Pushing Forward

Duskwood, continued

We spent some time in Stormwind, then completed another bunch of quests around Duskwood - closed out a quest for Sven Yorgen that we actually finished yesterday but hadn't got round to telling him, ran another errand for Abercrombie (which led to a bunch of to-and-fro 'quests' carrying messages between two people in different rooms in the same building), taking down a group of Nightbane Dark Runners and taking a monocle from an ogre named Zzrac'Vol (or something like that), this last quest involving fights with quite a few level-30 ogres.

Surprisingly, they weren't that hard even though we were level 27 (me) and 28 (Kate). I put it down to the fact that we both have some new equipment; Kate's bow training means that she's now able to use the 'blue' bow that we found in eastern Redridge, and for myself I have a new necklace (thanks to Kate again) that adds points to Spirit, Agility, Intellect etc., a Totem of Infliction that adds +50 to my armour and also occasionally delivers Shadow damage, a new ring, and one or two other things. All in all we're significantly tougher than we were even just a couple of days ago.

Kate hit level 28 and thanks to all the XP from relatively high-level mobs and all the quests, I wasn't too far behind. Normally we'd have zipped to Stormwind to update training but it was getting late so we've deferred that until our next trip. The plan now is to do that and then go back to Lakeshire so that we can finish up the outstanding quests there (or at least as many as we can). I think we can probably do the Deadmines now, too (yes, I know I thought that before and I was wrong; I may be wrong again but I really want to get those particular two quests off our lists).

A Guild Built For Two

When we were in Stormwind another player offered me 1gp to sign his Guild Charter; I replied that I wasn't interested in joining any guilds. He said I wouldn't have to join - he just wanted the sig and was prepared to pay for it. That struck me as strange - how would I sign the charter and then not be in the guild, and why would he want that?

I thought about that a bit and I think I've figured it out. You need ten signatures on a charter to start a new guild, but as far as I've seen there's no rule that says any guild must have ten members. Let's say I start a guild with a dozen members and then, for whatever reason, half of the membership leaves. It wouldn't make sense for the guild to automatically evaporate just because it only has six members.

I don't know if there's a minimum membership requirement for guilds, but thinking about it there should be no reason that a guild couldn't have just one member; if I was in a guild and everyone but me left, that would leave me as leader of a single-seater guild and I'd be free to recruit new members... or not.

Going back to the UnGuild idea I mentioned here a while ago, this could be another solution to the problem of being pestered to join a guild. All Kate and I would have to do is set up a guild and find eight other people to sign our charter on the understanding that as soon as the guild is established they would leave. We'd then have a two-person guild.

So in hindsight I'll bet that's exactly what this guy was doing when he asked me to sign, and if I'd thought of that earlier I'd probably have done it; I'd have belonged to his guild for the few minutes it took for him to gather his signatures, then I'd have been out again and a whole gold piece better off.

And again, in hindsight - a lot of the time players will just throw a charter at you and (I guess) hope you'll sign it. This guy had the courtesy to ask first, wasn't pushy and was prepared to pay for doing him a favour. He was actually trying to be nice about it.

Going West

We cleared another few quests in Duskwood - taking out Skeletal Raiders, Healers and Warders and Nightbane Shadow Weavers, running errands for Abercrombie, and a couple of others. Along the way we discovered the Yorgen Farmstead in the south.

Kate pointed out a large area in the north that we hadn't mapped, so we found our way in and discovered the Twilight Grove. It sounds nice. It looks nice. Then, looking down from the hills as we descended into the grove, we saw a huge dragon ('level ??'). Discretion being the better part of valour, we scarpered. But at least our map of Duskwood is now completely filled in.

With some more of our quests completed we made a trip to Stormwind to take care of business at the bank and the auction house and while we were there we located the library to return an old history book - another quest taken care of.

By this time we were both level 27 (and well on the way to 28) and I persuaded Kate that we could and should try to get to Darnassus to get her bow training. We flew to Thelsamar in Loch Modan then struck out north into the Wetlands. We needn't have worried - we tromped all the way across the region to Menethil Harbour without incident, then took our first sea voyage to Auberdine and then a second ship to the Rut'theran Village in Teldrassil.

There's a portal in the village that drops you right in the middle of Darnassus. We explored the city a little, mostly to locate the weapons trainer, and Kate got her training so she can now use bows.

Darnassus is beautiful, and from what little we saw so is the interior of the island. But it was getting late so this time around we thought we'd better head back to Darkshire. We'll be going back again to explore more, hopefully soon, and of course now that we've opened up the flight paths we can do that quicker in future.

Dark, dim, depressing Duskwood

It turned out that for two of the four Deadmines quests - the ones from the Dwarf in Stormwind that involved finding Miners' Union Cards and an Explorers' League Badge - we didn't need to go back through the instance portal so we did a quick trip to get those two off our quest log, then went back to Duskwood.

I lost count of how many quests we completed in Duskwood - seven or eight at least, I think, although most of them led to new quests so it didn't clear much from the quest log and I still show 18. It's still better than 21, though.

We both went from level 25 to 26, and Kate made 27 (I'm about 2400 points away) so we took a trip to Stormwind to do training and just for a change I didn't need to spend all my money to get all the Mage training. In fact, mostly thanks to auctions I had 3 gold at one point - the most I've ever had - and I still have more than 2gp right now.

