Random Acts of Kindness: Cross-Faction Edition

My druid, Shae, and her original Teldrassil Sproutling! He seems to have fallen asleep. He's so lazy. He'd usually find a spot to snooze smack in the middle of the raid, preferably in fire.

I’ve been working on my various collections lately. Due to my history with changing mains, my achievement hunting has been hindered in some regards. For example, I started collecting pets with my druid and more or less had to start from scratch with Millya’s collection. This is the background story behind why I was seeking the Argent Tournament pets, so long after the Argent Tournament’s conclusion.

It happens that I think the AT pets (all of them) are some of the neatest pets in the game. My Teldrassil Sproutling was my constant companion for druid healing. It was pretty easy to just quest until I had enough Champion’s Seals to get the Alliance ones for Millya! Where I ran into some trouble was trying to get the Horde ones. Back on my old server, I’d just spent a bit of gold to buy them for my druid. This was when the Argent Tournament came out, most people were doing it every day, and that server had a healthy Horde population to match the number of people playing Alliance. My current server doesn’t have that. There aren’t very many Horde players there, period. Some of these pets are up for sale on the neutral AH (or people transfer them over) but for exorbitant prices. And why not? They do take some time and effort to obtain, and the low population keeps them fairly exclusive.

I could probably have afforded to buy them all. But I thought, there has to be a pet collector on the Horde side who also doesn’t want to spend 6000 gold per pet to get the Alliance version. I made a post on my realm forums to the effect of, “Looking for Horde to trade AT pets with.” They cost 40 Champion’s Seals each, so we could just straight up trade. Alliance pets for Horde pets!

After about five days and no replies to my thread, it wasn’t looking good. I thought I’d been too ambitious. Maybe Moonrunner’s Horde players aren’t pet collectors, or else it was so easy to obtain the pets that they’d all collected them ages ago. Then Fsob mentioned to me, “Hey, did you see someone responded to your thread?” I’d stopped checking it! A Tauren warrior had replied saying he thought he had some seals left over.

I sent him an in-game mail (Horde-side) to ask him which Alliance pets he most wanted. I didn’t think I had enough seals for all five, but I definitely could get three right away. We played a bit of message tag until Sunday, I logged in and found a message from an Alliance character of his, and the character was online. We started talking, he was mostly asking how he could get the pets to me. It was the next part that flabbergasted me.

“I don’t collect pets,” he told me, “So I don’t need them, but I have all five for you. I made a lot of money selling them before so I figure this is karma. I thought when I first replied that I could get maybe two, but it turned out I had a lot of seals on different alts.”

He wouldn’t hear of taking anything for them. His Alliance character didn’t need anything. He suggested we make the switch then, if I had time. I made my way to his character in Orgrimmar, still completely floored. There they were in the trade window, all five of the pets.

I thanked him repeatedly and told him that if nothing else he’d made a friend Alliance side and if he ever needed anything at all, I wanted to help him.

A little bit of Mulgore wildlife. Hey, Draenei can appreciate creatures from all over Azeroth, right?

This is undoubtedly the kindest thing a complete stranger has ever done for me in WoW. He suggested that if I wanted to ‘repay’ him I could just pay it forward and do the same thing for someone else Horde-side. It’ll take me a bit of time to get all the Seals and find the right person, and I just might do that, or think of something equally momentous to do. Best of all, I will not be able to take out any of the new pets without thinking of this generous Tauren and his completely unexpected gift. I think it will always make me smile, and so not only do I have new pets, they also mean something.

Has a stranger in WoW ever done something really nice and totally unexpected for you? Did you do something nice for someone else in return, or maybe even without the initial catalyst? If you find yourself inspired yourself, let me know, I’d love to read about your experiences. I like to generally believe that all people are basically good, I love when the universe tries to prove me right!

Ritual of Refreshment – Winner!

Thanks to everyone who entered and sent a recipe or a story! I put your names into a hat (no, really, the program was called The Hat) and drew one out…

(drumroll)

A winner is...

Arinne, who sent me her family’s 50 year old cookie recipe! (The recipe, not the cookies). I received a number of recipes I’ll probably be posting over the next little while here. Thanks again for entering, and enjoy the moonkin, Arinne!

