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 III

Stop it with the Troggs...

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.

It was a slower week, this week, at least in terms of leveling Oloneise. He made it up to 18, and though it’s starting to take a little longer to hit new levels, it’s still plenty of fun. There was plenty of hoofing around between Thelsamar and Ironforge, as I tried to keep my hunter abilities up to speed, and learned a few more recipes for engineering. Despite all of the running around, though, I did manage to get a fair amount of questing in, though probably not as much as I would have liked.

The strange thing about the quests in Thelsamar is that they sort of bottleneck as you go around there. From about level 10 to level 15 things go really smoothly, but at about level 16, chances are pretty good that you will have finished much of the early quests there, and what few quests you can add to your plate often require players to fight enemies that will con orange. It isn’t the end of the world, but it can slow down progress a fair bit, as it necessitates more downtime after each fight. Luckily I was using a hunter, so I had the luxury of distributing damage between Oloneise and Whiskers. However, I can see how this could be a little bit troublesome for mages or priests, who have a bit more trouble soloing at the lower levels.

Nonetheless, I persevered, and got to fighting the countless troggs in the region. I know that the troggs are a problem in dwarven territories, but one would think that the king would issue some sort of initiative to deal with them given the sheer number of the buggers that are running around. The majority of my time questing was spent around the loch, either beating up troggs on a nearby island, who had stolen a gnome scouts tools, or beating ancient relics out of troggs at the nearby

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excavation site. The relic hunting was a bit slow going, as the quest items only drop at a moderate pace, but it was fun. The area makes for a good place to practice pulling enemies out of crowded areas, and if you mess up the pull, you can still run away at a decent clip.

Probably the most fun while questing this week came from helping this gnome scout whose plane had crashed around Loch Modan. Unfortunately, when he

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went down he lost all of his tools, and now a bunch of troggs on a nearby island on the loch were in possession of them. When Oloneise and Whiskers got there, it was obvious that very careful pulls would be necessary, as there were tons of troggs wandering around in close proximity of one another. The easiest way to go would be to slowly do laps around the outside of the island, spiraling toward the center, and wiping out the creatures along the way. While doing this, I developed a strong appreciation for the hunter ability Wing Clip. It’s a great move to use on enemies that flee when their hit points start getting low, as it greatly reduces their movement speed. This way a hunter and his pet can quickly chase down the monster and finish it off before it has a chance to get close to other mobs, getting links, and suddenly pitting the player against three or four enemies instead.

With all of this, and a couple of other quick quests that needed to be finished off, Oloneise is finally up to level 18. I managed to get him all of the skills he needs for now, but I’m really starting to itch to get him up to 20. Then he can dual wield weapons, and, more importantly, he will get Aspect of the Cheetah for a thirty percent increase in movement speed. At least now Oloneise is probably strong enough to hunt down some of the elite ogres near Thelsamar, assuming I can wrangle up a decent party, or any of my guildies are on at the time…

Mr. Nash

(April 2, 2005)


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