Boy oh boy, where do I begin? Old Hesston had a heck of a Winter Veil, running with new guildies, getting gifts from Great Father Winter and getting all sorts of good loots.

A few days ago I ran my first serious run with some guildies, hitting several heroic dungeons in a row. I was able to round out my hunter trinket collection with an incisor fragment from King Dred and the Meteorite Whetstone from King Ymiron. Both are very useful for different situations and compliment the Mirror of Truth quite well.

The next day, Winter Veil Day actually, we got another group together for some more heroic outings. Went to and finished Ahn’Kahet for the first time, though I can’t seem to survive through Herald Volazj’s insanity affect. My teammates always manage to kill me. Even so, we made it.

After the run, I had enough emblems of heroism to get a piece of badge gear, the Heroes’ Cryptstalker Tunic. Like a fool, I’d spent my first series of badges on the mirror and a belt, that was a mistake. Now I am saving up for the gloves too, which will make me more than ready for guild Naxx runs.

Took a large break, then got with a group for an evening run, which held in store the most epic battle of the night.

After going through Ahn’Kahet again and the Caverns of Time: Culling of Stratholme (where one of our lucky party members picked up a new mount), we ventured into Azjol-Nerub, a place I’d heard was quite possibly one of the hardest in the land. That may be true, but apparently we had a bit of an elite squad going in. We downed the first two bosses with little issue, much to my surprise.

Then it came time to battle the Cryptlord Anub’arak, one of Arthas’ chief enforcers. And man, what a fight it was.

Things started off OK, with me and the Boomkin laying down the ranged damage and our elite warrior and paladin tank (and KIT of course) taking it to him up close. After a few moments, Anub’arak released swarms of locusts and scarab beetles upon us. We muscled through, but he soon burrowed under the ground at our feet.

The coast wasn’t clear for long however, smaller nerubian fighters descended upon us. We fought them off just as Arub came bursting through the ground to attack us again. We all engaged the vile Cryptlord, loosing our fury upon his chitinous hide.

Suddenly, he reared up and pounded our tank and our warrior into the ground, killing our warrior almost instantly. Worse yet, our healer caught some of the attack as well, and soon he was down. One would think that all would be lost, with just an old man with a gun, a moonkin and a paladin with a steel reserve facing incredible odds.

Not for this elite group of dungeon runners.

Our tank, using his paladin skills, managed to keep himself alive through Anub’s assault. Our resourceful druid, taking quick stock of the situation, switched forms and revived our healer. He came back weak, but managed to get back into the fray almost immediately. Throwing healing back onto our tank so that we could continue our battle.

We were still a man down, and a good one at that, but we didn’t give up. Our druid switched back to his boomkin form and unleashed nature’s wrath upon Anub while I continued to pump him full of bullets. Our healer was fully back in action now, keeping our tank alive as he took the brunt of Anub’s punishment. It wasn’t yet enough, however, to take down the monster, so Anub was able to escape once again beneath the surface.

We prepared ourselves for more nerubians, I even let KIT completely off the leash. We were attacked again, KIT became a whirling dervish of teeth and claws, taking down as many enemies as he could. We managed the second wave of additional forces and Anub burst through the ground again.

This time, we were ready for the devastating pound attack. The tank used his battle prowess to mitigate the damage and I called KIT to my side to prevent him from being crushed. We survived and continued to fight on.

After another escape into the ground, and another wave of nerubians, our energies were running low. We needed to take down Anub when he showed himself again. He reared up and pounded the ground again. When he finished, we unleashed everything we had upon him. I think I even kicked a few stones at him too.

Bam, strike, volley, zap….we pounded away with righteous fury until….

BOOM!! (Note: Look at the mana reserves *gulp*)

That’s right, we came, we saw, we kicked his ass! Many congrats were had all around and we took a moment to get our breath. Not being the type to sit on our duffs though, we dusted ourselves off, brought our warrior and leader back to life, and headed off to the Halls of Stone.

I won’t bore you with another bang-bang story, but we conquered that place too. The dungeon finally earned me the Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement, which you can see above. Pretty proud of that really. All in all, not a bad two days of adventuring.

To make a long story short (people always say that at the end of a long story), I love my new guild. They rule! I took down some numbers about how I did, which you can see here. I’m pretty pleased with that, for an old man.

Other minor achievements:

Categories: achievements, guild, heroics, loot
No Comments »