Monday, December 29, 2014

Draenor Horde Garrisons: Strangers in a strange land


Welcome to Draenor, fellow Hordie!   What could POSSIBLY go wrong?


Well, friends, I'll tell you that it all boils down to one single, simple fact: Archmaage Khadgar NEVER asks for directions.

We see him blasting the Iron Horde into the air en masse, destroying bridges with a twitch of a finger, and even disintegrating a dam.  But as it turns out, the Omniscient One is secretly direction challenged and possibly time-challenged as well.

He does NOT manage to sail the boat to a nice warm place in Nagrand with sunny beaches where we can plan strategy over a nice microbrew.  Instead, Wrong Way Khadgar runs off to help the Frostwolves after they've hunkered down in the Great Icebox Of Durotar.  In lieu of cabana boys with frou-frou drinks, lush scenery, wooded dells, and uppity (but tasty) wildlife, Frostridge has rocks.  It also has glaciers, rocks, ice, rocks, and snow (and rocks) livened up by the occasional volcano.  And ogres.  And ugly hogs.  And demons.  And iceworms.  And rock ledges with a 200 foot drop. 

The Invaders from Argus (Dranei, who managed to crash land on Draenor before crash landing on Azeroth) ended up in lovely Shadowmoon Valley.  And yet with the rest of a lovely warm world on which to live, Our Hero's Father Durotan opts for settling down to live in the World's Biggest Refrigerator.

Apparently he gets epic hot flashes or something.



Welcome to Draenor.

GARRISON CHANGES:

Your garrison is visually more confusing than the Alliance garrison.  Gazlowe has a thing for Hides With Holes (as walls -- I think he gets them pre-ganwed on, wholesale) and your basic brick red and gray-ish tan scheme.  Your (white) position marker doesn't stand out well against the (white) snow and (gray) buildings.  Zoom in close to avoid changes.

If you're basing your gameplay strategy on what you did on the Alliance side, you're gonna be in a world of hurt.  That's what I did when I decided that my first resource building was going to be the Lumber Mill.

I ended up running across two zones (death run, really, and an 80 gold repair bill) just to find two doggone "small timber" trees to cut down for the lumber mill's approval, because there seems to be a rule that "Horde Doesn't Do Trees" -- except, perhaps for those flouncy Blood Elves, who seem to be closet tree-huggers when they're not sniffing illegal magic items.

And then I decided I'd build a barn and a leatherworking store -- only to discover that the animals you can get leather from live in Alliance areas (cue headdesk-ing.)  A few of them actually live in the Frozen North, but let me tell you, I feel guilty hunting wolves with Durotan and Thrall sitting around in my garrison.

Therefore, a better option is to build the Trading Post and simply trade for garrison resources.

As with Alliance side, build your tradeskill buildings first and then consider the recipes.  Remember that you can change out the buildings in your garrison if you want to pick up a different item.  For example, my priest (who has alchemy) traded in the alchemy building after getting all the recipes for an Enchanter's studio and enchants.

As with Alliance side, your better bet is handing over the raw materials to workers to process.  It takes my blacksmith character 24 hours, 20 true iron ores, and 10 Blackrock ores to produce one Truesteel Ingot.  Alternatively, I can turn over batches of Blackrock ore to my forge worker and get out 4-6 Truesteel ingots each day (and more possibly, depending on the worker.) The maximum item level equipment that these buildings produce is level 640 (and it takes around 2 weeks to make something, unless you get lucky), so you may want to change them for something else once you've gotten the gear you like.

Although you get a daily quest (with various rewards, mostly gold) from sticking with your own tradeskills and leveling the trade building to level 3, you may find that having an alternate building is more useful.  It is very expensive to make some items (and many things are "bind on pick up"), so I often include buildings that will produce armor for me.


SHAMANSTONES

One of the perks you do get is the blessing of the Shamanstones.  The main one is in Wol'Gar, but there's another one way out on the hind end ofnowhere (65,79 Frostfire Ridge).  They offer the "Spirit of the Wolf", "Blessing of the Wolf", and "Buffeting Galefury".  As best I can figure it out, the last one means a wind spirit comes in and dines on various things.  It promises some sort of levitation, but I haven't figured out who or what gets levitated.

My personal favorite is "Blessing of the Wolf," which calls a ghostly Frostwolf rushing to your aid when you get into combat (if you don't get into combat too often.)  So far, the frostwolf hasn't rushed in with a keg of brandy, but I have hopes...

So put some thought into your garrison early on if you're playing Horde.  While you can reverse the changes easily enough (gold and garrison resources are all that is needed), you can save yourself a bit of frustration by a little careful planning.