I think I figured out how Kate seems to stay 4000 XP ahead of me even though we're grouped almost the whole time. My earlier thoughts were wrong - all group members get equal XP for a kill (provided we stay within a certain distance of each other, which for the most part we do) no matter who does the most actual damage or who takes the final shot. But the one thing that I didn't take into consideration was the fact that Kate had a chain of Rogue-only quests for which only she gets the XP.

We still have a bunch of quests to finish up in Duskwood and to be honest I'd like to get them done and move on - Duskwood is a dark and depressing place.

Duskwood

A Short Exploration

Kate has a bad cold and wasn't feeling too good so we didn't play for long, but we did clear two short quests. The first was to find 'Mary' to ask about a mirror; however the mirror had been stolen by a level 26 Insane Ghoul (the very same ghoul that wiped us both - see the entry for June 17), so the second quest was to whack the ghoul and get the mirror. No problem this time.

We have three simpler quests in Duskwood, all of which involve killing spiders, wolves and ghouls, but mostly these are set at the western side and we were mostly in the east, so next trip we'll see about heading that way.

We explored a little of southern Duskwood and found a group of level 29/30 mobs. Even though we're only level 25 we should be able to take them, provided that we make sure we only go after one at a time but this time around we decided to leave them alone. We did do a short foray into that area so that Kate could skin some of the corpses that someone had left behind, but we got out pretty quick. We took a quick trip to Stormwind to check on auctions and set up a couple of new ones, then quit.

The auctions seem to be going well - I sold an axe for 12 silver and some coppers, for example. I need to work on a good price for the 6- and 8-slot bags I've been making since they're not selling as well as they might - I think I have the buyout price too high.

Research

WoWWiki is a cool resource for checking things out. For example I've found out why Rhahk'Zor and Sneed's Shredder are way tougher than their levels would indicate: it's because they're Elite mobs and as such have they have many of the attributes of mobs three levels higher and they have buffs and resistances that non-Elite don't have. That explains so much.

I also found out some stuff about the Deadmines that will save us a heap of problems later, such as the fact that the pilot of Sneed's Shredder is none other than Sneed himself - and when we take the shredder down we'll then immediately have to fight Sneed. And once we're past him we have another nasty goblin to get past. And once we're past him and get to the Cove, we have to take on five - count'em, five - level 20 elite mobs that are all in the same general area and have additional non-Elites around them. The Deadmines are designed for groups of five players including a Tank; we're one (1) Mage and one (1) Rogue. I think we'll be able to do this but we're definitely going to need several more levels before we can reduce the threat level to 'challenging' from its current rating of 'certain death'.

Deeper into the Deadmines

We took on the Deadmines again, and made it a little further this time. Rhahk'Zor was a challenge but this time he went down for the long dirtnap.

In the next area we found half a dozen or so nasty little goblins, and the little buggers were tough - apparently they have at least some fire resistance. Arcane missiles seemed pretty effective, though. The biggest problem now is Sneed's Shredder - a mechanical humanoid robot-like thing. And it got us, although it was close.

Lesson learned: you can't go by the level of an opponent when estimating your chances - it means nothing. Rhahk'Zor is supposedly level 19 but he has so much health that it took both of us at level 25, giving him everything we've got, to bring him down. I suspect that either one of us would need at least level 30 to take him on solo and have a chance. Sneed's Shredder is claimed to be level 20.

Kate wanted to go up against the shredder again; I didn't. A big part of the fun of playing is going up against the challenges, but when the opponents are so tough that you have to fight them over and over, just to get to the next one only to find that it's even tougher... well, it becomes an exercise in futility and frustration. I'm happy to wait for level 28 and try again, rather than just bashing and being bashed.

We decided to go for a quest that requires taking out fifteen Blackrock Champions in the hills north of Lakeshire. While we were scouting the area Kate went through the gate into the Burning Steppes - and was immediately flattened by some hovering, mechanical looking thing with flames for feet (it was over so quick I didn't get a good look at it). We won't be going that way for a while...

We found the Champions but they're in a cave at the end of a canyon; the canyon is filled with Blackrock Summoners and Renegades, and the cave is cramped and the Champions are so close together it's almost impossible to cut them out of the herd and take them on in ones and twos. Individually they're not so tough but they're level 24 and tend to come at us in groups of three and four. We got two before we decided to leave this one and come back later - again, a challenge is one thing but when you're getting killed by the bad guys once for every one of them you take down, and you have to run all the way back from the graveyard each time, it gets old pretty quick.

So for now we've moved on to Darkshire, where we have a fair number of outstanding quests to clear up. Maybe by the time we've done those we'll be in better shape to take on the Deadmines and the Champions - I still have something like twenty quests on my list out of a possible twenty-five, and I'd really like to open up about half of those slots for new quests before we start taking on any new ones.

Yet More Eastern Redridge

Grinding for the Good Stuff

Things didn't go according to plan (they rarely do). One of the things we'd noticed in the Gnoll camp in eastern Redridge was a chest that always seemed to contain some good stuff. We decided to do a bit more grinding in that area, in part for the XP but mostly for that chest. We both got killed a couple of times (these guys are a level or two above us, and there are a lot of them about) but we got level 25 and picked up some good stuff.

