purple poxers punch pwailing pcaverns

Wednesday, in the depths of the Wailing Caverns, the Purple Poxers laid the smack down. We came to kick ass and eat Savory deviate delight, and we did not disappoint. Led by the all-Kalimdor paladin tank Harisan, the Purples tore through all of the caverns, killing all of the Lords of the Fang and collecting many deviate hides, wailing essences, and serpentblooms.

I started the evening as level 16, as I mentioned last week, only one kill away from hitting that next level. Before I even hit that level, though, I got some nifty loot. Salindiar camped a vendor somewhere in the Barrens and bought out his supply of [Wise Man Belt]s, which he very awesomely shared with me. Woot! Combined with my [Seer's Robe], I looked stunning, if I do say so myself. I think Sal might have been flirting with me, sending me that belt, but let's not tell Madja that. Besides, Madja's really more my type. Mmm...cowgirl.

Anyway, we all met up at the Crossroads and began our run to the Wailing Caverns. We were clever last week and collected all of the quests that we could, so we could just start right away in the dungeon. Our second kill of a deviate raptor got me the experience I needed to ding (woot!) and equip my lovely Simple Pearl Ring (gotta love that +hit!). Oh, and spend another talent point improving my imp. Our path into the dungeon was fine, except for my falling into a hole near the door. You'd think that this would teach me, but it didn't, as we'll see later. Despite my clumsiness, we were on our way into the dungeon.

The first few pulls were pretty straight-forward. Harisan did a rock-star-caliber job pulling the mobs and holding aggro, and Salad was all over the sheep. Um, not like that. Madj waggled her bear rear in the air and tore into the mobs with her ferocious claws, and Ababis and I hurled firey (and shadowy) death at the mobs until we forced them from this mortal coil. Daxe had our back, keeping us all alive and healthy, and even finding time to throw a few wand-bursts at the beasties from time to time. We were cruising our way to that roundabout part with all the raptors when I hit my first stumbling block. A crash. Stupid computer!

As quickly as I could, I closed the error windows and logged back in, to find that the other four Purples had done a fantastic job burning down the mobs without me. Phew. "At least it wasn't a boss fight," I muttered into voice chat, to the confusion of my friends. Yeah, so they didn't even notice I was gone. "Well, [the mobs] didn't go down quite as quickly," Daxe offered as a minor condolence. Heh.

Undaunted, we pushed forward and dropped group after group of raptors cleanly and efficiently. I don't know how many wipes of how many PuGs those raptors have caused in the past -- I know I've been in a few -- but we avenged their deaths and then some. The first two boss fights were almost anticlimactic, in fact, we were such a well-oiled killing machine. All of a sudden we all had two of the four jewels and Madja was rocking both the [Serpent's Shoulders] and the [Gloves of the Fang]. Actually, it was a good night for her...as the only leather-wearer, she ended up with, what, half a dozen blue pieces? Not bad. I'm hoping for similar drops when we get into SFK. There's lots of tasty blue caster drops in there!

The rest of the instance went just as well, with two exceptions. The first happened about halfway through, when a mob aggroed on us, then fell through the bottom of the world. "That was odd," say we, and we pressed forward, forgetting about the bugged guy. We were almost done with the next mob group when all of a sudden we aggroed the entire instance. At once. Despite our valiant fighting, we wiped, for only the second time ever. Not even my fault this time! Our best guess was that the mob somehow respawned at the entrance (or at that large roundabout area) and came for us, bringing all of his deviate friends. Feh. Corpse run.

The second time that something like this happened came about half an hour later. We were battling a few mobs somewhere (honestly, it's all a bit of a blur by this point) when all of a sudden we were charged by at least a half dozen adds. Good times, eh? Amazingly, impressively, we managed to beat them all back with only one death. The sheeps sheared Salindiar before we knew what was happening. Sigh. Harisan continued to do a fantastic job holding as many of the mobs as she could (which was basically all of them, all of the time) and kept marking, so we knew who to focus fire on. It was really awesome and a hell of a lot of fun.

This post is getting far too long and is way past deadline, so I'll try to wrap it up here. I think I've given you most of the flavor of the evening, except, perhaps, how much fun we had. I love this group of Purple Poxers. I can't believe that we walked into the Wailing Caverns as a bunch of just-dinged or about-to-ding level 17s and basically cleared it on our first run. Only one wipe, too, which probably wasn't even due to poor play or a mistake on someone's part (like my minion). We killed all of the Lords of the Fang, eradicated the Deviate menace, and collected bags full of Serpentbloom, Wailing Essences, and Deviate hides. I think we all got a couple levels of experience, too, and have either just dinged 19 or are about to. Not bad!

I think that the plan next week is to go back and do the escort quest which we didn't have time to run this week, and finish collecting the remaining stuff that everybody needs. It would be really awesome if we could get all these quests done in just two runs, wouldn't it? I'm hoping to be able to get some of that nice caster gear from SFK in a few weeks, but maybe we'll be too advanced by then! Ha!