing in the dungeon that gave us any trouble was the maze-like layout and the holes in the ground. Though Maglok and Marlix knew their way around well enough, the rest of us just followed them blindly and occaisionally dropped down into an unexpected hole. Smokey made a picture of his untimely death, because not only did he drop down two floors, some orc sat on him too:



Though Sna was disappointed by the lack of oozes in this dungeon, Smokey was quite satisfied with all the chances he got to show off his pyrotechnics. The spiders were nice targets for Smokey's need to vent and while he and Marlix were blasting away at them, Maglok sang "Who let the gnome out" under his breath. The spiders really had me go "eew!" in a girlish way because there were simply too many twitching legs on the screen. I blame it all on Farscape and the icky monsters in that series.

If that dungeoneering business of ours ever doesn't work out, at least Maglok and Marlix can go into the extermination business, because they seemed to have this awful urge to kill every rat in the dungeon. Smokey joined in later, throwing fireblasts at the critters and remarking that they couldn't even take little blasts of 1000 damage.

So we killed some ogres, some trolls and some orcs, we put and orc's head on a spike to get the attention of some more ogres, we killed some worgs and caughts their pups in a cage, and finally we killed a young dragon. Since Crossfire is level 60 and most of us are wearing TBC gear, none of this was a very great challenge to us, so we were finished in two hours.

I was cut off quite suddenly by a series of internet hiccups and I can only be glad that didn't happen when we were still in the instance. That does mean that I missed the discussion of what we're going to do next and when we're going to do it. Smokey said something about Upper Dire Maul. ;)

So guys, what's it going to be? And when? I can post a new set of dates, but I seem to remember that Maglok said he will be very busy, what with the new house and all. So please let us know when you can make time for a little instance fun like last night, oh big blue.

It was 20:00 sharp when Glok signed in and we promptly summoned him to Caer Darrow. Without further delay I graciously opened the door to the instance and we carefully started to clear the mobs. Sna was very disappointed to learn that even though the school is the home of many hideous creatures, we would be encountering no oozes tonight. We tried to compensate by giving him stuff to do, like shackling undead, and occaisionnally even healing.

Poor Smokey was not having a good day. The large amount of casters in the first part of the dungeon required him to cast counterspell, which is usually enough to make any mage pretty miffed, and as we made our way deeper into the instance, the ghouls that excrete deadly gasses when they are vanquished really became a threat to Smokey's rather modest health bar. But Smokey was not the only one who needed to be brought back from the dead. Both Marlix (even in his invincible Chicken form) and I succombed to the gasses too.

Quite unexpectedly, we found the Helm of Valor, which Glok immediately put on. Sna remarked to him that it was really a very nice helmet, it made his tentacles look good, and Glok replied: "Tentacles... I almost forgot I had those..." We demand a screenshot, dear Glok.

The mobs in this instance were no big challenge for Crossfire, which meant we rushed through it so much like a bulldozer on nitro, that I can hardly remember which boss we killed where, and what we found on its corpse. The only really big problem we had, was that the batteries in Glok's mouse were dying and replacing them didn't help much. While he was off trying to find some way to make his mouse work, Smokey ran off towards the cellar to kill some of the undead there, stating that we were perfectly capable of getting ourselves killed without Glok's help.

At the end of the evening, Crossfire dinged level 60, which means that we've been hanging out together for quite a while now. Next time is on 6 May and we will be heading to Lower Blackrock Spire. Glok said to pick up all the quests, except one, but I've forgotten which one. I'm going to bed now. Albine signing off.

Last time, after we had finished Blackrock Depths, we wondered what to do next. We were level 56 and Stratholme seemed a bit out of our league. Lower Blackrock Spire was an option, and so were Scholomance and Dire Maul, or so we thought. We voted for Dire Maul, because none of us except Glok really know that dungeon and we curious. Well, I can say with quite some certainty now, even though our critkitty has tranformed into a moonchicken, curiosity killed the cat. Several times.

The East side of the instance was easy enough. We chased Pusillin, killed some plantoids and some satyrs, we had fun and it felt good. Though at a certain moment I started to feel that some of the plantoids really had a lot of hitpoints, that what I thought had been a pretty big hit only made a slight dent in its health bar. That's when I noticed they were all level 57 or higher. I thought: "should be interesting", and I went on with slicing and dicing.

