Mike Says Meh The blog of Mike Kauspedas | Hosting by www.gearhost.com

Level 63 Enhancement Shaman, grinding The Dead Mire [Guide]

This guide is specifically aimed at people (like me) who leveled but didn't pay much attention to what they were doing, stats, etc.  

I was doing some research online trying to find a decent spot to grind and farm. I don't even have my epic mount and I need 500g for that, and then of course the flying are 5200g. I read a few gold guides but they were aimed at people beginning characters. Which is fine, but I also want to level so I'm not going to sit on an alt for hours gathering a few gold here and there. The more I read, the more I simply came to realize there is no hot gold spot. Of course, wouldn't this be all over the web? "Go to these coords to get 100g per hour!!!" But I'm a silly n00b and thought there might be such unholy gold farming areas.

No, instead the best way to farm and grind is to simply look for a decent spot where you can pull mobs with a decent respawn rate. So almost anywhere in Outlands at level 60+.  So I did a search on the auction house and started thotbotting items. I found Mote of Life drop off Bog Lords or elemental types such as them in Dead Mire or generally around Zangarmarsh. They drop at a 10-12% rate, so you have a decent chance to pick some up. They can get you a decent amount of gold too, if you can get some. There are also a few quests in that area so there's some additional XP.

So that explains the reasoning. But its not just some rare drops, there are also sporebats and other skin-able mobs there. (If you really want an additional source of income take up gathering skills. Skinning and mining I believe are the most profitable, but so is disenchanting items and herbalism. I prefer skinning simply because a LOT of mobs are skin-able and it seems I get a decent amount of items to sell on the auction house. I chose LeatherWorking as well, but I want to be able to create some items for my alt.)

Here is what I did as an enhancement shaman. I started out at the bottom of Dead Mire and found a group of mobs. I ran in, put down a SoE (strength of earth) totem and then proceeded to pull each mob with a lightening bolt. In this case it was 4 sporebats. I killed all 4 within 60 seconds which got me an average of 950xp on each. 3800xp in 60 seconds, not bad.

Specifically on each mob my plan of attack was, Lightening sheild (watch this and keep it buffed), Stormstrike (st), earth shock (es) when focused proc'd (108 mana), ST again, and by then they were dead. About 15 seconds per mob. Skinned each one and then ran to the next group. They don't spawn too fast so I proceeded to the Bog Lords/Withering Giants and Parched Hydras and did the same thing. If I ran low on mana I simply used Shamanistic Rage to build it up. If I pulled too many, Warstomp, quick heal, and then dps.

Enhancement shamies are great dps'rs and we can level extremely fast so enjoy your soloing time. (Early in the morning, right after work etc.) Another piece of advice, get on a popular server and watch general chats for pick up groups (pug), join them as you'll still get XP, make friends, and complete quests quicker. I've been on several PVP realms and I just moved to a RP-PVP realm. I have found the people there a lot more friendly and willing to group. Ganking is still in high fasion though, but just deal with it. Enh shamies aren't great at pvp, if you can run do it. Try reading through the "How to kill a... (Shaman)". You'll pick up some pointers to be slightly more effective in pvp. If you really hate PVP move to a normal server.

Simcity Societies – Who cares?

I posted this over at simtropolis.com in the forums but wanted to add it here as well.

http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=367&threadid=90207&enterthread=y 

Basically my point is that Simcity Societies is not Simcity, that much is obvious. So lets stop comparing it to Simcity and look at it as just another game. Like City Life. For me games like this are no fun. Simcity is it or nothing at all. I'm sure I'll take a peak at the SCS demo when it arrives, but aside from that I could care less. It looks like a boring silly game. I did hop on the band wagon when I first read about and wrote a nasty blog to coincide with my view. But in hind site that was silly. This is just another game not even being developed by Maxis. So I am going to consider it as just another game with Simcity in the title only. It is Simcity in name only.

