Niqora

Has reached level 65. At level 64, she tamed a Warp Hunter who she named Grakoth. I just took a screenshot of them in Elwynn Forest (because it’s funny to bug the Alliance). Unfortunately it’s night now so the lighting is horrible.

Here’s a better picture taken from the character chooser screen.

I am loving the Warp ability. Only a 15 second cooldown and it instantly takes Grakoth to the mob…it’s really great for grinding or farming. He’s already up to Loyalty 5 because I’ve quested with him all through level 64. Luckily he likes his fish so it gave me an excuse to work on Niqora’s fishing skill, which is now over 300. And I think he’s just the cutest thing when he tilts his head up and sniffs at the air. It reminds me so much of a dog’s behaviour. Grakoth won’t replace Blacky but he is definitely going to be staying around.

Brighit

Brighit is level 24 as of today. A while ago, she moved to the Moon Guard server to join Wolfrider’s Alliance warlock. He also created a baby NE druid and she’s been waiting for him to catch up so they can level together.

Khaja

Quite a while ago, Khaja tamed a Ravager Specimen from Azuremyst Isle. You might remember that Khaja has gone through quite a few pets so I was hesistant to mention the ravager in case I got rid of him. But I think (don’t quote me on this)…I think this companion might be sticking around the little troll. I’ve named him Xiuhcoatl, which is an Aztec name meaning “weapon of destruction”. Quite an appropriate name for a ravager, wouldn’t you say? Definitely a tongue twister…I’m not even sure how to pronounce it so his nickname is going to be Xi.

Machalor

Yay! Machalor is level 40 and now my second character to get her mount. Of course, this happens just shortly before the announcement that we might be getting mounts at level 30…*grumble grumble*. Oh well, it will make it easier for my other 7 hunters.

After running around all of Azeroth during the Midsummer Festival, she got the 350 flowers she needed to trade them in for a Spirit of Summer, which can be seen next to her in the screenie below. It was quite an adventure that involved a fair bit of dying and dashing through areas that she really shouldn’t have been in. I did try to capture the flame in an Alliance city (Exodar in particular) but it was just too much work so I decided to stick with the little towns instead.

Fhionn

Not much has happened with Fhionn, except that I was bored one day and went around killing the Blood Elf Bandit again until he dropped his wonderful mask. I may or may not be moving her to Moon Guard (she and Brighit are a bit of a team, it doesn’t seem right to separate them like this).

Tkasha

What is it with my troll characters and constantly switching between pets? Tkasha was going to have a crab as her pet…but then I had to go to Petopia and browse through all the pets. I kept going back to the golden maned lion one, which is very strange because that model had never appealed to me before. So I tamed one and named him Rajesh, which is East Indian for “king of kings”. Then…I saw Humar. Of course I had seen and heard much about him before and I had never really paid much attention to him. But at that moment, I realized that Tkasha had to tame him. If you were to look at it RP-wise, Khaja began to notice that Rajesh’s coat was growing darker with each passing season, until his 23rd season where his fur was as black as night. I’d say that taming Humar was difficult but that part wasn’t. It was waiting for him to spawn. After spending about 2 days logging in and having no luck at him spawning, I woke myself up at about 5 am to tame him and sure enough, there he was. I was even going to have a little fun and make a movie out of the taming but alas, in my sleepiness I somehow managed to shut off FRAPs right before I tamed him. *sigh*

I do think that he is just gorgeous and I’m pretty sure he will be at Tkasha’s side for a long time (again, don’t quote me >.>)

Here’s some pictures of Rajesh when his coat was still golden. In these screenies, he’s with Tkasha in the old Lordaeron throne room above Undercity.

There is more to this story than “I had a sudden altitis attack.” It is true that I had been thinking about another hunter who had a crab as a pet (Yes, I’m copying Mania but imitation is the sincerest form of flattery). It all started with a visit to a certain troll.

Khaja had taken a liking to Wolfrider so I figured it would be nice to pay him a visit. I created a little Khaja look-alike on his server and sure enough, he was online. I’d tell you the details of the conversation but we ended up talking for 5 hours so we covered a lot of topics. Considering we started chatting at midnight, I was a little tired when I finally passed out in bed with the sun coming up outside. But honestly, it was worth it because I really enjoyed talking with him. He subtly asked me if I was going to stick around. I knew I wouldn’t keep the new Khaja because it would just be too strange for me to have 2 characters with the same name. In my eyes, my characters’ names are a crucial part of their personality. But the very next day, I created Tkasha and began leveling her. Wolfrider even joined me for a little while and helped me with some quests. He did make some blood elf newbies angry by wiping out all the harpies south of Orgrimmar. Oops! Meh, they respawn fast anyways.

