Mementos, Revisited (BA Shared Topic!)

This week has been my Shared Topic on Blog Azeroth! A big thank you to all those who participated! It looks like there were a ton of great responses.

I suggested the topic after I made my post on Mementos:


What mementos have you kept and why? What items or mementos have you kept (in your toon's pack or bank) and why? Whether it be keepsakes, quest rewards, special items, random drops, whatever! - why did you decide to hang on to it? What's its significance to you?


I thought I'd make an addendum here to go along with the Shared Topic, since my original post was a little while ago, and share some mounts that I'm particularly happy to have been lucky enough to get.

As you can see above, I was extremely lucky to win the roll for Mimiron's Head this past week! We did a quick mount run to break up the progression raiding week (and I think as a little break too as reward for finally getting Halion down). I couldn't believe I'd won it! Amazingly lucky.

Mounts are one of my favourite things in the game, I absolutely love them, particularly the dragon mounts. I have literally thousands of screenshots taken, and a huge portion of them are of my dragons soaring in various locations. My favourite of my dragon mounts is probably my Frostbrood Drake from ICC 10 (still missing just one achievement for my ICC25 drake! So close but so far...).

The Netherwing drakes are awesome, I love my Onyx drake. The Northrend drakes are brilliant as well. I like to fly my Bronze drake over to the Bronze dragonshrine to visit Nozdormu, or my Ruby Drake to Wyrmrest Temple to see Alextrasza and Korialstraz. I love all the dragonflights and their lore, so the drake mounts feel like a tangible connection to the dragonflights. If only dragons were a playable race! I also have the Black Drake out of OS10 which I really love, and I love flying him over to the Obsidian Dragonshrine to perch on the lava-strewn cliffs in the shrine. I tend to like the drakes over the proto-drakes, though I do still love my Rusted Proto-Drake out of Ulduar 10, both as he looks awesome and is a reminder of the achievements accomplished in Ulduar. I tend to like to fly him when around Ulduar. The red proto-drake is a pretty awesome looking one as well. I do tend to think that proto-drakes look particularly cool walking around on the ground, as the way they move is very fearsome (and they're lucky enough to make a roar sound when you do /mountspecial). The normal drakes I think look much more graceful when soaring through the air, though, so I prefer to fly them around. I also prefer their /mountspecial, though I wish they had a roar as well!

The dragons are by far my favourite (and I cannot wait to be able to fly them all over Azeroth!), but I have a few favourite ground mounts as well! I got extremely lucky and had the ZG Swift Zulian Tiger drop! The Nightsabres are my favourite of the class mounts (along with Night Elves probably being my favourite race), and the Zulian Tiger is amazing. I remember wanting one ever since I first saw one when I started playing ages ago. The raptor mount still eludes me, but I can live with that, I'm just happy to have the tiger!

I've had some great luck with mount drops (though the Kara warhorse eludes me as well); I've had the Swift White Hawkstrider drop in Magister's Terrace (great fun to ride when I have my Orb of the Sin'dorei on) and even the Red Qiraji Battle Tank in AQ. The Polar Bear mount from the Hyldnir daily dropped for me recently, and even more luckily, during a fishing daily the Sea Turtle dropped! (Thank goodness I didn't throw away the cast that caught it!!).

The most quintisential druid mount is, of course, the Raven Lord mount! This and the Zulian Tiger are my two most-used mounts, I absolutely love them. Best is definitely hopping on the Raven Lord with my Cenarion set on and my Guardian of Cenarius title up. Brilliant!

Mementos

Lament of the Highborne

I have a number of mementos sitting in my bags and my bank. They all have some significance, whether a gift from a friend, a rare or no longer available item, or just something I thought worth holding onto. I thought I'd share some of them and their significance to me, and invite you to share any significant items that you've hung on to over your WoW days.

Sylvanas' Music Box: I only acquired this just recently, but it is easily one of my favourites. The music box is a reward from one of the five quests that are in the Unsealed Chest - this chest drops following a kill of the Lich King (25) after a Shadowmourne has been completed. The music box will summon two banshees (pictured above) who sing 'Lament of the Highborne.' Horde will recognise the song from the quest The Lady's Necklace; Sylvanas summons the singers when you return the necklace to her. Anyone immediately around you will be able to hear them sing when you use the music box (provided they have their game sound on). I love the song and the lore behind it. The song is a lament of the Fall of Quel'Thalas to the scourge.

Stone of Stupendous Springing Strides: A friend mailed this to me one morning after I had been feeling pretty down the previous night and I've kept it in my pack ever since! It brightened my morning and makes me grin whenever I look at it. It ensures I keep up my tree-jumping ways.

Tree Branch: I once fished up one of these! The one I fished up I gave to a friend (to help keep him healed when he didn't have a Tree nearby). The one in my pack now was given to me by a Tree friend in a previous guild one night when we were working on Lich King (25). What's a tree without branches?

Haunted Memento: For those who always wonder where those ghosts who follow people around come from, it's from a player having one of these - as long as it is in your pack, a dark shade will follow you around and place a 'Haunted' buff on you (something is with you...). I love having my ghost friend follow me around. I call him Wilfred.

Sulfuras and my Tier 1 Cenarion set: Even though I got these after the fact (rather than from raiding Molten Core in vanilla), I still find them special items to have. The tier set especially looks brilliant and feels very appropriate for a druid - I imagine my druid feels right at home in Moonglade in this garb. I have a lot of fun running around in them (and healing the occasional Random Dungeon in them!).

I have a fair few disguises and toys in my bags to keep myself amused, most of which are brought out while waiting for a raid to start or during our break. One of my favourites is the Orb of the Sin'dorei, which is particularly fun to use with the Swift White Hawkstrider and Phoenix Hatchling pet. I wish you could sneak into the Horde area in Dal with all of that on, but the guards aren't so easily fooled.

I have a bag of weapons sat in my bank, the majority of which I either think look brilliant (Black Ice, for instance, looks amazing) or have some significance (like Oathbinder, a souvenir from a Lich King kill). Another is the Lightborn Spire, a reward for restoring Quel'Delar from the Battered Hilt quest chain.

I've also kept a few of the more interesting quest rewards, like Don Carlos' Famous Hat and the Barov Peasant Caller from the Scholomance quest chain. The Spectral Essence they give you is quite neat as well - it allows you to see and communicate with the ghosts on Caer Darrow, who walk around as though things were still the same as on the day they died.

I'll end with a video I recorded of the music box so you can see the Banshees and hear the song.

Shared Topic: A Picture Tells a Thousand Words

I'm excited by this week's Shared Topic on Blog Azeroth, 'A Picture Tells a Thousand Words' by Nuniel. I love taking pictures, both with my proper camera and in WoW, and consequently my Screenshot folder is packed with thousands of shots. I think the hardest part for me on this topic was simply deciding which one to share!

I finally decided on this one:

A Candle for the Fallen

I only came across this location recently - Dreadmist Peak in the Barrens. I had never done any quests up here, though some of you who quested in Kalimdor may remember it. It is quite a remarkable place... as you climb the peak, you leave the sunny savannah of the Barrens behind and enter a thick, dark, foggy atmosphere tinged umber and gold as the sun pierces through the haze. As well as the occasional tallstrider, you will find Burning Blade cultists who have infested the top of the peak. You can find spots on the peak that are still uninhabited, though, or do some cleansing of your own to reclaim the peak from the cultists.

I found this candle on one of the peaks, and hence decided to label this shot as 'A Candle for the Fallen'. A last candle lit under a setting sun for all those who have fallen and been lost.