We logged on Saturday night around 9pm and were rewarded with Baby Blizzard Bears.
Since we play on an East Coast time zone server, the day rolls over 3 hours early for most of us (Earl is in New York, so the time is right for him) so we got our bears a little earlier than expected.
There actually seemed to be some oddity with the times because while Vikund got the achievement and bear before midnight local, logging in other characters did not. However, they all got their bears the following morning when I logged them in.
So we ended up running around with five little bears in tow through much of the evening. And we were not alone. The bears were everywhere.
The usual line up was on hand for the evening.
70 Warlock – Bungholio
70 Warrior – Earlthecat
70 Priest – Skronk
70 Mage – Ula
70 Paladin – Vikund
None of us had hit level 71 yet.
Thanks to and afternoon of cobalt hunting by one of Skronk’s alts, Earl was able to put together new suits of cobalt armor for Vikund and himself. Here is Vikund as Mr. Cobalt:
Cobalt Jacketed Paladin
Nice stuff. I even left the show helmet option selected, since I like the sort of “Steampunk meets Shogun” look of it.
Along with that, my own alt, Tistann went out harvesting leather so, with the addition of a substantial pile of hides from Ula, he was able to make some Borean Armor kits to further boost the stamina of some party members. That put both Earl and Vikund close to 14K hit points when buffed.
With that bounty of new equipment for the tanks, we thought we might have a better shot at Utgarde Keep.
This time we went straight to Howling Fjord, avoiding last week’s long, but scenic, overland trip. (Skronk actually got the flight paths set between Valiance Keep and Valgarde, but said the flight was too much gold to start with and there were additional charges for checked mounts and in-flight meals and entertainment.)
We rolled in pretty well, as we did the previous week. We got through the forge area without issue and then the drake pens, which are also a nice setting that I did not post a shot of last week.
Here Be Drakes
I noticed this time around that the roof is “open” on the drake pens.
If We Had A Flying Mount...
Pretty quickly we found ourselves facing Prince Keleseth again.
Get Him? That's You Plan?
Unfortunately, the upgraded equipment on Vikund and Earl did not turn the balance quite enough. Both of us lasted longer when going toe to toe with the prince, but in the end, in four runs, we only got him down to 50% health before wiping.
The casters, who bear the brunt of Keleseth’s ice block, were hard pressed to stay alive and provide the damage needed to bring him down. Skronk did hang in better than last week, ending up the last dwarf standing twice.
Get The Priest!
But staying alive, un-frozen, and keeping everybody alive was a bit too much juggling.
So after the same result four times running, we decided to go do some quests to upgrade gear further. Rumor has it that some of us are still wearing gear obtained early on in Hellfire Peninsula. (No, don’t go to the Armory and check, it’s embarrassing enough.) Then to do some research on how other groups are going after Prince Keleseth.
Advice here is, as always, welcome. But if your own experience starts out with having the Warbringer Armor set or some such, it probably isn’t going to help us much.
We are strictly quest drops and auction house level of equipment.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 