Just two words

TURTLE MOUNT

That is all.

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Norse influence for Northrend

For the long time readers of this blog, its been quite a while since I've done one of my geeky historical posts.
/turns back on super geeky historical hat

So I think its pretty clear to y'all that there is a lot of Norse influence for Northrend. Let's look more closely at some of the inspirations shall we?

Valgarde in Howling Fjord:

Wowwiki says Valgarde "is most likely a reference to the Swedish town of Valsgärde, the site of a large number of Viking archaeological sites dating from the 6th - 8th centuries". Valsgärde is located north of Gamla Uppsala, the ancient centre of the Swedish kings and of the pagan faith in Sweden.

Check out a pic of the Old Uppsala Church in Gamla Uppsala:

Check out the inn in Valsgarde:

Now Valsgärde is one of the oldest known excavation sites in Sweden and they have found ship burials and graves there. Here is a pic of the Valsgärde 6 helmet, found in a cemetary believed to be from the late 7th century. What is that... T2? T3? :)

Hrothgar's Landing in Icecrown:

This new island north of Icecrown seems to have been inspired by Hroðgar, a legendary Danish king who lived in the early 6th century. Hroðgar appears in the Anglo-Saxon epics Beowulf and Widsith, as well as in Norse sagas and poems.

Gjalerbron in Howling Fjord:

Gjalerbron is the vrykul fortress in the northern area of the Howling Fjord. Wowwiki says a secret tunnel is being dug to here from below Utgarde Keep. In Norse mythology, Gjallarbrú is a bridge spanning the river Gjöll in the underworld, which must be crossed in order to reach Hel.

Tree of Life:

Now I did a post almost a year ago about the history of the tree of life, where I talked about the concept of Yggdrasil, or the World Tree, from Norse mythology and how it must have inspired Teldrassil. Now take a closer look at the Norse mythology view that Yggdrasil's roots and branches connect all the principal divisions of the world:

Hmmm, do you see any familiar names? Any names that remind you of any locations in Northrend?

Jotunheim in Icecrown:

You see Jotunheim in the middle there? Well Jotunheim was the "home of the Jotuns", or giants, in Norse Mythology. Jotunheimen is currently also known as a mountainous area in Southern Norway:

Utgarde Keep and Pinnacle in Howling Fjord:

Hmmm, see right above Jotunheim there is Utgard, Citadel of the Giants? Utgard, or "the Outer Dwelling", was a world, that surrounded the world of the men (Midgard). Utgard was a place, located in Jötunheim.

Dun Niffelem in Storm Peaks:

On the Yggdrasil diagram, see Niflheim on the bottom there? Niflheim, or "house of mists", is a region icy fogs and mists, darkness and cold. It is situated on the lowest level of the universe and lies underneath the third root of Yggdrasil.

I'm sure there is a ton of other inspiration from Norse mythology in WOW. I haven't even discussed any individuals (hello Freya... Sif... Thorim?) What can we learn from all of this? Well if the Yggdrasil diagram taught you anything, its that the tree holds everything together. :p

***Most of historical info gathered from wikipedia (Wikipedia FTW) and www.pantheon.org

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Whoa, how'd ya do that?

There are a lot of times in this game where I just plain forget stuff, leaving me feeling very very nub-cakey. Even if I remember what I'm supposed to do or what happens, I usually always forget what things are called. Case in point before some recent boss fight:

K: Isn't this where the boss does that thing and then I have to do something?

Hey, but everyone knew what I was talking about.

So there is this tanky trinket The Black Heart that drops only on normal TOC. I've been helping some tanky friends farm the normal instance to try to get it. Let's look at what happened.

Party leaves instance after finishing normal TOC
Venezia: Ok guys, its reset, lets go back in.
K: Whoa, how'd ya do that?
Party: What?
K: How'd ya reset the instance?
Venezia: This is regular K, you can run and reset normal instances all you want.
K: D'oh! Oh yeah.

I thought Venezia had some super sneaky powers or something. /sigh

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Obsessive compulsive cooking

Here I am wearing my Chef's Hat that I got a couple weeks ago. I think it looks super spiffy, though I wish I could equip it and show it in tree form. They added the equip buff in patch 3.2, and it really does let you cook super fast. I cooked up a bunch of fish feast in no time.

I've mentioned before that I lay out all of the fish feast for our raids. Now I've started this slightly obsessive compulsive habit of how I place the feasts before fights. See Exhibits A, B, and C below:

Auriaya:

Mimiron:

Trial of Champions:

Yeah if there is a circle anywhere near where we are preparing for a fight... expect my fish feast to be centered in it. I don't know why I started this, but I figure with eating the same fish feast over and over, its my way of sprucing it up a little bit. Consider the presentation my equivalent of raspberry sauce swirled on a plate or parsley or something.

Now speaking of cooking, I do really love the fact that we can now start fires so much more easily than before. But has anyone really considered the safety implications of this? I mean sometimes I run around Dal and there are fires just everywhere, often very close to each other:

I try to be a responsible fire starter, specifically starting them in a corner or side location. What a dork I am.

