69 and Nagrand

Two bars of experience was much easier than I expected. It took me all of 30 minutes to ding 69 last night. After dinging I noticed that coincidentally, I have all but two bars of rested experience going to level 70. After turning in quests along the way it will mean that all of level 70 will be rested, making the grind that much easier.

I started the night pushing my way through quests and first by rescuing Corki from the Ogres. For those that don’t know, Corki is the son of one of the broken in Telaar who keeps getting captured by Ogres. He is an idiot. But quest experience is quest experience. No complaints here. While working my way through these Ogres a call went out over the Penny Arcade Alliance chat for a DPS for Ring of Blood. I jumped at the chance because it is a ton of experience and gold.

I teamed up with a 70 Paladin and Shaman, a 69 Warlock and a 64 Mage. We burned through Ring of Blood really quickly and during it I dinged 69! That is just how much experience you get. The rewards at the end weren’t too spectacular and in the end I just sold the Axe I got. I’m still surprised that I’m using the Warsong Howling Axe from Blood Furnace. I’ll replace it someday.

I then asked in general chat if anyone wanted to do the Mastery Quests and quickly found a group of five people who wanted them. It was a decently mixed group that included a Warrior, Shaman, Druid and another Hunter. The Shaman unfortunately didn’t have the Banthar quest when we killed him, but tagged along anyways. We burned through Bachalor and Gutripped pretty quickly as well. I then made the suggestion that we help the Shaman finish his Clefthooves and every unanimously agreed to help out. So we cleared them out for him and turned in and then went back and killed Banthar a second time. We then waited for him to do his turn in and all met up at Tusker. Another quick kill and Hemet’s Elekk Gun was officially mine.

I then went back to my guide and headed to the Northwind Cleft to kill Ogres. It was absolutely infested with Horde and I got ganked a couple times by 70s leading around low 60s, but in the end I got my quest done and heather back to Telaar.

This all took longer than I expected and I called it a night but I am still 1/3 of the way to 70! I think I can push it all out tonight!

68 and Nagrand – Part 2

I spent the entire night in Nagrand again working on level 69 and ended the night two bars away. I contemplated chugging through the last two bars but decided to just call it a night and work on it today instead. The last two bars should be pretty quick.

I began the night by killing Ogres and Rock Elementals and while clearing a real nice 70 Tauren Warrior decided to swoop in and do a drive by gank. Real nice. I then proceeded to finish up and head over to Killsorrow for the Giselda the Crone quest. I then headed back to Telaar to turn in quests.

From there I went and killed Greater Windrocs for the second part of the Mastery Quest and went to the Consortium outpost to turn in the Gava’xi quest and then moved on to Sunspring Post again to kill some more Murkbloods. From there I traveled up the hill with the Ogres and collected supply crates and dodged Mountain Gronns while killing Ogres for beads.

Once finished I went to the Laughingskull ruins and killed Ogres along with the head Ogre that was listed on the Wanted Poster and then made my way back to the Throne of Elements and turned in quests and got follow ups. The follow ups sent me killing more Rock Elementals and Water spirits before turning in again and getting the quest to burn huts. I like this one particularly because where you release the Living Flame he runs around yelling “Reth Reth Reth” which I find amusing. After burning the huts I turned in the Mastery Quests and grabbed the follow ups to kill the Elite Talbuk (Bach’alor), Clethoof (Banthar) and Windroc (Gutripper). My guide says to skip them, but they are good quick experience if you get a group together.

From there I looped back around, turned in quests at the Throne of Elements again and then made my way to Sunspring Lake to kill Water Elementals and the Befouled Essence that lives there. I got a ton of Motes of Water from the elementals here, more than I remember getting in the past. I then did the quest where you throw the rock at the Earth Elementals and it breaks them apart into little ones for you to kill. Then it was back to Telaar for turn ins.

I ended the night by turning in Air Elemental essences to Wazzit the goblin and skipped the part to steal an egg. Then I “pacified” Lump and headed back to Telaar for final turn ins for the night.

Next is level 69 and as much of 70 as I can possibly do!

68 and Nagrand

I spent all of last night questing in Nagrand. The Mastery Quests take quite a bit of time to complete, but when you get to the end and down Tusker, there is a decent gun as a reward: Hemet’s Elekk Gun. It looks a heck of a lot better than The Gunblade too, but statwise, they are pretty even although the consensus on Wowhead is that the Elekk Gun is better.

So I finished off the last of the Windrocs first and then swam over to the Throne of Elements to grab quests, then starting grinding though Talbuks and Clefthooves again. An added bonus is that the majority of these mobs, when skinned, drop either Knothide or Thick Clefthoof Leather, both decent sellers on the Auction House.

From there I dropped down below Halaa and killed the Water Elementals and got a few Motes of Water, but nothing spectacular, then headed over to Sunspring post to kill Putrifiers. I then killed two more Elekks to round out my Pairs of Ivory Tusks to 18. At 250 rep a turn in with Consortium, it would give me some decent rep, although I hadn’t counted in my Mana-Tombs run last week, and was only able to do two turn ins before I was Friendly. I will sell the rest.

I then did some of the quick Consortium quests there and finished up by killing Gava'xi, who was a piece of cake. I then “officially” stopped at Telaar and picked up all the quests available there. I had decided to call it a night but saw that we were taking back Halaa so I joined up with the raid that was working on it. There is a quest I can turn in there when it is Alliance controlled. So we took it back, with no Horde opposition, I turned in the quest, hearthed to Telaar and called it a night.

68, Nagrand, Mana-Tombs and Caverns of Time: Durnhold

I picked back up in Nagrand where I left off, on the Mastery Quests and killed the Clefthooves and Talbuks that were all around Telaar and about ½ way through those two got invited into a Mana-Tombs run.

We did a full clear, but I didn’t get any drops. I did complete the two quests inside, including the floating cube from Hellraiser. We got rushed through by a 70 Boomkin and a 70 Warrior, so it was pretty quick and painless.

Afterward I went back to the Mastery Quests and finished up the Clefthooves and Talbuks and started to work on the Windrocs when I got invited into a Caverns of Time: Durnhold group.

We did another full clear, helped along by a 70 Paladin and Warrior along with a 69 Rogue. While clearing the Church with Thrall I dinged 68. Again, I didn’t get any drops, but did get the quest reward belt and made it half way to Honored with the Keepers of Time.

It was getting late so I popped into some Alterac Valley games to grind some Honor. I’ll go back to Nagrand tomorrow. I’m pretty happy still because all of level 69 will be with the rested experience bonus. I’m getting close!

67, Terokkar Forest and Nagrand

I picked up where I left off last night and cleared out the remaining Allerian Stronghold quests. There certainly were a ton of them to turn in, and since I had already dinged 67 the night before I was able to get about ¼ of 68 done just by quest turn ins. Also, the grind to 68 will be with a full level of rested experience. So in my opinion, the wait to level again has paid off.

I also got to do the Firewing Post quests where you have to do an escort and at the end enter a final code into the bomb in the center of the post that explodes and kills all the Warlocks around it. It’s a pretty cool quest ending and when it sends you back to Allerian you get cheered by the whole town. All in all, some petty quick quests for some decent experience. By the time I finished I was ½ way to 68 and ready to head to Nagrand and start the Mastery Quests.

So I went to Nagrand and picked up the three Mastery Quests to kill Clefthooves, Talbuks and Windrocs and then started killing when I was promptly ganked by a 67 Tauren Shaman. I rezzed and then went back to killing again when I came across him again and laid the smack down on him, he self-rezzed (since he is a Shaman) and I ganked him again. Then the call went out across the zone that a large group of 10 – 15 Horde were doing the Mastery Quests and that it would probably be smart to go do something else. I saw a big group of Horde coming my way so promptly took the advice and headed to Telaar.

Well it was still early so I queued myself for a couple instances but didn’t get any bites and since Brewfest ended yesterday, I decided to do a little collecting. I ran across the website Warcraftpets.com and entered my information ( You can view my collection here http://www.warcraftpets.com/account/profile.asp?user=powny#col ) and started grabbing vanity pets. I got the 3 moths from Exodar then took the boat to Darnassus and got the 2 Owls, then the 4 cats from Elwyn Forest, then headed to Westfall and did the Chicken quest, then headed to Booty Bay and got the two parrots. While in Booty Bay I checked the neutral Auction House and picked up the 3 snakes, 2 of the dragonhawks and the prairie dog whistle. Sadly the cockroach wasn’t for sale.

Finally, to finish off the night I soloed Deadmines to try and get the Green Wing Macaw. My luck was bad and it didn’t drop. I’ll try again another day.

67 and Terokkar Forest

I spent the entire night completing quests in and around Terokkar Forest. The Allerian Stronghold has a plethora of quests to do that take you all throughout it.

I began by killing the Fel Orcs to the east and also working on collecting Timber Worg tails and Warpstalker kills. I have to say that the Worg tails was one of the worst drop rates I have encountered to date. I spent a good hour killing them and getting a drop in maybe 1 in 7…I could be being generous with that rate because it felt like 1 in 10.

While killing the Orcs I came across a 65 Troll Hunter who happily killed things side by side with me until the end when he turned on me and ganked me while I was killing two Orcs at once. It sucked and I swore revenge however by the time I got back he was long gone. I then got whispered for a Auchinai Crypts run and gladly accepted. I should have kept grinding. The Crypts run fell apart almost as soon as it started because the tank, and I use the term loosely, came in with a new Sword he just got and close to zero skill in Swords. He couldn’t hold aggro and people eventually got fed up and quit on him. We didn’t even end up clearing the first room.

I got back to questing and was able to ding 67 from running around turning in and stuff. Near the end of the night I headed over to the Shadow Council encampment to do the two quests there and who did I happen upon? The same Troll Hunter from before. I ganked him so fast his head must have spun.

66 and The Bone Wastes

I decided I had taken a long enough break from power leveling and jumped right back in where I left off in The Bone Wastes and cleared out the next two Arakkoa quests from the caravan and then headed over to the Sha’tari Vindicator outpost to the southwest of Auchindoun.

From the outpost I completed the Bone Worm quests where you escort some Dwarves who dig up a drum and then you bang it and can sometimes summon Sand Gnomes. I then headed back to the caravan and turned in the Arakkoa quests and then headed to the Tomb of Light and cleared the consortium looking guys from it and then headed to the next Arakkoa section. There I put out the four signal fires and collected another 30 feathers for rep turning back at Shattrath.

From there I headed back to the outpost and opened a chest along the way summoning a ton of zombies and then burned vindicator bodies for another quest. Back at the outpost I turned in a bunch of quests and then got a whisper from a nearby Warlock to do the giant Bone Worm quest. I was going to skip it, but figured if I was getting help, why not. He had a full group already, including a 70 Rogue, and we quickly killed the giant worm.

