WoW Update - 2 Dec 2008: I'm Sick, Damn It

I played way too much World of Warcraft this past weekend, and now I'm calling in sick. Besides the usual ailments (eyestrain and hand fatigue) I'm running a low fever and my throat is sore. The fever and sore throat are probably due to a bug that's going around, but I've no doubt that my system was compromised due to too much time spent playing and not enough time resting.

But what a glorious weekend it was. I hit almost every goal I set for myself. Here's a breakdown of what happened -

1) Jewelcrafting to 420. Initially my objective was to reach level 400 so I could make myself a Figurine - Monarch Crab. But thanks to a few lucky drops in instance runs, I found myself with no less than 3 meta gem recipes in my possession that required 420 to learn. So I hunkered down and farmed ore to prospect. It took a day and a half, but it was worth my time.

2) Instances! Aranash wanted to run instances, so in one day we ran five. In rapid succession, we ran Drak'tharon Keep, Gundrak, Halls of Stone, Halls of Lightning, and the Oculus, pausing briefly to finish the Ampitheater of Anguish questline. Unfortunately, at this point he wasn't quite level 80 yet, so we didn't get to run any of these on heroic.

After he logged out we put another group together to run the daily heroic - Caverns of Time: The Culling of Old Stratholme. I grouped with Gwennell, Azmuth (a Death Knight), Grantilis and Nesian. We thought we'd have more trouble with the instance, but instead we just powered our way through. This was a pretty incredible group and I'm glad to have been a part of it. Between Azmuth, Grant and myself we were able to AoE down the undead swarms fairly quickly, and when the mobs started going after Nesian Gwen would shift to bear form and tank them while I tied up the elite undead waves.

The next day we had some trouble putting together a heroic group as there were only 4 80s on. So Rothgarth pulled me into a PUG heroic Anjol-Nerub run. It didn't go as smoothly as the CoT run, but we had awesome DPS and heals, so we finished the instance pretty handily.

And on the last day of this 3-day holiday we were able to get together a group for heroic Drak'tharon Keep. It was a really tough instance on heroic. We'd planned to run a second instance, but finishing the first took so much time that people had to log out once it was over.

3) Defense to >540. Instancing gave me reputation with the Wyrmrest Accord, and of course I got some pretty sweet drops from all the instances we'd been running. Over the weekend I managed to get a Breastplate of the Solemn Council, Bracers of Reverence, Gal'darah's Signet, a Solid Platinum Band, and a Seal of the Pantheon. As a result, I'm now defense capped and pretty solidly above 20,000 health - I'm at 23,000 now, as a matter of fact.

So I didn't get my reputation up with the Hodors (Hodor hodor hodor), but I more than made up for it.