The Instance: Pray for Prey

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I have my own solution.

The World of Warcraft podcast, so you don't have to. This is the instance.

Hey Scott, I heard that you might be rating tonight. I thought about it. It sort of depends.

I have another funeral to go to tomorrow. There's a very good chance that Scott Johnson will not

be rating tonight on our opening raid night. I was looking forward to it. I'm not on the calendar,

but the complaint that I was going to have afterwards here is that how long have we known each

other? For a number of years, right? You would consider me a good friend.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. At this stage, you've passed all the tests that I run for friends.

Well, then why did I have to hear from Tanner that you were going to be rating with us?

Oh, expansion. Oh, yeah, that's true. I didn't tell you.

Well, okay, so I have been, I've been a little on and off on this idea.

And I'm not sure why, except to say, I'm, you know, I leveled the pallet and that was my,

kind of my main during the story quest, MSQ, all that. And when I hit 90, I also got a little

curious about my, my warlock that I want to build out this year or this expansion.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Congratulations on 90, by the way. Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

It went well, although I have a, I have a weird issue with 90. I'll get to that in a minute.

But I hit that and I went over there and started messing around with this demonology warlock,

which right now is leading all, according to everything I can find, leading all charts and DPS.

No, I'm not a DPS chaser. I don't care. Don't chase those, don't trust those charts anyway.

I don't even, I like, yeah, what is wowhead? No, they don't know, they don't know nothing.

I mean, they know something, but, but the level that you and I are reading at,

I don't think it matters. Probably not. So, anyway, but I, but I've always liked

the demonology warlock because I love this, the spam of the underworld man, just bringing

everything to bear the, the current iteration of that thing. It's very different than it would

it used to be when, wow, it was new and fresh in a baby, but having all these little imps around,

hook and fire, big guys doing stuff for me, just the, the constant, having 10 pets on screen

is a real vibe and I really like it. And so, I got distracted when I should have been building

eye level with the paladin. I got a little distracted and was leveling mostly with world

quests and, you know, side stuff, not necessarily redoing story quests, the warlock. And they got

to the point where I was even thinking like, I don't like that my warlocks on dead, even though I

know it like thematically, it's always been a pretty good match, but I kind of wish he was taller

unless of a hunched over little weeny boy. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm going to go spend some money on

race change. And I did, but I waited till the spring sales. It was only 1790 or whatever the

hell the price was instead of the 25. And I didn't know this, but when I logged into wow,

I had 19 something in Blizzard Bucks credit that I, I don't know how I have a credit in my account.

And it said, you want to apply this to your purchase. And I'm like, and so now I'm two bucks.

That's the money we get from being in Blizzard's pocket. Oh, that's right. They pay, I forgot.

They pay us to talk positively about their money. How long have you been doing the podcast?

20 years. And now they've given me, that's the rate. Yeah, a dollar a year, a dollar a year,

$19 and some change. You must have spent one of the dollars.

I don't know what I don't even know what that $2 is going to do in there. It's just going to sit in

there, you know, and earn interest for the company, I guess, but I don't even know where I don't

see it anymore. It came from I must have overpaid for something or I must have gotten a credit

back by using a code or something. I don't know. Oh, you know, what it just hit me? I know what it is.

I a friend of mine, I'm not going to drop names. A friend of mine said, hey, do you want my

collector's edition code? I'm not playing this round, but I would, I don't want this to go to waste.

I'd love the box. I'm keeping all that, but I don't, I'm not going to use the game code.

And the way it works is you can plug that code into your account, and then you get all the digital

extras that you would have gotten. Right. Had you bought the big package. And so I think that's

where they invest you for the difference. Yeah, for the, basically, the game, because it looks

like you bought the game twice. So the value of the game, which I guess is 49 on its own.

So I must have spent, I must have bought a mount or something else with that money too.

I don't know what I did, but bottom line is there's two bucks left. It felt like free money.

I guess in my case, kind of is because somebody gave me the thing, right? That 49 bucks was,

that was kind of free. Yeah. So I used it on a race change. And then I felt bad to get back to the

raid thing. Yeah. Yeah. I felt guilty because I told Tanner that I wanted to get to like, you know,

225 or wherever the hell our baseline needs to be to run that. Yeah. And so I quickly got back on

him and worked hard. I'm only 215, but it's because it's the warlock delay. Yeah. I also had 90

after everybody else did, but anyway, that's where I'm at. And I do on a raid. And my plan was

tomorrow night. I was going to raid. I'm sorry tonight. Friday. Yeah. So it's going to

raid tonight. You wouldn't miss it anyway. I would have actually probably been better off tomorrow

night because by then all the funeral stuff is over and all the people are leaving. So I probably

would have been better off on a Saturday. However, future Fridays, I'm going to try very hard to raid.

Apparently, we're changing the core guild we're in now to some other new, the raid team is

getting a new name. Is it? Yeah. It's something about a, oh, is this a secret still? It might be.

Tanner didn't give me the full details, but he did ask me for a certain piece of art that I sent him.

Let's say that art was correlated. And let's just say it will probably be obvious to some people

listening. Maybe what they're doing, but I gave it my blessing said, here's the art. Go for it.

Let's go nuts. Because core within isn't really work anymore. Oh, right. Because that was based on

the war with it. It was a wordplay. It was a whole pun and everything, right? Yeah. You can't

just run with that. What are you going to do? That was my suggestion. Oh, this is your idea.