We did three quests - the first was to take the pendants that we'd picked up the day before over to the Tower of Azora. That led to another quest that meant coming back with different pendants and placing them on a statue near the tower, and that led to another quest that involved dropping a pendant into a jar on the top of the Stonewatch Tower - this last one being made much easier by the fact that someone had been in the tower just before us and killed everything in the tower and the surrounding area.

With all that done we nipped over to Stormwind, fiddled a bit with some auctions and picked up a couple of things. One was Strange Dust - nothing I'd found and disenchanted in Redridge had yielded any dust so I ended up buying two units on an auction buyout; now at least I can add that +1 to all resistances to Kate's cloak. I also picked up two Tailoring patterns that'll let me create eight-slot bags that I can auction off (the six-slot bags I've made all sold well).

Kate bought me a necklace that adds 10 to my attack power - even though I'm not a melee fighter, this'll help when something gets too close. Even though she never says anything I still owe her a bunch of cash for the things she's bought to help me out.

We're all set now to hit the Deadmines again, and with level-25 and all the other stuff we've got, Rhahk'Zor isn't going to find us easy meat the next time we meet him. Our next trip in, we're going directly to the Deadmines before we do anything else.

Going West

I talked to Kate about taking a trip to Kalimdor, but before that some research I did gave us a new reason to head that way.

According to WoWWiki, there are only four Alliance Weapon Trainers in the whole of Azeroth, and only one does Bow training - and he (or she) is located in Darnassus on the island of Teldrassil, just a hop from Auberdine in northwest Kalimdor.

Kate and I are both wary about going to the Stonetalon Mountains, mostly because there's a Horde settlement close by. If we just did Teldrassil for the bow training then returned to the Eastern Kingdoms, that wouldn't be a worry. But we're also a little concerned about the neutral Wetlands town that we'd have to go near or through on the way to Menethil Harbour - and there's no avoiding that area if we want to go to Kalimdor.

My main concern comes from the fact that any Horde we meet won't be NPCs - they'll be other players, and therefore unpredictable and potentially dangerous. If we were to encounter one or two lower-level characters we could simply avoid confrontation, and if they're dumb enough to take on two level-25 opponents then they'll get what's coming to them. But there's always the danger of running into higher-level characters, or a large group, in which case we could be in serious trouble.

I'm probably making way too much of this; for all I know the chance of anything happening is very low, and we might walk right through the Wetlands without a hint of trouble. And in any case, there's a chance of there being other Alliance players nearby, so we wouldn't necessarily be quite so vulnerable.

Nevertheless we decided to defer this until we have a couple more levels - 26 or 27, say - and in the meantime we still have plenty of quests to clear up.

The Guild that Isn't

We can't go into Stormwind without being pestered to join one guild or another. I'll be in the middle of buying stuff from a vendor or trading with Kate, and suddenly I'll get a popup telling that someone has invited me to join their guild. It seems to be getting worse as we level; I suspect that when someone sees a level-25 Mage and Rogue with no guild affiliation, they assume we'll want to join. I hate to think how things are going to be when we get to level 30, 40, 50. These people don't think; if we wanted to be part of a guild we'd have joined one by now. The fact that we haven't should be a signal that says we don't want to.

So I'm thinking of starting a guild of our very own: The UnGuild. An antisocial non-community of players who don't want to be in a guild. Join us then forget us. Communication between guild members limited to a 'hi' or a friendly wave. No guild tabard; no guild vault at the bank; no web page; no nothing. The UnGuild's one and only benefit of membership: reduction or elimination of pestering by members of other guilds. Our motto: "I don't want to belong to any club that will accept people like me as a member".

I'm almost serious about this, and frankly I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't already been done. I may do a search of the online Armory later to see if there's already a 'guild' like the UnGuild.

Grinding in Redridge

We spent quite a long time exploring the southern and southeastern parts of Redridge Mountains - as I'd suspected, a look at the map confirmed that we'd pretty much covered the northeast. Starting in the south, we swept east then north and found that the enemies get tougher as you go along. One unexpected find was a group including leatherworkers and a skinning trainer, hidden away in a pass in the farthest eastern reach of Redridge. Although I wasn't able to make use of their specialities, it did give me an opportunity to sell some of the picked-up junk clogging my packs and get my equipment repaired.

Ultimately, in the area just south of the nearby tower, we found a large Gnoll camp - Warriors and Shadowcasters mostly, and all level 25/26 - and there are enough of them about that you can't take out more than half of them before they start respawning again. We stayed in that area, grinding for XP, for quite a while before heading back to Lakeshire and then flying on to Stormwind. Thanks to all the XP I'm now halfway to level 25, thanks to all the drops I have four items up for auction, and thanks to the cash we picked up I now have 33-armour head protection.

We still have at least two quests remaining in Redridge - one to take out 15 Blackrock Champions in the hills north of Lakeshire, and another to find and eliminate 'Lieutenant Fangore', who I suspect could be another Gnoll but I can't be sure. Before that, though, we're going to take another shot at the Deadmines and before we do that Kate wants to pick up some extra protective items in Stormwind. I also want to find something to disenchant for Strange Dust - I have a spell to add +1 to all resistances on a cloak, and I want to use it on Kate's cloak before we hit the mines.

