Friday, April 24, 2020

Serendipity in the Morning

Sometimes, you actively seek out new experiences.

Sometimes, they seek you out.

And sometimes, you make lemonade out of lemons.

My day began more than a wee bit early when my cell started rebooting at 4:15 AM.

Every five minutes.

Since I'm on call 24x7, my work phone is always with me, and is right next to my glasses when I go to sleep in case I get awakened due to an emergency. So when my phone began it's shenanigans, it woke me up.

I ended up having to fiddle around with it --forcing updates, removing some unused apps, clearing space, and rebooting-- until I noticed that the phone was really hot, so I said to hell with it and popped out the battery and let it cool for about a half an hour.

By then I was already awake, so I took care of some housekeeping, checked my email, and decided there wasn't anything at work that couldn't wait for normal business hours. That meant I might as well boot up the main house PC and get onto Classic for a little while.

4:45 AM EST on a West Coast server is basically dead time: few people are loitering around the capital cities, almost nobody is chatting on LookingForGroup, and if you see people out in the world they're likely people who just got off work on the night shift or who start a 6 AM EST work shift.

In other words, it's prime time for anybody who wants to farm, say, Timbermaw reputation.

So Cardwyn decided that she needed a change of scenery and left the Plaguelands in search of Felwood.

***

Unlike Az, Cardwyn can't sneak her way through Timbermaw Hold, so she needed to grind enough Timbermaw rep to get to at least Unfriendly.*

Courtesy of previous grinding she was pretty close to getting to Unfriendly, but I figured that between the two Firbolg zones in Felwood the northern one was going to be the one most people in-zone would be at. After all, it was closest to both the Alliance flight point as well as Timbermaw Hold itself. But just in case, I decided to do some grinding there to start and then move south if things got too busy.

The only other player in the northern zone was a Pally, who almost immediately ran up to me and whispered a piece of gear to me. "Do you need this?" he asked.

Momentarily taken aback, I checked and discovered that this green actually beat the green piece that I'd gotten in Sunken Temple. "Actually, it does," I replied.

He opened a trade to give me the gear, and in return I gave him some water. "Have a great morning!" he said and was on his way.

This reminded me of the time back in Wrath when I was on Quintalan, leveling in Desolace, and an L80 Pally rode up, told me he was unsubscribing, and offered me tons of gear and gold. Obviously this little kindness wasn't on that level, but the randomness of it all touched me. So when a Warrior posted in LFG about looking for help in Duskwood with Morbent Fel and Bride of the Embalmer, I whispered that I'd help if he didn't get any at level takers.

"You're the only one who replied," he said, so he invited me to a group and I ported down to Stormwind.

***

The last time I visited Morbent Fel I assisted someone when Cardwyn was in somewhere in the L40s. But when you're sitting at L57, I figured this would be a pushover. All I had to do was wait for the player on the quest to use the magical device to render Morbent Fel vulnerable, and that would be that.

But wouldn't you know that bastard resisted at least three or four of my Frostbolts.

After the first two in a row, I thought that maybe I'd forgotten that he was resistant to cold spells and switched to a Fireball, but that didn't help much. Switching back to a Frostbolt I gave him some damage, but then he resisted me again. I gritted my teeth and just kept slogging away, and he finally dropped.

"The damn bastard kept resisting me," I said in chat.

The Warrior laughed, and I grumbled something about no good deed going unpunished.

The Bride dropped in almost no time at all, so I felt much better when I waved goodbye to the Warrior and headed back to Felwood to continue my grinding.

 ***

When I finally logged to get ready for work, I felt good. The day may have started lousy, but it also gave me the chance to give as well as receive some random act of kindness.

Now, if my phone will merely behave....

#Blapril2020




*Or she could make a run of it, but come on. I wasn't about to strip Card down to her skivvies and do the corpse run routine if I could avoid it. Az already did that, and I'd rather not become known as "the guy who strips his toons and runs around in the snow".

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