Christmas Cookies

These are Martha Logan’s “Can’t Fail” Christmas Cookies which we have
been making for a good 50 years or so now! The original cookie cutters
have become too frail to use anymore, but luckily we recently found a
site where you can order cookie cutters just like the old ones. For
Christmas Cookies you want the Merry Christmas Set and the Happy Day
Set (contains the snowman cookie cutter) . You can use this recipe
with non-Christmas cutters too of course. The Happy Day Set has a nice
pumpkin cutter for Halloween, etc.

• 1 cup butter
• 2/3 cup sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoon vanilla
• 1/3 cup eggs (1 to 2 eggs, depending on size)
• 3 cups sifted all-purpose flour

Combine butter, sugar, salt, flavoring and eggs
Beat until smooth and light
Stir in flour
Chill dough for at least 2 hours

Because it is so important to work only with chilled dough for these
cookies, we found it best to pat the dough to about 1″ thick, and wrap
in waxed paper for chilling. This makes it easy to divide into small
portions, also to roll to desired thickness with the least amount of
handling.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

Use a pastry canvas and covered rolling pin. Flour both lightly. Now,
take out 1/4 or less of the dough. Always keep remaining dough
chilled. Roll dough to 1/4″ thickness. Flour inside of cookie
completely, but lightly. Tap cutter against hand or table to remove
every bit of excess flour, leaving stippled surface with lightest
coating of flour possible. Place cutter on dough and press down firmly
with fingers all around edges to make sure the entire edge is cut.
Slap cutter down on table or cookie sheet and dough will come right
out. Wipe inside of cutter with a towel to keep it clean. Flour it
each time before cutting. Do not allow small holes in cutter to become
plugged.

Bake cookies on cookie sheet 12 to 15 minutes. Do not allow to brown.
Remove from cookie sheet and cool thoroughly on cake racks before
decorating.

Decorating

Then comes the decorating! You will need:

• egg whites
• red, yellow, green food coloring (other colors optional)
• red, yellow, green colored sugar (other colors optional)
• small decorating items (raisins, silver balls, etc)
• 1 bag of confectioner’s sugar
• 1 stick butter
• 1/4 cup milk
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• small, inexpensive paint brushes

Slightly beat egg whites. Divide into 3 cups or small containers. Mix
a few drops of food coloring into each – red, yellow, and green. If
you can’t buy colored sugar, make your own. Own a piece of waxed
paper, add about 1 teaspoon food coloring to 1/4 cup granulated sugar.
As it dries, stir with a fork or crumble with fingers. For decorating
icing, mix confectioner’s sugar with milk, vanilla extract and butter
to desired consistency: a thick paste. Add more milk or sugar to get
the right consistency. Dip a paint brush in colored egg yolk and paint
the area of the cookie you want to color. Then sprinkle the colored
sugar on top of it. Shake off any excess. Use the icing for Santa
cookies (beard, eyebrows, rim of hat), Snowman cookies, etc.

And even with a picture of in-progress cookies. I love it!

Ritual of Refreshment (Contest)

This + Comment = Profit?

You may have noticed that I like cooking things. I also love new recipes.

Through a strange turn of events involving a generous friend and a generous husband, I find myself with… one more moonkin hatchling than I actually need. (It’s too much cuteness for one person to contain. I don’t have a screenshot because durr I forgot to take one last night and the servers are down presently).

Regardless, I have a moonkin, and I’d like to give him to someone who will love him and squeeze him and call him George (or anything else, that’s fine too).

Where do you come into this? It’s a contest! It requires much less work than my previous contest.

If, like me, you enjoy baking – I’d love to have folks share a favourite holiday recipe. If you aren’t much of a baker, you can share instead your favourite memory of a holiday recipe or food, whatever that might be. So here’s what you do:

1) Leave a comment on this entry saying you’ll send a recipe.

(WoW-ified or not, it’s up to you), and then you can send an e-mail to puggingpally AT gmail DOT com with your recipe. Make sure your e-mail is clearly labeled with the name you commented under – if I’m confused about what recipe belongs to who I might not be able to match them up.

OR

1b) Leave a comment on this entry telling us a memory/story/etc. about your favourite recipe.

Please note that by sharing the story or recipe you’re acknowledging that I have your permission to use it in an entry compiling them all.

I look forward to reading – I think it’s a grand time for some holiday cheer. You have just one whole day to enter; I’ll close entries at 10 AM Mountain time tomorrow, December 1st. (You can comment on the entry and you’ve “entered,” if it takes a bit more time to send me a recipe that’s fine too). I think that keeping it short and sweet is very thematic!