So we have a plan for our next trip: Grind for Strange Dust, Stormwind for equipment, Deadmines, then (if time permits) back to Lakeshire for the Champions and the Lieutenant. If we can do all that we'll have cleared six quests, hopefully leaving none remaining in Westfall or Redridge, and be ready to move on to Duskwood.

One slight wrinkle is that while fighting the Gnolls we both picked up pendants that start a new quest - this one means going back to the Tower of Azora in the eastern part of the Elwynn Forest. The Tower is quite a way from any flightmaster so we'll have to hoof it, and I'm thinking that the quickest way may be to walk from Lakeshire or even Darkshire rather than Stormwind.

I really hope this doesn't start a new quest chain that means sticking around that area, because I'm itching to see new parts. In fact I've been looking at the maps to see how we might manage the quest to the Stonetalon Mountains in Kalimdor. As far as I can tell we'd fly to Ironforge then strike out east then north into the Wetlands. We'd have to pass through Wetland Town - which is neutral so there could be Horde there - but if we can make it we'd hit the road east to Menethil Harbour. Then we could decide whether or not we wanted to continue; Menethil has a flightmaster so we could easily abort at that point.

If we decided to continue we'd take the ship to Auberdine in northwest Kalimdor, then on foot south to Stonetalon. As far as I can tell most of the zones we'd pass through are relatively safe for level 24 although I'm not sure about the approach to Stonetalon itself - the indications on the map are that mountains to the north might be an obstacle and if so we'd have to skirt round them to the east, which could take us dangerously close to a Horde zone.

Once in Stonetalon Peak we still have to perform the quest - to collect eight basilisk scales (or is it salamander scales? I don't remember for sure). The trip back would be safe and easy by comparison - Gryphon to Auberdine, ship to Menethil Harbour, Gryphon to Stonewind then take the scales to the quest giver in the Mage quarter for the reward.

The whole thing would be risky, but I keep thinking what an adventure! New places, new sights, flights on Gryphons, a sea voyage! I want to talk this over with Kate and see what she thinks.

Eastern Redridge

Level 24

We mostly stuck around Redridge to clean up some quests. We took down Yowler (who is basically no more than a level-20 version of the level-11 Hogger), took magical orbs from Shadowcasters and pendants from Gnolls, and in the process I think we've explored most of the northeast corner of Redridge. With the combined XP from the quests we were able to hit Level 24, so it was off to Stormwind again for Mage and Rogue training and to auction off some of the better gear we'd picked up.

Again the Mage training cost just about all the cash I'd made, but at least I now have a much more powerful Fireball and a reduction in the cooldown time on Fire Blast, among other things. Together with the increased health and mana that comes with the level-up, I think we're now truly ready for the Deadmines - Rhahk'Zor is just an NPC and therefore it's impossible to really hate him, but I want to get past him and my upgraded fire spells should help leave the fat bugger crispy-fried. In the meantime we still have three or four quests outstanding in Redridge. Which to do first... we'll figure that out later.

I also got Teleport training, meaning that (with the help of a Rune of Teleportation) I can get back to Stormwind in a hurry from wherever I happen to be - probably something I'd only do in an emergency since it only works on me and Kate would be left behind, and in any case the runes aren't cheap. (Later I should get the Portal skill, which will allow us to travel together.)

The auctions seem to have been helping with the money, although it's often disappointing when a very basic item such as a gem sells and yet an item of 'green' armour or a weapon fails to get bids. I'd need to keep accounts to see how things are really working out but I'm fairly sure that overall I'm making more money on sales than I'm losing with lost deposits. At the moment I've got five items up, including a Claymore I picked up from a Gnoll that I expect to sell well, and a gem that I can't recall where I got.

Note to self: repay Kate the 25 silver she gave me, and the cost of a rune, when I'd spent all my cash on training and reagents. Plus interest.

Kate keeps getting ahead of me on XP even though we're grouped. It doesn't really bother me other than that I like it better when we're tracking each other on levels. In any case, I think I know why this is happening; originally I'd assumed that XP was split evenly among group members, but I'm beginning to think that what really happens is that the XP is portioned according to how much damage each group member does. So if a mob has 1000 hit points, I do 400 damage and Kate deals out the other 600, then she gets 60% of the XP and I get 40%. This is definitely possible because as a Rogue, Kate's character deals out damage faster than my Mage can. Another possibility is that the group member that finishes a fight gets a bigger share of the XP - and again this would explain it because Kate finishes the fights more often than I do. I think WoWWiki has a section about the detailed game mechanics, so I may do a little research about groups and XP.

Reality

Regular readers (Sid and Doris Bonkers of Epping) will have noticed that this has turned into a World of Warcraft blog, since I've written about nothing else for the last week or more. The plain reason is that (1) I want to write, but (2) I don't feel much like writing about what I'm doing at work (boring to the n^th degree) or stuff that upsets or depresses me. That's not to say that there's nothing good going on - there are plenty of good things but in many cases those things are too personal for a blog, or involve Kate who may not want these things made public, or for other reasons are just not suitable blog material.

So for the foreseeable future the major subject of the posts here will be our adventures in Azeroth - something that's fun and easy to write about, hurts nobody, and may be a useful reference for ourselves or others.

