Saturday, September 15, 2012

Random Late Night Adventures

Thanks to my work schedule, I play at some odd hours, sometimes never seeing a single person in my otherwise active guild for days on end.  This week I had a couple of extra night shifts, which threw things off even more, including making me unable to join in my weekly raid.  As a result, I've spent a lot of time this week leveling my alts and bank guilds; all my Horde-side Hyjal-destined characters are now above 80, and the guilds are ready to be transferred.

Last night our resident Aussie logged in when I was into my third hour of attempting to level Leatherworking; have to hate it when not only are the mats you need on the AH obnoxiously priced, but even if you bought them all, it still wouldn't be enough, which results in the need to farm.  We chatted a bit in Vent about various patch changes and potential AH opportunities coming up, as he's also a AH dabbler, then took turns logging into and out of alts in order to pass LW materials back and forth.  I was about to pull my hair out farming yetis in Feralas (Note to self: Go finish that Mechanical Chicken quest!) when the conversation turned to mount drops and better locations to farm Heavy Leather.  Somehow I wound up in Dustwallow Marsh, taking out dragonkin and enjoying his story about the time he'd tried to solo Onyxia on his mage, with disastrous results.

I'm sure I don't have to spell out where it went from here.  Though I was farming on my rogue, it was a simple enough matter to jump onto my Death Knight, Queen of the Overpowered Solo-Farming, and head inside Onyxia's Lair.  We were both bored, so we made a pact to take her out as a team, and if the mount actually dropped, we'd do it again next week in order to get it for the other person.  I had completely forgotten that the Lair had been upgraded from 60 to 80, so I ran inside first and pulled all the trash, before seeing those happy little green-leveled nasties grouping up on me.  I hadn't really had a chance to work with my DK since 5.0.4 hit, so my taskbar was in complete disarray, and I'm a little embarrassed to say that I wound up floor-tanking that pack.

Take two, and I'm joined by my mage buddy; between the two of us we knock out the trash with ease, then move on to Ony herself.  Phase 1 was cake, with me tanking and the mage burning her quickly.  Phase 2 went on for too long, as we did our best to remember what it was, exactly, we were supposed to be doing; by the time we'd figured it out, far too many whelps had spawned for me to be able to control them properly.  Another round of floor-tanking for me, after they'd eaten the face of my poor mage.

Third time's the charm, I'm telling myself after my second corpse-run back.  I've picked up a rhythm now, and have mostly remembered what I'm doing; while we wait for our respective cool-downs to clear (Time Warp for him, Raise Ally for me), I search for every single damage-mitigation spell I have in my spellbook.  Everything, and I do mean everything, is added to my toolbar, and as soon as the CD's are clear, I run in and start the fight.

Almost immediately it seemed like it was going to be another fail, with the mage getting tail-whipped into the hatchery while I'm turning Ony, sending a wave of whelps out before we'd even gotten her off the ground.  I'm popping everything I've got, good-naturedly cursing him as I do so, trying to run around and keep the whelps from melting him.  She gets down to Phase 2, heads into the air, and now I'm trying to pick up all the fresh adds, re-popping and prepared to Raise him again if needed.  Somehow, miraculously, we make it through Phase 2, and Phase 3 passes quickly.  My only regret is that I didn't have my little skinner there, in order to take advantage of the mountain of dragonflesh left behind.

Unfortunately, the mount didn't drop, but now that we've gotten a feel for what we're doing, we've decided to knock her down on a weekly basis until we both get the mount.  I can add this to my weekly multiple Karazhan runs, and should probably start up with the Stratholme runs again after my big push when MoP hits.

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