Next I turned in quests again and then summoned the dead Vindicator and promptly killed him. He was so easy. From there it was back to the caravan to turn in and then off to Allerian Outpost. I grabbed all the quests here and the flight path and then flew back to Shattrath. In Shattrath I turned in some quests and then summoned the Avatar of Terrok who destroyed me twice. I then asked in general chat for some help and a 70 Druid offered his services. With his help I killed the Avatar and got a good neck upgrade.

From there it was a couple more turn ins getting me half way to 67 and then hearthing to Allerian Stronghold for the night.

66, Fishing, Cooking and The Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj

I logged on last night with the intent of completing my Artisan Fishing and Cooking quests and then starting up the grind to 70 again. Instead I got sidetracked by a Penny Arcade Alliance Monday raid of The Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj.

First however I did complete both the Artisan Fishing and Cooking quests. When I have some time I’ll work on grinding Fishing to 300 and then 375, but think I may wait until after 3.0.2 is released since I read that they are reducing the number of catches required to skill up to 375. As for Cooking, I had bags full of fish and cooked to 270 before I ran out.

Then the call went out for the Ahn’Qiraj raid. A total of ten people volunteered to go, including me. I was the only person below level 70 however. This didn’t really matter since all the trash mobs were level 61 to 63 and died really quickly. Even the bosses died quickly, for example, the giant Obsidian Guardian, Moam, who has a special ability that triggers every 90 seconds, didn’t even have a chance to get to it, we killed him in less than a minute. In fact, the only time I died was when I was jumping down into a section to fight Buru the Gorger.

I walked away with Friendly reputation with the Cenarion Circle and the Qiraji Ceremonial Ring and the Qiraji Regal Drape, both redeemable for pieces of the Trappings of the Unseen Path set. Inconsequential pieces at level 70, but hopefully will count towards an Achievement.

66, Fishing and Cooking Quests

I’ve been neglecting Powny for a little while now, focusing more on my toons on Shadow Council who are level 70 and can easily get a group for the Brewfest daily. I have been doing this for two reasons, one, to build up some rested experience to make the grind from 66 to 70 quicker and two, because I’m tired of the leveling grind. I’ll get back to it eventually, I just need a break.

That being said, I actually jumped on Powny for the majority of the day yesterday. I decided to try and get my skill in Cooking and Fishing up to at least the 225 range so I could do the Artisan quests from Nat Pagle and the goblin in Gadgetzan.

Fishing turned out to be a lot easier that I thought, as I started the day around 150 and made my way to Booty Bay. Yesterday was the Stranglethorn Vale Fishing Extravaganza which gave me incentive to skill up Fishing to a level where fish wouldn’t get away. Then the Extravaganza started. I assumed it would be a complete gank fest, but the Horde were really respectable and I didn’t get ganked once. I didn’t win, but I did get 30 Tastyfish before someone won and I did end up hooking a rare fish, Keebler’s Angelfish, which rewarded me with the Lucky Fishing Hat which gives +5 Fishing skill when worn. I also got Fishing up to 185, just by trying to win. Not too shabby.

Then I focused on Cooking, which was at a measly 120. I needed 125 to read the next Cooking book, and was able to cook a couple fish to get there. The next recipe for fish I had was only learnable at skill 175, so I headed to Astranaar to fish up some Bristle Whisker Catfish. I fished up enough to get my skill to 175 and also got my Fishing skill up to 190 in the process. At 175 Cooking I learned the Rockscale Cod recipe and cooked all the ones I had in my bags from fishing which got me to 215, just short of the 225. Then, for the Artisan Cooking quest I headed to The Hinterlands to kill Owlbeatsts for the Giant Eggs. Didn’t take long at all.

As a side note, while flying around I decided to stop off in Ratchet and see if Humar the Pridelord had spawned, and he did! I quickly abandoned my Ravager, Gorefield, and tamed Humar. When the 3.0.2 patch hits, he will auto-level to five levels below mine. Score! I also thought of a name for Humar and Sian-Rotam…they are now known as BasementCat and CeilingCat! Such perfect names, I love it!

Then I headed to Dustwallow Marsh to speak to Nat Pagle. I had to get my Fishing skill up to 225 before he would give me the Artisan Fishing quest, so I spent another 30 minutes next to him fishing. The Artisan quest sends you to Stranglethorn Vale, Swamp of Sorrows, Feralas and Desolace to fish up four rare fish. Before calling it a night I fished up the Savage Coast Blue Sailfin from Stranglethorn and the Misty Reed Mahi Mahi from Swamp of Sorrows and then headed to Gadgetzan to do the Artisan Cooking quest…because I forgot I wasn’t 225 in Cooking yet, I will need to backtrack and cook a few things before heading back and then on to Feralas.

A final note, when I was in Stranglethorn Vale fishing up the Sailfin, a call went out that the Rebel Camp was being attacked by a ?? Warlock. I offered up my services and flew over. To me, at level 66, I could see that the Warlock was a level 70 Undead one, and I sent in CeilingCat and popped Intimidation. The Warlock never knew what hit him as I popped Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire and Bladefist’s Breadth. I then killed the 34 Blood Elf Rogue he was escorting around. It felt good to dish out some revenge for once.

66, Terrokar Forest and The Bone Wastes

I only needed 4 ½ more bars of experience to ding 66, so decided to bang it out quickly on Saturday morning.

I started with the Cenarian outpost that had the bomb go off in it and is now taken over by evil Moths. To start that quest you first need to speak to the Tauren out front and collect samples of good Moths and samples of bad Moths. It took me over a ½ hour to get all the good Moth samples and I was getting pretty frustrated with how long it was taking. After finally finishing I went in an explored the outpost, found the bomb and killed the head Moth in the tower. After turning in these quests I had to find the wandering Broken who had information about the bomb. Found him easy enough and subdued him quickly.

Next I headed into the Bone Wastes for some quests and stopped and the broken down caravan and got all the quests available. The first sent me into a tomb to collect some lost relics and then to escort a guy out. I failed the escort the first time because some mobs spawned just as we were about to get out. I then failed it a second time when I forgot about some mobs that spawned and ran too far ahead. The third time was the charm.

I then went a freed the kidnapped children from the Arakkoa camp and disabled their dark crystal. Then I killed treants and killed the insects that spawned and headed back to the caravan to turn in a bunch of quests and dinged 66. All in all, it took me a couple hours, not too bad.

65 and Zangarmarsh Completed

Again, I set a goal for last night, to finish up the quests in Zangarmarsh so I can focus on moving to Terrokar Forest, Nagrand and Blade’s Edge Mountains. The way I’m powering through the levels in the early zones, I may not even get to Blade’s Edge before I ding 70.

So last night consisted of killing Marshfangs and Wasps, stealing mushrooms from Ogres and turning in a ton of quests. I began the night about ½ a bar into level 66 and ended over ½ way through the level, plus its all still rested experience too. I cleared up a bunch of questlines too, including the saving the Sporlock lines, the Bohamu ruins line and the pre-requisite to the Lost Druid quests (which I did ages ago). My favorite is the Bohamu ruins one because at the end you get to turn into a Arakkoa and talk to one of the Druids. He sees right through your disguise and chastises the Draenai for trying to fool the Broken.

When I finished in Zangarmarsh, I headed off to Shattrath to do the dreaded sightseeing quest. It just takes too long when it’s the fourth time you’ve done it is all. The first time is cool because you get a full history of how Shattrath was formed, who the Sha’tar are and why the Draenai and Blood Elves are defending the city together. At the end I chose to ally myself with the Aldor since neither choice offers much in the way of Hunter gear, except for a decent ring on the Aldor side. Unfortunately, past experience has shown that I usually have a better ring before hitting Exalted with the Aldor. I also think that Aldor is a tougher group to get reputation turn in items for.

Next up is Terrokar Forest and Arrakoa quests…I hate the Arrakoa.

65 and Zangarmarsh

My only goal last night was to ding 65 and equip The Gunblade. With only 3 ½ bars to go, it turned out to be a pretty easy task and I was done in about an hours worth of questing/killing. A full 3 ½ bars of rested experience helped a lot too.

I started where I left off in Orebar Harborage and killed Ogres for mushrooms, Broken for poison vials and books and Wasps here and there for wings. When I was finished I went back to Orebar and turned them in and dinged Friendly with the Kurenai. Of course I thought I dinged 65 and was excited, until I tried to equip The Gunblade and buy level 65 food and water. So I had to go out and kill Hydras near the pipes to ding 65. Done and done.

I headed off to Shattrah to upgrade my bullets too and jumped in to a quick Alterac Valley game (it was the daily PvP quest) and surprisingly, we won! I spent the entire time defending Iceblood Tower with a Paladin. Two Horde showed up and I died but the Paladin stayed up long enough for us to destroy the tower. I had already released, but I’m sure we destroyed it within seconds of them about to capture it back.

Next is to finish up Zangarmarsh and head on to Terrokar.

64, Zangarmarsh, Sporregar and Underbog

I’ve been AWOL for a little while now, I just lost that desire to level ever since Blizzard lifted the restriction on transferring toons from PvE servers to PvP servers. I could quickly and easily move Agravane or Daggitt over to Dark Iron and have a level 70 with maxed skills and decent farming ability. I still may do it, but I haven’t totally made up my mind yet. However, with a new guild and a little motivation to level Powny again to 70, I went back to work in Zangarmarsh with the goal of hitting 65 and equipping The Gunblade that Josh gave me. I also had a full level of rested experience to boost myself along as well.

I quickly zoomed through the Blacksting, Count Ungula and Bohamu Ruins quests and made my way to Watcher Leesha’oh and began the Sporregar reputation grind. Fahsun was waiting for me outside the Spawning Glen and I tore my way through Bog Lords and got to Friendly with Sporregar by the time I was done.

Next I went to Sporregar itself and got a few of the quests there, including the one to clear Hungarfen and The Black Stalker from Underbog. At this point I queued up for an Underbog run with the hopes of dinging 65 inside.

The Underbog run didn’t start off so great. There were ten or so Horde at the summoning stone taunting the six or seven Alliance I was with. A huge fight ensued and I got a few kills, but the majority of the Horde were level 70 and really ripped through us pretty quickly. In the end we got into Underbog and did a full clear in about an hour. I didn’t get any drops, but did clear out both quests I needed.

I ended the night heading back to the Cenarion Expedition post (I was low on arrows) and almost got ganked by a 70 Troll Mage. I was too fast for him and got away, but then I saw him target a different Alliance Paladin, saw my chance, and tore him a new one. A nice, easy 25 honor. I made sure to laugh at him too.