Return to the Deadmines

We decided to try the Deadmines again but first we went to Stormwind - according to WoWWiki there are five quests in the mines, of which we had three, and the other two can be picked up from an NPC in the Dwarven Quarter. My thought was that if we had all the quests in our logs we could (in theory) clear out all five and get a big bucket of XP in one hit.

Naturally, it didn't quite go to plan. One quest was easy, because it simply involved picking up bandannas from Defias and we didn't even need to go through the instance portal for that. Once through the portal we had to try again to get past that big ogre ("Rhahk'Zor") and this time we almost had him. By hitting him with a Fireball at his closest approach I was able to get his attention without alerting the other Defias; Kate started chopping away with her poisoned blades while I hit him with Arcane Missiles and Fire Blast from a distance.

Despite the fact that Rhahk'Zor is only level 19 compared to our 23, he still takes a huge amount of damage. We almost had him, but he finally got Kate and came after me - and by that time my mana was almost out. Once he was on me it was all over - I had no way to keep him at a distance and for me that's the end. It wouldn't be so bad but on top of the huge damage he does in a single blow, there's three seconds of stun that stops you running or even drinking any potions.

So I guess we'll hold off for one more level up and try again. His time is coming, though.

Back at Stormwind I picked up a huge set of new Tailoring patterns and set up a couple of auctions. I also bought a sword - I need to get some practice in to get my skill level up with that, though. At this point we have the choice of finishing up some quests in Redridge (which would be my choice, just to clean out our quest logs a bit) or Duskwood (which would probably get us better XP short-term).

Poison

The Klaven's Tower quest run went pretty much as well as we could have expected. The first time Kate's character tried to pick the key from the pocket of the malformed Defias patrolling the tower, it turned out that someone else had already snitched it so I whacked him to force a respawn and we got the key on the second attempt. So far, so good.

Kate went into the tower stealthed and I followed - Kate was able to spot the guards without being seen and then I could get them out of the way, at least until we were almost to the top of the tower, when Kate got spotted and set upon by two guards. We got rid of them but not before Kate got wiped. Still, that just left Klaven himself on the top floor and he wasn't any trouble - Kate opened the locked Duskwood chest and we got out.

This is where the game sneaked in a surprise - somewhere along the line Kate got poisoned with something ('Touch of Zanzil') that knocked down her agility by 15% and eliminated her capacity to use Stealth, and it had a seven DAY duration on it.

It turns out it's part of the quest chain, and to get it cured you have to gather some items for an antidote. Three of the four items are easy-peasy, but the fourth (a bronze tube) is pretty hard to find - according to WoWWiki, there are only three merchants in the places we've been that sell them, and the supply is very limited but it seems that they replenish about every 30 minutes. We located the merchant in Stormwind and he didn't have one, so we waited for one to reappear in his inventory... and waited... and waited. We got tired of waiting and I left Kate to watch that first vendor while I went to try the one in Ironforge (he didn't have one) and then Darkshire (he didn't have one either). In the end we gave up and found the thing in the Auction House with a buyout price of 35 silver - probably four times the vendor price, but at least we were able to get Kate's character cured.

With that done, Kate now had the Poison skill (yay!) and is now able to treat her blades with poisons that last an hour at a time.

We decided then to head into Duskwood and make some progress in our quests there and we were able to clear two or three of those, and we made level 23 in the process. We still have quests in Redridge and three or four that mean going back to the Deadmines. I'm thinking we should do the Deadmines first, but we'll decide that when the time comes.

On the Auctions, the three gems I put up for sale all sold for good money, but the cloth armour came back to me unsold so I just took it to a vendor. I'm still planning on selling most of the good stuff by auction (when it actually sells, that is). Perhaps rarer items such as guns would have a bit more interest than plain old cloth armour.

Welcome to the Auction House

We spent some time in the Alther's Mill area knocking down spiders and condors to push us up to level 22, since we were so close to that, and once we'd got the level up it was back to Stormwind for training. I picked up a new spell (Scorch) and a couple of upgrades from the Mage Trainer and while we were there I got a couple of new Formulae from an Enchantment Trainer and picked up a new recipe from a Cooking Trainer. I forgot to hit up the Tailoring Trainer, so I'll make a point of doing that the next chance I get.

While Kate spent a few minutes at the weapons shop in the Trade District I scouted around the square and found the Auction House. Now this is pretty cool - up until now, when I've found items that Kate and I have no use for I've had the choice of disenchanting them or selling them to a vendor. Now I have a third choice - put them up for auction. I had three gems sitting in the bank, because I had no idea what to do with them, so (more as an experiment than anything else) I put them up for sale on 24-hour auctions. The way I understand it, if an item sells I'll get the cash through the in-game mail system and if it doesn't I'll get it back the same way.

Once we were done in Stormwind we went back to Alther's mill and since Stonewatch Tower is very close, went after a few of the orcs that have taken it over. That gained us a couple of axes that counted toward a quest, so we concentrated on those to get the required ten each so we could close out that quest (which we did). I also picked up some uncommon (green) cloth armour - not quite as good as what I already have, and not even close to the leather gear Kate has - and I was planning on selling it to recoup some of what I'd spent on training. Now that's up for auction too. We'll see how this works out but if it makes more cash than I'd get by simply selling the stuff, I think in future I'll gather all the uncommon items I find that we can't use, disenchant one or two so that I keep a supply of Enchantment materials, and auction the rest.

