We went to Karazhan yesterday. At first we were kind of nervous because a lot of the people who went this time had never gone before, and could probably still be considered a little undergeared.

But I guess we shouldn’t have worried:

Attumen: One-shotted
Moroes: Two-shotted
Maiden: One-shotted
Opera – Big Bad Wolf: One-shotted
Curator: One-shotted
Chess: Free badges!

So at this point, having completely demolished the first half of Karzhan, we were all feeling really high off of our successes. All you other bosses, bring it on! We were on fire.

…soon to be literally.

We had two wipes on Illhoof before deciding to skip him. This was rather hilarious actually, somebody cried out “If you run far enough away he resets!” so off about half of us went, running throughout the entire tower with millions of little imps following us as one by one Illhoof plucked people away from their flight and sacrificed them. Pretty soon we were down to only me left, so I feigned death– I don’t know if that’s what got me out of it or not but I do know that by the time he finally reset I had 40 HP left and was the only one still alive.

With that guy out of the question, we headed over to Shade of Aran. It was all sort of Leeroy Jenkins-ish: After an initial mishap where three people got too close and started the event with the rest of us still standing outside the closed doors (the panicky screams over Ventrilo were priceless), we all gathered together and had the two people who had done it before spend about ten minutes explaining the nuances of the fight to us in detail, we ran in, and… we blew up. At that point, the paladin was soulstoned but was literally laying at Aran’s feet, it was super late, and everything decided to respawn, so we called it for the night.

Still, I gotta say it was a very successful night overall. I think the fact that we’ve got the first half of that place “on farm” isn’t too bad for a scrappy group of roleplayers who have never stepped foot inside before until a few weeks ago. Oh, and no hunter loot, though our healers (and to a lesser extent, the rogue) really hit the jackpot. As I often say though– I’m here for the fun. The loot is just the gravy. Also I think I did really well this time (that’s the link to the anonymous WWS report– I’m Thetys, Locke is Snooper, and Jitte the Mysterious Rogue is, I’m pretty sure, Moroes’ garrote. No idea why it’s showing up as a player.)

I was feeling kind of bad the last Karazhan run because I wasn’t anywhere near the top and I sort of started to worry that I was “losing my touch” and not pulling my weight. So it was nice to do so much better this time. I was even tops on Curator! All the tips people started giving me musta helped. Oh and I was wearing my hunter shirt. Maybe that worked too. +100 Agi, +100 Ranged Attack Power, +100 doing-well-in-a-video-game.

/nods

…hey, you didn’t think I’d letcha go without a movie, now did ya?

This is the Big Bad Wolf version of the Opera Event. It’s basically a tank ‘n spank with one little gimmick: Big Bad Wolf randomly turns people into Little Red Riding Hood and you have to run around in circles while he chases you, because you’re silenced and can’t do much of anything except run. Now as a wise man once said, if you Feign Death, he loses aggro on you and you don’t have to worry about it (except for the fact that you are still slienced and can’t do anything). Fortunately, my Feign Death, well… worked. =P

Music: The Revs – Turning Japanese

And yes, bad, bad, naughty hunter at about 1:20, pulling aggro like that. Now in my defense, Omen failed to give me any sort of flashy advance warning like it usually does… but still. Bad hunter.

/sits in corner

My guild went to Karazhan on Saturday– I unfortunately was unable to go– and they managed to get past the Opera Event in what I hear was an epic fight (something about six people dying, the tank kiting stuff around for five minutes while the healers regen’d mana, and eventually four-manning it) but then got stuck on Curator.

So… we went back. When I was available!

This fight, for those of you who haven’t done it before, works something like this: There are these electric fuzzballs that aggro on random people that you have to kill. Every so often, Curator, a giant robot, turns all blue which means he takes double damage from everyone and that’s when you have to focus on DPS’ing him.

Here’s the final video I made– after three or four false starts:

Music: Cyborg Jeff – F-Zero GX Dr Stuard Jeff & Toad Air Team Challengers OC ReMix; Jean Jacques Perrey – Brazilian Flower

(I know the last song is ridiculously silly. Bear with me when I say it’s an inside joke of sorts. And makes the fact that the tank and Curator died within about a half second of each other even funnier.)

