Community Project: Mini-Games

Welcome to the seventh blog post in the “Warcraft Community’s Top Things To Do Before WoD” series!

This is one of the most fun of the blog posts we’ll be doing. Mainly because I love mini-games… but every adult has an inner child I think ^^

Pet Battles

I KNOW everyone has their own opinions of these beauties, but I’m going to put them in because I love them. And lots of people suggested them. But primarily because I love them. Not gonna lie.

If you’re truly bored and you’ve never tried pet battles, this is the place for you. It’s not like Pokémon, I promise. Ok, a tiny bit, but it’s worth it. There are lots of achievements up for grabs, from PvE to PvP, collecting, battling and completing goals. If that isn’t tempting, how about all the cute pets you can have? Or how about completing the Celestial Tournament? I’ve recently completed this and I have to say, although it’s really frustrating, the adrenaline when you finally complete it is a-may-zing.

There are many many people who write about pet battles and I couldn’t possibly mention them all. However, I will link a couple of guides to get you started:

• WoWhead. This is a pretty conclusive guide to the whole tournament, including the set-ups for all teams and alternative pets. It doesn’t always use store bought pets either which is good. The comments are also really helpful from other players and their experiences. I recently found a comment buried deep down and it worked perfectly after over an hour of trying different combinations of pets.
• WoWWiki has a clear description of strengths/weaknesses near the bottom of the page.
• Liopleurodon. I love her and her blog. Very helpful, very approachable. Highly recommended (even if I don’t really understand the technical talk!). Lots of in-depth strategies and guides here.
• Matt (aka Heallarious) is a pretty cool guy and has helped me a lot with pet battles. He’s also a contributor to this project so if you’re looking for a basic, workable guide, this is for you.
• Warcraft Pets. Some good information here on pets and where to obtain them.

Singing Sunflower

This is a fun little mini-game called Peacebloom vs Ghouls based up in Hillsbrad which is similar to the Plants vs Zombies game. You work your way through the levels and if you’re successful you get a very cute little battle pet, the Singing Sunflower. I actually found it quite tricky to get the hang of, and it took about an hour to obtain my little pet. Worth doing, for sure… and really fun too!

Hearthstone

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll know that Hearthstone is the new card game from Blizzard. It definitely deserves a mention here, although it isn’t technically World of Warcraft, it is based upon the game.

Neither of us are Hearthstone impresarios – we have done enough to get the shiny Hearthsteed mount, but that’s all. Here are a few tips we can give you. Google will probably be just as helpful :p

1. Remember, it’s just a game. Definitely not worth throwing your pc out the window for
2. RNG sucks
3. The more you play, the better you get. Even if you loose every game like us.
4. Watch other people play (via Twitch etc) as this does help your understanding
5. For the mount, you must win 3 games. All we did was go full offensive: used a beginner shaman deck; used as many minions as possible in the deck, put as many minions/totems down as possible to overwhelm the other player, then full nuke. It wasn’t pretty, but it worked like a charm.

Sentinal and Warden’s Games

This isn’t technically a mini-game I suppose, but I always enjoy them, so I couldn’t miss it out. Part way through the quest line, you’re lead underground to explore the area and have to complete the games above. If you haven’t quested in Badlands, I recommend passing through to complete this quest chain as they’re really fun.

The Skyrace

It’s amazing, but I’ve written about it before for the project so I won’t repeat myself… click here to read.

Shadow Hopper

This is again related to the Order of the Cloud Serpent’s rep grind. When the daily called “Catch!” is up, speak to the quest giver to be given a ball to play catch with your little serpentling. Catch it 25 times for the achievement.

It’s a pretty simple game, truth be told, but can be tricky because of the mobs and scenery in the vicinity. It appears the quest is still bugged however, so your tries are cumulative – if you drop it, start again and it should count towards the 25. Whether they will fix this remains to be seen. Anyway, it’s a fun achievement!