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A bot, a drake, and a badge

1. The robot:

First things first, we got Mimiron down! This was our second raid week where we really were attempting Mimiron. It was a bit of a learning curve because we had some different folks in each of the attempts/raid nights and had to take some time to get them used to the fight.

2. You can shove those eggs where the sun don't shine:

Finally. Finally. You may ask, why the 'tude? I mean I've only been getting an egg weekly since FREAKIN JANUARY!!! Maybe my new little Oracles pet put in a good word for me or something.

3. How the new badge system is affecting the game

I'm sure a lot of folks are running/farming heroics for badges. Here's a cute pic of Jess, Atania, and I in a heroic VH run.

Hell, I figured we could at least make it some what interesting so I suggested we 3 man it. One tank, one dps, one healer... what more do ya need? Jess was a little leery, but it was fun and ended up being fine. Come on, let's work just a little for these badges shall we?

Now I don't pug... ever. A number of guildies used to go into 25 man Naxx pugs, and even then I wouldn't really go. We have some folks who will not really pug on their dps or tank toons, but readily pug on their healers. I'm not really sure if some part of my real life personality plays into my aversion to pugs, but the point is, I don't really ever do it.

For those of you who do pug, have you noticed a change since the patch dropped? Are there even less skilled/geared folks who are pugging heroics for the badges? When friends and guildies were commenting on their pugs with phrases like "This healer is totally fail" or "I'm the tank and I am doing the most dps", it just made me wonder.

So it looks like a number of folks are now replacing some raid nights by farming 10 man Naxx for badges. Would the Left Claw ever run 10 man Naxx just for badges? Sure. Are we going to stop raiding Ulduar to do so? Hells no. The thought of just farming Naxx bores the hell out of me. (Wth with all this hell this morning...) Now I'm not sure if my thoughts would be different if we weren't very far into Ulduar. But with only the General and Yogg left (we are extending the raid this week so will be seeing those two this week), I want to finish Ulduar.

Running a couple of heroics in the same amount of time nets you the same number of badges as Naxx anyways. Also its not like there are endless items you can get with the badges. I also wonder whether just farming for badges and gearing up from Trial of the Champions will get you soft or out of practice for when you try to raid Trial of the Crusader. I guess I want us to stay challenged and continue working together.

I don't know... is it just me?

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Resto druid drops in heroic Trial of the Champion

I ran the new heroic instance again last night. Now in the two nights that I've run it, all I've seen is plate, mail, cloth, and melee dps leather gear. So I wondered, is there even any gear in here for us resto druids?

Well yeah there are, I just have yet to see them drop. Here is the full list of items, though the MMO champion site and wowhead still says they are item level 213 when they are actually 219.

What could us resto druids actually use?

Legs: Leggings of the Snowy Bramble (love the name!)
Gloves: Gloves of Dismal Fortune
Neck: Symbol of Redemption
Dagger: Spectral Kris
Mace: Mariel's Sorrow (I wonder who Mariel is)

Its still odd and new to think that I can upgrade my gear by running a heroic 5 man when I've been running Ulduar for a while.

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3.2 Pics

I'll leave the serious and actually helpful blogging about patch 3.2 stuff to my fellow smarter bloggers. Instead, let me give you a peek into what kind of things catch my eye on patch day.

Now I did run the new 5 man last night, which was fun. It was fun for 5 of us to go in there completely blind as to what was going to happen with the attitude of eh, we'll figure it out. One of us (ahem, Mallory) had never even jousted before. But wow, the new 5 man heroic drops some awfully nice gear!

1. Madness!

I went to go upgrade my Kirin Tor ring, and with all the new JC recipes, here is what I came across:

2. You know right where to hit me where it hurts

I picked up the new Oracles pet. Cute little bugger, except the little one knew right where to hit me where it hurts. Grrrrrr

3. Creepy night elves

Did any of you guys look up at the night elf cheering section? Every so often they would all do some kinda robotic cheering. It was kinda creepy... but funny. Silly night elves.

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How's the Sproutling doing?

From the feedback I got from my last post on the sproutling, apparently you guys thought I was pushing the little one too hard to become the next big healing machine. So keeping this in mind, I just let the little one follow me around to simply watch and learn.

Here's the little one with Jess and I as we discuss strategy for Iron Council:

Apparently she got a bit bored with our talky talky:

I did take the sproutling to give her a close look at some of the raid bosses. Here she is hiding behind me as we take a look at Ignis and his scary scary flames of fire. Its a good lesson for the little one to learn that us trees + fire = ouchiness:

Since she was a bit traumatized by our Ignis encounter, I figured the spoutling would feel more at home in Freya's conservatory:

Now the spoutling did get a couple of other lessons. Here she is learning all sorts of naughty swear words (me? never!) after my Oracles egg yet again failed to hatch a drake. Look at the sadness on my face. Look how the damn Oracle is turning its back on me! Bastard! Look at the smile on the spoutling's face as she repeats the swear words she's just learned:

I also showed the little one that there are a number of different types of trees out there. We were just out for a nice little stroll when we came across two interesting white trees who seemed to take a particular interest in the little sproutling:

But then before I knew it:

I'm not sure if the Eversong Keeper was trying to take down my sproutling or steal her as his own. What nerve!

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