Thirty-Fifth

Hokay, I've been plugging away with Verbatim on and off over the past few dyas, trying to get him attuned and geared up for Karazhan, but it's going slower than I'd like, to be honest. Last Thursday (I think) I managed to get a place in a guild run through the Shadow Labyrinth, unfortunately they already had a Holy Priest with them, so I was stuck on backup healing and trying to DPS. For those of you not 'WoW-ed' yet, once a Priest has allocated his or her talent points to make Healing their primary role, their Damage Per Second (DPS) drops to laughably low levels. This resulted in us making ridiculously slow progress through an instance which, while tough, should not really have posed us any great problems. Eventually I'd had enough, and after one more wipe I volunteered to take a quick portal back to Undercity and respec Verbatim back to Shadow (high DPS, non healing, for the non WoW-ed) for the rest of the run. Having done so, we then blasted through the remainder of the instance. Unfortunately, nothing really great dropped for me, but it was still fun, given that I didn't actually have the key for the Shadow Labyrinth at that point, and wouldn't have been able to gain access on my own.

While having to respec simply for the sake of one instance, (which while fun, did not drop any loot of consequence for me) did irritate me, it ended working out well when the Guild Leader and a couple of the officers were looking for a spare DPS to finish off the group. I volunteered and ended up getting into the Arcatraz - a high end instance that you actually have to complete a lengthy quest chain to get the key for. I made a decent accounting of myself (I think) and ended up getting the head peice of Dungeon Set 3, the Hallowed Crown. I also managed to loot a high-end Tailoring pattern,Arcanoweave Bracers. These should come in handy in Karazhan, in which there are a couple of fights which are made much easier by a healthy amount of Arcane Resistance gear on you.

Apart from that, I've been active again on Tornik, he's almost level 68, so it shouldn't take long to get him to 70. With Verbatim spec'd back to Holy, there's no point in logging on as him for extended periods of time, and sitting around waiting for someone to need a healer. If I'm logged on with Tornik, I can enjoy leveling him up, and keep an eye on Guild chat and advertise that Verbatim is available if needed. I've also been flagging up in the LFG tool, although since I have to use Tornik to do it, and put a note that i'm actually looking with my level 70 priest. Unfortunately, most players seem to find it more efficient to stand in a city and either spam the General or Trade channels than actually using the tool designed for finding groups. Go figure.

One last thing. I was online briefly last night, toying around with the Auctioneer addon, and I found what may prove to be a couple of bargains. Auctioneer massively simplifies the in-game Auction House by adding in the options (amongst others) to scan all the current listed items so that you can see how much any item you hold is currently worth at Auction. It also remembers how much you have previously posted items for and automatically populates the pricing fields for you. Even better, you can create a custom scan which will check all current auctions and find items which have been listed at less than their usual price, allowing you to snatch up items which you can (hopefully) re-list at a higher price.
So, I was tinkering last night, and Auctioneer threw up two things of interest, Foror's Compedium of Dragon Slaying and a Mature Blue Dragon Sinew. The Compendium is used in a quest which ends with the player getting hold of Quel'Serrar which, even now, is one of the very best tanking swords in the game. Before the expansion, the Compendium could easily be seen on the Auction House for 1000-1500G, obviously that price has dropped somewhat, around 50%, but you still see it out there. I saw it last night for 100G. That's right, 100G. I grabbed it immediately, and fired it right back up for 700G I believe. 100G is still a fair amount, but Verbatim has just bought a flying mount, and as a Druid, Tornik will be able to shapeshift into flight form anyway, so there's no great need for me to save up shedloads. Plus, you need to speculate to accumulate, don't you? So, hopefully that will sell soon-ish, if not, it's not the end of the world, but it should certainly go for a lot more than 100G. The Dragon Sinew is used to create an Epic-quality Hunter's quiver. It's almost certainly been bettered by something in the Expansion, but it's still usually worth aroun 100G, so when I saw it going for 40G last night, I coldn't resist.

Look mummy, I'm learning Capitalism!