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Episodes
Sunday Apr 20, 2008
Sunday Apr 20, 2008
Aprillian and Ashayo discuss another week of playing World of Warcraft, Blizzard's great MMORPG. Emails and a special interview with a confirmed Alta holic and Mage rounds it out. What We've Been Doing:
Aprillian
Working on getting Aprillian to 58, she's currently 48. After she dinged, she went to Og to train Had her soloing in Felwood, doing the Jaednar quest, but she kept dying so I brought in Auntrillia
Started a Mage named Pia
Thursday Morning Since Aprillian was running out of rested XP, I took her to Tanaris to do the Gahz'ridian Ornaments quest. She would get a little XP from killing mobs in the desert and complete that quest for xp. Plus she can level up her herbalism. She started at 292, Collecting ornaments went well. There was an ally at the Eastmoon Ruins killing the ogres, and ignoring the ornaments and herbs. It was easy pickings. I had Pia on at the same time. She was over halfway to 10 and dong Fairbreeze quests. Aprillian finished and turned in the ornament quest and ended up with her herbalism at 295. She checked her log and found she had a quest to go to the Hinterlands. She hearthed back to Shat and then took the portal to UC and flew to TM. She didn't have the fp to Hinterlands, so she rode from TM. What a difference a few levels can make. I remember running through the Hinterlands and dying on other alts at lower levels who didn't have mounts. As she was riding around, she saw a ! in a Troll Mob village, she picked up the Venom Bottle Quest, then the Undamaged venom sac quest in TM. Which leads to a ZF quest. Good times. She flew back to Hinterlands and I left her in the inn to get some rested xp.
Meanwhile Pia's gotten to level 10 out that tower with the corrupted soil quest, and she's bumping up her herbalism from all the bloodthistle out there. She dings 10 and heads to Silvermoon to train. Along the way she passes Farstrider Retreat and pickes up 3 quests and then heads to Silvermoon. She gets the start of one of my favorite quests, the one where the buildins are floating in the sky. She also pick
Guest Triaa - Mage Every class has it's give and take. I started with hunters because I like pets and believe they are the easy button.
Thayloo -http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Lothar&n=Thayloo
It seems to me that the Mages get pretty powerful early on. Come on they make their own food.
Frost Nova and then fire. Spec fire until higher levels.
Happy Birthday to Matahorn April 16
Email:
Hello Aprillian and Ashayo This is Matahorn, a Dual boxer and a long time listener of the podcast. Also I am a fellow guildmember of Alea Iacta Est. I thought i would write to you and tell you how I Dual Box. I have 2 accounts but I play them together both on the 1 computer with 1 screen. I atl tab between the 2 characters. Matahorn is my level 70 Tauren Hunter and he is used to help my lower level characters through instances or hard any group quests. I am also an Altaholic. I will start on a server with a hunter because I find them easy to level and I really enjoy playing them. When he hits 70 I then use his great money making ability to help out my alts. Another reason I love alts is that they are great for having the different professions and not having to rely on the AH for my goods. Anyway I just thought I would write in. Keep up the great podcast and see you in the Game
Matahorn
P.s For the Horde
While setting up the podcast, I got an email from Glanthur. Always nice to hear from him. He writes:
Subject: Stalker's Chain Armour
My first complete set. The boots and the belt are not part of the set, but I wanted to match to look pretty. LOL. What do you think?
/Salute to you Glanthur, looks pretty spiffy!
http://armory.worldofwarcraft.com/character-sheet.xml?r=Earthen+Ring&n=Glanthur
Monday Apr 07, 2008
Monday Apr 07, 2008
What We've Been Doing Aprillian Making Decisions: Felt a little pressure this week to level Aprillian and Ardrion, but at the same time, I'm getting antsy about money and all the money I could be making if I had a level 70. But I'm ambivalent, because I know even though I can push Auntrillia to 70, she doesn't have decent gear. And then it's HS all over again and I'm not in the right outfit. Some were silly, bought a 24 slot LW bag. Ardrion has two 20 slot leatherworking bags, one in bank one on him but always needs more room. Since they are boe and unique, when I upgrade I'll have to vendor one.
I took Ardrion out to Tanaris to grind and farm turtles. It was a win win situation for him. He gets turtle meat, skin and turtle shell. Plus they are all neutral, he doesn't have to worry about aggroing other turtles. Although in a rare instance another turtle will join a fight, only happend twice the whole time he farmed/grinded turtles.
