WoW Journal - 18-Mar-05

After a week of forced absence, I'm eager to play. Raslebol is level 38, and has spent much time mining and smithing to get enough money for a horse, so my goal is to reach level 40 this weekend.

I start with a quest in the Swamp of Sorrows. Kill lots of dragon whelps to collect dream dust. These dragons don't breathe fire, but some sort of green ball of nature damage. That makes them very easy to farm. The breath attack counts as spell, thus my warriors shield bash can interrupt that attack, and stop the dragon from using it for another 6 seconds. And I have nature protection potions for emergencies, when I'm attacked by several dragons, which totally absorbs their breath attack damage. On advise of a guild mate I then do another quest in the swamp. The quest is marked level 43 elite, but what you actually have to do is to collect 10 artifacts under water. And you can do that without getting into a fight with the level 43 elite dragonkin mobs, which makes the quest easy and profitable.

After the swamp, I decide to do a quest which leads me into the Badlands. But on the way I first tag the flight path in Hammerfell in Arathi Highlands, and then do a quest there. I have to kill a bunch of kobolds in a cave, and make my way to a crystal at the end of that cave. The kobolds are rather annoying, because they tend to run away and get help. But with my bow I can pull them away from the others, and then hamstring them to prevent them from running. I reach the crystal, and the quest reward makes me ding 39. A second later my computer freezes. I have to reboot, and by the time I can get back, the cave is full of respawned kobolds. I try to run, but die just as I leave the cave. And the program crashes again. I update Cosmos, which disable the QuestMinion UI mod, which the patch note says is causing problems.

Back in the game, I leave the Arathi Highlands and run through Wetlands and Loch Modan to the Badlands. There I first tag the flight path. This is an important flight path point, because it connects the northern part of this continent, the area around Undercity, with the southern part, Booty Bay. So now I can fly over the dwarven and human areas, without getting into trouble with the alliance guards.

Some friends log on, and we group. I lead them to the Badlands, so they get the flight path too. And we start doing a series of quests which according to Thottbot should end us earning the Nifty Stopwatch, a trinket which can be activated every 30 minutes to give a short boost to run speed. Good to have if you need to run away. I knew we needed to hand in frost oil and a gyrochronatom, so we came prepared. We then also need to hand in healing and invisibility potions, but one of my friends is alchemist and we can do that too. But the next part of the quest is collecting a lot of stones from different rock elementals. And as I'm still jet-lagged, and it is getting late, I stop here for the day.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:16 AM Permanent Link