Announcements

Words of “wisdom” from Guild Master, Officers, or other leaders within the Ministry of Defense. ONLY posts including this category will show on the homepage!

With the new patch a week underfoot, I’ve gotten a lot of tips and tricks sent to me over the course of the week. If you have more, PLEASE share, and I’ll add to this post!

Nazjatar

Murloc Trading Game

If you want the Crimson Tidestallion or any of the dailies, you gotta get yourself this weakaura: https://wago.io/6YhvXz76q Talk to each of the murlocs and eventually it will automatically purchase everything you need from the vendors! If you prefer the manual walkthrough of the most prized of Mrrl’s possessions, the Tidestallion, check out this Wowhead Guide.

Thre are a ton of other goodies from it as well – you can get rep tokens for followers, manapearls, and more. Just be sure to have your Aszh/ari Benthic Cloak equipped – it won’t work otherwise!

XP for your Followers

Kill the ancient coral rares! Check out Wowhead for a walkthrough!
Kill specific enemies to pick up tokens for specific followers – Giant Crab Leg for Poen, Eel Fillet for Vim, Fathom Ray Wing for Neri, and Reefwalker Bark for all three.

Getting Around

You can kill (and loot) Deepcoral Bud to get Deepcoral Pods – those will increase your jump height, length, and let you take less fall damage. Pretty useful! You’ll find a ton of these in the coral forest in the center of the map.

You can kill Toxigore the Alpha and get an Alpha Fin which gives you an insane burst of speed for a short time.

Whatever you do, don’t take a Scroll of Torga’s Swiftness. It does the exact opposite of helping you get around efficiently.

Daily Events

At reset time (11am est) and 12 hours later (11pm est), you will have two events: One for non-WM which spawns 5 elite Naga and gives you an unstable manapearl buff, and one for WM-on that gives you nazjatar battle tokens. An hour later in non-WM, Aszhara summons a being from the depths, which gives you a 150 rep token. If you miss it, these events happen at other points in the day too, but reset and 12 hours later are the most easily caught!

Algans

There are a number of regular creatures called Algans – Lost Algans and Wandering Algans. Killing them nets you manapearls and benthic gear. There’s also a chance to spawn a rare when enough die! If you can’t keep track (because they’re not rares), this weakaura is perfect for you.

Mechagon

Rare Hunting

If you are looking to kill a variety of rares for mounts, pets, rep, and more, you will absolutely need this WA. If you have Tomtom installed, it will place a marker on your map automatically when a rare calls out its existence. It will also play a buzzing tone in case you’re not looking at the game, to alert you of rare spawns. Either can be disabled.

Mecha-Pepe

You can find P3-P3 at 68.5 47.9 in The Other Place (future alternate Mechagon).

Drill Rig Map

When the rigs come back up next time, you’ll be prepared!

Both Locations

Rare Hunting

Rarescanner
Handynotes and TomCat’s Tours for Nazjatar and Mechagon

Zuldazar

Mount Questlines

You didn’t forget about your direhorn hatchling, did you? She’s waiting to be fed and played with to evolve into a mount for you! Go back to Warbeast Kraal every day and do her dailies.

What about Kua’fon? He can fly – go and visit Paku south of Warbeast Kraal for a short questline and cutscene!

Thank you everyone who came out and asked questions! I’m going to be dividing the meeting / Q&A up into two sections – the ‘mythic’ team and the ‘casual’ team.

Raid Pre-Planning Meeting Agenda:

  • Raid Times
  • Raid Teams
  • Mythic / hardcore
  • Heroic / easygoing
  • General Q&A

Mythic / Progression Team

Raid Times:

Thursday & Friday
7pm – 10pm (est) / 4pm – 7pm (pst)

Membership

Currently the main progression / mythic group is remaining the same. We want to keep the momentum going. Everyone who was a main or an active sub during Battle of Dazar’alor is on the Progression team. You are all considered mains until we hit mythic. When we hit mythic and need to limit to 20 people we will determine who will be considered a sub at that time. This means that performance is important – just because you were mythic in BoD doesn’t mean you can slack off in EP!

