Choose-your-own-adventure update
Bishamel has hit 18 and is paused there briefly while I do some other things. I’ll do a full update at 20. Suffice to say that prot paladinning is awesome, and holy crap does HoR do some serious damage at that level. I pull crap in the Ghostlands with it and it’s half dead almost immediately.
Mounts from Zul’Gurub
Valnoth confirmed yesterday that Zul’Gurub is gone as a raid instance in Cataclysm. This makes me sad - I love Zul’Gurub, and not just because of the mounts I can’t get to drop! - but if you want something from there, better get to farmin’. ZG’s lockout resets every 3 days, so you can be in there pretty often compared to other raids. Keep in mind it’s not just mounts - you’ll probably also want to get The Deadliest Catch by fishing up Gahz’ranka and Hero of the Zandalar Tribe by grinding to exalted with the Zandalar Tribe while you’re at it. (Full clears of Zul’Gurub - even ones where you don’t kill much of the trash - yield a few thousand rep. You’ll also want to kill trash for coins and bijous. Zandalar Tribe is super-easy to grind to exalted these days.)
So yeah, this is your last shot at the Swift Zulian Tiger (and its achievement) and the Swift Razzashi Raptor (also with an achievement). I ran a full solo clear last night. I’ve also decided to keep a small collection of Zul’Gurub weapons - so many of the items in there are absolutely awesome looking, and so many of the designs and models weren’t re-used (or were re-used in Outland).
Who’s ready to start farming?!
Builders League United
My guild, <Builders League United> (or BLU for short) has a few new people in it. It’s kind of comforting, having the general chatter of a small friendly guild again. If you’re interested in seeing what we’re about, and possibly raiding with a small-schedule 10-man Horde-side raiding guild in Cataclysm, I highly recommend checking our site, especially the BLU policies and “What is BLU?” pages. We totally have a bank tab and a tabard, just like those other guys in the Guild Recruitment channel.
Loopholes for silly pirates
So it turns out that those of us working on Insane in the Membrane and trying to grind up our goblin rep after sacrificing it in the name of pirate rep have a small loophole I just now got around to finding - we are not stuck solely freeing Knot Thimblejack or grinding on endless pirates and nomads. After some careful (fingers-crossed, bated breath) experimentation last night, I found that - barring the repeatable “reconciliation turn-in quests” that were made solely to raise goblin rep with one city and lower Bloodsail Buccaneer rep - it seems like as long as Booty Bay isn’t the primary rep recipient, you can safely do quests for Gadgetzan, Ratchet, and Everlook questgivers without lowering your pirate reputation (and earning spillover reputation with all the goblin cities, as well). The best part about this is that since I chose to get IitM on my death knight, he’s done basically none of the goblin quests scattered throughout old-world Azeroth. Time to see the sights before the sights go away, and work on my title!