I didn't spend as much time as I usually do playing. Did a lot maintenance. Clearing out stuff. Sending low level greens to Aunrillia to de.S Tay, my Ally Dranei AH alt is back to making money. I had some competition for a while, but it slacked off. I thought about this while I was transferring stuff in Booty Bay. It's a very tedious thing to do. You have to put each individual pet up for auction and then immediately bid on it on the other character right away. One time there was a bot there who snatched a cockroach away but I just overpriced it a bit and was okay. I imagine the average player doesn't have enough patience to do this on an ongoing basis.
I spent Thursday morning getting Auntrillia Enchanting to 100. Friday morning, Aprillian, Treshel and Ardrion went to Gnomeran, just for fun. Of course we were overpowered for the instance, being 54, 46 and 41 respectively. I loved it. We all died when that Shortfuse chick set off that explosion. Aprilian used a soulstone and was stuck behind a wall of rocks and the other two spent 10 or 15 minutes running around Dun Morogh (whatever) until they found the
Saturdy spent leveling up an alliance Ashayo I haven't played as much as I normally do either. Monday I spent some time with Asheal and Ashield out in Hellfire peninsula doing the 1st few quests. Then Ashayo came and helped Asheal get some quests done so that Asheal was a level or so ahead. Asheal is now 60.
Tuesday I was in Kara before shutdown to help finish clearing it. Got nightbane down with about 5 minutes to shutdown :) Wednesday we had massive storms that took out the power and internet, so I didn't get to play at all.
Thursday was Jekle's turn for Kara with the "drunk with power" group. We have lots of fun and took our time downing the first three bosses. As you've seen Tarqq has an open invitation for you when you hit 70 - regardless of your gear! Jekle and Hiide have been doing the new dailies, but haven't had time for the Ogri'la. The new bombing run on the Isle of Quel'Danas got nerfed in Tuesday's patch. It now requires less hits to kill the pit boss and the sorcerers, which is good, because it was taking too many re-runs, and about 80% of the time is just waiting for the flight to take you to the bombing area. Something I meant to mention last week that I definitely DON'T like about 2.4. Hunter's got a big nerf in terms of their mana regeneration. Blizzard made the mana-per-5second formula the same across all classes. For a class like a hunter where mana is important, but we have previously not concentrated on maximising intellect, we're at a massive disadvantage. Estimates on the forums is that you need an intellect over 400 to get the same mana regeneration you were used to prior to 2.4. I'm having to change the way I do fights, and take alot more rests , which is a pain. On the flip side, Jekle as a resto druid is better off. And Ashayo's minions are regenerating mana faster, so I can mana tap them more regularly.
One thing I want to do is to try dual-boxing two of the same class - probably mages. I want to try out the technique of both toons casting the same spells simultaneously. However the only software I can find to do this isn't free. I'm both hesistant about buying it just for a trial, and because it isn't open-source, I can't be sure that it doesn't contain a keylogger - since it's very nature is to replicate keystrokes (and mouse movements) Even though I've levelled my tailor past 300, I've been persisting with trying to get felcloth from the vendor in Winterspring. I was beginning to think that they'd taken it away in 2.4, as I spent hours there once and got nothing. Then one day I got 3 pieces in several hours, then another time I got 11 in about 2hrs. So the spawn rate seems very random.
Show Close out. Great Mods I've been using. This one came from Renata of World of Warcast Podcast Quest History http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/7388/download/42496/
and Pet emote
http://www.curse.com/downloads/details/3538/
Sunday Mar 16, 2008
Sunday Mar 16, 2008
Ashayo joins Aprillian in a discussion of their week of gameplay in Azeroth. The two talk about what they've been doing in World of Warcraft and alts as well as Dual Boxing. Aprillian admits to not liking some of the pressure in regularly run instances. They also discuss secondary sklls as they pertains to alts. Thanks Blizzard!
What we've Been doing
Aprillian
Went into Hellfire Citadel with Auntrilia (Level 63 Hunter) and Rilfire (Level 60 Hunter) with Ashoyo's Hilde and Jekle Hard for me to do the organized shooting thing. Setting up stuff, I kind of like to just fight. Ashayo knows the best ways. I felt a lot of pressure.
Went to Zul Farak with Aprillian (Level 43 Warlock), Treshel (Level 53 Hunter) and Auntrillia. I was doing pretty fine, of course Auntrillia is overpowered. I take my time make sure my 3 are in position
I mentioned in gchat that I was doing this and someone offered to join me. They needed some of the quests finished.
Practicing ignoring people in Trade - Cuts down for a small time. A couple of times I hit invite instead of ignore and people accepted
Secondary Skills:
Email:
I'm Nîmrod. I play a level 70 hunter main the Eitrigg realm.
On my main account I have the level 70 hunter, a level 70 warrior, and a level 45 rogue I'm working on. On my secondary account I have a level 58 hunter, and a level 45 warrior.