The mythic team’s membership and roles are not ‘locked’ – there is potential for both upward and downward mobility. If a person on the mythic team underperforms, we will be scouting the heroic team for a replacement. That said, we will be offering leeway as people adjust to new characters, roles, and mechanics. Don’t fret because you made a mistake on the first day – but we need to see improvement over time if you want to be on the Mythic team.

Anyone who isn’t on the mythic team but wants in on it should let us know so we can more closely evaluate their performance in the heroic group.

Mythic Q&A:

When will we know our roles?

We are asking for people to lock in between 2-3 characters by July 2nd, and their final role by July 9th. Roles are somewhat first come first served, and priority is given to those who are already playing those roles. (For example, we currently have 3 Demon Hunters; if none of them wants to swap, we will not be accepting more Demon Hunters) If you wait too long you may not get your choice at all.

Is there a chance of week 1 heroic?

Maybe. This depends on everyone reaching 415, for example. We are not accepting those who are not carrying their own weight or who waited too long to choose a new main. In addition to showing a strong understanding of mechanics. We are not going to smash against heroic bosses for several hours with no progress. We may opt to pop in to normal, see how it goes, and if it’s breezy and clean, go into heroic. Warlords will figure that out.

Can we pug Mythic BoD without penalty now?

Absolutely

Are we running loot council?

Not exactly. However, send your BiS itemization from bosses to Tiv. This has the effect of both you knowing and planning more about the class and the raid, and us being able to more easily spread loot for the group if something gets called into question.

What if someone has to eventually leave because of school in the fall?

We would love to keep you until then! If you eventually have to phase out because of classes or something else, please give us ample notice to train up a replacement, and let us know if you want to move to the weekend group, act as a sub, or anything else.

Are we giving up Mythic BoEs?

Depending on how farmable EP is, we may wind up requiring all or some of the funds from mythic BoE sales to fund guild bank repairs.

Can tanks pug ahead?

That depends entirely on what the group is doing and how it progresses. If we’re doing heroic week 1, feel free to go ahead on normal. Same with vice versa. We’ll keep you posted.

Can I sign up as DPS on the weekend team?

If the other raid group needs DPS, yes. However, we will be prioritizing roles they need.

Heroic / Easygoing Team

Raid Times

Saturday 5pm – 8pm (est) / 2pm – 5pm (pst)
Monday 7pm – 10pm (est) / 4pm – 7pm (pst)

Membership

Those not interested in main progression will be on the ‘weekend’ team. The weekend team will be more casual than the progression one – more lighthearted / easygoing / forgiving of mistakes. If we as RLs don’t live up to that standard and people think we’re being too harsh, then please communicate with us or with Urostek ASAP. It can be tough tough to swap between ‘mean progression raid lead’ and ‘casual funtime raid lead’ sometimes!

We’ll still want to progress on the weekends so serious underperformance of mechanics or play will be penalized in the forms of benches from certain bosses, but only after repeated or chronic offenses.

Anyone who isn’t on the mythic team but wants in on it should let us know so we can more closely evaluate their performance in the heroic group.

Because the weekend group will likely be missing some key roles (heals/tanks), people from the main progression group may bring one alt to the weekend group if the weekend group needs filling. Mythic mains bringing alts will only be allowed to bring the one alt until a determined time (this is so we don’t get people coming in on multiple alts every few weeks to try to get gear, thus hurting the other players gear efforts). Mythic members bringing alts to the weekend group will be held to a higher standard of performance and attitude – coming to weekend group is a privilege and should be treated as such. You are there to help fill in gaps that the other group needs, not be handed a carry.

Q&A

How do I tell you my role intention for Eternal Palace?

Fill out the spreadsheet here.

What are the addon requirements?

