Welcome to the first edition of our weekly report, a serie of weekly posts narrating our adventures in Azeroth.
Nobelgarden edition
This week, we’ve been catching back on the main quest lines of Battle for Azeroth, we both completed the war campaign and the pride of Kul Tiras.
Jaina became such a badass!Golthor blowing things up with Jaina…
We’ve also unlocked the Void Elves and the Lightforged Draenei allied races. We honestly thought that the Void Elves would be our favourite, since we’re not really fans of Draenei… Well, it didn’t turn out that way, helping T’paartos completing his trial was hillarious. That got us wondering: where is he now? Hopefully, we’ll cross him again…
Our new friend
Then, we embarked on an amazing quest: the Dwarf heritage armour. There’s no secret here, we’re Dwarfs fans. Having us helping to restore an ancient Dwarf armour with the help of the furnace master was a total hit. We’ve been talking about it almost every day as one of our favourite quest ever.
Visiting the old Ironforge was amazingSoforah in excellent companyHaving us crafting our own armour was amazing!
It was also Nobelgarden and we went back to our favourite chocolate farming spot: Goldhsire. We both collected the 500 chocolates required to purchase the new toy (the Nobelgarden Heartstone) and the 5 new spring circlets. The funny thing with Nobelgarden is that we often see it as a chore that disrupts our questing, but, when we’re transformed as rabbits running amidst the chaos that is the egg hunt, we’re enjoying it very much.
You know you’re heading to Goldshire when…250 chocolates for 5 circlets, totally worth it!250 chocolates to hearthstone in style
Until now, I’ve absolutely loved questing and levelling in BfA. Upon my arrival in Boralus, I started my adventure in Tiragarde Sound. There was an instant click with the new content, one that I hadn’t experienced in a while. I found myself stopping everywhere to admire the beauty of the landscapes and the details that Blizzard has spent so much time creating. Also, the music is mesmerizing. Every morning, I wake up with the Boralus theme song in my head, a great start for my days.
One of the first quest chains that I did lead me to the encounter with the kraken, Viq’Goth at Anglepoint Warf. I absolutely loved to take part in defending the sea gate. It reminded me of Tethyr, the kraken that attacked Theramore. It already was one of my favourite quests, imagine my surprise when I discovered the leviathan theme in this new expansion. As a huge Cthulhu fan, I was ecstatic.
I also enjoyed saving sailors from the siren songs, uncovering the betrayal of Lady Ashvane, and horseriding in the Norwington Estate,… So many great quests in this zone that are already creating fond memories. With a special mention to the side quests of The Roughnecks. They’re probably my favourite Tiragarde quests, from shaving goats, to gathering honey, and killing wendigos… I had a fun adventure which lead to the meeting of the majestic Wildhammer Dwarf, Boss Tak.
Description: With a performance like that, it’s clear you’re one of the top dogs here. Boss Tak will want to see you. He’s up north checking on one of our camps in Waning Glacier. Head up that way and give him a hand. Oh, and I don’t recommend looking him straight in the eye… or at his feet… or really anywhere near him. Best bet, close your eyes when you’re talkin’ to him. – Wow-pedia
I can’t help but chuckle at this description. What can I say? I have a certain fondness for Dwarves.
Now off to explore Drustvar and Stormsong Valley. The adventure continues…
Dwarfs rule and I’ve fixed the captions, I’m so happyyyy!
After a far too long break from WoW, we have finally resubbed… Only with a few twists:
We’re back to the Alliance. During our time away from WoW, we’ve missed the Alliance the most, with its forests and its cosy inns. Also, Kul Tiras looks fantastic, it is perfectly on spot with our idea of fantasy;
After many experiments with other classes, we’ve decided to keep maining our hunters. The deciding factor is the fun. On top of the many advantages of the class, our hunters are dwarfs and, if you’d know us in real life, you’d know that we’re all about dwarfs;
The last one is a biggy: we want to keep away from the negativity train. While we didn’t stay away from WoW because of the negativity, we were certainly afraid to come back because of it. Honestly, the game is a total blast to us and we have so many things to do in it, that we don’t care if some parts are less fun than others. To that end, we’re trying to be more selective with the people we follow, that’s why we’ve started new Twitter accounts. Sometimes, a reset is all you need…
Oh, and our guild and blog are now called “The Sleeping Grizzly”, which is the name of the fictional tavern in our stories (you know dwarves and their taverns).