All right. Core within. Yeah. I didn't know that. So I'm happy to see that sunset as the

as the midnight approaches. Get it? Yeah. I see what you're saying. The clock is ticking. Midnight

is on its way. It's here. I guess we're here. Hey, do you recognize this? I'm going to play it

one more time. I have my own solution. You know who that is? Do you know who that guy is?

No, I'm really bad with voices. Here's that. All right. So that guy is Magister,

Astelor, Blood Sworn. Oh, why? Of course that's who that is. I do so much pray

stuff in world warcraft right now. And that guy's voice, it has me questioning a lot of things.

Yeah. I might actually be in love with whoever this is. Yeah. Now, here's the thing about it.

It's very, very cool. He's existed in the game before. If you go to old TB or what was that?

Well, it's the second expansion or first expanding crusade. Cache. Dang it. I think the burning

crusade and you go to old silver moon. You can do this in classic now. But back in the day,

you go in there and there's this guy by this name is in there. And he's an NPC who gives you

stuff to do that is nothing to do with this pray system. Obviously. I love that they I love how

they do that. They they stick with like they're not just like like inventing new characters.

You know, they're going back and saying like who are the people that have been around for a long time?

Let's let's use one of them. Yeah, I love that. It's actually it's really cool. The only downside is

that's not the same voice actor. So in classic, it's just a guy going, well, hello, what's going on?

I'm I'm I'm just your butthole. Come on in. He like has no real resonance to him. But the new

guy I captured a little more. Let's just listen to this one more time. My colleagues are searching for

methods to protect our city. I have my own solution. Dude. Dude. Just wait. Just wait until you start doing

Nightmare pray because he gets involved. Yeah, he I think he wants you bad. He thinks like he is like

I want you a champion. Yeah, he's like, oh, kill for me.

He has a real creepy. There's a creepy vibe about him wanting you to go do his dirty work. And I am

all in. I'll tell you what, man, coming into the pray system, I will admit I had trepidation. I had

questions. I had feelings about, well, are you just tacking on a thing or is this like Dell's where

there's real meat on this bone? Like, where is this going to go? I mean, I know you're feeling about

it because I told you last time we talked that that I was I had played with it a little bit and that

I was enjoying it. And so where you have I love it. I think the pray system is bad ass. Not just

because okay, a large part of it is I just think the loop is fun. I like being I like going out

to a place knowing that somewhere in that part of the zone, a thing is happening and there's a

pattern to it at least up to heart. I'm in hard now. But yeah, you know, doing like killing a

bunch of dudes so you can spawn the first encounter. And then they leave they they push out and leave

with a puff of smoke at least a couple of more times. And then you got the added like torment

stuff that happens and you're like, yeah, yeah, stuff on the ground and all that. And that pattern

and the traps and all that is is fun on its own. Like it feels good and feels it doesn't feel

contrived to me. It feels like, yeah, I'm in a place. This is an organic process. While it does

have kind of a meter and there's a point to it and you build your thing and then you get there.

And I'm not running any add-ons for this. I guess there's probably I'm assuming there's already

like add-ons for tracking that. I don't know. I'm trying to stay away from add-ons. So I am too.

I've one to recommend today, but that's I'll get to that in a minute or in a bit. But I like that part

of it. I think the fights are actually challenging and interesting. And I like that sometimes it puts

me in some rough positions like crap. I am in a place where there's a lot of other mobs that just

are here naturally. And some of them are elite. Some of them are just a lot of them clump together.

I need to be smart and careful and you know, time this right so that I'm not causing a bunch of

poles. There's just a lot of that going into it. And then the rewards are really good. The stuff

he sells are really good for these little bloodmote things you have to earn. I forget what they're called.

What are they called? Not bloodmotes. I don't remember. They're like blood balls. Yeah. Blood

ball. But think of them as blood balls everybody. And then you go back. I've already bought the

shoulders. I think are awesome. I can't wait for that whole set. I want that whole set. He sells

anyway, or he doesn't sell the guy across the hall does. But point is that's all neat on its own.

And I think what have worked as an add-on to the game. But what really has sold it for me is the

detail they're putting into why he exists. Why he's doing this. Me not fully knowing any of it.

Until he's slowly repealing back the onion on why he wants to capture this this anger and this

essence of cruelty and all this. And taking me in his little dungeon basement and showing me

weird shit and experiments. Which is cool. The place where he is in silver moon. I was really

impressed at how like there's so much inside that building. You know, there isn't a lot too

that you're interacting with with him. It would have been easy for them to just make one room

where you get your pre-missions and then you go see the vendor. And then a side room where he

takes you to do these weird sex rituals. Yeah. I'm actually kind of nervous to know what they're

really doing in there. It's a little creepy. I saw Lady tied up. It's all a little bit weird.

You know. Yeah. So they could have just had those two rooms. But they don't. You go into a room.

You go in. You have to go through like a vestibule. Then you get to his room. And then he's got a

hallway out here and then a staircase down here. Spiral staircase. You go down. And then you go

down another long hallway to go into his like really. And then there's like two other entrances

in other parts of the city or this building that gets you in there. And it just feels like it's

a really fleshed out building. It's just cool. The little it's the details. You know, somebody had

to sit down and and design that whole building inside and out. Yeah. For those watching the video,

I'm actually going to go in there real quick. So here's Stephen show it. It's kind of weird the way

that displayed. That's okay. So I'm in the game. His little his little corner. I just like how

sneaky it is over here. This feels like some dark shit's going on. And then he's chilling over here.

