Merry Christmas

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from A World of Warcraft Blog.

Now I need to go see what Greatfather Christmas left under the tree :)

Brieonna - Level 82 Holy/Shadow Priest

I got a little bored leveling Brieanna, and I really wanted to try out Shadow Spec on Brieonna, so I started working on Brieonna.

Instead of going the usual route, straight to Vashj'ir then to Deepholm, I decided to start at Mount Hyjal. That was a mistake. I didn't like it there and there was nothing I was killing that I could skin so that wasn't working out. I did about half of level 80 there then headed over to Vashj'ir. I think knowing where all the quests are and knowing what to do in Vashj'ir had a lot to do with it. I got to level 82 no problem in Vashj'ir.

From there I headed over to Deepholm and started questing there. I will stay there until I reach level 83, then I will be off to Uldum. I discovered the entrances to The Throne of the Tides, Blackrock Caverns and Stonecore so I can start doing random Cata dungeons on her. I might switch back and forth between Brieonna and Brieanna, as a matter of fact I am almost sure of it. Get bored in one place switch and quest in another place for awhile.

Gomorra - Level 85 Demon Lock

I took a couple hours today and got Gomorra to level 85. I was going back and forth on whether I should finish my Hunter Brieanna first or not. I finally decided to just finish him off and get it out of the way.

I got the final half level I needed done in Twilight Highlands, that is the 84 to 85 area. There are a bunch of good quests there and a couple pretty funny ones. One of them was the dwarf's wedding you have to help set up. You help a song writer make a song for the wedding and then walk the blushing bride down the isle. To top if off you get to kill the minister who turns out to be a twilight guy and transforms trying to kill everyone.

I got no sense of completion when I finished Gomorra though, and I think that is because I still have 3 more to go so I am not really done, just a little closer to being done.

Red Winter Hat and Green Winter Hat - Seasonal Dungeon Drop

Some people like to get the Red Winter Hat and/or Green Winter Hat to complete the Full Winter Garb set. I guess you can get achievements by doing quests wearing it. This is the first year I have gotten the Hat. They only drop in dungeons and I wasn't doing dungeons last Christmas. This year however I have gotten the Red Winter Hat on Gomorra, Brieanna and Breeonna to complete the set. Breeonna also has the Green Winter Hat.

The two dungeons I know of that are dropping the Hats right now are Stonecore and Grim Batol on normal. I am sure other dungeons are dropping them too, but these are the two that I know are dropping them. They are a 100% drop rate. In Stonecore it is dropping off the last boss, High Priestess Azil, and she is dropping the Red Winter Hat. She is actually wearing the Red Winter Hat. In Grim Batol it is dropping off Forgemaster Throngus, and he is dropping the Green Winter Hat.

This is a seasonal drop and will be gone right after Christmas, until next year, so hurry and get yours now.

Gomorra - Level 84 Demon Lock

When I had the problem with Brieanna not being able to fly anywhere I worked on Gomorra. I got him to about half way through 84 now and don't know if I want to finish him off or get back to working on Brieanna, who is 83 now, and get her to 85.

I started off questing on Gomorra in Vashj'ir and got him to 82 there. I got a couple achievements while questing there, one from doing a certain amount of quests and another for finishing an entire quest line that is with you pretty much the whole time you are there.

From Vashj'ir Gomorra moved on to Deepholm, after getting the quest from the Hero's Call Board in Stormwind, skipping Mount Hyjal altogether. Deepholm is a pretty good place to level and is also the home to Stonecore, one of the Cataclysm 5 man dungeons. I have run that one quite a bit on all 3 of the toons I am working on. I stayed in Deepholm until I reached level 83, then moved on to Uldum.

Gomorra was in Uldum until 84, just one level and it went pretty quick. I picked up the quest to go there from the Hero's Call Board in Stormwind. This quest has you flying to Gadgetzan in Tanaris then heading over to the entrance to Uldum to meet someone. Once there you start a cinematic that takes you into Uldum and starts the quest line. As soon as I got there I made sure I physically visited the entrance to each dungeon so I could start running them.

At level 84 Gomorra moved on to Twilight Highlands, once again getting the quest from the Hero's Call Board in Stormwind. That is where he is now, about half way through 84.

To be honest I am getting a little bored of leveling and did dungeons yesterday on Breeonna, who is 85, instead of working on the other two. I got Breeonna's item level up to 331 so I can run heroic's now, but the few I have been in didn't turn out too well so far. They are brutally hard compared to LK dungeons. It is going to take some getting used to I guess.

