The Furious Five

It's been an eventful week for my 3 guys, halfway to 78 and Grizzly Hills is done. I'm now a few quests into Zul'drak, I should be 79 by the time I'm done with this zone. Then it's off to Sholazar Basin, where I'll get 80. Storm Peaks and Icecrown are all gold. It's been a weird trip, as the pics below attest to...

In Other News:
We've got some new faces in the guild, but we're still recruiting. We have a 25 man raid roster to fill.

What We're Looking For:
* 1 Druid - Feral Tank (Dual specced Feral DPS with appropriate gear set a plus)
* 2 Druids - Restoration
* 2 Mages - Arcane prefered
* 1 Priest -Discipline
* 1 Priest - Shadow
* 1 Priest - Holy
* 1 Shaman - Elemental
* 1 Shaman - Restoration
* 1 Warlock - (3 points in Improved Imp a plus)

For more info,click here.

I had plans for this week, I really did. I had intended to get 80 on my trio, but that just didn't happen. As of this writing they are 20% from 76 and just moved to Grizzly Hills. And I'm ok with that atm, for a couple of reasons:

First, I'm now quite sure that my guys will be hitting 80 without setting foot in Icecrown or Storm Peaks, that means I can clear the quests in those two zones at 80 for maximum gold. Considering these will be fresh 80s with epic flight (only the Priest is missing epic flight right now, and will have it next week at the latest) they will all need money to raise their skills. All three have Jewelcrafting + another profession. Alchemy for the Priest, Tailoring for the Mage(he's actually nearly maxed as it is though), and Leatherworking for the Druid.

This coincides with one of my other failed plans for the week, I had intended to power level the Priests Alchemy this week, however I got lucky in Ulduar and got my tier 8 legs on Khaas. So I spent about 1200g getting an armor kit, and gems (1K for Solid Stormjewel). Basically, that was my alchemy funds for the week lol. But it's ok, I'll get it and the Epic Flight soon enough.

We've been making great strides in Ulduar, the alliance between Face on Fire and Urge Overkill has proved nothing but successful: As of last night we only have 3 bosses left to kill (excluding the unlockable Algalon). The fights in this place are nothing short of epic, and I'm truly proud of our team.

TTFN!

The Rundown
Loot for Khaas:
Valorous Darkruned Legguards
Flamewatch Armguards

It's been a busy week, we've done some knocking around in Ulduar. Our second week in and we're making noticable progress: For starters, the first three bosses Flame Lev, XT, and Razorwing went down quick and easy. We had a few good attempts at the Iron Council, but we had some puggers along and not all of these were really up to the task. So, instead we went to Kologarn, we offed him after a couple of tries. Unfortunately, I was too tired by then to think about getting a good pic of his corpse, but I DID manage to snap a quick one of Kal at 0% just as I died. (I HATE adds). In other news, it appears we've allied ourselves (tenatively) with the guild Urge Overkill, we did 25 Naxx with them this week and overall it went really smooth. If it's any indication I suspect we'll have lots of bloody adventures ahead of us with these guys. I got some new loot on Khaas out of this 25 run: Shoulders, Legs, and Ring. And several other members scored big, most notably one of our warriors got Betrayer of Humanity off of KT.

One of our druids Someshta and wowinsider.com are the cause of the Patchwerk screenshot. Peggle is one of the most insidiously addictive games I've played since I was a kid, it has a classic feel to it, like the days of Asteroids, Tetris, Bubble Bobble, Breakout, etc.

In Boxing News:
My 3 box crew is 74 and just breaking into Dragonblight, several features/changes in 3.1 have really made boxing thru quests a breeze. Also, it appears that a variety of collection quests have been significantly nerfed. One for instance might have required 30 essences from some undead ... now it requires only 10. Obviously, this has helped streamline my quest grind significantly. I'm finishing out quests in every area, my plan is to hit 80 in Sholazar Basin most likely. That way all of Icecrown and Storm Peaks will give me max gold. At this writing the Druid and Mage have just gotten Epic Flight, so I now only have to worry about the Priest and Cold Weather Flight for all 3. Still a pretty hefty chunk of cash. However, once these guys do have their epic flight out of the way and money for cold weather flight I can start working on tradeskills. Each has JC + a second skill: Leatherworking (120) for the Druid, Tailoring for the Mage (Skill 420), Alchemy (120).