Kate voiced a question that had been at the back of my mind for a while: Where can we get the big money? I know that the most cash I've ever had is not much more than 1 Gold Piece, and so far every time I've managed to get that much I've had to spend most or all of it on training. It can't go on for ever like this - the vendors have swords, daggers, staffs, wands and all kinds of other items that I should be able to use but the prices on many of them are way more than I'm likely to have for a good while, if ever. So how is a player supposed to get that kind of money? I was wondering if maybe that kind of cash is simply out of reach until you get to level 30+, say, but I was also worried that maybe we've been doing something wrong. Maybe the Auction House is the way you're supposed to do these things; who knows? I'll do some checking later but for the moment I'll certainly be using the auctions.

Our next objective is to finish up the Klaven's Tower quest so that Kate can get her poison skill. After that, maybe we'll try the Deadmines again. Or maybe not.

Dead in the Deadmines

We completed the outstanding quest in Westfall, which was to intercept a Defias Messenger on the road between Moonbrook and the Jangolode Mine. Completing that quest triggered another, which was to escort a Defias Traitor and keep him alive so that he could show us the location of the Defias' head honcho. That turned out to be the entrance to the Deadmines on the western side of Moonbrook, and knowing that location led to what should be the final quest in that particular chain - to bring back the head honcho, but without the 'honcho' part.

The Deadmines are a bit of a maze and it took us a while to find the Instance Portal. Not far inside we ran into a big troll-like thing with a huge club, with at least two Defias guards. We got killed twice before deciding to call a halt on this one for the moment. The crazy thing is this big troll isn't technically that tough - level 18 or 19, I think.

It's down to bad strategy; I let him get too close. The biggest problem from my point of view was that Frost Nova doesn't work on this git, so he was on top of me before I could get away. The big guy took two thirds of my health with a single whack of that club, so the second whack was the end for me. It also looks like there's a Stun attack - I wasn't able to move for a couple of seconds after being hit, giving the bad guys plenty of time to take another shot at me. Kate was able to do the big guy some serious damage but the Defias guards were on her at the same time, and I couldn't hold them off.

So I'm thinking on two possible strategies; the first is to let Kate take him on while I take care of the guards. That doesn't sound like a winner; the second one might be better - Polymorph the big guy, which (if he's not immune to Polymorph like he is to Frost Nova) would put him out of the picture for up to twenty seconds during which we can get the guards. That would leave just the two of us against the brute; if Kate can keep him busy I can be hitting him from a distance with Fire Blast, Arcane Missile, Fireball and (if he's within range) Arcane Explosion. In any case we're not too far off level 22, so maybe we'll just wait a little while before we go back to try again. I suspect, though, that once we're past this particular obstacle, we may find worse as we go deeper into the mine. I have no problem with leaving this one alone until we hit level 24.

Having withdrawn to the inn in Lakeshire and done repairs and the rest, we decided it was high time to see about cutting Bellygrub into pork chops. It was quick but he still almost got me again. Mana Shield saved me but it was a close thing - my health and mana were almost out when he went down.

Now we have to decide whether to run the Klaven's Tower quest (the one that'll give Kate her Poisoning skill) or we can take our pick from a number of quests around Redridge and Duskwood.

Questing and Skills

Back to Redridge

The Alther's Mill quest allowed Kate to get her character's lockpicking skill up over 90, so we're about ready to go back to the tower in Westfall. I really want her to get that poison skill as soon as possible even though it could be tough - we're both level 21 now, but we'll be up against higher-level enemies and possibly more of them than we can handle if they come at us together (we try to take these kinds of guys on one at a time, but that's not always possible). It's Kate's Rogue-only quest, so it'll be her call as to whether or not we hold off until level 22.

We've relocated back to Lakeshire, because it turns out we're far from finished there - the level 26-28 mobs we saw in Duskwood should have been a clue that we're not ready for that area yet. We explored a good part of the area north-east of Lakeshire and out toward the eastern end of Redridge, and found that the bad guys are tougher than we expected at level 22-23. I think we need to stay there for a while longer and clean up as many of the quests as we can before moving on.

One thing I noticed about the quest list is that different quests show up in different colours, but it wasn't until yesterday that I found out the significance; the colour indicates how difficult a quest is relative to your current level, which explains why I've seen the colours change as we gain experience. Yellow quests are about matched to your level. Green quests are easy, and one source suggests completing those before levelling because otherwise they'll change to Grey, meaning that they're so easy you won't gain any XP. Since we have one quest outstanding in Westfall, and it's green, we really need to do that one very soon.

At the other end of the scale are the Red quests, which according to one source means they're basically suicide missions. The two boss fights I mentioned in an earlier post are still showing up red, so now that I know what that means I have no intention of even making the attempt just yet. We even have one red quest that means a trip by sea to the Stonetalon Mountains in Kalimdor - I guess the game throws the occasional long-term quest at you. I suspect that one's going to be on the list for quite a while.

As for Bellygrub, we didn't get around to the planned pig-whacking yet, but that's definitely coming soon; that quest is Orange, meaning that it's a tough proposition but not impossible. Two level-21 characters should be able to take on a level-24 porker, right? Well, we'll see...

