Exploration Tales: South Sea Islands

Way before the Cataclysm came and changed the world of Azeroth, there was a little island that was unknown by many. It sat just off the coast of Tanaris and was pretty difficult to get to. Back then you couldn't fly around Azeroth, so you had to use other clever means to get there.

Ignore the white path... this map was used for mining.

Here is an old map of Tanaris. It's crazy how much the world has changed. This was back before Uldum was a zone. I remember the first time I visited the area. It was just a broken down door with these huge (possibly elite?) Sandstone Golem's patrolling around the area. The islands weren't listed on the map, but if you stood on Land's End Beach, you could easily see them.

Anyway, the islands served no purpose other than if you were on the Scepter of the Sands quest. There was a lonely Naga woman named Meridith the Mermaiden who would give you a quest called Love Song for Narain. Upon completion she would buff you with Siren's Song which let you get to the isles the proper way to continue on your AQ quest chain (Draconic for Dummies).

I was such a young mage at the time, only level 70, and I really had no means of getting there. I was not on the quest, but I wanted to visit so bad since I first eyed up the islands. After doing some fishing dailies for Old Man Barlo, I realised that the Elixir of Water Walking I was getting from him would serve me well. I ended up barely getting to the island by using those elixirs and blink.

It was a nice little spot. It looked like it used to be home of a Goblin fishing village that was since then abandoned... maybe because of pirates? Maybe they moved to Gadgetzan?

Goblin buildings

Definitely signs of fishermen living there

Other that fishing or taking some screenshots, there was really nothing else for me to do there. It just felt really great as another thing to cross off my list of places to see. Sadly, the islands aren't in the game anymore... nor the Naga woman, or even the AQ quest. I would have loved to go back with the ease of flying in Azeroth and explore it again. Hopefully Blizzard adds more islands in later expansions; if you look at old maps of the South Seas, you never know what we shall find in those oceans!

Qiraji Guardling Woes

I figured since I pretty much did a guide for every other mini pet that has been somewhat annoying to obtain, I should probably do the Qiraji Guardling too. I have to agree with most people in that this is probably one of the most, if not the overall worst, wild mini pet to capture! Here are some tips that can hopefully help you obtain this little one if you haven't already.

Firstly, camping on my main server was a nightmare. I forgot about it spawning on the 21st and went to bed. The next day... and pretty much every day after it was a packed mess on Skywall. I had made myself a Death Knight on a Brazilian realm earlier in the year when I was farming for a rare Lofty Libram and a few others. The realm I picked was Gallywix that only shared CRZ with Goldrinn. It was pretty quiet in Silithus with about 10-12 people camping at a high time to 5-8 people camping at a low time. Most people are lower levels too , so the playing field is semi fair with land mounts vs. flying mounts.

I know there are other realms too that I don't believe share any CRZ with anyone else. There is a lot more information on the Warcraft Pets forum post where players are sharing what realm they used and their own experiences. (Sign up to the site too if you haven't!!)

Next, as always, set up yourself NPC scan. If it goes off when you open your pet journal, I suggest checking off the box that lets you see pets that you didn't capture yet.

The only annoying thing I found with this was that sometimes someone would already have one and pass by you (probably just to show off ), and it would make it go off. I ended up keeping my WoW Folder open so I could exit, delete my cache, and log back on as quickly as possible. It only happened to me about 3 times, so not too bad.

Now where to camp? I will be using in game coordinates, so if you don't have Coordinates, download it! (or something similar)

My pet collecting friend, Junkanoo, caught one on release night around 37,80... it's on the outside of the wall - to your left as you're about to enter the Gates of AQ.

There is a critter that spawns right here. You know you're in the right  spot!

I can guarantee that one does indeed spawn around that area because when I was there yesterday, one spawned, but I lost it to a priest with a flying mount *swoop*. I cried then congratulated them on their catch.

Last night I decided to log back on and wait while it was really late. I was in the same spot - 37,80. There were a few people there, but not many. I waited about two hours before one finally popped, but she wasn't in the area I was waiting in. She spawned further back... closer to the road at 35,79.

The road is behind me. She spawned in this area.

