Chilling With Warcraft – The Climb #180

Thursday 20^th July 2017

Today has been a day of trying to chill and get myself into the mood for my upcoming tournament. Given the way the world rankings have come along in the last year, Astolat now qualifies more than Fightcamp for the title of the UK’s national tournament. Not that there’s an official one.
I had to get up early this morning in order to get ready to go into the office for day 2 of our big day job departmental meeting. It went OK again (surprisingly) even though one participant in the group exercise seemed more intent on making it a solo affair. Oh well, not that I care.
I also helped a work colleague on an issue so felt pretty good because I’m usually the technical idiot.
I got away at lunchtime but it felt a lot later, and I’ve spent the rest of the day feeling knackered.
My plan for this evening was to chill. I decided I would play some Warcraft as a way to unwind ready for getting focused tomorrow. I’ve still not unlocked flying in the Legion expansion so I’ve decided that this is my current goal.
The first thing I needed to do was complete the Suramar quests. I’d completed all but a couple of chapters and despite some work the other day doing some dungeons to clear out quests, I still had the raid to do.
Tanking the raid boss did not fill me with joy so I was a bit of a coward. I swapped from Blood Death Knight to Unholy and got some artefact power so I could pretty much do the base level ups of the artefact weapon. I then queued as DPS. I expected to be queuing for longer than I was but I got in quite quickly, most likely because everyone need to do this boss.
I think my DPS was terrible. I had no idea of the rotation. But as the LFR wing is just the boss and a couple of adds, I don’t think anyone noticed. Plus my gear probably massively compensated. Whilst I’m a long way off the levels needed for Tomb of Sargerus, for the Emerald Dream raid, I’m pretty overgeared.
With that done I was able to pick up the quest items and hand it in. Of course, this then opened more requirements: namely to do all the leylines in Suramar. Luckily I’d done a lot of them so it was just a case of swapping back to blood and using a guide to find the entrances of the last few.
I then had a quest chain inside Suramar City. Now, when I’ve gone in there in the past, I’ve had my ass handed to me. However, as I’ve upped my gear a bit, it’s meant that I can pull quite a big mob and not die. I love the survivability of Death Knight.
I worked through these quests and then had a scenario to do. It did ‘amuse’ me when a character died with a 3^rd of his health still left. That’s not how death works in Warcraft!
So with the scenario complete I was able to complete the Suramar campaign and receive a load of achievements. However, there was still more work to do.
Another part is the explorer achievement which involves visiting all the locations in the expansion, which I’d done all but two. I did those and got a load more achievements.
I thought I’d done it but a quick check showed I still have to get revered in the new faction. This is a bit of a bummer as I have about 5000 rep to get and it’s not gonna come fast.
So as it was late I left it there.
Whilst it might be all virtual achievements I feel quite good at making so much progress with my character. My fear of tanking and a lot of the editing / writing work has meant he’s fallen quite behind in the Legion expansion. So it’s taking quite a concerted effort from me to get him back up to match everyone else.
I had a lot of fun doing it though, and that’s all that matters. Hopefully tomorrow, after catching up on my sleep – I am so tired – I’ll feel suitably relaxed to really focus on my game. I’ve seen the list of competitors and already I can see a lot of people I’ve fought and know that I can beat.
Of course, the worry is that I’ll be overconfident and then get knocked out, so I just hope that over the course of tomorrow I can stop worry about winning and losing and start focusing on the important bit about fencing well. There’s not a lot of time left, and I’m started to get pre-match butterflies!
If you want to follow more of my journey, then be sure to check me on my social channels. Likewise, if you’d like me to expand on any point mentioned above, please say so in the comments.