Now like Bobby said, this isn't just simply here's my guy who gives me quests. Here's this table

to tell me where my latest options are. Well, I got four pops now. I guess I'm done him today.

And by the way, you can also pay for him to do random ones. They're going to cost you. But

he'll kind of come up with a random. But it's worth it because you get you get I think champion

crests from that. Oh, that's I forgot or didn't know that. That's great. You can it's either

champion or adventure. I can't remember which one I think it's champion. And you can if you're

short on you can use pray random pray quests to fill out the rest of your if you're trying to cap

for the week. Oh, interesting. Okay. So that is good to know. But anyway, these hallways,

these go places like there's multiple doors and weird spiral spiral staircases. You can get

lost in his little shit hole place that he's got here. Yeah. And I have. Yeah. Many times I've

gone downstairs when I didn't mean to. And I'm not even complaining. I like the detail. I liked

that they went and said there's a bunch of back stuff to this that we don't know and that you

haven't been told. And there's world building there that I can tell somebody's taken efforts

to do that. Oh, by the way, this is my new Zandalari troll guy because I hate the end. Anyway,

and I'm loving it. So I guess my my grade overall for pray is a for awesome. I'm impressed.

And now maybe I could ask me in two months and they've you know, whatever they've done to the

game since then. And maybe by then I'm going, oh, I don't know if I could do another pray run.

Maybe I wouldn't anyway because the rewards aren't there for me at that point. But I guess

Chris always well, I mean, once you get to nightmare, once you level it up and because you there's

a renowned track with it. And once you get to renowned once you get to renowned for with pray at

Unlocks nightmare. Pray quests are harder. And those are really cool, by the way. So the it seems

like the design. And I heard a I read. It was either an interview or just some some thing that

one of the developers said. And the design the idea there is that it's always it's always part of

pray that you're hunting this guy. And he's also hunting you, right? Like and and when you're doing

like the the normal ones and the hero level ones, you can get ambushed. And it always happens

like after you kill something, something will pop out and an ambush. You are in the middle of

fighting. It'll ambush you. But but you're in control of that, right? Like because in a way,

you're in control of that because you choose when you enter combat. And that's when that happens.

But there's a bunch more when you're in nightmare, there's a bunch more

affixes that that get layered on top of you that make it. So basically, if you're in the zone

where the guy is and you're doing nightmare level pray missions, you can't

AFK. You cannot leave the keep because you'll die. If you just even if you just find like a mountain

peak somewhere where there's nothing and you stand there, you will die because something

will kill you. Something siphoning off you or you debuffed or something like that, right?

Yeah, you get you might get debuffed every once in a while. And this is the thing that I was

joking. He says, Oh, kill for me. Yeah. That's in nightmare. And basically, if he says that,

your screen goes a little red on the sides and you have 30 seconds to kill something, anything.

And if you don't kill something within those 30 seconds, you get this massive dot that gets put

on you and you'll probably die. Sounds like a nightmare. Just like the name. Yeah.

I have not been able to do that yet. I'm not that capable. Yeah. I'm getting there.

But I really do like it. And I'm curious what other people think about it. The one thing we didn't

do last week is let people know the website's got all the old ways to get in contact with us. So

I would highly recommend going to frogpants.com slash instance and use the text line,

the voice line, the freaking email. Want to hear your feedback about not just the system, but

you know, other stuff and midnight so far. But I just have to say, you know, as someone who

has less time in his life than maybe ever to focus on group content with friends, which I do love

to do. But it's just hard to carve out the time. When I'm able to play as often kind of the drop

of a hat and when I've got a minute to get in or an hour to get in or a few hours even to get in,

I love having this menu of things that are diverse and that it's not just world quests and

me waiting for the reset. It's not just queuing for dungeons and you know, that the kind of

sort of mess that can be sometimes. Like I said, a dungeon earlier today and I got we drop

down, I don't know, three people, two of them seem to be ACs or something, something not their

fall. And the other one was just a guy who was impatient. But these are all factors that always

contribute to the struggle in there. And to be able to go, I could do delves. And I have reasons

to do delves, not just because I need to fill my time, but they're good rewards. These new delves

are really great. I like how dynamic they are. And then there's this. Like keep thinking this way.

If they keep doing this and housing is a whole nother, I mean, hardly touched it because I'm so

busy trying to I level up, but and leveled on the warlock for no reason. But but they just keep

doing this and I'm so for it, dude. Yeah. I'm all in on it. Yeah. And the nightmare prey also

awards the hero quest, which are the second to highest level crests. So that's really,

really good. Those are really high level crests. Briefly, the difference is between quests

this time and and in in more within. What is the? What are the differences? They changed it.

It was a complicated mess of a system last time. And the names of the crests didn't match

the names of the tiers of the gear. And they've streamlined all that to make it make a lot more

sense. So the different tiers of gear, there's first adventure level gear. And remember,

you can upgrade your gear within that category, right? Adventure one through six and you can go

and upgrade your gear if it drops and it's an adventure one at one of six. You can upgrade it

to six of six and that just increases the item level, which in turn increases the stats on the

piece of gear. Yeah. To do that to upgrade adventure gear, you need adventure crests. I think

they're just called adventurers don crests. Yeah. But either way, they're called adventure crests.

