green armor dwarf

he's their champion?

Another Tuesday night means another Purple Poxing on a dungeon. Hurray! Last night, our heroes found themselves in the Scarlet Monestary's Armory, ready to do battle with The Scarlet Champion, Herod. Final score: Purple Poxers: 3, Scarlet Crusade: 1 (and really that was an own-goal).

The always-resourceful Daxe brought some tasty treats for us to enjoy.

[Insert your own ball joke here]

Viewing the Scarlet Champion for the first time.

Afterwards, we decided to die and run from the graveyard rather than hearth and run from the Undercity or fight our way through the respawns. This is as close as I'll ever get to naked Ess. /drool

Oh, noes! Naked ghosts!

At least I remembered to leave my tabard on. What a nightmarish image this would have been otherwise, eh?

Um, yeah, so we killed them all a few more times. In the meantime, I caught this nice picture of 'dwenne illuminated by her wand. Blizzard has done some really cool things with light and shadows that I'm just now coming to appreciate.

Ignore the fighting for a moment. How cute is the mechanical squirrel? I had never looked at him quite so closely before.

Herod? Dead. Trainee #1? Dead. Trainee #37? Oh, he's dead, too. In fact, they're all dead, here!

Next week, we're hunting some more quillboar, with a few skeletons thrown in, for good measure. And some nice clothy loots, perhaps?

peripatetic long weekend

A few notes on the long weekend...

Waradwen: I am just about sick of doing dailies, which is almost all I've done with good old Wara lately. I haven't been able to get the time together to do any raiding the past few weeks and consequently haven't been spending much time boomkining around. The good news is that I'm up over 1100 gold and have my full raid kit together, so any money I make between now and next raid goes towards Swift Flight Form. One of these days...

Waradwenne: Poxing night is tonight and am I pleased as punch. We're in the Scarlet Monestary again tonight, planning to tear up the Library and get Daxe his dagger, then dip our wee toesies into the Armory. Next week we're going to switch things around a little and go tackle Razorfen Downs, which should be a lot of fun. Like most of these instances, I've only run RFD once and am looking forward to the full experience. My previous RFD experience was essentially: "Watch these guys tear it up and try not to get killed." Heh.

Engineering training is going nicely, although it's costing a pretty penny. Thanks to a helpful benefactor, I'm up to 130 and made a handful of small seaforium charges. I even got to open a locked box the other day with one, which was very exciting.

Rotaan: The gaseous dwarf is up to level 32 after a lot of play time this weekend. I still haven't taken him tanking yet, which I really need to do. I'm simultaneously nervous and excited about the possibility of tanking. Gnomer and RFK are beckoning me, though, to plumb their depths...

Over the course of the weekend, I outpaced Rotaan's crafting skills. Until now, I've been able to make gear that's too good for his level, but not anymore. I'm stuck making the green iron armor for a little while longer. Oh well. It's a nice set. I can also now mine mithril, which is pretty exciting. Whenever I read the word, I hear Gimli's voice in my ears. Haha. I'm such a dork.

Rotag: The last toon I spent some time with this weekend is Rotag, my Draenei pally tank. Well, will be tank, one day. After realizing how much fun engineering is with Waradwenne, I decided that it would be a good skill for him to have. Rotaan can feed him some armor and weapons, and Rotag can keep his eyes locked on those beautiful tanking goggles (which will probably be obsolete by the time he gets there, but who cares?

pretty purple pox pictures

I'm too far behind in posting to give you all full recaps, I fear, but here are some pictures from our last few weeks of adventures. I hope you enjoy them!

From the first time we poked our heads into the Scarlet Monestary a few weeks back: Look! The mobs are red! Well, orangish-red, at least...

Good ol' Azshir the Sleepless. I think I'll have that necklace, thank you very much.

Oh noes! A wipe!

Eat hot death, Ironspine! And we'll take that chestpiece while we're at it!

How do the Forsaken sleep in these things?

Running around the next week. How fierce is Harisan with that sword? Rawr!

Uh-oh. Resistance is futile!

I said...

Running off into the sunset.

Back to the Kraul for some guano.

Overwhelmed! Well, almost...

How cute is that felpuppy?

Window shopping. I don't think I'm wearing this outfit without the tabard!

Back into the Library. Eat it, Locksey!

Firedancer!

Doan!

Dead.

'dwenne and her pets. Aren't they cute?

How's this dress? Shexy, yes?

We hit that Library so hard it got fogged over!

Night, night!

more podcast goodness

(Again, cross-posted from my /afk blog, because there's some nice gaming podcasts in here for y'all.)

Item the first: Go donate to the Maximumfun.org Maximum Fun Drive. Do it! Be like all the cool kids (and me)!

Item the second: I found a new knitting blog to add to my reader, if only because of the title (well, the content looks cool, too): The A.D.D. Knitter. Hurray, knitting! Hurray, AD...wait, what was I talking about?