Map view

I never ran so fast on a land mount in my life. I engaged her, she was a rare, and she was mine!

Don't freak out like me and forget you're using level 25 pets. Too risky!

While I have to say that camping is definitely NOT my favorite way of obtaining a mini pet, I did have some good conversations with some people on the Brazilian realms despite the language barrier. They all loved my Tyrael! I didn't meet anyone who was rude or griefing. Overall it was a pretty good experience, and it didn't take me that long to get. If you can make the time to go there at night, definitely do so - the later the better. It might even be easier now that it's a weekday and not the weekend. If you're still having trouble, don't fret, Summer should last quite a while longer! Before you know it, you will have a little Qiraji Guardling to call your own! Happy hunting!

I had some free time this past week, so I ended up using it to tag, re-add pictures, and updates links on all of my older blog posts. So if you go to view all the older ones, there should be no more broken image links, however, some sites just aren't around anymore. I ended up just leaving those links in just because.

Now to the important things - 5.4! As someone who is not a fan of Garrosh and the events going on in and outside of Orgrimmar, I have to say that I am really excited for this raid. I saw the preview of it from MMO Champion and everything looks amazing. We're basically going to be going deep under Orgrimmar to uncover the horrors that Garrosh is unleashing. I don't want to say much more nor do I want to know much more. If you are browsing WoW news sites, I know they have some audio file spoilers that have been datamined... so if you're like me and want things to be a surprise, try to stay away from those.

Garrosh's New Throne - from MMO Champion

However, I am holding my ground on this; I still believe that Garrosh isn't going to be the final boss of this expansion. I still think it's going to be Y'Shaarj! I will probably post a topic on this next week because I don't want to make this post that long! You can read my previous post that had a lot of speculation... I still think I'm (semi) on the right track.

I will leave you with one final screenshot. I became a very happy mage this week when I was able to add one more sexy mount to my collection and cross off one less thing to run every week!

Reins of the Onyxian Drake

Blog Azeroth: Favorite Vanity Items

I had a different post planned out, but I can never turn down a Blog Azeroth topic - They are too wonderful!

"What is your favorite vanity item in World of Warcraft?"

I'm assuming this topic was thought of from the recent Wowhead guide about all these different wonderful vanity items, and where you can go to obtain them. As with most things I collect, I can never just pick that one special item. Here is my top 5 favorite vanity items that I own:

#5 - Orb of Deception

This item holds a special place in my heart. I got it way back in Burning Crusades. The mobs that had the highest chance (or maybe only chance) to drop them were these three rare spawns that would spawn every few hours in the Dire Maul arena: Skarr the Unbreakable, The Razza, and Mushgog. I always brought Pigle or Chrisoos with me because since it was an arena, I think you would get flagged for PvP; Plus, it was a very popular place that was camped. Here is the exact post from when I got the item! I believe it dropped off of Mushgog. It was a happy day for me!

#4 - Frenzyheart Brew

As someone who picked the side of the Oracles first, I was sad to see that the Frenzyheart offered a cute vanity item. I had no idea until late WotLK that you could switch sides... which I bugged out on my initial try.   After days of dailies and opening quite a few Disgusting Jars, I could finally be like those furry little wolves. Too bad there isn't an Oracle equivalent! (oraclez4lyfe)

#3 - Dragon's Call

I hit a bunch of stuff but couldn't get the whelp to spawn. :(

This was an item I always wanted but never actually sat down to farm. It's new to me; I've only had it for about a week or two, but I couldn't be happier. Me and the emerald whelp go way back (I always talk about my hours of farming in BC), and I wanted the sword to match because it also spawns a whelp. After running Sunken Temple for what felt like hours the other night, it dropped!

#2 - Stave of Fur and Claw

This was one of those items you heard about people getting in Vanilla. It was special, it showed dedication, it wasn't something to go after if you were weak! With grinding out reputations becoming "easy mode" in WotLK, I finally decided to get exalted with the Timbermaw Hold. At first it was just for the awesome named achievement (They Love Me In That Tunnel), but then you realize you can get this item and and a trinket that lets a Furblog fight with you (Defender of the Timbermaw). After that, the grind seems alright. :)

and finally...