After a far too long break from PC gaming, we finally decided to build two new rigs…
For the build, we didn’t go overkill on the GPU, the price difference between an RTX 2070 and a 2080 ti was 1000,00€ per computer. Since 4k PC monitors with decent refresh rates aren’t within our reach yet, we targeted a gaming resolution of 1440p.
We went for an i9 9900k, since most of the bottlenecking in WoW comes from the CPU. It is also the first time that we used an AIO watercooler (Corsair h115i pro). It is incredibly more quiet and, so far, it seems to cool down the CPU very effectively.
We departed from the black Fractal case for something fancier: the NZXT H500. It is an amazing PC case with great cable management. The size and minimalist looks make it the perfect choice for our gaming space. Our desks are both 150cm wide and we didn’t want to be encased between two black blocks. Also, for years, I trusted the reviews about Fractal cases, but I never found the define models as silent as advertised, nor was the cable management that great. Actually, the H500 is even more silent and it doesn’t even use any damping material. I must admit that the use of PWM fans and a watercooler are probably responsible for the lower noise levels.
We took a few pictures during the process:
You can find the complete part list of the build on PCpartpicker.
Congratulations to Soforah for having participated to the assembly, she did an awesome job!
The anniversary event, The darkening of Tristram, has returned this year. I’ve already completed the Diablo 1 inspired dungeon on my PC, but I also wanted to run the event on my Switch. This time, I rolled a Necromancer. It was good fun exploring the labyrinth once again.
I’ve made some notes for the future since some things are easily forgotten:
When you start, make sure you start a fresh level 1 character. Run straight from the Old Ruins waypoint to the portal for The Darkening of Tristram without killing any mobs on the way. Once passed through the portal, you run straight to the Labyrinth without clicking anything. Clicking the cows, dead bodies,… will come later when you have obtained the necessary items. They are important for getting certain achievements, pets,… during the event.
The Butcher pet was the first one I got by clearing the dungeon with a fresh level 1 character solo. This will grant you the ‘An Eerie Red Glow Blurs Your Vision’ achievement and the Butcher pet at the end.
The Ogden’s Sign, and Ogden’s Brew (both banners), Red Soul Shard (legendary headslot gem), and The Butcher’s Cleaver (transmog) are easily obtainable since they are guaranteed rewards from killing bosses in the labyrinth. You clear the entire dungeon once and you have all of these for sure.
The next one is more tricky since it was bugged once again. How to get the plans for The Wirt’s Leg (transmog) and The Royal Calf (pet):
In Level 9 of the dungeon, you will find the Black Mushroom, click on it to obtain a Rotten Mushroom;
Go back to Old Tristram and find Adria’s Hut. Throw the Rotten Mushroom inside the cauldron to obtain Witch’s Brew;
Click the four corpses in town in this order: Farnham, Ogden, Pepin, and Griswold. The last corpse will drop the plan for Wirt’s Leg;
Then you can teleport back to town and teach it to the Blacksmith. You’ll find the plans under the Maces section. Now here’s where you have to pay attention since it was bugged 2 years in a row: If the plan is blue in stead of orange (legendary) don’t craft it! It costs 1 million gold to craft and a blue one (the bug) won’t do it. It has to be orange! They fixed the bug a few days later, but the damage was already done, I had lost a few million trying to craft the right Wirt’s Leg. I also had to first log into another character and then go back to my necromancer before the plan appeared legendary.
After you’ve crafted the legendary Wirt’s Leg, you have to salvage it so it offers up the Map of the Stars, which reads 2-1-3;
Go back to Adria’s Hut and click on the cow corpses in this order: middle (2), left (1), then right (3). This will open the Abandoned Farmstead portal;
Head through the portal and find Wirt’s Stash. Open the chest to get the Cow Pet Trinket and right-click it to earn the Royal Calf.