Three and a half bars till 65, I'll finish that up tonight, along with a couple more Zangarmarsh quests before moving on to Terrokar Forest.

Exuberance

Last night I bid goodbye to the Traveling Wilburys and joined up with Exuberance at the recommendation of Bill. Exuberance is a member of the Penny Arcade Alliance (PAA) and will get my foot in the door for level 70 instances and raiding. They welcomed me pretty well and I think they were impressed with my knowledge since I was able to jump right in and contribute to the Wrath of the Lich King discussions that were going on.

64, Zangarmarsh and an Odd Blood Furnace run

Being only 4 bars away from 64 took a lot of the pressure of speed leveling off of me last night. 4 bars is easy to get with all the experience you receive from turning in quests. I figure I was getting about 10,000 experience a turn in and 3 turn ins would net me a bar. Easy.

So I headed off to the dead marsh portion of Zangarmarsh and did some clearing, then headed to the lake with the eels and hydras and cleared there as well. An underwater breathing potion helped immensely here. I then headed back to the dead marsh and cleared a bit more. All in all I finished about 10 or so quests and dinged 64.

From here I went back to Ironforge to train and got my first rank of Aspect of the Viper. Combining Aspect of the Viper with the Mark of Conquest, I should have very little mana troubles while I level now.

I then decided to start gathering materials for the 20 slot Knothide Ammo Pouch and Knothide Quiver since I find myself burning through arrows pretty quickly. The toughest material is the Arakkoa Feathers and I refuse to pay 30 gold for a stack of 30 on the Auction House, so I decided to just head on over to Terrokar Forest and farm them up. I ran into Bbqgnome while I was farming, he is also level 64, and we re-affirmed out pact to sack Tarren Mill at level 70.

After I had farmed about 27 Arakkoa Feathers I received a whisper from a level 70 Paladin asking if I wanted to participate in a Blood Furnace run. There are upgrades for me from all three of the bosses so I agreed to tag along. I realized quickly I would be the main DPS for the run since everyone else was level 60, except for the Paladin. He then said he would charge me 5 gold for the run and an additional 2 gold if I got any drops. I thought this over for a second and agreed. 5 gold is nothing. At most I figured I shell out 11 gold if I got a drop off each boss. Thankfully it was a quick run because the Paladin was a pretty poor tank. He was level 70, so he never died, but I would have done things much differently. For one, he never judged Wisdom on any mobs and was constantly out of mana. I was the only person who ever came close to passing him on threat, so this just boggled my mind when he insisted on judging Vengeance on every mob. I even told him so, but he brushed it off. Less than efficient tanking aside, I did get the Warsong Howling Axe drop off of the last boss, so in the end, the run was totally worth it.

Next I’ll finish farming the ammo pouch and quiver mats, then get back to leveling in Zangarmarsh.

63, Zangarmarsh and 2/3 of Underbog

The bonus of Zangarmarsh is that the quests are all lumped together and they reward a ton of experience, many 14,000 or more a turn in. And there are rumors that before Wrath of the Lich King that they are going to increase this by another 10% to help people level faster from 60 to 70.

When I first logged into Powny I saw that I had some mail. I checked it and found that Josh had sent me a Gunblade! Now I have a little extra incentive to level to 65 quicker!

My next step was to hit the Auction House on Pownybank and buy up 270 Unidentified Plant Parts to turn in for Cenarion Expedition reputation on Powny. Right when you zone into Zangarmarsh there is a quest to turn in stacks of 10 and get 250 reputation per turn in. 27 turn ins got me to Honored with Cenarion Expedition, now all the quests I do for them will work towards Revered and ultimately Exalted. In the end I dropped about 150gold for the plant parts, but I can make that back quick enough. Heck, Powny has 250gold just from questing since entering Outlands.

I then started in on questing and queued up for an Underbog run if one became available. While questing and doing one of the escort quests a 61 Undead Warlock decided he would try and gank me. It’s very rude to try and gank someone while they are on an escort quest and it really made me mad. I quickly killed him with malice. He was pretty dumb as it was, attacking me when he was only at ½ health and two levels lower. After turning in the escort a 61 Undead Priest decided it would be fun to kill me in town. He killed me twice, but in return I saw him get killed by the guards at least six or seven times. Again, not too smart.

I got a whisper for an Underbog run, they had already cleared up to the big Hydra, but all I want from Underbog is to complete the Lost Druid quest, so I was fine with going in 1/3 of the way done. I quickly found that the group was pretty inexperienced and I had to make suggestions and lead them around and give strategies for the bosses. We cleared through it all but ended up wiping the The Black Stalker. After rezzing I had the healer stand under a mushroom so he couldn’t be levitated and we killed the last boss easier. The Stalker's Fangs dropped, but I could tell the Rogue in our group really wanted it, so I passed for him. It wasn’t as big an upgrade for me as it was for him in the end. Hopefully that builds a little Good Karma for me.

I ended the night clearing out a few more quests and setting my Hearth at Telreador. I’m also 4 bars from 64.

63, Underbog and Finishing Hellfire

Last night consisted of clearing up the last of the Hellfire quests, dodging sneaky Fel Reavers and a lot of PvP.

I started in on the Cenarion Expedition quests near the Zangarmarsh entrance, just a couple quick ones to kill Hellboars and stuff and I got the Colossal Menace quest as well, even though the end reward blue mail gloves are Shaman gear. While here a 61 Undead Warlock tried to gank me. He feared me and I was able to get away, ran off to the main raid, drank and bandaged and then went back to teach him a lesson. He now knows that Bestial Wrath breaks Fear. My Cat stunned him and then ate him up pretty quickly. It also helped that his Felguard was frozen.

I then got an invite for an Underbog run and jumped at the change to finish off the Lost Druid quest. Unfortunately the group I was with, while decent, lacked motivation and the tank quit on us after we killed the first boss. He claimed to have to go into Tempest Keep with his main, but I’m not sure I believed him. Oh well, a little bit of Cenarion Expedition rep for a little bit of work.

I then got the assistance of Josh’s Rogue to clear out some of the group quests, specifically Overlord and Drill the Drillmaster. We easily killed them both and then he switched over to his Druid and we finished Colossal Menace. From Overlord I got the Bladefist’s Breadth trinket, probably one of the best quest rewards, that will last me well into 70 and is a great Survival Hunter trinket.

Next I told Josh that I only needed 10 more Marks of Honor Hold and then I could get the Mark of Conquest. With him watching my back, we spent a good hour camping the towers in Hellfire, killing Horde, capping towers and working up to 10 marks. I didn’t die once, it was glorious. The best was a 70 Undead Warlock trying to kill me. Josh popped off a heal on me, I hit Bestial Wrath and Intimidation, stunned him, then burned him down with Josh’s help. I had to drink a pot to stay alive due to all the DoTs, but I survived and he never showed his face again.

By the end of the night I had my 30 marks and zoned into Zangarmarsh and picked up the Mark of Conquest. I now have two trinkets that, worst case scenario, will last me until 70.

Tonight I start in on Zangarmarsh and hopefully level 64.

63, Hellfire and Blood Furnace

Back to questing in Hellfire, I cleared out a number of quests in my log, including gathering Ravager eggs, feathers from Carrion birds and killing the two named ghosts in the shattered Armory.

I was about ¾ of the way to 63 when I got an invite from Lziggy to go into Blood Furnace. Needless to say, I jumped at the chance. I didn’t get any drops from the instance, but managed to ding 63 while inside and completed the two quests from Honor Hold.

Dinging 63 has put me an entire level ahead of my guide. In fact, the part I’m at says that I should be level 62 before leaving Hellfire for Zangarmarsh. No problem there. I plan to see out the guide however and will keep questing in Hellfire and I imagine I should be close to ½ way through 64 by the time I enter Zangarmarsh.

I am still slowly collecting Honor Hold marks for turning when I get to Zangarmarsh. The Mark of Conquest trinket is quite good even at higher levels since it gives mana back on ranged attacks approximately 10% of the time. Anything to help me quest faster is good in my book, however the 30 mark requirement is taking longer than expected. Unfortunately I have trouble finding groups to camp the Hellfire towers with and am a pretty easy target for higher level Horde. I’m at 16 marks right now, so at least I’m more than ½ way to the Mark of Conquest.

More questing tonight and maybe I can get a Wilbury Underbog run set up.

62, Hellfire and Slave Pens

Unfortunately Friday night was pretty much a wash and I didn’t get a chance to log on to play much at all so I had to make up for it last night. Sadly I wasn’t able to get to 63, but I did get about half way through and got a decent upgrade.

I started off by completing the Arakkoa quests, which I generally dislike because the bird-men are so darn annoying. It took an awful long time collecting the feathers for a quest as well. It generally took 3 kills just to get one feather to drop. The only good part of this was that I started saving Light Feathers for when I hit 70 and will need someone to craft the Quiver of a Thousand Feathers.

While questing, Tanktodabank whispered me and asked if I wanted to run Slave Pens with him. I would have preferred a Blood Furnace run, but really can’t complain about Slave Pens because Cenarion Expedition reputation is what I’m after so I can eventually get the Hyppogryph Mount. To sum it all up, I got two drops, the first a belt off the first boss and finally the Scorpid Sting Mantle off the Quagmirran. I sold the belt because it really wasn’t better than the leather one I got in Ramparts, but the Mantle is a huge upgrade. I was quite happy and immediately slapped a +6 Agility and a +3 Agility/+4 Stamina gem in it. Again, a HUGE upgrade over the green of the Monkey shoulders I was wearing.

There was talk of doing the second part of the Lost Druid quest in Underbog, but some people bailed and I went back to questing in Hellfire. I didn’t quest to long however, just enough to cement myself at the half way point.

62, Temple of Telhamut and Hellfire Ramparts

Last night was quite uneventful. I did the quests in and around the Temple of Telhamut, including slaughtering the Orcs in the mountains above in retaliation for killing Sedai. I then made my way down into the Pools of Aggonar to kill slimes and demons for another quest.

During this time I was in the queue for a Hellfire Ramparts run since I have the quest to collect the Hand, Hoof and Head of the three bosses which has a quest reward of a decent pair of gloves. A group queued up and after a few disconnects and replacing lost people we did a full clear and I completed the quest. I didn’t get any other loot but now need to do a run through Blood Furnace since I have all the required quests. I think I’ll bug the Wilbury’s tonight.

After Ramparts I did a few more quests around the broken city and the Arrakoa area and dinged 62. The broken city has a good quest line and another example of well thought out and interesting storylines. One of the broken apparently has made a pact with a demon and enslaved his whole city in return. Instead of escaping he has you recover a key and release the city elders and then slay the demon. The demon is an elite but the broken gives you a staff that temporarily removes the elite status so you can burn him down easily. I dinged 62 after turning in this quest.