Thursday, November 27, 2014

World of Warcraft - Bodyguards for your Body in Draenor

Felinos in his DPS Discipline spec -- and Defender Illona.  He needs a lot of defending.|











You And Your Bodyguard

I couldn't wait to upgrade my barracks and get a bodyguard for Draenor, because my main toon, Felinos, is a holy priest.  While he isn't that easy to kill, it does take him longer to kill things, and questing gets tedious.   I upgraded, grabbed Illona as my bodyguard but she seemed to die too easily, so I took on Delvar. 

...and regretted it about ten minutes later. 

It wasn't that he was bad at anything, but he talked constantly, bragged, and got drunk.  He seemed the hypercritical sort -- as though following a (male) priest in a robe (dress) around was beneath him.  Two bodyguards later, I figured out what I was doing wrong.

As with dungeons and raids, bodyguards have one of three roles:  DPS, Tank, or Healer-damage.  Illona was a tank, but I hadn't been treating her as a tank.  Delvar was pure DPS, which meant that a lot of the time the mobs decided a live Night Elf priest looked a lot tastier than a plate-wearing undead Dwarf.  Leorajh is a shammy who heals and does ranged DPS.  And once I got THAT sorted out, things began to make sense.

So consider your role before you pick a follower

Falcos, my druid tank, ended up with Leorajh as a follower.  He needs heals but he does NOT need someone for Competition Tanking (which was what happened when teaming up with Illona.  Felinos, my priest, ended up with Illona because he needs someone to charge in and entertain the mobs while he heals and does ranged damage.

My hunters did better with tanks and melee DPS, and my warlocks seemed to do much better with melee DPS and the Voidwalker as a tank.  I went with ranged DPS for my death knight.


ALLIANCE:
Delvar Ironfist: - melee (Blood) Death Knight
Defender Illona - tanking (Protection) Paladin

HORDE:
Vivianne: - Mage
Aeda Brightdawn: - Warlock

NEUTRAL:
Talonpriest Ishaal: Shadow Priest
Tormmok:  (Arms) Warrior tank
Leorajh: Ranged (Restoration) shaman DPS


You'll notice that you get reputation at 10 points per kill with your bodyguard.  It takes a LOT of kills to get to the next stage.  With the second level of honor, your bodyguard gets a new damage ability.  With the THIRD leve, the bodyguard gets an ability that is useful to you...

Delvar can set up a "death gate" portal to your garrison
Vivianne can open a portal to your garrison.
Illona can use "guiding light" to summon party members to your location
Aeda can set up a summoning stone so you can summon party members

Ishall can bring a raven (mailbox) to your location
Leorajh can set up a garrison mission table for you
Tormmok can repair your armor in the field.

Wednesday, November 26, 2014

World of Warcraft Garrisons (Alliance)

Ah yes... SilverGeek is also a Warcraft junkie.  I've been enjoying the new expansion, though learning what to do with the garrisons has been a bit of a head-scratcher.  Although I play-tested both the alpha and beta releases, I was more interested in the quests and storylines and details than I was in playtesting the garrisons.

Still, they're a lot of fun, and it's been interesting to work them.  This set of notes is a general "guide to starting a garrison" as learned (the hard way) by me.

HEARTHSTONES:
The best bit of advice I got was to keep your old hearthstone along with the new garrison hearthstone. Yes, you can use the portals on Ashran (the PVP island) but those are useful only if you want to go to Stormwind or Ironforge.  If you want to go to (say) Shattrath or Darnassus, you have to take the long way around.  Setting your old hearthstone to the main shrine in Pandaria is a much easier solution.

One of the features you'll notice with garrisons is that you do (ugh) get the old "city chat channels" by default.  One of the NEW things you'll notice is that they've limited how frequently you can post something to the chat.  There's less stupid "impress the world" chat and a bit more useful information on it.

BUILDING THINGS
The first building you will learn for your garrison is your barracks, which teaches you how to put buildings in the garrison.  Once it is finished, a reward announcement shows up along with a button that you can drag to your action bar.  You will want to keep this on your action bar -- if you get in trouble or you're trying to take down an elite, clicking on this button gives you reinforcements.

When you go into new areas, you will be able to build a "garrison outpost."
I built the Guardian Orb at Ft. Wrynn because the damage from this lasts longer.
I built the Shredder at Highpass because it gave me a mobile "tank"
I built the Trading Post in Spires of Arak
I built the Tank in Nagrand because it gives you a nice solid fighting vehicle for ten minutes.

 I'm not wimpy, but I don't like dying and I don't like repair bills.

 Shortly after you garrison is in place, other building plans will drop for your professions (though there's no 'kitchen' for cooking.)  You will find that your professions act in very different ways now.  You will eventually get a mine where you can mine ore, and a fishing shack.   At level 95 you can build a lumber mill, at 96 you get a herb garden.

These three professions give you a unit of currency called "garrison resources" (and later, apexis shards).  Gold is not that hard to collect in Draenor, but other things like the apexis shards and garrison resources can be a hard grind. 