Moonkin!

Guide to Getting Withers

It sounds like some kind of crippling disease, doesn’t it? But it isn’t. The first place I went after the world shattered was Darkshore. I’d quested through here so many times on my various draenei and night elves. The changes the Cataclysm has wrought are devastating. Once I found out there was a pet associated with a quest in the zone, well – my path was clear. I had to have it. His name is Withers, and he’s similar to the Teldrassil Sproutling with a few key differences. Here’s how you can get one of your own, whether you are Horde or Alliance.

D'aww.

Horde

For Horde characters, Withers is actually a vendored pet. You can buy him from Apothecary Furrows. He’s located in the cave behind Cliffspring Falls (you can see it on the map). He’s down at the bottom of the cave in his own little room. Be aware that to Alliance he is hostile so he may have been killed recently if you don’t see him but you see apothecary stuff. Wait for him to respawn, he should be back.

This is the entrance to the cave. If you are uncertain how to get up here, look for the torches that line the path at the bottom.

Alliance

For those of us who are Alliance, it’s a little more complicated. Withers is awarded from completing the quest “Remembrance of Auberdine,” but you can’t unlock that quest until you do many, many more. I made a map that outlines generally what I did. Keep in mind that it’s hard to tell exactly what was required. I suspect that the quests to the far south (marked on the map) were not required, but they are awesome quests and I recommend you do them regardless! If anyone does this and tries to proceed without first doing those quests at Eye of the Maelstrom, please let me know if you were able to get Withers regardless. *Edit: I had a helpful reader let me know – the quests at the Eye of the Vortex are definitely not required to open the Remembrance of Auberdine quest, so you can skip them over if your only goal is to get Withers.

Quest hubs are marked in blue.

You will begin by questing in Lor’danel. When I wrote this last night this wasn’t there, but a helpful person on Wowhead has listed precisely all of the required quests here. You can refer to that list as you proceed, or just take a more casual approach as you go!

Lor’danel is where the flight point from Darnassus goes now, so it’s easy enough to get here. Some of the quests don’t seem immediately related, but are. There’s a worgen who has a fishing quest that used to be offered by a dwarf – I doubt it’s necessary to get Withers, but if you do it you do get 250 Gilneas rep. Do the rescuing and provisions quests and continue on to the Buzzbox quests. Unlike the previous Buzzbox quests, they don’t take forever and lead you all over the map. This chain will have you wind up in the same cave that the Horde access just to buy Withers.

Another breadcrumb quest will lead you down to the Ruins of Auberdine and outside the ruins to do some quests relating to Grimclaw. Continue doing all of these quests (do the Auberdine ones while you are nearby) before completing them and heading back to Lor’danel. A hint: if you complete the Grimclaw quest chain first it will end up helping you throughout the rest of Darkshore. I don’t want to give away any spoilers except to say that I chose the stag – and it gives a 10% speed boost in the entire zone. Not “for an hour,” or “while you’re on this quest chain” – it gives you a speed boost anytime you are in Darkshore from then on. It was useful for the rest of my questing!

I don’t want to give away any more of the happenings in Darkshore. These quests are amazing, in some cases heart-wrenching and definitely hit home for me given how much I liked Darkshore. Don’t just rush through to get Withers, take your time and enjoy them. Ultimately your efforts to aid the citizens of Darkshore and uncover some mysteries will lead you to the Ruins of Mathystra where you will be challenging the Shatterspear trolls. When you’re at this point you’re near the end! Continue along with these quests and once you are finished with them, Cerrellean Whiteclaw will have the Remembrance of Auberdine quest for you, and one of the rewards is Withers.

I’ll probably be going through these quests again with my druid and hope to add some clarification about which quests are mandatory and which are not – but until then, this gives a rough guide of what’s necessary to get the little guy. Feel free to ask any questions and I’ll answer them as best I can!

His name is Withers because he starts out HUGE – up to my hips as a draenei – and he will slowly shrink to “normal” non-combat pet size if he is away from water. Re summoning him returns him to his original large size, and if you take him near any body of water he will drink it and grow. More importantly than any of that, though, is that he’s a reminder of Auberdine for me. Every time I look at his sad little face, I’ll remember the Kaldorei of Auberdine and Lor’danel, trying to maintain an outpost in their dark and foreboding ancestral land.