Tawyn and the Case of the Missing Chess Loot

On Sunday I did the Chess Event in Karazhan.

But then it decided to glitch and afterwards we all got pooped into Curator's Room instead of back into the Chess Room.

We ran back, but much to our dismay, it meant we could only see the loot and badges inside the chest... we couldn't actually take them because we apparently hadn't run back fast enough.

Ya know what I saw in there?

[Fiend Slayer Boots].

Mmmyep.

After much whimpering and clawing at the glass, I sent in a ticket to the GMs, and about an hour later one popped up (mid-crazy-pull) and I informed him of the glitch. He asked a couple questions about it, then told me that everybody in the raid should send in a ticket about their lost badges but that he would have to escalate the issue of the unlootable-loot to a higher power, and that they would get back to me. I said "Sounds good!"

We downed Prince for the first time. It was an epic battle. By the end, the tank was the last one standing; the priests (post-Spirit of Redemption form) having hit the bucket mere seconds before Prince. It was also the longest 1% on a boss you've ever seen in your life. Yeah... it was intense. We decided to call our Karazhan a big success for the week.

But I stayed around and waited a while for the GM. He didn't come.

I kept waiting. No GM.

Finally, after staying up much later than my bedtime, I went to sleep.

The next morning I got online; my ticket to the GM was still in the upper right-hand corner of the screen. But alas, there was still no response.

It's Tuesday night now, and still no word from the GMs.

This is killin' me, you guys. /twitch

Boots.

Boots.

Boots.

(Really though, I've no right to complain; I got a nice new cloak from Shade of Aran, not to mention my shiny new rifle. ...but... you guys... My current boots are level 67 rogue blues. /whimpers again, and contemplates various ways to bribe the GMs)

P.S. Are Felsteel Stabilizers really that hard to come by? I swear, I've been stalkin' the Auction House for days. How is the kind Mr. Flinthammer ever supposed to make me my scope at this rate, as he so generously offered to do?

/asplode

Pick a pet, any pet!

So I'm sure you long-time readers know about Tux and Locke, but who's the third pet in my stable?

Well, currently, it's a level 68 Bloodmaul Dire Wolf from Blade's Edge, named Amarok. Amarok being the name of a giant, fearsome wolf in Inuit mythology, and also the name of an amazing piece of Open Source software. I originally got him partially because I was inspired by my desktop wallpaper and partially because I wanted a pet that still did some damage but also had a little more armor than my other two pets, for grinding and the like. But for some reason I haven't really gotten attached to him the same way that I have to Tux and Locke. Oh, he's a neat little pet, but... I dunno. I'm sorta feeling like something different.

So here is where I turn to you, readers, for help and advice.

Should I stick with the wolf, or try something different?

Oh, and here are the current candidates for "Try Something Different":

Raptor:

Tux was the first pet I ever tamed, and the second was Wash, a Mottled Raptor from Wetlands. I'd had my eye on a raptor pet almost as long as I'd been playing the game, and I went out and tamed Wash the second I was a high enough level. (Oh, and for those of you who do not "get" the name... click here, please.)

For a while, Tux sat in the stable while Wash followed me everywhere. Then I started to feel bad for Tux so I pulled him out again. Then I tried alternating between Tux and Wash for a while but it soon got to the point where I simply could not keep them both up to me in level. Finally while questing in Stranglethorn Vale I realized that level-36-Wash just could not hold aggro on some of the level 40 mobs I was trying to attack, and I was forced to choose between Tux and Wash... and, well, I picked Tux and Wash went to the stable for good.

There he stayed until I was level 69 when I realized that I needed that third stable slot (the other two taken by Tux and Locke) to be able to learn the highest level skills for my kitty and birdy. It was actually something that I'd known I'd have to do for a while, but I'd been putting it off because I'd gotten rather attached to Wash in the short time that he'd quested with me. So finally one day I took a deep breath, pulled him out, took him to the prettiest spot in Nagrand, and released him.

