Atheren's Gaming Goals for February 2026

 Here are my main goals for the month:

Prep for Midnight 

 

It's crunch time! March 2 the WoW world descends into darkness with the coming of Midnight.  Or so it would seem.  Can our heroes, with the supposed help of the Army of Light overcome Miss Twinkle Toes?

Level up!   

My Rapscallion Blood Elf.  I've got the Mysterious Winds buff plus the ongoing 25% xp for having 8 max level characters.  Eek will that go away in Midnight once there's a new level cap?  Yikes. Just thought of that.   My Blood Elf also wants to do Endeavors in her neighborhood but they haven't been available to her.  Maybe now she's out of the Burning Crusade Time Loop the neighborhood will be kind. There's a watering can   (10 coupons each) available on the Endeavors Vendor and a little garden trowel (5 coupons each) that I need for both of my houses.  I mean REALLY NEED.

 

 

I have replaced my squishy main Tailor/Enchanter who is a Mage in the Midnight Runners with a currently level 77 Warlock.  Need to get her to 80 in a trice.  Warlocks never really get nerfed, in my opinion, so she should be viable in the new expansion.

 

 

Gear Up!  

I have to get all the Midnight Runners through the new pre-patch gear up area of the Twilight Highlands.  My main is a druid and before the Squish she could easily handle five mobs at a time.  Now two or three have got her on the ropes.  I've only done one session with her in the Highlands though and zero gear dropped, plus two of the world quests seemed buggy.  I think these problems were addressed  in last weeks patch?

 

 

Continue hunting down tradeskill recipes and ingredients for decor with all of my crafters.  Hot tips:  Dark Runes drop from Corrin's Crossing Dark Casters and Vile Tutors while I got none in two Scholomance runs.  The Firelands Raid in Hyjal is, in fact, a simple place to get your Living Embers, and the only place you will find them.

In Before The Lock

 I always loved that phrase, from way back in my Forum Rat days.  Here is post ten for January, putting me on course for squeaking out ten posts a month this year.  Yay me.

I chose The Dragon Isles for my Blood Elf Paladin.  I felt a little guilty leaving the Ghostlands unfinished, but these feet were made for flying through the air.

 

 

Beloved Raptor Plushie and The Dark Portal Decor I Didn't Know I Needed

 My Tailor made a new Plushie for the House.  I had to gather and mill a fair few Dreamleafs to get Roseate Pigment with my Inscriptionist, and Prospect also quite a bit of Leystone Ore and Felslate Ore with my Jeweler, but ta da!

 

Here's the Raptor in his original size, next to the embiggened Elekk Plushie.
 

And here I set both plushies to their maximum size, which I think I will keep.

 

Free for owning Midnight and logging into the game, your own personal Dark Portal.  After sneering at my neighbor who had an ugly green round portal in his yard (of course I didn't actually sneer), I am going to rearrange my furniture and find a spot for this bad boy.  I didn't realize I was fond of the Dark Portal, but it pleases me to no end to have it.

 

World of Warcraft The State of Azeroth

 Thursday, a video feature was posted with Holly Longdale and Ion Hazzikostas  talking about where Wow has and where it's going. 

 

 

 

 

In addition to the usual roadmap layout, they talked about many new features coming to the game.   

Though I don't PvP, I think it's interesting they're introducing an AI powered PvP mode so you can learn the basics without being camped at the graveyard by real people. 

There's a new Delve type coming that's called Labyrinth (for now) that is huge and sprawling, as if it's numerous delves joined together.  You can do the various parts as suits you.

Also I don't raid, but there are a few Single Boss Raids in the works, which seems less torturous than the normal raids.   Noice.

They did also cover upcoming Mists of Pandaria and Anniversary realm events.  Something for everyone.

Housing of course slipped into the presentation a fair few times.  It's a fantastic feature and some players are truly doing incredible things already.  Give them more tools, and what will they imagine?

I liked the presentation, but, then I like the game and play most days.  Holly and Ion seemed genuinely happy and enthusiastic, which is a good thing. 

