Glory of the Delver

I am a glorious delver! If you play The War Within, you probably already know that in order to complete this meta achievement, you must kill Zekvir all on your lonesome.

I’m a Beast Mastery Hunter using the Open World / Delves Pack Leader build from Wowhead, my ilvl at the moment of the kill was 605. Brann was level 32, he was specced as healer with Unbreakable Iron Idol and Relic of Sentience. It took me between around 20 attempts to complete it.

I used Deadly Boss Mods to warn me of the different phases, a Weak Aura alert to interrupt Enfible Spittle and a macro to counter shot the target of my focus, so I don’t have to swap targets:

#showtooltip
/cast [@focus, mod:ctrl, exists][] Counter Shot

There are 3 things to look for:

  1. Interrupt Enfeebling Spittle. Its cast time is 1.5 seconds, so you must practice to use your Counter Shot macro really fast;
  2. You must, in absolute priority, destroy the cocoon that Zekvir creates when he casts Call Web Terror. If you let it hatch, you’ll be incapacitated and probably die from Zekvir’s other spells;
  3. Don’t stand in the shit! Whether it’s Zekvir’s frontal attack or its AOE Fear, run away!

So the whole fight consists in DPSing Zekvir while interrupting its DOT and switching to the cocoons when he summons them. Don’t forget to heal your pets, stay out of his attacks and use your CDs on the cocoons, because they need to be destroyed in priority.

I start the fight by applying Hunter’s Mark, marking Zekvir as target of my /focus, using Misdirect on my pets and already using Mend Pet before pulling.

My greatest advice is to do it again and again until you get comfortable with the mechanics. The amount of attempt isn’t limited and, beside the repair bill, it’s free. Oh, and don’t do like me during my first 10 pulls, make sure that Growl is on!

Fear Street Trilogy

Slasher trilogy with a ’90s vibe. These words are enough for me. If you need more, the future of our friendship seems compromised and I don’t really know how you ended up on this blog. However, I’ll write a little something, for those who would need an extra push.

Teenagers accidentally cross path with an ancient witch responsible for a series of brutal murders that have plagued their town for centuries. This trilogy crosses time and takes place in the 90s (first movie), the 70s (second movie) and 1666 (third movie).

Fear street is a great blend of ocult mystery, slasher and ’90s nostalgia. It’s well filmed, stylish, and very entertaining! The cast is near perfect and the soundtrack is on spot.

Even if the movies often feel like an homage to classics slashers like Friday the 13th or Scream, it it manages to get its own flavor by adding supernatural elements for flavor and it all works!

I was pleasantly surprised by this Netflix Original trilogy and I would strongly recommend it to the fans of the genre.

Incident In A Ghostland

A mother of two who inherits a house is confronted with murderous intruders on the first night in their new home and fights for her daughters’ lives. Sixteen years later when the daughters reunite at the house, things get really strange. (IMDB)

I was afraid to watch another psychological drama masqueraded as an horror movie. While there is definitely a psychological dimension to Incident in a Ghostland, it manages to stay on track instead of flooding our screens with slow scenes of crying faces on background of violin music.

The violence in this movie is sordid and it isn’t until the end that we can fully mesure what horror befell the two girls. This movie isn’t for everyone and should come with a warning for the recovering victims of abuse.

It was a good watch and while it was darker than I had expected, Pascal Laugier (the director of Martyrs) managed to avoid unnecessary drama and deliver a cold and uncomfortable horror film.

Also, I was very surprised to see Mylène Farmer playing a role in an horror movie. She was convincing and I only wish that we could see her more often.

Trivia : Actress Taylor Hickson suffered a gruesome facial injury when she crashed through a glass door while filming, resulting in 70 stitches. She later sued the film’s production company for the accident. (IMDB)

There’s Someone Inside Your House

The graduating class at Osborne High is being targeted by a masked assailant, intent on exposing the darkest secret of each victim, and only a group of misfit outsiders can stop the killings. (IMDB)

The movie is pretty decent, with a vibe of 90s films like Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer. There are a few great kill scenes, featuring well-executed gore and blood splatter. While it gets predictable, it’s still a fun watch for slasher fans.

The plot was nothing new but it had some fun twists, the killer wearing a 3D printed mask of their victim was a great idea. I just don’t get why they picked up that title as many of the killings happen outside people’s houses…

I’d suggest checking it out at least once. While it won’t become a classic, it’ll probably entertain your evening, just like many Netflix original horror flicks.

The War Within – 20th Anniversary Collector’s Edition

Yep, we have 2 of these babies

A few days ago, it felt like Christmas… We’ve received our 20th anniversary collector’s edition of The War Within and, oh boy, we haven’t been disappointed!

The Collector’s edition in itself is the same as any other expansion, a beautiful big box with a few goodies inside, including the art book of The War Within. However, the 20th anniversary statue is absolutely gorgeous (and huge). The whole thing was very well wrapped and protected, you can see the details in the gallery below.

We’ve just been playing the entire week-end and we continue to enjoy the expansion very much. We’ve unlocked the world quests and we’ve both completed the Pathfinder achievement to unlock Steady Flight in Khaz Algar. All the zones are fantastic to explore, even if we both have a little preference for Hallowfall which is one of the most gorgeous place in the entire World of Warcraft.

The War Within Early Access

The madness before the launch

That’s what hundreds of players look like when they’re all gathered in the same room, minutes away from accessing a brand new expansion. There’s just nothing like that moment, believe me.