LUMBER MILL:
Build this rather than the other choices.  Lumber mill generates Garrison Resources.  The other buildings don't.

DAILY TASKS:
If you are undergeared or don't like wasting time (or are a caster with low DPS), get one of the people in your garrison to follow you around as you collect herbs from your herb garden or mine or do other collection tasks.  Occasionally you get jumped by mobs, and your follower will help you kill them quickly.  Anytime there's a quest inside your garrison (the "seismic" one, for example), get a follower to help.


FOLLOWERS:
Be choosy about which missions you send them on.  Each mission costs (usually 5-10 garrison resources) and you can choose ones that give YOU (yes, you) experience or the occasional epic object or gold (most often) or garrison resources.  My first time through I sent them off on every available mission.  When I hit level 100, I found myself resource-short for garrison upgrades.

At level 95 (or near there) you will get the quest that gives you blueprints for a level 2 barracks.  When you do this, you can go to your "architect board" and assign yourself a bodyguard that follows you all over Draenor and helps you kill things.  This is a great timesaver, because things die faster with help.

EXTRA RESOURCES:
Not everyone in your garrison is honest.  As you prowl around, you will find pilfered supplies (the guy in your fishing pond, the pug... and so forth.)  These are "one time" resources but still pretty handy.


Monday, September 1, 2014

Diablo 3 -- Side Game Fun

There are extra "instances" which may (or may not) appear in any one section of the game.  I check the whole map before actually going to the "goal" for this area just in case one of these shows up.  It's a great chance for extra experience and goodies -- and in some of them you will "rescue" a person who turns out to be a specialized gear vendor.  You can buy rare quality items from these vendors.  Each of these mini-dungeons will have a stone at the end that teleports you back to where you entered.

WITCH DOCTOR - At level 5 you get flaming bats.  Later on, you get a pack of undead dog-kinda thingamabobs.


Certain areas trigger a random event.  Some areas (cellars, etc) have merchants there (usually offering a rare item for sale in exchange for having saved them from monsters.)

Southern Highlands:  Cave of the Moon Clan (2 levels)
* Abandoned Servant House -
Northern Highlands: Watch Tower
Black Canyon Mines:
* Deserted Cellar may have a rare level boss.  Once defeated, this allows you access to the Tunnels of the Rockworm, which is a single level dungeon
* The Breeched Keep:
STINGING WINDS
Mehtan the Necromancer - one of the good guys.  Help him defeat the bad guys (often with a side order of whatever's wandering around the place at the time.)
* Hadi's Claim Mines:  One room.  One monster.  You know what to do with it.

THE CURSED HOLD
* Free Queen Asylla's servants

THE OLD RUINS
Dark Cellar - monsters.  You know what to do.

Equipping the Rogue:
He'll need two-handed crossbows or regular bows.  After level 18, special "relic" items (they look like a pair of dice) drop for him.  Pick the ones with dexterity.  Gem his weapons with RED (strength) gems, but gem his rings with GREEN (dexterity) gems.

OLD TRISTAM ROAD
The Cave Under The Well - monsters.  Have fun.

TRAILING THE COVEN
Make sure you're well geared for the "approach the Kharza barricade" section.  There will be wave after wave of the goat men.

SOUTHERN HIGHLANDS
* The Lyceum - if this appears, you'll have a quest to explore it.  The same architect who worked on the crypts, etc, was apparently responsible for this structure.

ROAD TO ALCARNUS

MACHINES OF WAR
The number of monsters increases dramatically.  Be prepared and be geared for it.  This is where you'll want to use a lot of "AOE" attacks that damage lots of enemies at once.
* Guard of the Keep -- a guard decides to join you.  He's almost impossible to keep alive.
* The Forward Barracks -- a side excursion with gold.
* Colonel Severyn -- help them fend off an attack

Treasure Pygmy/Treasure Bandit -always tries to escape, leaving a trail of gold to tempt you.  If killed, drops magic items and gold.

Your follower's icon will glow and flash when they can add a new talent point.

Shrines are a "one use" item.  Healing Wells will refill after a minute or two.

Monster talents change from level to level.  In "Normal" mode, there are very few special attacks.
Snares - your character and followers are encased in a reddish cylinder and can't move until the spell/effect wears off
Elite (purple) mobs in Nightmare can come in groups of three.
Laser beams -- Some of the elites throw points of light on the ground that become rotating laser beams.  Try to stay out of them.
Lava pools -- Some of the mobs create lava pools.  Try to stay out of them
Green goo -- not good for your health.  Stay out of that, too.
Stone walls -- restrict your movement
Frost traps - freeze you for a short period of time, during which you lose any generated talents (like rage for the Barbarian)

Recipes:
Each level drops its own unique things
No pages drop for Normal level
Nightmare level: pages drop


Tuesday, May 27, 2014

The Waze To Go

Like many other folks, I do a lot of driving to get to science fiction conventions.  While I don't mind driving, I do mind running into traffic jams and other complications that make the trip more wearisome than it should be.  When I was in San Jose to visit with the Other Daughter for her surgery, she had me use an app called Waze to navigate around the city instead of using a GPS.  I didn't download it then since I don't drive much at home, but when we started planning our Florida trip, I thought it would be a good time to check it out.  It turned out to be a real timesaver.