Skills

On the weapons front, I now have the ability to use daggers and swords, and I do a little more damage with a dagger than I did with the two-handed staff I was using. Since the dagger is one-handed I'm hoping I can use a shield - I need the extra armour. I want to get a sword, but buying all the skill training the other day left me a bit short so it'll be a little while before I can gather enough cash.

Kate bought a better sword and because she's able to dual-wield she has another blade in her off-hand. Since she got that setup she's been slicing up murlocs and boars left and right - I'm guessing she's doing about twice the damage she was before.

I'm better at fishing and cooking than I am at enchanting; that's pretty sad for a Mage. I've been making a point of fixing that by enchanting and re-enchanting the same items over and over, and I think I've got the skill level up to around 45. I'm hampered a little because each enchanting takes Strange Dust, and you can't just buy that stuff; to get it I have to disenchant 'green' items that I pick up from mobs, but first I have to decide whether those items are useful to me or Kate, and often they are. Even when I find something that I can disenchant (which destroys the item), I don't always get Strange Dust. As a result I can only build up the skill slowly. I really need to get it up to around 70 or so; that's going to take a while.

Westfall and Duskwood

It turns out that I wasn't quite right about Kate's character getting the Poison skill at level 20 - the web page I read about that oversimplified. In fact what happens is that you get the first quest in a short chain; completing the second quest gives the skill as a reward.

Following the quest instructions we went out to a tower in a far corner of the Westfall. The first quest wasn't too hard - just find a Rogue hiding outside the tower. The second quest? Well, it doesn't sound too bad - pick the pocket of a Defias to get a key, then sneak inside the tower and use the key to open a chest. The tough part is that the tower's patrolled by Defias guys - and they all seem to be level 22 and above. Another thing is that according to one source Kate's going to need skill level 70 or better at lockpicking, and I don't think she's that high yet. We decided to hold off on this one, but I have an idea for a plan that might work. [Edit: actually we need to go back to Lakeshire and do the Alther's Mill quest - that should bring Kate's lockpicking skill up to the necessary level.]

Instead we made some progress on a couple of the other quests then went into Duskwood. On a visit to Darkshire a few days ago we picked up several quests but put them off since we had so many uncompleted quests in Redridge, but having finished a good number of those we decided to move on. We have a trail of uncompleted odd quests behind us - a couple in Westfall and three or four in Redridge - but I'm thinking we can go back for those, especially since we're both just about to hit level 21 and the extra boost will help.

We're going to have to be very careful in Duskwood - at one point we were attacked (terminally) by a level 26 Ghoul, and we saw level 28 monsters in the woods not too far from Darkshire. We'll be sticking to the roads for a while at least. If things get too sticky, we can always go back to Redridge; we haven't explored any of the eastern end of that region.

Level 20 and Other Players

Level 20

We got both of our characters to Level 20, and flew to Stormwind and our respective class trainers to get our updated skills. Not cheap - I wanted to make sure I got everything, on the basis that you never know what you're going to need, and it cost me everything I had and more (I had to sell a couple of things to cover the last item on the list).

At level 20 my Mage does indeed get teleportation ability, in the form of the 'Blink' spell that flings you forward 20 yards. This promises to be very useful - Mages don't do well in melee combat, so anything that keeps some distance between you and an enemy is a good thing. Blink should let me jump away if something gets too close.

Another useful new spell is Fire Ward, which absorbs a good chunk of fire damage. This has already been useful against Dragon Whelps and Gnoll Mystics, which both attack with Fireballs.

Another new spell is Evocation. This restores 60% of your mana, and that's literally a lifesaver - if your mana runs out in the middle of a brawl you're suddenly reduced to hitting your enemy with a stick or even your fists, or running away. You can't drink water to restore mana while in combat, so the best you can do is hope you have a mana potion and the time to drink it. As a general rule a Mage with no mana probably has about ten seconds to live. Evocation changes that - I'm thinking if I get into a low-mana situation I can immobilize the bad guys with Frost Nova or maybe Polymorph, Blink away then hit Evocation. Evocation sounds great but it has two major drawbacks: for one, it takes four seconds to get the full 60% restore and you can't move or fire off any other spells during that time; if you do, or if something hits you, it cuts the spell short. The other problem is that it has an eight minute cooldown, which pretty much limits you to one use in any normal fight.

As far as Kate's character goes, she should have got the Poisoning skill, but we're not sure that she picked it up when we were in Stormwind so we have to go back very soon to be sure. It turns out that the skill involves creating a potion of some kind then applying it to your bladed weapon of choice. When you hit an enemy with the poisoned blade they suffer nature damage on top of the normal strike damage.

We still didn't get to the two boss fights that I mentioned in the Lakeshire area, but I think our next quest may very well be to take on Bellygrub (again) - he's a level-24 boar living just west of Lakeshire, and so far he's killed us both two or three times. You'd think he wouldn't be too much trouble - he doesn't have any ranged or magic attacks - but he takes a lot of damage, he's fast and imparts lots of hurt close-up. The strategy we've been using just isn't working, but our new skills and spells should help a good bit.

Other Players

Yes, I know WoW is a huge multiplayer community, and yes, I know that it can be useful to form groups to take down some of the tougher monsters. But that doesn't mean I'm about to group with someone I don't know. Kate and I play as a two-person group when it suits us, and just close together but ungrouped at other times, and that's fine with me.

