Astra's AC:NL Adventures!... Chapter 1 - 'Deantown' - My AC:NL Town!: Town Map, Villagers, Public Work Projects & Main Street! ^_^

Welcome to Astra's 6-Part Adventures in Animal Crossing: New Leaf... today we begin with Chapter 1 - 'Deantown' - My AC:NL Town!: Town Map, Villagers, Public Work Projects & Main Street!

So let's get right to it! ^_^


DEANTOWN'S TOWN MAP AND MY PUBLIC WORK PROJECTS!

Here is the map of Deantown, the town I like to call my virtual home ^_^ As you can see, all but one of my villagers live near the beach (sorry Charlise!), and the yellow home icon that's up to the northwest - next to the river - is my house, since in real life, I love the beach... too bad it costs so much in real life to own a beach house hehe!

My Police Station (the grey blocky icon), is next to the train tracks to Main Street, with the Train Station (the pink house icon) and Notice Board facing opposite the Station... also a little down and to the right of the Police Station is my Town Hall (the dark purple icon) - which I recently upgraded a few days ago! YAY!!!! ^_^ Took so long to get the Bells for that though!

The 2-arrowed icon is Re-Tail, where I can sell all the stuff in-game I don't have any use for, which is great because I can use the Bells I get from sold items and use them for other stuff, like Public Works Projects, or my many House upgrades, which is taking me forever to pay off.

The Green Tree icon is my Town Tree, which is centred around my Town Plaza, where many of the game's many different World Events happen, and now that my Tree has grown a lot, I can actually sit under it and relieve all the different Town Milestones - like when a certain Main Street building has been upgraded, or when a resident has moved into my town :) Personally, I love this little addition so much, and the gentle music that comes with the scrolling text really relaxes me :D Even the in-game character you control closes their eyes and is really happy ^_^

The Cup Icon is The Roost Cafe - in which I can grab a soothing, yummy cup of coffee from Brewster, the awesome pigeon who runs the shop, and even work there and serve different residents and special characters their own cup of coffee! (You have to get their order just right though, or else they won't be happy with you hahaha!)

The 3 Blue House icons are the 3 other characters I can control - Dreemer (who lives in the Blue House down the very bottom right), Max (diagonally-right from the Cafe) and Illy (directly south from the Cafe) - in which they are basically residents like the other NPC townsfolk, where as my main character (the one that lives in the Orange House icon), is the Mayor of Deantown :)

The Tent Icon next to the beach, next to one of the 2 pathways down to the Beach proper, is my town's Campsite, in which every so often an out-of-town resident will set up camp in Deantown... you'll be able to interact, play games with, and supposedly (I haven't yet tried this), invite them to move into your town! :)

DEANTOWN'S TOWNSFOLK!

You can have a maximum of up to 10 citizens living in your town (that number doesn't include your own player-controlled characters), and I've had the 10 villagers currently living in Deantown pretty much since I first started playing AC:NL, which is great because I've gotten to know them a lot better!

Not to mention now they know me so well, they keep visiting me at my house as a surprise, send me letters in my in-game mailbox for no reason (sometimes with a gift attached! ^_^), and just love talking to me... and it goes both ways, since they're all so cute hehe...

Though I will admit, it took roughly 2 and a half months for me to appreciate Charlise, because she was VERY hard to get along with... I've gotten used to her own personality so she's all cool with me now! :D

Here are the ten residents that currently live in my town right now! ^_^

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I know I said that this Chapter would also focus on my town's Main Street (where all the shops can be found, and various goodies to be bought!), but since Chapter 5 is all about Main Street, I'm going to leave all my Adventures in Main St. until then! :D

Anyway, that's all for now for Chapter 1 of Astra's Adventures in AC:NL! Stay tuned 'till next week for Chapter 2 - 'The History Of Deantown': My Town's Museum!'


Thanks heaps for reading! ^_^

Astra's Animal Crossing: New Leaf Adventures - Chapter 1 up in a few days time! ^_^

I love Animal Crossing: New Leaf. I also love coming up with random stories ^_^ So I've decided, that every week, I'll release a new chapter in my adventures in AC:NL!

Since my town has been relatively the same over the past couple of weeks with few changes, I thought it would be a great time to talk about what's going on in my town, otherwise known as 'Deantown' :)

So... here are the Chapters I have lined up over the next few weeks!