The Classic Demon Portrait is a reward for killing 40 unique classic monsters in the Anniversary dungeon, gaining you ‘The Protector of Tristram’ achievement. The full list of unique monsters:
Level 2: Rotfeast the Hungry, Shadowbite
Level 3: Brokenhead Bangshield, Madeye the Dead
Level 4: Blacklash the Burning, Gharbad the Weak, Snotspill
Level 5: Bloodskin Darkbow, Foulwing, Shadowcrow
Level 6: Bilefroth the Pit Master, Bloodgutter, Deathshade Fleshmaul
Level 7: Blighthorn Steelmace, Gorestone, Nightwing the Cold
Level 8: Baron Sludge, Firewound the Grim, Zhar the Mad
Level 9: Breakspine, Brokenstorm, Oozedrool
Level 10: Blackstorm, Goldblight of the Flame, The Flayer
Level 11: Bluehorn, Fangspeir
Level 12: Lionskull the Bent, Viletouch, Viperflame
Level 13: Rustweaver, Warlord of Blood, Witchmoon
Level 14: Graywar the Slayer, Steelskull the Hunter, Stareye the Witch
Level 15: The Vizier
Unholy Altar: Blackjade, Red Vex
Level 16: Sir Gorash
The Classic Angel portrait is awarded from the ‘I Sense a Soul in Search of Answers’ achievement. You can get this achievement by collecting all 7 Cultist’s Page items which are dropped by Temporal Priests. They can be found in the following locations:
Act I: The Weeping Hollow, Festering Woods, Cathedral levels 1, 2 and 4, Halls of Agony levels 1, 2 and 3;
Act II: Dahlgur Oasis, Desolate Sands;
Act III: Keep Depths 1, 2 and 3, Stonefort, Rakkis Crossing, Arreat Crater 1, Tower of the Damned 1, The Core of Arreat;
Act IV: Gardens of Hope 1, 2 and 3, Silver Spire 1 and 2, Hell Rift 1;
Act V: Westmarch Commons, Westmarch Heights, Paths of the Drowned, Battlefields of Eternity.
There can only be one Temporal Priest per location, which may drop duplicate pages so, be ready for several runs. They also drop while doing bounties so, you don’t necessarily need to complete this achievement with the same character you started the event with. Beware that you can’t trade these pages with a seasonal character!
I just finished the event for the second time, and I hope that everybody had as much fun as I had. Meanwhile, season 16 has started, and I’m experimenting with a new Witch Doctor build. But, more about that later!
I wanted to do it for a very long time and I finally did… I’ve built my very own Picade! I’ve done it while watching this video.
It took me two afternoons. The quality of the build is impressive, but what impressed me the most was the Raspberry Pi itself. It loads much faster than I expected and it is very easy to upload the roms wirelessly from my Mac via SMB.
Below is a small gallery of the building process. It starts with the frame and ends with the wiring.
I’d advise it to anyone who enjoys building things and playing retro games. Retropie doesn’t only emulates Mame roms, you can find the complete list of supported systems here. You don’t need any knowledge in electronics and no soldering is required. With a bit of logic, you can do anything.
During our second week off, Sardoken had the idea to write his own stories which, later on, I could illustrate. So, I decided to learn to draw again. It’s been 20 years since I last picked up a pencil… It will take some time to get back into it, but I won’t give up! I have spent a few afternoons copying simple drawings that I found on the internet, it’s was very relaxing. I’ll try to post my progress regularly.
It’s been a while that I wanted to knit my own scarf. I never knitted before and had no clue on how to do it. Thanks to a video on Youtube, I finally got started. It’s fun, but I made quite some mistakes, I guess that it will add some personality… I haven’t finished it yet, but I’m quite impatient to see the result.
A few weeks before the holidays I started Rise of the Tomb Raider, I had so much fun that I kept on playing until the middle of our first week. I haven’t collected everything yet, but I can see myself coming back regularly to complete each map.
I was already a fan of Life is Strange, so I thought that I would give a try to Before the Storm. Even if the gameplay is reduced to simple choices without the possibility to rewind, the game was entertaining. I really love Chloe Price and it was pretty fun spending a few afternoons in her company.
