When It Rains...

"When it rains, it pours." I don't remember where that originally came from. I just know it's one of those really old sayings that generally holds a goodly bit of truth about itself. ATM, I think I'm floating somewhere aimlessly upon flood ravaged plains. LOL! We do what we can, and ride out the rest.

I try not to get down about things anymore, afterall, "shit happens." But when the rains turn to floods, sometimes it's a little hard to tread water. Health stuff don't really bother me anymore, it is what it is. On the other hand, weird comp issues interrupting game play are a real pain in the you-know-where! Sooo...

I'm floating around the blog community this morning attempting to catch up on a mountain of blog posts I've missed of late. Most everyone I read looks like they've been carrying on fairly well in my absence. Except maybe Ancient, who I'm sure probably needs a few hugs these days. *hint*

I like quite a few bloggers for probably as many reasons as there are bloggers. Even if they don't wholly specialize in WoW, *cough*, I still like them. Wit, humor, sarcasam, rants, raves and whatever else they may toss out...it's all good. Every so often though, some sort of crap gummys up the works and opinionated bloggers become even more opinionated. Although things can be quite interesting on any given day in the community, you just never know what can tip the balance and flow of things at any moment.

It's times like these when I sit back, comfortable in the knowledge that I write in this blog. I write what I wish to write about. I write in a blog, while coming up on two years of age, most people don't even know about. I don't get hundreds of page views a day, maybe 10-12 per week last time I bothered looking. I have one (1) regular commentor and a few followers. All very nice people whose blogs I enjoy reading.

I don't get any spam, or trolls or hate mails. Most certainly the sign of a non-descript blog. And you know what? It's all good. If I want to post about some achievement I managed to earn, or some rare beast I managed to down solo, or some other thing most people consider common place noob stuff......guess what...I can do that. My cheevie, my kill, my blog.

Mind you now! I am in no way ranting or taking stabs at anyone. It is a self-evaluation, simply triggered by some readings from around the community. I am no longer the writer I used to be, but that's okay. This blog is about my journeys and time in Azeroth. The two wouldn't mix very well, and then there would be one of those nasty goblin explosions gone wrong. Sometimes I question my own blogging intentions/direction and wonder if I should do more. Sometimes. At the beginning of this 2012 year, I considered becoming a bit more opinionated. It's still under consideration, lol.

Someday, Moonkin Journeys may undergo some transformations. Someday. In the meantime....

Blatant self  'pat on the back.'

You know when...

You know you've been playing WoW for a while when...


you pull a mob at range, kill it, loot it and pull the next mob...

before the first one hits the ground. At level 12-ish.

Okay, it was just one of those random thoughts that passed by. Along with the other one over game time about to become rather spotty and random between 20-Dec and 3-Jan. Hurumph...the nerve of rl people interupting my realities. Azeroth needs it's heros! Speaking of which...

Aygaren, now in his late thirty-somethings, has no fear of jumping into the frays inside Grommosh Hold. After all, he can fling a mean shield along with a few hammers. And it's not because he cares all that much for Garrosh. He just has this bone to pick with the Alliance, who seem to like raiding Grommosh Hold on a frequent basis.

At thirty-something, Aygaren can't really do a lot of damage to level capped pvp raiders. In fact, most of his shots tend to miss and do nothing at all. He would probably do more good switching specs in such cases and passing out light weight heals on fellow defenders. But no. He's a 'wanna-be-a-tank' pally and insists on fighting the best he can. So all in all, he was really surprised when in the middle of tossing shields about, this came up:

Yep. One purely magical moment when a shield actually found it's mark at just the right millasecond to send a level capped Ally to his maker. Be it magic, RNG good fortune or whatever, Aygaren enjoyed his moment of celebration. Moving along now. (wish I was quicker with the screenshot button, lol)

I recall back when, sort of, when I saw my first mechanochopper in the game. Stopping stone cold on the spot, I looked at this thing in total amazement and  awe. Wondering to self, "Self-what is this world coming to?" The amazement lasted about 10 seconds I think. Then the level capped owner dismounted and proceeded to one-shot me. Then came the rocket ships, and pink ones to boot. And let's not forget the Sparkle Ponies flitting about. Someone actually paid real money for that!?! I just shook my head and went about my Azerothian business.

All the Brothers in Arms now have their first mounts, very glad to give their tired feet or hooves a much needed rest. Aygaren don't particulary care for Belfs, but has become tolerant of one who happens to be his class trainer in Org. Tolerant because, the Belf granted him both riding and a great looking Kodo mount for less than 1 gold piece! Such a deal. Really!