Chapter 1 - 'Deantown' - My AC:NL Town!: Town Map, Villagers, Public Work Projects & Main Street!

Chapter 2 - 'The History Of Deantown': My Town's Museum - what Fossils, Bugs, Fish and other Sea creatures I have collected / not yet collected, plus my own Gallery Rooms! ^_^

Chapter 3 - 'Can You Help Me Out?': The 10 Village Residents that live in my town, and my relationship with them all :)

Chapter 4 - 'The Place I Call Home': A look inside my AC:NL house!... (It's NOWHERE near finished though :P)

Chapter 5 - 'Deantown: Main Street!': The shops I have so far in the shopping district of Main Street!

Chapter 6 - 'What's Next For Deantown?' - Basically what I have planned next for the town, such as what I'm working towards, etc.

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Chapter 1 - 'Deantown' - My AC:NL Town!' should be up in a few days, and from then on, I'll post a new chapter each week WOOHOO! :D

Thanks for reading guys, and looking forward to sharing my adventures! ^_^

It's Festivale time in my town! ^_^

A new Event happened in my town today - FESTIVALE! ^_^

Festivale falls on the same day as the real-life Event of Mardi Gras, which is celebrated around the world :) I must admit I don't know much about Mardi Gras, though I do know people love to sing and dance, and Festivale in Animal Crossing: New Leaf is no different! :)

Upon logging into the game today, (with my villagers wearing their awesome Samba outfits on the Main Menu hehe), I was told by Isabelle that the Festivale Event was on - both logging in and via the Town Hall - and exited my house to reveal confetti raining down from the sky!

Of course, every Event in NL starts off at the Plaza, so I ran over there with excitement, to find a really colourful banner and a strange, dancing peacock character called Pave.

After berating me for not getting in the spirit of Festivale and dancing my heart out - I headed back to my house and put on my own Samba outfit (SO happy I got all the pieces!), and while you don't have to wear the Samba outfit to participate in Festivale - like the Santa Suit for Toy Day - it's awesome fun to just get into the lore and dance-off with all the other villagers in your town, who coincidentally wear their own cute little Samba outfits <3

Talking to Pave, he sets me off on a mission to get 3 Green feathers for him (I honestly thought Pave was a female XD). Collecting the feathers for Pave (upon which you get a special item), works pretty much like the snowflakes you get for Snowmam (one of the 4 varieties of Snowmen you can build between December to February), and like the snowflakes, you need a Net to collect the different coloured feathers - Red, Pink, Blue, White, Purple and Green - I might of missed a colour or two, but that's all the feathers I saw while I was hunting for them :)

I've also heard from guides online you can find a Rainbow Feather, which guarantees you a special item right off the bat, regardless of what colour or number of feathers that you currently have in your inventory, which is totally awesome! EDIT: I found a few Rainbow Feathers! And I've kept one to put in my house ^_^

Of course, collecting 3 of the same colour feather is easier said than done. For one, finding a feather can be tricky because you have the awesomely beautiful confetti raining down from the sky, and it's all different colours like the feathers that you need to collect.

Another thing is because there are so many different feather colours, you might not find the one you're actually after. Cue your trusty townsfolk, who seem to of secretly stashed a bunch of feathers who knows where to trade for your own feathers you've collected, and you'll need their help if you're to get 3 feathers to give to Pave :D

While some of my villagers I talked to for feathers were happy with just a simple trade, others would play games with me. The first villager I talked to - Charlise - wanted to play Charades with me, and actually relied more on their 'emotes', so that was a lot of fun to try and guess what she was thinking :)

After talking to Greta, another one of my town citizens who played a game of Charades with me (I won that one too), I spoke with Charlise again and she played Rock-Paper-Scissors with me, giving me the option of which one - Rock, Paper or Scissors - I could choose to defeat her :D

Of course, I always go with Rock, and she ended up going with Scissors. Rock beats Scissors... I win, so I got her feather ^_^ Of course, if Charlise had won, she would of gotten my feather... obviously hehe.

I had conveniently gotten my 1st Green Feather from one that was floating around my village thanks to my Net, and the last 2 Feathers from the 2 games that I had won from Charlise and Greta, so now that I had 3 Green Feathers, I headed back to Pave!