And then you have the level above adventure is champion. And no, no, no, I got that wrong.

Above adventure is veteran. Then above veteran is champion. And then above champion is hero. And

then above that is myth. Myth is intended to be the highest level. Obviously, you get it from

mythic raids. And also you can get it from high level mythic plus dungeons and stuff like that.

That's the gameplay that you're you're going to get those pieces of gear from. But each of those

groups of gear get upgraded with a crest that is named the same. So there's adventure crests,

adventure crests and veteran crests and so on and so forth. Champion crests.

Gotcha. Okay. So it makes it really, really easy. If you've got a piece of champion gear,

you don't have to like wonder what kind of crest do I need. You need champion crests.

Right. You just do. Like I like that. A lot more straightforward. They also took away the

there used to be, oh man, I was so ready for them to get rid of that other currency that I can't

even remember what it was called Valor stones. That's what it was. Because it used to be

you needed crests and Valor stones to upgrade a piece of gear. That's right. And they very

wisely realized that that was done. Yeah. It was done. Yeah. And everybody, everybody always

complained about the Valor stones because it was relatively easy to get the crests. But the Valor

stones were hard to come by. And many people found themselves starved for Valor stones.

They just got rid of that. Now, now instead of Valor stones, there's a there's like a nominal

gold fee. So whenever you upgrade something, you're you're spending a little bit of gold

and like a couple hundred gold and some of these crests. The cool thing about the crests,

in case you don't know, is for each piece of gear, if you have for each gear slot you have,

if you have already spent equipped a piece of gear of a particular level, let's say

you equip a champion four of six chest piece. Yeah. All right. Yeah. You've got that chest piece.

And then you get another chest piece that is champion only champion one of six. Well,

you don't have to spend all the crest to get it up to four of six. It knows that you you've

already gotten you had a piece that was there. So now you just have to spend the it's just you

only have to spend the gold. Yeah. It makes it so much easier. Now the reason that that's such a good

thing is it means that you don't have to like, you know, math out and plan everything and save your

crests for this. And there there are some other reasons that people in the community say you should

save crests and that's very complicated, very min-max-y and not really my playstyle. I just

upgrade everything. You want to max it once that's your goal. If you think about it, what you're

spending the crests on is to upgrade that gear slot, not the piece of gear itself. Yeah. That's the

way I think about it. Right. So now if I've upgraded that gear slot with a piece of gear that is

champion four out of six, like I said, then now that's that's what that chest slot on my character

sheet is upgraded to and anything below that I can just spend some gold to get it up to to level it

up. I like that. Yeah. I like that a lot. That's good to know. I haven't delved in too hard. Delph

shouldn't use that one. But I haven't dug in as hard as I plan to with all that. But I have

done upgrades. I've done my quest for my the drag the Val drag or yeah, the drag here. What

do they called the drag there? Drag there. Those poor guys, you go from this is an observation.

You go from the game or this, excuse me, the expansion, the expansion that was all about them,

all about flying their dragon kin and kind and everywhere you went in Val drag and just covered in

dragons and dudes that look like them and just happy times hometown. You go to war with in and they

get an office kind of they get an office over there with a desk and eat. They stand there and

everyone piles up and does their crest and everything and it's fine. They get a little zone there.

Oh, I know where you're going with this. This one. These guys are literally parked in the in the

foyer. The corner foyer of an entrance way to the bank, I think, or maybe it's even the auction

house. Whatever that is over there. It's like they showed up to silver moon and they were like,

they're like, hey, were you planning on having people upgrade their gear because you're going to

need us to be here if you want that. And then the people in silver moon were like, oh, shit.

We got to find a place for these guys. I want to know more of their story because they, I think

it's the same dudes. It's the same two guys. Yeah. And they're like vascarn and something else. Yeah.

And they're just no other dragon kind or kin around anywhere. It's just them in the middle of

silver moon going, hey, come here. We got upgrades. Yeah, right. They're like, hey, it feels like

they're being they're having to be sneaky or it's like a little underground row row kind of thing.

It's very weird. It's a small thing, but it's something I noticed. You know, yeah, at least they're

in the for for yay so that you don't have to like go deep into a building. You can just hop right

into the entryway there and that's true. Yeah, that's true. I don't have to there's less. I know

it's a dumb thing. Players get all hung up about, but I have less feet to walk when I have to go

back into flight form. You know, yeah. Well, you move so fast now. Yeah. And on your flying mount

that that you just it's it's it's like annoying to walk places now. Do you have do you have this

okay. So when I see the little blue, what are they called void light moats that are floating

above trees and stuff, especially out toward bell as you urge you get close to the troll town.

They start to take me a long time to figure out what the hell those things are. They just add to your

pile of stuff that turns into keys, right? Oh, no, no, you're so you're talking about the floaty

void orbs that are all over the place. Yeah, those things they don't think so. I think I think

what they do. Well, I know they definitely do this. I don't know if they do anything else,

but that what they do is they give you vigor for flight for for flying. Is that what you're talking

about? Well, they used to or whatever used to be floating in in the old. For you to mention

these green glowy orbs, right? Yeah. This one, it's like dark kind of void blue. They look like

little mini black holes or whatever. Yeah, those things are giving you a currency.