My cat also gained a number of levels of loyalty and dinged 61. He is now at an equal stage as Caspurr was with Dash, Gore, Claw and Bite plus level 2 in every resistance. He can maintain some serious threat now, in fact, he off-tanked the majority of Ramparts successfully.

I ended the night heading to train new skills and got Steady Shot. This is the bread and butter of end-game shot rotations as it does decent damage and doesn’t reset the swing timer of auto shot. I had to move my buttons around to fit it in but it should make leveling a little bit quicker now. I also jumped into a quick Arathi Basin since it was the daily but we got rolled by the Horde so I just called it a night.

My next decision is whether I keep pushing in Hellfire or move on to Zangarmarsh. My guide still has about a days worth of grinding through Hellfire and I can probably bang out 63 here, but we’ll see.

61 and Hellfire

I leveled half way through 61 last night on the way to 62, hopefully after the second round of questing tonight I should be able to ding 62 and make my way into Zangermarsh.

Surprisingly there was no Horde aggression in Hellfire last night. I did the quests north of Thrallmar too where there are usually a few Horde running around, but last night none were to be found. I even burned the Bolt Throwers to the south of Thrallmar, while Horde were questing, but they all left me alone. I was quite surprised.

My Cat also gained a couple levels of happiness and I was able to teach it Dash, Claw and Bite and it is finally starting to hold aggro. I still need to think of a name for it, but I don’t want it to be a dumb one like Kitteh or Boar.

At the end of the night I made my way to the Temple of Telhamut and trained First Aid. With all the Runecloth I had I got to 320, still a few shy of being able to make Netherweave Bandages. The area around the Temple feels a lot more like Horde territory so we’ll see how tonight shapes up. I will also be heading over to the Longbeard’s camp, which was where things went sour when I was leveling Agravane. I was camped non-stop and got so fed up I transferred him to the Shadow Council server. I promised myself that it won’t happen again this time with Powny.

At the end of the night I dipped back into Alterac Valley and promptly got rolled by the Horde in 2 straight games. It’s a simple concept to win:

1. Capture the Snowfall Graveyard
2. Kill Galvanar
3. Capture the Iceblood Tower
4. Capture the Iceblood Graveyard
5. Capture Tower Point
6. Capture the Relief Hut
7. Capture the East and West Frostwolf Towers
8. Kill Drek’Thar
9. ???
10. Profit

So why does the Alliance get so easily rolled on this server? Simple, they don’t defend anything after they capture it. One person can’t hold off 3 or 4 Horde when they come to take it back. Hopefully it will get better when I ding 70.

61, Honor Hold and Alterac Valley

I decided to just do it and level to 61 and see how bad the Alterac Valley queue is in the 70 bracket. I have 71 marks so even if it’s painful, I have above and beyond the 50 that I need for the Season 2 armor.

So I quickly began burning through the Honor Hold quests, getting some gear upgrades along the way. I got to do my first bombing run quest (you have to blow up two demon spawn points) and the quest Zeth’Gor Must Burn where you place exploding barrels under towers that explode and summon Gryphon Riders to bomb. All in all a couple fun quests and real easy as a Hunter too.

I also flew over to Shatter Point and dinged 61.

Instead of continuing I decided to dive right into Alterac Valley. It certainly was a change from the 60 bracket. In the 70 bracket the Horde are organized, take objectives and defend things to the death. This is what a real Alterac Valley bracket should be like and is what I am used to, a huge zerg rush to the Relief Hut. I went 3 for 4, not too shabby in all honesty and I decided to burn some Alterac Valley marks and buy the Alterac Valley Battle Standard for later use. It cost 30 marks and I had 81 pushing me back down to 51, above the goal of 50 I was looking for. I’ll be back in Alterac Valley, guaranteed, before I ding 70.

60…Still. Cleanup and New Pet Time

I decided that I needed to stop leveling in Outlands for now and clear out my quest log and see about getting my Mining skill to 300. It stinks running across Fell Iron nodes and not being able to mine them yet. So it was off to Burning Steppes to farm Thorium nodes. It took me a couple hours but I got to 300 and can now mine Fel Iron.

Furrocious and I then begged everyone for a Ramparts run with 70s leading the way. 18 minutes later I had new Pants.

Next I decided that I want a new pet and the only pet that will do is Sian-Rotam from Winterspring. Sian-Rotam shares the same skin as Echeyakee, a white lion that is spawned in The Barrens through a Horde only quest. Sian-Rotam is the mate of Shy-Rotam who is summoned by placing some Frostsabre meat on a stone and then she appears. After burning her down to 30% she calls Sian-Rotam to defend her. It’s a tough fight to solo because they both roar which causes Fear. I tried to solo them by sending in my throw away pet (a Frostsabre Matriarch I tamed for this) and laying a Freezing Trap. When the pet gets Shy-Rotam to 30% Sian-Rotam spawns and I hit him with a Distracting Shot, he charges me and hits the trap. I then abandon my pet and start taming Sian-Rotam. Long story short, it didn’t work. Once I abandoned my throw away pet Shy-Rotam charged me and feared me while I was taming. I died. A 58 Night Elf Druid, Tanktodabank, happened to come by as I was attempting a second try and offered to help, I gladly accepted and I easily tamed Sian-Rotam the second try.

In return I helped Tanktodabank do some elite quests that he was stuck on, it was the least I could do and I got a little experience from it as well.

Also, with all the mining and stuff being sold on the Auction House, I eclipsed the 1000 gold mark again meaning that at level 60 I can already afford my basic Flying Mount at 70. Not too shabby.

60 and Hellfire Ramparts

Back from vacation number two and ready to begin the Outlands adventure. Ok, so maybe not jumping to do it since the leveling bug still hasn’t returned. I did decide that I should try and get a couple runs of Hellfire Ramparts in to get some quick gear upgrades before actually starting to do some of the quests. Plus they will give me a little bit of an edge in the 60 bracket of Alterac Valley while I can still do it.

So I decided to Pick Up Group (PUG) Ramparts and found a decent one right off the bat. We wiped a couple times here and there and the Warrior had never tanked or been in the instance before, but we prevailed and I walked out with the Hellreaver. Not a Hunter weapon per se, but an upgrade nonetheless over my Ice Barbed Spear. The dps necklace dropped off of Omar the Unscarred but unfortunately the tank won the roll. Oh well.

While waiting for another group to gather I got a couple games of Alterac Valley in and of course won them all but the 30 minute queue times are beginning to get to me however I keep hearing that Alliance really stink and lose most games in the 70 bracket.

In the second Ramparts PUG the good Hunter gloves dropped off of Omar the Unscarred but a Shaman won the roll. Afterwards he said he didn’t even need them, damn. I ended up getting a leather Bracer off of the last boss with two red sockets, it’ll do. I made sure to say I needed it.

Then it was just a matter of doing a couple of the early Honor Hold quests to get to Friendly with them and a couple more pieces of good gear.

Ding! 60!

I did it, dinged 60 last night. 2/3 of the way done with Powny. At least until Wrath of the Lich King is released later this year.

Last night was a repeat in Western Plaguelands finishing off the last two farms there and also doing a quest I had never seen before where I had to kill diseased Wolves and Bears. The Wolves were a real pain since they were very spread out and mixed in with some annoying Spiders. Once I finished the Western Plaguelands quests I was six bars away from leveling so off I went to Eastern Plaguelands.

My guide wanted me to speak to Tyron in the northwestern corner so I could do three quests to kill Plaguehounds, Bats and Carrion Worms, but I figured since I was so close to 60 I might as well skip them. The quests are pretty tedious. I did however go near the Blightcaller’s house and see the child ghost Pamela in Darrowshire before making my way to Light’s Hope Chapel. At Light’s Hope I did the turnins and got to within one bar of 60.

From here I simply went back to Western Plaguelands, finished up a quick quest and dinged.

Then it was on to Alterac Valley again to spend some tokens and get the Battle Ram. 50 tokens is a lot, but for a basically free Epic ground mount, it was totally worth it. Also, for Season 2 gear I only need 50 Alterac Valley marks and will be grinding honor there anyways, so sitting at around 38 left, it won’t take long. I also transferred 1000 gold from Pownybank to Powny and then realized that 150 Riding only costs 480 gold. I was pleasantly surprised since I thought it cost closer to 800 or 1000 gold. So I still have a war chest of about 850 gold heading into Outlands.

On to Outlands and better gear!

59 in Western Plaguelands

Skeletons and Ghouls everywhere. I’d hate to have lived here when the Scourge invasion and plague broke out, but I bet it was a pretty place. Now instead Andorhal is a mess and diseased critters are everywhere. The four farms in the area are overrun with rotting Zombies, Ghouls, Skeletons and Ghosts. Where is a +damage vs. Undead weapon when you need one.

Last night was apparently “Gank Alliance While Escorting Lowbies” night for the Horde since I saw a couple level 70s running around with people in the low 50s. I also ran into Bbqgnome, a level 58 Gnome Mage who kept getting targeted by the 70s and being ganked by Rogues. In the Local Defense channel we made a pact to sack Tarren Mill when we both hit 70. I’m all over that like white on rice.

By the end of the night I had torched the Watch Towers and purged two of the farms of their undead menaces and dinged 59 in the process. I also went back to Stormwind for the ‘Ol Emma quest and coincidentally hit Exalted with Stormwind.

I am now Exalted with Darnassus, Exodar, Ironforge and Stormwind and have the four mounts associated with them bound into a /castrandom macro. Draenai may look dumb riding anything but the Elekk, but at only 8 gold apiece, what the heck. 32 gold well spent.

The best moment of the night was when Bbqgnome was being chased down by a 70 Orc Hunter. Bbq made it to Chillwind Camp alive and the Hunter accidentally Multi-Shotted Bbq next to the Gryphon Master. Well this unleashed the three level 65 Crazed Gryphon elite mobs on him who he managed to Feign Death away from, but not before I hit him with a Concussive Shot and Intimidation and was able to finish him off before he got away. It felt so good that I posted on the forums about it.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=9236646378&postId=91730294318&sid=1#0

I don’t care if I get flamed for killing a 70 with the help of the Gryphons, a 70 kill at 58 is a 70 kill.

Next I go back to Western Plaguelands to finish off the farms and move onto Eastern Plaguelands and hopefully Outlands too.

57 and 58 in Winterspring and Burning Steppes

It’s a new day, back from vacation and time to really renew the push to 60 before I go away again on Thursday for the long Labor Day weekend. With all this rested experience still I decided to see if I could push for 58.

