July 6-7: Grinding, guildies, and 'Goro

I started off Thursday, July 6, with more Un'Goro grinding. I had to collect a bunch of scales from dimetredons and pterrordaxes (or whatever they call them in-game), and the drop rate was low, so I was also collecting bloodpetals from bloodpetal threshers to stave off boredom. Things were going fairly well when a 49 guildie with whom I'd had fun questing before showed up. We teamed up, I shared my quests, and we set to a-killin'. He's a mage (and I'm a warrior, remember?), so grouping was...interesting. We killed many, many dinosaurs (and some gorishi bugs for good measure) and finished our quests, though without gaining much XP. That was fine, though; I don't mind sacrificing XP when there's good social gaming to be had.

The next day I headed back to Un'Goro to finish off my quests there. Before I left Ironforge, though, I noticed that for some reason, the best time to sell things has swapped since early June. It used to be that I could sell most things at outrageously inflated prices during the week (especially between Tuesday and Thursday), and weekends were best for dumping special items that were too esoteric to sell to the relatively small number of every-day gamers. But since early June (that is, since public schools closed down for the summer), I can't sell anything at exaggerated prices ever, because the market for whatever I'm selling is always flooded. For some reason, though, weekend sellers seem to be engaged in a reverse price war: items that might sell for 20s during the week will go for 1g on the weekends. I'll admit I don't know much about virtual economics, but this mystifies me. No matter; I'm still making profit, however slowly.

So while I was making my very cautious and downright jumpy way through an insect hive, my guild leader and the guildie I had been questing with the day before came on. We decided it might be fun to tackle Blackrock Depths. Ha. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Obvioiusly, a 52 warrior, 49 mage, and 53 priest wouldn't last long in there without help, so our guild leader recruited a 54 hunter and 51 warrior to round out the group. We were still sort of underpowered, and three of us had never been to BRD before (and my instance experience consisted of an ill-fated Gnomer run a long time ago and a ZF run that ended prematurely when two party members took off), but we were willing to give it a go.

None of us had the proper key, so we decided to sidestep the larger bosses and made our way to a lesser area. We were doing OK for the most part; I died several times, but that's the job of the tank. I felt pretty good about that; we wiped four or five times, I died alone a few times on top of that, and once I went down with the priest while the rest of the party survived. Except for the priest/tank death, I was the first one to die each time, so I felt good about doing my job right (that is, I was pretty successful about keeping mobs off of the casters and DPS folks while I was alive).

So we headed into an area where a minor boss sends some random spawn out, and we had our first wipe of the night. Our more experienced party members said the spawn was usually a single dinosaur, or a pair of mobs, but for some reason we got 6 or 7 elite spiders. Everybody played their roles pretty well; it helped to have two tanks and a tanking pet to manage aggro, but eventually they got me, then the secondary tank (who was arms/fury spec'd, whereas I'm arms/protection), then the priest, then the mage, and finally the hunter. The secondary tank called it quits after that, but the hunter brought in a 60 rogue to fill out our numbers.

Interestingly, this combination was less successful, probably because we went to more ambitious areas (the rogue had keys). But as a warrior, I have to say it's nice to not be the only one taunting when there's multiple mobs and my taunt's cooldown isn't as short as it could be. Nevertheless, we killed a bunch of elementals and dwarves before experiencing multiple wipes in the same place. Having accomplished pretty much nothing (other than having fun, of course), we called it a night.

I'm still a little bit short of 53, but I hope to get there within the next few days (though real-life obligations limit my playing time to Thursdays, Friday evenings, and Saturdays), because I have a very nice set of gauntlets and a decent new cape waiting for me in the bank once I ding. Then it's back to Un'Goro for a bit, and hopefully some more dungeons.