QuestHelper is definitely one mod you must not be without if you are leveling your character. Best of all, not only does it work in Vanila WoW, and the Burning Crusade, it works for Wrath of the Lich King too! Since I haven’t had any alts (until the refer-a-friend promo) and leveled a character in awhile, I don’t know of any other alternative mods to this, but this mod is amazing. It seriously makes questing 20 times easier. No more need to alt-tab in and out to look at WoWHead or Thottbot. Everything is there for you in-game. You can download this nifty little mod here at Curse Gaming.

Simply download, unzip, and throw the folder into your addons folder. Enable the mod on your character screen, and voila, instant help with all your quests. First thing you want to look at is your map (M).

You will notice your map will start looking like an air traffic control screen with dotted lines and icons all over the place. The dotted lines or way points, are recommended paths to take to get from one quest objective to another. The mod actually looks all every quest you have in your log, and calculates the best path to take to finish all the quests.

If you keep your quest log clean, then this will save you a ton of time. But if you are and quest hog like me, and still have the “Opening the Gates of AQ” quest still saved up to be solo’d later, then your map can get pretty messy. Good thing the mod gives you the option to prioritize all your quests. Just simply put all the quest you don’t want listed as “low priority”, and your map will look a bit cleaner.

What does the Icons mean?

There is pretty much only four icons which you should worry about. They are the Blue Question Mark, the Gray Question Mark, the Box, and the Monster Face.

Blue Question Mark:

This is the Icon with the Question Mark with a Blue background, not actually a Blue Question Mark.

This will show up on the map when you have a completed quest, and will mark on the map where you go to turn in the quest. It will also show up on your mini-map.

Gray Question Mark:

This is the icon with the Question Mark with a Grey background, not actually a Gray colored Question Mark.

This will also show where you would go on the map to turn in a quest. The only difference is that you have not completed this quest yet. It will also show up on your mini-map.

When you mouse over the icons, it will give you more detail on what quest it is referring to, as well as your progress (if it can be tracked), as well as the estimated time it would take to reach that point on the map.

The Box:

This is the box or cube looking icon on the map.

This icon will show the area on the map of where you want to go to complete your objective. This is for quests which requires you to collect items.

When you scroll over the icon, again it will give you the description of the quest it pertains to, as well as the current progress of the quest.

The Monster Face:

This icon looks like a jack-o-lantern face, or a pumpkin face on the map.

It will show you where you need to go on the map to find the mobs you need to kill are located. This is for quests which require you to kill an X amount of mobs or a single target.

Scrolling over the icon on the map will also give you the description of the quest it is pertaining to, as well as the current progress of the given quest.

How do you know what target to kill?

Another great function this mob has, is when you target the correct mob after going to the location specified on the map, it will tell you on the tooltip if it is the correct mob. If it is a gathering or kill X amount quest, it will also track the current progress for that mob for the quest it pertains to.

What about the party members?

I don’t have a screenshot of it currently (will add in later today maybe), but it will actually track the progress of all the party members currently on the same quests as you. For players running the same mod, it will actually show what other quests they have, and the progress they have on those quests as well! No more, “How many more tusks do you need left?”

How much memory will it use?

This is actually the only negative thing about the mod. It uses quite a bit of memory to run as expected. This doesn’t concern me much cause there won’t be much going on while questing (Not nearly as much going on like during raids), so it won’t bog down your computer much. You might want to restart your WoW client every hour or two of straight questing. It does build up pretty quickly.

What are the commands?

/qh - Displays a list of command options.
/qh ants - Toggles the dotted lines.
/qh hide - Toggles the minimap arrow and addon icons and paths on the world map.

Again, this is a great addon, and I highly recommend it to all of you out there leveling in Northrend right now. It will save you a ton of time. It did for me, hope you find this mod useful too.

Any questions, comments, or addition information to add, let me know!

I got my achievement for obtaining 50 different non-combat pets the other day. This wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought, and now that these pets no longer take up my precious bag space, I went and hunted some down.

First off, WarcraftPets will be your bible for this achievement. It is an excellent resource for all things, everything to do with non-combat pets. Read it, loved it, bookmarked it!

