Journeys in Azeroth Archives:

Part I

Part II

Part III

Part IV

Part V

Part VI

Part VII

Part VIII

Part IX

Part X

Part XI

Part XII

Part XIII

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Journeys in Azeroth X

Traveling Song

Warning: Throughout this article there will be several spoilers related to World of Warcraft. If this is a concern to you, please do not read any further. This is the only spoiler warning you will receive.

So it’s been a couple of weeks since my last update in World of Warcraft, but I’ve been keeping myself quite busy questing the living snot out of Azeroth. I’ve continued to play as my Tauren shaman, and he’s been traveling hither and yon, spending time in Tarren Mill, Red Rock Retreat, Ashenvale, and has done some exploring in Thousand Needles too. This vacation from the Alliance to play Horde has been one of the most refreshing experiences in the game after playing it for three quarters of a year, and I don’t see myself going back to any of my Alliance characters any time soon.

Since last we met, I’ve been mixing it up quite a bit in terms of where to do quests. Things started off, though, polishing off some business around Tarren Mill, since one of the quests there offered a decent ring that would boost my character’s intelligence. This particular quest required me to bring thirty human skulls to one of the guards in the city as souvenirs from my killing spree in a nearby Alliance village. This quest proved a little time consuming at the onset, because I made the mistake of hunting some of the higher-level humans in the town (around level 24-26). It seemed like good logic since the quest was around level 25. However, it turns out that the mobs that drop these skulls most frequently are around level 22-24, hanging out in an orchard towards the center of the village. Who would have thought?

However, I just wasn’t having much fun kicking around Tarren Mill like I used to, and was itching to dabble in some other areas. The first thing I did was high tail it back to the Barrens, since I had a stack of quests that needed to be down in the south of that region. These quests were a mix of quillboar hunting expeditions, one of which I had to kill off a trio of their commanders, and the other involved getting a trio of weapons that these creatures were mysteriously able to manufacture. Hunting the quillboar leaders was by far the easier of the two quests, as they each roam a corner of the triangular camp they live in. The quest for the quillboar weapons, on

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the other hand, was a bit more of a pain in the ass because it was dependant on drop rates. The quest required getting a knife, a staff, and a shield. The first two were easy to get a bold of, but obtaining a shield proved to be quite time consuming. It was nice to have these two quests done, and even more surprising was how much experience points that they awarded. My shaman got about 6,000XP when all was said and done, which isn’t too shabby.

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The problem I have with the Barrens, though, is that there is just way too much brown, desolate dirt. Obviously, that’s what a barren place is, but playing it in a game environment for too long can be very tiresome. That being said, I decided to head up to Red Rock Retreat, all surrounded with trees, and only small sections of burned out forests. The first little bit of questing here was pretty straightforward, as I collected these seeds. However, as fate would have it, I quickly found myself questing in the Charred Vale, which is just as drab, and overwhelmingly brown as the Barrens. Most of the quests here involve hunting harpies, or fire elementals, with a few other quests thrown in on top. This is definitely an area where it is a good idea to bring a friend when doing quests because the density of monsters roaming here is really quite amazing. It’s very easy to start by fighting a single mob, then all of a sudden have three or four different creatures whacking at you. I even teamed up with a Warlock who was around level 33 so that we could get the quests done, and we had one instance where we were surrounded by legions of enemies from a horrific chain reaction of links. Eventually we died, but there wasn’t much we could do with eight mobs on us. It’s a really tricky section to hunt in, but the quests here are so tightly packed that if you do come here as a Horde player, it’s easy to polish off three or four quests at once and make a ton of experience points.

One side note I should bring up about my time in the Charred Vale was that I even got some very kind bi-partisan help when enemies were overwhelming me. It looked very likely that I was about to die one time, and then all of a sudden a healing spell hit me. That gave me enough life to polish off the mobs, but when I turn around, I didn’t see an undead priest or some such smiling at me. It was actually a night elf priestess who saved my behind. I wasn’t able to vocally thank her for the heal (due to faction language barriers), but I did give her a polite bow, which she returned, and we went about our business. It was nice to see that there are players that don’t always think, “Oh, that person is on the opposite faction, I’ll just let him die.” This priestess is top shelf in my books, and if I ever see her in trouble I’ll do my best to help.

After my merry little romp around the Stonetalon Mountains, my shaman was at level 28, so I decided it was time to trek to a new area: Thousand Needles. This is another of those desolate wastelands in the game, but it’s a pretty neat wasteland to visit. Basically, players wade through towering columns of stone weathered by wind over the centuries. It’s largely a Horde hunting ground, as players take down centaur, elementals, and corrupt Tauren. Thus far, the quests I’ve done there have been ones that require a certain body count, or retrieving items. As a shaman, I quite like the quests that I've completed here, since I’ve been able to get some decent leather gear with an interesting mix of stamina and intelligence buffs, which I find go a long way towards reducing down time due to not having to stop so often to recharge hit points, and mana. There’s actually quite a few quests here that can increase Horde players’ reputation with Thunderbluff, so I reckon I’ll be kicking around here for a while, as I try to get up to exalted status with them.

Anyway, that’s what I’ve been up to the last while in World of Warcraft. I’ll be hanging around Thousand Needles for the next while, and from there who knows. The sky’s the limit as to where I’ll quest next. I’m starting to get a hankering to do some instance runs soon, as level 40, and a mount loom on the horizon, and I’m also thinking of doing a re-spec on my shaman talents. In any case, we’ll discuss all that with my next update from Azeroth.

Mr. Nash

(August 11, 2005)