Peter's Blog

More Rep Grinding

Spent more time focused on rep grinding, specifically running around Ashendale Forest. There are two long quest chains there that involve running backwards and forwards: I'm not sure how the Night Elfs without mounts can stand it. The place is usually fairly deserted, I guess the wise Nelfs hot foot it to the Eastern Kingdoms pronto.

A Taste of Hellfire

Once I couldn't stand riding too and fro any more I hearthed to Shattrath, portalled to Ironforge, flew to Nethergarde Keep and made my grand entrance through the Dark Portal, then flew to Honor Hold. Ok I could have just flown from Shattrath to Honor Hold but I would miss some trivial quest bonus that way as well as missing one of the big occasions in the game.

First quest was killing orcs and gather wood and scrap metal. This was more challenging that what I was used to, not too bad but I seemed to be having to heal Rakky constantly. I died twice, both times to the same inconspicuous level 61 elite who roams the area. You think you are getting an add and don't care much and then BAM. However killing the orcs was such fun that I carried on grinding on them.

My first quest reward in outlands was a crossbow with 44 dps where my blue gun was 37 and that was good. This gave me a new challenge as my crossbow skill was one out of 290: Mae had never held one before. I didn't start using it in Outlands, not the best place to learn to use a crossbow.

Was invited into a group by guildie Brutusmarcus. After an embarrasing session looking for someone who sold bullets (nearest vendor was beside the Dark Portal, Outlands side) we attacked the four throwers and set fire to them. Then we went and killed an orc for a talisman. He had to go then.

I went on and ground 12 more talismans. I remember with pooky this took some time but it was faster this time around. Hellfire is definitely more tricky than Azeroth, the Hellboars have a big agro radius.

Next quest involved burning four towers. The first two went ok, the next one I died twice:

• game went into that funny mode where the monsters are not where they appear to be. Had one fight where Rakky was fighting an invisible monster 20 yards to the left and Mae was shooting at it 20 yards to her right. Anyway, soon lost track and died to a big group of skeletons.
• for the next death I was spotted by a floating eyeball and was suddenly surrounded by skeletons and fireballs. Ouch.

Finally reached the tower to find it was not the right tower Did the next two towers although I had to buy more bullets half way through: used a LOT of bullets and was down to six.

By now I was fed up with dying and decided to give it a rest.

Nubrs

Went on guild tour of UBRS. Not a good session for me. I'll list the noob errors I made here for reference: I will read them every time I raid with Mae.

• First fight the raid leader use blue square for a mob so I wasn't sure if I should blast it. Did anyway but blue square was sheep
• We had to jump off a ledge into the middle of an area surrounded by monsters. The others just jumped and I used 'Eyes of the beast' to drive Rakky over: only something went wrong and I push Mae over the edge instead. Rakky decided to trot around the long way and when he reached us he had about five elites behind him and this escalated to agroing every mob for five miles around. The ensuing fight is by far the biggest fight I had ever seen, we had a clutch of level 70 mages so it was dealt with and the only fatality was Rakky.
• I wasn't aware that the others were avoiding going near mobs but I discovered the hard way that I was a bit of an agro magnet if I strayed too far to one side. Was one-shotted twice I think, very quick deaths.
• In one fight I fired at a sheeped mob. This may have been because my baby daughter was on my lap and was banging the keyboard around the tab key but that's no excuse. Do the top raiding guilds raid with baby daughters on their laps?
• We wiped on the final bosses, not sure it was entirely my fault, there was a mix up in the order of killing them: skull was not supposed to die first this time. Did the corpse run back, ressed and followed some others back into the instance. Reached the same ledge I mentioned before and this time did the Right Thing and dismissed Rakky. By the time I had finished the others had run off and were nowhere in sight. I was left alone, not knowing the instance, where patrols may be etc. It was about time to finish playing anyway so I bade a farewell.

There may have been more screw ups, I can't remember. I'm not going to wallow in self pity or solicit reassurance. I'm documenting it for completeness.

More Rep

Bought a load of runecloth in the auction house, no more than 1g40 a stack. Did some more quests till I got fed up. Have only 1500 rep left to go.

Crossbow Skill

To level up the crossbow skill I started by one-shotting level sevens during the low level quests. One shot, one kill, one skill level. I decided to progress with my Azeroth questing, specifically scaring goblins with yeti's and exploring Silithus. I flew to Gadgetzan, scared a goblin, then on to Un'goro where I scared another goblin.

Then went across Un'goro killing dinosaurs with the crossbow. Tiddles held agro, Mae shot, wasn't worried how long they took to die but could still kill them very quickly, twenty seconds or so.

By the time we reached Silithus the crossbow skill was 270 and the crossbow was a useful weapon until I ran out of arrows and had to revert to the gun.

Silithus looks interesting, lots of creepy insect nests, amazing scenery of deserts and huge insect hives with insects buzzing around. Completed the first Silithus quest much more easily that Hellfire quests. Found the main quest hub and there seem to be many quests there. It may be like Hopes Light Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands where there are loads of quests but they are all for rep grinding. gathering bone fragments, savage fronds etc from around the globe. I didn't check any, flew back to Winterspring and picked up a mechanical yeti instead.

Mae dinged 59 in Silithus.