...I cried. Real hunters cry.







(Warning: if you are anything like me, then do not look at these pictures while listening to "When Somebody Loved Me" from Toy Story 2 unless you want to risk bursting into tears.)

*pulls self together*

Anyways, the point is that I still have this little longing in my heart to have a raptor waddling after me again. The downside is that they do fill basically the same role as a cat so it might be sort of redundant to have both. But hey, who said having hunter pets had to be logical, right?

"A feeling is not much to go on."
"Sometimes a feeling, Mister Spock, is all we humans have to go on."

Ravager:

I've never had one. Supposedly they are the highest-DPS-pet in the game and that aspect sort of intrigues me. I'd like to try something else in my raids and heroics; I love Locke but he's gotta get some time off sometimes ya know?

Unlike many people, I find ravagers to be cute in an Aliens/hydralisk sort of way. "Pike, you're nuts for using the words "cute", "Aliens", and "hydralisk" in the same sentence." Yes, yes I know. (Hey, Starcraft is cute.)

I do rather like the idea of trying out a type of pet that I have never tried before... it'd be exciting I think.

Windserpent:

My character Lunapike has a Windserpent as one of her two pets (the ever so cute bright red Springpaw Lynx is the other) and I've really enjoyed having him as a pet. Lightning Breath is great and scales with hunter AP, so as your attack power goes up it will make a difference in your noodly Windserpent buddy as well.

I'll admit I'm also inspired by the fact that a hunter friend of mine who I have ridiculous amounts of respect for (and who consistently beats me in PvP although I outgear the heck out of him) runs with a Windserpent. Clearly he knows something that I don't. (Actually I think he knows a lot of things that I don't.) And I think the Windserpent might be a part of that secret. MUST. FIND. OUT.

Boar:

If I want to stick with my original plan of having a grinding pet, then the ever-fashionable boar might be a good choice. The downsides are that it'd be quite a level grind to bring one up to level 70, and also, the recent boar nerfs make this somewhat less of a must-have-pet than it used to be. Still, it's a solid choice with lotsa armor.

And there you have it. What's a hunter to do for her third stable slot? The nostalgia and overall coolness-factor of the raptor? The damage, unique-ness, and new-ness of a ravager? The fun Lightning-Breath-goodness of the windserpent? The armor of the ol' boar standby? Or should I just stick with my wolf?

...I'm torn.

What do you think?

I've put a poll up on the sidebar so you can cast your vote. And please feel free to leave your comments on pet-picking!

This Is My Rifle

"This is my rifle. There are many like it but this one is mine. My rifle is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I master my life. My rifle, without me is useless. Without my rifle, I am useless. I must fire my rifle true. I must shoot straighter than any enemy who is trying to kill me. I must shoot him before he shoots me. I will....

My rifle and myself know that what counts in this war is not the rounds we fire, the noise of our burst, nor the smoke we make. We know that it is the hits that count. We will hit...

My rifle is human, even as I, because it is my life. Thus, I will learn it as a brother. I will learn its weakness, its strength, its parts, its accessories, its sights and its barrel. I will keep my rifle clean and ready, even as I am clean and ready. We will become part of each other. We will..."

- Rifleman's Creed



So yeah, cookie for the first person to guess what exactly about this picture is making me grin like a lunatic!

/continues grinning like a lunatic

You broke my Karazhan!

That's me. In a raid group with one other person so I could run into Karazhan for two minutes.

And that's... that's another raid group in the same instance with me.

After a lot of confusion and pondering over whether we actually could 11-man Karazhan, the one final member of the other raid group realized he couldn't get into the instance because the "raid was full". Ah, so that was it. Ten people with the same Raid ID can all get into the same copy of Kara, regardless of groups. That's how it seems, anyway, because I'd earlier been called in to help on Curator with two of these people a couple days ago... so I was, in fact, sharing a Raid ID.

