It Was a VERY Good Sunday

On the Wings of Dragons 

It all started at midnight, as most days do. In this case, the start wasn’t good: My friends Mysty and Swissy had just been knocked out of the game, and couldn’t reenter. Turns out Blizzard was having some ISP issues. So we chatted on Skype, and about the time we were going to call it a night, they were able to get back in game. 

For some reason (I don’t recall why, exactly, because we were all kinda tired at the time) we decided to head to Netherwing Ledge. Swissy and Osprey were this →← close to being Exalted with Netherwing and getting their Nether Drakes, but we planned on doing it Sunday morning, when Swissy would be able to pick up more quests.

But we figured if we could find a couple Netherwing Eggs and complete one or two quests we hadn’t done on Saturday, we might be able to actually get the dragons before going to bed. We didn’t count on finding five eggs for Swissy though!

So around 1 a.m. Sunday morning, we were facing Illidan Stormrage himself (or at least a projection of him). A few minutes later, I was the proud possessor of Reins of Jorus, the Cobalt Netherwing Drake, while Swissy was holding the Reins of Voranaku, the Violet Netherwing Drake.

Mysty’s turn will come: She’s about halfway through Honored, but her contribution was huge. For Christmas, she gave us each enough gold to complete the training for our 300 riding skill; which, of course, is a prerequisite to getting the quest line for the Netherwing Drakes. In return, we’ve pledged to help her get her Drakes as well.

Serendipity Happens

On Saturday Falken, my jewelcrafter, had finally put together enough gold through AH sales that he was able to bid on a new design: Delicate Living Ruby. It was in the AH for 600 bid, 750 buyout. I thought the 600 was a little high, but I was willing to bid that. No way I was going up to 750 though.

I logged in late Sunday morning to find that I hadn’t won, but I hadn’t lost, either: The auction had been canceled! I don’t know about you, but I really hate when that happens. Ah well, let’s go see what is up for sale today. What’s this? Not one, but two Delicate Living Ruby designs! And the buyouts were 350 and 500 gold! I wasted no time in buying the lower-priced one, and immediately cut one of the gems and put it up for sale. An hour later it had sold for my buyout price. Not a bad turnaround at all.

Osprey Gets Maced

Just for grins and giggles after I’d put some more gems up for sale, I thought I’d take a look at a possible weapon upgrade for Falken. I spotted a purple mace, and took a closer look. The Ancient Scepter of Sue-Min was looking back at me. Current bid was 945g, with a buyout of 1,000. A lot of money, but I have a pretty good cash flow now, due to Falken having an epic mount and the ability to mine a lot of ore in a short time, and doing a decent job of playing the AH. Besides, there are few, if any, better tools for a Holy Priest outside Karazhan.

So I quickly gathered the money on Osprey and bought the mace. Quite an upgrade from The Essence Focuser! So now all I needed was to get the Major Intellect enchant on it. Ten Greater Planars and a couple Large Prismatics and I’d be set.

Kestrel, the ‘chanter, has plenty of Greater Planars, but I had to buy the Large Prismatic Shards. Found a pair for 40g buyout–a reasonable price on Kul Tiras, which must have the screwiest AH economy in the game. That, however, is another article for another day.

Kestrel Gets Lucky

You know, once you have the pattern, getting the mats together for the +30 Int enchant to weapons is really pretty easy. Almost any Outland instance will net you a couple of Large Prismatic Shards, and Greater Planar Essences are only slightly less common than Arcane Dust, it seems. However, the Formula: Enchant Weapon – Major Intellect is a rare drop, is bind-on-pickup, and only drops if there is an enchanter in the group who doesn’t yet know the formula. Enter Kestrel, my once-upon-a-time main, level 70 rogue and 360 enchanter. (Yes, I know he sucks. One of these days…)

I headed out to Mana Forge: Coruu, in Netherstorm, filled with optimism that I could snag that formula in just a couple hours of farming. From past experience, I knew the three Sunfury Researchers in the first group I encountered were close enough that attacking one would bring at least one of the others. So I sapped the one in the middle, picked his pocket, and went to the one on the left. I didn’t want to break stealth in the event of a resisted pick pocket, so I started in with Cheap Shot, Backstab, and quickly took him out.

I decided to loot him before re-sapping and then taking out the one on the right. But then I stopped cold. Autoloot was on and I saw a paper of some kind was in grabbed…and I thought it might have been a green. (My loot add-on puts a colored border around items corresponding to their rarity.)

Opening my bags, I looked at what I’d just picked up. My jaw dropped as I saw The Formula, and I exclaimed out loud, "NO WAY!" But indeed, I’d managed to beat 1:250 odds and snag that lovely little piece of paper on the very first kill. I was so dumbstruck, I didn’t notice the sapped target had awakened until he’d hit me two or three times.

So I headed back to Shattrath, gathered the mats, enchanted Osprey’s mace, and took the picture at the top of the article.

And to Top Things Off, "Ding!"

After dinner, the three amigos, Mysty, Swissy and Osprey (but this time playing Sassy, Lavynder (both SPriests) and my #2 Hunter, Sparverius, laid waste to Terrokar Forest and the Bone Wastes for two or three hours. About midway through our adventurs, Sassy hit 64 and Spar hit 68. Now with Snake Trap, he’s turning into a pretty effective BM hunter. Icing on the cake was Shy’Rotam hitting 65.

All in all, quite an eventful, and very rewarding, Sunday in Azeroth and Outland. So how’d you do this weekend?