Zevrim the evil sacrificing satyr was a challenge, especially because the first person he decided to sacrifice was Sna, and our ever versatile Marlix had to jump in with the healing. The second time he activated the altar, it was me, so there was no real loss there, and we pounded his face into a pulp none the less. From there, making our way to the treant who would open the door to the final boss for us was quite fun.

Alzzin the Wildshaper patiently waited for us in the middle of is courtyard while we slew all his happy tree friends. He turned out to be a slippery fellow, but all his changing back and forth between satyr, wolf and other shapes did him no good. He fell unmistakebly hard and we felt fittingly heroic, having killed a level 58 boss. So we made our way back to the centre of Dire Maul, where a level 60 chimera had spawned.

Quite a gripping battle, but the loot was disappointing, so we moved on to the West side of Dire Maul. The first treants we encountered near the entrance were good practice and quite easy, especially because they could be pulled one by one. A good thing was that our vigilance didn't waver, a very good thing indeed. The huge demon hound Immol'thar is being kept improsoned in the depths of the West side by five highly magical pylons, guarded by arcane elementals. In order to kill him, he must first be released by destroying the pylons and the elementals guarding them.

The first pylon is quite near the entrance and the arcane elementals stand in a circle around it. With our first pull, we aggroed three of them and that was a little bit much to handle. Their damage ignored Glok's massive armor rating, and they had the nasty habit to shoot volleys of arcane missiles and chain lightnings at us. It was the first but certainly not the last wipe that night. Some of us had just turned level 57 and they were level 60.

Pulling two of them at the same time proved doable and we felt like we got the hang of it, keeping the guys with the chain lightning at a distance of the rest of the party and killing the guys with the arcane volleys first. When we had cleared the first pylon and moved on deeper into the dungeon, things calmed down again. The undead we encountered were a nice exercise in alertness, because some of them were invisible, and as we fought our way through them up to the parapet where the questgiver waited for us, I admired our solid teamwork.

We picked up the quest and paid our regards to the undead hunter roaming the balcony, and after that we went down towards Immol'thar's prison. That's where things got nasty; the only enemies we encountered from there onwards were the arcane alementals, and storm elementals who always came in large groups with one elite while the rest was level 58 or 59. The first time we tried such a group,  we were a goner. Marlix feared they might be immune to his hurricane spell, but they turned out to be immune to arcance spells, including counterspell, which made it harder for us to pull them away to a quiet spot of the hall.

But we learned our lesson, and the second time we pulled such a group, we made mincemeat out of them, or whatever kind of meat you can make of elementals. Taking down the rest of the pylons was no problem either, now that we had the trick down. And there he stood, Immol'thar himself, quite a scary guy with all his eyes, and his level 61.



Overwhelmed by his awesome powers, we died. But we didn't leave it at that. Luckily, the graveyard is quite close to the entrance of Dire Maul, and though he put up quite a struggle, the biggest struggle we've seen ever since we vanquished Herod at level 36 before the patch that nerfed all the dungeons, we got him in the end.

But that was only half of the quest; the other half was killing the guy who had imprisoned him: Prince Tortheldrin, who turned out to be quite a formidable opponent too. We were in luck that there was someone to repair our armor inside the instance, or Marlix would have had to face him with a bare chest. His nasty habit of ignoring our tank to jump up and kill the weaker members of Crossfire was a pain on our poor casters, and by the time we finally pinned him down, Glok and I were the only ones left standing.

Looking back on the challenges we had faced, we decided not to go to the North side of the dungeon. Maybe later, when we were higher level. Next up on our schedule is Scholomance on 15 April. We don't have the key, but I will make sure that the lock will pose no problem. Glok and Marlix immediately started to discuss which quests we need to pick up and which we would not, so I open the floor for their discussion here.

Last night was our second night in the Blackrock Depths and though we didn't find any great loot, at least the fun we had was epic. I have been trying to remember all our witty remarks, but I just can't. Writing them up here, out of the context, would spoil it and make into a "you had to be there". So let me just get down to business.

