🚀 go-pugleaf

Felt like a break from Timeless Isle farming tonight so ran my lvl 70
raid pet runs (TK and SSC, Lesser Voidcaller FINALLY dropped so I'm
done with TK now :-)), then wondered what to do next... when it
entered my mind that I never did go to the lvl 85 version of ZG to
rescue my little Lashtail Hatchling who I last saw in STV questing
being stolen by Bloodlord Mandokir. 

Well, I've recently soloed Temple of the Jade Serpent and Stormstout
Brewery while working on the noodle cart questchain, so figured a Cata
lvl 85 dungeon might hopefully be a similar difficulty level. I've
never done any of the Cata heroics, except the End Time trio (yeah,
silly, I know, but I chicken out of trying new stuff and tend to go
for solo content instead :-P), so it's all new to me, even though I
knew the lvl 60 raid very well indeed (I'm exalted with Zandalar
Tribe, mostly through a lot of soloing).

So, I headed in, and found it is indeed pretty soloable. I would not
like to try it without very good selfhealing; I struggled badly even
on some of the trash mobs, although the cauldron buffs certainly help
a lot - you have to play pretty smart with them though, standing on a
freezing cauldron and freezing multiple mobs was a favourite tactic of
mine. Only died once, on the cat boss, having not realised you should
kill some of the cats before phase 2 - oops! Lesson learned, I checked
tactics on Wowhead for the rest of the place and was completely
successful, although I had my doubts I'd manage on Jin'do, those
spirits do a ton of dmg even if they've got low health. He died
though, so all good!

Anyway, given my success in ZG, I may have to take a look at some of
the other Cata heroics now, guess I've got another batch of
achievements to hunt then! Suspect most will prove too challenging,
but at least the ones for doing the dungeon should be manageable
enough, I hope.

Best bit though was killing Mandokir and finding my little raptor
chained up, love the detailing that the pet has scars on it, poor
thing! Delighted to rescue it and I had to rename to Sagartaka; just a
shame you can't put the ' in the name now (I believe before MoP it
automatically had a title that would've been "Sagart'aka" for me but
that doesn't work any more). Considering the storyline where you first
find her and then lose her, I couldn't really help getting a little
emotional at rescuing her once more - I think I know who'll be
levelling up next among my battle pets :-)