Catching up…

When last we left our heroes, Sindei had helped to conquer Yogg-Saron, and Ginnger was level 70 and had gone back in Azeroth to level mining and jewelcrafting.

Our raid team is progressing nicely through ICC. We had a little trouble with Saurfang at the end of the Lower Spire, maybe  because we were three-healing the encounter to be safe. As soon as we tried two-healing it, we won the dps race and got Saurfang down. On Friday night we spent some time in the Plague Wing. Festergut didn’t give us too much trouble, but just to be a jerk, he dropped druid healing gear on a night when our druid healer was uncharacteristically absent. Rotface, on the other hand, proved a little more of a problem. I look forward to three-healing that encounter next week, because I think a third healer would help us out on it.There’s an awful lot of damage flying around in there!

In the meantime, to break things up, our team likes to do an off-night activity every other week. I took a poll of our team, and despite my efforts to institute bi-weekly Celestial Steed Parades through Dalaran, it seems everyone else wants to work on Trial of the Grand Champion instead. So we’ll take a swing at that on Tuesday.

After a lot of mining and a lot of spending gold at the Auction House, Ginnger’s mining and jewelcrafting are both leveled up to a reasonable skill for her level. Mining is at 440-ish and jewelcrafting at 430 or so. So at least she can mine where she’s leveling and get the JC daily done every day. I try to get her daily random dungeon done every day, though if push comes to shove, Sindei’s takes precedence. I got Ginnger to 74 last night, so she’ll be questing in Zul’Drak for a little while.

And I don’t want to forget about Children’s Week! Sindei wasn’t my main at this time last year, so she hadn’t done any of this achievement. I grabbed her a couple of orphans from Orgrimmar and Shattrath — sadly, the Dalaran quest seems to be bugged for anyone who did it when it was first released. Everything in the For the Children achievement is pretty easy, with the glaring exception of The School of Hard Knocks. Lucky for me, Day 1 of Children’s Week seems to be an unofficial interfaction cooperation day. Of the four battleground achievements needed, I was able to get three in battlegrounds where Alliance and Horde players worked together to get each other the needed achievements. I’m always glad to see people work together for a common goal. My one “real” achievement was capping the flag in Eye of the Storm, just moments before we were soundly defeated.

After wrapping up Hail to the King, Baby tonight, Sindei is proudly wearing her Matron title and is one step closer to her Violet Proto-Drake. I’m not sure how much of Children’s Week I’ll do with Ginnger, though I did pick up the Children’s Week quest in Dalaran for her. I generally side with the Oracles, but just to try something different this year, Ginnger has a little Wolvar companion in tow.

 

The Noble

Pet rabbits do not behave well for photographs.

Even with all the egg-camping going on the first day, I had no trouble to speak of getting Sindei her Noble Gardener achievement in short order. I started out in Falconwing Square, thinking it would be less crowded than the other areas. I clearly wasn’t the only one with that idea, because it was totally crowded.

For the record, the fountain in Falconwing Square is my favorite place to hunt for eggs. They appear in the fountain and under the benches. It’s easy to grab them quickly and they spawn pretty frequently. A lot of folks seem to not notice them under the benches. I grabbed plenty that people had just run right past.

Still, I persevered, and was lucky enough to get my Spring Rabbit’s Foot within my first 20 eggs or so. That made it easy to get the Spring Fling achievement, because on the first day there are plenty of people hanging around all the starting areas with their Spring Rabbits.

I don’t buy anything for the holiday until the end, because if I do, it’ll surely drop from the eggs right after. Basically, my strategy is to just farm the 100 eggs for the Chocoholic achievement, then keep farming until I either have enough chocolate to buy what I need for the meta OR the eggs drop whatever I still need for the meta. The eggs dropped Spring Flowers for the Shake Your Bunny-Maker and the Spring Robes for Desert Rose. I also got a couple of Black Tuxedo Pants from the eggs, but no shirt. Marsha had the shirt in her bank, though, and since it’s not soulbound, I was able to send that to Sindei for the Blushing Bride achievement. In all, I farmed about 200 eggs and the only thing I had to buy was the Brightly Colored Egg to hide in Silvermoon for the Noble Garden achievement.

For Hard Boiled, I just waited until one of the eggs turned me into a bunny, hearthed back to Dalaran, grabbed the portal to the Caverns of Time, and ran my little bunny-self down to the hot springs in Un’Goro Crater. I found a safe spot to go AFK, went to the kitchen for coffee, and by the time I got back, boom! I’d laid an egg.

In all, Noblegarden really is one of the easier holidays. My goal is to get Sindei the Violet Proto-Drake reward by the time the next Brewfest rolls around. The only holiday that’s got me worried is the Midsummer one, because I wasn’t that good at the torch juggling and such last time I tried them. I guess we’ll have to see.