Welcome one and all to Spectacular Death's web site.

Thanks to Minaithelan and Pinkel's dogged efforts at BG's over the last 4 days, we were less than 200 honor kills from Guild Gankers. So, after a boatload of guild spam regarding finishing 25-man Naxx, a group of us headed over to Orgrrimar and took over the Valley of Honor bank in an effort to get the achievement.

Viola.


That's a lot of horde.

You are all to be commended and, again, I want to thank Pinkel and Minaithelan, who have done nothing but BG's it seems lately, to drive us toward this achievement. The last achievement in this string is called Creepjackers and it requires 1 million honor kills. Um...yeah.

So, what grinding achievement should we do next? I'm kind of leaning towards the fishing one.

Here's to us! I also posted a thank you to the Llane forum. If it wasn't for horde, we wouldn't have this.

--Gimm

Our Guild Gankers total has risen to 248,640. I'm thinking we'll get this next week. We helped it along by running over to Orgrimmar and taking over that north bank again. With Tol'Barad in session when we arrived, the 9 of us who went were able to hold the bank for a good 10 minutes and pad our total.

After mucking around for another hour, we headed to outside of Ratchett for some Deathtacular achievements. Thanks to the arrival of several level 85's; Vashkiri, Zeruch, Virges and even Voodoohermit before he left, we have a nice group of people who run Tol'Barad on a regular basis. That means, we've obtained some PvP achievements which we might never had gotten. Delamonde, in particular, has been very active over the last week. We discovered, last night, we only had three left to go for the Alliance Slayer meta achievement.

Thanks to Ranhol, we have slayed all the Draenei classes.

Thanks to Glitterati, we have slayed all the Dwarf classes.

And lastly, a big thank you to Lesovika and Alagos, who helped us get the Worgen Slayer AND the meta.



When I logged off last night, we were at 86% of level 2. I have to say, I'm having a lot of fun driving this towards level 2 and doing my part to add to our Guild Gankers total.

Just a note, make sure you've voted in the Spectacularly Dead tabard poll. In another week, I'll be posting the winning tabard. And if you have a level 1 human on Ghostlands that is not in the guild, speak up. A number of people have invite privileges for that guild. I'll need to know your toon's name so you can get your shiny gold piece. Remember, don't level the toon. Keep it in the human starting area. Level 1s can't form or join raids anymore so we will have to do this simply as a mass of humanity, but it's bound to be one of our funnier events. To answer a question I get asked a lot, right now, I have a lot of money on the guild leader toon. There will be another event upcoming in July that I might need more funds for. I won't know for awhile, however. Unless you want to level a toon there, I don't need people to level for money.

And, watch this space. A new contest is coming.

--Gimm

Two nights of 25-man Ulduar raiding culminated in meeting Algalon.



Ulduar is my favorite raid so far, hands down, and, while I think Kil'Jaeden's arrival in Sunwell is the most impressive boss arrival in the game, the start of Algalon's fight is probably the most breathtaking. A key is no longer needed to access him so we wandered in to say, "Hello". He's an affable fellow, if hell-bent on world destruction. Of course, Brann Bronzebeard is our guide and he leaves to let us continue "negotiations" to save the world. When we were done "discussing" the pros and cons of destroying Azeroth, we all had this achievement and a shiny new title to add to our names. "Gimmlette, the Astral Walker". I've always wanted that title. Congratulations folks.

It was a hugely productive 2 days. It's going to take more runs to finally finish off the required achievements to get the Ironbound proto-drake, but we got half-way through. Flame Leviathan's 4 towers up achievement requires more than 18 people. We did everything we could think of, but the combination of more hit points to and damage from the boss and the need to get away from 4 different elements just couldn't be overcome by being overgeared. We need more people in more vehicles. The best we did was 23%. We took down one of the towers and then downed Leviathan, getting a leviathan's worth of achievements in the process but we need the achievement for downing him with all towers up for the drake.

