Soloing the Lich King

Just found this video on youtube last night.  It is a level 85 Death Knight soloing the Lich King.  For those of you paying attention, I play a DK who is off-specialization is Blood.  But I have never even gotten close to a Lich King kill.  This has got me thinking that maybe I can gear up a bit and try this for myself.  I would love to have the Kingslayer title floating above my head.

I can see it now, Gluug the Kingslayer, has a nice ring to it.  Or does it go Kingslayer Gluug...

I began looking at videos like this because of a post on joystiq.com about a level 80 DK who soloed a level 85, 25-man raid boss.  That is just ridiculous.  Anyway, enjoy the videos great followers of mine.

How I WoW

I have written this blog post several time before, but I think it is one that is always relevant to my blog because how I play the game is always changing.  Sometimes I'm leveling my main, or an alt, sometimes I'm more focused on randoms dungeons and grinding for badges, sometimes I'm REALLY focused on making gold from farming minerals, herbs and playing the auction house, maybe even fishing.  I'm like a child in that aspect, I'm always looking for something different to do in game.  

This has been a problem for me in the past.  It took me almost 14 months to run my previous main, Chuckem (the Lord of Assets) from 1-80 and I didn't even finish before Cata dropped.  Then it took me another 4-5 weeks to get from 80-85.  Now when MoP dropped I finally had a chance to play with a max-level toon on launch day and I blew it.  I haven't really been playing with Chuckem lately and I was working on a different toon, on a different server, in a different guild and trying to get him to 85.  Again, I was about a month late to the expansion when I got Gluug to 85, about 2 weeks ago.  Since I wasn't playing a max level character I would not let myself buy the expansion until Gluug was level 85.  

I just wanted to discuss the journey I took to get there.  I always get board eventually and want to try something new.  But at the same time I always want to see everything in the game.  That is the main reason it took me so long to get Chuckem to 85, I would get distracted with an alt, or leveling cooking, or working on PvP for a week.  I just don't have the attention span to straight level a character from 1-90.  Lately with a new job and my daughter just turning six, I have had very little time for dungeons.  So I have been focusing more on quests and professions.  It is definitely a new way for me to play.  


I have also been trying to focus my play on just one character but when I get tired of questing I do something else like leveling my cooking and fishing.  I will eventually talke about each of these in more depth in future posts.  Just know that I play the game like an ADHD cat surrounded by tuna, lazer-pointers and catnip.  I'm always running a quest, stop to mine a node then I see a pool of fish and I'll work on that.  It takes me forever to get from point A to point B, but it has been a lot of fun.  Thanks for reading!

Lord of Who?

I'm back.  I started playing WoW again around the launch of MoP, even though I'm not really playing Chuckem anymore.  I did start playing on my DK on Earthen Ring who is a proud member of AIE.  I believe he was still level 71 when I pick it back up and I had to level him to 85 before I was going to buy the expansion.  It took me about 5 weeks to get there.  Now my DK is level 87 and currently my highest level toon.  More about this later.

So I have decided to start blogging about WoW again as well.  I'm not promising much at this point, but I'm going to try and keep it going with at least one post a week.  I also have some WoW themed artwork I'll upload in the next few days too.  So stay tuned and there will be some gradual updates.  Until then, keep on playing WoW.

Google's Robot Car

I don't normally post about this sort of thing but I didn't know anything about it and I'm really impressed with what Google is doing here. This is something that we have all been wanting for a long time and I'm excited to see this in the next 5-10 years.  I want one!

EDIT: Here is an article that NPR wrote about Google's robot car back in February.

Gibson's '88 walk-off HR

Spring Training

I'm so excited that spring training is here. I can't wait for the regular season to start.

Baseball, W00T!

2012 in 2012 February Update

Here is the February update for the 2012 in 2012 challenge. I'll start off with the table.