In addition to DBM or Bigwigs, we will be requiring all new raiders to use Weakauras and install specific packs that we link them.

What’s the ilvl requirement for Eternal Palace?

ilvl requirement is 400 for normal and 415 for heroic

What are some resources I can read about to prepare?

Check out the #palace-raid-planning channel in discord. Eventually we’ll move those pins to Raiding Discussion.

What if we have a problem with the Warlords or other raid members?

If you don’t feel comfortable talking to the Warlords or the other member about it, please reach out to Urostek. This is especially imperative if you think you maybe treated unfairly or not taken seriously.

Are we picking team names?

Maybe? It wasn’t planned but we could? SHRUGS!

Are we doing more AOTC runs?

We might! It wholly depends on who needs them and how much begging happens

Will you be updating the audit sheets?

Yup! We have an audit sheet for Mythic Raiders and one for Heroic Raiders. I will be clearing out / adding people to that in addition to…

What about the attendance?

I will be cleaning out the attendance page and adding new folks as well before the new raid starts. I will also be paying very close attention to mythic attendees lateness.

What if I don’t want to raid for a few weeks?

Attendance is on a freeze right now. You can earn vanguard, but not lose it!

What do I need to do to join in?

Read the Rules and Regulations! Are you already a raider? Re-read and re-confirm!

Raid interest meeting for Eternal Palace on Thursday at normal raid time (4pm server / 7pm est)! This will be for both new and returning raiders. I encourage folks to look over these past posts to answer common questions:

https://www.ministryofdefense.net/uldir-raid-pre-planning-meeting-minutes/
https://www.ministryofdefense.net/bfd-raid-planning-minutes/

We’ll be talking about ilvl minimums, expectations, and the two raid groups (yes, we’re keeping two).

If you can’t make the meeting please let a Warlord know so that we can fill you in. I will also write up another Q&A / meeting minutes like I did for Uldir and BoD.

In the meantime please check the spreadsheet below so we can get a sense of what everyone is playing.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1YlSI5h2w3rlITTajV0wp7OYFhRs7h_AipuvY-d4dTp0/edit#gid=0

Hopefully this is self explanatory.

Slap your name on the left, select checkmark if that’s what you’re gonna play for sure, select question mark if you might play that class, leave blank otherwise. Don’t include alts, just your main intention.

There’s also a ton of good information in the #palace-raid-planning channel of discord!

Thanks to Arianrhod for putting together an incredibly fun and rewarding event last Saturday!

Altogether, we had 20 people attempt to hunt us all down, with 11 successfully deciphering the clues to all the officers.

Did you miss any clues? Check out the hints and their locations!

Group 1 Hints:

Urostek: At his usual capital city hangout. D-Fence!
Harmesi: We used to train mages here until we moved to help fight the Lich King
Quetzie: Owls, pterrors, bats, and crows; Different druids, different forms. Quetzie looks across the place where training them was once the norm.
Grimmbrew: With the Gordok I stand, waiting on a champion in dire need.
Jibbles: No, I’M the Gobbo King and I’m taking over the palace!

Did you figure them out?

Group 1 Solves:

Urostek: Orgrimmar AH Fence


Harmesi: Dalaran Crater


Quetzie: Moonglade


Grimmbrew: Dire Maul


Jibbles: Gallywix’s Pleasure Palace

Group 2 Hints:

Round 2 was trickier than round 1!

Lineda: With bark of steel, the trio stands. Forever petrified by evil hands. Crazed, corrupted, Furbolgs, more, deep in the woods of northern Kalimdor.
Arianrhod: Door to Crushing Bones and Cracking Skulls
Deathhoss: Among the poor and transient I stay, a failed payment led to this place in the west, where my brotherhood made a home
Zextol: Atop Lei Shen’s ORIGINal resting place.
Telann: Say what? Corgi butt. Or Corgi butts drive me nuts.
Bulborbish: When Blightcaller finishes a campaign, he can’t help but return to what was once his home.

