WoW Journal - Day 23 and Day 24

Having posted my analysis of the WoW quest system yesterday, I'm bunching the WoW Journal entries for the weekend into one post. Saturday I'm eager to do some adventuring, as Raslebol didn't level much the whole week long. Continueing from Friday, I finish my quests for Thousand Needles. I solo most of the time, just doing some short term duos for the quests where I have to kill some elite mob. Progress is good, but nothing exceptional. But as an added bonus I discover where in Thousand Needles the iron deposits are, which is good to know.

In the afternoon I group a bit with my guild. In Stonetalon Mountains we do an expedition into the Grizzled Den. Elite mobs, but not an instance, just the standard night-elf type of dungeon full of bends and roots. Not really my favorite, and the reward isn't great either. Afterwards another guildie is having problems with a quest in Hillsbrad. He is level 27, and has to kill level 30 murloc and nagas. No problem for my level 33 warrior. As an added bonus I collect a bunch of tangy clam meat, which brings my cooking skill up to 170.

The evening I'm soloing again. One of my favorite spots, the Shimmering Flats in south Thousand Needles. This is a salt flat, on which the goblins and gnomes have built a big race track. Now they are running races against each other there. So there are lots of quests to kill the local monster population to clear the track, or to gather monster parts that serve to improve the race cars, or gather car parts from the wrecks you can see everywhere. Too funny, the goblins have a chariot pulled by two huge rockets, and at one place you can see one of these chariots stuck and exploded in the canyon wall, ten meters off the ground. I do all the quests there that can be done without leaving the flats, and ding 34.

Sunday morning, I'm still an early riser, and there are only 40 people playing on the Horde side at 7 am. So I go mining, while there is few competition. I gather lots of iron, tin, and copper in Thousand Needles, and even a bit of mithril. Then I spend all my money in Ogrimmar for coal to smelt steel, and get up my smithing skill up to 220. I don't even have enough left to put everything up on the auction house. So during the day my smithing moves into phase 2: money making. I'll be blocked at 225 skill anyway, I'll need level 40 to advance beyond that. So now I don't smith for skill rises, I smith for profit. Another Green Iron Hauberk sells, which gives me enough money to put everything I smithed up on auction. I also have a lot of loot I put up on auction on Saturday selling during the day. With Green Iron Hauberks selling at 6 gold, and me being able to smith some very nice weapons that sell for 1 to 2 gold, and level 30ish loot also selling around 1 gold, I end up the day richer than I ever was: 25 gold. Suddenly having 90 gold at level 40 for a mount doesn't seem impossible any more. Although I'm sure that business will be a lot slower during the week, there are a lot of weekend shoppers around.

Sunday afternoon a guild mate of mine which whom I often group logs on, he wasn't on Saturday. As during the week I didn't have time for instances, with me playing my Alliance gnome, now we gather a group and go on an expedition to Gnomeregan. Funnily you not only get a quest for there from the goblin engineers in Ogrimmar, they also direct you to "Chief Engineer Scooty" in Booty Bay, who will beam directly into Gnomeregan. The other end is operated by "Spocky ". I love these out-of-game references, although I know not everybody finds them funny.

While we have only one quest at the start for Gnomeregan, we pick up some more inside. There is an "event" in there, events being similar to quests, but not going into your quest journal, and not having a reward beyond the loot of the boss mob who appears at the end of the event. The Gnomeregan event is about helping a dwarf engineer blocking some tunnels with explosions, preventing an invasion of troggs. The chief trogg *can* drop some blue stuff, but we aren't lucky and only get some green loot drop nobody wants. We do another quest to escort a goblin out of the instance. We also find lots of gem encrusted objects, which have to be cleaned in a gnomish machine. For the Alliance the place with the cleaning machines is a safe haven, with a mail box and a vendor. For us Horde the gnomes there are hostile, we need to kill them, and the mail box doesn't work for us. The cleaning machine is kind of a slot machine, each operation costs 3 sp, and the gem encrusted object often is a worthless stone, rarely a valuable gem, and ultra-rarely a magic item. But at least the first operation of the machine is a quest which gives good xp. The same machine is used for another quest with a gem-encrusted ring, again good xp, but the ring you get from that isn't really good. You can get that ring upgraded for some materials and 30 silver, but the resulting ring isn't worth 30 silver either.

But it is simply me who hasn't got luck with loot in Gnomeregan. For our mages we find some very nice blue boots. And then we procede to the hard part of the instance, fighting our way towards the big boss Thermaplugg. We get wiped out once on the way, because we didn't see the alarm robot hidden on a lower ledge who summons lots of mechanical sentries who swarm and kill us. But I ding 35 shortly before we reach the final boss mob. And the group is well organized and we kill Thermaplugg on the first try. Me and a level 33 warrior tanking him, a level 33 priest to heal, a level 38 mage to deal damage, and the level 33 mage doing a good job of running around and pushing the buttons that stop the walking bomb attacks. The mage wins the roll for Thermapluggs good blue ring. Well, at least I get some blue pants as quest reward. They don't have stats, but over 100 armor class more than the green iron leggings.

In the evening my bad luck with gear turns dramatically. A guild group is heading for the Scarlet Monastery, and lets me tag along. At level 35 this is like cheating, the main quest for the monastery is level 42 and red to me. The Scarlet Monastery consists of 3 separate instances, and frankly I'm only useful in the first one. The rest is about fighting level 38 to 40 elite mobs, with level 42 end boss mobs. Most of the time my attacks simply don't connect, and if they do they deal minimal damage. And my taunts are resisted as well half of the time.

The crazy thing is that for not being able to do much, I'm excessively rewarded, being the only warrior in the group. Although I lose the roll, my guild mates let me have the Steelclaw Reaver axe, much better than my Knighly Longsword of Power. I switch to this axe, but as my axe skill is a bit lower than my sword skill, I hit even less with it for a while, until my axe skill catches up. The group also lets me have Herod's Shoulder, which I can't even use yet. And in a short break we take between the instances, I hand in a Scarlet Monastery quest in Thunders Bluff, and receive a Vile Protector shield with over 1000 armor. I now have a total of 2871 armor class, which translates to absorbing 46% of the damage dealt by an attacker of my level. Plus whatever the "block 17" of the shield is able to block, I admit I'm a bit hazy about how exactly shield blocking works. A true tank.

But the highlight comes from finishing the last instance of the Scarlet Monastery, and getting the reward for that level 42 elite quest: The Sword of Omen. Wow, that's one wicked beast of a sword. From the Knightly Longsword with a bit over 20 damage per second to the Sword of Omen with nearly 30 damage per second (and better boni) in a few hours is a huge step. My character damage per second, which adds the effects of my weapon skill and my strength, is now at just over 50 damage per second. And that is without using any special attacks.

So while I felt a bit useless in the Scarlet Monastery, I am very grateful to my guild mates that walked me through this, and got me all this very nice equipment. That is what a guild is all about, mutual help. I'm doing my part as well, helping lower level players with quests or instances, and providing people with smithed weapons or armor, cheap or even for free if they are broke. In the end it all balances out, and everybody wins.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:59 PM Permanent Link