Well, all I can say is... Pave LOVES his feathers! <3 He even did a little dance for me haha! After his dance, he gave me a special item from the 'Pave Series', in which there are 13 different items that you can collect.

Talking to Pave again, he sent me on another quest to get 3 Pink Feathers... I love collecting items in this game, so I'm not going to stop until I've got the entire 'Pave Series' set WOOHOO! (EDIT: I'm short one of the Pave Series items, since it's taken me ages to 'farm' these as it's not guaranteed that Pave will give you a new item the 2nd time round :S)

Here's some other random Festival screenshots - and I gotta say... man, I LOVE that confetti, it's so pretty! <3

Move over WoW... Animal Crossing: New Leaf is here! ^_^

I'm really bored of playing WoW at the moment. I've been playing a lot of other games like Diablo 3 - first Diablo game I've ever played - and got through the main campaign of that which was a LOT of fun - I could of upped the difficulty a bit though cause hacking and slashing with the Barbarian was a bit too easy :P

Anyway, other than D3, and a lot of Steam games I've playing (still can't master Don't Starve), I bought myself a Nintendo 3DS XL last year in November WOOT! :D This is the first ever handheld gaming console I've ever owned in my whole life... never had a PS / Xbox, etc, since I've been a hardcore PC gamer for the last 25+ years. Sure, I've played console / handheld games (my first game being Pokemon Blue, CAN'T WAIT FOR THE 3DS REMAKE VERSION IN FEB!), but never bought any console to call my own :)

So what game did I get with my new 3DS I hear you ask? Well, the main reason I bought a 3DS in the first place was a lot of my friends recommended the game Animal Crossing: New Leaf. And long story short, I've been addicted to this game from Day 1, and been playing more and more as the weeks go by, as the Town you build in this game gets bigger and bigger.

For those of you that don't know what Animal Crossing: New Leaf is (I haven't played the previous AC games in the series), basically you arrive at this town (you can name it too!), and become the new mayor (that is if you choose the first Save File on your 3DS).

You then choose a spot in the town to put down your tent (which is where you live, and upgrades to a house later on, with multiple rooms as more upgrades), and as mayor, you're encouraged to make Public Work Projects (PWP), plant flowers and trees, and get to know the different villagers that move into your town (you can have a maximum of 10).

Each of the villagers have their own distinct personalities, and it's been great getting to know them all! I never let them leave my town (and they can), since I adore them so much - though there's one, Charlise, who looks like a green teddy bear, who I can't wait for to leave. Her personality clashes with my own real life one :S

Anyway, I'll post more of what's happening in my own town in AC:NL in later posts... thanks for reading everyone! ^_^

Thok-tacular Adventure!

When I first did 'The Underhold' wing of the WoW Raid 'Siege of Orgrimmar', when it first opened on October 1st last year, I honestly didn't expect the last boss in there, Thok, to be a huge devilsaur.

I never read the Dungeon Journal entry on any of the bosses back then, seeing as I wanted to keep the entire story of Garrosh Hellscream - and how his reign ended - a secret. Since I was able to finish each raid wing as it got released every few weeks, reading up on the mechanics wasn't necessarily a prerequisite, which was absolutely fine with me, since I liked playing the raid out and seeing what happened next... again, I wanted it to be a secret.

Anyway, I digress. This isn't about my adventures in the Siege... ok, maybe it's one of them. This is about Thok after all, the huge Devilsaur that is ALWAYS hungry, like me! Though my appetite varies from Thok's :)

It's now been roughly a year later since I first encountered Thok, awed at how big and tall he was, with enough chomping power* to eat an entire raid and not be satisfied! (Bottomless pit much! ^_^) That 'thrill' has long since faded. I know the fight pretty well now, and ever since I first went up against him, there was only one bit of loot I really wanted off him: 'Thok's Tail Tip' - aka, a Trinket that, according to my knowledge anyway, was the Best In Slot trinket for a DPS character, or well, a Warrior such as me.