Then, just like the rest of the world, I’ve bought Red Dead Redemption 2. I was so hyped, I almost bought a cowboy hat for the release. Thank god I didn’t… As it turned out, I’m far less into the Far West than I thought. I enjoyed the first chapter, then I ended up alone in that huge world, it felt empty, soulless. Ultimately I got depressed and I deleted it.
That’s when I started the best game of my holidays: The Witcher 3. I had already tried it on PC a year go… At that time, I was still in WoW and other games didn’t easily interest me. Anyway, I got completely hooked, to the point that I instantly purchased the first book of the serie, a comic book, an action figure and a Funko. Now, that’s a world I love! I can’t help it but fantasy is where it’s at for me. I’m ready to explore each corner of every map and to complete all the quests. I’ll be there for a while…
Soforah
I started playing Yonder: The Cloud Catcher Chronicles on Switch a few weeks before the holidays started. I had so much fun in this game that I couldn’t resist reaching 96% completion. Yonder is about exploring the island, Gemea. The more you explore, gather materials and craft, the more you advance in the storyline. I’ve finished it all, except for the quest that requires you to find all the cats and planting all the trees. I think that the completion of these 2 quests would take me hours of mindless running around and, while I like to wander, this is too much for me.
After that, I wanted to give a try to Victor Vran on my favourite portable console. I remember quitting this game on PC because of the clunky gameplay, I somehow thought that it would be better on console… I was wrong! This game is even worse on Switch and the Overkill Edition is disappointing. I gave up after one afternoon.
Instead, I started playing Octopath Traveler. This game is a jewel, it’s beautiful and fun. Normally, I don’t like turn-based games, they easily become boring to me, but Octopath is different. I haven’t finished it yet, but I will!
Sardoken & Soforah
On Halloween afternoon, we played a tabletop game, Mysterium. It was the first time that we played this one and, with it’s Halloween settings, it was perfect for the occasion. It was a great moment and we can’t wait to be the next time!
Diablo 3 for Switch was released on the 2nd of November. We went to get it that same day and we haven’t played anything else since. We’ve levelled two seasonal crusaders and we’re currently working on getting to the free set. The Switch is an amazing port for D3, probably the best. We even have more fun than we had with the original.
We also made a major upgrade to our office room. Soforah bought her first Playstation, a black PS4 pro. We’ve both purchased a Steelseries Arctis pro headset and a LG 4K HDR 27′ screen.
This year, our holidays were supposed to be made of walks in the park, video games, horror movies and no coffee. After a few days, we had bought a new Nespresso machine. On the second week, we got our first tattoos and, on the third week, we had our office turned into a gaming room. None of this was planned, but you know what? We had a great time!
Since it was our Halloween holidays, we had planned to watch only horror. Just as the year before, it failed. There was a time when horror was great, we could watch one movie after another and have a great time… Well, that time is no more, horror nowadays is supposed to seduce everybody, that’s why most of it is closer to a psychological thriller than a real horror. While there are a few good movies, there aren’t nearly enough to watch on a three week span. Here’s a list of the things we’ve watched and what we thought about them:
Hold the Dark: the trailer was promising, mystery, snow, wolves and the super sexy Alexander Skarsgård. The reality was a boring, slow movie where, in the end, you have no clue what the point was. It felt like the movie was created by a drunk apprentice of David Lynch. Thank god for the snow;
Apostle: this movie was so hyped by horror movie reviewers on twitter, we couldn’t watch it soon enough. Some scenes were creepy and pretty gore, but the movie was mostly too slow. Too bad, it could have been a good one;
Big Mouth: we enjoy to start a day off with a cup of coffee in front of a cartoon. That’s how we started watching Big Mouth.We love the sense of humour, the hormone monsters, the shame wizard, coach Steve,… so much fun and so many great characters. Jeez, we don’t miss puberty;
The Haunting of Hill House: another highly rated crap. Seriously, except for the minor jump scares, this tv-show is boredom itself. A psychological drama. The only horror in this story are the long and annoying chats about the characters’ pathetic life;
Castle Rock: the fist few episodes were promising, but the eternal going back and forth in other timelines and dimensions got confusing. As for the episode about the mother’s Alzheimer, it had nothing to do with the story and could just have just not existed. Another disappointment;
Fear the Walking Dead: while we liked the previous seasons, this one is a let down. The first episodes were great, with an awesome new character (John), but it had to turn into a slow drama soap again. Why did they have to bring in Morgan? He was boring in TWD, why screw up the spin-off as well?Could we, please have some real survival horror, instead of a debate about the meaning of life? Anyway, we’ll sure watch the end of season 4, some day, when we’re old and we have nothing else to do;
Castlevania: another early morning cartoon. This one is more serious, but also very beautiful. We loved it so much, we’re keeping the second season for our Christmas holidays;
The First Purge: finally a good movie! It was so badly rated that we were afraid to watch it.