Item the third: New podcasts to try, from friends' suggestions and the depths of my memory! Here's some updates to my previous list (which I promise to fill in with linkage in the next day or so):
- The Savage Love-cast
- Shut Up. We're Talking.
- Witty Ranter
- You Look Nice Today (recommended personally by his awesomeness, Jesse Thorn)
- Cast On
- Sticks and String
- Y Knit
- Stash and Burn
- It's a Purl, Man
- News from Lake Woebegone
- Car Talk
- NPR: Hidden Kitchens
- QN (formerly known as Quirky Nomads)
- A Brobdingnagian Minute
- Marc Gunn's Irish and Celtic Music Podcast
- And how could I forget retroCRUSH, the Podcast?

That'll keep you busy for a few days, eh?

N.B.: I haven't yet listened to many of these, but they're recommended by people I like and whose taste I generally approve of. Just saying. YMMV.

podcast suggestions

(crossposted from my /afk blog, sciencemonkey.net)

Hey, gang. I need some advice from y'all. I b0rked my iTunes library the other day and am having to reload everything. Since I'm going through and resubscribing to all of my podcasts, I figured I'd take this chance to see if there are any that you'd recommend that I'm missing. So...what'cha listening to?

So far, here's my list:
- This American Life
- NPR: Science Friday
- NPR: Sunday Puzzle
- NPR: Wait, wait...
- alt.NPR: What Would Rob Do?
- All the awesome stuff from maximumfun.org (Jordan Jesse Go, The Sound of Young America, TSOYA Classics, Coyle & Sharpe, Kasper Hauser, and The College Years)
- The Instance
- Cory Doctorow's Podcast
- How I WoW
- EFF Linenoise
- Radio Free Burrito
- Radio Lab
- Krulwich on Science
- retroCRUSH

What am I missing?

announcement

Ahem! May I have your attention, please? I would like to say CONGRATULATIONS to my friend and (hopefully) yours, Ess, for having the Blog of the Week on this week's Shut Up We're Talking. Ess is an excellent author and gamer and an all-around awesome person, and I'm proud as hell to call her my friend.

Three cheers for Ess! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray! Hip hip hooray!

alternative post

I can't believe how behind I am in posting. Well, not behind, as there aren't deadlines or schedules or what have you, other than self-imposed. Feh.

Waradwen: I've been playing a lot of my alts lately. I've done a little raiding with Wara in Karazhan, but not much else with him. Some dailies, I guess, and am pushing exalted with the Shattered Sun, so that's nice. I'm tired of the dailies and usually only do a few each day to support my modest raiding habits.

Waradwenne: Awesome fun with the Poxers, as usual. The past few weeks we have torn up the Scarlet Monestary Graveyard and done a bunch of running around, filling out class quests. I have lots of screenshots that I will someday get posted, but probably not before tomorrow's adventures. I have my felpuppy now and we're anxious to start pushing deeper into the Library. We got through half of the Library a few weeks ago but were pretty overpowered by the large groups of mobs post-Locksey. This week they're going down. Woo! And Arcanist Doan is going to drop his robes! Umm. That didn't sound right.

I've also swapped 'dwenne's professions around. She had been doing mining to make some money, but since I don't play her much other than on Pox Nights I never did much leveling. So I dropped mining and picked up engineering, which is pretty awesome. Not having a rogue (or other engineer) we've been passing all of the locked chests, and I'm looking forward to my first seaforium charge. Heheheheh. Plus, there's some really cool headgear coming up soon...

Rotaan: Most of my game time lately has been with Rotaan and I'm starting (starting) to get a feel for playing a warrior. I'm getting better about remembering which move to use when, etc., and am having a heck of a lot of fun with him. Rotaan's up to level 26 and I'm currently leveling him as an Arms warrior. I started with Fury but am having more success with a big, two-hand weapon, so Arms seems to fit better. I'm having some trouble figuring out just where to be leveling, as this is my first real Alliance character, but I'm starting to get the hang of it. I spent a couple nights banging my head against the Wetlands before discovering Redridge Mountains which was so much more appropriate for my skills. I'm back to Wetlands now and am starting to plot where to go next...maybe somewhere on Kalimdor? That'd be fun to see as an Alliance toon.

I'm also looking forward to (but am very nervous about) tanking my first instance with Rotaan. I ran Deadmines with an overpowered guild group a few weeks ago (whence the Rolling Pin of Doom) but not as the tank. I think that's the next thing I really need to do. I just picked up a ton of Gnomer quests late last night, so maybe...no. That's probably not a best choice for first tanking experience. I never did the Deadmines quests, so I should probably go back and pick those up. Easy XP, baby.

Miscellany: Sidhe Devils are awesome. I had one of the most fun evenings just farting around on Friday night thanks to my awesome new guildies, as well as an older friendship that I'm getting to develop more lately. Oh, and the tastiness of a few Honey Moon Summer Ales. (Not my favorite beer ever, but certainly decent and enjoyable.)

fishy dwarf