I have decided to write some things down. im no word smith nor am i experienced in this sort of thing. but i thought i would give it a try. so im going to write some stuff down about my becoming a druid. i hope to expand on it with additional posts to tell some of the stories i experienced while getting to where i am now. i have decided to inflict them on you!

be warned! you may get very bored!

E

of mice and druids, (as the saying goes.)

the mental expulsions of a rambling druid.

I have decided to take a night off playing WoW and write down my adventures in the WoW universe as a Druid. Elventra is my 4th level 80 toon. I have been playing WoW since about 6 months after release, so nearly 5 years now. I have 2 other toons in there mid 70's which I no longer played. Subsequently I have returned to my mage to level up as she was a level 300 jewel crafter and I still believe JC is by far the most financially rewarding profession in the game, as well as saving cash by cutting my own gems. All my gems are financed with honor from doing wintergrasp with all my toons once a week. I then pop off to Stormwind and buy up the gems for 10k honor a piece for cutting and selling. Any how I digress..........

why a druid after all my other toons I hear you ask in a relative state of boredom.... well I say. I have been the main tank for my guild for some time. I worked as a human warrior to fill a vacant slot in my guilds ranks after the release of Warhammer online and we lost the core group of our guild. Which included our GM, 1 officer, our best DPS and some others. It nearly destroyed us as a guild and it took a lot of work for the remaining 2 officers (myself being one) our newly appointed GM and the remaining faithful to hold it together. Now, Macto the warrior who was lying around level 50 unloved and unwanted (I hate questing and levelling a warrior) was the obvious choice to power level to fill the void. I still remember the pain of grinding those 30 levels and the doctor says I will eventually sleep normally again when the nightmares finally stop........

after Macto was levelled and I had started doing 5 man heroics for a bit (this is before the random dungeons where invented) I found myself in a Utgarde pinnacle run (I think it was) which has the boss with the 4 mini bosses first in a big room. One of those mini bosses was a Big worm who does a poison de-buff. Now, no one in our group had the ability to dispel the poison. So although we took the mini boss down we wiped repeatedly afterwards as the DoT ticked away. Now, this made me rather annoyed. We where good enough group, it was my umpteenth time in there chasing the red sword of courage I was getting sick of the place and we where wiping because of a poison and not because we where not good enough. So what did I do next. I here you ask in maybe a slightly interested tone....
I rolled a shaman. Mordius was born out of a complete frustration of that mini boss. I power levelled him to 80 in 8 days played. Geared him to heroic level within a few days after hitting 80. and fully intended to go to the keep and dispel that bloody worm until my heart was once again joyous! Of course by the time I had levelled a brand new toon and geared him up the guild was way past going there so it was months before I finally got to go there and then I was with 2 pallys and totally over geared for the place..... such is life. Mordius quickly became my main toon. There was something about being a totem farting dual wielding killing machine I kind of took to. It was easy.. point me at something and I would kill it. (most of the time) all this time Macto was doing the weekly guild event as main tank. I kind of liked tanking but that was it. I never quested or anything else with him. Mordius would be my daily quest grinder and gold farmer as well as my toon I would use to go for any achievements I fancied doing.
Then it happened. Cataclysm was announced... another 5 levels of questing as a warrior. Nooooooo!
I started getting fidgety, the sweats came back.... what was I to do. Well, after trying 4 Death Knights to a max level of 64. and liking them less than warriors I looked back at the vanilla WOW classes open to me. There it was. A night elf. Hmm thinks me. Never levelled one of those before. Very versatile. Early flight, can tank rather well, can heal very well and can DPS pretty well to boot. Lets do it I thought. Balance was the path of choice for me. I have a level 72 rogue so feral cat wasn't for me as its just to much like that and I was bored with that style of play. After another 8 days of play Elventra hit 80. then I made my first mistake. I respeced feral cat as I thought it would be higher dps in pugs while farming the emblems of triumph for my tanking set. Its amazing how many DPS there are looking for groups. The constant 20 min waits between runs meant farming triumphs was a very slow process. Oh did I mentions I disenchanted all my boomkin gear when I respecced..... that was mistake number 2. so a quick respec to healing and the guild crafters dontaions of a set of gear to get me started and I was healing pugs like crazy. I farmed a full healing set first. I decided I wanted to build a set of gear and skills to allow me to heal anything our guild did before I started again on a tank set. As a healer I might wait 5 mins to get a pug. It seems tanks are a premium on our server. Now here comes an unashamed addon plug...
VuDho. It is a healers dream. Hover over a players bar and click the relevant pre-set mouse keys to instantly heal, hot or buff you can even just left click the dead player to instantly cast combat res on them. It can be found here:
http://www.wowinterface.com/downloads/info14239-VuhDo.html

it takes a bit of setting up but well worth the effort.