The Yeti quests in Everlook proved to be quite rewarding with the rested experience bonus as each would net me ~600xp a kill. I did have to contend with some unruly Horde in the area, specifically a 58 Blood Elf Warlock who jumped me while I was skinning and a 70 Undead Warrior escorting a 48 Tauren Shaman who killed me twice when I was turning in quests at Donova Snowden and Sidalva. I still can’t take on a 70 so decided to run through the cave since he apparently was still hated by the Furlbogs, but I was too slow and died. All this left a bad taste in my mouth, but I was done with Winterspring anyways and moved on to the Burning Steppes.

In the Burning Steppes I got to do the Ogre quests, the one to collect Broodling Essences and the one to kill Dragonkin. I made a fortune in skins from the last two quests as a couple other Alliance were doing it too and weren’t skinning anything. When I was done here I had dinged 58 and had 3 stacks of Rugged Leather and 2 stacks of Thick Leather, just in the Burning Steppes alone. This translates into 50 or 60 gold easily on the Auction House.

I did also get repeatedly ganked by a 60 Orc Shaman running around collecting herbs or mining nodes. I almost got him the second time around, but he got the jump on me when I was low on health and Gorefield was fighting another mob.

Not that it matters anymore, but I also started the Onyxia quest chain and can go save the prisoner in Blackrock Depths if I feel like it at some point. Maybe after I hit 70, but for now it was quick and easy experience for running back and forth from Stormwind.

Up next is Western Plaguelands.

56, Felwood and Winterspring

Back from a week in Maine and time to ding 56 in Felwood and set myself up for the run to 60. 56 was easily accomplished running through the remaining quests in Felwood since there are a lot of turnins for some large amounts of experience.

I also made my way to the Furbolg cave and ripped my way through the Furbolg camp killing everything in sight while racking up some decent reputation with the Furbolg. Rested experience is truly a wonderful thing. If I could stand to take a week away from the game to get it I would, but clearly I’m addicted.

I also spent some time clearing out my quest log by finishing up the Princess Trapped quest that I had (somehow I missed one of the keys in the Arathi Highlands) and jumped to Tanaris to turn in the quests I had there. Every little bit of quest experience helps and I know that I will have a ton of quests as soon as I hit Outlands. I also took the time to do some mining to get my skill up. I got it to 270, enough to be mining Small Thorium nodes and to smelt Thorium, which will provide skillups. I would really like both Mining and Skinning to be 300 before I head to Outlands (Skinning is already there).

The last thing I did was run through the cave and get the flight path in Everlook.

55, Un’Goro Skipped and Felwood Questing

I finally made up my mind to simply skip Un’Goro since I was level 54 and three levels above where I was supposed to be in the leveling guide I use. Felwood is listed as 53-54 so by starting there at 54, the mobs still were easy enough to solo my way through and I was able to ensure I wasn’t going up against gray mobs.

I really didn’t spend much time playing last night because I wasn’t feeling well. I am chalking it up to allergies, but with vacation at the beach next week I’d rather err on the side of caution and go to bed early.

So all I did was the first half of the quests in Felwood, including the first Furbolg quest to hit unfriendly so I can travel through the cave into Winterspring later on. I also still think I should be able to skin Furbolgs. I also finished the Ooze collection quests and the first half of the Jaedenar quests. With turnins and rested experience these were enough to ding 55.

Tonight I will get back into Felwood, finish it off and move on to Winterspring. I know there are a few that relate to the Linkin quests in Un’Goro that I’ll have to skip, but I’m still two levels ahead of my guide and everything should be good. With luck I’ll ding 56 and maybe even 57.

On a side note, I have given up the quest for 60 by Friday. I’m not going to push myself.

1000gold Mark Broken

Not bad for a new toon on a new server. Just goes to show you how broken the World of Warcraft economy is right now with all the daily quests and high level players tricking out their lowbies.

54, Blackrock Depths and Searing Gorge

I begain the night where I left off the other night, in Searing Gorge, completing quests and working my way to 54. I also, through the Looking For Group, interface, said I would join a group in Blackrock Depths, for the heck of it. About an hour into playing I actually got a whisper from a Druid asking if I wanted to go. I asked if he had a full group to which he responded no, but that they only needed dps. I joined and saw it was a Paladin and this Druid and figured ok, tank and healing is all set, they’ll add some more dps and we’ll be good to go. I didn’t realize that the Paladin was level 70 and that he’d just be running us through since he was in the same guild as the Druid. Bonus.

The run didn’t go as well as planned because the Paladin pretty much stunk at his class and his gear wasn’t that great. He also kept going afk because his parents were checking in on him to make sure he wasn’t playing World of Warcraft. Somehow through it all we managed to kill a few of the bosses in there and I picked up a couple new pieces of gear. Nothing super fancy, just a couple better pieces and a few Mail replacements for Leather gear I was still wearing. In the end it was a decent run and I dinged 54 as a result.

Afterwards I finished up the last few Searing Gorge quests I still had and before calling it a night queued for an Alterac Valley to get some more reputation, honor and marks.

My guide says I should go to Un’Goro next, but again, I really dislike that zone and may skip it since I’m 3 levels ahead of it already. I don’t want to waste time grinding on grey mobs that don’t yield any experience just to get quest experience.

53, Searing Gorge and Alterac Valley

I should have played more yesterday than I did however I’ve been caught up in the Olympics and stuff. I also should have leveled more than I did, but I’ve been caught up in the Alterac Valley Olympics as well. I’m close to hitting Exalted with Exodar and Darnassus with all the games I’ve played.

I did hit Exalted with Ironforge since you get much more reputation from Alterac Valley turnins with them than any other group. I went a bought a Ram too. I programmed this macro in to randomize my mounts:

#showtooltip
/castrandom [nomounted] Gray Elekk, Gray Ram
/dismount [mounted]

I did manage to get to some leveling in Searing Gorge. I cleared out the majority of the quests there in one circle, killing Golems, Dark Iron Dwarves and Lava Spiders. I also got to do the Incendosaur quest which yields a lot of nice Thick Leather to sell (plus they are easy to kill). I’m also half way to 54 after all the quest turnins.

I also hit Revered with Stormpike Guard as well and got the fourth Alterac Valley trinket. It’s a decent item to help regain health while questing. The Frost resistance is almost worthless however, unless I’m fighting Frost Mages. While getting the trinket I got to experience some ganking as I got camped by a 70 Horde Druid who killed me five times before I could finally turn in the quest, get the new trinket and hearth out of there. I think he was mad because I tried to kill him when he was killing the Stormpike Guard in front of the Alterac Valley cave.

All in all, I’m very impressed with the 50-60 Alterac Valley bracket. Due to the excruciatingly long wait times (sometimes 30 minutes) I only played about 25 matches, but won 24 of the 25, giving me 73 Alterac Valley marks, well above the 50 that I needed for the Season 2 Arena gear. I also picked up my Insignia of the Alliance. It was 2800 honor that I would have rather saved, but it’s too useful of a trinket to pass up.

I figure I’ll work on Alterac Valley a little bit more to try and get Exodar and Darnassus to Exalted (I can get a kitty mount to go with my Elekk and Ram) and then go back to leveling to 54 and beyond. My goal is to hit level 60 before I go on vacation next week. We’ll see.

52, Alterac Valley, Tanaris, Searing Gorge and More Alterac Valley

I started the morning yesterday working on level 52. I was already half way there and pushing my way through the quests I had in Tanaris were almost enough to make my way over the top. In Tanaris I had to do the Silithid quests, and as I've stated before, I really dislike the Silithid. Two races really annoy me, Silithid and Aarakoa, I hope there are 100% less Aarakoa in Wrath of the Lich King.

My guide took me all the way back to Ironforge so I figured it would be a good time to go back into Alterac Valley and try and get my dragon. As with the other night, Alliance really owns the 51-60 Alterac Valley category. In most cases it is 40 Alliance to 15 - 20 Horde, pretty much a cake-walk. By my second game I remembered that there were some quests outside of the Alterac Valley cave (near Southshore) so I few on over. Sure enough, there were quests to capture a mine, capture a tower and capture a graveyard. I signed up for all three and easily completed them, and dinged 52 in the process.

I continued to do Alterac Valley for the majority of the day and on my 10th win got my dragon. Coincidentally, that same game, we managed to summon Ivus! I haven't seen Ivus in a game in probably over a year. There just isn't usually time to summon him anymore.

I also realized that I could be doing Alterac Valley quest turnins for reputation. I spent every game at the front lines long enough to get my bags loaded with turnin items before recalling back to turn them in. At the end of the day I racked up over 7000 reputation with Ironforge and 1500 each with the other capitals. I am almost Exalted with Ironforge.

Finally, I ended the night by making my way into Searing Gorge and doing a couple quests. Tomorrow I'll be spending a little more time in Alterac Valley to finish off the Ironforge reputation and then moving on to level 53 in Searing Gorge.

Alterac Valley and the Olympics

Today they announced that in the spirit of the Olympics there would be two new items made avalable, one is th Spirit of Competition tabard and the other is a Gold Medallion that summons a small flying dragon as a non-combat pet. I want that dragon!

So, foregoing my normal levelling guide I instead queued up for Alterac Valley, by far my favorite battleground, probably because the Alliance wins it a lot.

To obtain the tabard you just need to stay in a battleground until it closes, simple enough, and I got my tabard on the first Alterac Valley I played in, which we won! Not only did we win, but it was almost 40 Alliance to 10 Horde, so it was a total roll. At the end, the Horde hadn't taken any towers or bunkers, I've never been in an Alterac Valley that happened like that before.

To obtain the dragon you need to be in a battleground until the end and win it. Upon winning you have a very small chance of receiving a gold medallion in your mailbox.

It was totally a telling of what was to come, barring the 15 to 20 minute waits to queue into a battleground, Alliance rolled the Horde in every single one and I walked away with almost 2,000 honor and 15 Alterac Valley marks.

I also completed the quest to Kill Drek'thar which rewards you with the Ice-Barbed Spear, a weapon that will probably get me all the way to outlands because it is stacked with Agility and Stamina, much more than the simple "of the Monkey" sword I was using. At first I was torn over whether to get the Crossbow that is a reward, but in the end, went with the Spear.

Tomorrow I'll go back to do some levelling, but I plan to spend an equal amount of time in Alterac Valley trying to get my dragon.

51, Feralas and Tanaris

Apparently last night was escort quest night. I did two of them, both successfully.

The first one was to rescue Shay Leafrunner from the harpies and bring her back to Rockbiter. This one is a lot like the sleeper quest in Darkshore where you have to ring a bell every time she wanders off so she comes running back to you. The toughest part of this one is the mobs that are in the way that you have to grind through to get her out, but still easy enough in the long run.