For me, I only had to hunt down the remaining 20 or so pets I needed to reach 50. The first thing I did was teleport to each Major City except Ironforge. In Darnassus and Exodar, there was a pet vendor. Darnassus has a Owl Vendor, Exodar has a Moth Vendor. Two to three of each kind. For Stormwind, there is a small little cottage right outside the capital where the Crazy Cat Lady lives. She sold me four different types of cats. For my last few, I went to Stormspire and bought some pets off of Dealer Rashaad. He sells eight different types of pets.

That is a good start for anyone looking to go after the achievement. That is 17 pets out of the way before thinking of going to a neutral Auction House. Plus there is the Parrot vendor at Booty Bay.

After obtaining 50 pets, you will receive a package in the mail. Your very own pet Skunk! He even has an aura of stink surrounding him.

Next order of business: Mr. Death Knight

So there I was at level 71, riding around Howling Fjord, minding my own business when out of nowhere I get Death Gripped and dismounted. It was a level 73 Death Knight trying to gank me. He was probably thinking, “Hehe slow leveling Mage, easy kill”. Wrong.

Frost Nova -> Icy Veins/Trinket -> Deep Freeze -> Frostbolt -> Ice Lance x 2

Frostbolt crits for 5.7k, Ice Lance crits for 2.7k, Ice Lance crits for 2.8k. Mr. Death Knight has died. He got off an Icy Touch, and maybe a melee swing in.

I dunno why, but I wasn’t satisfied with just killing him once. Probably because he was Death Knight that was higher level than me, so I camped him for the next half an hour until he stopped spawning or logged off. I killed him about seven or eight more times by then.

See Mr. Death Knight, you may have out leveled me in over 3 days, but that is all the experience you have, and you won’t be that geared as well. I have over 3 years on my Mage. Seeing how you probably spent all your time leveling your Death Knight, you didn’t have a “high level main” to log on to prevent me from camping. Seeing you without a Guild tag means you didn’t have help on the way either. Trust me, general chat isn’t gonna help either. You will either see Chuck Norris jokes, or be told that, “the PvE Server is that way —>”.

This is a PvP server, you should have taken this time (usually a week or two when new content is released) where the Horde and Alliance normally ignore each other to prevent any interference to each others questing and leveling. Hope you have learned your lesson. Oh and thanks for the achievement.

Love, Tuna

Utgarde Keep is the first dungeon hub located on the shores of Lake Cauldros in the Howling Fjord of Northrend. Inhabited by the Vrykul (led by King Ymiron), a half-giant Viking-like race bent on proving their strength to the Lich King, they are raising the most worthy of their warriors to serve him beyond the grave here at their main base of operations.

Utgarde Keep is the first 5 man entry level dungeon of Utgarde Keep. ” - WoWHead.com

The way Prince Keleseth fights seems to be a fusion between a Warlock and a Death Knight. The fight reminds me of Terestian Illhoof from Karazhan.

Boss Stats:

• Hit Points - 192,200
• Mana - 50,000

Abilities:

• Shadow Bolt: Deals 2975 to 4025 Shadow damage.
• Frost Tomb: Encases a player in a block of ice for 20 seconds and causes 400 damage per second.
• Raises 5 Vrykul Skeletons which cast Decrepify on their target.

Recommended Consumables:

• Any TBC Elixirs you may have left over
• Any TBC Weapon Oils you may have left over
• Spell Damage food of your choice

This is a pretty simple fight, with a bit of AoE mixed in. You would want any consumables which may help your DPS.

Frost Mage Overview:

• Pet Friendly: Very Friendly
• Cooldowns: No need to save your Ice Block and Cold Snap cooldowns

Your Water Elemental will not be affected by Frost Tomb, so you don’t have to worry about keeping your pet safe and alive.

Prince Keleseth will be standing in a room with four mobs standing in front of him. They can be pulled without aggroing the boss, but once the fourth mob dies, Prince Keleseth will start attacking.

Just stand back and DPS away. Occasionally, he will cast Frost Tomb on a group member that isn’t the tank, you will have to target the person to break them out. The Frost Tomb has roughly 7,000 HP.

You can have the following Macro to help if needed:

/target Frost Tomb

If you happen to be targeted by Frost Tomb, you have a few options. If you happen to be Human, than you can use your Every Man for Himself racial to get out. You can use Ice Block, or just simply Blink out.