There was a guild best 28 minutes to get Iron Dwarf, Medium Rare on 25-man. We putzed along, getting 1 dwarf fried with every landing until she enraged. Then those fire balls she shoots, the ones that cause 7-9,000 hp of damage go to 75 to 90,000 hp of damage, but she kills pretty much any iron dwarf and the tank, if you aren't careful, when she deep breathes. Two fireball hits and you're toasted, so getting this achievement really is a group effort. She's kind of pretty, though, when she's enraged.

We stopped after Kolgarm, getting one of the most problematic achievements in the meta, Disarmed, in the process. We got everything, except Flame Leviathan, that we needed up through Kolgarm so we have the back half of Ulduar yet to conquer. The key which would have been used to open the planetarium to access Algalon is still in the game although you don't need it anymore. I forget who won the discs to start the quest but it's a fun quest line to do and we will certainly be in here that more people can get that.

Another thing we started, Pinkel won the first shard to start the questline which results in getting Val'anyr, the Hammer of the Ancient Kings, the legendary healing weapon in Ulduar. Very, very few healers had this as it's a huge pain to accumulate the materials and do the events to get. You have to collect 30 fragments and then throw all of them into Yogg-Saron's mouth when he casts deafening roar while in a guild group on 25-man heroic mode. That means only one keeper can be up maximum. (sigh) It's as bad as going after Shadowmourne.

We are one legendary weapon short of the meta. We have Sulfuras and Thori'dal. Dolvange has one of the Warglaives of Azzinoth, but we need 2 for the achievement. I thought someone had one of the bindings to make Thunderfury, but I don't remember who. I know a number of people are on the chain for Dragonwrath and both Dolvange and Minaithelan are working on Fangs of the Father, although Fangs is not included in the meta. I think Kariel is working on Shadowmourne. We have a lot of people working through various stages of various legendaries. Every time we run Molten Core, Black Temple, Sunwell, Ulduar and ICC in 25-man mode, Firelands and Dragon Soul, we have the chance to add to our list of legendaries. I think it's so neat that this not hard-core guild has 2 legendaries in our midst. Thoryn has Sulfuras and I have Thori'dal. I really want to see more people get them because they are just plain cool.

So, back to Ulduar. What to do about the raid? We won't be back here until next month. We are just way too busy with so many other things going on. Plus, you have voted to try to work toward downing Deathwing at the end of a July "Dragon Week" event. That's going to mean living, practically, in Dragon Soul. With summer and vacations and holidays and nice weekend nights for cook outs with friends, there's a lot to occupy your time. I want to take as many people as possible into Dragon Soul to work toward the ultimate goal. Some weeks, it will be a full 25. Some weeks, it's probably only going to be 10. We'll make it work.

There are so many, many achievements in Ulduar. Ignis is an example. He has three; Hot Pocket, Shattered and Stokin' the Furnace. Then you get to Hodir and there's; Cheese the Freeze, I Have the Coolest Friends, Getting Cold in Here and I Could Say this Cache Was Rare. Some achievements take luck, such as Hot Pocket. You have to be the random one Ignis grabs. Some take some coordination, like Shattered, to accomplish. Some are just "Open Fire!" like Stokin' the Furnace. But getting achievements is something we love to do here so working on the Ulduar ones is second nature to us. Part of me would like us to forge ahead from this point, get to Yogg and down him once, and then come back. Part of me knows it's going to be awhile and why not come back and pick up some of the other achievements available to us when we come back fresh. 20 people, combined, got into Ulduar over these last two days. I'd sure like to see more people have the experience.

It was a great two days of raiding. This weekend, we will polish off a couple more 25-man Wrath runs, Naxx and Trial of the Grand Crusader. Check your achievements for both. We'll be doing as many in Naxx as we can and a few, probably accidentally, in ToC. The goal for ToC is simply to conquer it in 25-man heroic mode. We've never done that as a guild. Lots of fun raiding upcoming folks. Come on along.

--Gimm