Khaas of course is the tank for this group, and one of my Shamans (Horaxë) will be with the group as well. I did some work to Hor this week too, I got his JC up to 420 and Inscriptions is steadilly climbing a point per day on Northrend Research, I hate that this is the only way to feasibly skill up. He's at 430 Inscriptions right now but at this rate he should be maxed in a couple of weeks. Anyhow, that's about it for this week.

The Week in Screenshots:

Well, 3.1 has arrived, and along with Ulduar there's been a lot of changes to the game that effect boxing. For starters, there's some new UI interact changes. For example: You can now keybind mouse clicks to the keyboard. This; I imagine, was more a change for people using laptops or disabled gamers, and use with game pads. However, this is a HUGE benefit for boxers. Now I can loot and do quests with my other guys much easier. There were other changes, such as the Relic shoulders now granting it's bonus XP to that gained from quests as well as npc kills. That being said, I haven't had a chance to do much boxing at all since the patch dropped.

The patch experience is not all good news however, there are still some pre-existing bugs that were not addressed. And the graphics engine though "apparently" upgraded is causing loss of fps without a noticeable change in the same graphics we've been enjoying for the past four years. This problem has only been exacerbated on my boxing rig, before the patch I had 4 copies of WoW open at 60 FPS with a handful off AddOns. Now, with 0 AddOns, a fresh install of WoW, a newly flashed BIOS, latest drivers, all Vista settings turned to max performance (Aero off), ALL settings in wow at minimal, etc and I'm pulling 40 FPS with one copy of WoW open...

Even my main rig is losing some frames...

Here's hoping a fix is forthcoming.

That being said, I've been primarily focused on Ulduar with my guild. Sadly, the world server has been more unstable than Gary Busey after an all night bender. Wednesday night: We knocked out Flame Leviathan, Friday night : We got back in and took out Razorscale and XT-002 Deconstructor before the instance server shat itself again.

You can see some pics of the progress here

More coming soon...

3.1 dropped today, it was a bit unexpected really. There wasn't much notice given by the blues, this upsets my levelling scedule a bit as I was hoping to have the new guys up to 80 by the time the patch hit.

As it stands, I've gotten the Druid, Mage, and Priest to 73 and cleared Borean Tundra and Howling Fjord in short order. The good news is that the patch delivers a few features that actually should smooth things over for boxing in general. For starters, in the patch we're now able to bind mouse clicks to the keyboard. This is something I never thought, but always hoped would happen. This means with 1 button
press I can talk to an NPC/Questgiver, or loot a corpse with all of my guys, etc. As opposed to manually switching screens for each toon and clicking the mouse for each one individually. It doesn't seem like much, but when you consider the amount of collection quests, etc that time adds up pretty quick. And since I'll be hitting the bane of multiboxing quest grinding "Dragonblight" very soon (why are there so many freakin collection quests here?)

That being said, I'm going to be refining my keybings/addons since I'm adding new classes to my team and spreading the team among 3 computers. With the new more powerful machines I'm able to run more addons and at a higher resolution with even better performance. Infact, I'm able to log on all of my dudes and move around passably with all 5 in Dalaran now on one computer ... having only 2 per machine will be even better, and epic flight should be a lot more manageable. As it stands now, my guys have dropped follow in epic flight because of fps drops.


So what all has been going on?
Firstly, there's 3 box crew. I've been tinkering with specs slightly for the Druid, Mage, and Priest. The Mage has switched to Arcane, Druid is still Boomkin, and Priest is still Disc, but I have moved

around a few points here and there for efficiency sake. That and because they're getting closer to 80 and their *final* specs.

Caerroil - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=0xG0hiIRIdIVh0hZbxcub
Miraru - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=of0Vck0IzxGuMtedcE0bo
Findail - http://ptr.wowhead.com/?talent=bVcbuhhiRhsffRpcxxc