Like I said, it's been a year now, and after killing him FOURTY-FOUR times across several game difficulties, and many bonus roll 'coins' (you can use them to roll again on whatever he drops for your particular class and specialization) - 35+ coins! - I have now, after a somewhat fair and honorable fight (was a great last fight!), wished Thok a proper farewell, and bid him good luck on getting out of his prison and stomping Garrosh like the punk he is! XD

So Thok, my friend and enemy, thank you for getting my hopes up, for getting me frustrated, for keeping me patient, and always coming back to you every week to try my luck out again in getting that Trinket you just don't want to give me :) And even though you're a right pain in the butt, thank you for being a challenging virtual boss in the game that I love, and I usually hate video game bosses!

Seeya around Thok! ^_^


* Gear and Raid difficulty may apply.

Why I don't think Garrosh Hellscream should die in 5.4

I won't lie, I'm hating the Hellscream family a lot right now.

I've got Grom Hellscream making his orc brethren turn into demonic versions of themselves and turning against his 'brother' Thrall in Warcraft 3, and his son, Garrosh Hellscream, who keeps on killing me in the beta game Hearthstone. Not to mention, there will be an all-out war against Garrosh come Patch 5.4 in World of Warcraft.

If I had to pick between them though, I would choose Grom hands down, for the sole reason that he actually chose to sacrifice himself at the end for Thrall and his orc brothers, ridding the orc race of their demonic corruption by killing the vile pit lord Mannoroth, who tainted a river of water with his blood (long story XD)

Garrosh Hellscream on the other hand, while I can applaud his love and dedication for his brothers, has now (I think) just gone mad with power, to the point that he just doesn't care about anyone or anything, only using them so he can gain more power in the process.

I've done my best to understand why he's like this in WoW lore, even going back and doing the first Mag'har quests in Garadar with him as a completely depressed individual, who was shameful on what his dad before him had done to his race with the whole demonic corruption thing.

After Thrall came to Garadar himself and told Garrosh what his father Grom had done (via a shamanistic vision), and his ultimate sacrifice, Garrosh himself felt uplifted in the fact that his dad HAD done something right in the end, that he had chosen his own path for his people.

Feeling renewed, and with all the qualities that his father had inherited - strength and courage definitely -, he and Thrall traveled to the icy lands of Northrend to begin the campaign against the Lich King. (At least, I'm assuming this is where they headed after the two reconciled).

With Thrall keeping watch over his Horde, he put Garrosh in charge of the Northrend campaign, and this is where I think he started to slip. Armed with the fact that he could be as awesome as his dad, and with the 'I-can-do-anything-I-want-don't-tell-me-off' abilities as a leader, he would definitely start to make some rather brash decisions on what and how he wanted to kill the Lich King. (Just see what he does with the Northrend map when you get to Warsong Hold in Borean Tundra!)

So after the Lich King was defeated in Northrend, he definitely started to feel pretty powerful at this point, thinking he could do anything, or overthrow anybody that tried to rise up against him - especially when Thrall stepped down and Garrosh became Warchief of the Horde. To me, there's also the underlying fact that Garrosh (now aware of his father's actions against Mannoroth and his race's salvation), wants in someway to prove to Grom that he's worthy of the Hellscream name.

Having said that, you can clearly see the way Garrosh acts when Taran Zhu in the Patch 5.4 trailer below (1:12 mark) taunts him about his dad, and how angry that comment makes him.



Now with nothing standing in his way, Garrosh is ready to take on the world, turning his attention towards the continent of Pandaria, and seizing the resources (and weapons), of the land so he can better use them against his enemies, or as he puts it - "anyone that stands against my NEW Horde!"

Which brings me to next week when WoW Patch 5.4: The Siege of Orgrimmar, is released. Yes, Garrosh Hellscream is the last boss in this particular instance, and I'm totally looking forward to kicking his butt!

Like many others, I can't wait to get my revenge on him for everything he has done over his life against the world and people of Azeroth - there are too many innocents to count, not to mention turning particular favourite characters against me, and beautiful locations to desolate wastelands (not going to say here, spoilers :P)

But, as much as I want this angry, evil-mad character to die, I think that would be a mistake lore wise. And here's my own opinions why:

I think Garrosh expects to die in the end - The Horde is all about honor, orcs even more so. The well-spoken Horde phrase, 'LOK'TAR OGAR!' or 'VICTORY OR DEATH!', is not just a bunch of words. When a person wants to sign up with the Horde, they swear a blood oath to those words, meaning you either get through a battle and be victorious, or die an honorable death.