So after a lot more emblem farming I have now built a tanking set. Last week I started tanking 5 mans with guildies to start learning my trade. I still have a long way to go and I am a nood druid tank. But I did MT the weekly quest “Lord Marrowgar must die” with 2 rep runs of the trash first. I even managed to pick up and hold 2 of the big mobs when we triggered 2 traps at once. With out a wipe. The only thing I am really struggling with now is group threat. I know druids are not the best at mass agro which is why I work with my guilds pally tank as off tank. He gathers all the mobs and I just pick one out and hold it while it is DPS'd down. It works well and is very controlled. I hope with some practice I will start pugging as tank soon. Im still not confident enough at my trade yet.
one thing i must say is many thx to syteara for this:
http://thedruidsgrove.org/wow/forums/showthread.php?t=13534
i was a massive help to me


ore to come when I can be bothered to ramble on

Brilliantly written Elventra! I have a blog full of these ramblings!

Also, Kudos on leveling a warrior. Mine remains lvl 34...how long did it take before your nightmares stopped?

wheres your blog?

SmartBlond posted a link on the Silent Grove Thread, but the link is this: (http://little-bear-tree.blogspot.com/)

I'll give you the links to a few of my FAVORITE stories hehe :)

Thorns (http://little-bear-tree.blogspot.com/2009/05/thorns.html)

Des's Raid Do's and Don'ts (http://little-bear-tree.blogspot.com/2009/09/dess-raid-dos-and-donts-v-10.html)

The Lovely Black Dress Incident (http://little-bear-tree.blogspot.com/2009/11/lovely-black-dress.html)

Ding! It's not what you think... (http://little-bear-tree.blogspot.com/2010/01/ding.html)

Dessyre, Queen Of Demons: Episode 1 (http://little-bear-tree.blogspot.com/2010/03/dessyre-queen-of-demons.html)

Those are my most favorite posts that I've written. The one about my poor, unfortunate warlock is kinda funny...Tinypickle, wherever you are - thank you for the laughs! Lately my posts are more achievement tracking type posts...I've been stuck on this monotonous grind to farm up enough gold to help out some of my lowbies and snag the last 12 mounts I need for the Mountain O' Mounts achieve...lemme just say...AAAAAAAAACK!

Also, Elven, if you write a blog I'd love to read it. I really enjoyed your post here. It wasn't boring at all and it's nice to hear others tell their WoW adventures too!

i have never written a blog. but i will continue with this one in some kind of instalments. i have read some of yours and although i dont have a red dress Macto my warrior has often started instances etc, in berzerker stance and wondered why i could not hold agro...

hehe happens to the best of us. I'll be looking forward to future installments. =D

last night a few of us ran another guildie through Forge of Souls with one of his newly levelled to 80 alts. Just before the first boss, on one of those big skelly guys the battered hilt dropped. Every one saw what it was straight away and a sudden silence decended over the ensembled group.... every one wanted it of course. No one new what to do. It was quite an interesting moment when you analys it. One of the group in a unsure voice asked if we should all need on it. I suppose as the run consisted on a guild officer (me) and our GM leadership and guidance where the order of the day. So I jumped in and said yes every one need if you want it... (who wouldnt, i mean its worth 10k gold on our server let alone the weapon if you want that).
Any way. We all rolled. Most of us where pretty sure who was going to win. One of our guilds members has a title given to him by us, we also are considering petitioning Blizzard to get him a title created called "the lucky" because he wins every thing. I dont just mean he wins all the best stuff, i mean he is damn spookily lucky. Infact we think he might be a blizzard employee..... no one is that lucky. If you combine that with me... Elventra the unlucky... oh yes yin and yang, for every action there is an instant and immeadiate reaction. You get the idea! He was sure to win.
So we rolled.
It was suprising even in the middle ground around the 50's until i rolled 100!!!!!

