Fire down below

It feels as if I've made loads of progress since my last post, but actually only a few of my characters have gone up a level. That's because I've been spending all my time on my three 85s - all the others have only done cooking dailies, and not even every day.

Iolanthe and MadMargaret are still grinding archaeology as previously described, but Mabel's been storming through the Cataclysm zones. She's finished Mount Hyjal and Vashj'ir and is now at the start of Deepholm. However, we're all taking a break from all that, because it's the Fire Festival, and it turns out that very few of my characters had done any of it. Iolanthe and MadMargaret just needed to do the Northrend and Cataclysm bits (not sure why they hadn't done them before). They both also needed the torch juggling and the boss kill. Since there's no way of getting the boss kill on my own (and I can't group with strangers) we'll never get the title, but I decided I would at least try the torch quests with Iolanthe. Never again! The first one wasn't too bad, but I spent ages trying to do the catching. I went to Exodar, as the forums suggested, but it was still nearly impossible. I did it in the end, but since the forum posts also said it was much harder for non-druids (who don't have travel form) I decided not to try with anyone else. (I can certainly see why it would be harder without travel form - I could barely catch the shadow as it was!) The final quest (the one for the achievement) was also nearly impossible, but I got it after a few goes.

Mabel, it turned out, hadn't done any of the fire festival stuff, so she's done it all tonight - took about five hours. Well, I say she hadn't done any of it, but she must have done some, because she had a mantle from it in the bank - I assume she must have done a few fires but not enough for an achievement. And when I say she's done it all now, of course I mean she's done it all apart from the torches and the boss kill… and the one where you steal the flames from the opposition's capitals. Iolanthe and MadMargaret both did that, but they can both stealth and they still died a lot. There's no way I'm trying it with a non-stealther… I would if it was the only one I needed for a title, but even if I did it there'd still be the boss kill, so it's not going to happen.

Current aim: to try and get all eight of my other characters to do as much as they can of the fire festival by 4th July. It won't take as long as it did for Mabel - none of the others will be doing Cataclysm or Northrend, and only three of them will be doing Outland, and in any case I know where all the fires are now, without having to search or look them up.