First Impressions of Ulduar and other new stuff

Ragar: Yesterday the doors to Ulduar finally opened up for treasure-hunting adventurers like ourselves. Per the request of the guild Sol and I contract for, he was our representative in their first foray into Ulduar. It was a short trip since everyone got a late start that day, so they only made a little bit of progress. Sol, how was the trip?

Solannis: It took us three or four tries to get Flame Leviathan down, so it wasn't too bad. Nice change from Naxxramas though since it didn't feel like there was a lot of room for errors on our part. I'm not sure that first attempt really counts though since we sorta made a mistake.

Ragar: Oh? What was the mistake?

Solannis: Apparently there are these towers up in the courtyard of Ulduar that do things like send fiery/icy/nature-y/physical doom at you from the sky. We sorta neglected to destroy those towers. That was apparently a mistake. We rectified the problem and after a couple of attempts, the giant doom tank was destroyed and we moved along to Ignis the Furnace Master where we encountered another couple of problems.

First problem, the Flame Ragers in front of Ignis. We received reports today that those are apparently supposed to be attacked primarily from ranged DPS, with melee waiting for the tornados to go away before moving in to attack, then ducking out before the next tornado. Our group? Heavy melee. Let's just say it wasn't pretty.

Next was Ignis himself, and apparently there's some issue with the buff he was getting not going away when the Iron Constructs he summoned were heated, cooled, and shattered. It sounds like the issues been dealt with, but we'll have to wait and see on Thursday since we're not scheduled to go back until then.

Ragar: How was the Argent Tournament? I know you did everything available today and Medeleth's working on it, but I haven't had the chance to check it out yet.

Solannis: The mounted combat is a little strange, but after a bit you get the hang of it. Haven't dueled anyone yet though, so I can't vouch for that. As for the rest of the quests, they're fairly simple, but they require a bit of flying around, especially between Crystalsong and the tournament grounds. I'd imagine Medeleth isn't too happy about doing all of that on his flying machine.

Ragar: Hey, if he wants an epic flyer, then he can finish getting that last thousand gold himself. Most of the team's funds have gone into getting dual spec training and even that's not really enough. You, me, and Mordigg have enough, but the shaman's gonna have to wait or start doing dailies like the rest of us.

Solannis: Yeah, he could use the exercise anyway since he doesn't get a lot of instance work. Oh, and I did pick up that other thing we were waiting for. I couldn't get it until I finished today's daily and I'm still working on the rest of the achievements, but I at least have this.

Ragar: Excellent! We'll have to work on the achievements later, but that'll do. Folks, I'm sure we'll have more later this week like on what our specs are or more Ulduar impressions, but until then we'd like to close on this note:

Just tell me who I need to beat up

Another day, another list of notes about different things we'll see when the gates of Ulduar open up. Normally we'd just look at these notes and see if we need to change anyone's spec/rotation/etc., but today we've got something awesome:

Cooking

• Cooking with Style - Obtain a Chef's Hat.

I will have that hat. I don't care what I need to do or who I need to kill - that hat will be mine!

There's probably some other stuff in there I should pay attention to, but I don't think any of it is more important than a new hat. Well, unless they give me a frying pan shield or something like that. I certainly wouldn't say no to some actual cooking utensils. You'd be amazed how difficult it is to make a proper feast with nothing but a fire and a pouch of spices.

Hail to the Chef

Today was the day the vendors received their new recipes, so I ran straight over to get my stuff. Wolf Tartare was easy enough to pick up, but when I looked at Fish Feast, it took 450 cooking - I was still three points short. I thought, "Okay, I'll just go pick up the Kungaloosh recipe and take care of that first." Good idea, except for one tiny little detail: I kinda forgot that I never did any questing out in Sholazar Basin. Now normally this wouldn't have been that big of an issue. I would've just gone in, knocked out whatever quests the people out there wanted me to do, and picked up my recipe. However, there was apparently some strange activity going on in Wintergrasp today that seemed to have effects on everyone else in Northrend. Reports from myself and other members of the team include blackout periods with no memory of what happened, delayed reaction time for some spells, and in my case, learning how to swim through the sky:


Despite all that though, I finished getting the quest and got my recipe. That just left learning how to make a Fish Feast, so off I went to search the rivers of Northrend for the fish needed to finish my cooking training and learn my last recipe. There was a bit of a delay from the guild asking me to schedule Solannis to off-tank their 10-man Obsidian Sanctum run that night. Stupid "only one person can work at a time" contracting rules... Regardless, once that was taken care of and Solannis collected his fee, I went back to my fishing and got my last skill point. A quick trip back to Dalaran for my recipe, and my journey was at an end.


Ah, it feels so nice to finally have that taken care of. There may be dozens of other titles available, but there's just something about Chef that's awesome. Now if only I could find an epic chef hat or a frying pan shield to accompany my shield. Maybe one of those white smock things that the chefs in the fancy parts of Dalaran wear. I don't care if it's not all that great compared to my actual tanking gear - it could be vendor trash quality for all I care. I just think I'd look awesome in a chef hat.

The secrets of the Stormchop are finally mine!

It took many, many months of doing work for that stingy goblin, but after all the questing and all of the threats, I finally pried the secrets to the Stormchop out of his grimy little hands. All that was left after that was tracking down the supplies I needed for the recipe and I finally had my Outland Gourmet achievement.

That just left Northrend Gourmet and Dinner Impossible in my path to becoming Chef Ragar. Northrend Gourmet is as progressed as I can get for the moment; still waiting on the vendors to get another shipment of recipes. In the meantime I could chip away at Dinner Impossible. I'm not particularly fond of giving food to people in battlegrounds (they're just gonna run in and get knocked out anyways), but sometimes you have to swallow your pride to get the job done. I'll get this one done soon enough, but I'll do it my way. I call it "Operation: Drop and Run" - I don't do PvP.

Soon, very soon, I shall have my title and Scourge and blue dragons everywhere will tremble before the might of Chef Ragar!

Oh, there was one more thing I picked up today:


Apparently it was a good thing that I never dropped that quest, and that I'm such a horrible packrat that I still had the turn-in items from my old 40-man raiding days. And my friends told me I should clean out my bank more often. Hah!

An Open Letter to The Rokk

Dear Rokk,

Let's get this out of the way: I don't like you, you don't like me. However, you have my Stormchops recipe, so you're stuck with me doing your dirty work and swearing at you every day. It doesn't have to be that way though - you have the power to put an end to all of this. Just give me what I want and I'll be out of your hair. Earthmother knows I've more than put in enough time for it. I've made enough Spiritual Soup and Demon Broiled Surprise to feed an army and I've brought you enough Mana Berries to fill the Nagrand Arena. I've even made enough Kaliri Stew that those damnable birds start flying away in a panic when they see me coming!

I'm so close to getting my Chef title. I have Great Feasts prepared for Dinner Impossible (when I can bring myself to give useful food to people that are about to die in mere moments anyways...) and I'll have the last recipes I need for Northrend Gourmet when the vendor gets their new shipment in a week or so. All that remains after that is becoming an Outland Gourmet, which brings it back to you.

In closing, please give me my Stormchops recipe and I promise I won't do anything uncouth like use you as a training dummy or drop you from the Scryer's Tier.

Have a nice day,

Rags