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

There weren't enough people online Sunday night to run 25-man Firelands. I didn't do enough publicity for it to let everyone know that as long as they were level 85, we'd take them. We'll try a run again in the future and give you more of a heads up so you can plan to attend.

So, we headed off to the vast northern reaches of Northrend and ran 25-man Trial of the Crusader. Sixteen people came along. It took us an hour and 20 minutes to conquer the raid and fill the screen with guild achievement spam. I always like those nights where people get a boat load of achievements they wouldn't normally get. If you look over the Trial's list of achievements, there are a lot more we could work on, too.

This upcoming week sees us in the Firelands on Wednesday. We'll also be in there twice next week. We have Cataclysm 5-mans Monday and Tuesday. We'll be working on achievements and just running 5-mans for content, justice and valor points. We will do regular and heroic modes for all levels from 81 to 85. We have our weekly OS3 run. I'd like to, if we can get the numbers, break into two groups and get a couple people who don't have it, the black drake. While the blue one is more rare, if you don't have the black one, I'm sure you'd like it. This Friday is a "Friday Night Fights" PvP event. Come on along and run PvP with the guild.

Lastly, a few of us were discussing guild achievements. We are still solidly in 11th place. The Sardaukar is ahead of us with 1630 to our 1605 achievement points. Analysis shows we don't have a whole lot of achievements that we can grind out. There are a few, however, we could be working toward.

Daily Grind - We are at 50,463 of 75,000 daily quests.
Guild Gankers - We are at 174,493 horde killed out of 250,000.
City Attacker - We are at 1,822 of 2,500 horde killed in their own city. (We will be working on this next month.)
Glory of the Cataclysm Raider - We need Blackwing Descent for this achievement. (This gets us the Dark Phoenix mount.)
Better Leveling Through Chemistry - We are at 1,761 of 3,000 flasks made. (This gets us Recipe: Big Cauldron of Battle)
Gemcrafter Extraordinaire - We are at 1,724 of 2,500 Cata blue level gems cut.
Master Crafter - Craft 500 Epic items with an item level of at least 359. We are at 179 of 500.
(This achievement gets us the Cloak of Coordination which has a 2 minute cooldown as opposed to the 30 minute cooldown of the current SW teleport cloak.)
We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat - We are at 22,469 of 25,000 fish or other stuff fished from pools.

We also haven't done Baradin Hold, the raid in Tol'Barad as a guild and each of the Cataclysm raid has a heroic version we haven't attempted. As we have conquered Throne of the Four Winds and Bastion of Twilight only once each, we're going to need to run those more often before we attempt them heroically.

We had some guild groups doing Arena matches and we are at 704 out of 1,000 winning matches towards the achievement Killing With Friends. If you have any interest in running Arena, please talk to Fenistra so he can compile a list of interested people.

We are doing quite remarkable for a guild that plugs along at its own speed, doing its own thing. We have a lot planned in the next 3 months. Yes, I am looking that far in advance because we can't fit everything into one month. As we approach the end of this month and look to next month, if there is something you are interested in running, an achievement you'd like to get (within reason), I need to know about it. I will be putting the schedule for March together soon and need to know what things people would like to run.

Thanks for being a part of Spectacular Death.

--Gimm

We went into Sunwell last night. While we can, and did, blast through content, I wanted us to take it a bit slower. Blizzard put some time into Sunwell, to expand on pieces of the lore and to set the stage for later events, such as Kalecgos who is now in charge of the blue dragons since Malygos went mad and we had to kill him in Eye of Eternity.

Particularly of interest, to me, was the end fight against Kil'jaeden. The very first time I went in here, the group I was with (all level 80s), sort of blasted through content. I saw part of how the KJ fight was to happen. I've always wanted to see and experience the whole thing. Yes, that's hard at our level, but we were successful doing mostly auto attacks. We were able to engage the final dragons. Here is the video from last night.



There are other bosses who have longer fights than we currently see because we can blast them to pieces, Ragnaros and Nefarian in Blackwing Lair come to mind. It takes skill to be able to withhold your power so these events get played out as intended, but, we did it last night, we can do it again.

Lastly, I think KJ's arrival is one of the best boss entries in the game. Having spent days and days listening to Arthas, he could stand with an improvement in how he starts his battle. What boss's arrival do you like?

--Gimm

We got another achievement tonight. Huzzah for us!

A group ran into 25-man Naxx, cleared all 4 wings on Tuesday and finished off Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad on Wednesday. Branni had the great idea, because we were so close to this, that we should, well...

JUMP! Everyone! So, after we finished KT and contributed to a minute and a half of guild achievement spam, we met by the meeting stone and jumped. The outcome was predictable.

We raced up to the keep to repair and, viola, we got the achievement. This puts us at 1605 achievement points. Branni also pointed out we're only 20 points behind Dark Oath who is in 10th place. There are a few things we could work on to get that 20 points. Probably the "easiest" is We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, which is fish up 25,000 fish or other stuff, from pools. Our total stands at 21,932 of 25,000. Three thousand fish is a lot but if everyone fished for 30 minutes every time they were on, it would quickly add up. We will be working on City Attacker in March.

The Monday Blackwing Descent group hit the lava, so to speak.

The Nefarian/Onyxia fight is a bugger. We could just barely get into Phase 2 before everyone died. We were disappointed because it's the last raid we need to clear and then exalted toons can get the Dark Phoenix mount. It's going to take some work to get these two down. Thanks to Jovarastus for leading us. He did a great job in his first real raid leading. Thanks to Unthur for tanking; Pinkel, Janarr and Argia for heals; and Varaluna, Squidchin, Tarsan and Duellona for dps.


I am still making Lovely Charms as I grind some items we need for the guild bank. There are probably others in the guild with charms which form the bracelets which you exchange one for one for tokens. If you are needing a few bracelets, speak up in chat. I and others are happy to help so you, too, can be as awesome as Lohnar and I.

Upcoming, we have Sunwell, OS3 and a 25-man Firelands run. If we don't have enough people for a full 25 man group, we'll take everyone who comes somewhere else so we will raid Sunday night.

--Gimm