We were well-prepared with the potions provided by Marlix and my paladin, and Smokey had gone fishing to provide us with some nice sushi that gave us extra health, and the fishy snack that gives you a halloween costume. So we entered the depths looking like two pirates, two ninjas and a chicken (because Marlix doesn't need costumes).

Combat was swift, though no swifter than our tongues, except for Glok who repeatedly demonstrated a certain lack of eloquence. He made up for that by going back into tourguide mode, carefully explaining what was coming next, which way to look and what not to do. ("If you look on your left, you will see the bridge, please don't fall off. Follow me this way.")

By the time we reached the Grim Guzzler, the pub inside this instance, we had completed three quests and our bags were getting rather full with loot. We broke some beer barrels, angering one of the patrons, which we should have known was going to happen. There were two people in the pub we wanted to kill, preferably without getting into a bar brawl so big that we would have to massacre all of the guests, but despite our efforts to lure people into a dark alleyway with mugs of ale, we ended up having to kill them all, which was a bit much.

Dying has its upsides. We respawned back at the entrance, which meant we could go the other way to rescue the Marshall from Stormwind held captive in the jail. Jailbreak is known to be a pretty tough quest and now we know why; the marshall just doesn't stop to recuperate after a battle, which is fine for him, because he's a paladin, but not so fine for our priest, mage and chicken. Still, we made it, killing every single group of guards the marshall decided to attack and escorting him safely back outside.

When that was done, we could go back to the pub and onwards to the seven dwarves. Having defeated them, and still wondering where snowwhite was, Glok guided us to a large room which he called Moria. It was filled to the brim with patrolling dwarves, and they respawned within a minute after being killed. We managed to follow Glok closely as he made his way to the Flamekeepers, who had the torches we needed to light to open the next door. Though we didn't quite manage to go about it successfully the first time, the second try was one of our finest hours: I have never seen such watertight teamwork!

After that came the final room contaning Emperor Thaurissan and the princess he was holding captive (who looks suspiciously like Leia). To my shock, one of my swords broke, and Glok gave me a toothpick to make sure I had something to poke the Emperor in his kidneys with. Another shock came when Sna and I leveled for the second time that night, before we had even cleared the room. No more shocks after that, though. The Emperor's death was a bit of an anticlimax, and so was the loot.

To finish off the night, we returned to Stormwind to speak with the marshall and together we marched to the royal palace to reveal that the advisor to the Regent, Lady Katrana Prestor, was actually the dragon Onyxia! /shock and horror! We were joined by random people who were just minding their own business in Stormwind until they saw us marching by. The fireworks were a fitting end to an epic night of adventure.


After our victory over Thaurissan, we sat on his throne.

Next time on 28 March, Crossfire goes to Dire Maul.

I was sick for a few days, which basically meant I had more time to play WoW. I made two new alts: Braidbeard the dwarven priest and Belittled the gnome Warlock. I just love those first 20 levels.

A few weeks ago I decided that Mohikka my hunter needs to get to level 70, but I got her stuck on 54. I get so lost in Winterspring, it was getting on my nerves. This weekend I dusted Nathree my prot paladin off and she's not as rusty as I thought. I've been wandering the plaguelands with her and I suddenly remember why I loved the paladin so much. 

Hey Glimworm, you had that idea of a party with only paladins? What do you say we make an all-paladin party to get our epic mounts? There's my prot pally who is now almost 58, Alice's damage pally Palatine is 62 and yours, that makes three already. And doesn't Jo have a paladin too? 

I've also been going to some BG with Albine. Turns out that the sword rogue is a very common pvp build, and even I am fairly effective against horde players with it. I rather liked Warsong Gulch and I became a rather fearsome flag defender, if I may say so myself, despite my low level. I didn't like Arathi Basin much, because it really takes some serious effort to win it, and the amount of Alliance players that's willing and able to make that effort is really disappointing... The game is a lot more interesting than the capture the flag game in WSG, but it's no fun when people are just fooling around. I wouldn't mind playing Arathi Basin again with a premade good group, but not with random idiots again.

Anyway, I got the pvp gear I wanted: a necklace and some bracers from WSG and boots from AB. Now all I need is an agility enchant from Smokey. Crossfire is this Friday. I've been reading up on Blackrock Depths, but none of the bosses I've read about so far require any special strategies, except to clear the room of adds. I'll read up on the emperor and the princess, because that can't be easy right? Anyway, Albine is ready for Friday.

