or maybe something uplifting…

I’ve never been really in to PvP before. I played a little Warsong Gulch with my hunter a while back but now that I hit 70 a couple weeks ago with my main, I’ve developed a thing for Arathi Basin.

I’ve really just binged a couple of nights, once on Warsong Gulch and once on Arathi Basin. Once I noticed that some of the gear only costs 20 Marks of Honour from Warsong Gulch I thought maybe that wasn’t a big purchase. I’m a casual player so I don’t follow all the details of this. Still I’d like to get some better gear when it’s within the bits of game that I’m going to play anyway. What I didn’t realize until I went to turn my marks in for loot was that the much higher cost is the required Honour points. I’ve decided that I’ll just PvP when I feel like it and if I get enough honour and marks from the various battlegrounds then I’ll buy the pretty purples when I can. It can’t be as simple as that of course. So I had to sit down and dig through WoWHead today and find what you buy how.
Read the rest of “WoW PvP Rewards for Mages”…

At level 69 you can use a Riding Crop to get a mounted speed bonus. Since my main is finally level 69 I’ve been eying the Auction House. I just lucked out and found one for only 41 gold. On my server they’re usually over 80 so I snapped it up right away. Of course then I have the issue of switching trinkets so can have the Riding Crop while mounted and go back to my other trinkets when I dismount. This got me looking at macros again and since macros are written with Lua in WoW, I thought this ties in nicely with the Lua interpreter stuff I’ve been writing about lately. Today I’ll share the macros I’ve been using for a while now to smooth the rough edges off the World of Warcraft interface. I didn’t write most of them but I’ve tweaked them to meet my needs.
Read the rest of “WoW: A few Lua Macros to save time and clicks”…

There are a couple things I’ve done to tweak World of Warcraft on my Linux box. I run OpenSuse 10.3 now but most of this will be the same for other distros, especially if you use KDE. These are just specific to what worked for me but I guess that some other Linux WoW players might benefit from the same settings.

First off I lost the ability to do a quick self-cast. Self-cast is done by just holding alt while clicking the icon for a spell. So, as a mage, every half-hour I want to self-cast Arcane Intellect. That’s no big deal since it’s not in combat. Remove Lesser Curse is a bigger problem. The second fastest way to use that is with a shortcut key or click followed by F1 (which also targets your own character). I thought the problem was because of some multi-language keyboard customization I had done but as it turns out it was a setting in KDE for moving windows by holding the Alt-key. To turn this off just follow the steps here - I included pictures, click each to get a bigger image.
Read the rest of “WoW: Self-Cast in KDE and Faster Performance in Wine”…

I’ve got a new update for the search plugins I wrote for the World of Warcraft Armory. Blizzard changed the search results URL slightly and that broke my old version. While I was at it I added a general search (all realms) that might work for Taiwan and Korean realms.

If you’re a new user, the basic idea I’ve used is that sometimes people want to search all realms for a character name but usually you want to look for a character only on a specific realm. Looking on a specific realm is a lot more useful since most of us only play on one realm or at most a few. You can install the realm-specific search for each of the realms you play on and the name shows up when you pick which you want from Firefox’s search box.

The search plugin shows up on the top right corner of Firefox. It might also work on Internet Explorer 7 since it’s written as an OpenSearch plugin. It doesn’t add anything to the browser except this new search engine provider - it’s not as big as a normal Firefox add-on.
Read the rest of “Updated Firefox Search Plugin for WoWArmory.com”…

I’ve finally got the search plugin I made last month to work for European Realms. The idea is the same, so the info in the original release still applies but I’ll recap here.

Background

This is an OpenSearch plugin, it only adds a search provider to the list at the top, not generic functionality for Firefox. Since it’s done with OpenSearch, my understanding is that it might work in other browsers too. My instructions and experience are specific to Firefox though. If you still don’t have Firefox, you can go get it from Mozilla or get .

I’ve approached the search two different ways, one way is to search all realms for a character. The other looks for a character only on a specific realm. I think looking on a specific realm is a lot more useful since most of us only play on one realm or at most a few. You can install the realm-specific search for each of the realms you play on and the name shows up when you pick which you want from Firefox’s search box.
Read the rest of “Armory Search Plugin updated for European Realms”…

Wierd, but as I was sitting here writing my last post, I heard the level sound effect come from WoW (running in Wine on one of my other KDE desktops). I flipped over to it and it says my pet’s loyalty has increased. He went from Loyalty Level 2 (Unruly) to Loyalty Level 3 (Submissive). So apparently loyalty increases with just time spent being happy. Keep your pet fed.

I’ve been spending some time leveling my new pet Ravager up. I found a spot that suits me just fine. Right at the western edge of the Vul’Gol Ogre Mound in Duskwood just east of Addle’s Stead there are a number of level 29 and 30 ogres. Most are warriors but there are a couple casters. All of them are easy for my 36 hunter but also give XP for my pet Ravager. Now the Ravager just hit level 15 and I’ve only killed the same 5 ogres about four times. So my strategy’s been working pretty well. I got some food in Goldshire and parked my hunter in this spot last time I was on and now that I have a few minutes I’ve put on some levels for the pet.
Read the rest of “An Update on Leveling the Ravager Combat Pet”…

I finally got around to playing my hunter again. It’s been months. I’d forgotten how nice it was to solo with a hunter. I decided that it’s time for me to go find a new pet. I like my owl but he has two problems: first he’s always blocking my view and second he has a really dumb name. The great things about the owl are that he’s pretty quick and he has no trouble holding aggro at all now at level 36. That’s also partly due to my hunter’s talent build (I know it says level 38 there, but I was mistaken - I’m still 36) I suppose, but it’s been a great combo for me. Still, for some variety I thought I’d like to try out a new beast.

I still want something fast that can hold aggro - my preferred style is to send in the pet, lay a trap and start an aimed shot. Now that I can lay traps in combat that part’s not as important. I have aimed shot on 9 so I do ctrl-1 then 9. By the time my aimed shot fires, the owl is already attacking and the mob is paying attention to them. Still my second attack is a concussive shot (which I keep on 8 for convenience) so that if the mob starts coming my way the owl can keep up.

I didn’t want to change my play style much with a new pet so I figured I’d still need something fast with a focus on DPS. I think this pretty much limits me to cats, owls and now the ravager. To be honest, ever since I first saw the ravagers when I started my shammy I thought one would make a good pet for my hunter. My hunter is still level 36, so I took a wild guess that the easiest way to get a ravager was to head on over to Azuremyst Isle and find one of the level 10 Ravager Specimens that I’d fought with my Shaman.
Read the rest of “WoW: Training a Ravager as a Combat Pet”…