Still, I can tell you right now, after months of playing this game, it is downright surreal to be in an instance all by yourself and suddenly run into a bunch of other players.

My Kingdom for a Choco-Bow

In a comment in my last post, Sonvar asked me when I'm going to be replacing my PvP bow with a good PvE bow.

Sonvar, I am the first person to admit that my bow is not the best bow for PvE. Not by a long shot. The reason I've been using it this whole time is because I got sick of [Valanos' Longbow]. Every new-70 hunter and their ravager has Valanos' Longbow. And no upgrades to it were dropping for me (none has ever dropped for me actually) so I did the honor grind and got myself a spiffy and oh-so-shiny [Gladiator's Heavy Crossbow]. It's slow, it's not an optimum PvE Beast Mastery bow by any means, but it's served me well regardless.

As for when I'm going to replace it... the answer is... the very second I loot my 150th Badge of Justice. Currently I'm sitting at 93 of 'em or something similarly abysmal. "Pike, why do you need 150 badges?"

This:

[Crossbow of Relentless Strikes].

This is delicious on so many levels. Improves your hit rating. Improves your crit rating. Improves your attack power. 2.80 speed. 93 DPS. Probably tastes divine when plucked, roasted, and lightly seasoned.

It may be a Choco-Bow (This is the new name of this weapon. So let it be written, so let it be done), but I will be doing heroics all weekend and it will be mine.

Top Secret Project #314159: A Confession

That's me.

Tamaryn, kittycat, druid.

Yes, I can hear you, screaming at your computer monitor, "Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute!"

"Didn't you roll a horde druid that you got to level ten?"

Yes, yes I did. Then I decided to reroll as an Alliance druid because I wanted to play with my guild.

"You actually got a non-hunter character to level 20?"

Hey, this is my second non-hunter to get to level 20, thankyouverymuch. I have a 21 mage.

"So you decided to make a feral druid?"

Actually no, all my talent points thus far have gone into the Balance tree. The picture shows me in Cat Form cause I just got it and thought it looked fun.

"So you're gonna level Moonkin?"

Yup, I figured it was the best bet if I wanted to be able to solo decently efficiently while still having a strong mana pool for times when I'd want to jump into a healing role. Endgame I think I'm gonna either stay moonkin, or more likely, switch to tree, because I really want to give healing a serious try.

"Wait... did you just say... endgame...?"

Yes. Yes I did. I'm being serious when I say I'm leveling this character. And thus far this is the only non-hunter class that has been able to hold my interest for a decent amount of time.

Here's the deal, basically I decided that I wanted to try playing a "hybrid" class that would allow me to heal, or, with the proper reshuffling of gear and talent points-- tank, for my guild. That gave me two options: paladin and druid. In the end it came down to whether I wanted a reliable rez or whether I wanted to be able to turn into stuff, and being able to turn into stuff won out. (Not to mention I have a horribly hard time trying to get into paladins. I just can't do it... I don't know why!)

How am I liking the class so far? To be honest I've been having a lot of fun with it. It's fun to be able to cast at stuff and then when you're running low on mana, switch to bear or cat and start swiping at things. It's fun to be able to run around and give people buffs (hunter pets are always buffed. Always.) Perhaps one of my favorite things is that it's an all new challenge for me. Running into quests that are orange or red to me with one of my hunters is challenging and it's fun to take on that challenge; but trying to do the same with my druid is even more challenging, partially because I'm still learning about the class. I felt so proud of myself today trying to complete some collect-the-mushrooms quest in a cave in Darkshore. There was one last mushroom that I had to get that was surrounded by three guys all at my level, one of which healed. I popped an armor elixir, cast Regrowth on myself, hopped into Bear Form and ran into the fray. A healing potion, a couple healing spells, and a whole lotta Mauling and Swiping later, I'd finished the quest and was /dancing all over the cave.