Unlike with my previous boxing team, I hit the icey shores of Northrend at 68 rather than 70. Also, I skipped Borean Tundra almost entirely with the other group, I only went there long enough to get the 2 hander on Khaas, then I moved on to Howling Fjord. With the 3 box crew I decided to start with BT and clear it before moving on, my idea is to clear out all lower level quests before moving on to anything else, the reason I started a couple of levels down, and this will help me catch up. Plus, I'm thinking the more quests I can do in low and medium level zones the less I will do in Icecrown or Storm Peaks before 80. With my previous team I managed to get to 80 doing only a few quests in IC or SP, after I hit 80 I burned thru quests there and was making tons of gold. My objective this time around, avoid them entirely before 80 and maximize my earning potential. My concern is that I want to have enough money to get epic flight on all 3 ASAP, and maybe a couple of BOE/Crafted epics (for example: Titansteel Spellblade)

Secondly, there's some familiar faces who've returned to the game and the guild recently, as well as a couple of new recruits and recruit hopefulls. We're pushing for 25 man content, however it's slow going because we're not spamming trade chat like idiots looking for guild members. What we are doing is trying to find quality people, by that I mean: the optimal combination of temperment, dedication/enthusiasm, skill, and gear (to a lesser degree). It has always been my opinion that gear is not inherently necessary when finding new members for raids, if the rest is good then we can get them geared up. And will.

Besides, who wants to invite someone who already has all of the gear and achievements in the game accomplished? Surely there's not much left for them to do...


Primary Spec for Khaas (23/5/43) Unholy Hybrid Tank: link
Secondary Spec for Khaas (51/13/7) Blood Tank: link

As for the guild raids? We've been hitting 10 mans knocking out achievements. We even got to run a raid with our guild leader and her husband (both still in Russia till July 1st). Here's some pics from our last Naxx run:

Stay tuned, next update I'll have some info and screens from Ulduar as well as info on the new boxing team. (Warrior, Warlock, Paladin, Hunter, Shaman)

I've had a lot of bad luck getting the new setup running properly. I'm glad I decided to just build one computer first, then the second (after I iron out any kinks). However, the new computer is now running like a champ. You can read the worklog of the entire setup here: Project: Leviathan

I've also been quite busy in WoW, our guild downed Sarth 10 Man with 1 Drake up last week for the first time. It was a rush, I don't think we're going to manage 3 drakes by the time Ulduar comes out, but we're going to atleast try for 2. Also, we've opened up recruiting. We're pushing for 25 man content now, so if you want to see the video of the Sarth fight or are interested in a cool horde guild check us out here: Face on Fire - Bloodscalp - US Horde

In boxing news, I've decided to level up some guys to replace shamans. I'm dropping 3 of the Hors from my main team in favor of a Priest (Disc), Druid (Boomkin), and Mage (Arcane/Frost). Till they're level 80 most of my boxing time will be spent on them. Though I have been boxing some raid content with Khaas and Horaxë. That being said, ding 70 for the substitutes!

Expect updates to be back on track, every Tuesday during maintenance more news, more pics, vids, etc.

Another eventful week; it's a good news bad news situation.

First, the bad news:
My old gaming rig died. I'd actually been planning on replacing it in the near future anyways, but ... not this soon. So, unfortunately this means no boxing for a while till I can figure something out. I've got an idea for the replacement setup, but it's going to take some money and right now I just don't have enough to do it. The good news is, I filed my taxes Monday, and it looks like I'll be getting enough back to cover the entire replacement setup.

Here's the specs for the replacement(minus psu and case)
Motherboard: EVGA 113-M2-E113 AM2+/AM2 NVIDIA GeForce 8200 HDMI ATX
Processor: AMD Phenom 9600 Agena 2.3GHz Socket AM2+ 95W Quad-Core
Video Card: EVGA GeForce 9600 GT Superclocked Edition 512MB
RAM: G.SKILL 8GB (4 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400)
Hard Drive: OCZ Solid Series 2.5" 30GB SATA II Solid State Disk (SSD)

I'm going to be running 2 secondary rigs with the parts listed above with 2 shamans running on each. And my DK will be playing as always on my main rig.

The Good News:
Before my system went down I managed to get some upgrades, and Naxx has been good to me. I got a nice trinket and helm for Khaas. And I grabbed T7 Gloves and BPs for my Shamans.

And now for the best part. I was recently interviewed by Greg Tito of The Escapist Magazine for an article on multiboxing. I was very pleased with the way the article turned out, I thank Mr Tito for his objective analysis. And I was honored to see him citing my (Hor) in the article. Here's a link to Tito's article The Escapist: Multiboxing to Level 80 Nirvana

And here's a text version of the complete interview: link