Later on, he was doing his dailies while Tkasha completed her taming quests. As she was visiting the hunter trainer in Orgrimmar, I casually noticed a level 14 troll wearing a bright yellow cloak. Then Tkasha flew to Undercity to get some cooking recipes and on her way back I noticed the same troll again. Hmm, interesting, he must just be going the same way as me. Once back in Durotar, she headed east of the zeppelin tower to tame Dlish and once that was done, started killing some mobs to see how well the crab works and as just something to do while I’m chatting with Wolfrider. Then…that same troll appears again. I don’t say anything but I purposely move further down the coast, killing mobs. He doesn’t say a word and kills his own mobs but he works his way after me. Okay, this is getting a little weird. He starts talking to me a little, just general observances like how a glitched scorpion is stuck inside a rock. I don’t mind it really but he just keeps following me everywhere. Finally I just mention how weird it is to Wolfrider and he comes riding out to save his little troll lady …Now I have two trolls following me around. After about 15 more minutes of this, the other troll finally wonders off. I guess he got the point. BTW, I ended up staying up til 5 am that night too *facepalm*

Tkasha will be sticking around now, especially since I have Wolfrider for the wonderful conversation and to finance me (I’m rich! I’m rich!). And because I can, here’s some screenshots I took of him when he wasn’t looking. He be one fine lookin’ troll

Tkasha’s own character page is on the way!

I’ve been working on a portfolio project at school (did I ever mention that I’m taking web design) and for this project, we pretty much get to do whatever we want. So…I’m not only going to create a new theme for this blog from scratch, but I’m also attempting to create an online WoW name generator in Flash, since the majority of my visitors are looking for that. I’ll tell ya, the Flash part is so easy…the ActionScript part is not. I sure hope that I’m able to finish it by the end of the week. The blog theme won’t be as bad, as I just have to slice my Photoshop layout and code using this wonderful step-by-step guide.

WoW-wise…let’s see…Khaja reached level 29 and her ravager is around level 23. I still need a name for him, as well as a screenshot so everyone can see the two of them. Nicora dinged level 55 the other night and in a couple hours, managed to get her Cooking from level 141 to 234. Being my real first character, I didn’t realize how useful cooking could be and so I hadn’t leveled up her cooking at all. It wasn’t too long ago before Nicora’s Cooking was level 1 (she would have burnt water) and in a previous session, I got it up to 141 before I got sick of that and put it off for a little while.

I know that Nicora’s gear is sad to say in the least. I’m not the kind of person who obsesses over PHAT PURPLEZ but I do know that wearing gear that’s 15+ levels lower than you is a bad thing. I’ll have to get her some better gear before she and Blacky venture off into the battlegrounds to get her Black War Wolf. One item that drastically needs replacing is her Master Hunter’s Rifle. And she does have a Highland Bow in her bags…only her Bows skill is 1. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet but I need to soon because the battlegrounds are looming over me menacingly.

So…remember that cold that I was talking about oh…30 days ago? I’m still dealing with the after-affects. It sure was a doozy, making me miss a day and a half of school, not to mention I couldn’t sleep properly for a week. I was tired and grumpy and coughing and generally not a fun person to be around. I think Mr. Paladin and my brother annoyed with me coughing up my lungs 24/7. Heck, I didn’t even like myself then. It got to the point where taking 2 Advil Cold & Sinus and Buckley’s just wasn’t cutting it. If I was working or going to school, I was trying to sleep.

Luckily it went away on its own after a while. Surprisingly, I’m still coughing every once in a while but it’s nothing more than a mild annoyance. What is unlucky however is that when the cold was at its worst, I had a huge project coming due. So…I had to spend 3 days staying 4-5 hours after school trying to get it done on time. Since I already spend 7 hours in school…that adds up to 11-12 hours spent sitting in the classroom for 3 days. My prof gave me an extension and I just barely got it in on time but I was soooooo relieved to have it done.