That's really the beauty of the class so far-- you can change your style of play based on what you feel like doing. Feel like casting? You can. Feel like tanking? You can. Feel like being a rogue? You can. Feel like healing? Yep, you can do that too. Granted, this does leave out "feel like being a hunter?", which is my favorite type of character, but hey... nobody's perfect. And running around in Cat Form sorta feels like a perpetual Eyes of the Beast.

I have no idea how much longer I'll be able to feel like a true hybrid before I realize that my feral skills are falling farther and farther behind because I'm spec'ing and gearing myself up like a mage, but in the meantime, it's fun. There is a "MoonkinForLife" in my guild who told me he leveled up to 30 with no problems using Cat Form, even as Balance, so that's encouraging.

Oh and for the record, I still like hunters the best and this is always gonna be a hunter blog. =P My hunterness, I feel, extends beyond the game whereas donning the druid costume for a couple hours does not.

That said, I'm having Writer's Block lately. Ask me hunter questions so I can answer them. Dooooo iiiiiiit!

Easing into Endgame

World of Warcraft is an interesting creature.

It is, of course, an MMORPG-- "Massively Multiplayer" being the first two words in that acronym. And yet if you want, you can go through much of the game without really dealing with too many people. That's what I did. Oh sure, there's other people you can interact with and there's a living breathing economy, much like on Neopets which is what I played pre-WoW. But you can level to 70 basically without any outside help.

When I was level 19 or 20 or so, I did Deadmines because somebody told me I should. It was my first ever instance, people were impatient with me (to be fair I was the worst hunter of all time at this point-- pet on aggressive and immolation trap for the win) and the whole experience really left a negative impression on me and after that, with the exception of a few run-throughs by higher-level friends, I hardly did any instancing at all until I hit Outlands.

And this is where it started to get interesting, because this is where our guild really started to grow and we started to do stuff together. Our little Karazhan group that we have now has been running stuff together since Hellfire Ramparts-- heck, a few of us have been running together since Zul'Farrak. But for the most part, we went through Outlands together, running instances as we encountered them and sort of learning together. This has culminated in what I think is a very solid group of people who know how to work efficiently as a team.

So you'd think the level 70 endgame would be a breeze right?

Well, it takes a lot of work that really hadn't occurred to me beforehand, simply because I've never played an MMO with situations like this before. Karazhan is a ten-man raid that takes quite some time to do if you're still learning it. So it's a pretty big time commitment. And it's really hard to sync up the schedules of so many different people, most of whom have school or work or even the military going on in their real lives. And it just so happens that as a guild officer, I am now in charge of trying to plan this and get it together, and keep everybody happy.

It's a little bit stressful and it pushes me out of my comfort zone, and I have to admit it had me worried for a while. Had WoW finally turned into a job? Was I breaking my own "it's a game" rule by continuing to play?

But I've been thinking about it and I've decided-- WoW isn't just any ol' game. It is an MMORPG as I said at the beginning of my post. It has plenty of solo content, but if you want to really, truly unlock the "massively multiplayer" portion of it, it's going to take some work because other people are involved, not just you. But that, I think, is part of what makes endgame so rewarding.

It's not everybody's thing, and that's quite okay. In fact, as I even told my boyfriend the other day... "Sometimes I catch myself wishing that I could just go back to when all I had to worry about was how many kobolds I had left to kill." But in the end, as much as I do truly love the solo content of the game and the leveling (hence all the alts), I also love running instances and raids with my friends. And to experience that, you've got to be willing to put in a little effort... more than you might initially expect.

And that, in a nutshell, is why I've been a little scarce these past couple of weeks. Because I had to take a little break to sort of define the game in my head and decide if the sudden new "work" aspect of the game that jumped on me without warning was justified. I've decided it is.

As is running into Orgrimmar with a couple buddies when you're bored, just to see if you can actually hit Thrall once before dying:



I think I got in a single Arcane Shot. It was epic.

Geek is the New Black

Now I'm not one to hide my nerdiness and all-out geek pride.