The Blackrock Depths gave us a run for our money. Not only is this the first dungeon that's not too easy for a 1337 group like us, it also involved some challenges we're not quite used to.  

It started with a number of prequests, which we had to pick up individually to save time. Some of these were just deliveries, but others involved killing a number of red dragons, which was especially hard for Smokey, because changing his fire specialisation to frost or arcane magic would be blasphemy.

Then there was that prequest that involved getting killed and then talking to a ghost. Sna still needed to do this quest when we were about to start last night. Now, the only way of dying without damaging your equipment is to strip, so we cheered him on and Glok even tried to dance with him. That was clearly a very traumatic experience and Sna promptly jumped in the lava to end it.

Marlix arrived and presented us with his new look; he had always been a rather ugly night elf who normally turned into a panther or a bear to make himself more presentable, but tonight he had a new shapeshifting ability. He turned into an owlbear, and was immediately nicknamed chicken by Glok.

We entered the depths of the caverns beneath Blackrock Mountain and fought our way through large groups of hellhounds and dark dwarves. The other party members made quite a bit of anti-dwarf remarks and I just stealthed, hoping they wouldn't mistake me for one of our enemies; they were clearly out for blood.

The first boss to give us real trouble was the High Interrogator Gerstahnn, who shrieked like a banshee and sent us running with fear into the clutches of more enemies than we could handle all at the same time. When we finally managed to silence her, she dropped a rather disappointing magical orb, that made both Sna and Smokey go: "Eww, I don't want that junk!" Snobs.

When we reached the Ring of the Law, Glok warned Sna that there would be no oozes in this dungeon, and Sna replied bravely that he would survive somehow. When we were overrun by a horde of giant beetles and Marlix demonstrated his new area of effect spells, he nearly croaked, but he unmistakebly did a lot of damage. After that, we had to defeat a large fire elemental, which resulted in a lot of complaining; Sna complained that he needed to heal so much, Glok complained that he was getting so much damage despite of his uberhigh armor rating and Smokey complained that he had to do nature damage like a tree-hugging hippy. Marlix and I just smiled at each other and did our best to obliterate the enemy.

We made our way to the Vault to steal the Heart of the Mountain and we sent in Marlix to get the attention of some of the golems while we tried to kill the real boss, renaming Marlix to the sacrificial chicken. Here is a picture, but Marlix is trying to hide behind Glok:



After some more running around, with Glok and Marlix bickering over which way we should go, which was worse than usual because I couldn't give my opinion to force a decision, we defeated Bael'Gar and his lava spawns, Lord Roccor the elemental jailor, Pyromancer Loregrain during his prayers, and Lord Incendius who was guarding the black anvil. 

The loot was rather satisfying; Sna found a very tinkerbellish wand with a great deal of healing, Smokey got some very nice cloth armor with extra magic damage, Marlix found some cloth armor for his new chicken outfit and I got a nice new sword. Glok was all: "I go through all this trouble getting burnt to a crisp by fire elementals and all I get is some lousy bracers." and frankly, he was right, even though there was 18 stamina in the ones we found.

It was getting late when we entered the Manufactory and we decided to go home after we had defeated Golem Lord Argelmach, who turned out to be tougher than we thought. We didn't know he would run into the Manufactory to rouse all of the gnome egnineers we had not yet killed, who then blasted us with their blunderbusses. That was one tough fight.

Next Crossfire meeting is Friday 14 March. We will finish all the quests that we did last night so that we're up and ready to go at soon as the clock strikes 19.30. And now to finish off, I'd just like to show off Albine's ubercool new rogue armor. I'm very happy about the effect it seems to have on my damage, though that might also be the pvp practice I've had paying off.

 

We got off to a bad start; both sna and maglok were thoroughly disgusted with the Valentine Festival, but Smokey seemed to find it funny to shoot all of us with silver shafted arrows, which basically meant that we all had a goblin cherub following us around all the time. Inappropriate sense of humor is not on your character sheet in this game, Smokey, cut it out!