Gizzel has hopped on the motorized mount wagon. Yep, he got his first Trike, and actually loves tooling around in it.











Birzak got his raptor, a rather expensive venture. Oh, he mentioned that he was a little too busy for picture taking that day.

And Gandom came into a wolf, for a moderate fee of coarse.

Gandom also has a new companion! Such a happy little thing she is. Although, she does tend to randomly stop in mid-stride, or mob fight, to cross over into some sort of realm of oblivion. At least she does manage to catch up rather quickly when her reality snaps back in.

Last but not least, there's Bossy. How the heck she got herself in some out of the way upstairs room unable to get down the stairs, is just pure mystery. And she's not speaking of how or why.






Okay, one for the road: Gandom came across this friendly little fella whilist flower picking in the snow.

OH, and my new phrase for the week is courtesy of the Forsaken:

"Beware the living."

Has a nice ring to it, don't you think?

Enjoy your game folks, whatever it may be. :)

Pot Luck

Golly Gee, it's Saturday morning, again. It's the one morning each week I actually think about making a post...and sometimes actually do it! :)


Really though, I generally manage to go through my reader most nights of the week. Then I wander through some news sites, like MMO Champion for example. And, if I'm not too awful tired by then, I'm off to various other WoW sites to see what's going on. I most always come up with some subject thoughts for posts which stir around this fragmented mind for a bit but then seem to get lost. /Blame those "Doorways to Lost Memories."

Today, a little different approach. I'm going to lightly touch upon some of those random thoughts. Perhaps some will get expanded into full posts at a later time, (or perhaps not), we shall see.

Transmo-whatever-it-is stuff: This is perhaps the most currently written about change coming to the game that the majority of players and bloggers seem excited about. That in itself, is a FoS on blizzards' part. In a nutshell, you can have your current gear transformed to look like some much older gear set you like the looks of. The only minor drawback for some would be the requirement that you have in your possession the desired gear set. At least on my 'home' server though, this has caused a sudden rush of many pug groups to start farming an array of old world instances. I even see guilds setting aside special nights for nothing but old world content. Along with this little gem that's likely to produce some interesting eye-candy in game, another well accepted addition with 4.3 will be Void Storage. Long awaited extra storage for all those soul-bound-just-gotta-keep items everyone tends to collect along their travels through Azeroth.

Deathwing: hmmm, split decision here. Some say "finally!", the rest are like "already?" This is going to bring with it a couple of new instances which lead to the actual encounter with Deathwing himself. No real hints as to the identity of the bosses as yet. But the real news here is a smaller blue post which states that there will follow, a world event which has to do with the next expansion. And since the subject of blue posts popped up:

Some interesting tidbits here, as close as I can remember them. Things I've come across at the Battle.net community site. One blue poster commented about the way Cataclysm channeled all the players into either Stormwind or Org...and that this turned out to be one of those ~not such a good thing~ in retrospec. I wholly agree with this, and I gather that Blizz is looking into ways to change this for the next expansion. So much of Azeroth seems deserted and void of players now, even many major capitol cities. It would be good to see everything all active again.

Darkmoon Faire: Excitement ++ in my book! Reading through all the blue info about the changes coming to the DF has got me really looking forward to the opening of the new Darkmoon Island. I think Khrox is the only one who actually tried to do some things here, at least a little bit, but the fortune teller in me foresees many new adventures ahead.

These are just a few of the things which have wandered through the fragments lately. How about you? What has stirred up your interests recently?

Wow! What a week it has been...

since the 4.0.1 patch dropped on live. So many changes and things to address in game, that it about felt like the Cataclysm did start up. All those earthquakes really stirred up new difficulties to overcome. How I love a challenge. /grumblegrumble


What seemed to be the most pressing issues was getting Sol re-specced into the new talent tree. It also seemed like a good time to re-do the keybinds and rotation since some spells went MIA. First up, reset keybinds to default, then jump through a Dal portal to the trainer in SW. It wasn't exactly a free re-spec though, it did cost a few gold, not much really. I got my balance tree back working, grabbed up the training and checked out the new glyph processes. Not too bad at this point, seemed to go rather smoothly.