Every so often, he will summon and resurrect five adds. Once the tank grabs them, you can Blizzard away, and they’ll all be dead by one Blizzard. Having Improved Blizzard and Frostbite helps.

This all repeats until he is dead. I’ve been told that he is the same for both Normal and Heroic Mode.

Mage Loots:

• [Reinforced Velvet Helm]
• [Keleseth's Blade of Evocation]
• [Wand of the San'layn] (heroic)

If a Priest is in the group and needs the Helm, pass it up. There isn’t any Spell Hit, Spell Crit, or Spell Haste on it for you. Same thing for the Dagger, only pick it up if the Priest doesn’t need it. The Wand on the other hand, will be a great pick up, and we don’t pass to Warlocks.

[Image and General Strategy used was taken from WoWHead.com]

Don’t Panic! I’m still alive! Well there has been lack of activity here lately, and you all know why. Wrath of the Lich King was released last week, and like many players out there, I’ve disappeared. I’ve been devoting all my free time running around Northrend doing quests, killing mobs, and killing Horde. Fun times.

I’ve been taking my time, and enjoying my travels through Northrend. I am in no rush to get to level 80. I took my time leveling in the Burning Crusade expansion, and I will do the same with this one. I am currently only level 72, and half way to 73.

Though I have been neglecting the site, I have still been taking screenshots of my adventures, and thinking of things to write about. Then my short attention span kicks in, and I have to do more runs of the Nexus, or kill x more amounts of mobs. I gave myself the first week for just playing. Now that that is over, you can be expecting more stuff coming from me on the site.

At first, I had an post ready that was titled, “Mages can get to Dalaran at 71, Lesser Classes at 74″, but a quick Google search revealed that not only did Euripedes of CriticalQQ steal my post, but he time traveled and posted it 5 days ago! Damn you and your Flux Capacitor! I’ll get you next time!

Second idea that popped in my mind was an AoE Grinding Guide. I’ve wanted to do this a couple of months now, way before Wrath of the Lich King was even mentioned. I just never gotten around to writing one up. Maybe just a Northrend AoE guide? Krizzlybear has already made an great guide for players who are looking to AoE grind their way up to 80. So be sure to check that out!

Well now I’m all out of ideas, but I’m sure a couple will pop-up for me.

Goal 1: Level Tuanass to 60

Remember that goofy looking Tauren from Halloween? With the Refer-a-Friend promotion running out of time soon, me and my friend decided to go back and level up some characters. Tuanass was my next target. And by “leveling” I meant have a level 70 Warrior run us through instances many many times.

The last instance we ran was a full run of Stratholme, and that took us from level 56 to 60 in a full clear and turning in a couple of quests. No Baron Mount still. Tuanass is Oomkin Spec’d, and is very fun to play.

Goal 2: Level Ayuki to 60

Remember that Mage I created to give free levels to after I got my Paladin to 60? Well she went from level 10 to 39 last time. When Tuanass hit 60, I had more free levels to give, and took her all the way to level 60!

New personal record! Leveled from 1 to 60 in less than six hours! Ayuki is another Frosty, of course.

Goal 3: Get Exaulted with Timbermaw Hold

Well this I could have gotten a long time ago, but I held off on it because I was also doing Wintersaber Trainer rep. Since you have to kill Furbolgs in Winterspring, you could just keep collecting the [Winterfall Spirit Beads] and kill two birds with one stone.

I gave up on Wintersaber rep (for now) and decided to hand in all the beads I have collected so far. Turns out that after I turned in all the beads, I was two turn-ins shy of Exaulted, so after 10 minutes of farming later, I haz exaulted.

After hitting Exaulted, you are then given a quest to defeat some demon. Upon completing the quest, you are given a trinket and a quest to turn-in to the King of Ironforge, Magni Brozebeard. Bronzebeard then tells everyone in Ironforge how much time you wasted by farming rep.

New Title, and new Pet. Utada the Diplomat, and my [Defender of the Timbermaw].

A taste of the server lag we should be expecting when we all march on over to Northrend that is, and it does not look too good for us. The event was cool and everything, but the lag was awful. And this was with about 40-50 players at the event.

For those who are not familiar with the event, this event will give us an introduction to the upcoming expansion, Wrath of the Lich King.