#1 - Magic Bamboo Shoot

On my cute raft... fishing away.

This was introduced in MoP. I don't think this would be as cool if it weren't for all the crazy things you can do while being a little panda! Epic!

Look at the cute little wand and held in off hand!

Runners Up:

Ruther's Harness

Before ass kicking.

After he kicked my ass then ran away.

Noggenfogger Elixir

Eek! Scary bunny!

Crate of Kidnapped Puppies

I like the one dragging his butt and well, Fezes are cool!

And finally, oh my goodness! All of the things being data mined from the patch 5.4 PTR. I cannot wait to talk about all of that, but as I said before, that will have to wait until another time. ;)

"Pet Cage" Bug

I had heard the horrors of this occurring, but I never experienced it myself until today. I'm going to go ahead and call this the "Pet Cage" bug. What seems to happen is that your pet, whatever it may be and regardless of level, simply turns into a Pet Cage with nothing to be done about it. Clicking on it gives you the text error: "Internal Error".

A former Fiendish Imp.

It wasn't that big of a deal for me, because what happened was I had an extra Fiendish Imp up on the Auction House, I cancelled it, and it was "Pet Caged" when I tried to retrieved it from my mailbox. I also have a Menagerie Custodian up, so I hope it will be safe. I will let the auction end on its own to see if that makes a difference. I will definitely post my findings on the custodian when the auction ends tomorrow... hopefully it doesn't change. I also sold a Porcupette yesterday, and I didn't hear from the buyer so I'm assuming that sale went through perfectly fine.

While I do make my gold by using the auction house, I don't really dabble in mini pet buying and reselling. I do feel for those who do though... or those who bought an expensive mini pet only to be delivered a pet cage. However, there is some hope. It seems that Blizzard is definitely aware of the issue, even though I don't believe they are posting about it on the forums, and will hopefully pop in a hot fix for this soon. Until then, I suggest reading through the following threads and definitely holding on to any mini pets you have, unless you're selling them via trades. The auction house just isn't safe enough right now. If you have a "pet caged" mini pet, just stick it in your bank in hopes that it will be fixed. My little guy will be spending his days in my guild bank hoping to turn back into an imp someday.

- Warcraft Pets thread - Pet Cage AH Bug
- Blizzard Forum: TCG Pet Showing up as Pet Cage
- Blizzard Forum: Battle Pet Bug
- Blizzard Forum: BUG ~ Pet Cage
- Blizzard Forum: "Pet Cage"
- Blizzard Forum: Pet Cage in the AH
- Blizzard Forum: Pet Caging/Moving Pets from Bank to Toons Bug
- Blizzard Forum: Pet Cage 5.3 Bug (CONTAINS BLUE POST!!!)

Update (6.8.13)
I logged on today to check my auctions. My custodian sold and I didn't have a message or anything from the buyer, so I think everything went alright with that sale. I did forget I had a Harbinger of Flame up, and sadly it was returned to me "Pet Caged". So I will definitely be staying away from selling pets via AH for quite a while.

Blog Azeroth: Junk Mail or Repurposed?

It's that time again for another wonderful shared topic from Blog Azeroth:

"What junk or grey items in game should be made to be used for spells or buff foods, etc? There are many fun items that no one wants, but could be used in imaginative ways!"

This is actually quite a funny subject to me. My collector friend Rocky (where are yooooou??) once asked me if I had any idea what the Exquisite Murloc Leash was for. After telling him it was just vendor trash and nothing more, we went on a discussion about how cool it would be to actually be able to use it.

He said that he would be keeping a few just on the off chance that Blizzard would implement a system that allowed you to use it to basically "tame" a murloc! Since most of the murlocs were only obtainable via Blizzcon or from International contests, how cool would it be to be able to find one, use the leash on it, and tame it. Of course, I would imagine you would only be able to keep three, and they wouldn't be cageable like other pets from the wild. I think my murloc of choice would be Cruelfin!

Before I go, I want to thank my WoW bestie Mr. Waffles who once again surprised me with a new mini pet. I feel so lucky and spoiled sometimes! :)

Adorable!