But on the other hand, it's not something I bring up with a whole lot of people. Largely I think it's just because I assume that not very many people can relate to me if all I ever do is talk about Linux and video games. In order to get to know people, I sort of subconsciously stay on their level of interests, which I'm pretty sure in most cases is not mine.

But I sort of got tired of it today. Tired of beating around the bush. Tired of going "Um, er, ah..." when people ask me what my hobbies are or what I do in my spare time and I wonder what sort of blank stares I'd get if I told the whole truth.

Somebody asked me today what I'm doing tomorrow. I said "Raiding Karazhan with my guildies in World of Warcraft." "Oh... okay," was the semi-stunned response. It was all slightly awkward but I felt good. I'd unabashedly outed myself and it was nice.

In the breakroom at work today somebody came in and sat down across the table from me. We sat there munching on donuts and he asked me what I did last night. I said "I played video games." "Ooh, what games?" "World of Warcraft." "Ah yes," he said. He'd never played it but he knew a lot about it. We talked about XBox 360 games and Starcraft 2 for a while before he finished his donut and made his exit.

Not long after he left, two other people came in. One was a departmental manager and the other guy was someone who started working there not long after I did. They had McDonalds and they came in and sat down at the table and set up their food. Then the manager turned to the other guy and said simply: "I'm telling ya, mining, herbalism, and an epic flying mount, and you'll be set for life."

The other guy replied, "Well, I've just got mining to supplement my engineering. I finally learned how to make the +10 damage scope for myself yesterday!"

The engineer, as it turns out, began playing five months ago or so and is a level 65 hunter.

I told him if he made Goblin Jumper Cables, people would love him if he feigned death in an instance and could then rez the healer. He was pretty impressed with this idea.

He said he was trying to work on gaining rep with a lot of factions so he would have kind of a headstart when he got to level 70. I told him to start working on his Cenarion Expedition rep so he could nab Glyph of Ferocity.

Then my break was over.

I foresee some more fun chats between the two of us in the future.

Apparently I was underestimating the world's geek level. And I'm glad to say so.

On a completely different note, my boyfriend, Mr. Pike (though he prefers to be called "LS"), the infamous warlock who little level six Tawyn trekked across the world to find, started his own blog a little while ago and now feels he has enough content to warrant some visits. So go on, head over to Wearing Black in the Back and read what he has to say about roleplaying (both in and out of WoW), warlockery, and a variety of other goodies.

*pushes you over*

I live! I promise!

Huge apologies for the lack of meaningful posts recently, and my lack of presence in the WoW blogging community in general. Basically I've had a lot of stuff going on lately both in-game and in-real-life, and on top of that, I've hit a bad case of... maybe not writer's block so much as "Editor's Block". I have probably five or six posts I've written on various subjects in the past couple of weeks that are "in queue" but have not been published because I'm unsatisfied with them, and I'm having troubles trying to fix them so that I am satisfied with them. So they don't get published. I'd like to get them all out there someday, though.

In the meantime, rest assured knowing that all is well in Pike's WarcraftLand. I've been logged into Tawyn a lot, doing Kara and various heroics and rep/gold farming. A lot of my alts are sadly being neglected, though, in favor of a... Top Secret Project which will reveal itself later. Whether or not the Top Secret Project goes as far as I want it to, I can't say, but this particular one has gone farther than most of my others, so... we shall see.

Locke! What're you thinking?

Cheating on me like that...

Hunter Kindergarten: Chain-Trapping 101

I'm enjoying this movie thing so much that I decided to make my very first real instructional movie:



Tawyn and Tux show you the basics on how to chain-trap in an instance.

I noticed something though. Something that didn't even occur to me until afterwards when I was watching the finished product.

...I kept using certain pronouns.

...like "we"... and "us"...

...is it a hunter thing, or is this what happens when you read too much BRK? Have I been permanently transformed? Am I doomed to refer to myself in the plural form from here on out? WHAT SORT OF MONSTER HAS BEEN UNLEASHED?