I noticed you guys were talking about dual boxing and I thought I'd share something not many people know.
I play on a Macintosh. I am able to play two accounts simultaneously on the one machine!
My Mac is a fairly powerful one. It's an 8-Core machine. 8 3GHz intel Xeon cores and 8GB of RAM, with an ATI 1900 graphics card with 512MB on board.
I have two monitors attached, an Apple 30" display and an Apple 24" display.
On the Mac, you just have to create a copy of your WoW folder and poof, you can launch two separate WoW processes. WoW is very self contained, not spreading crap all over your hard disk, and we Mac folks don't have to worry about antiquated constructs like registry files.
I log into both accounts all the time using the one machine. My performance is still great.
I've even done this on my Mac laptop. I open two instances of WoW on the one screen in small windows, but it works. I wouldn't want to play long that way though. It's much nicer on the large flat screen monitors.
I like the podcast very much.
Keep it up!
Thanks,
Nîmrod.
The American Heritage Dictionary offers two distinct definitions of animrod -- either a hunter, or a person regarded as silly or foolish. The dictionary goes on to explain that the second meaning probably originated with the cartoon character Bugs Bunny. The wily Bugs used the term in its original sense to refer to dithering hunter Elmer Fudd, whom he called a "poor little Nimrod." Over time, however, the "hunter" meaning got dropped, and the "dithering" connotation stuck.
Hi Aprillian:
I just listened to my first episode of your podcast (#53) and wanted to let you know that I thought it was great. I've subscribed to it through iTunes and will definitely catch future episodes.
I met Ashayo last night for the first time. We ran Shattered Halls together and he mentioned the podcast. He was fun to group with and an excellent guest on your show.
Best of luck to you, Molsan
Wednesday Feb 20, 2008
Wednesday Feb 20, 2008
Aprillian and Glanthur talk about the latest events in Azeroth and how they affect their alts. We all know the main point of Lunar Festival, to get flight paths for lower level alts. And in the middle of it, I got Valentine's Day Fever.
What a crazy week.
Aprillian:
I spent the whole week running around Azeroth. I didn't get to do any quests. All of my alts have major exp. We all know the main point of Lunar Festival, to get flight paths for lower level alts. And in the middle of it, I got Valentine's Day Fever.
Emails
Hey Aprillian and Glanthur, its triaa again (70 lock) I don't know if you had this answer questioned yet, but in episode 48 the question of what the choice between infernal or felhound was raised. Waht the choice in these quests is the choice of one of the two different offhand items, if i remember correctly, the infernal is for increasing the damage of fire soells in the destruction tree, what the felhunter choice gives you is an increase in shadow damage, such as those in the affliction tree. However in my opinion what you get from outland easily outdoes these quickly, unless you really need the experience I recomend skipping them. They are a very long and almost now pointless chain. Well thanks guys keep up the good work on the podcast.
Triaa 2nd Email
Hey Aprillian and Glanthur, its Triaa again(70 lock). I had an experience this past week where I helped to explain the different talent trees to a 60 lock who did not really understand them. This showed me that no matter how long you have been playing your class you can always learn something new, so I thought I'd give a quick overview of how I personally level a warlock. However I do recommend you play your class however you want, these are just my personal opinions. I personally found for the ranges of 10-49 having an affliction lock is actually the easiest way to go. And then after 50, I respecced to demonology for the Felguard, best choice I ever made on my warlock. The Felguard provides an amazing tank, and some of the spells you get in the demonology tree improve your character's abilities incredibly. I thought I would include a spec that i used at 50 and one i am currently using to farm at 70. If you guys ever have any warlock questions don't be afraid to ask. Keep up the good work.
Here is the spec i used at level 50- http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?0000000000000000000002052030131250102501251000000000000000000000
And the one I use at 70- http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/classes/warlock/talents.html?0501220510000000000002052030131250103521351000000000000000000000
3rd Email
Welcome to Dual-Boxing Glanthur!
I agree with Aprillian ... FFA FTW, and get the follower to complete the quest first ... ALMOST.
Why "almost"? When doing grinding quests such as "go find me 30 human heads", and you kill 10 humans and only 2 of them turn out to have heads, (go figure) I found that it's faster while both character have the quest. If one character completes the quest, the drop rates seems to drop. I guess it makes sense mathematically. So I get the follower up to 29 heads, then work on the followee, so they both finish about the same time.
Ash
Glanthur is leaving. RL sucks sometimes.
Ashayo has graciously accepted
Sunday Feb 10, 2008
Sunday Feb 10, 2008
The Lunar Festival comes once again to Azeroth and Glanthur discovers the joys and pitfalls of Dual Boxing.