The Vortex Pinnacle Entrance (77,84)

The entrance to The Vortex Pinnacle (77,84) can be found just off shore in Uldum. This entrance is floating in the air. For those without coord's you will want to follow the river down to the sea and head southeast (about 5 O'Clock) once you hit the sea. At that point you should be able to see the entrance floating in the air. There are three buildings out there, one is where you rez if you die inside the instance, the other is the entrance and I am not sure what the third one is.

There are some other sets of buildings floating out there to the west so if you can't find the entrance in the set you are looking in, you're in the wrong set, just head east. The buildings off to the west are the Throne of the Four Winds (38,80) which is an entry level raiding dungeon.

The Vortex Pinnacle is one of three, 5 man dungeons found in Uldum. There is also The Halls of Origination and The Lost City of the Tol'vir which I will be providing locations to in another post.

Blackrock Caverns Entrance

The entrance to Blackrock Caverns is pretty easy to find. You will want to head to Blackrock Mountain (Burning Steppes/Searing Gorge) just like you were going to go into Blackrock Spire. From the meeting stone at Blackrock Spire you will want to head up the passageway just like you were going to BRS. On the way in you may encounter a couple mobs by a bonfire. Right after the bonfire you will see some broken crates and stuff, you will want to look to your right. The entrance to Blackrock Caverns is right there. This is a pretty quick one to find and flying in Azeroth only makes it that much faster and easier.

I am not sure how I feel about this new process of finding the entrance to a dungeon before you can do it. On the plus side, if you queue in through dungeon finder, which most people do, and you die inside the dungeon you will be able to find your way back. Also if you have to meet there at least you will know where it is. On the minus side, it is kind of a waste of time while you are trying to quest.

Throne Of The Tides Entrance

The entrance to Throne of the Tides (70,29) is located in the Abyssal Depths in Vashj'ir. You will want to swim over to the Abyssal Depths and into the Abyssal Breach. Once there you will want to swim down right into the center of the whirlpool. At some point you will lose your mount and get fatigue, it doesn't look good. Then you will spiral down the whirlpool and suddenly find yourself falling. Things aren't looking great at this point and you fall for a long time. You will land in a pool of water right outside the entrance to Throne of Tides, in the Abyssal Maw, none the worse for wear. Getting out of there is another problem, I didn't see a portal or any way out. If anyone knows of a portal or a way out without hearthing let us know.

I am not sure how I feel about this new process of finding the entrance to a dungeon before you can do it. On the plus side, if you queue in through dungeon finder, which most people do, and you die inside the dungeon you will be able to find your way back. Also if you have to meet there at least you will know where it is. On the minus side, it is kind of a waste of time while you are trying to quest.

Blizzard In Game Support

Has anyone had to use Blizzard's in game support to get a problem resolved? Sometimes, most the time, it is not too bad, but other times...

I had to put in a ticket because I could not fly in Azeroth after buying the pilots license on my Hunter Brieanna.

While I was waiting for a response, I hit the forums and found one other person that could not fly anywhere. I immediately headed to Northrend to see if I could fly there. Guess what? I couldn't fly in Northrend or Outlands either.

Three days after I put in the ticket I finally received a response. I was told that I would be unable to fly in the starting area's of Azeroth as they are no fly zones... My problem was, as stated in my ticket, that I could not fly anywhere in Azeroth. They went on to say that they hoped they answered my question, but if not, feel free to put in a ticket...

A ticket is a maximum of 500 words. I could not express what I was feeling at that point in 500 words or less. I tried though. I really didn't want to wait another 3 days for more "advice" so I sent an e-mail directly to Blizzard. For those of you who do not know how to do this, the e-mail address is: wowgm@blizzard.com. That would be used for technical support only I would think. I received an answer in less than 3 hours telling me that they had fixed my character and I was all set. Sure enough, I logged onto Brieanna and could fly in Azeroth. I should have done that in the first place.

Anyway, because Brieanna could not quest in Deepholm, I switched over to Gomorra and he is now 83. I got Brieanna to 82 before I could not go on anymore due to not being able to fly. I will get Gomorra to 85 then go back and finish off Brieanna.

I also dual spec'd my Priest Brieonna to be Holy/Shadow. I have been wanting to try Shadow for awhile now and, with what I have seen of the Cata dungeons and how hard they are to heal, I figured now was as good a time as any.