Argent Tournament

Ugh I can’t believe I’m putting this here, as I’m not a fan, however if you like a mindless grind with lots of reward, this is for you. The whole thing awards plenty of mounts and it’s not hard. The mini-game itself is a jousting tournament between yourself and Champions of other factions. It’s pretty fun the first few times. 4 months later, perhaps not so much. Needless-to-say, only one suggestion by @Ngakma for the Tournament, BUT if you want pretty mounts and pets I encourage you to go play being a Knight.

There are probably many more, please feel free to add them in the comments below. Definitely give them a go if you haven’t already!

Contributors_____________________________________________________________________________________

• @Eolien_WoW
• Matt @Heallarious
• Velgana – click for post
• Tome of the Ancient – click for post

 

 

Hearthstoning for a Hearthsteed.

We are the world’s biggest noobs when it comes to Hearthstone. Seriously… we played at launch of Beta for a while before giving up as we were just loosing constantly.

I got really into it for a while, levelled a couple of custom decks to level 11. I eventually lost interest as I really feel it’s more of a phone/app game… one where you can play-and-go at work, or on the bus etc. I have much more important things to do at the PC and would much rather be playing WoW or Diablo.

Anyway, Twitter was all at a buzz about the new mount Hearthstone was offering your Warcraft account in exchange for 3 wins… excellent marketing, Blizzard, it got thousands of people to play!

After a couple of hours (and plenty of help from the Twitterverse!), we finally got the mount and achievement:

The only bit of advice we can give if you’re still struggling, is to stack your deck with 1/1 murlocs and boars. This means you can put lots of low life minions on the board at once,  overwhelm your opponent and then pewpew them to the death. We did this with a shaman deck and once we got the hang of it, won pretty easily.

Good luck, and enjoy the mount! We certainly like it!

 

The Hearthstone Beta

We were lucky enough to get a key for the beta in the last wave sent out… thank goodness. We were both desperate to try this new venture of Blizzards!

Starting Out

Once we had downloaded it, Mr B talked me through the basics (he had played the tutorial whilst I was out at work, damnit). It seemed relatively straightforward – kill the opponents main boss card using your cards, but not letting him hit you. Each card has a health pool and an attack which you have to mitigate and use to your advantage.

Oh deary me, it is certainly not straightforward! I went in with an attitude that it couldn’t be that difficult and along came defeat after defeat. Mr B had chosen a Mage deck (I don’t think he really knew what he was doing at the time!), so we were stuck with blimmin’ Jaina and her missiles.

Anyway, the first couple of weeks playing Hearthstone has been intense. I started by levelling the Mage deck upto 10. This involved loads of wiping, lots of frustration and a couple of rage quits. In the end, I started to understand – by reading, watching youtube vids, and a lot of common sense – that it was all about putting strategies in place to keep their minions from eating my boss. Seems logical, but when you have lots of cards which deal damage, it’s very tempting to play them straightaway. It took my brain a while to realise it wasn’t…

When you win against another boss, you unlock that set of cards and are able to start levelling them up. The first guy I managed to beat was the Warlock… haven’t managed again since mind you.

PvP

After finally getting to level 10, you can put your own deck together. However, I had only collected about half of a deck as prizes from levelling up, so I used the automatic function to add the rest. My deck complete, off I went into PvP battling.

After the first battle, I realised I had a lot of damage dealing cards, but not enough minions to soak the opposing damage. Once I had shuffled the cards around, I managed to win a match… it was a miracle! This isn’t as scary as it seems – as far as I know you can’t talk to each other (long may it continue!) and your anonymity grants certain liberties with being crap and getting away with it.

Moving Forward

Coming up is a full Beta wipe, where all progress will be put back to the start and any we make since then will be carried forward when the game goes live. I’m not sure Hearthstone is something I will be concentrating on in the future, but it’s certainly fun to be able to dip in and out of, playing when you have a half hour spare or need a break from WoW.

I am still a total noob with it, but hopefully when it goes live, there will be lots of readers to share tips with!