Obviously, the new patch won't have a scenario where Garrosh WILL win - too bad evil characters always go down one way or another -, but to have him killed at the end of the new raid is, I think, a cheating way to end the Garrosh storyline, and wouldn't justify this guy's struggle with his own identity and who he is.

Also, and I know everyone is thinking this, there's no doubt that Vol'jin will attempt to get Garrosh back for what was done to him (Dagger in the Dark scenario), among other things with the trolls. But what if say, Vol'jin kills Garrosh... what then? Vol'jin would be happy he's dead, but he'd turn out no better a murderer than Garrosh, not to mention the guilt that would follow by killing him.

True, Garrosh is such a powerfully evil character right now with an enormous army, and a various array of all-powerful weapons at his disposal, not to mention he plans to dominate the whole of Azeroth (bad-guy cliche), so maybe the world would be better if he was dead. Still, I think that would cheapen the story somewhat.

This is what I'd do. When I attack Orgrimmar next week with my friends and comrades who are against Garrosh, I'll wipe out his army, make a beeline for his fortress or wherever he's holding up, and imprison him, or trap him, just somewhere he won't be able to do anymore damage. Yes, you could have the choice to kill him, but I'm sure that's what he'd want, to die honorably.

But to keep him alive, imprisoned, while his fortress, his army, his POWER... is stripped from him, would just downright humiliate Garrosh. To be kept alive, but lose the battle, and not given an honorable death on the battlefield, would go against everything his beliefs and that of the Horde's would stand for.

No victory. No death. Just imprisonment. I also think keeping him alive would be the most moral thing to do, and in doing so, would free people like Vol'jin (if he does end up killing Garrosh), from the guilt, not to mention not giving Garrosh what he wants... an honorable death, or a quick death at least.

I have a few more thoughts on this, but it would involve spoilers from the new 5.4 raid, which I might bring up after it's been released :)

If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my thoughts on Garrosh's 'demise', and hope it all makes sense to you ^_^

Please feel free to leave some comments and tell me what you think should happen to Garrosh next patch! :)

'Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft' - First Impressions

I recently was lucky enough to get an invite for the 'Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft' Beta card game - it's very similar to Magic: The Gathering if you've played that instead :)

Personally, I find it a lot more appealing than Magic (please don't kill me Magic fans :P), just because I have a more deeper understanding of the lore and characters from the World of Warcraft universe. Fortunately, there's no NDA surrounding the beta at all, so screenshots and video's are very welcome, and Blizzard have encouraged people to show their games off and the like :D

So after installing Hearthstone with the new Battle.net app (also in Beta as of this blog post), I was ready to play ^_^

After a brief introduction to the game via the Hearthstone official trailer, we were launched right into the game proper, playing a familiar Alliance mage by the name of Jaina Proudmoore :)

My first battle was against a gnoll named Hogger, who for those familiar with WoW, is one of the bosses in the lower level dungeon 'Stormwind Stockade'.

As any first battle goes, it was very easy to send Hogger packing, not to mention I could play any card I wanted - the tutorial introduction of Mana (aka Land), was shown to me in the 2nd battle :)

The beginning levels of Hearthstone against NPC controlled characters (there's 6 of them), are very fun to play, each giving me one of their usual taunting lines. For example, I used a Beast creature against Hemet Nesingwary (the Safari hunter from WoW), and he commented that he wanted to skin it haha :D It's small details like that, that make the game more fun to play ^_^

Right now, I'm fighting against the last of the 6 NPC's, and somehow knowing he would appear last, I was overjoyed and excited to fight Illidan Stormrage himself ^_^

Turns out I wasn't prepared to fight him - he makes sure you know that at the start of the battle too :P

I'm finding Hearthstone very fun to play, and so far as beta games go, it's doing a great job! The only downside so far that I've found, is that everytime Battle.net disconnects via the Bnet app, the game essentially quits itself :S Hopefully, they either fix this annoyance, or remove it so it's much like WoW and won't quit the game on you :)

Anyway, I'm back to beating Illidan, though to be honest, I don't think I have the strength to be victorious against him, since he is my videogame idol ^_^