However, all of this meant that I barely touched WoW for 2 weeks. Xion and Bursthoof were worried that I had fallen off the face of the earth. This did lead me to discover that…I didn’t really need WoW. Sure, it would have been nice to play it but I wasn’t freaking out over it.

This doesn’t mean that I’m going to quit, oh no. It just made it obvious that I’m not addicted to the game. I can go without it for a while and not go insane. In fact, WoW has kind of gone on the side burner as I was really aching for some good roleplaying so I pulled out Neverwinter Nights 2 again. Now, WoW has the advantage of being more open-ended and more hack-and-slash. You have complete control over your character and what they do. In NWN, the fighting is more automatic. Your character automatically performs certain abilities and starts attacking a nearby hostile once they’ve finished off the original target. Throw your character into the middle of a battle and you don’t have to do anything for a couple minutes if you don’t want to. There’s also a more linear, in-depth story progression. You follow the story line from beginning to end and when you kill someone, they stay dead. The roleplaying is also unparalleled IMO. I just love being able to immerse myself in the story lines. It really fires up my imagination and makes me dream up my own stories. WoW just doesn’t have that impact. All in all, these two games serve two different sets of my entertainment needs. If I was locked in a room with a computer that had only these two games installed, I could live happily ever after.

NWN’s aside, only Khaja has been receiving any attention in WoW. On a whim, I decided to tame a ravager specimen for her. I’ve been to Azuremyst so many times now that I don’t even need to consult my own directions any more. Once I arrived there, I thought it would be prudent to first tame an enraged ravager to get Gore 3. Keep in mind that at this point, Khaja is level 28 and the enraged ravagers are levels 16-17. Those green buggers are bloody hard to tame! Slumber Sand or Magic Dust are almost required to tame one of those. My first attempt I simply used Tame Beast from a reasonable distance away. Then the swipe attack knocked me down and I was going to attempt to try it again but I didn’t have enough mana and hit points were getting scarce. Silly me forgot about rez sickness. >.< I ran away, waited for it wear off, then tried again. I get knocked down yet again and when I try a second time to Tame Beast, another swipe makes me hit the dirt. I must have tried 5 more times with varying tactics before I succeeded. What finally worked was: going into Aspect of the Monkey, setting down a frost trap at max ranged distance from the little bugger, letting off a Concussive Shot and then immediately beginning Tame Beast. After the trap wore off, he still tried to swipe at me but I was lucky enough to dodge him and complete the tame. After all of that, learning Gore 3 from him and grabbing a ravager specimen was a piece of cake. Why did I not just stick with the enraged ravager? Because the ravager specimens match Khaja’s hair better >.>

From level 10, Khaja was able to level the ravager up to 21 by killing stormhides in the Barrens (skinning FTW) and later lots of harpies and miscellaneous enemies in Stonetalon. It only took me maybe two or three hours, with detours and chatting with people on MSN at the same time. Not too bad, and he’s already begun stealing aggro away from Khaja and holding his own.

I’ve had this nasty cold for the past week that has left me coughing mostly and generally feeling tired. Last night was the worst so far, where I couldn’t stay asleep even for an hour at a time before waking up in a coughing fit. Finally at 4 am, I stumbled out of bed, downed a bottle of Buckley’s Nighttime, and actually managed to pass out until 7 am when I had to get up for school. That stuff sure does work. Too bad I’m always hesitant to take it because it tastes so bad it makes my eyes water. And silly me has not slowed down on my late nights with Xion. His little BE paladin on Hydraxis is now level 31. Khaja joined him in leveling for a while and that’s how she went from level 25 to 27 in one night. Mostly I’ve been running him through quests on Nicora. I think I’ll pull out Machalor and Snickers to level along with him. That poor orc-hyena duo has been neglected ever since Machalor tamed Snickers in the Scarlet Monastery.

Nicora, by the way, has reached level 53 and has almost completed all the quests in Tanaris and Feralas and still needs to do ALL the quests in the Hinterlands. I grabbed a bunch of those last night when I realized that Blacky still didn’t have Dash 3. Off Nicora went to tame a Vilebranch Raiding Wolf, grabbing a level 50 turtle as her trash pet. Despite the turtle having the latest rank of Bite, he was woefully slow at killing all the Vilebranch trolls in the ruins area. I got impatient and just mounted up and dashed through all the mobs, not really caring if I aggroed them. I finally found the Raiding Wolves, abandoned the turtle in preparation to tame and then…got attacked by a patrolling troll. It’s been a while since I’ve had to attack an enemy without a pet, especially on Nicora, but I remembered my old strategy. It includes Wing clipping and running away until I’m in shotting range, firing off a quick Concussive Shot, then unloading all the shots I can before they’re in melee range again. Lather, rinse, repeat. My health was down a little more than I’m used to but the point was I was alive…the troll was not. I then proceeded to tame the Wolf which was simple enough with a Freezing Trap. And oh how I love the damage wolves do! This little guy had the same rank of Bite that the turtle had (and Dash 3 but that doesn’t count damage-wise) and he was just tearing through those trolls like they were newspaper.