The second one was to take Tooga, a turtle in Tanaris, back to his wife, Torta, near Steamwheedle Port. Honestly, this quest is a pain on a PvP server, especially in a hotly contested area such as Tanaris. You need to escort Tooga, who is slow as a…well, a turtle, from the Thistleshrub area (near the Un’Goro path) in the southwest corner of the zone to Steamwheedle all the way in the northeast corner. It’s just an excruciatingly long trek through the desert. Thankfully I made it the whole way without running into a single Horde.

Of course when I was resupplying at Steamwheedle after turning in the quest a 54 Troll Mage decided to jump me and wasted me pretty quickly. I honestly wasn’t really paying attention because I was buying arrows and selling grey items when he attacked me. I was a little disappointed that the folks in Steamwheedle didn’t assist me, I am Honored with Gadgetzan, but they weren’t guards so I understand. It would have been nice though.

Next up are a few more quests in Tanaris and then off to Searing Gorge.

50, Hinterlands and More Arathi Basin?

It took me a little while to get motivated again to start leveling to 50, but I finally got around to it and headed off to the Hinterlands, an area with some quick and simple quests including the Sharpbeak saga. This is also a notorious place for unwanted ganking making me always have to watch my back for Horde sneaking up on me.

So let’s jump right into the aforementioned attempted ganking. I reiterate, this was “attempted” and not actual outright ganking done to me. The first attempt was by a 48 Blood Elf Rogue. I think she may have accidentally clicked to attack me, why do I say this?


Yes, she apologized. But it was too late by then. Caspurr was already in Bestial Wrath mode and I had plugged her with a Serpent Sting. She died quickly. I felt bad afterwards and when she rezzed made sure to say I was sorry back. Accidents do happen afterall.

Attempted ganking number two was also by a Rogue, Blood Elf again, level 50, so one level above me. He snuck up on me while I was fighting spiders and stunned me, I was able to get down a Freeze Trap and stuck him in place while I bandaged quickly, then sent Caspurr in (Caspurr was still fighting a spider at the same time). Bestial Wrath, Rapid Fire, Serpent Sting and he is down to almost no health, but so am I. He Vanishes and tries to run away, but I gun him down with an Arcane Shot. Two Rogues down.

Attempted ganking number three was by a 50 Troll Mage while I was clearing my way up the Altar of Zul. This was a real close one because he hit me in rapid succession with two Fireballs that dropped me down to almost no health. Thankfully I could stun him with Intimidation and hit him with a Serpent Sting. His Ice Block must have been on stun because Caspurr shredded him and I barely survived.

After all the fun and quest turnins I was one bar away from level 50 and headed to Darnassus to turn in some quests. On the boat ride over I figured I’d queue up for two Arathi Basins since I was at 73 marks and wanted to get to an even multiple of five. 75 marks would leave me with only 15 remaining when I hit 70, not too insurmountable. Of course who do I find in Arathi Basin? Muwatalli! He immediately points out that I said I was done and I just chuckled in return. It was a pretty close game but we still ended up losing and I said my final goodbyes to Muw. After spawning back in Darnassus the idea struck me: Why not queue for Arathi Basin and then level to 50! So that’s exactly what I did. I knew I had a couple quests to turn in that would easily ding 50 so I queued and then sprinted to turn them in and sure enough, ding right before the battleground opened.

Let the “HACKER!” whispers begin. It was quite surprising (and Muw commented on this as well) to see so many people unaware that this could be done. Also, it seemed to piss the Horde off as I was constantly a target. In the end we got 5-capped and lost but the best part was in the beginning when we went to take Blacksmith and Muw and I fought off five Horde and then a second wave that spawned at Farm afterwards. I easily took down eight or nine before Muw was out of mana and we were both dead. But damn straight we took and held Blacksmith alone. This will go down as one of my better memories of Arathi Basin with Muw. I’m going to miss him. Hopefully we will meet up again in the 70 Alterac Valley games.

For now it’s back to Feralas for more questing and leveling.

49 Arathi Basin Take Two

After the previous night’s debacle of an Arathi Basin I figured it couldn’t be that bad again and queued up rather than working my way to 50. Bad idea.

Nine games, all losses. Nine Arathi Basin marks the hard way. I may be up to 71 total marks now, but I am pretty much done with the 49 bracket. Boy how I longed to be back in the 39 bracket where we won as many as we lost.

The only bright spot was Muwatalli again. He healed me amazingly well, at times while I was fighting four or five Horde at a time. I made sure to tell him about the thank you post I made on the forums. He seemed pleased that someone would take the time to do it, but he just doesn’t understand how rare it is for someone to heal in a Battleground, and to heal well.

The one thing I did take away with me was how powerful Intimidation is. So many times I would send in Caspurr and pop Intimidation and he would stun the Horde just long enough for me or someone else to get a shot in. For me it would be a Concussive Shot followed by a Serpent Sting and an Arcane Shot. For clothies, they’d be dead real fast. This is certainly one tip I have mastered and added to my repertoire.

I’m not sure where to go next, it’s either off to Hinterlands and quest my way to 50 or try a few more Arathi Basin games and see if my luck changes. It should be an easy decision, but we’ll have to wait and see.

Arathi Basin 40-49 Bracket

Since I didn’t get a chance to hop on the computer until after 9:30pm I didn’t even consider working my way to 50 so instead I opted to go back into Arathi Basin for a few games. I was up to 62 marks and figured if things went well I would try and work my way to 90 to be able to afford the PvP Boots when I hit 70.

Things couldn’t have gone much worse. I only got four games in before I was fed up and called it a night.

I walked into a 5-cap in game one with the Horde at 1200 resources. I just sort of sat in the spawn waiting for it to end.

Games two and three were terrible as well, but had a few bright spots, namely in the form of a 49 Night Elf Druid named Muwatalli. He and I took and defended the Mines in both games with him healing and me dpsing anything and everything that dared show its face. We easily took on dual Warlock teams, Hunter / Shaman teams and even two Druids and a Mage who thought they could take me out. Muwatalli was great. He would sit stealthed and let them train their sights on me then pop out of stealth and heal me while Caspurr and I pwnd face. And we pwnd face hard. I was so impressed with his skills I felt compelled to post on the WoW forums thanking him. You can read it here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=8557021548&sid=1

/salute Muwatalli

We did lose both games and then I suffered through a fourth defeat before I called it a night. I think I’ll check it out again tonight but if we are getting steamrolled I’ll go back to leveling and worry about the 24 marks at a later date.

48 and 49, Another Arathi Basin Bracket to Dominate?

Yesterday was Saturday, a day without the daughter, housework done early, meaning plenty of time to dedicate to Powny and reaching the weekend goal of 49. As the title suggests, this was easily accomplished with runs through Tanaris and Feralas.

Tanaris was ultra-quiet in the morning. At one point I was the only one in Gadgetzan and the Pirate Cove. This really made questing simpler. No Horde to think/worry about plus no Alliance trying to steal my kills. I burned through the Pirate Hat quest and even got a Captain's Key to drop. Sadly the loot from the chest was less than spectacular and will hit the AH.

I was a bar away from 48, but had to take a break for lunch and to go get a haircut.

I came back online that night and quickly cleared out the rest of 48 and started in on 49 in Feralas. The naga quests on the island were simple as usual and quickly led me over to the mainland and away from Feathermoon. Here I made my way through the Yeti cave and then down to grab a Hyppogriph Egg before clearing out the Ogres when I came across a 46 Night Elf Rogue following the same guide as me and we joined up. I think I amazed him with how quickly I was switching and pulling mobs and burning them down. I don't usually stop until I'm out of mana, plus a pet really helps.

We also decided to do the Sprite quests where you kill Tauren and save Sprites. It's just a blind massacre at times. Unfortunately my party mate kept forgetting to get followup quests and I ended up killing twice as many mobs as I really needed. In the end it was just extra XP so I didn't complain.

Afterwards he had to go so I continued on to the Silithid Hive alone. I hate Silithid. Plain and simple, they suck. Here is where a moment of fun came up. A 48 Orc Hunter came across me. I was killing Silithid and he even helped me kill one and then surprisingly, sent his Ravager after me. I Feigned Death, popped Bestial Wrath and Rapid Fire and sent Gorefield after him. He was dead in seconds. I don't think I lost even a quarter of my health. I don't know what he was thinking.

By the time I was done with questing I dinged 49. Since my questing took me to Darnassus I decided to queue up for some Arathi Basin for the heck of it. Game 1, I join when Horde have us 4-capped and are at 1700 resources, we lose. Games 2 and 3, we roll them hard, constantly pushing, almost 5-capping each game. Game 4, a long drawn out loss which in all honestly wasn't even close, we just sucked.

So in the end 2 wins, 2 losses. Seems promising. Back to Arathi Basin for 40 more tokens? I haven't decided yet.

47 in STV.

Man, STV is just the pits. I find myself always looking over my shoulder and keep thinking I hear stealthed Rogues around every corner. It really doesn't help when you travel through an invisible kitty mine field too. Makes me long for the PvE server when STV was a joke. Tons of easy quests with decent rewards and killer XP. But I'm a PvP server player now. No looking back.

In STV I did the Princess Poobah quest which I had never done before. I vaguely remember King Mukula (the giant ape) used to be elite. Now he is just a pushover. Everything seems to be simpler now that nothing is elite anymore. The reward for the quest was wierd...her nose ring that you can wear on your wrists. Nasty.

I didn't come across any PvP activity this time around. Usually getting that first ganking out of the way relaxes me a little and I can settle in and complete the quests, maybe it was a little more stressful since that gank never came.

All in all a quick run through the jungle. Next up is Tanaris.

45 and 46 Down, Badlands…Not So Bad After All

As I posted the other day I was just a sliver away from 45 so I knew that would be an easy level to grab, and sure enough, two quests into Badlands and I was done with 45. Unfortunately hitting 45 made some of the mobs grey to me in places like Uldaman and the early beasts in Badlands. I think I may have to skip a section of the guide in order to make sure I’m maximizing my leveling abilities.

Back to the Badlands. The last time I leveled a toon in Badlands was about a year ago and on a Human Paladin. Some quests seemed to take much longer than expected and without the benefit of a pet and ranged dps, Badlands wasn’t much fun. It was a totally different experience last night. I was flying through quests like there was no tomorrow and I don’t think my health dropped below ¾ at any time for the entire night. I also tamed a Ridge Stalker Patriarch for Dash 2 and Prowl 2.