I’m not sure if this is a difficult fight for a hunter or if it was just hard for me because I’m not used to it. I know I do my best when I get to stand still and really dig into my shot rotation and let the crits flow. But for this fight I hardly got a chance to get in one or two shots on each fuzzball. For this reason, I had the snot beaten out of me in the DPS charts. I don’t mind though. I had fun, I had the killing blow, and I got something shiny out of it:

Feels good to have some Tier 4 on my Armory, lemme tell ya.

At some point I’d like to write detailed guides to playing a hunter in each of the Kara fights but that’s a ways off yet, right now it’s just a blast to run around and check out all the different bosses. It sort of has a “rogue’s gallery” feel to it. These are the bad guys that I’ve been hearing about since I started playing WoW about a year ago. It’s so neat to finally go “meet” them.

We went to the Chess Event after this and then called it a night. Yes, we won Chess. I’d been informed that we’d be disowned if we didn’t, so I guess that’s a good thing.

First he met my challenge and developed The Shaman Gear Drinking Game.

Then he made the BRK blog Drinking Game.

And then… Znodis made the Aspect of the Hare Drinking Game.

A couple examples:

- Take a drink for each character Pike mentions in a post. (That could get you drunk right there.)
- Take another drink if it’s not a hunter

…

- Take a drink if she talks about RP’ing.
- Take a drink if she actually starts RP’ing on the blog.
- Take a drink when she mentions Linux.
- Take a drink because no one really likes Windows.
- Turn off your computer and go get really drunk if you have Vista installed. When you sober up, uninstall it and get Linux because if you run into a problem at least you know someone can fix it.

…

- Take a drink if you wrote this drinking game in a subtle attempt to get Pike to draw you one of those cool custom avatars even though you’re not a hunter superstar.

Znodis, you may be disheartened to know that I still don’t drink (unless we’re talking about chocolate milk, or Mountain Dew when I’m feeling adventurous) BUT I think you’ll be happy to learn that, just for you, if you e-mail me a screenshot of your character (in your favorite gear) and pet, I’ll whip something up for ya. No guarantees on how long it will take, but I’ll do my best. Oh, and if you have a specific location you’d like for the background… let me know that too. *nods* (I left this as a comment on your blog too, but I’m having trouble figuring out if it actually went through or not).

I’d love to be able to make avatars for the rest of my readers– unfortunately time is still an issue– but I often find myself trying to think up a way I can finally give you all your own little custom avatar. So hopefully someday I can make it happen. ^_^

In other news, my guild’s got another Kara run lined up for tomorrow. I… have to work. /cry Fortunately I’ve been informed that best efforts are going to be made to line up the next-after-next run with my work schedule (which has been irritatingly inconsistent lately…) and besides, I never really figured I’d get to go to all the Kara runs. We’ve got dozens more ahead of us anyway, I’m sure. And lots of people who want to go. So it doesn’t bug me too much.

… /sniffle

…all I gotta do is act naturally!

Yeah, I figured you guys might want to see a little more than just screenshots!

Our little guild’s second ever try on Moroes; the first try doesn’t really count, I think, because somebody got disconnected and the pull was a complete accident. Now I’m no BRK; watching this movie there are a few things I would have liked to have improved on, but overall I think I did a pretty good job that I can be proud of. Me and the other hunter were sort of bouncing traps off of each other during the second half; what you don’t hear in the movie is the two of us on Ventrilo discussing how we’re backing each other up.

About four minutes into the movie is a sort of funny moment as you can see both us hunters trying desperately to get green triangle into one of our traps… he was pretty heavily planted onto the off-tank at that point though.

And yes, the song is indeed “Scatman”. Partially because the other hunter requested that song, partially because it fit perfectly with the length of the movie, and I won’t deny, partially because this song has long been one of my favorite songs to WoW to. It’s overdone, but I like it.

Enjoy!

(And I realize the video is pretty small; I may try to see if I can post up a bigger, higher-quality version, if enough people would be interested.)

Tawyn & Locke and her guild (and a few non-guildies) vs. Karazhan:

This is going to be edited frequently throughout the night:

4:25pm: Having a roleplaying guild meeting and trying desperately to fill out our group because we had a few people drop out…

4:40pm: At the summoning stone. Tying up last minute details. Let it be known that I am really, really nervous.

4:55pm: The Boyfriend/Guild Leader is giving the Pre-Kara Peptalk.

5:05pm: Goin’ in!