Well, we were glad we finally did. We always loved the franchise. We were surprised that the reviews were so negative though. The Purge always makes us think about what we would do if there would be a real one;
Gotham: one of the rare super hero tv-shows that we enjoy. So, we kept season 4 for our holiday lunchtimes. Every day at 12, we ate our sandwiches and had our cup of coffee in front of an episode. One of the highlights of the day;
Disenchantment: We fell so much in love with it that we’ve ordered a poster for the gaming room and Soforah made a cutout of Luci for our living room door.We’ll watch it again before the next season comes out, that’s for sure;
Game of Thrones: by the end of the holidays, we were really in need of some good quality show. While we normally aren’t big fans of re-runs, Game of Thrones totally deserves it. It was like listening to a good song after spending an hour in a supermarket.
That’s it for all we’ve watched during these three weeks. One lesson we’ve learned is not to make an horror program based on reviews and ratings.
One of our traditions is that, when we are sick, we do a Harry Potter marathon. Last weekend was one of those moments… While we were watching this fantastic serie, I realised that we never wrote a post on our blog. So, here we go!
Sixteen years ago, Sardoken got rewarded the DVD of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone after winning a contest in the local newspaper. I remember that it was during the first month we lived together. One year later, we got married and bought all the HP books in both languages (Dutch and French) with the gift certificates we received from Sardokens’ workmates.
In the mean time, I think that I must have read all books over 3 times by now. Once you’ve known the coziness of the wizarding world, it’s hard to come back to reality ;p
Here are some of my favourite things throughout the serie:
Teacher: Professor Slughorn;
Classes: herbology and potions;
Food: anything from the dining tables in the great hall (always makes me hungry);
Holidays: Christmas & Halloween in Hogwarts;
Places: Hogwarts, the Burrow and Hogsmeade around Christmas;
House: Slytherin of course! I would have a cat as a pet and my patronus would be a moose.
Now we are in 2018 and I have so many great memories of all the Harry Potter moments we’ve shared… We’ve been to several midnight openings to get the latest novels, we’ve watched all the movies several times at the theatre (except the first one, which we’ve only seen on TV), we’ve done reading marathons, we’ve gotten a subscription at Pottermore where we were both sorted in house Slytherin, we’ve been collecting quite a lot of goodies, we’ve been to the exposition in Brussels and, most important of all, we’ve visited the Warner Bros Studios in London.
Our trip to London is the one that I’ll cherish the most. I’ll never forget walking around in Diagon Alley and the great hall, visiting Hagrid’s house, watching Sardoken drink a butterbeer (I’m lactose-intolerant), having our pictures taken while flying the Weasleys’ enchanted car or Sardoken pushing me forward when the tour guide asked whose birthday it was (so I got to open the doors to Hogwarts),…
Here are some pictures of our trip to the WB Studios:
For more of our pics, check out our gallery on Imgur.
Writing this makes me realise how much I love the world of Harry Potter. After all these years I still have butterflies. J.K. Rowling created something magical and I’ll always be grateful for that. Next month Fantastic Beasts 2 will be playing in the theatres. I’m already looking forward to this moment. Even though it isn’t the same, it’s a part of the HP universe which means that I am hyped like hell.
