November 2014

Garrisons and all their Goodies

stargrace November 14, 2014 2 Comments

Alright. I know there are going to be a lot of WoW posts from various sites over the next little while, so for those who are not interested in WoW, I apologize. It is one of the (many) games I tend to play, so you’ll have to handle a few posts here and there! Warlords released, and while there have been issues (server issues, bug issues, etc) for me personally things have been relatively smooth – minus the server issues which were of course expected and I don’t mind them.

When I first heard about garrisons I got all excited thinking these were player housing. They’re not. They’re instances where you get to plop down buildings and sure you get to choose what buildings you plop down, and yes they are incredibly useful – but this is not player housing as I have come to know it. There’s no decorating, no creativity. You’re not naming any of your followers, or doing anything to the zone aside from choosing what building is going where. That being said, it IS highly addictive.

If you’re familiar with the Rift minion system then you already know what to expect from followers in garrisons. You earn NPC through PvE quests and through garrison quests (there are other ways but these are the beginning methods) and they’ll randomly take on a quality. The  beginning NPC will start at level 90, you get to level them to 100 through garrison quests. You’ll spend a lot of time at the Mission Specialist in the garrison, choosing which follower is going on which mission for the best odds. Unlike Rift where you’re not given a percentage of success right there on the mission, WoW takes all the guess work out of the equation for you.

You send your little minions followers out, and they come back after a pre-determined length of time. Some times they come back with experience, garrison resources (used for upgrades), a fancy item for you, some gold, etc. You get the picture. They level up, and you work on your garrison. You start with an Inn, Barracks, and if you have a crafting specialty chances are you’ll run into a quest that will reward you with plans for your craft (in my case this was engineering). You’ll play some more and wonder how the heck you get to earn more buildings, and how to upgrade the current ones you have.

Thankfully there are loads of guides on this part of the game. One in particular that I have been using is on Icy-Veins, and it explains that in order to upgrade your town hall to T2 you’ll need to complete the quest Bigger is Better. In order to get that quest, you need to complete a majority of the quests in Twilight Glade (Alliance at least). You’ll also need 200 resources and some gold, so keep that in mind. I’m not quite at the point where I’m ready to upgrade to T2 yet, but I’m slowly getting there and I’m quite excited about it. My warlock just reached level 92, and I’m enjoying the ride more than I’m trying to rush.

I have to admit, it’s also very nice to see so many of my friends playing – I know it probably won’t last, but I’m still very happy.

Simple Weekends

stargrace November 3, 2014 No Comments

Clocks went back an hour on Sunday morning, and while I had planned on taking advantage of the extra hour to do some gaming, after a very long week all I wanted to do was sleep, and so that’s exactly what I did. 10 hours worth, all be told. It was glorious. Once my day got started, I decided to spend it relaxing and with as little stress as possible. Of course that included a lot of gaming.

While I had killed Garrosh in LFG numerous times, I had never attempted any of the more difficult runs. I queued up for a FLEX raid over the weekend and defeated the normal mode version, which granted me my first heirloom staff, a 556 ilevel beauty that was a significant upgrade over the 510 mace I had been using previously. I also won another weapon, a warforged mace that goes perfect with my healing spec. The raid itself was pretty smooth. As a healer your job is simple, keep people alive and stay out of the purple. With the removal of our instant cast heals, keeping people alive got a LOT  harder. Once I had defeated Garrosh on normal I decided it might be neat to try heroic. I queued up once again and was invited before too long. We managed to get him down to 25% but we kept wiping on the final phase when there is mind control going on. Still, it was a good learning experience for me. Dying costs a lot of out of pocket coin, so instead of spending more on wipes I decided to go run older raids with a friend to earn that pocket change back and prepare for WoD.

It was SO MUCH fun. We ran 25 man Ulduar which I had never been to before, along with pretty much all of the raid zones from the Lich King expansion. I earned so many achievements it made my head swim, and I also won two new mounts. I made a fair amount of coin back and I expect that in WoD the amount raid mobs drop may be reduced slightly. It seems like since the stat compression everyone and their dog is running older raids and stockpiling for WoD, which is now only days away.

I’m so excited!