Upcoming Journey and Gaming Hiatus

Once again, I find myself in transition. Six years ago, I was preparing for my relocation from Florida to Oregon. This time, I’m heading in the opposite direction. However, I’m not heading back to that shithole swamp. I’m heading to where I should have stopped when I was heading west. I’m headed to Colorado, where my chosen family is.

The difference between this transition and my prior transitions, is I am able to play WoW and FF XIV during the transition period. I just find myself not wanting to. Our guild has had some issues recently (combination of real life and other external forces) that have made progression a problem. We’ve decided to halt our progression so people can handle life. I’ve logged in to both games recently (multiple times) and I find myself just sitting there with no drive or direction. I loved chasing KSM the last 2 seasons. I even helped others chase it too. This season, I’m 500 io away from it and I couldn’t care any less. Maybe I’ll feel more of an urge as season 2 is announced. We’ll see.

In the mean time, I’ll likely be posting more about the scoot ride that will be happening over Memorial Day Weekend. That will be my final transition to Colorado.

First week in to Dragonflight

… and I find myself completely distracted by IRL. In a good way.

I’m not doing a lot in the game currently. I log in and run heroics and mythic 0s to help gear folks, farm pixels for the grumpy old bastard and the playa, and then I log out.

I will say that I’m happy that being distracted isn’t a problem with my player progression. Considering how much time I spend (or more aptly, don’t spend) doing “chores,” I’m comfortably geared at an item level of 365. I’m sticking with my mostly naked purple transmog for a while. I’m using it as a tool of shame for my IRL self to get back to the gym. It’s working a little.

The (most likely) last KSM push for SL season 4

I think this was the last one for the season, unless someone expresses an interest in the next couple of days. Our druid friend in the prior post, Ohsata, got the last of her dungeons done last night. We’re so happy to have helped so many guildies and guild friends get into the dungeons they needed for their purple kool-aid mounts. Several folks that have been involved over the course of the season were logged in at the same time after she got it, so we figured a group picture was in order.

Really looking forward to the new season coming up. I think folks are enjoying the challenges of M+ and we might have a couple groups running them.

Changes. Ever Onward.

Minor detail from the prior post that a few might have caught in the image, but I’ve changed guilds. No drama, no malice, just a difference in desires and direction. I won’t be elaborating on that. I only say something, because folks have noted my guild previously from screenshots and were familiar with its origins and/or progress through the years. I still run content with folks who are still in or have previously been in otQ.

Not done yet. Still have work to do.

Due to people moving (both in real life and in-game), the KSM wave puttered out for a while there. Last night, we finished up Jakjak’s KSM journey and have made a decent dent in Ohsata’s io score too. We should have hers finished up next week, so be on the look out for another Grape Kool-Aid picture in a few days.

The title of this post is from Dr. Liet Kynes in the miniseries version of Dune. For some reason, his words in the desert have been running rampant through my head. Truth be told, I know the reason, but I’m playing dumb so that I can enjoy the endorphin boost of reconnecting the thought processes every time I “hear” him say it in my head. That’s a story for another time though.

It’s like Oprah… KSM FOR YOU, KSM FOR YOU, KSM FOR YOU, AND KSM FOR EVERYONE!!!!!

Got the next guildie their grape Kool-Aid mount last night and made a noticeable dent in another’s M+ score.

Jakjak there, without his purple drink mount, should be able to get his shortly after the next weekly reset. I’m having more fun getting folks through the io requirements than I am with old farms, so I’m gonna keep riding this wave. With an actual launch date of end of November for Dragonflight, I know we’re probably a month-ish from the end of the season. The window of opportunity is going to be closing soon, but we’re going to sneak as many through the window as we can in the meantime.

Another one achieved. I’m super happy

Our band of misfits got another KSM last night. Looking at a couple guildies that are doing M+ and are getting close, we’ve set our sights on yet another person who’s wanting to keep pushing. I should be posting yet another picture like this in the next couple of days.