If you are Alliance, there is an event which takes place at the Stormwind Harbors, where the King Varian Wrynn and company defends the harbors from forces of Arthas. If you are Horde, you will witness a duel between Thrall and Garrosh Hellscream. Eventually Orgrimmar is attacked by the forces of Arthas, leaving Thrall, Garrosh Hellscream, High Overlord Saurfang, and Lady Sylvanas Windrunner to defend the city. In both instances, the attackers are defeated, and the event will reset and start again every hour or so.

It is nice that Blizzard is giving us a small event to prepare us for the upcoming expansion, but they really need to work on their server stability a bit. If this lag was what I was experiencing with amount of players equivalent to say, Ironforge AH/Bank area, then I fear of what we will be seeing at the starting areas in Northrend. It is going to be a repeat of the opening night of the Burning Crusade.

“But there will be TWO starting areas for Northrend!” Yea I understand the argument but think of it this way. Right before the Burning Crusade hit, the number of subscribers was at 4.5 million. We’re looking at more than double the number of subscribers when Wrath of the Lich King. If the two starting areas in Northrend effectively splits the population in half, we’re still looking at a repeat of the opening of the Burning Crusade. Now it is going to happen in two areas instead of one.

Hopefully the very lengthy server maintenance we experienced yesterday was to fix some of that problem. We’ll find out tomorrow night (Thursday morning) at midnight. Goodbye Outland, it was a fun ride. Hello Northrend!

Ophelia from Claymore

Ophelia isn’t usually a character many people would want to befriend, or even want on their team. She is a rather psychotic with a lust for killing. Guess you would rather fight along side her than against but still.

This was mainly the reason why I chose to draw her after seeing her in this pose. If you had seen this series or read it like me, then you would see how unnatural it is to see her sitting there with a cute smile on her face.

This was pretty much the last drawing that I’ve made, and as you can see, that was over a year ago. Hopefully I can make time to start drawing again. Maybe someday I can get my own table at one of those Artist Galleries at a con.

It has almost been a month since The Echoes of Doom patch was released, and the Achievement system with it. Since the release, everyone and their mothers have been running around doing ridiculous chores in order to unlock these Achievements. Including myself.

Now there a few achievements out there which take a massive amount of time to unlock, a few which only takes a few minutes, and then there are some which requires a bit of luck. Being a Mage, there are a few tricks we have in our Spellbook which may help make some of those achievements easier to acquire.

The Exploration Achievements

For our first trick, we have the ability to Teleport to every Major City in our faction, as well as the main Capital in Outland. We can travel to any location in the World of Warcraft fairly quickly, without any help.

There have been a increase in Portal requests thanks to the Achievement system. Players with their Hearth Stone on cooldown, will be looking for Mages to take them where they want to go. This also ties in well with the next achievement I will be talking about.

The Loremaster Achievements

These achievements require you to go back and complete any old quests you may have skipped while leveling up. Which there will be quite a lot that you haven’t done yet, and quite a lot of traveling you will need to do.

Remember to set your map to Track Low Level Quests, and concentrate on one level at a time. As a Mage, we can afford to set our Hearth Stone to where we are questing, without fear of getting back to a Major City when we have to.

Oh and while you are questing in certain areas, if there is an Instance around, you might as well start up on our next group of achievements.

Classic Dungeon Achievements

As a Mage, we are able to Solo pretty much all of the Classic Dungeons. The only thing holding us back would be instances which require Keys that you don’t have, or require two other players to help start an event (Upper Blackrock Spire).

Who knows, you may get lucky and unlock a Feat of Strength while soloing Stratholme?

Food and Drink Achievements

For these two achievements, we are required to eat 50 different types of food, and 25 different types of drinks. Food and Water? That is our specialty!

As a Mage, we get a head start on this achievement, with 8 Ranks of Food, and 9 Ranks of Water available to conjure up. Each different Rank count towards the total for each achievement. It is up to you if you want to share some of it with your friends.

“Going Down?” Achievement

While all the rest of the less classes are complaining in Guild Chat about dying many times trying to get this achievement, this was the easiest, and most likely the first achievement we got when we logged on patch day. All thanks a little Spell we have called Ice Block.

Simply fly straight up on your flying mount really high, dismount, and be prepare to pop your Ice Block. Pop it a bit early in order to compensate for any lag you may have, and then voila! You got your achievement.