Woot!

OMFGWOOTWOOTBBQ! I won the battered hilt!

Elventra <--------- very big cheesy grin!

I also went on to win a book of glyph mastery and papas brand new bag as well as those bloody daggers the first boss drops every other time im in there.

Once we had finished the run most of us logged out. Being a sunday and most having work commitments plus being in england we are an hour behind most of europe. This just left me and another druid online........

Any way. I thought i would start the quest line, apparently it is rather long. First i had to shoot of to the argent tourney grounds. Just south of there is a ring of stones. When you are on the hilt questline there is a group of NPC's one of whom is your hand in and next quest. He sent me off to the wyrmrest temple to speak to Krasus one of the red dragon kin and a key player in "the day of the dragon" book about the freeing of Alexstasza the dragon queen. He sent me to dalaran to speak o a mage up by where you trade in your emblems for nice goodies in the alliance quarter. That mage sent me on a quest to get a disguise so i can enter the horde quarter and get a book. I was keen to get that far as i have explored all of dalaran exept the horde quarter. When you try and get in a guard teleports you out as soon as you pass by. Any way. I went to see this guy doing his laundry on a balcony. He had one of those get me this before the time runs out type of quests like the ones in sholazar for the booze, and the daily in the apothocarys place. I had to gather the laundry items he wanted. Any way, disguise got and then book and explore of the horde quarter done... i was sent back to the tourney grounds again. This is where the quest gets harder (ish) the first instance i am sent to the pit of saron. I have to gather these special stacks of saronite. 5 in total. They glow and are dotted around all over. You then need to kill the first boss and get his hammer and then use one of the forges to make the blade for the hilt.
As i said earlier there was just me and another druid online. So we decided to try and 2 man the Pit of Saron on normal. He had a tank spec and although my tank spec is better than his, (he tried it but does not like tanking where i am main tnaking guild runs) i have a healing offspec. So he tanked and dps'd mobs. We stealthed passed all we could. The first boss took about 8 mins. But he went down. I got my hammer and made my blade. We then decided to try the second boss. Ick and crick. That took also a looooooooooooong time but we got him down as well. I even got a new pair of healing boots out of it :)
any way, it was midnight by then, (1am for my friend) so we decided to call it a night. We will go back and try to 2 man it all again just for the fun of it. I handed in the quest to the guy outside the instance and he gave me the next step. Forge of Souls. I will need to kill the end boss in there. And do something in his room.

I will let you know what when i do it.

E

That's awesome! Congrats Elven! Let me know how that questline works out. Is it cool so far, lore-wise?

check my new post.

as if by magic :)
http://thedruidsgrove.org/wow/forums/showthread.php?t=13546

lore wise, not sure. i used to have the full history from the begining of time (wow universe time) which covered from the creation of the universe to the begining of the world of warcraft. which covers wow 1,2 and 3. there is no mention of the happenings from this book in that. i suspect it is dare i say fiction of fiction.... the characters are there, krasus (korialstrasz as his red dragonflight name), alexstrasza (one of the 5 dragon aspects and ruby dragon queen) can be found atop the wurmrest temple and quest givers in game. rhonin the mage and "lady" vereesa (elven ranger) can be found in dalaran if you look for them. falsted the dwarven gryphon ryder is still hanging out in aerie peaks near the top of the walkway to the flight path. given the time scale and known ages of the characters it may not be covered in the history i had.

finished the book. not bad i suppose. the ending was gave me the impression the writer either run out of time or got bored and wanted to wind the book up. funny i get that impression from a lot of books. long drawn out character explanations and intricate descriptions on their places in the plot of things then wham bam 2 mins of story and there all heroes wootwootbbq!

never mind. i could not have been to bad. i picked up the "sequal" from amazon.com. cheep cheep as the budgie says.

as to your question des, no the first book is a fiction of fiction. no lore involved. the writer just took names of characters in the game and used there classes to create the story.

oh well onwards and upwards..... i will report back on the next installment when i get it started.

E