A Big Leap Forward

Our Friday session was pretty epic - we covered a lot of new ground. (There was no Saturday session - we were too busy to play beyond a quick check of auctions and mail.)

We started off by going back to Theramore and heading straight out into Dustwallow Marsh. Just off the road north is Swamplight Manor where we picked up three quests - "Swamp Eye" Jarl the cook needed some frog legs, Mordant Grimsby wanted us to whack some Risen Spirits, and we found a document written in Orcish that would have to be returned to Theramore.

Theramore could wait so we went out into the area around the manor to take care of the other two quests (easy) which led to two more quests; Jarl wanted us to pick up spider eyes from Darkmist Cavern to the west, while Grimsby needed us to pick some Witchbane plants from around the marsh nearby. We took care of the witchbane first and Grimsby gave us another quest - he made a torch from the witchbane and had us light it at the end of the dock outside the manor to see what it would summon. What it summoned was Zelfrax, a level 36 demon with bat wings. At this time I was level 35 and Kate 36; Zelfrax wasn't a problem and with him out of the way we headed west to find Darkmist Cavern.

The cavern isn't hard to find although it looked a lot more like an abandoned mine than a natural cavern. In any case there are plenty of spiders in and around the place so it didn't take long to fill the quota of eyes that Jarl needed. We also found that it's one fairly good place to find the white spider meat that we've been looking for (I picked up enough to make ten lots of spider sausage).

We didn't head back to the manor right away, instead choosing to head south to explore the marsh a bit more and try to find the turtles we needed for another quest from earlier. The first find was Brackenwall Village, which is a Horde settlement so we left it pretty well alone. Further to the south we found Tabetha's Farm where we picked up another handful of quests - one to test a totem against some crocolisks, another to gather some marsh venom from the spiders and shredders around the farm, and one to find a Zeppelin crash site to the east.

We left off the crash site quest for a bit and took care of the other two quests. While we were doing that I found a road to the west and followed it a little way to the north - and found another road leading west, right into The Barrens so now we had a second way to get there. There was also a sign pointing to the Shady Rest Inn, but it turns out the place is a smoking ruin.

We headed back to Tabetha's Farm and closed out the two quests then went east to find the zeppelin crash site. There was a gnome there who wanted us to knock down some of the oozes wandering around the area and to pick up some of the supplies scattered around in the crash. Thanks to the Ooze Buster that she gave us the oozes weren't too hard (without it, we'd found, they're pretty tough - level 40 or more) and it didn't take long to complete the quests.

We didn't finish mapping the very southernmost part of the area; instead we went east to the water and swam across the bay back to Sentry Point then ran up the road from there so that we could give Jarl his spiders' eyes and close that quest out. Jarl gave us one last quest - to find a murloc called Razorspine north of the manor and get a sword from him. After a quick trip back into Theramore to close out the quest with the Orcish message, we headed north.

We didn't find Razorspine; what we did find was that if you go far enough along the beach you end up in The Barrens again, and when we continued along a bit further we found the port town of Ratchet.

This part of the Barrens is actually rather nice - it has the feel of a coastal town in north Africa and just inland is an area with animals that look a lot like lions, hyenas, zebras (the Azeroth counterparts are called Zhevras) and giraffes. Ratchet itself has a bank and a flightmaster - very handy.

We were able to close out a quest here by finding Wharfmaster Dizzywig on the dock, and he gave us the next quest which would mean taking a boat to Booty Bay. So off we went...

Booty Bay is in the very southernmost part of the Eastern Kingdoms, in Stranglethorn Vale. We didn't take much time to explore but we found the flightmaster and closed out the quest that Dizzywig had given us; the next quest in that chain will take us to Darkshire. With those couple of things done we took the boat back to Ratchet.

Kate needed (and still needs) to get her First Aid skill boosted a bit, since she's maxed out the points at her current skill level (Master, I think), and to do that we needed an auction house and a first aid trainer, so we flew from Ratchet all the way up to Darnassus. It also meant that Kate could get training to use a bow, since the only Alliance bow trainer in the world is there.

With that done I flew back to Ratchet, thinking that we'd be continuing with the quest to find Razorspine, but as it happened the first aid training wasn't successful and we thought Kate needed another book from Deneb Walker in Stromgarde Keep. She also needed Razor Arrows and I had to fly on from Ratchet to Theramore before I could find someone who sold them before flying back to Ratchet, where we joined up again.