Did you figure them out?

Group 2 Solves:

Lineda: Felwood, Between 3 Petrified Ancients
Arianrhod: Blackrock Foundry


Deathhoss: Deadmines entrance
Zextol: Hall of Origination Entrance


Telann: Orgrimmar, Anniversary Vendor Location
Bulborbish: Eastern Plaguelands, inside Marris Stead

Winners

Everyone who participated was entered into both a 20,000 gold raffle and enough bones for the Albino Raptor!

Congratulations to Clownshadowz for winning the gold. As a newer character, that gold will be put to good use, I’m sure!

Congratulations to Vaughna for winning the Albino Raptor!

The Grand Prize reward for finding all officers was to be entered into a raffle for an in-store mount of choice. The winner was Gary (Elide). Congratulations!

Next Time

The officers all had a blast with this event and we’ll definitely do it again. We may change a few things up (maybe we’ll be themed, like only in Pandaria or Northrend) or we may decide to really stretch out how far you can fly on flight paths and have you bouncing around the continents even more!

Thanks to Arianrhod for organizing such an awesome event, and thanks to all participants   we’ll see you next time!

With almost record timing on the kill, the gang tore through Mythic Conclave last night. We had 3 pulls the previous week after killing Opulence, and last night we got in 14 pulls including the kill. Considering it took us over 100 pulls to kill Opulence, this is an almost record-breaking feat. Congratulations to everyone involved!

…and it would appear our members are incredibly excited about it:

Lokisapocalypse (Lokiwise, Thanos, Lightchylde, and many others) is a very active member of the Ministry of Defense Discord. He’s also a crackshot programmer who created an amazing tool for tracking World of Warcraft reputations – the World of Warcraft Reputation Calculator.

The World of Warcraft Reputation Calculator was created as a way to easily track earning reputation in World of Warcraft. As someone who’s played since Vanilla, I often found myself asking, “How many more daily quests do I need to hit Exalted?”, “How many Emissary Caches will it take to get Revered?”, “Why should I bother getting Hydraxian Waterlords reputation in Battle for Azeroth?”.

With that idea in mind, I created a tool that would display your current reputation score in a more meaningful way. By entering your character’s name, server, and realm, you can see a page that shows you how close you are to the next rank for each reputation.

By clicking the To Next Rank, for a given expansion, you can see how to earn reputation for that faction and how many more of that activity you need to do. This will allow you to see exactly how many more Emissary Caches you need to turn in to unlock Zandalari Trolls as a playable race.

I’ve also created faction pages with more details into the history of each faction. Each faction page also contains all of the repeatable ways you can gain reputation for that faction as well as what rewards you can earn at each level.

Continue reading →

I’ve been generally too busy to post wrapups for a few weeks, but I’ll catch up on them shortly. In the meantime, congratulations on everyone who got AOTC for Uu’nat this week! It is unlikely to be our only attempt at him, so if you missed out, don’t worry, there will be more. In the meantime, Mondays are back to Heroic Battle of Dazar’alor, since a lot of people are still missing Jaina on their mains, and it gives us a break from Uu’nat for a little while.

Killing Uu’nat brought us up to #1 Horde and #14 overall on Aerie Peak for Crucible of Storms. Considering that we’ve only been doing it one night a week without a chunk of our main progression team, I’m happy with how we did on the overall!

I previously mentioned this in Discord, but now that the official donation season is upon us, I wanted to give everyone a more thorough explanation. Throughout May I will be doing a charity stream for St. Jude PLAY LIVE, during which all funds donated go directly to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. You can scroll down to the bottom of the post to see what they’re about.

Quetzie’s Stream & Goals

Since I never streamed outside of raids for the guild and I never did this before, I gave myself a modest goal of $150. In order to reach this goal I’ll be streaming my alt-levelling, Mythic+ runs, Island Expeditions, etc more regularly as well.

There are a few rewards and incentives to donors, most of which center around raids and the guild.