Then it was off to the local AH. More earthquakes shaking things up, including the sellers who were taking big advantage of the conditions. To say that price gougeing went into effect, is stating the condition rather mildly. Just about everything saw price hikes ranging from 200 to 400%. *tries to hold spinning head still* Fortunately, I already had most of the immediate glyphs I needed, only had to pick up one or two as I recall and they weren't that earth shattering. Took some time to sift through the gem market as well. Decided to wait a bit before adjusting mine as the cost was a bit outragous. This did spur my posting of gem transmutes though, a small collection I usually put up once a week or so. (Sol transmutes the gem mats that JC's need to cut their epics) The market for these was nearly tripled at the moment, but I just could not bring myself to act in the same manner. My thoughts here also followed the coarse that if I only mark up slightly, they will sell really quick, very quickly it turned out. I don't use any AH add-ons, everything is done with simple logic and common-sense. The weekly batch of transmuted gems which usually made me about 600 gold or so sold within the hour for about 1,000 gold. Not bad at all. Seeing how everything else was in the same condition, I dumped off some stuff which had been collecting dust for some time. Like batches of inks and pigments from a former scribe alt, some Iceweb Spider Silks and such. All in all, I probably made about 2k gold over 24 hours. Thankyou Deathwingl, for shaking things up a bit. This was a one-shot moment and I'm happy with it. I expect things will settle down fairly soon enough.

Moving on, I decided to skip the training dummies and put the new stuff straight to work on some tourney dailies. Hearthed back to Dal, then off to tourney grounds. Disaster struck! And not from where I would have expected it to come from. BLACK SCREEN! The graphics chipset stopped working with Wrath content. I found that I could play in the old world but not in Northrend. /GRRRRR! Rumaged around a bit and found a graphics card to drop in the comp and finally got things going again. Will have to work on a lag issue, but at least Sol is up and running again. What next!?! (btw-that new return to graveyard button sure works great!)

Sol had also been soloing some instances for a little extra gold before this mess occured. So, after a few dailies, it was off to see The Baron again. (Strat) The rotation felt odd and some things did not seem to be hitting as hard or doing as much damage as before the patch. He used to be able to gather small groups (3-5), pop a hurricane and take them down. Now it takes two pops. Hmmmm? Where Sol would normally spend about 2 gold in repair after a Strat run, this one cost him close to 20 gold. Talk about mark-ups being everywhere. I obviously need to make some healthy adjustments.

Off to Outland next. Several, about 5 instances there I normally would solo. I started with Settketh Halls. Major problems here, I kept dying in the first room! So I moved over to the Mana Tombs....same problems, death was ruling the day. Soooo not good! Is this a sign of times to come? I really wasn't having any mana issues, but my overall damage dealing seems to be nerfed quite a bit more than I expected. Even applying myself to a more strict rotation with the new eclipse factor did not seem to help. This is one really, really unhappy Moonkin for the moment. So much so, that I moved on to the alt kids to allow for a time of reflection. At least they seemed to be in much better shape overall.

I would imagine that Blizz may get things worked out a bit with balance druids, or at least I hope they do. In the meantime, I'll keep trying to work with what I got. I'm sure that skipping the target dummies and forgeting to keybind my spells again probably had something to do with the overall mess of things. Still, I cannot help feeling that some of my spells have been nerfed for the worse. Hopefully, Sol will be a viable asset again by the time Cataclysm does go live.

Weekly round-up: The Rogue Child

Oneshadow, a NE Rogue, is Sols' youngest child. Now, Sol has tried raiseing up rogues before, but they never seemed to quite bond with him. Several attempts actually, on both Ally and Horde factions. All met their demise by level ten. So, just what are the differences now where an intentional bank/ah alt child suddenly starts maturing with both vigor and relatively successful ease? I don't think that there is any single definitive answer, but if pressed for one I would have to say that starting to learn this class' playstyle and abilities has been nothing short of "fun".


I would also have to attribute Oneshadow's sudden claim to be noticed and reckoned with, as genetically influenced. With nearly three years of war (craft) play and more races and classes attempted than I can remember, perhaps the rogue childs' high level of independant nature just suddenly seemed to fill the mode and needs rather well. ( I have heard it said that rogues will hire out to just about anyone! )

As it stands at the moment, Oneshadow has in the past four days gained eight ages, currently sitting at level 18. He has traveled far and wide with various ups quests, (go talk to this or that person, deliver such and such), and quietly stealthed up on mobs 1-2 levels higher with ease (more successful than not). His latest flurry of excitement came from learning to sap, pick-pocket, then backstab. Followed quickly by gouge and another backstab. The extra loot from the pick-pocketing is small for now, but at the end of the day it turns out to be a nice tidy little sum of notice. Before this discovery, he used to stealth up and go straight for the backstab, which usually ended up as a miss. Perhaps due to the distance thing. So when he tried for the sap first instead and found he did'nt have to get quite as close, the backstab came off most every time. The inclusion of the pick-pocket followed quickly afterward. All this is "fun" stuff. Grab some extra loot and kill the target to boot for more loot.