We try not to get in other players' way. If it's plain that other players are in some area trying to take down boars or gnolls or whatever, we generally leave them alone. This is especially true when whatever it is we're there for is in short supply (there's only one Hogger at any given time, for example, so it's a bit daft when four or six other players all try to get him at the same time - better to come back when things aren't so busy).

So I don't appreciate it when other players try to muscle in when we are doing the same thing. It's annoying when we find a promising area to grab a few items for a quest, then two minutes later a bunch of other characters show up (and don't have the decency to go and find something else to do and come back later), force us to stay three or four times longer than we would otherwise, just to get what we came for - and then have the nerve to complain about us taking 'their' kills. I don't like it when someone invites us to join their group when we were there first and doing just fine without their 'help'. And I don't like it when someone starts a little impromptu group by hanging around our characters without saying anything, and joining in uninvited every time a fight starts up.

I don't know if things are any different on other Realms - the one we're in is 'Normal' and I'm really not that fussed about going onto a PvP realm (to me that sounds too much like a kind of Warcraft Deathmatch) but I'm curious to know whether the people on the Role Playing realms are perhaps a little more sensible and courteous.

Questing

Our characters are now located in Lakeshire in the Redridge Mountains. We both just hit level 19, mostly thanks to completing a slew of quests. We have a bunch of quests remaining that involve finding and eliminating bad guys, including two in particular that look like they could be pretty tough boss fights, and that'll probably give us both enough XP to hit level 20, which I think will unlock some very useful new skills for both of us - Kate's Rogue, for example, should be able to use poisons and I think I'll be able to use portals or teleportation. With as many of this type of quests on our list, I think we're likely to be in the Redridge area for a while although we do have a couple of quests outstanding in Westfall that we'll have to go back to finish up.

Gryphons are cool. We encountered our first flightmaster in Sentinel Hill (we didn't know about these guys when we first got to Stormwind) and since then we've added the ones in Stormwind, Ironforge, Thelsamar (we took the Deeprun Tram from Stormwind to Ironforge then hoofed it to Thelsamar to complete a quest), Lakeshire and Darkshire. I guessed that the size of the game world made it likely that there'd be some fast method of long-range travel, but I was assuming some kind of teleport system, like Diablo II's waypoints. I wasn't expecting to be able to fly on the back of a Gryphon and it's awesome. I'm looking forward to being able to fly the entire length of Azeroth.

Idle time

How is it possible to be busy and idle at the same time?

To find the answer to that question, get a Government job. I'm working on a very important and urgent job involving setting up a system of eight servers and getting all the applications installed and configured, and I've got less than a week to get it all done. And here I am blogging, because I can't do anything more until certain people get certain paperwork done and get back to me. Frustrating.

More WoW

We got a bit further last night - completed four or five quests, got a couple of levels (we're both level 10 now), learned a few skills (in my case fishing, cooking, tailoring and enchantment). Not much in the way of exploring, although we did find the East-something logging camp (we were actually very close to it before, but just didn't know it).

We have another quest to finish up at the logging camp and that'll probably lead to exploring the rest of the south-eastern corner of the area we're in, and while we're on our way back there I want to stop at the Tower of Azora to pick up some supplies. I know there are also another couple of quests waiting in the area near the mine south of Goldshire, so we'll probably swing over that way on our way back west. After that we have at least two quests waiting for us in the Westfall, which will probably lead to more quests around there and I suspect a couple more levels, then it's off to the capital, Stormwind.

I suspect it'll take us more than a couple of hours to do all that, but I'm really curious about what Stormwind will be like and I can't wait to get there - I know it sounds silly (it's just a game, after all) but it's like the virtual equivalent of going to visit London when the biggest place you've ever seen is Nowheresville-in-the-Marsh (population 2). It promises to be very interesting.

World of Warcrack

See snow-covered mountain peaks... visit massive, ancient castles... explore monstrous caves and dungeons... fight wolves, bears, thugs and dozens of other enemies... watch looters picking over your decaying corpse and stealing all your stuff... decline offers to duel with hundreds of other players... laugh at people dancing in skimpy clothes... avoid crowds of kiddies hanging out outside an inn (at least they're not hanging out around a real inn)... Welcome to World of Warcraft!

Okay, I took a few liberties with the blurb inside the box. Yes, we finally joined the World of World of Warcraft. I have to say this wasn't something I'd really anticipated doing; I've been wary of getting into any MMO games because of some of the stories I'd heard about game addiction and what's happened in some (admittedly very extreme) cases. But one of Kate's friends is a WoW player and has been pushing her to give it a try, so we bit the bullet and installed it.

I don't need to tell anyone who plays how much fun it is, and how fast the time passes without you realizing. A couple of nights ago we were playing and I was thinking it was probably about 2am. When I looked at the clock, it was 5:30am. Yeesh. In future I'm keeping a clock or something on my desk so I don't lose track.

We haven't got especially far yet - only as far as Goldshire, the second major settlement you reach. We don't have very strong characters either - we're both level 8, which caused a certain amount of trouble exploring one area where there were a lot of level-9 and level-10 Murlocs; we both got killed at least three or four times before we were able to get to a safe area again.

But, it's fun exploring this huge virtual world... I suspect we'll be doing this at least an hour or two most nights for some time to come.