5:25pm: Standing in front of the first boss, getting ready for him. I chain trapped something and was proud of myself. ^^

5:35pm: Attumen the Huntsman down. I got some bracers; [Stalker's War Bands] (I’d link ‘em on WoWHead but I’m in the middle of a raid! =P)

6:00pm: We’re currently in the room with Moroes. I successfully pulled off four chained traps in a row a little while back, I’m glad I’m managing so well so far! =D

6:20pm: First wipe on Moroes; we had a horrible accidental pull and someone got disconnected, and still managed to kill some of the mobs and get Moroes down to about 11%. I kept some guy trapped for a while until I wound up too close to my trap and he got a hit on me; killed me in one hit cause my health was already a bit down. Still, definitely not a bad first try.

6:35pm: Moroes down on the second try. Me and the other hunter had some tag-team trapping action going on throughout most of it and it was pretty fun. I recorded it too! =D

7:03pm: Wiped on a trash pull where we accidentally grabbed two more adds than we wanted; we still managed to take down three which I thought was pretty good considering the fact that we’re in some tiny hall and there was very little space to move around or trap and stuff. Currently sort of taking a small break while people rez, repair, and/or grab stuff to eat.

7:19pm: Standing in front of Maiden.

7:25pm: I died about ten seconds after starting Maiden; whoa, had no idea Holy Fire did that >.> So yeah, that one was a wipe.

7:37pm: Holy Fire and Repentance at the same time! The tank and I both died when she was at about 50%. Offtank picked up and got her down to about 30% before another wipe. The Deadly Boss Mods announcements are a big help though.

7:57pm: Third try, third wipe. Healers keep getting stunned…

8:10pm: …and again. Sheesh. x_x We keep getting her to about 30%ish.

8:13pm: New plan, going to Opera.

8:25pm: The priest disconnected without us noticing and we did a pull expecting a shackle which never came– this was followed by more adds then we wanted and this resulted in a wipe. My gear is all yellow… might have to repair soon. A couple people have to go so we’re working on grabbing some replacements!

9:00pm: Unexpected issues with a lot of people having to leave, so we’re going to call it for the night. We may or may not be back tomorrow. Either way, I had an awful lot of fun and got some new gear out of it. (Oh, and topped DPS. Just barely though. We had a fantastic group!) =D

So I’m going to Karazhan on Saturday. For the first time. I think that these next few days are going to be spent getting as ready for it as I possibly can.

Ran Heroic Mech yesterday– our little instancing group decided we really need to get back into shape instance-wise because we haven’t been running them as often as we used to– and I maintain that Panthaleon the Calculator must really love me, because last time he dropped my gloves and trinket, and this time he dropped my gloves again (they got disenchanted) and also [Beast Lord Helm]. Now, I’m currently wearing [Gladiator's Chain Helm], and when I’ve got both of them all gemmed up and stuck a [Glyph of Ferocity] on them… Beast Lord Helm gives me about 2 extra attack power and a little mana regen, and Gladiator’s Chain Helm gives me over 1% crit. Not to mention the stamina boost– I’m sitting at about 6700 HP with Beast Lord. I feel like the world’s flimsiest glass cannon.

You may be asking “Why say goodbye to so much crit and stamina?” And the answer is: The two-piece Beast Lord set bonus: Set: Reduces the cooldown on your traps by 4 sec.

I have always seen Crowd Control as being my #1 job in a party. CC comes before DPS on my little priority list. Always. (Unless everybody else in the party can CC– but when I’m with my normal group, I’m always main CC.) And this trap cooldown is something that I see as being essential for Kara, especially as I have been informed that I am going to be one of the main providers of CC (alongside a priest). I’m glad I managed to snag this helmet before the weekend.

So now I’ve gained a shortened trap cooldown but lost a bunch of crit. What to do about this? The answer, I think, comes in the form of a list:

1.) Slap a [Stabilized Eternium Scope] on my bow (replacing +10 damage, which is on there currently).
2.) Get the exalted Scryer shoulder enchant (I’ve got the honored one already, but the exalted one gives a little more crit and some attack power)
3.) Replace the +7 agi enchant on my gloves with the +15 agi enchant.

I want to get those three things done by this weekend. Can I do it? …I’ve no idea. I’m only Honored with Scryer (getting close to Revered though, I’ve been grinding rep in Shadowmoon and Netherstorm these past couple of days) and I’ve spent several hundred gold these past few days mostly on gear enhancements and the like, so I’m questioning whether or not I have the money for the new scope and glove enchant.

