It’s a new world for the Forsaken
I’ve started a new Horde character on some pretty much random realm – this time an undead Mage, Celreth. I was never able to level a mage high enough, and I always disliked the old Forsaken questlines, especially the ones in Tarren Mill – I remember them as being full of unnecessary violence, poisoning people for no gain and other annoying stuff. I tried to level there a few times before, but always ended up disgusted and flying back to Kalimdor.
With the new questlines we got in Cataclysm the old world got revamped and I wanted to see if anything changed. I already saw the damage to Southshore and Hillsbrad on my warrior, but was there any story behind it?
Tirisfal Glades is mostly unchanged for the later part of the zone (at least if you disregard the plague spreaders in every city), but the first few levels are quite enjoyable. Being raised as a new Forsaken by one of the Val’kyr was definitely a surprise.
But even bigger surprises awaited me in Silverpine forest – seeing the place full of Forsaken fortifications and constant fighting with the worgen, witnessing the conversation between Sylvanas and Garrosh, assaulting Gilneas and finally learning who are the new inhabitants of Shadowfang Keep and why would we want to kill them. I don’t want to spoil too many things (thought it probably wouldn’t be a spoiler for too many people anyway), but as a Forsaken my mage has a very good reason to dispose of the three undeads.
And finally, Hillsbrad. After trying out how it is to be a cog in the Forsaken war machine and handing down few quests to idiots, I followed to the places I’ve just sent them. The first area – the Azurelode Mine – was quite boring, killing murlocs and capturing humans, but after going to the second quest hub it suddenly changed a bit – and for the weird. I landed in Hillsbrad in the middle of a quite strange conflict between a Forsaken Master Apothecary and another undead mad sciencist of sorts. It was even more weird that after cleaning one place of awful experiments and destruction of human life I was sent to Soutshore, which was also bombed with the plague – to continue experiments on the plague used by the Forsaken. Maybe the Apothecaries are just afraid that one mad scientist would become the next Putress.
While doing stuff in Southshore I’ve again encountered the last of the “idiots” I’ve gave out quests to at the start of the zone. I was expecting it at this point, seeing that I had to rescue the other two as well, but after finishing the first “idiot” quest I totally didn’t expect the quest chain that followed. The orc introduced as an idiot turned out to be more of a hero than my mage was. Again, not going to spoil it – just go and start Welcome to the Machine and continue the questline. You won’t be disappointed.
Oh, and by the way – it’s totally untrue that there are no reasons to group anymore. Near the yeti cave I’ve encountered a huge elite yeti with more than 5 times my health that’s an objective of a 3-man group quest. Of course I’ve tried soloing it, but that didn’t go very well – my frost nova was on a too long cooldown to reliably CC the yeti, and after I’ve finally got knocked back into some trees I died very quickly to its melee hits.
None of the quests or mobs were terribly hard, but I’m outleveling the zone a bit since I did a few dungeons earlier. I still managed to die a few times though if I wasn’t careful with pulling mobs.
Overall – as surprising and unexpected it is – for the first time I’m enjoying taking my new Forsaken mageling through her storylines. I think I’m gonna make more alts soon to see the rest of the new stuff. But for now, I’ll stick to this one and I hope to see more new stuff on the way. Hopefully it will be as enjoyable as the Kingslayer Orkus’ story.
The Undergeared
I’m leveling another Horde character. Meet Misaka, the level 30 elemental shaman. This time I will probably finish the leveling fast though, possibly in the next week or two, as she actually has quite a good reason to exist. After all, she’s not just a random alt I’ve made out of boredom, but a member of on Arathor-EU.
What is Undergeared? You might already know, if you read our GM’s introductory post on his blog. If you didn’t, here’s a short explanation – the greedy goblin Gevlon is teaming up with a bunch of players to clear every raiding content in the game. On normal level of difficulty, but all in blue quality gear.
Sounds interesting enough? Add one more thing to this – most of the characters are either fresh rerolls or non-raiding alts. The most advanced raiding achievement we now feature is killing Flame Leviathan one of the transfered level 80 hunters has. Obviously none of us has an excellent knowledge of his class. This is a big disadvantage to the previous Blue Ulduar run, as that one was done with a group of serious raiders that were playing the same classes they did Ulduar hardmodes with. Here, you can’t really know if the people are skilled or not, at least not until we start getting to 80.
This is what made me interested in taking part in it. We all like to say that “skill > gear”, here’s an excellent chance to prove it. I might not agree with Gevlon on everything he writes in his blog, but this is really something I’d like to take part in. Given that the holiday season is usually pretty slow on raiding in my guild, at the very least I’ll have something to do (and something to write about).
The guild was formed few days ago, and already has about 60 members – mostly rerolled alts of various low levels, a few new deathknights and 3 level 80′s. As the official start was supposed to be on this Saturday, I expect some more people to join then. Of course it should be obvious that not all of these characters will be raiding or even hit level 80 at all, that’s why it doesn’t really matter that there are 10 priests or 12 paladins.
It’s a pretty weird environment though – the guild chat is silent most of the time, apart from occasional class question or people looking for a group to some instance. Granted, all of this is explicitly written in the guild rules, but it still feels kind of weird to me. I don’t really miss the “gz” spam and other annoyances, but it’s really strange to open up the guild tab and see that suddenly you’re the only one playing and you haven’t even noticed when the rest went away. On the other hand, it’s not like I’m going to miss them or anything, especially that I don’t know anything about them anyway. ;)
Little Hunter Love
The little Tauren Hunter is not so little anymore, with level 27 done this morning. I have to say that I fell in love again with leveling a hunter, and I don’t even mind that I have to run around the Old World all the time.