/cough

Enjoy the movie, hopefully it's helpful to some of you =D And I promise I'll start posting some non-movie stuff again too.

And yes, I know I have a dorky voice.

How to: Make a World of Warcraft Movie

Loronar asked me to write up a little tutorial on how to make a WoW movie.

Sure thing!

This is going to be super basic. No need to download too many fancy programs. This means you won't be able to do too much fancy stuff with your movies, but you WILL be able to make a basic movie and add your own sound and that type of thing.

This tutorial is written for Windows XP because it's what most people use and because sadly, there does not seem to be a good solid program yet for Linux that works well with WoW/Wine. I've looked. I imagine they'll have one out probably in the next couple of years but until then, I use Windows for my movie-making needs. (I imagine the tutorial for Vista would be similar-- but I've never used Vista so I can't say.)

How to Make a World of Warcraft Movie:

1.) Download Fraps. Fraps is the only program I've found thus far that works as well as it does. There are other free, open source programs out there which I'd rather be using but most of them are still sort of "in beta" and do not work with WoW, at least not as well as you need it to. So for now there is really one thing you can use to record a movie if you are on Windows, and that is Fraps.

You will need to pay a one-time fee of about $35 to unlock the full program (being able to record more than 30 seconds at a time). If you don't feel like paying a fee I'm sure there's other ways to "acquire" the full version. But you didn't hear that from me. =P Myself, I just coughed up the money.

Basically after you pay you'll be able to access a "members only" section of the site, and download a full version.

2.) Install Fraps. Straightforward enough.

3.) Open Fraps. You have some options in here you can play with. The options are pretty self-explanatory. I myself left pretty much everything at default, although I did disable sound recording so I could record my own sound (also because it saves a little disk space). On the subject of disk space, the movies you are going to be recording will be huge initially, so make sure you have a lot of hard drive space available.

4.) Minimize Fraps and boot up World of Warcraft. You will notice you have a number in the upper left corner of your screen. This is not going to go away so long as you have Fraps running. It displays your Frames-per-second. If the numbers are yellow, it means you are not recording, if they're red, it means that you are. The numbers will not show up on your finished movie, so don't worry. Now let's say you just want to record a test movie to make sure everything's working right. Press F9. It'll probably open one of your bags, but wait, it also makes Fraps start recording! See, the little number in the corner turned red. And if you have a computer that boasts pretty good but not excellent stats, as mine does, you will probably notice that your game is slightly choppier now. You will lose some FPS while Fraps does its thing, but unless your computer is really outdated the game should still be playable, if a little bit choppier.

5.) You can run around for a bit, shoot some stuff, whatever you want to record. Then press F9 again to stop recording. The number will turn yellow again and your game will probably get a lot smoother. And your bag will either open or close again. (You can go into the options and set the default recording key to something else if you don't want it to also open your bags. Or you can just do what I do and open your bag before you record, so it closes it when you start.)

6.) You now have a movie in your Fraps folder, which by default is C:/Fraps. But you're not finished yet because maybe you want to add music-- not to mention the movie is way too big to upload to YouTube right now. Fortunately, Windows comes with something called Windows Movie Maker. Just go into your Start Menu and find it, it's not in any subfolders or anything.

7.) Open Windows Movie Maker. You have a sidebar that gives you some options, you want to click on "Import Video" and navigate to your Fraps folder and import your movie. Now it's going to show little thumbnails of parts of your movie in the main area. Drag each of these parts, in order, down to the timeline at the bottom and arrange them one after the other. You can press play to preview your movie and make sure you got all your thumbnails in there (one time I forgot and finished/uploaded an entire movie before I realized that a portion of it was missing-- do not let this happen to you! =P)

8.) So you have what we in the industry call "picture lock". (Look Mom, I'm using my degree!) This means that the picture part of your movie is all finished and you just need to add sound. Go back to the sidebar and click on "Import Audio or Music". Now you can navigate to maybe some music you want to add, or some narration that you made, and import it in. It's going to show up with all your movie thumbnails. You can drag it down to the bottom section of the timeline and move it around so it starts and ends when you want it to. You can also trim your song if maybe it's too long, you do that by finding the end that you want to clip, waiting until it turns into a little double-headed red arrow, and then dragging it down so it matches up in length with your movie. If you have more than one sound file you'd like to use, you can upload more than one and put one right after the other.


