WoW Journal - 6-Jun-2005

One disadvantage of putting up an e-mail address on this blog is the inevitable flood of spam. Fortunately GMail does a good job of spam filtering, and only a small amount of spam lands in my inbox, instead of going directly to the spam folder. So I'm a bit puzzled by a mail I got, advertising WoW gold. 100 gold on a US server apparently cost $13.99 now, while on a EU server they are at $20.99. If I think how many hours of farming at level 40 it takes to get the money for a mount, I can understand that some people are interested in buying. But why did I get this mail? Was it just general spam, which just happened to hit somebody actually playing WoW? Or is the spam address finding software nowadays so sophisticated that it can target everybody with a blog mentioning WoW?

I hope all spam is getting more sophisticated, as most of the spam I'm getting right now is for things I absolutely have no need of, like "low mortgage rates", fake Viagra, or the millions of dollars from a deposed African despot. Everybody is talking about how your personal information is being grabbed by advertising companies on the internet, but frankly I don't see much targeted advertising yet. I actually *wish* the people sending all this mail knew me a bit better, and wouldn't bother sending me ads for stuff I don't need. They don't even know if I'm male or female, I get both penis enlargement and breast enlargement offers.

Back to WoW. A Sunday spent mostly at a cold and rainy barbecue limited my time spent playing, but I made some progress anyway. Honey, the gnome warlock, is now level 28. Over the weekend I grouped mostly with my D&D friends. As we are exactly 5 on that server, it makes for a nice group when everybody is online. Getting everybody in the same level range is more difficult, we now span from 26 to 31. The 5 of us did Shadowfang Keep on Saturday, and the higher level ones didn't get any xp. But the loot was good, and I won the rolls for blue cloth shoulders, and for Arugal's robe. We breezed through the dungeon with little problem, fearlessly approached the level 26 elite boss at the end, and promptly got wiped out. Arugal is one nasty piece of work. We should have brought shadow protection potions, his shadow bolts deal insane damage. But I had put my soulstone on one of the paladins, who then rezzed all of us, and we managed to kill Arugal on the second go.

Sunday evening we were still 4 D&D players, so we invited a 5th guy and did Blackfathom Deeps. Better xp than Shadowfang, but less good loot, I had the impression. But we were lucky and got another Rod of the Sleepwalker for our mage, my warlock having already found one the last time we went. I'm wondering which dungeon to do next. The prison in Stormwind is too small, and Gnomeregan still a bit too high. Maybe Razorfen Kraul, although getting there isn't easy for Alliance.

On the Runetotem server I played a while with Kyroc, my undead priest, and leveled him to 16. The only really interesting thing about that is that my wife is playing a level 16 undead mage, and we can team up together. Priest / Mage works better than I would have thought, in spite of the total absence of tanking power. But we make up for that with crowd control and direct damage, so we managed reasonably well.

I also had a lot of fun with Raslebol this weekend. Originally I wanted to farm Shadowfang for wool, so Kyroc could turn the wool into magic clothes, and disenchant those for skilling up enchanting. But some guild mates needed help, so I first escorted two guys through all of Wailing Caverns, then another two guys through the first part of Scarlet Monastery. Wailing Caverns is bad for finding any cloth, but in the monastery I got a lot of silk. No xp in either dungeon for a level 56 of course, but the good karma from having helped lower level guild mates.

Sunday morning, I played Raslebol a bit before the barbecue. I usually wake up early, and like to use the time when nobody is online yet to gather herbs. So I flew to Felwood, to stock up on Plaguebloom and other stuff. But then I noticed lots of exclamation marks over the heads of NPCs and decided to gather all the quests there and do the easier ones. Good choice, because doing the quests worked together well with gathering herbs. Killing some mobs here and there, and suddenly I dinged 57 without having noticed my progress. And I still have a full level of rest bonus xp.

Especially nice is a quest where after killing 15 wood elementals you are charged with healing corrupted plants. That is a repeatable quest, you get quest items as random drops from all monsters in Felwood, and also from gathering herbs there. You can hand these in to get Cenarion Salve, and that can be used to heal the corrupted plants. You only get xp the first time you hand in stuff, but healing the plants enables you to harvest them. One type of plant gives a nice +15 buff on all stats for one hour, and the other three types of plants give different fruits. One works like food, in both regenerating you when sitting, and giving you a stamina buff. One heals your hitpoints like a healing potion, and the third heals both hitpoints and mana, like a rejuvenation potion. But in spite of working like potions, the fruit don't use the same timer, which makes them interesting. Gathering the quest items for the salve is easy enough, only finding the corrupted plants is hard, as they don't show up on your mini-map, in spite of you getting a Cenarion Beacon whose description sounds as if it should help you find the corrupted plants. But the only thing it does is enabling you to find the quest items for the salves. You need a map from Thottbot, or a lot of searching, to find the corrupted plants.
- posted by Tobold @ 8:24 AM Permanent Link