Good thing we're not playing tonight; my internet connection is imitating a stroboscope. But when will we play then? Marlix is off on holiday tomorrow, so the options are: 

edited 

Looks like Wed 28 May and Wed 11 June are our best bets for now.

Sna has just let me know that he can't make it to Crossfire. We will have to find another date. 

EDIT: How about 13 May? Sna?

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.

Looked like Wed 23 April or Thur 24 April were good options, until Smokey said he can't make it. I think we're going to have to postpone until Tue 6 May. How is that for everyone? 

EDIT: I have reserved 6 May, but I'm still hoping for this Wednesday or Thursday too, Smokey please let us know if it's possible soon, then we can do Scholo this week and DM North on 6 May.

Sorry to hear Sna and cars are still not really getting along. Let's find some other time. Albine is available on:

Mon 21 April
Tue 22 April
Wed 23 April
Thur 24 April
Fri 25 April
Sat 26 April whole day
Sun 27 April whole day
Mon 28 April
Tue 29 April
A slight case of no time because of Symbols
Mon 5 May
Tue 6 May
Wed 7 May
Thur 8 May
Onoes! Aon!
Mon 12 May
Tue 13 May
Wed 14 May
Thur 15 May

How's that for options?

We had convened to meet again on 15 April, but Glok can't make it that day because of work. Please let me know when we can go to Scholomance together. These are the weekday evenings that I'm available:

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.

 

Tonight, Blackrock Depths, 19.30. You guys know the drill. 

Today I ventured into the Burning Steppes and the Searing Gorge (where I picked up elemental leatherworking!) and I'm wondering about those quests we're supposed to pick up for Blackrock Depths. Namely, the Dragonkin menace, which seems to require killing a number of dragons before you get to the part inside BRD, and a taste of flame, which requires a quest item obtained from a quest in the Searing Gorge. Are we going to do that stuff together, or are we supposed to do it by ourselves? Does anyone want to team up this Sunday to do it? Or some other day next week?

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.

EDIT: Looks like we're finally ready to roll! Sunken Temple, here we come! Wednesday, 19.30. I'll probably station myself at the summoning stone around that time. I'd like to emphasize that people try to stick together and inform the rest of the group before jumping down a balcony.

The phat loot we're all hoping for: Jammal'an the Prophet drops some really nice things for Smokey and Aisli, but they're secretly hoping for this purple sweetness of course. Which is really a shame, because if that drops, then Baduila won't get the chestpiece or the hammer. I'm of course rooting for this cool sword, though its speed and special ability are not really my style, I might like one of these better. All in all, looks like nice possibilities for our tank and our squishies, but not much leather for Marlix and me. Luckily for me, there's a broad choice in weapons, and I might even pick up a dagger again, if one happens to fall in our laps. Looks like Marlix is the one who is going to be left out...

About loot. We're bound to find stuff we won't use. Is it an idea to share it evenly? In a former group, I was the enchanter, and I would take all the drops we didn't like, disenchant, sell and then send everyone their share of the profit. Is that an idea, or too much fuss?

According to Wowwiki, everything in Sunken Temple is now level 50 or lower since the last patch, which means it might not be an awfully big challenge. No reason to slack though; the avatar of Hakkar will still give us a very long combat in which we have to work together closely, and a bad pull will still get us all killed. Let's review the strategy quietly before storming into battle like we normally do. For the Avatar we will have to stick closely together, when fighting Jammal'an Smokey must be ready to sheep any party members that get turned, and if we go on to fight the shade of Eranikus Marlix will have to carefully off-tank him.

Well... See you all on Wednesday.