Name	Server	Class	Race	Level
Chuckem	Demon Soul	Mage	Blood Elf	85
Chuckita	Demon Soul	Paladin	Blood Elf	44
Tanadrenis	Vashj	Hunter	Blood Elf	4
Ottochuck	Kel'Thuzad	Death Knight	Draenei	8
Augustelly	Darkspear	Hunter	Draenei	1
Augustember	Kel'Thuzad	Shaman	Draenei	3
Shamary	Vashj	Shaman	Draenei	1
Lerrenz	Darkspear	Paladin	Draenei	1
Nochuck	Kel'Thuzad	Paladin	Dwarf	1
Oonoreen	Vashj	Paladin	Dwarf	4
Flintfoul	Darkspear	Shaman	Dwarf	1
Foghalnar	Darkspear	Priest	Dwarf	1
Fynevisock	Darkspear	Death Knight	Gnome	5
Gnowangie	Vashj	Priest	Gnome	3
Turpsterr	Darkspear	Warrior	Gnome	1
Huntermary	Vashj	Hunter	Goblin	4
ChuckMAN	Demon Soul	ShaMAN	Goblin	28
Kalchuck	Kel'Thuzad	Rouge	Human	37
Alkala	Vashj	Rouge	Human	4
Gwynstacy	Demon Soul	Hunter	Night Elf	11
Velyyindre	Darkspear	Mage	Night Elf	1
Gluug	Earthen Ring	Death Knight	Orc	71
Ottochuck	Demon Soul	Druid	Tauren	16
Calola	Vashj	Warrior	Tauren	2
Dachuck	Earthen Ring	Priest	Troll	24
Augustember	Earthen Ring	Shaman	Troll	2
Matington	Darkspear	Druid	Worgen	1
Earnwell	Darkspear	Rouge	Worgen	1
Denrowlez	Darkspear	Warlock	Worgen	15
Dunncan	Kel'Thuzad	Warrior	Worgen	1
			Total:	381

My first impression is that I added quite a few characters this time around (13 to be exact). It makes the list look a little longer, but ultimately more daunting when you notice all the level 1 character there. If you can remember back to last month's update I only had 17 toons represented, I now have 30 toons spread over 4 servers.

My progress has changed from 336 levels to 381 levels, and improvement of 45 levels for the month of February. However my goal is 148 levels per month to reach 2012 by January 2013. My percent complete as of last month was 16.7% and after February I am now at 18.9% to goal. The biggest change is that now I need to complete 163 levels/month to reach my goal. Ouch.

The other thing that I have been focusing on is getting 2 of each class and race represented. In my 30 toons I have 2 of everything except Warlocks of which Denrowlez is my only one. As for races I have only have 1 orc (Gluug) and no undead. So I suppose once I finish bring all of these toons to level 20 I need to go back and focus on the horde side a bit more. Here are some tables that show my breakdown.

My most improved characters over the last month have to be Denrowlez who did not exist last month but has now made it through the Worgen starting zone and into the Night Elf territory. Standing at level 15 he is not only my highest level Warlock and Worgen, but he is my highest level character on Darkspear.

An honorable mention should go out to Gluug my main DK who moved from 69 to 71. I know that doesn't seem like a lot but compared to the first 1-5 levels that I have been seeing a lot of; it took some time to move Gluug up 2 levels. I was also running a lot of random heroics with Chuckem to try and get his item level up to where I can use the raid finder. I want to see the end of the expansion before the new one come out and in order to do so I need to have a character with an item level of 371 to enter the raid finder. Chuckem's item level is now at 356 (and rising).

JD Kenada over at Amateur Azerothian asked the participants in the 2012 in 2012 challenge to answer a question in our updated post. It basically was about how the world events affect our leveling. Well, I’m a bit of a non-participant in the big events. I have yet to complete a single world event for the achievement/title. Although I try to incorporate some questing related with the events I usually just go for the low-hanging fruit of the first few achievements before I move on. Therefore they don’t really affect my leveling as I don’t spend too much time on them.

The first one I really tried for was the Noble-Garden one, but I was never able to get the “Shake Your Bunny-Maker” achievement to get the “Noble Gardener” achievement and title. I remember hunting eggs for hours, then eating 100 of them and getting frustrated when I tried to find females of every race to put rabbit ears on. That was in 2010 and sort of soured me on the events; I enjoy them but I never really get around to completing them.

