Thursday, June 30, 2011

More about Dante

I need to clarify some things about Dante, since I don't believe it's ever fully been done before.


Dante was there when I walked into the Molten Front for the first time.  Technically, we did find each other and bonded immediately.  But his personality didn't take a true form.until he had his name, which he got from Caelan.  The moment she suggested it for him, we knew it was right.  Coming up with Dante's official backstory was definitely a collaborative process.  Caelan and I were always involved, though others often pitched in as well, like Miacoda.  Caelan is Dante's "co-mother," like Vephriel was with Chitter (she found and named him), though I'm not sure that Dante really has "mothers;" regardless, the sentiment remains - Cae's as much attached to Dante as I am in terms of core essence.  But Dante himself means something to more than just us.

This is why I consider Dante to truly be a Petopian mascot.  He was the Petopian mentor on the PTR for weeks.  He was our guide, our friend.  He was always there for us when no rares were up.  He was our anchor.  And he always will be.

<3 Dante!

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Oh Dante....

You know....after escorting Dante to the Molten Front and idling with him while waiting for the Karkin, it hit me. This Dante is the real one for my server.  This Dante is mine.  There will never be another, though he will reincarnate.  When more people enter the Molten Front, that'll be it.  The window of opportunity will be gone forever.

He chose me for a reason.


This was it.


Welcome home, Dante. <3  Now all is as it should be.

Yes, I cried after taming him.  Yes, he breaks the naming scheme.  And I don't care on either count.

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

Dante's journey north


Dante found me the moment I entered the Molten Front on the PTR for the first time.  He didn't have a name, but we bonded instantly.  Then other Petopians joined our little group.  He got a name and a backstory (he was not a typical emberspit scorpion, but was in fact a black Madexx who had journeyed to the Molten Front).  And it was good.

When 4.2 hit live, I found myself wandering, restless.  I wasn't camping any of the spirit beasts and I was unable to do the Thrall questline while horde are camping the hell out of the various areas.  So I found myself wandering over to Madexx's area....


Shockingly, he was up.  And he was black.  I knew he would be.  I don't know how I knew, but I did.

It was Dante.


He wanted me to escort him to the Molten Front on live.  So I took his claw in my hand and we proceeded east.


As we crossed Uldum, I heard of two Ban'thalos tamings.  Dante had given his blessing.  Also, I was tabbed out, chronicling our journey.  All was as it should be.


Except for those scorpids following us.  But we lost them.


We left Uldum and ran into some more of Dante's fiery cousins.


We stopped so Dante could ask a few questions about fire usage.  He knew that Kirix lay in wait in the Molten Front, but it didn't hurt to get a little bit of a head start on his training.


A third Ban'thalos was tamed (on Dethecus!) as we reached the Noxious Lair in Tanaris.  The hunter was horde, unfortunately, so I couldn't pass on my congratulations.  Dante let me know that it was okay and that he truly appreciated what I was doing for him.  I told him that the honor was mine.


We didn't get far when we paused again, this time to meet with Hellgazer (and save me from a giant worm that I didn't even see sneaking up behind me), then we headed for Gadgetzan.  As we approached, a fourth Ban'thalos spawned!  We heard news of the tame as we reached Thousand Needles.


Dante was pleased with all of the rare taming, but less pleased by the zone ahead of us.


Fortunately, I am an alchemist.  Also fortunately, Dante knew how to swim.  If Uldum was our trial of air, this was our trial of water.


We successfully passed into Splithoof Heights.  Dante was pleased.


Unfortunately, I then made a wrong turn, going right instead of left.  The hills were pretty, but there was no path.


Fortunately, there was a way out.  Theramore and the sea lay ahead of us.


Unfortunately, there was a very steep cliff between them and us.  Dante prevented us from freefalling, digging in his claws, so we survived (albeit a bit more bruised, at least on my part).


We made our way to Theramore with the help of another waterwalking potion.  I was set to turn inland, to cut through the Barrens.


But Dante had another idea.  He assured me that he didn't mind swimming after spending so long in the desert.


