Snakes on Planes

As a big fan of the Stranglethorn Vale safari quests, I have been looking forward to visiting Nagrand and Nesingwary. Nagrand is a beautiful area, with lush green fields, purple swirling skies and big lumps of land floating in the air. The canyons and waterfalls are a fantastic setting for an area of mass carnage and destruction. The first 3 quests in the safari series are:

Talbuk Mastery
Windroc Mastery
Clefthoof Mastery

Kill 30 of each and return. This is bread and butter for a Hunter with Skinning (90K xp for the kills) 60 (Knothide/strips/Clefthoof leather) (30K xp for the quest completions).

Talbuk Mastery (2)
A Rare Bean

These two run together take about 30 mins - with plenty more Knothide to show for your troubles.

Clefthoof Mastery (2)

The Clefthoof Bulls are a bit more ferocious, and even attack you if you get too close. Lacking the same numbers as the lesser Clefthoof, there is a need to find multiple spawn grounds to bag your 30.

I invited a couple of friends to help the Group parts of:

Talbuk Mastery (3)
Clefthoof Mastery (3)

I am not sure that these are really a group quest, but maybe it was just made to look too easy with aid of 2 level 70's. I will tackle the Windrocs when I run out of more interesting quests.

66 - The Number of the Beast

Another landmark reached - Level 66 achieved whilst pottering around Zangarmarsh. Armed with a new Epic Mount (White Ram), Bob was able to cover ground at a fantastic rate. I always assumed that Epic Mounts were something that people bought because what else did you spend your money on at Level 60. I was able to make the plunge after picking up the first Blue item from the Outlands. The Fist of Reckoning http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=31139&locale=enUS;source=live is a mace, one of the few weapons not usable by a Hunter. Allakhazam values it at 70G, but from experience these things never normally reach the asking price, leaving the seller footing several large AH bills. Eventually the mace sold for 50G quite quickly - probably to a AH scavanger looking for a profit.

Recent nights have seen a rotation between Zangarmarsh and Terrokar in attempt to avoid quests turning Green. Terrokar in my opinion is a little bit more disjointed than Zangarmarsh and Hellfire, although I have collected some nice quest items.

Zangarmarsh quests cleared up last night:

Ango'rosh Encroachment
Overlord Gorefist
Daggerfen Deviance
Wanted: Chieftain Mummaki
Balance Must Be Preserved
Menacing Marshfangs
Now That We're Still Friends...
Secrets of the Daggerfen
Stinger Venom


The best of these was Secrets of the Daggerfen and Wanted: Chieftain Mummaki, which is indicated as a group quest or (bring a friend). After reading comments on Allakhazham it was obvious that this was soloable. The Chieftain and the Book required for Daggerfen Deviance are located in the same tower. It is difficult to work out why one is solo and one is a group quest.
Bob was able to sneek the book out without disturbing Mummaki, but why would you do one without the other. Bob rested, popped some buffs, and prepared for a fight with Mummaki and his 2 bodyguards. Bobcat went for The Chieftain and turned Red with Bestial Wrath, Bob fired a couple of shots off and that was it. Game, Set and Match, not even a scratch on the cat.

The second part of Daggerfen Deviance is the potion that is a random in the village, I checked for some known co-ordinates and went in search. After a few fruitless minutes and several attacks from Daggerfen Assassins, I decided to switch from Track Humanoids to Find Treasure. Several yellow dots appeared and it transpired that the Potion is trackable to the Dwarf community and there are several in the village.

The other interesting quest was the Balance Must Be Preserved chain. Bob swam from the North as recommended on the forums, and popped a scuba diving potion, and went to explore the large structure in the middle of Coilfang. Although the co-ordinates were known it was still difficult to find the entrance, even with the bubbles gushing from the vent.

So Honored with Cenarion Expedition, and lots of nice new Leatherworking recipes to grind up for. Time to finish Zangarmarsh and Terrokar and move onto new pasture, looking forward to meeting Nesingwary again!

Gone Fishing

In Real Life, angling is certainly something that does not appeal to me. In WoW, I have been, torn between the fantastic rewards that people have written about and the reality of watching a bobber for several minutes/hours.

