We’re getting the band back together! -Earlthecat
It was April when the Saturday night instance group last met in full.
A spring and summer full of real life challenges, like changing jobs and moving across country, kept us from being able to play together until this past weekend.
Finally though, things have settled down a bit. Last Thursday, during our “off night” when we usually try to get our characters lined up for an instance on Saturday, we decided to put Lord of the Rings Online on the back burner for now and get back to finishing up the five person instance path we had been pursuing in World of Warcraft.
Friday, those of us who had to re-activated our accounts did so.
Of course, once we had all done that, I noticed one of Blizzard’s latest inducements to get people back into the game, the “Scroll of Resurrection” where by you can send an offer to a friend who has left the game and end up with some free play time.
Oh well.
So the first team was back together and ready to go in Azeroth.
47 Mage – Ula
47 Warrior – Earlthecat
47 Priest – Skronk
47 Warlock – Bungholio
48 Paladin – Vikund
I have no idea how I ended up a level ahead.
Most common phrases of the night:
“Oh yeah!”
“How do I do this?”
I actually got on about 30 minutes early to get up to speed on how to play the game. Skronk was already on and we ended up running around outside of Gadgetzen killing mobs just for practice. And I needed it! It took me a few fights to figure out judgement again and what skills a paladin has in WoW.
We were all on by 10pm Pacific time and headed for where we left off: Zul?Farrak
We all had at least two quests to finish off in there, so we headed in.
We started off slow and deliberate, taking on the fights carefully. We actually did very well, although the last thing we had done in WoW was work on a few levels to make ZF easier. At around level 44, when we first went in, it was a series of very tough fights. Now the extra few levels were payoff.
We managed to get ourselves through ZF to our first goal, the Gong of Zul’Farrak!
Getting here is required for the quest Gahz’rilla.
There was, however, a catch.
As we stood there, eyeing the gong, Skronk, who is Potshot, said on Skype, “Remember what Darren said about 90 minutes into “Shut Up We’re Talking #8″ the first time we did the show?”
That was, of course, the show that did not get recorded. I knew exactly to what he was alluding.
When you mouse over the gong, you get the message:
Mallet? Mallet…
Oh, crap! The mallet! We need to finish that quest in the Hinterlands to get the mallet.
And so we had to put off Ghaz’rilla for another day.
We did knock off a named troll for Earl so he could complete a quest the rest of us had done.
Then we started off towards the one other quest we all shared in ZF, the Divino-Matic Rod.
This involves getting up to the top of a pyramid… or ziggarut… via a long set of stairs, killing a named guy, flagging yourself PvP, releasing a group of Alliance NPCs, and then helping them fight off a series of attacks at the top of the stairs.
Here we are, flagged PvP, and getting ready to roll. We have the key and just need to unlock the cages to start the battle.
The fight starts at the top of the stairs, but as it progresses, the Alliance NPCs, and us in tow, are slowly drawn down the steps as wave after wave of mobs come at us. None of them were elite mobs, but still the weight began to tell.
Finally it was time for the two named, elite NPCs to come after us. We were pretty far down the stairs at that point.
As we started into that fight, one of the named cast fear on Earl and Vikund and off we ran, collecting a few more elites from the area around the base of the stairs.
You see, we got up there by taking an edge route around the courtyard. We might have been better served by clearing some of the courtyard near the stairs before we started the battle. Live and learn… or die and learn rather.
And die we did.
Embarrassingly I went down before I remembered… er, was reminded… that I had lay hands.
As I said, it was a night of “Oh, yeah!”
So we ran back to ZF in ghost form.
Aside from a few patrols, the instance had not yet respawned.
Unfortunately, the Alliance NPCs do not respawn. If they die, you have to reset the instance. By that point it was getting late. One of our team is now living on the east coast, so pressing on until 2 or 3am is not going to be an option any more.
But we got back in the game, got our feet wet, and at least when we died, we died on a tough battle.
Next time we will be working on the Hinterlands. We have to pick up that mallet.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 