And so it was that we continued north by sea.


It didn't take us long to reach Ratchet.  We came ashore just to the east of the town, then continued our journey up the eastern side of the Barrens.


As we turned inland, toward the west, Takk the Leaper came to wish us well before leaping off.  (I'm fairly certain he spawned on top of us and scared me half to death with his sudden leap off to the east.  Oh Takk. <3)


We reached Ashenvale and passed through without incident to Felwood.


Death Howl literally ran to greet us there, almost knocking me off my mount.  Between him and Takk, my heart rate had gone up considerably, but Dante remained ever stoic.  I felt like a terrible escort, but he assured me that I was doing fine and that he had everything under control.  I started to realize that this was more of a Harrison Jones type escort and that there was nothing wrong with that.


After meeting with the tempermental Mongress and taking a small detour to dispatch the Ongar (Dante soloed him), we spent a considerable time visiting Olm the Wise.


I for one was grateful for the breather.  Also, the lack of scares.  Takk, Death Howl, and Mongress had gotten me very twitchy.  (The latter had attempted to maul my face off.)



We passed a couple of Timbermaw on our way out of the zone.  Dante had a kind word for the cub.


A thrill went through me as we crossed Winterspring.  Our destination was almost in sight!  But then, I suddenly remembered that the Frostwhisper Gorge no longer has a bridge running across it.  This would be our test of earth.


We had some trouble navigating the mountains in east Winterspring, but we found a cutthrough above the Owl Wing Thicket.  We paused, bemused by a random mountain skunk.


The cutthrough turned out not to go through, so Dante guided us safely back down the hillside and soon, we found a proper cutthrough that bypassed the gorge.  It was all very complicated.  There was one point where Dante and I had to scale a mountain on foot.  Climbing and ropes were involved.

And then....


We reached Mount Hyjal.


An elite twilight stormwaker attacked!  But Dante's guard is never down and we disposed of our assailant readily.  We then proceeded to cross the Regrowth with shockingly less resistance than expected.


We also passed our trial of fire.


And then, we finally reached the Sanctuary of Malorne.  We had made it!  And without any horde resistance.


A friendly night elf hunter cheered Dante as we settled in to await the opening of the portal.  That day could not come soon enough, but come it would.  But that would be a different day and a different story, for Dante and I found a way in today.


Horde stopped camping Dante protected us through the aforementioned Thrall questline, so we eventually got a port to the Molten Front!


We made our way past the fire, a familiar path from the PTR....


We made it. :D  And now I don't want to leave him here, but I can't rightfully keep him from his home.  That was our mission.  He will be here when Ursa and I unphase him.  I can't wait to see him again.


Small addition: was able to get into the Molten Front again in the dead of night to tame Kirix (welcome home, Arachne <3) and visit Dante.  He was quite happy to see both of us; came right over for hugs and photo ops. :D


Sunday, June 26, 2011

Waxing nostalgic


Icarus is back! :D  (That's him transitioning from his miniature form on the left to his full size on the right.)

Sigh, never leave me with open stable slots; I will find ways to fill them.  Seriously, though, I have been considering bringing back Icarus for a long time.  In fact, if I hadn't been pressed for space, I might not have parted with him in the first place.  But he was another redundant ability pet....good thing I don't care about that anymore!

Maybe now I can stop waxing nostalgic about Deadmines.  After running Caelan's lowbie huntress through there and discussing all the parrots at length with multiple people, I realized that this parrot was flapping around in the back of my mind.

I can't help it; I fell for Ol' Beaky the first moment I saw him.  That never left me.

Friday, June 24, 2011

Summer Cleaning (and Change Ups)

This may be somewhat obvious, but I'm going to confess it anyway: I'm an Idealist.  Therefore, when I ran around taming like crazy, I fully expected to truly, deeply love all my pets and that I'd never have to change my stables....or at least not Kalliope's.  I had hers down to a science: all the basic buffs and debuffs - I'd never be wanting for a pet.

Unfortunately, even hunters with the best intentions don't always click with their pets.  And so it has come to pass that a number of the pets I've previously written about here are no longer with me, returned to the wild where they belong.  Some of those who are gone never even got written up here....that should say something.

Kalliope's changes are the big ones.  At the risk of sounding one note, this all started with a spider.  No, Chatter and Chitter are innocent this time, and Orpheus took a great deal of convincing to approve of this new direction.

Yep, I fell for Kirix - and HARD - on the 4.2 PTR.  I was originally scouting for Kallimon, but was so completely won over by Kirix's personality that I knew I had to change my plan.  Arachne never had the kick as Jadefang that she had as a green tarantula in the past; turning into Kirix would give her new life.  But that change would completely break Kalliope's stable!  However, after much debating, I finally decided that I didn't care:  I never go BM for the buffs/pets, so I should really only keep the ones I'm attached to.  So I went for it!

Out with Arachne the shale spider who never clicked, and in (sometime next week, I hope) with Arachne the green lava spider.  Orpheus made me swear up and down that he would still get the #1 position.  I gave him the exasperated look that one gives a pixelated spider when he's worrying himself into an unnecessary frenzy. There's no way Orpheus will ever get the boot or be second banana to anyone.  He owns my soul and he knows it.  (And yet, he's still insecure....yep, totally my pet.)

Also taking their leave were Persephone the green wasp, Odysseus the black monkey, Penelope the purple tallstrider, and Bellerophon the green chimaera.  They were never used and therefore, never really stood a chance.  There was no burning need to use them, like Perseus the green Madexx; I didn't need him at the time, but he made me want him, then need him.  Kalypso the white crab will be changing to the black gem look just because I love Karkin, but I'm still not 100% sold on that change sticking.  We'll see.  I was very surprised that Tantalus moved in shortly after these spaces were vacated.

Kallimon's shifting stable has two new highlights: Tabasco the orange ravager and MintJulep's new form of a green Outland wind serpent.  Tabasco won me over on the PTR with his fiery personality (as a spider even!) and Minty's blue and green ravager appearance looked too much like Kalliope's Cassandra.  It's amazing how much better Kallimon clicks with a wind serpent than Kalliope ever did.  Kallimon also retamed Ghostcrawler as Bisque (as he should have been in the first place) and a ghost worm again for Bait; I just wasn't feeling the green fuzzy look on her.  Eh, so I can't see her; it's still the only look that suits her.  Kallimon's planned 4.2 tames are Skittaflame (red lava spider) and Dante (common black Madexx); I do have room again, but likely have more to make.  We'll see what happened with Deth'tilac; as amusing as that PTR tame was, I'm pretty sure I'm not going to bother on live.  After all, how many spiders do I really need? x_x

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Why? Because he's blue!

I'm absolutely overflowing with energy right now, so I'm allowing myself this one brief post to siphon some of it off.


Meet Tantalus.

He's an impulse tame of epic proportions (and small stature).  He has a penchant for jumping at low-hanging fruit, hence the name. :)  This is the only color of the runed demon dogs I hadn't tamed before - I think he was waiting for the right circumstances to reveal himself.

I really like this dog. :D

This amuses me to no end, since Veph recently tamed the green runed puppy.  We tamed each other's colors!


I really really like this dog.

Friday, June 17, 2011

I'm baaaack! :D

I shall get caught up soon, I promise!  I've been back for a while and doing lots of PTR testing with the ten new challenge tames, so I've been shutterbugging it instead of writing up accounts of what's been going on there.  Let's just say I have a major thing for a couple of Chatter and Chitter's cousins!  The family will definitely be getting bigger when 4.2 hits, although I have been releasing a few pets back into the wild for various reasons (they're still extended family, though!).

Speaking of C2, Chitter did make it safely home with Yoninah the moment 4.1 hit.  More recently, Chatter went home with her and Babykalli as well, so both Chitters have accompanying Chatters.  I now am owned by three Chatters, two Chitters, and one Creepthess (Eurydice!).  I think I have a problem.