9.) Now I should warn you-- chances are your audio clip is going to be very very loud by default. To fix this, click on your audio, go into the "Clip" menu at the top of the program, go into Audio, go into Volume, and set it so it's a lot lower. (You can also fade your audio in and out and a few other basic things here.)

10.) Alright, you can play your movie back and if everything looks good, head over to "Save to my computer" on the sidebar. It will give you some options about what to name your movie, where to save it, what size you want it to be, etc. If you want to make a fairly-decent-sized movie you can upload to YouTube or Blogger, I recommend saving the movie as "Other Settings: High Quality Video (Large)". Eventually it will get to a part where it has to process your movie; depending on how long your movie is this will take ten or fifteen minutes or so.

11.) After processing you've got a nice little WoW movie sitting on your desktop (or wherever you decided to save it)! Congrats! You can now upload it to YouTube, Blogger, or something similar-- be aware that the uploading process for both of these also takes ten or fifteen minutes or so.

And there you have it, that's how you make a WoW movie with minimum amounts of fuss. Have fun filming!

Traptacular Trapathon

When you are chain-trapping, possibly your two most important assets are: firstly, making sure your trap cooldown is up before you first pull, and secondly, distance. Putting distance between yourself and your trap helps more than I think many people realize; it can give you up to some ten seconds of extra time if you concussive shot/wing clip your mob, and still a lot of extra time even if you don't.

I have a lot of hunters who will ask me how I can keep something trapped for so long, and those are my secrets. Starting off with no trap cooldown, and then maintaining distance. If you lose distance, you can still regain it later to maintain your edge-- it's difficult but can be done.

I've discovered I'm really into this whole "movie" thing (I guess my filmmaking degree is coming out here?) so I'd like to show Tux in his motion picture debut in "Trapathon: Tawyn Gets Bored". Basically when I get bored farming Scryer signets, I'll go trap a mob and see how long I can keep him trapped while I burn down the other guys. This is mostly a "just for fun" movie as opposed to an "instructional" movie because I figured BRK already has his fantastic chain-trapping how-tos-- so this is mostly to show that keeping your distance = endless chain-trapping, even if you don't have any points in Survival:



Music: Beatnick vs. Loituma - Leva's Breaks/Caramell - Caramelldansen (Speedycake Remix)

(Yes, this is the type of stuff I listen to when I play WoW. No wonder I'm so upbeat and postive about the game all the time, right? =P)

Another important thing to keep in mind when you're trapping is to make sure that you are inbetween your trap and the mob you are trapping. Sounds obvious right? Well sometimes it's easy to forget and move yourself so you have a better shot at whatever you are shooting at the moment. Always be aware of your surroundings so you can adjust yourself if need be-- for example, you'll notice at around 3:50 that I saw my hapless Trap Victim was running towards me and not the trap-- so I had to quickly move myself so he would run into my trap instead.

So there we have it: Start with your next trap ready, maintain distance, and keep the trap between you and your mob. With those three things you can trap indefinitely, at least until you decide to pull five mobs at once =P And even then you can regain your trapping rhythm and continue trapping indefinitely... well... until the wrong mob runs into your trap anyway.

I enjoy making these movies but I sort of feel like most of the instructional stuff has already been covered by BRK and others such as The Hunter's Mark. But if you've got anything in particular that you'd like to see, let me know and I'd be glad to see what I can whip up! (Oh, and also, let me know if you've got a good solid place where I can host bigger sizes of these movies).