Let me see if I can run over one and I'll tell you what it tells me. I just happen to be out there

so why not? I don't see any strange. Oh, here it is. Okay, so I'm going to fly through one

and I'll tell you what it gives me. So these are just the ones that are floating above spires and

trees and whatever. Okay, I went through it. That gained me a void mark, one void mark,

or moral. No, that's okay. Oh, I think it is. I thought it was moral. Might be moral. Okay.

Anyway, so that's an actual currency I have now. And my understanding is that those go into the pile

of stuff that when I go into like a delve and you know how you auto create keys now,

if you have enough of them to do it, those contribute to that. They're in that pile of

possible conversion. Yeah, that's that that's that currency that gets used for all kinds of things

now. Yeah, like it's the it's the war resources of this expansion. Like you remember that from

from many, many expansions ago, right? Or there's just shit around the floor. You would grab

or they would, the quest would give you some of it to the table or they find them everywhere.

That'll for Azeroth had that it was lousy, but that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's that's that

moral void moral or whatever it is. That's what that is. And I didn't I didn't realize that those

floaty orbs also gave you one of those. I know I know that they refresh a vigor when you're

flying as well. So this is one right here. I'll just go over it. Come on, buddy. There we go. And

then as you can see this over whoops. That gave me a void moral. Yeah, you're right. Maybe I have

that that currency turned off in in my chat window. Oh, that's entirely possible. It took me a

long time to figure it out. And then I did a little reading and it said, yeah, these are also

part of that. So if you so the reason I brought that up is now that I know it's a thing I collect

and it contributes to something or many things. Yeah, it's really hard for me to like fly around

there and not like go through every dam to one of them. Yeah. And it's that's very distracting.

And it's like they know I have undiagnosed ADHD. And they want me to go do things before I get to

whatever it is I was going. So now I've got this new distraction in my life. And every time I see

it blue dot, that's how it's going to go. I don't have any crafting professions this time. I decided

to get rid of them all because I finally after like four or five expansions of not making any money

just gave up on crafting. Because you never got deep enough or do you feel like the systems are

not great? I don't know. It's hard for me to accurately say what the problems if there are any

problems with the professions and everything and money making. It feels like every time they change

something, it really just makes makes the rich get richer. And like real life, the one the one

percentors problem here in World of Warcraft. But I can never make any money. And I might just be that

I just if you want to make a decent amount of gold in World of Warcraft, you need to spend more time

doing it and be willing to spend more time doing it. Maybe I'm just not. But either way I decided

to get rid of the crafting professions and I have just mining and skinning now. So I just do

gathering and the problem that you're talking about with those void orbs that happens to me every

time I see a mining node or one of the like high high quality or whatever they're called skinning

targets. I have to stop. It's like yeah. If it's the one that's all I'll be like oh I've got 30

minutes. I can do a delve real fast and then and then I'm I get I get halfway through the delve and

I my 30 minutes are up and I got to go or whatever. And I'm like what happened to my time? Oh it's

that I went and mined 12 deposits on the way to the delve. I do this exact same thing and I'm

I'm doing herb gathering and mining and I make decent money. Just sell it. I did herb gathering

and mining at the beginning of war within and it was even worse when you have both of those. Yeah.

That's why I did skinning. Skinning is a little bit I'm able to like fold that into just regular play

a little bit more rather than yeah. He'll always have something to skin because you're always

still stuff. I don't know if you've ever done skinning before but I guess this has been around

since dragon flight and I've just never done skinning before but they have these high quality or

high something skinning targets. It'll just be a random beast in the world that you can skin but

they get when they spawn they have a chance to be this high quality target that you can skin and

and it shows up on your mini map and anytime I see one of those I'll stop and kill it and skin it

because it gives you a ton of leather or whatever. Yeah. Even if you don't get the

essentially the role for the best skin or the best fur or whatever you're trying to get off of

it you still get plenty of other good stuff. They've basically given all of the gathering

professions that the three main have all been given that kind of it's a unique one. I'll go get

that that weird you know this this mine or this this rock when I finish mining it is going to spawn

five rock dudes. It got a kill or it's going to explode or suck me in or whatever. Well that's a

different thing altogether. That's the overloaded or whatever elemental nodes, right?

Right. But on top of that there's also like the the rich mining nodes and the lush

herb nodes. That's what you're talking about where if it's rich or lush it just gives you extra

stuff. When I was doing drag they called me lush herb node for a while. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll need to remember that. Rich. Rich mine node. Yeah. Yeah. It's I think those are really great

additions. I've never ever really been able to enjoy professions outside of the gathering ones.

And I just think me either I'm not built for it or the path they make you take just takes too much

time. Now that I'm so I was really salty about it as they've been changing it over the past

couple of expansions because back in the day I used to make a ton of gold doing crafting. Oh

interesting. And it's just becoming harder and harder to make gold for me. I keep saying for me

because I know that my experience is is different. It's it's than other people. Lots of people

enjoy all the crafting. And I think now that I have some distance from it because I'm just

gathering and not crafting. I think it's making it easier for me to see. Okay. The changes that

they're making probably are good for crafting and and are and people who love the crafting game

probably really enjoy this because it makes it more interesting that you know with with now you can

you level up within your crafting profession and you can even do that with gathering.

Oh yeah for sure. And so you you level up and spend you know knowledge points on different

aspects of crafting so you can specialize and and I I think it's good what they've done because

what they've done is decided were they've done what they probably should do in terms of design.

And they've said instead of trying to make crafting fun and interesting for everybody.

And that you couldn't fault them for thinking that that's the way they needed to go.