After I learned Dash 3, I taught it to Blacky and called it a night, only to end up coughing up a lung while trying to sleep of course. When both Xion and my Mr. Paladin are urging me to get more sleep, maybe I should start listening to them.

• The two most popular articles are the name generator and the Horde guide to tame on Azuremyst.
• Someone has looked at my site over an iPod. Cool!
• Firefox is kicking IE’s butt! Hooray for geeks!
• The top five nationalities of people that visit are USA, UK, Canada, Sweden, and Australia. Don’t know why so many Swedish people are visiting…
• Google really likes me. Of all the search bots that visit, it constitutes 93%. Its IP address also has the most page views.
• Someone found my blog by Googled “faeldray” which is kinda creepy because I’m the only person in the world that uses that alias. *puts on tin foil hat* I know because it’s completely made up and completely obscure. Google it and everything that comes up is related to me.
• WordPress.com Stats says that I’m getting over 100 hits per day. Google Analytics says less than 100. I’m gonna believe WordPress because it makes me feel better
• There have been at least 3600 hits from RSS feed alone. A lot of you are like me and enjoy your feed reader.

Now for some character updates:

Nicora reached level 52 and put her first talent point in Ferocious Inspiration. I’m really enjoying that because Blacky crits a lot! The pair of them are still completing quests in Feralas, despite them being too high a level for the area. At least the quests are easy

Aunniaq is still level 29. I’ve been holding back leveling her because I don’t want her to get ahead of Xion. And since he’s created a toon on Hydraxis-H (yay!) and has been leveling it to reach around Khaja’s and Aithne’s levels, his Moon Guard character hasn’t gotten much play. So the other day, Anu just went around killing turtles and collecting their meat to cook with. She’s now about 3/4 of a way to level 30, cooked 60-something pieces of turtle meat, and maxed out her cooking skill at 225. She can’t get the next rank until level 35

Last night, I took Khaja to Tarren Mills and got her fishing from 75 to 120. She also cooked all the fish but I can’t remember how much that skill went up. The funny thing is that despite hating cooking IRL, I’m beginning to enjoy it in-game. I’m thinking of getting it for all my characters, especially Nicora who will have to do a lot of farming to get that skill up.

Lately, my schedule has been going like this: get up at 7-ish for school, finish school at 3:30, go home and take a 2-3 hour nap, work in the evening if I’m scheduled, and then stay up until 2 am playing because that’s when Xion is online. Not the best schedule but as long as I get enough total sleep, I won’t be really grumpy. I know, I’m bad. Like last night, originally I was planning to fish for just 15 minutes until 11pm but then Xion logged onto his Hydraxis character and we chatted and then suddenly it was 2 am. Thankfully I had taken my nap earlier so I was able to get up this morning without too much effort. And I plan to repeat this all over again today.

On that note, I’d like to say farewell to Someone, who will be sorely missed but I wish good luck to nonetheless.

This leads me to welcome two more to my blog roll, both of whom have tried linking to me under the radar but I discovered them nonetheless:

Altitis – The Sandbox of yet another unfocused World of Warcraft player, with a slight paladin slant.

Kinless’ Chronicles – Another altaholic who has been blogging since December 2005! That’s a really long time ago.

/wave to you both

Pretty much the only character update I can give is that Khaja has reached level 25 and has tamed Washte Pawne. I forgot to take a pic of the two of them and I’m at school right now so it will have to wait until I get home. Edit: Finally got the pic up. He still needs a name but I’m starting to like him. Lightning Breath is taking some getting used to because it actually pulls the mob closer to you than it would if your pet didn’t have it.

For the most part, I’ve been playing my new character who I have yet to reveal. I really should do that soon, considering she’s level 23 already. Yes, I know, yet another one but hey, I’m an altaholic. I need to feed my addiction.