Mrs B’s noob guide to the Azerothian worlds.

If you haven’t already read it, I’d reccommend you read my complete noob guide first: https://mrandmrswow.wordpress.com/2013/01/16/mrs-bs-noob-guide/

One of the most confusing things in WoW, in my humble opinion, is definitely finding your way around. How do you know where everything is? How do you get there? Knowing is a skill. No, an art.

First, really important things you need to know about the different continents:

Eastern Kingdoms

• Looks like the UK
• Hosts lots of major cities which high level players hang around in looking important
• Starting areas for humans, dwarves (grisly little brutes), gnomes (small, so small!), blood elves (weird pointy ears), undead (says it all), worgen (funny walking dogs)

Northrend

• Take a jumper, it’s blimmin’ freezing
• Looks like Australia and is home to Dalaran
• Has some good hunter pets – if you can be bothered waiting

Kalimdor

• Horde are everywhere
• Bad to get to if you get seasick
• Starting areas for orcs (ugly!!), trolls (see previous), tauren (cow-like creatures which have tusks… what’s all that about??), night elves (Mr B has a thing for these little yummies), draenei (yeah, the feet ARE weird!), goblins (look like someone has projectile vomited over them, poor things)
• HORDE ARE EVERYWHERE!

Pandaria

• Uh, PANDAS!

Maelstrom

• It’s the big swirly thing in the middle…

Outland

• Has some really pretty places to visit if you’re having a touristy day out (Nagrand, Zangarmarsh, Netherstorm)
• Shattrath is here
• Nightmare to get to from Eastern Kingdoms

Now you know the important stuff, let me go into some of the particularities. Bear in mind I play Alliance so this may not help you Hoardies much 😉

1. Eastern Kingdoms – Vashj’ir (watery place) / Uldum (desert-y place)/ Hyjal (got a big tree and loads of burning stuff) / Pandaland / Tol Barad (lots of horde) / Twilight Highlands (high level stuff) / Deepholm (in the big swirly thing): go to Stormwind and take the portals out the back of Dwarven District. Hopefully, knowing this now will save you lots of running around later!
2. Stormwind – Ironforge. You KNOW you want to take the tram! Pick it up from the Deep Run Tram place in IF or from Dwarven District (co-ords 66,34). If you’re boring, fly from the flight master.
3. If you want to go to Isle of Quel’Danas, unless you’re closer, go to Ironforge and fly from there. It portals you and saves you a looooong flight. Wish I’d known that when I was farming Magisters Terrace….
4. Eastern Kingdoms – Dalaran:  go to the docks in Stormwind and get the boat from the harbour… I’m sure there’s probably a way to tell which dock is for which boat…
5. Eastern Kingdoms – Kalimdor: depending if you want to go north or south: either get the boat to Darnassus then fly, or take the Uldum portal from Stormwind. Or, get the boat or a mage to portal you to Theramore.
6. Eastern Kingdoms – Outland (Shattrath): take the Dark Portal. Go to Stormwind, find the Mage Tower (yeah, that took me about an hour too!), take the portal. Enter Blasted Lands, go through the Dark Portal (straight in front of you). Hope you don’t get ganked. Voilà.
7. Eastern Kingdoms – Pandaria: Portal at the place in Stormwind (or take the gunship in the air if you haven’t been before). At the major city in Pandaland (Shrine of the Seven Stars) there is a similar portal room to all the major Alliance cities. Worth considering setting your hearthstone here at 90 for that reason.

Of course, you could always befriend (or pay) a Mage to portal you to the main cities of Stormwind, Ironforge, Darnassus, Exodar, Theramore, Shattrath, Dalaran, Tol Barad, Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Oops, maybe I should have said that first…

Boats… blergh.

REMEMBER: you have a hearthstone. Save it to your current most-used location and save yourself loads of time flying / running around.

Good luck in your adventures – if all else fails, at least you’ll give Dora the Explorer a run for her money!