The powers that the BM hunters have (even at low levels) are just awesome. Soloing a level 30 elite panther, which was an objective of something they call a “group quest”? No problems, me and my kitty make an awesome group, and that’s a vanilla type group quest, not the Northrend ones, that most of them were so hard, that I could solo them with my quite squishy rogue.
Venturing alone to the Wailing Caverns to see how far I can go without help? That went pretty well – I died few times due to the mobs awful sleep spell, or randomly appearing patrols, but other than that I got five quite useful blue items from there. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to kill the last bosses as a level 25, so no achievement for that. Still a nice excercise in chain trapping, pulling, avoiding mobs and all that stuff. And if you thought that level 18-20 elites can’t kill a level 25 player, you’re wrong. :] I’m especially happy about the blue shoulders that dropped from one of the bosses, as having anything in that slot is quite uncommon at this level.
Gold is even less of an issue – I’ve spent about an hour farming some stacks of Small Eggs in Eversong Woods, and gathering herbs as I quest – with 400 gold as a low level I can be sure I will have enough for mounts, skills, glyphs and whatever else I need to level.
Poor no more
Just a quick update before I drop on the bed like a brick. The baby Tauren is already almost level 19, got a very pretty white kitty (though as a Hordie, I think that it’s much more common), and is doing all kind of weird quests in The Barrens. No screenie for now though, but I will add something next time :)
Why the title? I started her as a first character on that server, so of course she started with only the backpack and barely enough silver to buy skills with. That changed not long after I visited Thunder Bluff and got my two gathering professions. Now I have some bank slots, three Netherweave Bags and I finally can loot (and then most likely vendor) everything that drops from mobs. Oh, and still over 60 gold left, so there goes a mount pretty soon. :]
The secret to that? There is no big secret really. Double gathering is one part – on every server there will be alts and mains needing even the basic herbs and metal bars, you can count on that for some profit. Farming [Small Eggs] is another one. The eggs drop from any low level flying mob, and while the Alliance have it a bit easier in Westfall (there’s more space and it’s easier to pick the birds from other mobs), Mulgore isn’t a bad spot for them. [Swiftthistle] is another good thing to sell – it’s used in rogue potions for regaining energy, and there aren’t any alternatives to this potion later on – but as it’s a rare drop from lower level herbs, you can’t really farm it. So it gets quite good prices on most AH, even if you don’t sell it in full stacks.
So if I can easily have 100 gold even before level 20 (and with not that much extra time spent on that – I just pick stuff while questing mostly), I’m not going to believe anyone that will try to say that getting gold in WoW is hard. Especially some dwarves. How can a dwarf be poor?! It’s clearly against our nature! ;]
Things happen, sometimes.
Some things just happen.
On Tuesday, the guild finally got to kill Malygos-25 again (after something like two weeks of not enough people signing), so Saithir is now a happy dwarf with the best necklace a rogue can get… and a [Frosted Adroit Handguards]. Getting the best in slot gloves for mere 20 dkp is definitely not bad, so it was worth the wait. :)
Today I responded to one of our officers looking for a dps to heroic Violet Hold, and what bosses do we get? Ichoron of course, who I’ve been lacking to complete the Lockdown achievement. While doing this, I also got the achievement for this boss, so I don’t have to hunt him again for another two months or more.
I’m also entertaining myself with doing the dailies in Scholazar Basin – I plan to get exalted with the Frenzyhearts, get their reward (the flask that turns you into a cute wolvar), and then switch them to Oracles. Doing the puppies first is easier – both take about same time, but I only want one thing from them, so I could switch back faster.
And yesterday I made a baby Tauren Hunter alt on another PvP realm. She’s level 10 at the moment and doing quite great. It’s amazing how easy can you level a hunter if you already know the class, and know how to shoot stuff, kite stuff, trap stuff (well, not yet, but I know how to do that already) and all that. She’s also a miner and herbalist – I think it’s quite the standard for a first character on the new realm, as I have to get some gold from somewhere.
Maybe I should just make her dance naked on a mailbox, though. ;]
For the Horde!
So, on Monday I was playing around with Vean a bit – ran around Durotar and the Barrens for an hour or so, farming herbs and ores, and then finally got to Outlands. Playing on the Horde side still scares me a lot – I have almost no reputations, no idea where to go for quests, level 1 skill in two gathering professions, and no discovered areas at all… It’s really strange to see all that at once – and I don’t have the luxury of having high level main to support my leveling.
Oh, and the achievements. The absolute lack of Vean’s achievements, apart from the Collector’s Edition pet one. Hurts my eyes…
Lost in Orgrimmar
This is Vean, and she’s lost in a large, unknown Horde city that looks like a maze. Say hi, Vean.
I’ve finally got few hours spare to make a Horde character on a new realm, and thanks to the patch 3.0.8, I can skip leveling from 1. Not that I won’t do that – I’ve also made a little Tauren druid there, but I won’t show her here for now.
As for the server – I chose Terokkar-EU, which is a pretty new realm that was released in October. To be completely honest, I chose it because the game client was showing it as the only “recommended” PvE realm. At least I hope that it will spare me some cursing of being ganked. And finally, I can see the other half (or rather a 1/3 of the other half, but that’s also good for now) of the game. But first, I will need some tourists guide to the Horde cities…