Instead they thought I think that the what they've decided is let's just like really lean into

the people who really love crafting and how to make it interesting for them. You know. I like how

to really reward the people who want to spend a lot of time doing this and really want to be good

at it. Well and you made a you made a system in the game that is not antithetical but it's so not

the normal track. It's like yeah I want to go out and kill stuff. I want to advance a story or

I want to collect a thing or get a better piece of this or that. That's a very different discipline

than I need to gather a bunch of things or buy them off the auction house or keep track of what's

cheap right now. So all either buy them or gather them or work with a guildmate or whatever.

And then I'm going to make these recipes and these are going to help people with rating and my

job is to do this and cook and make that but it's a different game almost. And I think acknowledging

that is actually really healthy thing for the game to do and say we're going to let the people

that love this and that really are driven by it. We're going to give them more even more of what

they already clearly love to do right. And then everybody else can continue to either ignore it

dabble in it or find out later that hey it's a whole aspect I never played maybe maybe I'm

mim for some fun now. And I have to admit there's some fun in the progression there used to be

back in the way back in the day it was fighting over nodes and lucky if you got it before the other

guy did and then if you did you sort of just had to do this old archaic thing and now it's I don't

know makes more sense to me now. A lot of people don't like the changes but I like it. It's good.

I'm definitely enjoying gathering and with all the with the way the auction house is now with

consumables and crafting materials and everything you're you basically just unless if you're not using

it because I'm not using it right now I'm just making money off of it and you're you go out you

gather the materials and you just turn it into gold because you put it on the auction house and

it sells immediately. And so I've been making plenty I've been making more gold gathering

just casually while I'm out and about than I than I have in several expansions trying to do

crafting stuff. So I'm glad I switched. Yeah I think it's cool and I'm you know again I'm not

opposed to actually making stuff but I just I feel so like crannily behind what crafting is in

this game because I've spent most of World Warcraft not crafting. So playing this game. It's complicated

now it's complicated now and I think that's why it's rewarding to the people who are good at it

is because they feel like they're good at it. You know like like I know how this works and I know

what I'm doing and and I know I know someone in our guild not the core guild but the other guild

that I'm a part of I'll give him a shout out airbuck he'll be glad to hear his name and feel listen

airbuck is really good at he he loves playing a lot of ults and one of his goals is for our guild

he always tries to make a bunch of ults so that he can cover all the professions and all of his

characters all feed into each other and he takes a lot of pride in knowing how all this works

he's always telling people hey if you've got professions questions let me know I can tell you

you know help you out and but then ultimately he takes a lot of pride in knowing like I'm I'm

spending a lot of time on this and I'm gonna I can be the the crafter for our raid team you know

and if you need something if you need a piece of gear you need a weapon you need potions and

flasks and stuff like that like I'm I want to be your guy and and he's really good at it yeah

I think it's cool that they've made a system that makes people feel rewarded for investing that time

and energy that's a perfect example of that I kind of hope he hears this because I think that

that's a thing that um I don't know maybe the game needed more of a way for your group of your

friends or your guild to say this is my thing this is my thing yeah I think any chance to do that

like even in microways everyone loves to get to a raid and go I got cookies says the warlock

I got a good blessing of whatever says somebody else like I love that and that I if anything I

feel like Blizzard got too far away from some of that stuff uh yeah you know buffing each other

and providing you know passives that everybody gets to use during well there was that window of time

where where it felt like everybody could kind of or there was a large number of people that could

do a lot of things and and they told everyone that that was what they were trying to do they were

like oh you know their whole bring the player not the class mentality yeah and and like is often

the case when you're developing and and changing a design and everything you they they swung

probably too far in a direction sure and then they've brought it back and said okay we need to give

people some more identity and and it needs to feel good that you have made the choice to be this

player and be this character and do this thing and and you're providing something that nobody else

or at least a few people can provide you know yeah it's also just tricky to

do any of this when you add new things other things get get tweet it just affects the overall like

it's just balance once again right the whole game has a balance to it it will never be perfect

yeah but I want to hear um I feel really good in the game right now so I'm not saying it's perfect

but everything feels really good so does feel good I'm I'm I'm really enjoying myself but I want

to hear before we ever before we end up out of time or forget I want to hear how you've gone

with like your 90 now how is your experience getting to 90 oh my gosh all right so

talk to you are still leveling up yeah I love them miss Q had a really good time with the story like

I said it's cheesy in a medicine way and I enjoyed that um and it was when I finally hit 90 it was

like all right sweet let's go let's open everything up and then I still had to wait some time for

season one to hit which is you know when the rubber really meets the road um yeah I got confused

by the season this time because for the first time the first week of rating did not coincide with

the first week of mythic plus mythic plus doesn't start until next week yeah it's weird right

confused me I like tried to get into some mythic plus I was like excited and ready to go and I was

like where's the mythic plus doesn't exist yet where's my keys you go I'm sorry your keys don't

come out till next week so uh yeah I had a weird experience though between 87 and 90 roughly in

that little zone is this your beef you said you had some maybe some beef I don't know if it's beef

or if it's just the way I played it and I'm not used to this normally uh well since shadow lands

really you they they made it so and I think shadow was the first one that featured like the the