$10 Donation

Anyone who donates $10 or more can sign up for a custom innervate message. These messages will be used during Saturday and Monday raids. You can use song lyrics, flirts, dad jokes, or even use as advertising space. Since I block chat on my screen, there will also be a /say message over my head so that those watching at home can see your message. I will also screencap the message and post it in Discord, in case it gets used when you’re not around. If I receive any interesting responses, I’ll be sure to add that 🙂 Remember, messages cannot be explicit! This is for children! If you donate over $10, send me a message on Discord with the message you’d like.

Top Donor Reward

The top donor* will receive a FREE custom Ministry of Defense hoodie with their character name of choice on it! The MoD logo, character name, and “Ministry of Defense” will appear splashed across the center back and front left breast area of the hoodie. If you win, I’ll be in touch to get a shipping address.

* In the event of a tie, both parties get one!

$50 Milestone: Healing Normal Battle of Dazar’alor

When I reach $50, I will consult with the resto goddesses* to set myself up right to heal a normal run of Battle of Dazar’alor. I may or may not heal Jaina depending on how craptastic I do. But I will absolutely give it my best shot!

*Meevs and Shay

$150 Milestone: First Person battle of Dazar’alor

Blame Corignis for this one! If we hit my stream goal of $150, I will play the entirety of Battle of Dazar’alor in first-person. I fully expect to get hit by fire in Opulence and frozen into a block on Jaina. But at least you won’t have to see the back of the head of an ugly chicken-lizard, right?

Future Milestones

If we wind up surpassing $150, I’ll think of something else fun or interesting to do. (I’m not saying I’ll get a MoD tattoo, but I’m not saying I won’t either!) Submit your own ideas if we reach that point – I’d love to make this fun for you guys.

Quetzie’s Tiltify page

DAM BUG Team & Goals

My stream is part of the DAM BUG team, which has a goal of $1200. We’re a handful of small streamers looking to make a big impact. There’s only a few of us signed up right now, with more expected to sign up throughout the duration of May. Last year, the team leads raised $1200, so that’s our goal as a team this year. Any one can join the team and help us reach – and surpass – that goal!

Are you interested in joining us? Boter, one of the team leads, set up a YouTube video tutorial on how to join. There is a link in the video description to art / streaming assets and a document walking you through the process if the video doesn’t help. You can also ask me for a hand.

DAM BUG PLAY LIVE page

About St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital

  • Treatments developed at St. Jude have helped push the overall survival rate for childhood cancer from 20% when the hospital opened in 1962 to more than 80% today
  • Families never receive a bill from St. Jude for treatment, travel, housing or food
  • 82 cents of every dollar received from donations, research grants, insurance recoveries and investment returns goes to support the current and future needs of St. Jude
  • St. Jude treats about 8,500 patients each year. Most patients stay in one of four housing facilities specifically designed and managed for families of children with cancer and other diseases. Construction of a fourth housing facility began in 2018.
  • St. Jude has an onsite school allows patients to keep up with their school program back home.
  • More than 75% of St Jude’s operating cost come from donors

More information about St. Jude

About St. Jude PLAY LIVE

PLAY LIVE has raised over $11,000,000 for St. Jude over several years.

Basic rules: Anyone over 13 can stream; games streamed must be rated “TEEN” or lower by the ESRB; streamers may not use language or visuals that are bigoted, sexually explicit, or profane. (I’m not sure they’re really pressuring about the profanity thing). Streamers cannot be drunk or partake in drug-related activities on stream (which is also within Twitch rules anyway). ALL money donated goes directly to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Streamers who raise a certain amount of funds will receive prizes based on how much they raised; $100 nets you a free PLAY LIVE t-shirt, while $5000 or more gets you a gaming chair!

More information about St. Jude PLAY LIVE

Thanks

Thanks to anyone who shares the link, watches the stream, and who donates (or has already donated!).