We even did this last night while I was feverishly foggy-headed. Doesn’t it just give you the warm fuzzies knowing the person keeping your group alive is dealing with some sort of plague?

The little big things

As mentioned here, a couple of us in the guild have been trying to help a couple guildies on their journey to KSM. To be clear, this isn’t a carry situation. This is simply a couple of us making sure that folks are able to get into the keys they need when they’re available to run them, because life doesn’t always give them time when it’s most convenient for the rest of the world. Our little band of misfits in the guild keep odd hours across multiple time zones, so we tend to be around at the inconvenient times. When we group up, it’s usually 3 or 4 guildies and we typically look for a DPSer or two that has listed their key and is lonely in the group finder. We’ve met some really cool folks this way.

Getting back to the point though, after raid last night, one of my guildies asks me if I’d be able to heal a 15 Iron Docks. I told him I didn’t care what I heal, any dungeon would be fine. He replies with something along the lines of “I need a 15 Iron Docks and only a 15 Iron Docks.” It caught me off guard because he doesn’t “NEED” anything at a 15 because his vault is already filled with max M+ options, but whatever. He’s kind of an odd character, so I just ran with it. After the group forms, he sends me a message to look at Raider.io for this guildie and specifically look at fortified Iron Docks. There it was. I was pretty sure that mathematically it could happen this reset, but he went and found where the numbers were. We cruised through the dungeon at a decent clip and timed with with 4-ish minutes left on the clock. When the boss went down, there is was. Guild toast for KSM! The 3 of us hopped on our Grape Kool-Aid mounts for the obligatory group picture.

We’ll be adding the other guildie mentioned in that previous post to the picture sometime this coming week. I’m still hopeful that we’ll be able to get even more guildies their KSMs this season.

“Hard Mode” and KSM for guildies

Have been running M+ regularly. Most weeks, all 3 M+ slots in the vault are max iLevel. As a bit of a break, a couple of us decided to do the hard mode of Tazavesh and Mechagon for the mounts. The Taz one was pretty easy since Mythic 0 is last season’s difficulty level. Upon completion everyone got the Tazavesh Gearglider mount. The Mechagon one was even easier, or so we thought. The final boss’ hard mode was difficult. In the end, we decided to simply brute force it rather than do the mechanic. If you’ve got the gear, you can ignore the pattern recognition thing and just burn the boss before the group blows up. The Mechagon hard mode only awards one mount, so your party of 5 will have to run for 5 weeks or do 5 alt runs.

Another bit of M+ excitement is that there’s a couple folks in the guild that either never thought they’d be really pushing M+ or never thought they’d be getting KSM and the mount. Well little did they know that a couple of us in the guild were secretly conniving behind their backs to help them get there. One of them could mathematically get it this week, but will definitely have it next week. Another will need to wait till next week due to low/missing rating on two or three dungeons. While I continue to enjoy trying to push as high up into the keys as I can, I’m more excited about the guildies’ KSMs than I am about possibly timing 20s for the dungeon portals. Hoping that perhaps as the season progresses, we’ll be able to get more in the guild their Purple Kool-Aid mounts.

Jigglesworth Sr., Season 4 KSM, and alt M+

The Fated raids were a treat. For simplicity’s sake, we opted to run the raids on normal mode. Many folks in the guild get their gear from M+ and the vault, so this was basically just a nostalgic trip-down-memory-lane of all the raids for this expansion. We knocked everything down each week at a leisurely pace. The mount looks amazing and of course it looks great with the accessory companion pet Jiggles.

Aestalas on Jigglesworth Sr. with his companion pet Jiggles.

Season 4 KSM achieved on first day of of week 3. I know a couple toons that have purple mogs in their closet that will be cleaned and pressed to accessorize with the Restoration Deathwalker mount. Except for Aes and Raz. Aes will be fluctuating between druid-y looking xmogs and mostly-nakedness. Raz will likely always be a mostly-gnaked gnome.

Grape Kool-Aid mount achieved. Purple mogs incoming!