MSQ quest versus all the little were they were they really highlight yeah the main story yeah and they

want in the high conscience and essentially they say hey do that and then if you still got a

little left leftover I think it might have been dragon flight was when that happened I can't

remember swear I did some of this in that but anyway maybe maybe uh for whatever reason I

weigh normally I over level on MSQ so I have no problem you get to max level and you still have

some story story to do which I is fine I'm used to that that is probably the last at least three

expansions for me have been that or two if it wasn't if it wasn't shadow lands um I swear it was

though but anyway the the feeling of getting there and maybe even coinciding with level max level

or slightly exceeding it that was fine don't mind that for whatever reason in this one

MSQ was keeping me behind so I hit so you had a several levels to go when you got to max yeah and

there was a I got gated at one point it said sorry you can't do 86 and on until you have hit

whatever or you had to hit 86 continue this for it no that yeah and I've never done that before

that was like whoa wait a minute what like gating is the thing in the game certainly but in this

case I just that's never happened so I don't know what I did why don't that's the thing I don't

know what I did you also played a paladin right for the yeah your main did you and I did I I went

straight through the main story quest I I did a couple of side things here and there in ever song but

then I finally I very early on decided just to stick to the main story because I wanted to use the

the side quests because all the all the all the side quests are shared but like the completion of

them can be shared between your your war band war band right and so I decided to leave those

quests and just explore all those quests with with with an all death night oh yeah yeah same

same this is what I was going to do with the warlock and I have been doing yeah but yeah and so

I got to max level and I was nine I was 89 and a half damn so what did I do wrong well I did a lot

of gathering is maybe the only thing I can think of like I got quite distracted a lot with

gathering that does with mining and stuff and that every time you mine a node while you're leveling

up you get some experience so maybe that maybe did they did you run normal dungeons when they would

unlock outside of the because if I got it not when I'm not if they not necessarily if they unlocked

but if I got a quest you know to do one then I would do it as a might have in that because I only

did the I only did the follower dungeons if they were part of the story so I did so that was twice

yeah that's all I did I don't know then I don't know what happened it was a very weird thing

so when I had delves while you were leveling I did but okay it sounds like we had the same experience

the only thing I can think this different is maybe I did more gathering yeah and I thought I

did a fair amount of gathering but I you know if I think back I wasn't like super hardcore about it

but what it ended up happening is I was pretty hardcore about it because I wanted to sell a bunch

of that stuff well yeah that helps but I get to this point where I was like I don't I'm not there

what is going on why am I why is this so weird so then I start saying well all right let's go do

some of these quests around the side and they seemed like they were taken way longer than usual

to get me over this hump to get to the place where I could continue the storyline and get back on

MSQ train by the time I did though it seemed to catch back up and it I hit 90 at roughly the time

that I crescendoed the story in fact it was right after the right after the stuff oh geez you're

out there talking to what part of the game was this they basically rally the army of light guys

and the whatever they're called yeah and you the father and son have kind of found some common

grounded you know all that stuff and then bling I'm like all right sweet and then I finished all

that out and went on with my way but there was this weird little pocket of time and I don't know

if something was maybe bugged or it was it was unlike any other leveling experience I've had

and that includes by the way the warlock I'm not I'm 88 I'm not feeling that

that resistance at all right right so I don't I don't know what that was about but

whatever it was it annoyed the hell out of me and everything's okay now so

we all survived yeah um I you know what's talking earlier about voices I do you know that okay

there's a brand new there's a brand new uh uh knight or excuse me blood alpha actor in a bunch

of voice roles and I swear to you it's Lee pace I know it isn't him

pie maker dude from the marvel of guardian's first movie bad guy he's in that he's in

tv show about the foundation foundation Lee pace everybody knows him he's now buff and tall big cool

dude uh was in the running man remake all this stuff so everybody loves Lee pace tell me this

doesn't sound like Lee pace here you go baladash malanore what needs bring you here with perseverance

strength anubalore dalana we endure look all you like but don't touch I'm telling you yeah that

does sound a lot like him yeah I couldn't find him in the credits though and I don't think it's true

but I was I'm obsessed with this dude every time I walk into a place it's different some actors

get this you know multiple characters right they're just just NPCs and I think it's in the one of

them's uh I don't know what place he was in maybe stable master guy and every time I go in there

I'm like oh I gotta go talk talk to Lee pace for a minute I got a little obsessed with it but um

what's with the sexy what's with the sexy night by blood elf business blizzard what's going on

there with that you know yeah allot allot store blood sworn and now this what do you what are you

trying to do to me even even uh velira in the delves she's all like like uh whenever she's

healing you she's all like um like I've got you yeah I can't remember what she said but it's very

it's very evocative do you miss brand uh on those runs no I didn't like brand very much

I thought I was charming at first and then it got real old real fast yeah plus I don't feel like

he's really it was really fighting with me I feel like she fights with me even when I have

her on a healing duty or something yeah she's and she's she always seems just a little bit annoyed

that you are running a delve she's supposed to be back at her little perch her little office down

there here's the thing um I was gonna say about her I kind of think I bugged her out the other day

because I was mid delve almost to the boss and got a phone call I had to go take care of something

left my computer went to do it and it was probably a good probably just barely made it under the

time before blizzard's gonna kick me out and put me at the login screen right so however long

that was and I came back down to my go hurry and get the keyboard and move forward she is on repeat

going have you had enough rest have you had enough rest have you had enough rest and she kept saying

it over and over again until I exited that delve including the load screen wait for the grade to

disappear have you had enough rest or whatever the word I don't remember the exact phrase but she

