WoW Journal - 5-April-2005

I start the evening by hunting in Tanaris, killing hyena for mystery meat, and rocs for giant eggs. I make a stack of Dragonbreath Chilli with the mystery meat, and Monster Omelette with the eggs. Then I go and test the chilli in Ragefire Chasm. There is definitely some sort of bug: When you click on a stack of them, they all disappear, and you only get one breath of fire per item on the stack. But if you first shift-click on the stack to split off a single chilli, and then click on that, it works well. You get 10 minutes of effect, with several fire breaths per combat, and the other stack doesn't disappear.

So I run around in Ragefire Chasm, collecting large trains of low level mobs, then turning around and breathing fire on them. Okay, not highly effective, the chilli only does 60 to 70 points of damage per breath. But fun nonetheless. That way I "farm" the whole dungeon, netting me no xp, a couple of silver, and a few low level green items.

Then somebody from my guild sends me a tell, and wants to do the Maraudon instance dungeon with me and some other guildies. My first instinct is that I'm too low with level 46, but he says the monsters are level 46 max also. Which turns out to be not totally true, the quest to kill the final boss is level 51 elite. But the monsters in the first half of the dungeon are low 40's.

What I should have asked him instead is "how long will that take?". Because it turns out that Maraudon is huge, much bigger than any other dungeon I did up to now. After 4 hours we reach a point in the dungeon where you get a staff, with which you can teleport back to that mid-point of the dungeon. And because it is late and there are at least 2 more hours of dungeon ahead, we postpone that to another day. Dungeon with a save point, now that is something new for a MMORPG. But necessary for instances which otherwise take 6 hours or more complete.

The expedition sure was profitable. I finished four quests there, which I still have to cash in. I won the roll for a blue trinket which cures poison, and for some green stuff for selling. I even manage to persuade the group member who won the roll for the recipe for the limited invulnerability potion to give the plans to me, and promise him to send him a stack of those as soon as I can. 6 more points of alchemy skill to gain until then, should be doable.

But I can't say I especially enjoyed that Maraudon trip. The guy who invited me was level 48 priest, and the rest of the group even higher, up to a level 60 rogue. Now for a priest it is okay to be a bit lower in level than the others, but as level 46 warrior I felt I was the least useful member of the group, and I hate that. I don't want to be powerleveled by others. I'd rather group with people closer to my level, where everybody has an equally important role to play in the group. I'm kind of committed to do the second half with the same group this evening. But as the second half starts with level 48 elite mobs, which I can hardly hit, I wouldn't mind if that group fails to reassemble. Guess I'm not much of an "achiever", speaking in Bartly type terminology, I don't care much about the phat l00t and xp I can gain when grouping with high-level guildmates.
- posted by Tobold @ 12:26 PM Permanent Link