We decided to try Stromgarde Keep, and from Ratchet it's easy - by boat back to Booty Bay then a flight to Refuge Pointe. We made our way out to Stromgarde but it turned out that Kate had already got all the books that Deneb Walker had available. This left us at a bit of a loss as to what to do next on the first aid front.

But there we were in the Arathi Highlands and we had a quest to do there, so we decided to take care of it. This was the one that meant getting the keys from the Circles of East, West and Outer Binding and taking them to the Circle of Inner Binding. Each circle is guarded by level 38/39 elementals, but by this time we'd got new levels (38 for me, 39 for Kate) and they weren't too hard.

With the keys gathered and taken to the last circle, we got one more quest - to find a giant called Fozruk. We'd seen him around and we thought we knew where to find him, but we looked around for a while without any luck, so we decided to call time and headed back to Ironforge to take care of the usual business and pack it in for the day.

Afterward I did a little bit of research; it turns out that Fozruk wanders along the main road between the Circles of East and West binding, a little bit away from where we'd looked for him. At least we know where to look next. And on the first aid front, Kate needs to go back to Theramore to find the Trauma Surgeon - he has the missing piece of training she needs to progress.

So, all in all, a very productive session. We advanced three levels; we explored almost all of Dustwallow, found Ratchet and Booty Bay, and found two new ways into The Barrens so that we're getting ever closer to Thousand Needles.

We still have quests to close out in Dustwallow - we never did find Razorspine - and a little more exploring to do to finish up, and I'm guessing the first priority on our next trip will be to take care of Kate's first aid in Theramore.

Questing in Theramore

I started off by going back to Arathi to whack some more mobs for XP; by my reckoning I was around 74,000 points behind Kate. I closed that gap a bit - I can't be sure exactly how much, but I'm guessing I got around 10,000.

As soon as Kate was ready we took off for Theramore and instead of heading straight out into Dustwallow Marsh we ran some quests right there in town. One quest chain meant whacking some agitators, then going out to a ship moored at the dock to gather some pamphlets that the agitators had been putting out. The quest-giver then altered the message on the pamphlets and had us give them out to the guards. Finally, we had to swim out to an island not far from the dock and arrest the chief agitator.

Another quest had us go to speak to a gnome who's trying to get the lighthouse working. She told us she needed oil from the threshers that swim around under the docks, and this would have been difficult were it not for the fact that Kate had made a bunch of underwater breathing potions.

On the next trip in I'm hoping we can get out into the marsh and finish our exploration there.

Dustwallow Marsh

I started off by flying back out to Refuge Pointe to whack spiders and raptors for XP, to get my level to 36. I needed about 9500 XP so it took a while, although the rest bonus helped, and with the mobs only two levels above me I was never in any real danger so I wasn't worried about getting wiped and wasting time running back from the boneyard. I was also able to mine a little bit of tin and iron, although mining was definitely the lower priority.

As soon as I got the level I took care of one other bit of business - buying an Elekk. A quick flight from Refuge Pointe to Menethil then by boat to Auberdine and another boat to Azuremyst, and that was taken care of - I'm now the proud owner of a Brown Elekk (I wish they had blue ones, though). That done I hearthstoned back to Ironforge for level 36 Paladin training and the usual other business (selling vendor trash, repairing equipment, etc.).

Kate wasn't quite ready to go so after making sure I was stocked with potions, food and sharpening stones I flew out to Stormwind so that I could run around Elwynn Forest. This is part of something I've been doing for completeness; I want to go back to a bunch of the lower-level areas that we haven't completely explored (with these characters, anyway) and fill in the corners on the maps. I did Dun Morogh this way a couple of days ago and I'm planning on doing the same in Lakeshire, Westfall and Darkshire soon. Having a complete map of any given region is a big help at times, so I think spending ten or fifteen minutes running around like this, while it doesn't generate any XP, is still useful in the long run.

Kate was ready by the time I'd finished mapping Elwynn so we made our way back to Theramore; we'd left off the other day with a quest from diver Renn McGill to see Lady Jaina Proudmoore in the mage tower. However it turned out that we didn't both have the quest; Kate hadn't closed out the previous quest with McGill, so we ran back out to the island to find him - battling Defias and murlocs on the way - then dashed back to Theramore. Jaina closed that quest and gave us another that meant going back to Stormwind, but made things much easier by teleporting us directly to the room where the guy we needed to see was standing, so that was another quest in the chain closed out real quick. He sent us back to Theramore, and again things were sped along by running over to the mage quarter to see a mage called Malin who teleported us right back to Jaina in Theramore. Jaina closed out the last quest in the chain for a monster 4600 XP.