When Marlix had to go afk for a few minutes to talk to his real life valentine on the phone, Sna remarked that he didn't understand how anyone would prefer the company of an intelligent, beautiful woman over playing WoW. He was going to elaborate, but suddenly erupted in despereate cries: "No! Ouch! Help! She's got me in a headlock!" spacegeest had heard him. You go girl!

Anyway, about that temple... There were oozes. There were also trolls and dragons, but they didn't physically excite our priest. Let's move on to a safer subject... Maglok did his usual routine of knowing exactly where he was going all the time, and disagreeing with me whether it was a right turn or a left turn, depending on viewpoints. Following his unfaltering lead, we activated eight serpent statues to summon an abomination, we defeated four undead trolls and their spiritual leader, and we killed a great number of dragonkin, four green dragons and a corrupted elder dragon.

There were moments that Sna was genuinely surprised that he needed to take a mana break, and there were moments that Smokey complained about running out of mana, but I can't say I minded, because that gave me more time to skin all the dragons. Some of the trolls tried to turn us into frogs and some of the dragons tried to magically lull us to sleep, but thanks to our superior communication system ("Ribbit!" "Snore!") Sna was always quick to respond with a dispell.

The followers of Jammal'an had us worried a few times when they cast fear on us, sending us galloping straight towards the enemy, but we were lucky... er I mean skilled enough to avoid any bad pulls.

Here is the picture to illustrate our kill count:



I hope everyone has reached level 52 by now. Next time on 26 February we venture into the Blackrock Depths. Please review this page for all the quests.

Crossfire got off to a shaky start last night. Marlix had let us know he couldn't come and a friend of his would fill in for him, playing Marlix. But this friend had deinstalled the game last night, in a fit of "Stupid game! I hate you!". Which meant he was still downloading all the patches when we were coming online. Marlix himself logged in for a second to pick up the right quests and bring his druid to the Valley of the Swords, where he set it to follow Smokey and left. The friend was still patching so we went inside and Smokey was all: "This opens possibilities..." But I guess making Marlix cast buffs on us and picking up all the right loot was not what Smokey had in mind. When the friend finally came online, he took over Marlix, and I mean no offense to the fella, but Marlix, we missed you. Let's not do that again.

The other disrupting factor was my condition. Migraine is something I can handle usually, but it becomes a lot harder when I can't breathe. There were moments when I moaned because the lights on the screen were just too bright (<I>after</i> I had turned the brightness down to 20%) and there were moments when I asked: "Guys, give me a moment so I can just... schpooooooooooot. Ah, that feels better. Now i'm not dripping anymore."

So, Maraudon... What can I say about it? It was big and confusing inside as ever. Luckily Glok really knows his way around and his tourguide mode was very helpful. We started on the purple side of the cave, and worked our way around to the orange side before actually entered the instance. Glok: "On the right here, you will see the instance entrance. We will be ignoring that for now. Ooh! Mithril!" We entered on the orange side and started off with killing lots of evil corrupted... plants. Glok: "And if you pour the water from the cerulean vial over this plant here..." Albine: "Like so?" Glok: "Then it spawns three elementals. Sigh." Takes out his shield and sword and starts to bash the elementals.

Deeper into the cave, we ran into slimes, Sna's favourite. These were the really slow and toxic kind, and Glok gave us all a lesson in kiting. The next big cave offered us maggots, lots and lots of slimy maggots. Sna cast shield on Smokey and then held his nose shut and told us to keep our hands clean. Yuck. Sna: "I am definately taking a shower after this instance." Albine: "No worries, you can do that in the instance, later." And after that, came the broccoli, not very fearsome enemies, especially after having killed the other plants which were far more dangerous. After some very annoying searching for last khan for this quest, we finally reached Celebras the Cursed. Glok was just explaining how we only needed to half kill him, when Sna asked: "Why just half?" Albine: "Because when he's almost dead, he goes: Oh noes! What have I done? How can I repent?" Sna: "Marginally evil, my least favourite alignment."

So after Celebras gave us the magic schtick, we washed ourselves in the waterfall and fought our way through some hydras, dinosaurs and giants to where Landslide resides. And then onwards to the pretty Princess. Here's the picture of all the bosses we defeated.

