TagWorld of Warcraft

World of Warcraft Pet Battles Attacking/Defending chart

When World of Warcraft announced they’d be adding the equivalent of Pokemon, POKEMON, to the Mists of Pandaria expansion pack, I vowed, VOWED, that I wouldn’t have any part of that silly nonsense. And neither would I be following the crowds down the path of creating either monks or pandas. No, no, no! NEVER!!!

So, anyway, my panda monk Jaybbles (right) has been happily leveling her cute menagerie over the past three week. I first started off with pets inspired by my real life animals – a black cat, a chicken and a pig (Mr Wiggles) to represent Lily, the tubby, grunting dog – but quickly discovered that my beloved pets would get their arses kicked in Azeroth. Now Jaybbles has got a more exotic/deadly team with which to stomp various beasties as she sees fit. However, silly Jaybbles sometimes sends the wrong pets into the wrong battles and the fight ends with loud boohooing. What Jaybbles needs is a clear chart to show her which pet is good – and bad – against what.

There are, of course, other charts out there on the web but I found them confusing so made up my own. (click the pic for the bigger, clearer version)

(I’m not 100% happy with the column headings but they’ll do for now.)

My initial plan was that this chart would be the basis for an embroidery pattern but it’s ended up being a lot more complicated than I thought it would be, so that will have to wait for now — there are critters, horny toads and goddamn foals to beat up first!

Blogtoberfest 2012 – Day 1/Make 1: Fimo fun – a WoW hearthstone

I’ve not been blogging enough recently, for various, uninteresting reasons so inspired by Lynsey of Swirly Arts, I’ve decided to throw myself back into the blogging deep end and take part in Blogtoberfest 2012 to try to remedy my “not blogging” problem – posting every day in October, one way or another, on one site or another (preferably more than one!).

Some of the posts will probably be short/picture heavy but I am going to try to include a lot of “makes” in the month, because I’ve not been making stuff enough lately and I’m missing it. Most of them will probably end up on The Really Good Life or How Can I Recycle This? but as this is neither “good life”y or recycled, I thought it wasn’t really appropriate for those sites. It is though, fittingly, a little swirly ;)

It’s a World of Warcraft “hearthstone” – a little thing you click in the game every time you want to return to your in-game home. I’ve been meaning to make a “real” one to go on my (house keys) keyring for a while but didn’t get around to it until today. The bits are meant to be there – it’s Fimo “Effect” which is supposed to look a bit like stone/marble. It needs to go in the oven to bake hard, but it can wait until we’ve heated up the oven for something else.

It’s very small and very geeky but it’s a start!

3BT – snow day, elastic, killing is fun, same soup

1. Even without my glasses or raising my head from the pillows, I can tell the world’s gone white again. Our plans are abandoned and we give ourselves a snow day of relaxation.

2. The cheese stretches between my teeth and the toasted bread shell.

3. I rarely play PvP battlegrounds and forgot how much fun killing other people can be. Fighting NPCs is rarely as exhilarating – it’s often just a case of going through the motions – but my half-hour in Warsung Gulch is electrifying.

4. Katherine & I discover we’re having the same soup for dinner. Katherine types “smiling now” and I am too. For all our differences, we’re so alike.

Six Beautiful Things from the weekend

1. “This wood will keep you warm next winter,” I tell Carla as she watches me pull thick branches from the giant pile and stack them on the dormant flower bed. Further down the garden, John is building a platform where the wood will season while I’m sorting it from the twigs (which will be chipped and used under our chicken run) and the ivy (which had been strangling the tree and will now be composted). The garden is so much lighter without the sycamore’s shadow.

2. The giggles and screams as John tricks people on ChatRoulette.

3. The worst thing about World of Warcraft is all the travelling about so I like it when I have a string of quests to complete on the way. I loop through the Hinterlands with perfect efficiency and level up twice when I cash in all the completed tasks at Revantusk Village. The game’s combination of micro tasks and multiple possible paths is deeply rewarding and I wonder how I could organise projects in my real life to be as pleasurable.

4. I finish reading ‘All my friends are superheroes’ by Andrew Kaufman. I enjoy the physical book as much as the story – super smooth ivory pages and a lovely choice of font.

5. Another day sorting and stacking wood. It’s pleasing to sweep up the last of the sawdust when the giant pile has finally gone.

6. The sieved flour disappears into the liquid almost instantly, leaving behind just a ghostly trace.

3BT – racing, productive, post office, cheese, wowed by WoW

1. A few people have suggested we have a second bathroom installed on our lower ground floor – near the area which will be our office – but if we did, we’d have no reason to race up the stairs, pushing past each other, pulling back on jeans’ waistbands, when we both realise we need to wee at the same time.

2. I work hard all day – nothing from my to-do list and hardly any billable hours – but I tick off a range of things that have been nagging at me for weeks, perhaps months. For the first time in a while, I feel like I’m making progress on my life rather than just treading water.

3. The walk to the post office is delightful – until the very end, it feels like a walk through a country village and it’s just far enough to warm me up without being an over-exertion or taking all day.

4. We eat enchiladas for dinner, the second helping of a batch from earlier in the week. “Is there anything better than baked cheese?” I ask John as I chew on a perfectly browned piece. He replies: “Twice as much baked cheese.”

5. I have a fantastic evening’s play on World of Warcraft – I complete some quests that had been bugging me (because they’d been too hard before) and successfully sell some items at auction so I won’t have to worry about game-money for a while. The interface overlays my dreams though, so possibly played it a little too much…

3BT – phezoo, gummy wisdom, it is quite social you know

1. We have a phone conference instead of our weekly in-person meeting. Restricted to just our voices, we’re more stilted and business like than usual but the phone service makes us smile with a comedy “phezoo” noise whenever anyone leaves. In our text-based chat later, Caius announces a sub-set meeting is over, saying “Participants dispersed in a hail of alien gunfire”.

2. My first wisdom tooth has finally made it into the open. The gum around it feels spongy and soft. I can’t resist tonguing it because it reminds me of losing teeth when I was a child.

3. I talk to a Romanian guy living in Sweden about life in the UK (and how it’s a balmy -6°C compared to his -25°C) while killing mutated turtles in a mythical land.