Why Can't I Fly In Azeroth?

Everything was going pretty good, I got Breeonna to 85 and started working on Brieanna. Everything was fine for a little while, then I lost the ability to fly in Azeroth. I can fly on all my other toons, just not Brieanna. Needless to say, that is putting a damper on my ability to quest. Brieanna is 82 and should be questing in Deepholm. I did all the quests there that I can from the ground but you need to be able to fly to get up on the shelfs for the other quests.

I have had a ticket in for 2 days now with no end in sight. This is keeping me questing in Hyjal and Vashj'ir where you don't need to fly too much although it is very helpful. I deleted my WTF, Cache and Interface folders but that didn't help so now I wait...

Breeonna - Level 85 Elemental Shaman

I finally got Breeonna to level 85. I followed the quests from Vashj'ir to Deepholm to Twlight Highlands where I finally got to 85.

The problem I had was running out of quests. I could see in the achievements how many quests there were in each zone, but found myself unable to find any more around the half way mark. I still have 4 80's to level to 85 and I figure by the time they are done I will know where all of the quests are.

Gearscore seems to be out the door, now it is item level that determines how good your gear is. My current item level average is 326. That means I can only do normal Cata dungeons because you have to have an average item level of 329 to do heroics. Right now I am doing Stonecore, Vortex Pinnacle, Grim Batol, Lost City of the Tol'vir and Halls of Origination. All on normal. I will have more on the dungeons once I get a little more used to them. The sad part is, after waiting up to 45 minutes in queue, I usually end up getting queued into a dungeon in progress. I have done all the above mentioned dungeons start to finish but only a couple complete runs in each, the rest were partial runs.

I am going to continue to work on Breonna and get her geared up a little more before I start to work on the others. While I was questing I was making between 400 to 600 gold a day from quests, dungeons and the quest rewards I couldn't use and sold to a vendor. There seem to be a lot of Plate rewards along with a lot of Mail with Agility and Strength on it.

How Do I Get Back To Vashj'ir?

"Where's the boat back to Vashj'ir?" and "I hearthed out of Vashj'ir, how do I get back?" are questions you see in Trade every couple minutes lately.

I made this mistake myself. In my rush to get out and explore I forgot to train my professions. Once I got to Vashj'ir and realized that the things I was skinning were not giving me points, I hearthed back to Stormwind and got training. Then I went back to the docks to wait for the boat back to Vashj'ir. It never came.

You can only take the boat to Vashj'ir once, when you have the quest. After that you will have to use the portal found on the island in the middle of Stormwind Lake. The portal is available to use only after you have been to Vashj'ir on the boat. As for the boat, it takes awhile to get to the dock in Stormwind the first time you go so be patient. It comes to the last, most northern, dock, the same one that goes to Northrend except this boat looks like the one you would take to Darnassus, it is a sail boat, not a steam ship like the one that goes to Northrend.

There is also a flight path above water on Vashj'ir, at a place called Sandy Beach. There are what I call "swim points" in Vashj'ir. They are like flight points but you take a Sea Horse instead of a flying mount. Once you find one of these, located in underwater caves, you can take it to the flight point on the surface. It will drop you off right on the edge of the beach at the flight point. The flight point is directly connected to Ironforge and all points from there.

Flying back there you just land at Sandy Beach then go over to the "swim point", on the shore, and take a Sea Horse back to the depths.

You will also get a Sea Horse mount relatively soon after you get there. That makes things so much easier as your swim speed on it is pretty fast, allowing you to get around quickly. It is a big place and you have to go all over it. You will also get a buff shortly after you arrive, I think it is a reward for the first quest, that allows you to breath underwater and swim faster. This is a permanent buff meaning every time you go under water in Vashj'ir it will kick in and you will be able to breath.

450 Mining

I got Breeonna's mining skill up to 450 yesterday. I finished up in Sholazar Basin mining Saronite Ore. That gives her 2 maxed professions, Mining and Skinning on the eve of the Cataclysm release.

I had mining on a couple other toons but never got it too high, I think 326 on Gomorra was as high as I ever got. Other characters I think I deleted it before I got to 50. I made a lot of gold leveling up my mining and as I was 80 I wasn't too worried about the mobs that can be a real pain when leveling. I made over 1,000 gold leveling mining up. That is already spent on 300 riding skill on my Priest Brieonna.

Lets see what Cata brings tonight.