Since we ran both our GPS and Waze at the same time, I could directly compare the two.  As far as map accuracy, Waze was more accurate -- my GPS was two years old and the maps weren't current.  Both showed the same position for our car, so the tracking was good.

At first it was just amusing -- watching out for stopped vehicles and confirming them or reporting them "not there."  But Waze showed its real worth when I spotted a notice of a big wreck on the interstate ahead and figured out from the messages and reports that the mess stretched for about six miles and average speed on that part of the road was around 4 miles/hour.  A quick view of the maps showed that we could avoid it all with a pretty simple detour.

The interface is pretty simple -- just a map and two buttons.  The one on the left allows you to customize your account; the one on the right allows you to report on-road issues to other drivers.  The app alerts you (if you wish) when you're within a half mile of cops, stalled cars, and various road conditions including roadkill and weather.   

The maps are all real-time maps and are generally more current than your GPS, since Waze gives you points for making edits to correct road conditions -- places where other maps might not be updated (recent construction that's closing the roads, for instance.)   It was better at identifying accidents than my GPS (which only reports based on the state's Department of Transportation status reports), and some of the features (tires in road, bad weather conditions) were alerts that turned out to be very useful.  Also included is a "gas prices" feature -- Waze gives you points for reporting updated gas prices, but because it can only be done when you're actually stopped at the gas station (the software has a method of checking), it isn't quite as useful as GasBuddy.

 Waze shows your position on the map with a custom icon that also indicates your activity if you're in the top 10% of active users for your state.  While this is fun, it also leads to some false reporting, which is a problem in some cities.

If you're the only person in the car, it can be a  very distracting app, since you will be tempted to respond to alerts.  This is especially true if you're driving in a city, since the number of alert messages can be pretty high.  But it's THE perfect app to hand to your passengers, and it's a real timesaver (and sanity saver) for long trips.

Waze is available as an Iphone app and an Android app.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

UNINSTALL It!

It's rare, but every once in awhile you get a really badly behaved app for your Android-- one that just won't work for you or isn't right for you or even locks up your device.  But a misbehaving or inappropriate app can become more aggravating if the thing simply won't uninstall.  It sits there, taking up space on your phone or tablet, and attempts to get rid of the thing end with your system hanging up and nothing being done.

I ran into this situation myself after trying out the highly rated Nun Attack and its successor.  After a few attempts at the program (and at turning OFF the sound), I decided that these games just weren't for me.  So I tried uninstalling them... only to find that the built-in uninstall program for these games just didn't work on my Samsung Galaxy 5 phone.  Annoyed, I went into the settings for my Samsung phone and tried using the file system to uninstall, but they didn't go away.

And that's about the time that the whole situation got on my last little nerve.  So I did what any good geek does -- went out and started hunting down an application to get rid of it.  After a few tries, I came across a little app called "Uninstall" by Diya.

This is a little freeware gem for your android phone software problems.  It doesn't need fancy permissions, it doesn't throw ads at you.  It brings up a display of your apps (in alphabetical order) and you tap on the one that you want gone for good.

And it uninstalls it.  Just like that.

I gave it 5 stars.  You can find it here:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=diya.android.uninstall

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

HabitRPG -- a good habit to get into!

My least favorite part of the day is doing ordinary tasks.  I like novelty, I like excitement, and I've been a gamer girl for decades, so when I saw that there was an app to "RPG your habits" I went over to check it out -- with just a tiny bit of skepticism.  How could you possibly have a web and smartphone app for tracking your habits that's been turned into a game?

After two months of trying it, I'm wondering why nobody ever thought of this before!


The application is lean (no memory hogging here!) and its simple interface and will remind you of your favorite 8-bit game graphics. You are given a character and you set your own tasks and decide whether you want them done daily, weekly, or on whatever schedule you like.  If you're a habitual procrastinator (that would be me, folks) then there's also a column for the "get this done or else" list.  Delay your tasks too long and your health bar goes down.  Quit doing them for a day or two, and you're dead.

Or at least your character is.  There's scary stuff out there!

Luckily there's a "vacation mode" (if only we could get life itself to install a "vacation mode.")

After two weeks, I don't know that I've developed any habits, but it IS an excellent reminder system for me to keep up with certain tasks... like writing new posts for The Silver Geek.

https://habitrpg.com