Mythic Night 1

Champions was another one shot loot pinata this week. We’re getting cleaner about add kills and dodging hammers.

Grong was problematic and from talking with other guilds, Grong is one of the hardest reclears even after everything else is on farm. Poor RNG on bots (including a bot placement we’d never seen before), as well as a mess of fears making for missed interrupts, made Grong a burden again. Towards the end we adopted a new strategy on interrupts, and both of our orb collectors are getting more comfortable with their roles.

That said, if you are not an orb collector, please do not pick it up, even if things look hairy. We know the timers on them, we know our cooldowns, we know what we’re capable of. Multiple times we were planning on waiting for damage and mechanics before fetching an orb, only to find someone else had grabbed it…and then subsequently died with it. Leave us to our job, and we’ll leave you to yours.

We finally killed Grong with just enough time to clear trash and get a pull or two on Jadefire. After the issues with Grong we were feeling a bit down. Fortunately, the only DPS who wasn’t with us last week – Grim – was a tank main already familiar with the hardest mechanic, which is the multi sided strike. Therefore we didn’t have to explain this to him. The rest of the fight – gunning down explosives, killing the adds, navigating the maze – were a cinch. The group stacked wonderfully when Manceroy became a phoenix, and we 1-shot the boss with minimal losses.

Thursday Logs

Mythic Night 2

Unfortunately for us, Blizzard decided to be screwy and anyone with a Cox ISP had serious connection difficulties. Some of our main roster and some of our subs wound up suffering the whole time, so we wasted between 1 and 1 and a half hours until we could get real progression going.

Left-side fire room has a slight change; we’re now tanking the boss in the middle as opposed to near the gate, which makes it easier for people to deposit orbs safely.

We swapped healers on different sides and may continue to tweak healers over time.

Both sides reached the Gem room at various times, though we never had an attempt with both groups reaching the end room. We’re quite pleased with how the latter half of the night progressed.

This week we will continue to reclear bosses 1-3. Depending on how the group feels we may save the lockout on Opulence for next week, or we may reclear again.

Friday Logs

Saturday: Heroic

I was again not present for the Heroic run, but it looks like things went really well. Conclave was a 2-shot and Mekka had some issues, but otherwise things looked good. We welcomed a couple new people on Saturday, and we look forward to them continuing to raid with us.

Saturday Logs

Monday: AOTC and Normal

With a blockade lockout available on Heroic, we decided to see if we could get some people AOTC that need it. Blockade had an annoying wipe at 0% HP and then we killed it. Jaina was surprisingly a 1-shot, netting 6 AOTCs, 3 of which were new to the player.

After that, we swapped around and ran through normal. Much like last week, we 1-shot everything there, too. For those of us running on out Mythic tons, it was almost laughable to realize how far we’d come. Corignis decided to /sleep in fire on Grong for 20 seconds and barely took damage; others played similar games with damage taken, or simply ignored mechanics in favor of DPS output.

The combination of 2 heroic bosses and all of normal came in at just under 3 hours. We’re making good time on alt nights.

Monday logs

AOTC Achievements

As we continue to perform in Mythic and have raid opportunities for heroic on Saturday, the chances of us getting more AOTC events is very high. If you’re interested in AOTC and don’t have it, check the Raiding Announcements channel in Discord. You’ll see a signup post.

Crucible of Storms

This week will be our first look at the new raid. Saturday will have Normal and Heroic runs. Vanguards get dibs on spots. If we have too many people showing interest, we will either trim or split into 2 groups (to be determined). After the first clear, we will determine how to add it to the rotation. It’s possible that CoS will be added to Monday nights, after finishing heroic BoD or before clearing normal.

Mythic CoS will likely be handled by Jibbles, who organized his “Gob Squad” runs of Champions early on. We’re not looking to add Mythic CoS to our normal Mythic BoD time slot. As Jibbles’ runs are unaffiliated with the official Ministry of Defense Mythic runs, you’ll have to contact him if it’s something you’re interested in.