Oneshadow is slightly going against the grain for now. Duel-wielding daggers along with speccing assassination. Yes, I have read that he really should be swinging about a pair of one-handed swords for greater dps. But since his dagger skills are already established, they remain his mainstay weapons of choice when questing against mobs his level and slightly higher. The dps issue/info did not go un-noticed though. When it came to my attention, Oneshadow quickly went and got weapons training in everything which was available to him, EVERYTHING! His bags now hold an assortment of weapons available for use. He could only find one fair 1H sword so far, but came up with an equally fair cross-bow and gun. (along with a better throwing knife). Still needs some maces and axes to round out his weapons training. All these need to be skilled up to level as yet, but he travels a lot so there are plenty of areas where he can take time to work on them. On this, his first day of becoming skilled in all weapons, he equipped the sword and used his gun to pull. Kind of like combo points, skill point for gun going off and several points for using the sword along side the off hand dagger. He'll start working in the crossbow as well, and eventually maces and axes as he comes into them. Hmmmm? A little something for whatever comes along weapon toolbox? Could (will) be interesting.

One other little surprise tactic he unexpectedly learned; when things get out of hand such as multiple mobs joining the fight in progress and death is staring him in the face, SHADOWMELD! He discovered that if he don't de-select his target, go shadowmeld, the extra mobs go their way while the original target maintains whatever combo points were on him at the time. It is a be patient move. Wait until health is up, go stealth again, and finish off the original target. Works like a charm! He just only needs to be mindful of not letting his health go to the point where the mobs kill him anyway. (alright, it took a couple of deaths to perfect this one!) Oh, and being able to stealth in to a quest target without wading through all the mobs first is another big happy advantage.

That's about it for this weekly round-up of goings on within Sol's family. Sol is still vacationing somewhere, even though the kids have found him quite helpful from his money bag for bringing their professions up to skill level. (spoiled brats!) Gotta love them though.

Out of curiousity, has anyone else tried skilling up all available weapons on their rogue? How did it work out for you? Did you find it advantagous while leveling to switch out weapons for different quests-bg's- or whatever? Don't be bashful! Let me know your experiences, or escapades!

Sometimes, Elune smiles

I made a stop over at the AH yesterday to gather up another batch of mats for my gem transmutes. In doing so, I also made the ususal browze of available armor just in case something good might have found it's way there. Low and behold! Sheer luck or more likely Elune smiled upon me. But there sat the Professor's Bloodied Smock! This is a rare find as not too many ilvl 264 items make their way to the AH on my server. And when they do, the price is....breathtaking to say the least. I think our AH prices are so inflated that they border on the outrageous. (I've seen basic herbs like silverleaf jump as high as 10g a pop for example) None the less, there was the Smock. An item I most likely would not be able to obtain through any random pugs, and the buy-out price was only a mere 2900g! After I caught my breath and gave this some pros and cons thought, I pryed open my wallet and gave up the gold. /ouch! Now I just have to remember to add the extra gem socket, and gem, and I'm good to go until the next item finds it's way to me.


* * * * *

I cannot stress enough to any newcomer to World of Warcraft, to get out in the internets world of game related blogs, websites and forums. Especially those pertaining to your particular class. There is just so much information available, and truly helpful people willing to answer your questions that you will discover many ways not only to make your character better, but find yourself enjoying so many more aspects of the game. A lot of which you could easily miss out on by not taking the time to read about it all. By far, I am not the best example of a well-played class, but even I have made great leaps and bounds simply by reading much of what is freely available. Just in the past day of reading, I've gained knowledge of two assets available to me which have gone un-noticed all this time. So, you just never know when or where Elune will be smiling upon you. Sometimes those small things can make a world of difference for you.

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Well, Sol is still grinding out some faction reps and farming some instances for gold value. (have to make up the 2900g expenditure!) He is also still busy in the off-time formulating the ground work for his guild, slowly putting all the pieces together to ready for Cataclysm. Sol has many visions for his guild, hopefully Elune will keep on smiling. Sol will most likely stop by in the next few days to talk a bit about his guild and visions. So if you would like to see a little background about it before then, stop by the guild website, Elunes Chosen. Feel free to ask any questions about the guild here at Moonkin Journeys.
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Until we meet again...
Sol