For those without a flying mount yet, you can do the same thing by jumping off Lumber Mill in Arathi Basin, or if you are Alliance, off the top of the Stormwind Harbor. Thanks to Willie for the heads up on this tip!

There are probably more achievements out there which I may have missed, but these are some which came to mind while writing this. If you have anymore to add, let me know and I’ll add it to the list. Have fun getting sucked into the Achievement System!

Now a few days later from attending the latest convention, I happen to log onto Facebook for the first time in a long time, and stumbled upon one of my old drawings I’ve done. Again, it makes me want to draw, but I have yet made time to start it up.

Orihime from Bleach

I don’t remember what possessed me to sit down and draw this, but I remember it taking about 2 hours to complete. I do remember where the picture is from though. I remember reading a chapter from the Bleach manga, and seeing this cute picture of Orihime Inoue sitting at her school desk, and wanting to draw that.

I guess the lack of drawing supplies forced me to use other mediums to accomplish my goal. From the date of the drawing, I drew it over a year ago, and I used some Graffiti Facebook application. Back then I used to go on that site everyday, now it is more like once a month.

I did it using only a computer mouse. A Logitech MX Lazer to be exact. Oh boy was that a pain in the butt to draw. I should really get myself one of those drawing mouse and mouse pad thingies. Maybe something like the Graphire Wireless, but you know, 10 x cheaper. Any recommendations?

Despite only having a mouse, and not knowing any drawing techniques (using frames, guidelines, etc…), I really liked how the final product turned out.

The latest patch was released yesterday during Tuesday’s regular weekly maintenance. Though the patch will only be remembered for being the Nerf Hammer for Retribution Paladins, there were a few changes that will affect Mages as well. You can check out the full patch notes for the latest patch HERE.

As for Mage changes, let’s take a look at the new changes we need to deal with:

Mages

• Arcane Potency: The additional crit bonus is now consumed immediately on cast of a travel time spell, so it is no longer possible to make two spells benefit from one charge. (Ex. Fireball followed by Fireblast.)
• Blast Wave: no longer receives double the intended critical strike bonus from Combustion.
• Burnout: Now consumes extra mana as intended when Living Bomb gets a critical strike.
• Brain Freeze: Now only frost spells that can chill can trigger the free Fireball proc from this talent.
• Cold as Ice: No longer reduces the cooldown on Deep Freeze.
• Deep Freeze: Now consumes a charge of Fingers of Frost when used.
• Focus Magic: Now works properly when mages with this talent use the ability on each other.
• Frostfire Bolt: The periodic damage effect from Rank 2 of this spell now benefits from spell power gains.
• Living Bomb: Mana cost reduced to be the same as Arcane Explosion.. It no longer causes the caster to stand up when the final explosion occurs and it is now possible for each mage to have Living Bomb active on a target.
• Master of Elements: Now works with Living Bomb.
• Molten Fury: This talent no longer prevents Ice Lance ranks 2 and 3 from dealing triple damage against frozen targets.
• Reduced the mana cost of Fireball, Frostbolt, Frostfire Bolt, Arcane Blast, Arcane Missiles, and Arcane Explosion.
• Torment the Weak: Now works correctly when the Mage also knows the Molten Fury Talent.

Buffs:

A big buff for Mages is the Mana cost reduction on all of the Mage’s main nuke spells. Some players were having Mana problems, and this should help a bit.

Nerfs:

Brain Freeze can only proc off of Spells with a Chill effect now. This means it will no longer proc off of Ice Lance. It does however mean that it can now proc off of Ice Armor.

Deep Freeze is no longer effected by Cold as Ice now. This means that the 30 second cooldown of Deep Freeze, can no longer be reduced.

Fixes:

The rest of the changes are fixes to talents to make them behave like they should have been. You could say they’re all small nerfs, but this was the way the talents were supposed to be.

Thoughts:

The Mana reduction is a nice change to have. I personally haven’t had any Mana problems at all in PvE, but in PvP, this will be a nice change for me.

The nerfs to the Frost Tree I saw were coming for quite some time now. Brain Freeze being able to proc off of Ice Lance was a bit too powerful for PvP, and led to excess amount of Ice Lance spamming. Taking Deep Freeze off of the Cold as Ice list, I thought was uncalled for. They have already nerfed the Spell big time by taking off the Damage component, they really didn’t need to nerf it even further.