Finally, if you follow the blog at all you will notice that there has been some changes. Lord of Assets is not just a WoW blog anymore. I'm not going to get into this here (as there are several posts already that do) but my interests are ever expanding and changing to I wanted to reflect that in my posts. I still play WoW and I'm still working on the 2012 in 2012 challenge, but I also do a lot of other things.

Happy Friday!

Just wanted to say happy Friday to everyone out there. Have a great weekend.

Also, I wanted to give a shutout to Effy and her recent post on Night Elves versus Drow. If that description doesn't leave you any idea what I'm talking about, you should read her post and it will all be explained.

Thirsty Thursday...

...it's the thirstiest.

Have you guys heard about the 1.2 million dollars that was raised by OOTS? I mean, that's crazy right? Here is a link to the kickstarter campaign.

Let me start by saying congratulations to the author/artist over there at the Order of the Stick. That is an achievement that most of us mortals can only dream about. To have something that you made, and nurtured for the last 10 years (since 2003) grow into something so substantial like that is amazing. As a content creator it is one of my life-long goals to have something that has a fraction of the success that OOTS has had.

I have recently gotten back into Dungeons and Dragons and so I have been enjoying this comic ever since I discovered it a few days ago. The humor is spot on and the art style really grows on you after only a couple of strips. It has made me want to dig out my old strip and start making them again, but then I remember how hard that was for me the first time and I decide to just focus on my blog.

Anyway, if you have not heard of OOTS or you don't have any idea what I'm talking about when I say webcomic then you owe it to yourself to check them out here. I would like to finish by saying Happy Thursday everybody!

I have transferred many posts...

I have transferred many posts from my other sites here as I transition to the new face of Lord of Assets. If you are curious as to what I have been up to in February then please go back and check out some of those transferred posts. That is all.

Cruckson Family Crest

Here is the finished design for the Cruckson family crest. My family, through my wife's relatives, have a big family reunion every 4 years. The family is divided into 3 different branches of the family tree: Bessie, Emerson and Rueben.

Here is the design that I came up with. It will be used on the invitations, letterhead, cookbook and on the t-shirts. I tried to incorporate the different branches into a color scheme that showed the theme of this years reunion, mixing it up. The point of these reunions is to meet family members that we may never see otherwise and to have the mixing of the different clans. Hopefully this is apparent in the colored branches each having leaves of a different branch color represented.

I also used an old family crest to base the design on that had a blue/white partition design with the head of a falcon. I tried to modernize the design without changing the core elements. I was pretty happy with how it turned out. This is really the first original thing that I have made in Adobe Illustrator since I began taking a graduate class on the program this semester.

Anti Iron-man

That's right, I'm Anti Iron-man and proud of it. Now I'm not talking about the superhero (because who doesn't love Tony Stark) but the WoW Iron-man challenge. It just seems like a giant waste of time, when players could be getting their characters raid ready or leveling alts for the coming expansion. Here is a link to the official rules of the challenge.

It seems like everyone in the WoW community is looking for a way to make the game harder, or more dynamic to level. I agree that after you have done the same zone 4-5 times is gets pretty old but doing it to just make it more of a grind is just silly. Now I may not be the typical WoW blogger because I only have one, level 85 character but I don't really have the time (or ongoing interest) to have a stable full. It took me over a year to get Chuckem to 85, actually close to two years. I will admit that I get distracted to I took breaks for weeks at a time, and that I rolled several alts along the way, but I just can't imagine doing this without the help of enchants, buffs, Purples, Blues or Greens.

I'm sorry but that is just crazy. Playing with just white/grey equipment, or even just greens, is stupid. The best part of a long form game like WoW is the gear. If you are stuck just wearing any crap that drops, how are you supposed to progress?

And without a guild, how does that work? Maybe I just don't see the appeal because it won't work for me, but if there are people out there who want to try ... who am I to stop them. The point of a MMO is to socialize with your friends, your guildies. I just don't see the appeal of trying to solo it again.

