Welcome

Welcome

Portentous Dream is home to Ritual of Chaos, a weekly "adventure" centered on the ramblings of an undead warlock hearthed in World of Warcraft. It also provides random musings from the game as seen through the eyes of countless alts. Enjoy.

Ritual of Chaos - Level Guide: 10

By: Damian Lampl - 1/14/2010 11:01:46 PM

Big Blue and You
Trust me, we're not lost...

Honestly it's a miracle you've lasted this long.  No really, it's quite an achievement to ding Level 10.  They even put an achievement for it in the game.  Not kidding.

In some ways the training wheels have now been ripped off your tricycle and you're now tooling around on just three wheels!  Badass.  Pretty soon you'll graduate to a bicycle with training wheels and then who knows from there, maybe a unicycle or something awesome like that.  What?  Who doesn't like tooling around on a unicycle?

Level 10 brings about all sorts of new goodies and decisions.  Maybe not in that order but both definitely exist.  In addition to new spells, you're also going to land your next minion as well as your very first Talent Point.  There's so much going on right now your head just might explode.   ...   ......  ..........  Nope.  Damn.  Would have been cool.

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Wahappun?

By: Damian Lampl - 12/10/2009 1:47:07 AM

Original Login
How long ago was that?

Where'd your head go? Excuse and bullshit and words and numbers. Here's a new post for the first time in more than... two months? Yikes. ROC probably won't be weekly anymore (obviously) but it'll still get done once in a while and there are about 5 or so unpublished (but not quite finished) posts from way back yonder in the section of existence that was months ago sometime.

So what really happened? Well there was this [event] that was overwhelmingly [adjective] and with all the [plural noun] [progressive verb] my [noun], there just wasn't enough [noun] to get to everything. [number] [unit of measure] ago I said to [name], I said, "[name], [noun] is really [progressive verb] the [noun] and I just can't [verb] with all this [progressive verb] going on." And [name] said to me, "Damian, you've got [number] options: [number] - you can [verb] yourself into the [noun] or [number] - you can [verb] a [noun] with a [noun], your choice." So naturally I chose to [verb] [number] [plural noun] and this site took a [progressive verb] [verb] into a [noun].

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Ritual of Chaos - Level Guide: 6-9

By: Damian Lampl - 9/25/2009 10:41:18 AM

Nightfall at Agamand Mills, Tirisfall Glades
No, really. It looks totally safe.

Sweet Aunt Jemima, you're Level SIX already! Wizzoot! Did you know it used to take eight full months to reach Level 6? It's true, look it up. You've only been playing for four hours and for three of those you were running into walls and jumping in place. Seems like only three levels and 500,000 words ago we were discussing the same phenomenon. Deja vu.

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Pic of the Week - WoWWE

By: Damian Lampl - 9/18/2009 5:41:37 PM

Pic of the Week - WoWWE
Where did he go?

And it's Big Bull Guy with his signature "Crouching Totem, Flying Tauren" move off the top ropes...

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Ritual of Chaos - Why Do Mages Hate Us?

By: Damian Lampl - 9/18/2009 5:14:44 PM

Why mages hate us
Jealous of the epic mount, are we?

Us warlocks have come to live with the fact that we're Azeroth's outcasts and even pride ourselves in being the demented step-cousins of the world. But what's the deal with mages hating us so much more than any other class? Are they so insecure with their inabilities that they resort to making up stories about us to justify their own shortcomings? Are they that jealous of our control over demons that they summon their own minions thinking we'll somehow be impressed? Are they so ugly that even ogres find them repulsive? Yes. Yes they are.

FULL ARTICLE

Ritual of Chaos - Level Guide: 1-5 Profession Supplement

By: Damian Lampl - 9/11/2009 3:05:52 PM

Tailoring Profession
What to choose. What to choose...

Now that you're Level 5 and already more than six percent of the way to the level cap, the professional world is now your pearl. No, sorry, it's your Small Barnacled Clam. Always seem to get those mixed up. At any rate, if you have enough copper saved up you can learn yourself some trade skills. As with spell rotations, there are no "wrong" professions for a warlock. You'll definitely see more benefit from some over others but Blizzard totally set things up so you can pretty much play the game the way you want. Genius, man. Pure genius.

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Pic of the Week - Privacy, Please

By: Damian Lampl - 9/7/2009 11:59:28 PM

Pic of the Week - Privacy Please
Sometimes bathroom attendants can be a little overbearing.

"Do you know how hard it is to take a shit on such a tiny stool with some creepy dude breathing heavily over your shoulder, measuring the size of your last log? Well, do you?"

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Ritual of Chaos - PVP Guides: Wintergrasp

By: Damian Lampl - 9/4/2009 2:01:31 AM

Wintergrasp - 100k Health
Only 17 tenacity? They're slacking off.

So you've finally dinged level 50.  Time to hit up some Wintergrasp, huh?  Wait, no, even locks shouldn't be that guy.  So you've finally dinged 51.  Time to hit up some Wintergrasp, huh?  What's in it for the aspiring lock unafraid of a few (thousand) deaths in the span of twenty minutes?  Aside from cannons, the epic feel of storming or defending a castle, cannons, being the best zone in the game for farming ore/herbs/elementals, cannons, siege vehicles, cannons, epic shard/marks gear rewards, cannons, and being able to blow things up with CANNONS, Wintergrasp has beautiful scenery this time of year.  Nice flowers.

There's two basic strategies in Wintergrasp: attacking and defending.  Don't worry, despite needing a degree in Astrophysics to follow along, it won't get more complicated than that.  And there'll be no math in case rogues or mages feel like skimming through their superior class' notes.  Everyone ready?  Yes?  Damn.  I'll wait until you're not.

FULL ARTICLE

Pic of the Week - Flying Chicken

By: Damian Lampl - 8/31/2009 11:58:21 PM

POW - Flying Chicken
Do chickens like to fly?

Scared shitless or machine gun noises - you decide.

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Ritual of Chaos - ChaosCon 2009

By: Damian Lampl - 8/26/2009 12:36:09 PM

ChaosCon
BlizzCon has been taken over...

Not attending BlizzCon is bittersweet. Conventions suck balls. Large clumps of human mass spewing noise and stench in every possible direction. No. Escape.

On the other hand, BlizzCon is a large clump of human mass put on by BLIZZARD. These guys don't know how to do anything second-rate. And not only do they have tons of exciting (at least for nerds like you) news and updates for the best franchise and game ever created, they also have the same exciting (man, you really are a NERD) news and information on all their other big properties - i.e. Diablo and StarCraft. Sure you could purchase the DirecTV feed or live stream, but if you're not going to nut up and brave the horror that is thousands of crazed video game fans, it's just not the same experience.

That said, it's the times they break out the best changes to our favorite class that make a person wish they were there to bask in the rage of every other class flipping out over what could quite possibly be THE GREATEST MOMENT IN THE HISTORY OF WARLOCKS SINCE GUL'DAN THOUGHT UP DEATH KNIGHTS.

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