What We've been doing
Aprillian dinged 40 and is riding a chicken, she also has a felsteed, but I like the chicken better.
Managing alts during the Lunar festival, tough to get ones on the same level together.
http://www.wowwiki.com/Lunar_Festival
http://www.wowwiki.com/Elders
Went to Azhara
My newest account didn't have a higher level alt, so I transfered one over.
Ctrl Alt WoW News
Sagala's prize is on the way.
Glanthur:
Lots of dual boxing. Made two new toons (a hunter and a druid - just like Ashayo). I'm loving it. Though, macros are a lot more difficult than I thought they'd be.
Email:
Hey Aprillian and Glanthur, its triaa again (70 lock) I don't know if you had this answer questioned yet, but in episode 48 the question of what the choice between infernal or felhound was raised. Waht the choice in these quests is the choice of one of the two different offhand items, if i remember correctly, the infernal is for increasing the damage of fire soells in the destruction tree, what the felhunter choice gives you is an increase in shadow damage, such as those in the affliction tree. However in my opinion what you get from outland easily outdoes these quickly, unless you really need the experience I recomend skipping them. They are a very long and almost now pointless chain. Well thanks guys keep up the good work on the podcast.
Triaa
Our contest winner, Sagala writes:
I have a quick question about that, also...do you group when you dual box or stay ungrouped since your grouped toons share xp? Thanks. :)
Friday Feb 01, 2008
Friday Feb 01, 2008
Glanthur and Aprillian discuss the cycle of playing WoW. Glanthur decides to Dual box. Contest Winner is announced.
http://ctrlaltwow.com
Thursday Jan 24, 2008
Thursday Jan 24, 2008
Glanthur gets his flying mount but longs for more speed. But now he needs a good guild as support. Aprillian plays with her many alts. Letters for the contest.
Glanthur gets his flying mount but longs for more speed. But now he needs a good guild as support.
Aprillian plays with her alts.
Leters from Contes entries.
http://ctraltwow.com
Tuesday Jan 08, 2008
Saturday Dec 22, 2007
Saturday Dec 22, 2007
December 23 marks our one year anniversary. Aprillian and Glanthur discuss Winter's Veil, pallies and other stuff. Upcoming Contest and Aprillian attends MacWorld
December 23 marks our one year anniversary. Aprillian and Glanthur discuss Winter's Veil, pallies and other stuff. Upcoming Contest and Aprillian attends MacWorld.
Sunday Dec 02, 2007
Sunday Dec 02, 2007
Aprillian and Glanthur discuss the many play styles of WoW. Talk about what they've been doing, re-entry into WoW after taking a few days off, developments in the Guild Bank and going back to Basics to RTM!
What We've been doingAprillian
Glanthur:
Re-Entry
OK, It's that time of year again -- when everyone goes to the mall. So, work has really picked up. And, because of that I have very limited time for World of Warcraft. Now, I know a lot of people think that there's ALWAYS time for WoW, and you're right. However, last week also marked the release of Mass Effect, an Xbox 360 RPG that I had been waiting patiently for. New always takes the place of old, but I find that WoW is like your comfort foods. You may want to try snails, you may even like snails, but grilled cheese sandwiches will always be delicious. But, going back into WoW after some time away can be disorienting. Here are some things that I do to help get me back in the saddle again (which ever mount it happens to be):
- Challenge allies to duels outside a capital city. This will help you refamiliarize yourself with your hot keys and keyboard layout. The point is that it's OK to die. Better than running to your corpse across STV.
- Look over your quest and remember "The Tubes" are a great resource. Get your bearings and remember all those quest items and XP you were lusting after
- Go shopping. Nothing gets you back in the mood than a little spending spree at the AH. What good is fake gold if you don't spend it. Splurge and get those blue leggings you have been craving. If you're low on gold, then spend some cash on materials for professions. Leveling your professions also helps get me back into the swing of things.
Play your own way
Working out Guild Bank issues
Back to Basics
Strength (STR)
Increases your Attack Power with melee and ranged weapons. Increases the amount of damage you can block with a shield.
Agility (AGI)
Increases your Attack Power with ranged weapons. Increases your Armor. Increases your chance to score a critical hit with a weapon. Increases your chance to dodge attacks. Increases your Attack Power with melee weapons (rogue, hunter, and druids in cat form only).
Stamina (STA)
Increases Health. Increases your pet's Stamina.
Intellect (INT)
Increases Mana. Increases your chance to score a critical hit with spells. Increases the rate at which you learn weapon skills. Increase your pet's Intellect.
Spirit (SPR)
Increases Health regeneration rates out of combat and Mana regeneration rates when not casting spells.
Next week
Dual Boxing reintroduction