Peter's Blog

• The guild were doing a run to Black Rock Depths for the fun of it, there not being enough folk of sufficient level to do a serious attempt. It was interesting to see it though, the inventiveness of the level design: huge statues, burning lava, dragons flying around. We went through a few fights and didn't do too badly, I managed to tank a couple of times in that I preoccupied elites until the mages got around to killing them (kinda like an automatic sheeping bot). My play was hampered somewhat by having to change/feed baby which is a very effective debuff.
• Early morning and had a laptop trip to draenae land to look at the noob quests to test the water and see if I wanted to grind for rep for an epic elekk. I found the capital city and wandered around in there a bit. It's very pretty but I got lost and couldn't find my way back out so I hearthed home. I just don't have the motivation to run around clicking on every NPC to see if they had a lowbie quest available. By all accounts the rep I would get from draenae noob quests is still nerfed: it would be easier to get an epic sabre from the Night Elfs but another guildie has already gone that route and I want to be different. The epic sabres are very impressive but not funny enough to grind for. I went to the Ram dealer outside Ironforge and looked at the selection of epic rams. They are ok, they have a big comfortable saddle. It's transport, it will get me from A to B. I looked at the epic mechanostriders and they are nicer, they have huge and mean looking exhaust pipes but gnome rep would be the hardest grind of all. Gnomeregan anyone?
• Went to Western Plaguelands to tackle the last cauldron and a couple of other quests. I managed to complete the last cauldron, dying once when I aggroed the Cauldron Lord and a few minions. Once I realised that some of the monsters were doing mana taps I was more careful to clear away the minions before tackling the big guy himself.
• Afternoon and the guild have a trip to Booty Bay for a group photo (that I'll put up here if I get around to it: could do with more illustrations). Useful for me to visit because the Master Blacksmith is there and I can't always be bothered to venture that far. I got the training for dense weightstones to add 8 damage to my maces which is about 6 dps on the one-handed mace. The one hander is now reporting 120dps in the character pane with Seal of the Crusader.
• I was wondering what to do with myself as I was only half way to level 58 and two other guildies were leaving me behind. The guild leader mentioned a long quest chain starting from the Blasted Lands and we did it on a guild raid since two members hadn't done it before. It was a long chain, we were at it for two and a half hours and we didn't finish it then. I don't remember anyone dying but the fighting wasn't very intense, the quest is for low fifties players and there were three high fifties in our group. All this got me to within 10k of level 58 so big thanks to the guild for that.
• Next morning, how to get this last 10k? Decided to head for Azshara to finish off a quest there, find a book in a temple. I found it ok then decided to head for Felwood to finish a quest there. In Felwood I was disgusted to discover I should have gone to the Barrens instead so I just dropped the quest. I got up to level 58 by grinding in Jaedenar (sp?). Level 51's are soft targets now.
• New paladin training is just upgrades to Flash of Light and retribution aura, no nice new abilities AND the training was about 4g a pop
• Still had full bank/inventory problems so, sod it, paid the 25g for another bank slot and put spare ooze covered bag in it. Soon filled it with runecloth: I have a few stacks but a drop in the ocean as far as rep is concerned. Spammed /trade and got a nice rogue to open my collection of three locked boxes for 30s each giving me three greens to auction. There is a rouge in the guild who might have been able to do it but:
  • I don't want to prevail
  • I've only met him in-game once and he was afk.
• Someone asked me to give them a twink run through gnomeregan but I didn't have time. Tempting as there would be a lot of gnome rep to be had. Why do twinks run around with a guild name like 'the twinks' over their heads? Isn't the fact that you are a twink a nice surprise for the people you meet? Wouldn't it be doubly satisfying to kill someone in a twink guild?
• Found a very nice level 58 axe in the auction house, 59dps 3.5 sec two-hander, a 10dps upgrade on the Twig of the World Tree. I thought the twig would last me much longer but anyway, the new axe had good stats and was a green and cost me 15g. My axe skill was 270/285 so didn't really need conscious levelling up, I just have to be more careful for a while.
• Spent afternoon doing some questing in the Eastern Plaguelands. Nothing much to say here, it was no biggie. So dull in fact that ultimately I couldn't resist it and headed for the Dark Portal.

WARNING: Outlands Spoilers from now to the end of time (or till I stop writing about WoW, whichever comes first).

• Still reading? Good. Outlands is very impressive, when you get through dark portal and stop taking screenshots you know things are different. There is a big war going on against demon things and it's like being part of a military operation.
• My first fight was against a level 58 hellboar which was tough, especially when it called for reinforcements. I ended up having to kill four of them. One dropped a green ring that was a nice upgrade to an ageing blue ring I was wearing. Progressing further it seemed these Hellboars have a huge agro radius and it's hard to avoid being attacked and it was taking me so long to kill them protection mode that two or three more would join the fight. Phew. Was examining a strange anomoly on the ground when a huge worm thing popped out and started lobbing fireballs at me. In my desperation to run away I agroed a few more hellboars. Death ensued.
• Found a quest to let some flares off under some towers. I started on the first tower and was still having these big fights, almost every fight I was getting two or three adds. One fight in particular there was only one guy around so I attacked him, then I had two level 60's spawn right next to me, then I got another add.
• About this time a level 60 mage from the guild asked me if I needed any help. We did the quest together. Level 60 mages are so powerful, they kill things in seconds. When I play with her I'm never sure if I should be sword-and-board for a bit of tanking or two-hander in an effort to hit the baddies hard enough to stop them attacking her. In these kind of fights she doesn't really need a tank as she has frosty and sheep spells for crowd control and she didn't get much damage so she didn't need healing. I need to figure out a role for myself in these situations, I don't want to feel like a passenger. We died a couple of times, again because it was too easy to get five or six add's in a fight, it was even awkward to res after a fight (she had a good plan there: jump on a horse and run).
• We completed the quest and my reward was an awesome breastplate with 300 more armour, +healing, +spell and stats aplenty. The rewards in Outlands look very nice but I think I will need them. I slipped this breastplate on and lost the final +stat from my Imperial Plate set but I didn't miss it. I could have got the Imperial Plate Leggings to recoup the set bonus but I still don't think it's worth 12g to get the missing stat back. NB the Imperial Plate Set doesn't include gloves and my gloves still clash and I cannot find any better ones.
• In all I died more times than I can count, the long fights are very demanding and the lowest level monsters here are 58's. By the end of the session I was getting broken armour so on my last death I used the spirit healer. She managed to break ALL my armour so I had to find someone to repair it. While I was running around a hailstorm of big green balls started and having no armour I nearly died from that, I kept getting stunned and couldn't heal. When I did find someone to do repairs the bill was over 5g
• Morning and I complete another quest and the reward is another axe very nearly as good as the one I bought the day before: if only I had known...
• I've started mining fel-iron in outlands, hope it is a good seller. I've taken the master level mining training and that cost 10g but hopefully this is a worthwhile investment.
• My plans now? Frankly, I'm not sure I want to leave outlands much, it's challenging but it makes the old world seem a bit dull. The rewards look good and I'm already half way to level 59: you don't spend much time searching for things to kill here, they come to you.