WoW Journal - Day 17

Day 17, Saturday morning. As usual I get up early, not because of the game, but because I simply can't sleep that long any more. Quick census for the fun of it, at 7 am there are only 39 people on. Now what can you do best when there is nobody else there? Ah yes, buy the rare things some vendors have in limited supply. So I head over to Hillsbrad, where hidden in a corner is the vendor for the pattern of Green Leather Armor. I buy one then, and later in the day I buy another pattern. Both go to guild leatherworkers. I also supply them with the heavy leather, so they can make this Green Leather Armor for me. With this done, I can now smith the Green Iron Hauberk. Perfect, it's minimum level 31, which is just the level I am now.

But smithing the hauberk needs 20 iron. So I spend a good part of the day gathering metals. A guild mate recommends an additional UI addon, Gatherer. Nice, it keeps track of all the spots where you found metal in the past. I just hope the date don't get erased by the next patch. I gather metals in Thousand Needles, where there is few iron, but lots of tin. And in Desolace, which has more iron, but higher level monsters. I then spot some iron bars in the auction house, stack of 20 for a bid of 1 gold, buyout 2 gold. The buyout is too rich for me, but I put in a bid for three stacks, and win that bid on two stacks.

All in all I make 4 green iron hauberks this day. I wear one, send one to a guild mate (for free, but he promised to send me iron later), put one on the auction house, and keep the 4th for selling later. Then I get smithing quests from an orc next to the Ogrimmar forge, who wants me to smith bronze stuff for him in exchange for patterns. I do two of these quests, using up over 100 bronze. The next quest in the series would require me to hand in iron armor pieces, and I just don't have the materials right now, so I leave it for another day.

After lunch some guild mates want to tackle Dun Gorak, a dwarven stronghold in Hillsbrad, full of elite dwarves. They share one quest with me, but for another quest I first need to do a series of quests as prerequisite, which takes some time. Then we storm the dwarven keep, which turns out to be empty, because another group just cleared it. We head for the part where the boss mob should spawn, and wait for him to reappear. Strategic mistake. He reappears, we fight him, but during the fight a lot of other dwarves respawn as well, and we get wiped out. Fortunately we get credit for the kill of the boss, so we don't have to do it again. I resurrect at the graveyard, but some group members want to walk to their corpses and rez there, which gives less damage to items, and no resurrection sickness. I can't help them, as I'm stuck outside with 10 minutes rez sickness. And they die again on the way out. Well, in the end we all get all our quests done, and I ding 32, so all is well.

I do some more quests to keep the number of quests in my quest journal below 20. I have one quest for which I need to storm another dwarven stronghold, but this one is in the Barrens, and the dwarves are not elite. On the way there I get a message on the local defense channel that "southern Barrens is under attack", and I see the quest giver NPC dead on the road. Well, I'm not going to hunt Alliance players, am I? I start killing the first dwarf outside the dwarven stronghold, when I notice a level 29 night elf NPC in stealth mode sneaking up on me, with PvP flag on, undoubtedly the guy who killed the quest NPC. What an idiot! I don't have PvP flag on, so even if I hadn't noticed him, he couldn't backstab me. So I turn around and whack him. He is fighting badly, and not using the best of his abilities to stun me. I use a special ability (which I can only use once every 30 minutes) which automatically counterattacks after each time I get hit for a couple of seconds. That is bad news for a rogue which relies on a flurry of fast dagger attacks, and I quickly take him down.

Then I notice that he isn't alone. He brought a level 29 druid, and level 26 hunter as reinforcements. They just were too slow to react to help the rogue much, I didn't notice him getting a heal from the druid. I attack the druid next, always take the healer out first. The druid transforms into bear form, but that's okay with me, that way he can't cast any nasty spells. He doesn't even think of putting faerie fire on me. Finally I go after the hunter. Who like all hunters tries to run away. But this time I'm prepared. I got some Really Sticky Glue from some quest, which immobilizes him for a few seconds. Enough to hamstring him, after which I'm faster than he is, and he goes down quickly.

I still don't see the point of this sort of PvP, even if that encounter was fun. Why did the rogue sneak up on me stealthed? Okay, if they had played better (and I worse) the three of them could probably have taken me out. I didn't gain anything from the fight, they didn't lose anything. And now I have to wait 5 minutes for the PvP flag to go away, because they are still around, but don't dare to attack me any more. I hope the battlegrounds add some purpose to PvP.

In the evening we hold a guild meeting in the arena of Ogrimmar. Wow, 39 guild members online, impressive. We discuss recruitment, and how to help each other out with crafting and resources. We pose for screenshots and somebody even tries to capture a movie with the whole guild dancing. Fun time. As it is getting late, I go to bed, but most of the guild is doing a raid on Ashenvale. Thanks guys, but not for me, I had enough of PvP for today.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:59 AM Permanent Link