If anyone out there is trying this, please let me know what is driving you to walk this path?

My Blog is Changing

My blog, much like my life, is changing. I have been busy with work, school and parenting but that is really not an excuse. I have been getting distracted by side projects (as usual) and that has lead to less playing of WoW. If I play WoW less then I write about it less. Everything in my life goes in cycles like this.

So, I have decided instead of having 4-5 websites running at the same time I am going to consolidate my posts to just this blog. The other sites will remain (for now) but I will basically link them to here for the current updates. I hope that this adds to the flavor of the site, making it more personal, rather than taking away from my core audience (of like 3 followers). ;)

What that means for the Lord of Assets blog is that you will start to see several different kinds of posts. Some will still be about WoW, MMOs and gaming in general but you will also start to see posts about my artwork, my family, Pokemon (or Dokemun), complaints about life in general and whatever other little nuggets I can come up with. So please stay with me as these changes take place, cheers!

I have been busy...

I have been really busy over the last few weeks between grad-school, scheduling meetings for work and being a father. I just wanted my readers to know that I haven't forgotten about them and I'm working on something. Hang in there and I'll try to post soon. Cheers!

Mickey the Mamoswine

Another installment of the Dokemun Party. In today's episode we will be taking a look at the promotion Momoswine available from pokemon.com.

I plan on using this Mamoswine as a blocker. Unfortunately, he got the worst Defense IV possible at 0 so he will not be as effective as I had hoped.

I do have a soft spot for Mickey though as he is sporting the thick fat ability which will half the damage taken from fire and ice type moves.

A Krookodile named Hook

Here is the 3rd installment ofDokemun's Party. Today we will be discussing my Krookodile affectionately named Hook. Like the crocodile in Peter Pan. His is surprisingly fast.

Now it is time to talk about the IVs of my Krookodile. This was actually one of the first 'mons I ever EV trained. At the time I know very little about IVs and I had no idea how to accuratelycheck them. Now that I can clearly see his IVs I'm quite impressed with just how fast Hook is. I was lucky to find a Sandie with a high, natural speed. I'm also pretty satisfied with his 22 attack and 26 special attack.

I think that it is important for my team to have a quick, dark 'mon to counter any psychic Pokemon I may encounter. As you can see I have EV trained my Krookodile in speed and I don't expect many 'mons to act before Hook. Since his speed EV is raised by 252 he is truly one of the fastest 'mons I have.

I also EV trained his attack by 254 on top of an IV of 22. It's not topped out, but it is definitelyrespectable. As you can also see his attacks are all physical in nature. I have considered replacing swagger with a special attack but for now I'll keep him as a physical sweeper. I also like having bulldoze, which gets Hook out of the way when I use surf in a doubles match. That has come in handy with my current doubles team. More on that later.

My Shiny Axew named Chuck

I wanted to take a look at specific Pokemon of mine and explain how I plan to grow them, EV them and then us them in my game. I thought this might be a fun addition to the blog. I plan on doing posts about every major 'mon I use in my current Pokemon Black game.

I got this printout from Pokecheck, a fake-GTS stat recorder. I have included a link in the name for your convince. I have found this website VERY useful for checking the stats, IVs and EVs of my 'mons. It was also valuable when configuring my pprng program as I needed my SID and had no way to get it. I highly suggest using Pokecheck for anyone interested in breeding or RNG'ing their Pokemon.

I think that it is important to note the date that the egg was received/hatched. As you can see the egg was both received and hatched on October 12th, 2012 (a date in the future). I have beenworking on RNG training my Pokemon. There are several useful tutorials available out there onSerebii.net and Smogon.com. I may write a post about it in the future but for now I will entertain myself with talking about my current 'mons.

Chuck is the first of my RNG'ed 'mon who I have to EV trained and plan to level up for my team. I plan on creating a series of trained 'mons with maxed IV stats and EV'ed to taste for mycompetitive team. Silly thing is that I do not currently competitively battle in Pokemon. Maybe once I have a full team I will.