We played the entire starting scenario during the night of Thursday to Friday and we went on to game on Friday evening and the entire week-end. This launch was the smoothest that we’ve ever seen, there was no lag, no crash and no bug. Big kudos to Blizzard for making it happen.

It is now Sunday evening and we’ve both reached max level a few minutes ago. We’ve completed most quests (if not all) of the two first zones and all I can say is that The War Within is shaping to become one of my favourite expansions. The zones are gorgeous and there’s a great variety in the quests. The main quest line is absolutely Magni-ficent (pun intended) and I can’t wait to see more, Xal’athat is already a better protagonist than Fyrakk ever was. Delving is very well done and we had a lot of fun running each of them (some more than once).

Below is a small screenshot gallery of this week-end.

If you purchase drinks in the right order at the Kaja Cola vending machine located in The Ringing Deeps, you’ll be rewarded a 34 slots bag 😉

How can a 20 years old video game still manage to have people countdown until the next time they can log in? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to be tomorrow to continue my adventures.

To Hell With Dragons, I Wanna Be A Furbolg!

We’re only a few hours from The War Within‘s early access and we’re still discovering great stuff from Dragonflight. Last Monday evening, we’ve completed what we’ll remember as our favourite quest chain in the expansion. Learning the Furbolgs’ language to be able to quest and gain their trust was awesome! Also, SNOW! It felt so good to play in the snowy landscapes during this hell season.

My apologies for the small post and the eventual typos, but I’m typing this while watching the one on one interview with Chris Metzen and I just love that dude! I’m so glad he came back to work on WoW.

I can’t believe that WoW is already turning 20 in November. I’m so incredibly proud that we’ve both been part of it for so many years (decades). Long live Azeroth!

Late Night with the Devil

October 31st, 1977, Jack Delroy tries desperately to get the numbers of his talk show “Night Owls” up by hosting a Halloween special like no other.

A lot of TV-shows and movies royally fail capturing the 70’s vibe. Late Night with the Devil, however, successfully integrated the amazing 70’s aesthetics with the grainy, multi camera look and excellent costumes. The decor reminds me a lot of my dad’s paintings, and brought some nostalgia of my early childhood.

The movie was excellent, exceeding my expectations. It was original, part found footage, faux-documentary with tones of the Exorcist and a good use of the Halloween theme.

Good movies and a great casting go hand in hand. David Dastmalchian is a great lead for the role of Jack Delroy. The directors cast him after having read an article written by him about regional horror TV hosts for ‘Fangoria’ magazine. It’s a small world. The possessed little girl, Lilly, portrayed by Ingrid Morelli, was genuinely creepy, and reminded me a lot of Regan in the Exorcist.

Late Night with the Devil is entertaining to the end and well worth staying up for. I absolutely recommend this to anyone who wants to watch an original horror movie with a compelling story and amazing aesthetics.

Cool and Deactivated

Enjoying the office’s air-conditioning

Another hot summer week has come and gone. From people exhibiting their ugly flip-flop feet in the streets to the heat preventing me to game on my PC, this really isn’t my favourite season. We’ve almost watched five seasons of The Rookie in a few weeks and, while I really like Nathan Fillion, I could take a break from the LAPD and find back my life, which in normal times is absolutely great.

In other news, one of my Instagram accounts has been disabled. Not my main account, but a side one I was using to post World of Warcraft stuff. It’s not a great loss as there were only 5 posts but the way it happened confirms everything I always thought about social networks: you’re not controlling anything.

I woke up this morning to my account being deactivated with the possibility to appeal, which I directly did. After having provided many security codes and a video of my face tilting in every directions, I received a mail to tell me that, after review, my account was permanently disabled. My only way to get it back would be to go to court.

Apparently, the moderating AI identified my account as a bot and its decision is final, even after providing proofs that I’m a real human. I don’t really care since it was just an account to check other people’s World of Warcraft screenshots.

However, the way it happened makes me think that I shouldn’t put any effort in that platform anymore, since an account can be deleted without any form of appeal. Already being a social networks hater, this may be the final push to get me permanently disconnected.

So, starting today, instead of posting my pictures on my main Instagram account, I’ll post them here, as a blog post. Ultimately, after a few months, I’ll deactivate all my Instagram accounts and I’ll be entirely free from social networks. Long live blogging!

The War Within Pre-Patch Event

The Lag King

We’ve been spared! The weather cooled down for a few days, very conveniently during the first week-end of the Pre-Patch Event of The War Within. I honestly thought that Augustus would be too warm to spend hours on our PCs and that we wouldn’t have the time to complete the event.

I hate it when Blizzard releases temporary content around summer. I don’t care not being in the few firsts to reach max level in a new expansion, these people always end up burned out of the game anyway. However, I do care about temporary content and I would hate to miss on something that will never come back.

Fortunately, Blizzard had tuned the event so people could farm the Residual Memories non stop and that’s exactly what we’ve been doing on Saturday. By the end of day, we had enough resource to purchase all mounts, pets and craft the new heirloom ring. By doing so, we’ve also completed enough objectives for the Trading Outpost to get the monthly reward. On Sunday, we’ve continued to farm the echoes a bit further so we could purchase the remaining pieces of the mail set appearance (which is ugly, but completitionism and all…).

The event was fun and everything went smoothly, except for Dragonblight which was laggy as hell. Soforah ended a few times without getting her reward after killing the Lich King, which can easily get frustrating.

All in all, we had fun and we’re super happy to know that we won’t miss on anything, even if summer would return with a vengeance.

Oh, and cherry on the cake, Wakyn dropped from Warden Entrix exactly one minute before I had to log out. A welcome pat on my back during this God forsaken season!

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