WoW Journal - 24-July-2005

I spent the last couple of days leveling Honey from 37 to 40. That usually meant doing quests in Desolace, the Swamp of Sorrows, Arathi, and Dustwallow Marsh during the day soloing, and dungeons with the D&D guys in the evening. But now that I'm 40, I think I'll stop leveling for a while. There are two of my D&D friends who are still below 40, one other at 40, and 2 above. And if we don't watch it, we drift too far in levels from each other.

I spent some time in combat experimenting with the warlocks transfer abilities. A warlock my level can drain 350 mana from an enemy for a cost of 155 mana, and gain it for himself, but only if the enemy has mana, of course. He can also drain life, at my level 210 life drained in 5 seconds for 185 mana. The drain life is interesting, because I can convert 214 life into 214 mana with life tap. So a life tap / drain life combo works on every mob, and basically costs nothing, but ends me up with 30 mana surplus, and the enemy with 210 hitpoints less. The last interesting transfer ability is health funnel, where I spend 279 hitpoints over 10 seconds to heal my pet for 640 hitpoints. The channeling makes these spells slow, and easily interrupted, but they enable me to still do things when my mana is empty.

I'm happy I managed to reach level 40 without having to do Stranglethorn quests, I really don't like that place, and I did it too often. It meant traveling around more, as the quests in other zones weren't that numerous. But I found a couple that I hadn't done yet. And from level 40 on I can do the Alliance quests in Hinterlands and Feralas, which are new to me as well.

In dungeons I did both Gnomeregan and the Scarlet Monastery twice. And managed to find not a single blue drop for me. Even the quest rewards weren't all that useful for warlocks. In the monastery there is a hidden room in the cathedral with an undead High Inquisitor Fairbanks. He used to be easy to kill, and drop three green items. But it seems some people camped him, so he got nerfed in the last patch. He is now dropping always the same Inquisitor's Shawl, which isn't that good. And it's "unique", meaning you can have only one, which should stop the farmers. We also had more trouble killing him than before, but I might be imagining that.

On the last expedition into the Scarlet Monastery there was one noteworthy experience: We had a group of 4, and couldn't find a 5th in Ironforge or on the way the monastery. So I clicked on the meeting stone in front of the dungeon, hoping to get a fifth member. Nothing happened. After waiting a bit in vain, we entered the cathedral and started killing. We just had reached the inner cathedral door, when a dwarven fighter joined our group through the meeting stone. Seems that entering the dungeon doesn't turn off the search. That was the first time I found a group member with a meeting stone. Even now that you can access them from any inn, they aren't used all that much, and clicking on them while alone never got me into a group. But for finding a 5th group member it seems to be not so bad.
- posted by Tobold @ 6:27 AM Permanent Link