Below is my original forum post: 

SCS looks like a horrible game imo. But I don't view it as a replacement to Simcity seeing as it's so radically different. In fact I don't understand why Simcity is in the name, you're not simulating a city, you're simulating sims on a broader scale. If they have a demo I'll give it a shot, but it's not like I am going to uninstall SC4 and replace it with SCS.

Yes I am sad like the rest of you that there is no SC5. But there still is Spore which looks like an awesome game that I can't wait for. And I'll always enjoy hours of detailed city building and scrolling through the Stex looking for new buildings and mods. As long as there is new content for SC4 I will be thrilled.

The grahics don't bother me at all and I don't base a game off the way it looks alone. I still enjoy playing tetris on my game boy. even the original Simcity is fun from time to time. I don't think any of us on this forum are focused on the look though. I'm sure everyone who comes to these forums is interested in game play and taking full advantage of SC4.

But what about what we're missing that we we're looking forward to in SC5? We already have fixes to the transportation system through NAM. You can get civic buildings which cover broader areas for more realism. You can download larger regions for massive cities. We even have rural highways. And this isn't the end.

So what exactly would an SC5 offer that we don't already have aside from better graphics? I know there's something I'm missing, but maybe if we start putting down ideas one of the great mod/batrs out there will take a peak and think, that is a nice idea, I'm going to make it

As for SCS, who cares? It's Simcity in name only. Lets focus on other things like the Simtrpolis 1000 project or adding even more custom features and perfecting mods for the current game.

ps: I just noticed this post as well

RIP Simcity

Well, EA ruined Simcity for me.

http://www.1up.com/do/previewPage?cId=3160151

http://simcity.ea.com/

Thanks EA. I'm fine with waiting on Maxis to finish Spore. I can play that while they hack out the next Simcity.

Simcity is obviously a game of micromanagement. Wright is correct, the game is difficult. But that's what makes it fun, the challenge of building a major city, even re-creating real life cities on your computer. Dealing with traffic congestion, fighting rising crime rates, trying to budget. Even laying power lines and water pipes is fun. But what I really don't understand is that Wright is making a game like Spore, where you control the evolutionary path of an alien being up to the rise of it's civilization and then conquer other planets, and he says Simcity is hard? Why not just make a simple mode for Simcity 5?

Game features Lithuanian criminals

A new game called The Agency being show cased by Sony features a Lithuanian gang in the demo. As reported by Game Spot:

"After a brief, action-packed road trip the spies arrived at their destination--a district controlled by a dangerous Lithuanian gang known as The Bones."

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/rpg/theagency/news.html?sid=6172347&tag=nl.e579

The actual game on the other hands looks cool, but its a standard run of the mill shooter. I'm done with FPS until they start bringing some story back into it. Or until HL2 Episode 2 comes out

Simcity 4

Those who know me, know I'm crazy for Simcity. Maybe because it was the first game I got addicted to, idk. But I've been playing since classic came out. I've gone through all the versions. Resorting to playing Simcity 2000 on a Sega Saturn since our 386 wouldnt run it lol. Now I've got an uber laptop (thanks GearHost) and have the ability to run SC4 Rush Hour at any rez with all the options enabled. I got back into SC4 when I found this site: http://www.simtropolis.com. Mods, buildings, tutorials, etc. I thought I was pretty decent at making a city, but some of these guys make unbelievable cities. They look as real as it gets on a computer. Needless to say I've learned a lot just from their examples.

This is by far the most useful and best mod for SC4 http://www.simtropolis.com/modding/index.cfm?p=details&id=380

I have a 22" widescreen LCD and SC4 looks like crap at 1600x1200 on it. So I found a way to enable a custom resolution for Simcity 4 by adding some parameters to the exe. Here is an example:

"C:\Program Files\Maxis\SimCity 4\Apps\simcity 4.exe" -CustomResolution:enabled -r1680x1050 -intro:off

"intro:off" turns the into movie off, much faster load time. And of course the customres lets me us my native res. Hope this helps someone out there!