As a Hunter, there is a symbiotic relationship between the Hunter and Pet. This is further complicated by the need to feed your beloved Pet on a very regular basis, this takes up very valuable bag space and requires the need to find bigger and better food to keep the hunger pangs away for longer periods. Cooking is the natural answer to the Hunters problem. You are killing Beasts on a regular basis why not feed the surplus to your closest friend.

The problem with cooking is the best way to level up to 300+ was by cooking fish, which have no need for elaborate spices, just requiring a roaring fire. The best way to get raw fish is to go and dust off your fishing rod and do the deed yourself. The first 75 skillups are no problem with a ratio of 1 per fish, this gets gradually more difficult until you reach 1:8. Most of my fishing was conducted whilst on the docks waiting for boats between continents, to avoid downtime.

From personal experience I had no issue with this until hitting lvl 225 and then trying to complete "Nat Pagle, Angler Extreme" http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/quest.html?source=live;wquest=6607&locale=enUS.

This is the worst quest I have completed by a mile. Not only do you need to fly to 4 different zones, but the droprate is terrible and most of the zones are sat next to Horde camps or Nasties like in Stranglethorn Vale. Thankfully I am not on a PVP server. The result was several hours and 100+ raw fish in my heavily laden bags and no skillups for my trouble. I can safely say that I never wanted to fish again. My cooking however was easily skilled up to 300 by grilling Spotted Yellowtail.

So many moons roll by and Bob dug out the fishing rod whilst at the Cenarion Circle in Zangarmarsh. Fishing is by no means any more exciting but there is a whole bunch of new things to catch, and all of them come with buffs when cooked. It was time to get that skill up to an acceptable (275) so that I could read "Master Fishing - The Art of Angling" .

In an attempt to do this and make some money I decided to read up and see if there is any sensible way to this. El's Extreme Anglin' http://www.capsu.org/wow/ was a very useful resource. Bob portalled back to the Old World and ended off to the old stomping ground of Hillsbrad. Just behind Tarren Mill there is a whole series of Sagefish Schools. Over 2 nights Bob travelled the circuit once each night and topped off the final skillups by travelling to the Alterac Mountains, to fish for some Greater Sagefish.

The fish were distributed amongst the Alts and then a Hearthstone back to the Outlands. 2 nights spent/wasted, with no XP, but with the prospect of more fun filled evenings fishing in Zangarmarsh.

Hopefully with the new patch 2.1:
- The fishing timer has been reduced from 30 to 20 seconds and it now takes less time to fish.
- The fishing timer can no longer run through its duration without a fish biting.

Then fishing might become slightly more enjoyable/easy

Reputations At Stake

"Grinding for Rep" - a statement guaranteed to drive fear into the heart of most WoW players. For the first 50 levels you play as you like, take a quest don't take a quest, learn a proffesion, sit down for an hour fishing. Then life takes a dramatic twist for the worse.

My first experience of Reputation was for the Timbermaws. I was running a quest series for the Linken Sword, and suddenly discovered the need to spend many hours killing the same beasties for 5 or 15 rep each. Every session would result in a calculation of how many Deadwoods it would take to get from Unfriendly to Neutral with the Timbermaws. As part of the original endgame it was designed to draw out the game interest for a bit longer. The result was parties of people camped out in certain areas killing anything that spawned immediately. After the release of The Burning Crusade, these areas became ghost towns.

The Timbermaws took 2 nights play and then after the jolly trip through Timbermaw Hold to discover that the process starts again in Winterspring there are more Repeatable quests and lots of slaying. I managed to get to 1502/3000 Neutral, and then drifted over to the Outlands.

So it was with a sense of dread that I discovered that I needed to get Reputation everywhere in the Outlands. However, I have started on the road down to getting friendly with the Sporeggor. This proved to be a cakewalk, a few collections, a bit of killing and there was a happy race, willing to talk to me and offer more crazy quests for more reputation. The main driving force was for the Survivalist's Pike http://wow.allakhazam.com/db/item.html?witem=27751&locale=enUS;source=live .

Bring on the rep, because this time I am ready for it.

A Gnome for All Seasons

Greatboo was recently rescued from oblivion. She was abandoned on the Kilrogg Realm which was hugely overpopulated with waiting times at peak, it was just absolutely chaos in Stormwind and Lagforge. Having missed the free move to Anachronos, I bit the bullet and took Bob and Flimsy over on the Paid Character Transfer. 6 weeks later I was missing my Alts and went back for Greatboo and Dumpyrustnut.