Honestly, nothing spectacular came out of Badlands. No great weapon or gear upgrades, just a couple levels and some pet skills, oh and the Fiery Blaze enchant. I think I’ll slap this on a weapon around level 49 when I take another stab at Arathi Basin.

I also really didn’t see any PvP action in Badlands. I ran across two Blood Elves doing the same quest as me once, but they either were too afraid to attack a Hunter five levels above them or were too busy questing. I think I could have taken them. Other than that, I was part of a “Gank Train” in the caves of Uldaman when a ?? Troll Warrior steamrolled me as he was leading some lowbies through the cave for a speed run through Uldaman. I let it slide, no retaliation tonight.

I ended the night by doing one Arathi Basin, more for the heck of it than anything. My friend Josh joined me on his 49 Night Elf Rogue, Ragz. We came out of the gates poorly and ended up down 4 nodes to 1 really quickly but somehow came back with a vengeance taking the Blacksmith, Lumber Mill and Farm and the points ticked almost even, with the Horde at a slight lead. In the end it came down to us holding 3 nodes to their 2 but they had enough of a lead to sneak out with a 2000 to 1980 win. A little depressing, but a close, hard fought game. With that, I called it a night.

Next up, back to STV. Hopefully for the last time.

Almost 45, Stranglethorn Vale...Again

Last night was a pretty slow night, I didn’t even bang out a single level, so still stuck at 44. At 45 I get to upgrade my food again and can get that happy feeling of being 50% done with the 40s, but I was pretty tired last night and finished all but 1 ½ bars of 45, easily finishable tonight.

Possibly the highlight of the night was that I finally decided on a name for my Ravager. I decided on Gorefield, a decent play on words and really syncs with Caspurr nicely, two cartoon character names twisted to fit my pets. It was a toss up at first between Gorefield and Igore, but a decision was made.

I was worried that Stranglethorn Vale was going to be a nightmare again last night when I was collecting Skullsplitter Tusks (awful droprate btw) and a ?? Tauren Druid unstealthed behind me and one-shotted me. It is a long run through STV to your corpse and it made me mad having to make the run and I decided that I would return the favor and gank at least one horde before I left STV for the night. I got my chance when I was working on my last quest, Excelsior, to kill an Elder Saltwater Crocodile. I came across a 38 Troll Hunter heading out to the Mysterious Island, followed him and when I got close, unleashed Gorefield on him. +4 honor, mission accomplished.

To further lament on awful droprates, I felt like I was in droprate hell at times. First, collecting Skullsplitter Tusks (21% droprate), then Singing Blue Crystals (31% droprate), then Snapjaw Crocolisk Skins (28% droprate) and finally Mistvale Giblets (17% droprate) for one of the funnier quests, Scaring Shakey. If anyone is keeping score, that’s a 24% droprate overall, basically translating into killing at least four mobs for each quest item. It would be one thing if it were all rested XP, but I don’t ever seem to have any of that.

Enough of STV, next is Badlands.

42-44, Onyxia’s Lair and some PvP

Last night I finished up the Theramore quest lines including the Shady Rest Inn quest line and the Mudsprocket quests.

As I wrote yesterday, I was again wholly unimpressed with Mudsprocket as a town. That being said I did get to do the Onyxia’s Lair questline. Basically the Ogre in the Inn gives you some quests to kill dragonkin and suck their essences, then collect some dragon’s tail herbs and then purge some Ogre bones. The dragonkin killing quest also coincides with a quest to retrieve an Ogre banner from a cave. Ultimately you get to plant the banner in front of Onyxia’s Lair as a “challenge”. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Onyxia herself is too cowardly to come and accept your challenge and instead sends out a level 41 non-elite dragon to fight you. Needless to say, Bestial Wrath + Rapid Fire = Death. Caspurr tore through the dragon like there was no tomorrow.

Going back to the Shady Rest Inn quest line, which I had never completed before, you beat down some deserter leader who points the finger at another guard and then ultimately you are directed to the rogue Tauren tribe in the swamp as the culprits. In the end you torch their tents and report back to Theramore where the Captain asks you to lay a wreath at the tomb of the Hyal’s. Laying the wreath summons the wife and son of James Hyal (who has regressed into Smiling Jim) who thank you for pretty much getting revenge. Nothing like a revenge questline to tug at the heart strings.

I did also get a slight taste of world PvP yesterday.

The first was short and sweet. I was collecting dragonkin essences when a 40 Priest came into the compound, saw me attacking a dragonkin, Mind Blasted and then Flayed me. Before I could recover a Shadowmelded Night Elf Hunter popped up beside me and nuked down the Priest. I had no idea he was there but I thanked him profusely!

The second was a little longer, but while collecting some merloc heads for a quest (I think the Ogre you give them to eats them) I ran across a 38 Mage and 41 Warrior also doing the same quest. The Mage was AoE clearing them pretty impressively so I did a /cheer and /wave like I usually do and kept clearing merlocs. I saw that the Warrior was targeting me and figured I should get ready but he didn’t come at me until I was killing another merloc (cowardly). As soon as he charged and stunned me I spammed Freeze Trap and redirected Caspurr to the Mage who was hitting me with Frostbolts. I finally trapped the Warrior and popped Bestial Wrath but I was already quite low on health and died. That made me mad.

I immediately rezzed and corpse-ran back to the spot and made sure to pop back up behind a hill where they couldn’t see me. I ate/drank and waited for them to engage some merlocs then popped Bestial Wrath and Rapid Fire and sent Caspurr at the Mage. The Warrior charged me right as I dropped a Freeze Trap and I took a single hit, but trapped him. Then the Mage outfoxed me and Ice Blocked. Caspurr beat on him but I figured I was screwed and started to get out of there when the Warrior came out of the trap and stun/charged me. By now the Mage was out of the Ice Block and Caspurr shredded him. We both ended up dying at the exact same time.

I immediately rezzed again and corpse-ran back hoping to beat the Mage’s rez and sure enough, the Warrior was all alone. I didn’t even bother eating/drinking and just sent Caspurr in and popped Bestial Wrath. The Warrior didn’t last long. I made sure to /spit on his corpse before I swam off to do a different quest.

Ahh, the fun of a PvP server. I guess you never know who you will run across, but my demeanor is that I won’t start a fight, but I’ll try my hardest to finish it.

40 to 41, Arathi Highlands and Dustwallow Marsh

Back to leveling. I didn’t want to waste too much time in PvP because the goal of 60 is still a real possibility. I’m on a good pace and haven’t lost the leveling bug yet. I know I’ll lose it eventually.

In the past I had skipped most of the Arathi Highlands quests and all of the ones that take place in Stromgarde but this guide directed me to complete a good portion of them, including the Princess Trapped questline and the multiple “bosses” in Stromgarde. At one point I happened across a 39 Blood Elf Rogue trying to gank a fellow Alliance in Stromgarde so I jumped in and assisted, quickly dispatching the Rogue. I also came across a different 39 Blood Elf Rogue near the Air Elemental circle of binding who tried to gank me but I was a little quicker and got him first. Unfortunately I didn’t realize he would resurrect so close and he came back and ganked me while I was drinking. Oh well, chalk it up as a draw.

The Arathi quests easily got me 40 and then I moved on to Dustwallow Marsh and a multitude of quests I have never done before. I did the ones near Witch Hill which surprisingly rewarded a ton of experience. I killed a ton of Raptors and Grimtotem Tauren. One of my favorites was to collect some meat and then release it in the center of the Grimtotem camp and watch a horde of Raptors appear and fight the Grimtotem. Definitely a well thought out quest.

I ended the night with a few quests around the crashed Zeppelin and made my way to Mudsprocket. Along the way I dinged 41.

Arathi Basin, Arathi Basin and More Arathi Basin

Going into the 39 Bracket of Arathi Basin I was ready for disappointment because of my experience in the 29 Bracket getting dominated by Horde at every turn. What a pleasant surprise after the first game ended and the Alliance totally dominated the Horde and completed a 5-cap faster than I had ever seen before. I finished the “Capture” quest on the first match.

All the games after that went pretty much the same way with the Alliance completely dominating the Horde save for a few hiccups in games where people didn’t call out incomings, etc. I went from 10 Arathi Basin marks to 60 in a single day. My final record, 15 wins and 5 losses. This put me well above the goal of 50 Arathi Basin marks by 70 and is tempting me to collect the next 40 for the PvP Boots…maybe.

I’m speechless and a little hesitant to level to 40.

37 to 39, Desolace and Another Stranglethorn Vale Run

Time to kick it into overdrive, 39 is right around the corner and I’m dying to get back into Arathi Basin and see if the 39 bracket is better than the 29 bracket. I’m hearing good things from the people I come across.

Step one is Desolace and the various quests there, including my first reputation with the Argent Dawn. I got to do the Rackmore’s Treasure quests and surprisingly the two keys dropped almost immediately from the mobs. Per my guide I skipped one of the Centaur quests I’ve done in the past, to gain reputation with the Gelkis Centaur and instead just collected ears from any Centaur I came across. I also did the quests to save the two Night Elves in Thunder Axe Fortress, the escort is usually a pain, but seemed easier as a Hunter.

Before heading to Stranglethorn Vale I ran down into Feralas and grabbed the Flight Path from Feathermoon.

Back to Stranglethorn Vale and again constantly looking behind my back for that unseen ganker waiting to get me. This time I was able to grab a bunch of quests in Booty Bay including another “ear” quest. The Old World has a fascination with ears while Outlands has a fascination with poop quests…I can’t explain it either.

First off I cleared the stealthed Panthers for another mastery quest then cleared Goblins followed by Raptors and then Tigers before doing a turn in run at Nessingwary and getting the next round of mastery quests. From there I killed Sin’Dall and then heading to start collecting ears. There were a few Horde around so I headed into the temple complex and cleared for ears there before working my way down to the Basilisks and then popped a water breathing potion and started collecting fins from the Merlocs. In the past I’ve skipped the Merlocs because they all used to be elites, they aren’t anymore and the quest was pretty easy. The water breathing potion was a must. While collecting fins I also roamed around and collected Blue Pearls for a quest later in the Badlands.

Now for a big turning in Booty Bay followed by a run to Shimmering Flats to turn in a bunch of follow ups followed by a hearth back to Menethil Harbor and a flight to Southshore.

I cleared up the final few quests I had in the Alterac Mountains to ding 39 and ended the day by flying to Arathi Basin and getting the quest to Capture the Farm, Mine, Blacksmith and Lumber Mill. I then flew to Ironforge.

Tomorrow I head into Arathi Basin for some PvP.

