[WoW - Hunter] This post took longer than expected to get online

Some connection issues kept me from finishing what I started to do yesterday, but everything seems to be fine now. More importantly, I'm finally part of the Level 80 circle, which is definitely good news and bad news in a certain way.

The good news is that I can now start working towards getting into raids with my guildmates. The bad news is that I now have no idea what the hell I'm doing. Reaching level 80 means a couple of things:

1. Researching strategies and whatnot for bosses in dungeons and raids, as I soloed most of the way to 80.

2. Upping my gear to acceptable levels, making sure that I can hit enemies and do at least 1200 DPS (a relatively respectable number at the start) in a fight.

3. Learning even more things about the hunter that I probably didn't expect to know, such as gems and enchants and whatnot.

The important thing is that I don't make it feel like a grind. That's definitely something that's tough to do, since I make everything feel like work, but I do hope I can pull it off. WoW is supposed to be for fun, right!?

[WoW - Hunter] Victor Stillwater, Giant Rider

The last few bits of experience before hitting 78 were quite interesting. What really caught my attention was the opportunity to ride a giant, in order to find an even bigger giant, so that I could beat the stuffing out of said humongogigantinormous person.

The quest line I'm talking about can be found in Zul'Drak (obviously, I decided not to skip it ^_^), and starts off with you finding Gymer, a storm giant, in a cage. After finding some components to create a special batch of Seaforium to blow up his cage, you get to ride on him as part of the quest, "The Storm King's Vengeance."

After killing 100 Scourge and two Elites, the final guy shows up, and his name is Thrym, The Hope Ender. Defeating him after going through a veritable gauntlet isn't easy, but so long as you're able to command Gymer to grab a storm cloud during the fight to regain HP, everything should go smoothly.

For hunters, the item you'll want to pick up from the quest will be the Bracers of Vengeful Flight, a pair of nice blue bracers.

Pretty epic actually, and rampaging as on the back of giant is fun. If you haven't tried it out yet, head over to Zul'Drak and look for the quest at the approximate starting coordinates of 20, 56.

As for a picture, I'm having a bit of trouble with Blogger at the moment, and my pics won't upload. I'll update this with pics when I have the chance. :D

[WoW - Hunter] Level 77 means never having to say you're landlocked.

First off, I just want to say that I hate shouting, and I don't think that the guy above should be asking me if I was bitten. That's a private matter between Stillwater and his Night Elf lady friends.

Anyway, I'm proud to have finally reached level 77, and all of it from the comfort of doing Kalu'ak Dailies and Grizzly Hill quests. To date, I have not yet done Zul'Drak, and I might just skip it for the chance to do the Oracle questlines in Sholazar Basin. Just a handful of quests away from finishing up Grizzly, and then I may just head there directly.

To that end, I'm also proud to announce that level 77 also means never having to say you're landlocked. By that, I mean I can now fly around Northrend without having to worry so much about travel expenses, and on my engineered Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, to boot!

First off though, I may need to look into the pros and cons of skipping Zul'Drak. As much as I want to do the quests in Sholazar, there may be something important in Zul'Drak that I need to do, such as a faction questline, or something else.

Would anyone care to enlighten me on the pros and cons of skipping ZD?

[WoW - Hunter] Becoming a Veteran of the Wrathgate

I didn't know that this seemingly innocuous questline I followed with a missing courier could lead me to an epic questline and a new achievement. I encourage everyone who's ever been in the Dragonblight zone to go and do the quest beginning at Star's Rest (for the Alliance, anyway).

It doesn't have a formal name, so let's just call it the Veteran of the Wrathgate questline. It's comprised of around 37 parts (more if you do some optional quests for specific areas that are close to the region you're in), which begin with a missing courier and lead up to an epic battle at the Wrathgate, and even finishes with the storming of the Undercity.

All in all, you get some useful Blue-level upgrades for your character, an achievement, 1/3 of the Required Quests for the Dragonblight zone questing achievement, and an awesome replayable cinematic that can be accessed by talking to a giant red dragon.

For more information on the questline, feel free to check the link above for the Veteran of the Wrathgate achievement, there's a list of links for both Alliance and Horde so that people can do the questline.

The only thing missing: a title like "Wrathgate Survivor" for following this epic quest to completion.

[WoW - Hunter] Level 75 and an accidental achievement

An hour or so ago, I hit level 75 with my Hunter... it was an anticlimactic sort of level up as I picked it up from killing a lower-leveled mob while looking for Rhino meat for one of the cooking dailies. Still, that brings me one level closer to joining my guild in the endgame, which is always good to know.

As for the accidental achievement noted above, I picked one up called Northern Exposure. I got it in the middle of performing the Kalu'ak daily quest in Kamagua, wherein I had to get two sea bulls to fall in love and, presumably, mate.

The thing that unlocked it... Attacking a larger than average penguin for no apparent reason, only to realize it was a rare enemy. Below, you'll see screenies of King Ping and the subsequent acquisition of this little achievement.


And the Achievement:

[WoW - Hunter] Getting back into the rhythm of beast mastery

One of the things I never thought I'd do again was go back and play World of Warcraft.

It's been an on-and-off relationship with the game, and one that I can safely say has its own little space in my heart, mostly because it really is a world all its own.

That said, I've been spending the past two weeks just enjoying what the game has to offer in terms of its new class, the Death Knight, and just yesterday, I decided I want to go and take my main out for a spin in the new zone from Wrath of the Lich King.

That said, as of today I'm now level 72, and I've done quite a lot recently. Yesterday, I remember being a pain in the ass to Hemet Nesingwary's overzealous hunting brethren by being an active member of the Druids for the Ethical and Humane Treatment of Animals. Today, I probably slew close to 1000 Zaxxis enemies just to level my Burning Crusade Consortium rep up to Revered for a schematic I needed to make a flying machine... only to find out that I didn't actually need the flying machine to make the advanced model.

Oh, and I leveled up.

-------------

That said, Beast Mastery isn't the powerhouse it used to be, though I find myself still gravitating towards using it ever since I picked up tips from the BigRedKitty blog. While I could probably change specs, something tells me that I won't lose my love for grabbing rare animals and using them to thrash other baddies into submission.

In any event, I'm getting back into the rhythm of shooting and commanding a pet, and it feels good to be back in the game.