Dumpy as previously stated was my first Toon, and although I bored quickly of the simplistic fighting action of the warrior, he became invaluable as "the banker". Frequent trips to the AH, Dumpy clocked up hours of game time and must be longest leveling of a lvl20 in the history of WoW. Bob was able to buy his mount at the right time due to the spiv* activities of Dumpy.

Greatboo on the other hand was the strangest Toon in history. Having already clocked up 4 professions Leatherworking - Skinning - Mining - Blacksmithing, I decided I needed an Enchanter, and due to the Rogue being of a Gnomish persuasion, I utilised the innate ability to do Engineering.

Enchanting and Engineering are the money pit of WoW professions, and to make matters worse I was dependent on another toon to share the Metal Bars and Jewels that he unearthed. Despite this I was able to level Greatboo's engineering up to 240 with the help of a lvl50+ mage who needed Mithril Casing and other items for a quest. He took the level 20 Rogue to Tanaris as a bodyguard destroying everything in Greatboos pathway. Tanaris is the home of Buzzek Bracketswing (Master Engineer) who was able to train Boo in the ways of the Engineer.

So Boo was a Level 20 Rogue with 240 Engineering and a very poor 100 Enchanting. The only problem with Boo was that I hit a wall leveling her at 24. I was able to do bits of Redridge and bits Wetlands but struggled to find PuGs for the group tasks. Hence Boo became covered in dust and very much unloved, until now that is.

Boo threw away the Enchanting and gave mats to a new Alt and set off to Darkshire with a pick in hand. Darkshire was too low a level but the Ore was very plentiful, a dash round Deadmines, Stockades and Ashenvale and Boo is invigorated and now sailing at lvl26.

Meet Greatboo - http://armory.wow-europe.com/?#character-sheet.xml?r=Anachronos&n=Greatboo







*Spiv is a British slang word for a person (invariably male) who makes a living by shady dealings, usually by selling goods of dubious provenance.

Birthday Run through Dead Mines

Flimsystone, for a birthday treat xx years old yesterday was given a choice what to do for the night. The result was a race through the Deadmines. Bob, Flimsy, Fuzzy and Rhienne lined up at the instance, entered alone and then joined a party to help with communication. Bob had the advantage of 12 levels on the other 3 and handicapped himself by taking on 2 quests that he had previously missed as the Noob that I was. The quests for the record [Collecting Memories] & [Oh Brother. . . ].

I also started off without the aid of Bobcat, but quickly changed my mind. A Beast Master Hunter without his faithful companion is as much use as a Chocolate Teapot.

Bobcat was released onto the unsuspecting miners in aggressive mode and quickly tore through the instance. Bob was unable to keep up with the ferocious onslaught and missed out on lots of Twink loot.

Flimsy was the first to the WWE wrestler Rhahk'Zor aka The Foreman. Bob made short work of The Foreman and moved swiftly past his bodyguards who did not Aggro when a Level 63 Dwarf, armed to the teeth ran past with Aspect of Cheetah.

Bob and Bobcat got quickly in their stride and even killed the Rare spawn Miner Johnson and collected the Miner's Cape for the slight detour.

The carnage continued with Bobcat taking out the Goblins and in particular the Shredder on his own. As usual it was difficult to target Sneed but just in time I made a striking blow to maintain a share of the loot.

I was easily ahead when I headed downstairs to fight the Goblin Engineers. I cleared the room unnecessarily because at the end of the day this was a race. Flimsy at this point asked how my quests were going. Damn, drat - a deal was a deal, so off back into the instance I went back to find the Union Cards and the Explorer Badge.

5 minutes later, and back at the entrance with a mound of dead miners, I decided it was time to continue the race. Everybody was attacking Mr Smite by this stage. I raced down picked up the dynamite and blew the door, but I already knew it was too much to catch them up.

After a particularly slow death of Mr Smite, Bob and Bobcat took alternative pirates. But halfway up the ships ramp, the game was finally up, and the Birthday Girl had killed Van Cleef bounded over the side and out of the Instance.

Some minutes later a dejected Bob emerged into the sunlight in last place. Rhienne broke the news that my quests were in fact outside the Instance. Thankfully the language filter &*$£ &*$£ &*$£ &*$£ managed to block out my true feelings.