WoW Journal - 4-April-2005

Another WoW weekend, having a lot of fun. But somehow the theme of this weekend turned out to be "how to have fun without gaining xp", and so I just dinged once, to level 46. So what did I do that didn't gain me xp?

One thing was playing tour-guide through low-level dungeons. Once for my wife, in Blackfathom Depths, and once for my two D&D friends, in Razorfen Kraul. It is sometimes surprising how differently new players play WoW. My wife simply never groups, except with me. My D&D friends either solo, or group with each other. And I guess they are not the only ones, you see a lot of unguilded people in World of Warcraft. While veterans instinctively go for guilds and groups, to maximize benefit, the new players don't feel the need to group. There are disadvantages to grouping, it's often a hassle to set up, and then you can't easily leave or go afk. And as WoW allows you to level without grouping, many players simply don't. And then they do the instances dungeon quests either not at all, or in a small group with real life friends, when the quests are already green or even grey. Or, in this case, grouped with a level 46 warrior they happen to know in real life. Okay, obviously I did nearly all of the work, and got no xp. And I even passed on nearly all the loot rolls, so I didn't get much treasure either. But it was fun anyway, especially for dungeon which I haven't visited for a while. If you remember how difficult a dungeon was when you first did it, you feel all powerful when you can practically solo it.

The other thing I did without gaining xp, was raising my herbalism and alchemy skills. With good success, both are now above 240. The downside of that was that all that training costs a lot of money. 9 gold alone for getting the two skills past the 225 barrier, plus all the cost of the alchemy recipes from the trainer, some vendors, and some from the auction house. I tried to offset the costs by selling potions on the auction house. But although I had started alchemy with low expectations on profitability, even those were disappointed. I had put different sorts of potions on the AH, but I didn't sell a single one. Not even after lowering the prices to something less than the cost of the ingredients. I ended up giving the potions away for free to my guild, or using them myself. I wonder if that is because I'm playing on the Horde side, which is less populated, or whether it is due to the server being younger. Anyway, there doesn't seem to be a market for potions.

A part of my weekend was spent hunting for small flame sacs. These are used for fire protection potions, which are immensely useful, as they offer a random amount between 900 and 1600 points of *complete* protection against fire damage. Rather useful against some spellcasters, and against some kinds of dragons and dragonkin. Small flame sacs are also used for a cooking recipe, Dragonbreath Chilli. You eat the chilli, and for the next 10 minutes, in every combat you breath fire several times, dealing more than 60 points of damage to everybody in front of you. Looks funny, and is useful against hordes of lower level enemies (like when touring low level dungeons). I have to experiment a bit more with the chilli, I think there is a bug where you click on a stack of them to eat one, but the whole stack disappears instead of just one of them. I had the same bug with my druid on one potion, the Gift of Athas.

But of course I also gained some xp, from quests. I managed to do all but one quest in my quest journal, with the one remaining quest being for Tanaris. But before starting questing in earnest there, I wanted to visit one of the forgotten corners of the World of Warcraft: The Dustwallow Marsh. This is a level 35 to 45 zone, with an Alliance city on one side, and a Horde village on the other. And somehow I had never quested there, except for one quest from the Badlands, where I had to summon a sea giant on one of the islands along the coast of that zone.

One quite interesting detective quest has to do with a burned down inn, at the border between the swamp and the Barrens. There are three "clues" hidden in the inn, a shield, a tiny badge, and some hoofprints. I had found the shield, but the other clues I only found after reading about them on Thottbot. Each clue leads to a quest, leading to the perpetrators of that crime. Unfortunately the series ends with a dud. After you did everything, you are told to bring the black shield to somebody in Thunders Bluff, for the final revelation of the mystery. And there you hand in the shield, get a tiny xp reward, and the quest abruptly ends without explanation. Seems a bit unfinished. Maybe you would get more information if you did the Alliance side quests from the same three clues, but my druid only found the black shield at the time, and now his account has expired.

Maybe the reason why the Dustwallow Marsh are a bit underpopulated is that this is not the only bad quest in there. There is a guy in a hut in the swamp, "Swamp Eye" Jarl, who gives three quests which don't make much sense. First he wants three soothing spices, which you have to buy from a vendor, and the reward is only some food without stats. Then he wants 40 spider eyes, but he is talking crazy, and you don't really know what for. And then he wants an expensive smithed sword for the third quest. I declined that third quest, because I knew how valuable the sword was, and the reward he offered was worth a lot less. But I checked on Thottbot if there was another quest behind that, which would explain and reward a bit more, but there apparently isn't. Simply a badly written series of quests. It actually speaks for the otherwise high quality of the World of Warcraft quests if the bad ones are jarring so much.

But then I struck gold in the Dustwallow Marsh, by taking three quests for the southern part of the swamp, which were interesting, fun, and profitable. The ogres in the Horde village in the north of the marsh are refugees, which have been driven out by dragonkin of their old home in the south. They send you there to kill dragonkin, dragon whelps, and to find some lost items. The area is well done, with the wooden ogre fort being in smoking ruins, and dragonkin roaming them, with the whelps flying around in a wider area. The dragon whelps are easy enough to kill, being around level 41. And as they drop small flame sacs, I was happy enough to kill them, even if collecting 15 each of their tongues and hearts took some time. I like fighting dragon whelps, because their breath weapon is technically a "spell", thus can be interrupted with my shield bash. And a fire protection potion absorbs the few breath attacks they manage to get past my shield bash.

The dragonkin are a lot tougher, being level 41 to 44 elite. And they have some nasty area of effect fire spell, with a very short casting time, which can rarely be interrupted. With the help of fire protection potions I could barely solo the level 43, and my potion supply was running low. But then somebody from my guild turned up in the swamp, and we grouped and did the dragonkin together, which went a lot better. That got us two out of three quests done, with one quest item found for the third quest. But another player told us that the other quest items for the third quest are in a cave full of elite dragonkin, and I guess I have to go back there with some reinforcements, and a freshly brewed stack of potions.

The dragonkin dropped up to 10 pieces of silver each, so they were profitable enough. But besides money they practically never dropped anything. It seems their loot table is rather empty, with no common drops. Another sign that this zone has been done in a bit of a hurry, and maybe isn't as finished as it could be. But I liked the dragonkin area anyway, it was dangerous, exciting, and fun.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:43 PM Permanent Link