The next thing we wanted to do was to go back out to Dustwallow Marsh and explore the rest of the area, but it was getting late so we went back to Ironforge to finish up. We'll get back to that on the next trip.

Saving the World... Please Wait

Something unusual happened when we tried to enter the game; we couldn't get in. We would log in, get the character screen and click "Enter World", and then it would just hang. A check of the Realm Status page and the support forums revealed that a whole bunch of Realms had gone down (something to do with a problem with a couple of battlegroups, apparently). Things came back up after half an hour or so and we were able to get in, but things still weren't 100%...

The first thing I'd planned was to go to The Exodar and buy an Elekk, so I flew to Menethil and took the boat to Auberdine. So far so good. Then I switched boats to get to Azuremyst but when the boat took to sea it vanished out from under me, dumping me in the sea. At first I thought maybe I'd done something stupid, so I swam back to shore and got the next boat. This time I wasn't the only passenger, and a couple of minutes later the other passenger and I were both swimming back to shore. I tried one more time with the same result, then submitted a support ticket and gave it up.

We'd planned to go back out to Dustwallow Marsh to explore some more and maybe find some more spiders to whack, but since that means taking another boat we decided to not risk it being a waste of time. Instead we flew back out to Refuge Pointe and headed back to Drywhisker Gorge to knock down kobolds and mine some minerals. And that's what we did until Kate hit level 37, by which time it was time to pack it in for the night.

I'm short of level 36 by about 9500 XP so my first priority on the next trip will be to find an area to go and gain some points to catch up to Kate a bit - being one level behind isn't too much of a problem but two levels makes things very hard, not least of which is that it becomes increasingly difficult to keep us both alive if we get in fix. It would be better still if I could catch up to level 37 so that we have equal abilities - that would make it easier to help Kate out if she's having trouble with a high-level mob (at the moment she should be able to take on a level 40, but if I go toe-to-toe with something five levels higher than me it's usually not survivable).

After that, I'm still planning to get my elekk, and then we can see about going back to Dustwallow.

Spider Bites

Kate was having trouble maxing out her First Aid skill. I've seen this kind of thing with all skills before - the closer you get to the max, the more you have to do to gain points until eventually it doesn't matter how much you do, you just can't seem get that last point.

When you get into that position it's past time to see about updating the skill with some training. As I think I mentioned before, we got Kate's cooking skill up to Expert level by buying a book out in Ashenvale. I did a little checking and found that expert-level First Aid training works the same way, with a book you buy from a character in Stromgarde Keep in the Arathi Highlands.

Kate thought that she might have already got a copy of the book in the bank, but when she checked it turned out that she didn't so I flew out to Refuge Pointe and cut across to the Keep (on my new Warhorse, which saved a lot of time), found the guy, bought the book and headed back to Ironforge to hand it over to Kate. Her First Aid max went from 150 (Journeyman) to 225 (Expert) and now she shouldn't have problems until she gets close to the next level, which I think is Master.

On the cooking front, both of us have the recipe for Spider Sausage (yum!) which sounds disgusting but replenishes a lot of health and gives a bigger 'well fed' bonus than the Turtle Bisque. The recipe calls for White Spider Meat, which comes from spiders from level 35 to 60 in various regions all over the world. Down at the lower end of the level scale at around 35-37, there are four or five kinds of spiders in the Dustwallow Marsh that are supposed to drop the stuff, and Dustwallow Marsh has another attraction: it's close to The Barrens and Thousand Needles, each of which has a quest we need to complete.

Kate was busy dealing with auction house stuff so I took the boat from Menethil to Theramore then headed out into the marsh to try to find some of the spiders; it also gave me a chance to get a few more points - I'm more than a level behind Kate on XP and the bigger the gap gets the harder it is for both of us in the higher-level areas, so I need to close that gap a bit.

It wasn't too successful - there are spiders in the part of the marsh that I explored (basically the eastern side from Theramore up to the northern border), but there aren't as many as there are in other areas like Arathi and they don't drop White Spider Meat very often - I probably whacked about a dozen and only got one piece before Kate followed me out, and I only got two pieces altogether. I suspect there are more spiders to the west and we'll have better luck there.

While we were in the area we took on a quest from Sentry Point, to find some Defias guys with an unusual interest in a shipwreck off the coast; we were to take the orders from the head Defias. We found the island the Defias were using as a base, found the boss guy and got the orders without any trouble, and went back to Sentry Point. The next quest in the chain was to find a diver near the Defias camp; in turn he sent us off to find some damaged diving equipment and tools on the island. That led to another quest, to use the repaired diving equipment to find and collect six boxes of salvage from the waters near the island.