The Bloody Elf On The Shelf

 Half the battle of writing a post is getting just the right title.  I pondered quite a bit before that gem came up.

 You will recall I made this character to snare some of the new Blood Elf themed furnishings now available.  I haven't any at all, I don't think.

My plan to level her using dungeons on high pop Horde server Area 52 has not been a grand success.  She's level 28, which is perhaps a little higher than she would be if I had just quested with her.

The Blood Elf starter area is Sunstrider Isle, Eversong Woods and The Ghostlands.  It may be somewhat akin to Ammen Vale and Azuremyst Isle for the Draenai in size. It feels like it goes on forever.  I'm in the Ghostlands portion, and you can see how much more there is to do.

 

There's no flight here.  Also, it turns out, the whole area is in the Burning Crusade Time Period, not the Midnight era of the game.  The big gate you see on the map leads to the current era.   Additional timey wimey twistiness is that in order to get Classic Dungeons for my runs, I went to Orgrimmar and chose the Cataclysm timeline.   I don't believe I have gotten a single low level Classic era dungeon in my queues, as they time out and try for another era.   A trip to the Big Bad O for nothing.

I did travel there yet another time to get my house at level 11.  I went with the traditional Blood Elf style home. I've not done much with it because I have no money (though I took 2000 gold out of the warband bank to get her started), and also, I want to use this house to experiment with changing the structure of the inner house, trying to add stairwell rooms and such.  Simple is good, I can just stuff all my things away and then move walls and ceilings and doors around, constructing staircases from beams like the big boys and girls do.

 

I got a really nice plot looking out to sea again in the neighborhood. There aren't any close neighbors here either.  It's a good escape on a day when my girl may have gotten pounded into the ground by bad guys.

I'm unsure where I'll go once I finish the Ghostlands.  I was trying to think of an era of the game where there's a neutral hub so I can be in a city I'm familiar with. The three possibilities I came up with are Draenor, Legion, or Dragon Isles.   Dunno.

Wow Transmog: Back To Clown Town

 It's only been a recent thing for me to do much transmog.  Now that I like it, I'd send my character to the Transmogrifier after any session where they got new armor.

I knew changes were coming, and I initially had thought transmog would be free in Midnight.  So funny!

What they did instead, on the 27th of January, was remove the transmog you had on every single character.   No toon left unturned.

 Because Atherne has plenty of money, I fixed her appearances and took the shot.  The others, particularly my Mage....eeekkk.   For other characters as I've played them, I just went with the hidden helm appearance, and let the clowns flow.  Horrible. No fun.

 Here is a character who has no money to speak of.  34 Gold.  I had her upgrade a bunch of Dreanor Buildings so poof went her money.

How she looks now:

 

Using the Transmog interface, I put her outfit back the way it was before the transmogapocalypse  as best as I could. 

This would cost 492 g 55 s 90 c, unless I'm mistaken.   Additionally, she does not come with an outfit slot  though it looks as if she has two.  Nope, 200 gold for a slot.  Yup 34 gold...nearly 700 gold to get to where she was...

 

My hope is they back track from the system as it is now.   At some point soonish, they are planning to give every character one free transmog.   After that, I will do little transmog. Surely I won't buy anything more from the trading post, and any reward that is a transmog reward is as dust.

The Post Count Cheater

 

I’m back in fine post form with a goal of 100 posts for the year (this blog had 11 total in 2025).  My monthly goal is 10 posts each month, to slide into that 100 posts for the year with ease.  This is just for me, to keep my brain going, sort of.

If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you know I can be ruthless getting my post count goals in.  My “a post is a post” mantra gets me a long way when I’m crunching.  As always, I can philosophically fall back on two things:

I write this for myself and my imaginary audience (also me).

Nobody reads this %h*t, so it doesn’t matter at all.

To those of you who are definitely not nobodies, big hugs as always for stopping by.

This counts as one of the six I need for January.  Five more to come before day’s end on Saturday the 31^st.  Go go go!