BC Journal - 2-November-2006

I finished my exploration tour of the currently available Outland zones by traveling all over Zangarmarsh. Only the 4 lower level zones of Outland are currently open, the 3 higher level zones can't be entered yet. Zangarmarsh is a slightly psychedelic looking marshland full of gigantic mushroom forests, spore monsters, glowflies in different colors, and a number of other mobs.

There are 4 villages in Zangarmarsh, one Horde, one Alliance, and two neutral ones, where you can gain faction with. In the middle there is a graveyard flanked by two towers. You can "capture" the towers by standing in them with PvP flag on, and once you captured both towers, you can carry a flag from the village of your faction to the graveyard to capture the graveyard. I couldn't find a quest for the capture of the graveyard, but I did it anyway, even if there was no reward.

So while I talked with the standard bearer, from whom you get the flag to capture the graveyard, I noticed there was an option to redeem Marks of Thrallmar. I already had 6 Marks of Thrallmar, which I gained by doing a PvP quest in Hellfire Peninsula twice. The quest consists of capturing 3 structures, again simply by standing in them with your PvP flag turned on. Capture all 3 structures, and get 3 Marks of Thrallmar in a repeatable quest. Now in Hellfire Peninsula I didn't see much interest in gathering more Marks, because the rewards were good, but more for melee than for casters. At the quest giver you can get blue slotted rings with a high stamina bonus for 15 Marks, as well as gems to put into the slots for 10 Marks. You can even get an item which increases your xp by 5%, but only for 30 minutes. I wasn't really interested in any of these rewards at the time, so I stopped the repeatable quest after 2 runs. At the time the quest was a bit boring, because I just had to stand in each structure for some minutes to flag it, and nobody tried to stop me, so there wasn't really any PvP.

But in Zangarmarsh at the standard bearer I could turn in the same Marks of Thrallmar for other rewards. And one of these rewards was really useful for me: The Incendic Rod, a wand with an astounding 97.1 DPS, +8 stamina, +14 to spell damage and healing, and +3 mana regeneration per 5 seconds. The other rewards there were a throwing weapon, a bow, a libram, a relic, and a totem, thus covering all possible classes' needs for items in the "ranged weapon" slot.

So back I went to Hellfire Peninsula, to do more repetitions of the PvP quest that gives the Marks. And then things got interesting: I found a group of Horde players doing the same, they invited me, and there was a group of Alliance players fighting us. Well, the fighting wasn't all that intense. The nature of the PvP quest is such that a certain amount of collusion automatically occurs. Both sides need to capture the same 3 structures, and you capture it the faster the more people of your faction with PvP flag on are in the structure. So if an Alliance and a Horde group meet in the same structure, they fight a bit to determine who is superior, but then the losers usually don't insist, but simply move on to the next structure. Not only would it be hard to keep control of all three structures, it would also be counterproductive. Only once the enemy captures the structures back can you again capture them and get another quest done.

At first I thought fighting for the structures was totally useless. But then I noticed that I had picked up more Marks of Thrall than I should have had from the quests. I did the repeatable quest 4 times, but instead of having 12 Marks, I had 17. So by fighting in the structures and doing honorable kills, I must have been awarded additional Marks. Thus having more than the 15 Marks I needed, I went back to Zangarmarsh and got my Incendic Rod wand reward. Getting 15 Marks doesn't take all that long if both sides are capturing structures. The worst thing that can happen is that one side isn't playing, because then you are blocked after capturing all 3 structures. Never happened to me, but I was thinking that at least on the beta server, where I have both Horde and Alliance characters, I could have resolved that blockage by switching from one faction to the other. If both sides are doing PvP around the structures, which I expect will be the case most of the time on the live servers, them being more busy than the beta servers, you can get 15 Marks easily in an afternoon. At which point I ask myself whether that is well balanced, or whether Blizzard is going to increase the cost of the rewards in Marks a lot before the Burning Crusade goes live. If I compare the cost of the level 60 epic two-handed mace, The Unstoppable Force, of 30000 honor and 80 AV Marks, with the cost of the level 62 wand, 15 Marks of Thrallmar, I don't find that balanced. Of course priests (and hunters maybe) are a special case here, because for us the ranged weapon we can get from Outland PvP is our "main weapon". I never hit anything with my staff, I just carry it for the stats. I always use my wand, which has much higher dps.

I finished my round trip through Zangarmarsh, and then realized that I hadn't found a dungeon there. Hmmm, wasn't there supposed to be one? I went to the official map of Outland, and found the dungeon entrance marked as being in the middle of Serpent Lake. I had swum through that, and seen a strange structure in the middle, on which I had climbed without finding any entrance. A second trip there revealed the entrance to be a tunnel under water in the middle of the structure, leading to the Coilfang Reservoir dungeons. Like Hellfire Citadel there are 4 dungeons here, two lower level 5-man dungeons, a level 70 5-man, and a level 70 raid dungeon.

I had just left Coilfang and gone back to Hellfire Peninsula to do some quests, when I got a tell asking me whether I wanted to go to the Slave Pens, the first of the Coilfang Reservoir dungeons. Of course I wanted! I didn't know the people, but the group turned out to be good. We wiped once when we pulled the second boss without clearing the room first, but other than that we were very successful. Killed all three bosses, found a couple of nice blue and green items (although nothing for me), and gained good xp in the process.

If I want to see more of the Outlands, especially the Caverns of Time, the dungeons I haven't visited in the Outlands yet, and the zones that aren't open yet, I will have to level a bit more. I assume, though I'm not sure, that I have until January to do so, which even for a slow leveler like me should be possible, with the help of the free time during the holidays. But I still want to keep playing my "real" characters, at least my main, the undead priest. I want to go raiding two or three times per week, and I want to skill up his mining to 300, to be ready for jewelcrafting. After thinking about it long and hard I have decided to ditch tailoring when the expansion comes out. Thus I'll have the level 60 warrior with herbalism and alchemy, and the level 60 priest with mining and jewelcrafting. That should cover all my needs for craftable "consumables", potions and socketable gems. I'll leave my second priest, the human one on the younger server, on tailoring. The expansion promises some improvements to tailoring, but in my experience you don't use very many self-tailored items, except for bags.
- posted by Tobold @ 9:14 AM Permanent Link