This was a long and difficult process, complicated by several things: there were a lot of Defias divers in the water and they'd often attack in pairs; the salvage would often spawn a murloc instead of giving up the stuff we were looking for, so we'd find ourselves fighting a murloc and a diver at the same time; the water is murky and the sea-floor featureless, so it's easy to get separated and lost; and you can't eat or drink while swimming so we often had to get out of the water to heal and recover mana.

The diving equipment gave us sixty minutes of underwater time and by the time we'd finished I had thirteen remaining, which gives an idea of how long this took. But we got there in the end and went back to the diver who gave us the next quest, to find a character in Theramore. By then it was getting late so we hearthstoned back to Ironforge; we can pick up where we left off on the next trip.

Heffalumps and Warhorses

We spent quite a long time in Ironforge - so long that we didn't leave enough time to actually get out and do much. That may sound like it wasn't productive, but it was; I spent a while scanning the auction house for bargains to buy cheap and resell at a profit, and in the process I found a couple of things that'll help Kate out later (a bar of Truesilver and an Aquamarine that she'll need to make a sword that she wants). I also spent some time going through my character's armour and looking for better equipment on the auctions, and I found new leggings and a belt, plus eight (four for me, four for Kate) Thick Armour Kits that each add thirty-two points to armour, at bargain-basement prices.

Kate was still busy so I flew out to Refuge Pointe to find a few raptors to whack so that I could get level 35, and while I was about it I mined some iron, tin and mithril as I came across it. On the way back to Ironforge I detoured to Southshore to get some turtle meat so that I could stock up on 'cheesehead' Turtle Bisques, then it was back to Ironforge for cleanup and repairs. While I was doing all that, Kate was in conversation with a friend who has been very generous with cash, and who gave her quite a pile which she's shared.

Now, we've had the ability since level 30 to get riding mounts, but I was always under the impression that they were expensive. It turns out that I was wrong in more ways than one. For most classes it costs a gold piece to pay for riding training so that you can actually use a mount, and then another ten gold to buy a mount (actually you get a price reduction based on your reputation, so it's not quite that much). For some reason I was under the impression that training was much more expensive and that the cheapest mounts were at least thirty-five gold.

There is one limitation - you have to buy mounts from your own faction's vendors, which limits the kind of mount you can buy. In fact you can buy another faction's mounts if your reputation is Exalted - the highest reputation level you can be - but we're not that high with the other factions so as Draenei we can only buy Elekks, little Elephant clones.

As it happens I already had riding training, and I had a spell called Summon Warhorse that I'd got as part of my level 30 Paladin training. I'd never cast the spell to try it; I'd assumed that it wouldn't do anything until I'd actually bought a horse. Standing outside the bank in Ironforge, I moved the spell down onto my action bar and clicked it. Three seconds later, I was sitting on a horse (it looks pretty cool, too, like a Shire Horse with its own armour). I did some checking and found that this is a perk of being a Paladin (or a Warlock - they get a similar summon spell at level 30); you get the training, the spell and the mount for the cost of the training (a few silver, if I remember correctly).

We made our way out to the Exodar - the only place to buy Elekks - and Kate got her training and bought an Elekk (8g50s with the 15% reputation discount). Both the Elekk and the Warhorse add sixty percent to your speed, so we should be able to keep pace with each other easily. Kate feels dorky on the Elekk, so we might go and run some quests to push our rep with the Night Elves up to Exalted; Night Elves get Sabercats to ride, which look much cooler. In the meantime I may get me an Elekk too; I've got enough cash and maybe Kate wouldn't feel so bad if we both looked like dorks.

Drywhisker Gorge

We went back out to eastern Arathi and found Drywhisker Gorge right where I'd expected (no big surprise - the area northeast of Hammerfall was the only part we hadn't already mapped, so it had to be there).

The Gorge is rotten with Drywhisker Kobolds, all around level 35/36, and it turned out that they were carrying the Motes of Myzrael that we needed for the quest here. Having whacked a few we found a cave with a bunch of minerals to mine - Lesser Bloodstone mostly, but also iron, mithril and the occasional gold and tin. The outcrops respawn pretty quickly, too, making this a good place to come to mine any of those things.

What makes it not so good is that the cave is also rotten with Drywhisker Diggers and Surveyors, up to level 38. The diggers aren't so bad but the surveyors are a pain in the backside because of their frost attacks - they have a tendency to freeze you in place then run to a safe distance and whack you with frost missiles. I have an aura that boosts my frost resistance, and it helped but it doesn't confer immunity and the attacks still do a lot of damage. It's also extremely frustrating when one of the buggers runs off (which they do when their health gets low) and you 'chase' after it at a walking pace because you're part frozen. Next chance I get I'll be looking for something that gives me much better frost resistance.