On the WoW front, things have been less busy but more funny. If you’ve read my long list of suggested names for Khaja’s bear and the title of this post, you can probably put two and two together to figure out what I decided to name him.

I asked a friend to help me choose because there were so many good ones and when we talked about the name Skittles, the more we said, the more we laughed about it. He of course thought that Khaja’s little pet was as ugly as sin and felt it was suitably ironic to name him after the brightly coloured candy. We were practically rolling on the floor laughing at the thought of Khaja sweetly saying “Want to see my cutey-wootey pet Skittles?” and then summoning this creature that looks like it’s the spawn of the devil. The wonderful emote “Taste the rainbow, b*tches!” was also a deciding factor for choosing the name (oh, how we laughed and laughed).

Having finally decided this, I open the dialog box to give the bear his name, type it in and press Accept…only I get an error message saying that I can’t do it. What the….? I try again, same error message. My only guess is that Blizzard has a filter for certain copyright names like Skittles. It can’t be duplicate names because at one point, I had two pets that had the same name at the same time. …Well, that sort of ruins it. Of course by now, Skittles is the only name that I want so my friend and I desperately start thinking of some alternative spellings. The only thing we can come up with that will satisfy me is Skittels, which is close enough to the original name that people should recognize it but will get past the filter.

So, I present to you Khaja the troll and her companion Skittels the bear. He he he…I’m making that emote into a macro as soon as possible.

• Grumpy (as suggested by Pike)
• Winnie
• Epicdemic
• Grisly
• Ursus Horribilis
• Silvertip
• Tarnish
• Corroded
• CareBear
• Dontcarebear
• Bahr
• Ungraya
• Yamaan
• Deathclaw (how witty )
• Pretty
• Tethcler
• Sparklelimpbasket (???)
• Withered
• Leprosy
• Rotten
• Curdle
• Cuddles
• Khadaver (nice)
• Bearenstein
• DK or Decay
• Little John
• Wakawaka
• Swipe
• Yoink
• Winniedadead
• Deadmon
• Deacer
• Rabid
• Scurvy
• Voodoo
• Fester
• BaronSamedi (not sure what that one’s about…)
• Jim
• Skittles (someone then suggested that I should have a emote that says “Taste the rainbow, b*tches!” )
• Frolic
• Pooch
• Hungry
• Shake
• Froyd
• Thomas
• Pooh
• Shardik (suggested several times actually)
• Grungie
• Sludge
• Ooze
• Fozzy
• Ozzy
• Poxy
• Wormy
• Wormsy
• Itchy
• Ribsy
• Baby
• Sweetling
• Precious
• Happy
• Cuddlebear
• Scabs
• Prophecy
• Tazdingo (good thinking! Goes with the troll accent)
• Patches
• Bob
• Pestilence
• Kasdeya
• ExFeral
• Ebonlaes
• Landavarian
• Googoo
• Plague
• Penicillin

So many good ones to choose from. Looking over them all now in list form, I’ve picked out a couple that I really like: Grumpy (maybe GrumpyBruce after my boss’s friend that enjoys bugging me), Voodoo (goes perfectly with the whole Jamaican-like accent that trolls have), Skittles (the whole emote thing is hilarious!), Pestilence (I mean, come on…he’s one of the four horsemen!), and Tethcler (just because it sounds cool). I’m going to think it over and maybe get some of my friend’s opinions. Thanks to everyone who submitted a suggestion and an especially big thank-you to Mania for featuring Khaja!

Khaja is now level 20 and I can officially cross the “get all characters to 20″ off my list and add “get all characters to 30″. That went so much faster than the others did. Thanks once again to Blizzard for increasing the quest rewards. Honestly I think that my Alliance characters will always be behind my Horde ones. They’re just not as fun to play, maybe because all of the great people I’ve meet are Horde-side. For the Horde!!!

Khaja tamed a new pet. More specifically, a bear. A diseased bear. Never in my life did I think I would do that. I’ve never been fond of bears or the diseased/undead look. Yet…he fits Khaja somehow. He’s grown on me. If only I could think of a name. I sent him over to Mania’s Name That Pet feature but it was right after the first one she did so she probably doesn’t want to do another right away.

So if there are anyone out there (c’mon, I know you guys are lurking in the shadows), please give me a suggestion for his name. Here’s a pic of him and Khaja: