I apologize for the delay.

PS I also notice that my last post to this section of the site was approximately 6 months ago, also saying that I was sick. I either need to either get sick less often or post more regular blog posts…

Still feeling a bit ill folks, so you’ll have to deal with these penciled sketches for a bit while I recover.  I’ll go back and update them (as well as the blog) over the next week or so.  I used to have a two week buffer on this strip, but somehow that disappeared over the course of a year of updating.  It’s kinda amazing to me that I’ve managed to keep up with the five times a week schedule.

2011 resolution – get that buffer back!

Edit – April 11, 2011

Yikes!  It’s been over three months since I wrote in this section of the site?!?

I’ve updated the pages that only had sketches.

PS.  Thursday’s strip will be up later than normal.  Strips have been penciled until next week, but cough medicine is making it hard for me to concentrate on inking right now.  We’ll see how it turns out tomorrow, though new year’s preparations with the family might get in the way…

There’s tons of new content, so what should you do first?

If you’re not planning on starting a new character (and who are we kidding, everyone’s gonna at least try out a new goblin or worgen), then there are a few things you should keep in mind when exploring the new content.

Guild Perks!

Some of the new guild perks are pretty sweet.  The first one for example grants 5% more xp from killing monsters and killing quests.  You get this for just being in your guild.

How do you get guild perks?  That’s easy.  Guilds are like characters now, and they gain XP based on the actions of its members:

• XP earned by members from quests (regular ones or daily quests).  This is a direct XP gain for your guild as well (1XP gained by a character means 1 XP for the guild).
• Killing dungeon and raid bosses in a guild group (i.e. 80% must be from your guild).
• Certain guild achievements (like achieving mastery in one of every crafting profession for example, or for fishing in 10,000 pools).

In addition to the nifty guild perks (which are pretty nifty in of themselves), your guild can also unlock access to certain new items (including new craftable stuff useful for groups and xp boosting heirloom items that occupy new slots-head/cloak).  Once your guild unlocks an item’s availability, your character still needs to have enough reputation with your own guild to buy it (which should be no problem if you’re playing normally).

Just keep in mind that your guild XP is capped at 6.2 million a day.  This is to encourage smaller guilds in competing with larger guilds.  If you’re in a smaller guild, you might want to maximize your guild XP by alternating between mains and alts so that XP gain is just around that 6.2 million daily cap.  But I don’t think it’s a big deal either way.  Smaller guilds will just take slightly longer to reach max guild xp than larger guilds.

But Cedric, enough about guild stuff, what should I do first?

• Set your hearthstone at Orgrimar/Stormwind.  For level 80, your starting quests will take place there.  Dalaran is now just another city now that its best feature, its portals, are now gone.
• As soon as you get to the city, you will immediately get a quest marker.  Click on this and a picture will appear of an NPC asking to meet with you.  Finish this short quest (which has a cool cut scene).
• Go to the jobs board (or whatever you want to call that thing in front of your faction leader’s place that offers quests).  There will be two options, one to go to Hyjal and one to Vashj’ir.  Accept them both.
• Before leaving the city, GO TRAIN. Train your old world flight skill (200gp), any class skills you missed, and your professions.
• DON’T FORGET ARCHEOLOGY!
• For the two quests, I would choose Hyjal first.  If you follow the quest chain, you’ll get to a point where you see a gnome standing next to an orc.  He’ll offer you a quest to go check out if Ragnaros has indeed risen and wants you to accompany him in his digging drill machine.  Accept, click on the digging drill to the left of his platform and you’ll be transported outside the new Blackrock Caverns Instance.
• Grats!  Now you can que up for Blackrock Caverns!  Oh, I forgot to mention.  You need to physically discover new instances now before you can que up for them (with RFC and Stockades being the exception for the opposite factions).

Apparently there’s a world event happening right now with rifts opening up all over Azeroth and elementals generally making a nuisance of themselves.

I found this out by accident. I was retraining some of my paladin’s talents when suddenly the trainer said he had to go evacuate and ran away from me. I was confused.

Then the ground started shaking and dust started to fall from the ceiling. Earth and fire elementals were invading Orgrimmar! I ran around lost and didn’t quite know what to do. I ended up helping the guards by putting up barricades and then fighting the elementals that spawned around us.

After the event was over, I decided to do a bit of research to figure out exactly what was going on. This wowpedia page on the Elemental Unrest seems to have the most comprehensive info.

Basically:

• To get the Feat of Strength achievement Tripping the Rifts, you need to help close down four rifts, one of each type.
• These rifts spawn all over the world, but also in the major cities. Fire&Earth-Orgimmar/Ironforge, Air&Water-Thunder Bluff/Stormwind.
• The toughness of the elementals vary depending on what zone you’re in, and for purposes of the achievement, it doesn’t matter what level rift you help close. The city ones are pretty tough, and guards will open up gates for lowbies to evacuate the area.
• To place sandbags or barricades, click on the boxes near the guards (green arrows) and this will put one in your inventory.  Then look for red markers and click on the item in your bag to place them.  These need to be done before the big elementals come.
• There is a followup quest after closing a rift however, and that is level dependent.
• You just need to be in the area of a closing rift for it to count.
• After a city attack, special rifts will open up that will allow level 80 characters to fight special bosses for 30 minutes (you can access these through portals in the cities or through the random dungeon finder). You can fight these guys as often as you want, up to the time limit. They drop some pretty nice level 80 epic gear (item level 251), so are well worth doing.
• The bosses are fairly easy. There are four different ones: Grand Ambassador Flamelash, Crown Princess Theradras, Kai’ju Gahz’rilla (never knew this guy had a first name), and Prince Sarsarun.
• The invasion happens every few hours, with a herald announcing the event.

I had fun attending the various workshops and seminars for comic creators, which was my primary purpose.

While there, I decided to acquire as many artist cards as I can (artist cards are basically small pieces of original art, the main purpose of which is to trade among other artists).  I created several before the con and drew a few more while I was there.  I created a bunch of custom cards with APE info in the back, blank fronts and passed them around.  Unfortunately, I was unable to return to the show on Sunday and missed out on picking some up (if you have a card for trade, email me!).

All of these are 2.5″ x 3.5″ on watercolor paper.

Here’s a scan of the cards I was able to get.

Description of the cards above as follows (left to right, top to bottom):

1. Shi Long Pang by Ben Costa – www.shilongpang.com
2. Andrew Farago by Shaenon K. Garrity – www.shaenon.com
3. Shaenon K. Garrity by Andrew Farago – www.cartoonart.org
4. Nosferatu by Daniel Davis – www.steamcrow.com
5. Optimist Winner! by Jemma – http://oxboxer.livejournal.com
6. Dragon by Christine Knopp – www.merafishstudios.blogspot.com
7. Erika Moen by Erika Moen – www.erikamoen.com (some content might not be safe for work)
8. Zombie Cedric by Scott Aleric (yes, that’s me as a zombie) – www.hellhasfoundme.com

Here are the cards I did myself that I have left over after the show.

1. Toad Perplexed
2. Space Whale
3. Land Shark
4. Duck Bear

Deathwing in Stormwind? Hope he didn’t burn the cat lady’s cottage just outside the entrance…

Larry Elmore, R.A. Salvatore, and Ed Greenwood play D&D using the essentials rules with Chris Perkins DMing.

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