But you’d better believe I’m gonna try my hardest. I want to go into Kara feeling as ready as I possibly can be.

By the way, I think I’m going to borrow a page from Matticus and “liveblog” my first Kara run. What I’m trying to decide is… should I type it all up as I go along and then hit the “Publish Post” button after we’re done for the night? Or should I publish it first thing and edit it throughout the run? I’m sorta thinking the first option is the best one, because I doubt anyone is going to be sitting at the edge of their seat refreshing my blog. =P But, we’ll see!

Finally got around to doing Black Morass and nabbing the vaunted key to Karazhan. We sort of waited around until we had a good-sized group of us in the guild who needed it, and today was one of the rare days lately where schedules didn’t clash and we had four of us who needed the key, so we grabbed a fifth person and off we went to what was overall a very smooth run of BM, free of any deaths or major problems. I was on “adds duty” and I got a lot of praise for my job as such, so I must’ve done better than I thought I would, which is always a plus!

Afterwards we all rushed off to Shattrath and then all the way back to Azeroth and Deadwind Pass to finally nab ourselves [The Master's Key].

Now, you gotta understand something here. Of the five of us, three of us, myself included, had never once set foot inside Karazhan. The fourth had only been inside once and only for one boss, and the fifth had been inside multiple times but never before on this character or even character type (his two other characters are a warlock and a mage; this character is a holy pally.)

So what did we do?

We converted the group to a raid and went inside, of course.

(Insert screenshot here that I should have taken but completely forgot to! =P)

There were some level 71 elite horses that we decided to have some fun with because we were feeling a bit giddy. So that’s exactly what we did. Pulled some horses and disposed of them. I even chain-trapped one, which normally isn’t a big deal because I do that all the time but this is Kara, after all.

After a couple pulls we were sort of discussing it and came to the conclusion that the mobs so far seemed to be of a comparable difficulty level to the mobs in a Heroic. And as a guild, we’ve got a few Heroics under our collective belt.

So that’s when somebody said “Hey, let’s see if we can grab five other people and take the first boss.”

So there we were, with that carrot dangling in our faces, and it was as four of the five of us were drooling over the carrot when my boyfriend, who also happens to be the guild leader, spoke up. He said that he had made this guild and leveled up with this guild and become good friends with the people in this guild and he wanted his first Karazhan run to be a guild/good-friends-of-the-guild run. And at the time we certainly did not have enough people in the guild who would be ready to jump into Kara with us.

And we all sort of agreed and reluctantly pushed that tasty carrot aside and left Karazhan. For now.

See, lemme talk about my guild for a bit. I’m sure I’ve mentioned this before in the past, but I’m gonna say it again. We have a pretty large guild, 120-something characters and 70+ accounts, and we are largely comprised of people who are newer to the game or who are at least new to getting a character to 70. These are people I leveled with. People who learned the game with me. People who have never done this end-game stuff before… just like me. We’re all in this together.

I know of a lot of people who are in some big huge guild and they get ushered through Karazhan by the big boys the day after they hit 70 and come out of the other end all shiny and geared. I’m not trying to say that’s a bad way to do it, but that’s not how I would want to do it. I like the fact that my guild and I are doing it the old fashioned way. A year behind, yes. But that’s not the point. We worked our way through the 50s and 60s doing instances together. We learned how to work together as a very unified team. We started doing some heroics and we have done very well on them, if I might say so myself, largely because we have that unity and experience with each other.

Most of us have never been in Karazhan before (except for today’s little tour of the entryway). We haven’t done end-game before. We don’t know what we’re doing. This is a big first for us. And it’s going to be hard and we’re going to get dirty and there is a lot of work ahead of us. And we are going to learn so much. And I can’t wait.

We have a lot of people in the guild who are in their 50s or 60s or who are 70 and still need to get geared/keyed. And we agreed that we are going to start concentrating on helping those people get ready. It might take a few weeks. It might take more than that. But we will do it, and then we will have more than enough people for a ten-man raid and we’ll trust each other and be able to work as a team because that’s how we’ve been doing it all along.

It sometimes amazes me how much of a role WoW has had in teaching me how to be a team player. We’re allowed to say this in job interviews, right? You know, when they ask you the inevitable “Tell me a story of when you had to work as a group” question. I can talk about WoW, right? I might get some funny looks, but hey…