An icky bunch all in all. Especially that Princess. It really is no wonder that she sent us running away in fear, because she also has this noxious area attack where she sort of squats and realeases a really foul cloud of gas... Anyway, the loot was ok, for once. Both Sna and Smokey got some nice new things, and I got a ring. Too bad Rotgrip didn't drop those boots, though, they really had my name on it.

Next time Crossfire is open for discussion.  I'm still in the middle of  moving to our new house, but Marlix invited me over to play at his place, which might be nice! So guys, when? Is Monday night an option? Some Fridays might be good. And I don't mind if we postpone everything until February, so speak up.

Glok promised to look into what we could be doing next time. We're not quite ready for the Sunken Temple yet, and he said: "Then we'll just go do Blackrock Depths.", but we're still level 47 and we need to get some quests done first. So he said he was going to make a list. Ok, let's see it.

The thing I hate about some of these instances are the pre-quests. If you want to do Zul Farrak in one go, you have to stop by Tabetha in Dustwallow, Aerie Peak and Jintha Alor in the Hinterlands and Nethergarde Keep in the Blasted Lands, which requires some serious backpacking. It was almost 20.30 before we reached the entrance to Zul Farrak.

In the ruins of the city, the trolls stand around in groups of four or less, some patroll and some are chanting to their evil gods. Patrolling groups were lured closer with one of Maglok's well-aimed crossbow bolts, stationary groups got a sap-sheep approach. Maglok would mark which ones would be sheeped and sapped. Then I'd sneak forward and do my thing with a pummel, and while I snuck back towards Crossfire, I would hear the sound of an enemy bleating and another cursing behind me. The angry ones would charge past me to our blue friend with the crossbow and that was the start of another battle.

The quality of our game varied greatly. Some fights were as smooth as described above, while others went completely overboard when the enemies detected me before I could sap and an unforeseen patrol jumped us from behind. It kept us on our toes, to say the least. And so did the enemies' ability to turn us into frogs, which resulted in the shouting of  "Ribbit!", "Kermy, help me!" and other hilarious comments over Teamspeak.

Gahz'rilla gave us a run for our money, because of his habit of throwing the people who are in melee with him high up into the air and then taking out his rage on the mage or the priest. After defeating that big oaf, we slowly cleaned out the rest of the dungeon before making our way up to the pyramid. Marlix suddenly got a call from work, which meant he went half afk while trying to get a server or two back online. This was fine while we leisurely opened a few graves and killed a number of scarabs.

Marlix gave us back his full attention during the event at the top of the pyramid, and the whole thing went down rather smoothly. I activated a mechanical Greench I had got from Father Winter, and the little thing bravely fought off quite a number of trolls before it broke down. There were two pauses in the waves of trolls that stormed the pyramid, which made sure no one ran out of mana. Marlix was still a little distracted though, and suddenly keeled over, but there was even time for Sna to resurrect him before we had to descend the stairs again.

A picture of all the bosses we defeated, as suggested by Maglok:


The loot was rather disappointing, though Smokey did get a scary new Halloween costume, and when we had killed all the bosses, some of us were still lacking a number of quest items, which required us to make more kills. We slacked off and Marlix went back to his debugging duties, which lead to us getting caught in a sudden respawn wave! Sna called it a recreational wipe. With more than nine trolls on our neck, we died. Except me. I snuck off.

While the others made their way back from the graveyard to the instance entrance, I stealthed through the ruins. If you know the map of the ruins, you also know that there's a long, narrow corridor not far from the entrance. As Crossfire was sitting just inside the entrance, eating and drinking to regain their strength, I was making my way through this corridor. Everything on this side had respawned, and two trolls were standing at the end of the corridor, talking to each other. There was no way I could stay behind them, so I snuck between them. Of course they noticed me, so I turned on evasion and sprint, and charged towards my party members, screaming: "I got some!" They were just finishing their drinks when they suddenly saw me bolting towards them, with a horde of angry trolls behind me. We quickly fled the instance, not just to save our skin, but also to catch our breath from laughing so hard.

Next episode of Crossfire is 9 January and we will convene in Nijel's Point to venture into Maraudon together. Please remember to pick up this quest and level up a bit. I think I have a little headstart xp-wise and I am now at 41321 xp into level 45.
Crossfire! At! Ease! See you all next week.