WoW Journal - 23-June-2006

The great thing about making plans in a MMORPG is that things never happen as planned. I logged on my level 19 priest yesterday, planning to do quests in Ratchet and Stonetalon, but I never made it there. I hadn't arrived at the gryphon master yet when I already got a tell from somebody I knew whether I'd like to join a Deadmines group. Hey, I *made* this character to join dungeon groups, so of course I went.

The group was interesting, with no warrior, but a paladin who was tanking quite well. And somebody in that group taught me a trick I didn't know yet: if on the ship you jump on the big wheel, mobs can't reach you (except for the parrots, they fly). You can't hurt the mobs either, they just evade, but after some time they lose interest and go back to their initial positions. Thus we were able to avoid two wipes after bad pulls, by going to this safe spot and "resetting" the encounter.

After killing Van Cleef, I spotted Cookie down on the other side of the ship, and told the others to jump down with me and kill him while he was alone. Bad idea, I should have coordinated that plan better. One group member jumped too far to the right, thereby pulling another group, while the others jumped belatedly. So we wiped. Well, I thought, no problem, we had basically finished the dungeon anyway, and I just spirit rezzed at the graveyard. That got me some nasty comments about "I hate people leaving groups early after one wipe". Hmmm, I didn't think we would have run all the way back just to kill the last mini-boss.

By doing Deadmines again, I had dinged to 20, and I went to Stormwind for training. Ouch, at level 20 there are a lot of priest spells, and at 27 silver per spell the total training cost is huge. The money I fished in Stranglethorn in gone, I don't even have 1 gold any more to buy the level 20 fishing book that would allow me to further increase my skill.

So I came back to my original plan and travelled via Booty Bay to Ratchet, and took the flight point there. Seeing how the flight map showed Auberdine, I decided to fly there and then go to Darnassus to tag the midsummer bonfire for the quest there. Mainly because I wanted to see which route the gryphon would take. As I had feared, Ratchet is only directly connected to Theramore, so taking the gryphon from Ratchet to Auberdine involves first heading straight south until reaching Theramore, and then going northwest to Auberdine. Long flight.

While on the gryphon, somebody from my guild asked me whether I wanted to go to Deadmines. Well, that was my first opportunity for a guild group, most of my guild mates are already above level 30, because they can play much longer hours than I can. So from Darnassus I hearthstoned back to Stormwind and went to the Deadmines again.

This group was funny, with 3 gnomes, two rogues and a warrior. Then there was a paladin and me, which all together gave quite a good group mix. Levels were 18 to 21, but the gnome warrior was already level 29. Another good group of competent players, and we finished all the dungeon, Cookie and Van Cleef included. I won Van Cleef's blue cloth chest, but I'm not yet sure if that one is worth wearing. I basically need to chose between +5 int on my old chest piece and +11 spirit on the new one. I know that spirit has a bigger effect on mana regeneration for priests than for other classes, but I'm not convinced that spirit is already useful at level 20.

So after a bad start with pickup groups, I now killed Van Cleef three times, and I think I've done enough of Deadmines for now. Unless a guild group desperately needs a healer, I'll move on to the next dungeon. I have all the best loot from there anyway, Cookie's wand, the blue +6 int ring, Van Cleef's cloth chest, and the Staff of Westfall for handing his head in. I also earned tons of xp, loot, and many stacks of linen and wool cloth for my tailoring. I turned the wool into green woolen bags, and hope I can sell them for 15 silver each, to finance my fishing book. Once I have the fishing skill cap raised, I can do another tour of Stranglethorn fishing this weekend.
- posted by Tobold @ 11:08 AM Permanent Link