35 to 36, Shimmering Flats and Dustwallow Marsh

Shimmering Flats is a great place to bang out a couple levels. The quests are tightly packed in together and can all be done just by doing one big circle around the zone. It’s all flat land too (it’s a salt flat that the Gnomes and Goblins race in) so nothing gets in the way when you are circling. I’ve got these quests down to a science too:

Saltstone Gazers and Crystalhides, then Scorpids, then Turtles and Saltstone Basilisks then finishing up with Scavengers all the while collecting Rocket Parts along the way. I dinged 35 about half way through.

Next up was Dustwallow Marsh, but not before grabbing the Flight Path in Gadgetzan and then flying there. I’ve never done any of the Dustwallow Marsh quests, so these were pretty new to me as well. All the quests took place in Theramore and included working on the Traitors and a “Propoganda War” and then finally killing Threshers for their oil to restart the lighthouse. I was surprised with the amount of experience I gained as I dinged 36 by the time I was done and prepared to head to Desolace.

33 to 34, Southshore, the Alterac Mountains and Another Stranglethorn Vale Adventure

First off, Southshore sucks on a PvP server. There is some unwritten law that Horde must attack Southshore and that Alliance must attack Tarren Mill and that both sides must enact revenge for the other side’s transgressions against said towns. Of course, when I arrived, a 70 Orc Shaman was busy destroying everything in Southshore, including any low level Alliance that landed via Flightpath or arrived via road…including me. But maybe it’s because I took a potshot at him. I never claimed to be smart all the time.

So I took a break for a little while.

Back at it in Southshore I did the couple quests there, including killing more Merlocs and then headed into the Alterac Mountains to do a couple Syndicate quests and to tame a Mountain Lion for a new rank of Prowl. Stupidly I turned off Prowl and since the pet never used it I never learned the new skill…again, today is stupidity day apparently.

Next I made my way back down to Stranglethorn Vale to finish up some mastery quests before getting ready to head to the easiest quest hub in the game, Shimmering Flats. I easily dinged 34 half way through the mastery quests my guide listed.

Next up Shimmering Flats and the racetrack.

30 to 32, Retribution Ganking, New Quests, Wetlands and Refuge Point

After the debacle in Arathi Basin I was more than ready to start leveling again and it took me back to Ashenvale to finish up the Rayne’s Cleansing quests and to a new quest hub I’ve never explored before: Forest Song.

Long story short, I finished up the Rayne’s Cleansing quest line up to where it rewards me with Dartol’s Rod of Transformation so now I can become a Furbolg at will. As I stated before, this is probably one of the coolest items in the game and a must have for any Alliance player. It still surprises me that a lot of people have never seen this item before and are shocked when you turn into a Furbolg. Now if only the Furbolg had some animations, no dancing, nothing cool.

Forest Song is a quest hub I have never explored before, I think it may have been beefed up before the Burning Crusade was introduced. The majority of the quests here had me dealing with demons near Felfire Hill and satyrs in the north, some of which I have quested through when leveling Horde toons on other servers. I also decimated the populace of the Warsong Lumber Camp across the way. My Ravager really enjoyed shredding through the mobs there.

I also had a chance to get a little retribution ganking in. While questing I was hassled by a couple Horde and one level 28 Orc Hunter in particular. He never got a chance to kill me, but to return the favor, when he was fighting the elite Hyppogryph for a Horde quest, I ganked the hell out of him. As I’ve said before, just leave me alone when I’m questing.

I finished up here and made my way back across the sea to Menethil Harbor and the Wetlands to finish up a few more quick quests including killing the Dark Iron Dwarves near the Thandol Span before I made my way to the Arathi Highlands and Refuge Point. Somehow I’ve gotten ahead of the guide in levels again and dinged 32 just getting to Refuge Point. The last thing I did was to sneak into Stromgarde and get the First Aid books needed to level my skill.

Next up is Southshore and the Alterac Mountains.

Arathi Basin

Wow. The Alliance really stink in the 29 bracket of Arathi Basin.

After losing 5 in a row, mostly to 5-caps, I just gave up. I’m sitting on 8 Arathi Basin marks, really earned the hard way and have no desire to go back in there until at least level 39.

It was really surprising how poorly the Alliance played. Specifically, not calling out incoming Horde, not asking for backup taking nodes and a general sense of noob players in there. Granted it is pretty easy nowadays to level to 29 but I had hoped a little bit of skill would follow people into the battleground.

As a test, I jumped over to my Horde Rogue, Stabberz, on the Twisting Nether server (it shares this battleground) and laughed as I rolled the same people who I was just playing against. At least Stabberz got 3 marks.

Tomorrow I go back to leveling and head to Astranaar again.

Warsong Gluch

This will be a rather boring entry. I spent all my playtime yesterday in Warsong Gulch acquiring marks. It was a 50/50 split in games it seems where we’d win a few in a row and then lose a couple, back and forth, back and forth.

No real highlights from the games, but I’m at 27 marks, just 3 shy of the 30 mark goal. I decided that I’d had enough for a while and will try out some Arathi Basin tomorrow and wait until 39 to work on the remaining 3 Warsong Gulch marks.

28 to 29, Skeletons, Zombies and Duskwood Ganking

Duskwood is located a little too close to Karazhan for my liking, especially because it is a contested zone. This basically means that at any time a Horde 70 can ride through town and gank you. Usually it is a Rogue and they are sneaking around picking people off on the rods. At 70 a Rogue can easily one-shot me. Proof? Ok, a 70 Undead Rogue named Roguerage was riding through, saw me and one-shotted me. At least he had a cool name.

In Duskwood my guide had me do a few of the longer quest chains here including the Worgen ones, the Telescope ones and the Stitches one. Unfortunately, the guide didn’t have me finish any of them. Maybe when I hit 70 I’ll go back and finish the Stitches quest at least since it’s funny to see Stitches come sauntering down the road.

For those who don’t know, there is a Hermit at the cemetery in Duskwood who has you get Ghost Hair, Zombie Juice and a number of other items, each time saying he needs it to do something for himself when in the end he is really creating a giant abomination named Stitches. After you get all his “ingredients” Stitches comes to life and heads down the main road, ganking lowbies as he goes, until a high level kills him or the guard finally do. It’s really funny the first time you see him because it’s scary as hell to see him coming down the road at you.

I also got the Morladim quest chain here, but again didn’t finish it. This is sort of a sad story about a warrior who heads to fight the Scourge and comes home many years later to find Duskwood changed to how it looks today and his home empty and family dead. He discovers their graves and begins to wildly beat on the tombstone with his sword when some gravediggers come along to help/stop him and in a blind rage he kills them. In despair he then takes his own life only to be resurrected as an undead Lich in the graveyard. The end of the quest chain has you destroy his undead body and then go find his only living child to tell her what happened and that he has been redeemed.

The good news is that while questing in Duskwood I dinged 29! That means time for some Warsong Gulch and Arathi Basin over the weekend. I’ve decided that as soon as I ding 70 I want to be able to buy as many pieces of the Season 2 PvP set as I can and I’d rather not set foot in Warsong Gulch or Arathi Basin after level 70, because the Alliance really gets creamed in there and the honor gain isn’t as good as Alterac Valley (which I actually like playing). So this means 30 Warsong Gluch and 50 Arathi Basin marks before I can go back to leveling.

On to the battlegrounds!

26 to 27, Wetlands and Redridge.

I really enjoy coming across another Alliance killing skinnable mobs, looting them and then continuing on to the next one. I easily skinned 30 or 40 mobs while I followed one guy around and got a ton of free Leather to sell. Pownybank is starting to make some serious money on the Auction House these days. I’m well over 200 gold just from selling smelted Ore and Leather in stacks of 20.

I finished up my Wetlands quests quickly and made my way to Redridge to do some quick questing there. Really I was only doing the Blackrock Bounty quests and the Gnoll quests in the northern part of the zone. I came across a Druid who was also doing the Blackrock quests and we blitzed through the cave faster than I ever have before. We did the escort too, way too easily. I’m thinking they nerfed the Orcs a little bit because this was always a tough quest for two people because of all the mobs that spawn.

Next up were the Gnolls which I did solo and decided to push my luck a little bit and see how many mobs Caspurr could take at once. The answer is three with a fourth one trapped. I did have to stop and drink afterwards because I was usually out of mana, but Caspurr can really take a beating. I’ll experiment more on this later and see if I can get five or six at once.

For now I’m off to Duskwood.

24 to 25 and Wetlands

One thing I like about Wetlands is the abundance of skinnable mobs. From Raptors to Crocolisks to Whelps, there is a good chance of taking in multiple stacks of Light and Medium Leather…to sell!

Wetlands is also the only place that Alliance can buy the Minor Discombobulator schematic. Every chance I get I snatch this for a few silver and then resell it for anywhere from 10 to 15 gold on the Auction House. Taking advantage of the lazy is how I make my gold now.

While the Wetlands is full of quests, none are really memorable or stick out except for the expedition quests where they have you searching for artifacts and killing Raptors at the same time. I buzzed quickly through both 24 and 25 in the Wetlands before I called it a night.

Next I’ll finish up a few more in Wetlands before heading to Redridge for a while.

21 to 23, Caspurr and Astranaar

First things first, it was time to tame a Ghost Saber. The Ghost Saber is a spawned beast from clicking on Cat Statues in the northern part of Darkshore. It’s also a small chance that a cat will even spawn as most just give you a statue in your bag. They are scattered all over the place and on my fifth statue a Ghost Saber spawned. I immediately tamed it and fed it because if you don’t get it to happy quickly it will despawn and you will lose it. Needless to say, I got mine to happy, it despawned and I called it back. Pet tamed, now for a name. I decided on Caspurr because the Ghost Saber retains a ghostly appearance and you can see right through it in certain areas. A really cool feature.

Now I have two pets, a Ravager (still unnamed) and a Cat named Caspurr. I will leave the third slot open for future tamings to upgrade skills.

The rest of the night was just doing quests in Darkshore, like the Sleeper quest, where a Druid follows you and falls asleep occasionally and you need to ring a bell to wake him up. This quest brings you into Ashenvale and to Astranaar.

In Astranaar is the start of a long quest chain called Raene’s Cleansing. While this may just seem like an annoyingly long quest, at about ¾ of the way through you receive one of the coolest quest items ever created: Dartol’s Rod of Transformation. It turns you into a furbolg! I’m still a ways away from getting it, but this is a chain I will do regardless of whether my guide says to or not.

In Astranaar I also got my first taste of world PvP in the form of a few 70s Horde running around killing quest givers and us lowbies running around. I must have been killed four or five times last night, annoying when you are just trying to quest and level. Hopefully it doesn’t carry over from zone to zone. Stuff like this makes me long for 70 so I can go raid Splintertree Post.

I quested as fast as I could and now it’s on to Wetlands.