would not shut up about it so apparently if you leave her sitting long enough she loses her mind

and uh just when he complains that that you've sat long enough it's time to fight or whatever

she was really bothered by you the whole rest of the fight all through the boss fight she's throwing

out pots and doing the fight and I'm doing my thing and all through it did you have enough rest

did you have enough rest it was great that's great and terrible at this exact freaking same time

yeah anyway um yeah just having a really good time and me too tonight tonight I'm getting on with

the the soon to not be core within I guess but name something different um we're gonna we're gonna

go venture into the rating I have been in the raid already with my other raid team I'm gonna bring

the same paladin to do that the goal with the death knight is I want to this time have two different

tanks I want to have a death knight tank in a paladin tank so I can bring different characters

to different teams yeah um that's always a challenge to find time to to keep two different

characters geared right especially two tanks yeah that's the other beef I have is two handed weapons

for a dps red pally extremely rare in yeah I still have a low level blue like all my gear is all

purple like epic level and and I'm geared up pretty well except for on the red yeah the two

handed weapon I can't seem to get one to drop single handed weapons and and shields off hand stuff

in the places lousy with it like there are multiple I think even just in zandalari or not zandalari

zulemon zulemon this version's troll town they well yesterday they before they had multiple single

handed upgrades for tanking for world quests and a shield in that area but nothing since I hit 90

has had anything close to a two handed weapon upgrade and I don't know why that is it's not

dropping for me in dungeons I'm running I haven't gotten any lucky delve caches or any of that

just like they forgot to put them in it's annoying me yeah it's annoying me too but um

forch I don't do much ret anymore once I get leveled up I mean I don't know I do it when I'm playing

by myself and and um I end up switching to my tank spec and tank gear more because I can do more

damage that way and I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that that I have a really crappy weapon

weapon on right two handed weapon yeah and if you can um you know gather a ton of mobs together

you're taking away less damage like there's there's advantages to it medicine won't play he plays

nothing but paladin but he will not he he levels entirely as tanks back I normally do too this time

I didn't just feel faster slower how to fill to you um I don't think it felt much different honestly

really um I uh I always feel like I'm so slow as a tank if I'm trying to level well you have you

you just have to do what you were describing you have to look for opportunities to grab as much

stuff as possible to kill it but um yeah it's it um I didn't feel held back by playing right

because I could I even as a retribution paladin I felt like I could because I had such great

gear from rating in the last season the war within that I could I could quest in midnight and pull

a bunch of stuff and just kill it all and AOE it down and all that kind of stuff and I was waiting

for the moment when it was gonna feel like it was too much but it didn't so yeah well it's

exciting stuff um we'll be back with more soon I have a lot of um complaints and and fun things

to say about the story but I don't want to spoil people you think next week we start talking about

that yeah yeah I think so yeah with season one already kind of well there'll be a week and a half

in or almost two weeks and something like that yeah yeah yeah uh I think we can talk about some of

the stuff some of this you know maybe not maybe not the end of the raid the way that concludes I'll

I'll save that I I spoiled myself on it I always do and looked at the videos and stuff did you do

uh you haven't oh I guess the elephant is not even a thing yet isn't there is it well it is the

first wing but so they they doled that out oh first wing L a little bit at a time so once I say

you know once once story mode is available for the raid and you can see the ending it's been maybe

a week or two then that's safe for us to talk about it yeah I feel like it I feel like that's good

you know a thing I do miss about tanking or when I was running around in tanks back was uh

poppin tensions are so fast man yeah yeah oh my gosh now they they even say for DPS spec all like

even as the warlock it'll go you know less than a minute on average it's like 12 minutes

that's never every once in a while because I will always queue as you know you can select multiple

roles so I always queue as tank and DPS and it was always tank you never get asked to do DPS but

this time um a couple of times I was asked I got pulled in as a DPS really yeah I was shocked by that

yeah it was I was shocked too well um more as we know it and a reminder to check to the

tech to the website if you got any questions about stuff including nerd-tacular tickets by the way

come join us in June uh Bob will be there I'll be there a whole bunch of folks from the frogman's

network Liam O'Brien Illidan Stormrage they Illidan Stormrage will be there and so in cost

and full costume with his scars no that's not true it'll just be he's gonna bug out like

Valera and he's just gonna say you are not prepared yeah dude you are not prepared I look forward

to that um but if you go to the website all the links are there you're looking for all the places to

get the podcast the video archive of this thing we put it up on YouTube uh we sometimes do live

stuff on Twitch more on that later I want to send us a message that's all here audio and text

and of course email is all simple stuff uh if you'll head over there now and check out the schedule

as well and find out when the show comes out if you guys have any questions let us know it's gonna

do it for us um is there anything else I think we may have covered it all for today getting

the thing else catching up catching up since two weeks in yeah a couple weeks in the lock going

on around here per usual I've had kind of a nightmare a couple of months but uh I'm about to go

play bingo no fun with the family we're meeting up with some people and doing some church bingo

that sounds all right church bingo is better than no bingo you know what I mean yeah I don't know

what that means I don't and I don't know if it's true I don't know if I think it's probably

untrue but uh I do know this we'll be back next time with more in the meantime go out and gather

some herbs and some for the highest price you can think of so that when you check your mail it's

just the same stuff back in your back do it for us thanks for listening we'll see you next time

thanks for listening the frog pants network lives at frogpants.com

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