Regardless, we were able to find all the Motes of Myzrael we needed and also located the Iridescent Shard (needed for the quest) inside the cave; applying the motes to the shard completed the quest for a whopping 3700 XP. This led to the next quest in the chain, to gather three keys from certain stones scattered around Arathi and take them to a fourth stone. We've seen the places the quest mentions; they're guarded by level 38/39 elementals. I'm level 34 and close to 35; Kate hit 36 during the fighting with the Kobolds. I could probably solo a 38 but I'd be hard pressed to beat a 39, so we'll probably wait just a little bit until I hit 35 - I'm only about 3000 XP off and that shouldn't take long.

With all the fighting in and around the cave Kate's armour had started to give out so we went back to Ironforge for repairs and to dump some of the stuff we'd picked up. I lost count of the Kobolds we'd whacked but these guys don't drop much stuff other than silver; for all the fighting I picked up only one 'green' item worth auctioning.

All the same once we'd taken care of repairs and so on, including me buying a more powerful one-handed axe at auction, we went back to the area - Kate wanted to mine more stuff and get more XP from these high-level guys. We did that for a while then called it a day and went back to Ironforge to take care of business.

A Guild Built for Six

One thing I'd done the day before but forgot to mention here was that I spent ten silver on a Guild Charter. The plan was to get all the signatures (you need nine) from Kate's characters and meant Kate creating some new characters to fill up the numbers.

Unfortunately it's not that simple - the signatures have to come from unique players, not just characters, so once Kate had signed it as one character she couldn't sign it again using any of her other characters. That left me with eight sigs to get so I flew down to Stormwind City, since it's a bit busier with lower-level characters who aren't already in guilds, and hung around asking people for signatures.

There seem to be two main methods for getting signatures; one is to offer cash and it turns out that one or two gold is the going rate (some level 70 smartass laughed when I naively offered twenty silver in the trade channel). The other extreme is to simply throw your charter at people and hope they'll sign it, which we've had done to us and I find rude - I've always declined in that case.

I decided on a middle course, which meant asking politely if someone would sign. To make things easier I created some macros - one to ask someone if they'd sign, another to thank them when they did, and a third to thank them for their time when they declined.

I'd managed to pick up four sigs in Stormwind before we went off to find Drywhisker Gorge, then I hit up a few more people around Ironforge before our return trip to Arathi. It turned out that while Ironforge isn't so busy the players there are a little more laid-back and I was able to get the last four sigs pretty quickly.

Once I'd got all the sigs I registered the charter and now we have our own guild. I booted out all the other signatories (I sent them each a mail with a token twenty silver as thanks for their time) then we each brought in our alts and signed them up. So now we have a guild with all our characters as members.

The main reason for getting a guild in the first place was to save money in the long run - it can cost a couple of silver to mail stuff to my Mage character to be disenchanted and the same again to send the disenchant products back, and it soon adds up. And there are other times I need to mail items and cash between characters. A guild vault in the bank would stop that and also give us some extra storage space.

Unfortunately it turns out that a bank vault tab costs one hundred gold - which Kate and I probably have between us, just barely, but it's a heck of a lot of cash at the moment. I don't expect Kate to pay any toward it, since it was my idea in the first place, so it'll have to wait a bit.

Still, it does give us a couple of immediate advantages - for one, we shouldn't be pestered any more by people asking for charter signatures or by people inviting us to join their guilds. I spent a gold and seventy silver setting it up, and as far as I'm concerned it's worth it just for that.

And later down the road, if we decide it's more trouble than it's worth, we can always sell the guild; people do that, and other people pay good money for ready-made guilds - several hundred gold if there's a bank tab in place. So it could be a big earner in the long run.

Slow Progress

Kate's been pretty sick for a few days so apart from doing a few things with the auction house we haven't been up to much. Yesterday was the first time we've done actual playing since the last post.

We went to Darnassus to find Thyn'tel Bladeweaver for the next step in the quest from Ashenvale. She gave us the key to Velinde Starsong's locker, which is in another part of Darnassus; we got the journal from the locker and went back to Thyn'tel.

The next step in the chain means finding Ratchet, a port on the coast of The Barrens, so we now have another reason to make our way in that direction.

Kate didn't feel much like questing so instead we went back to Refuge Pointe and whacked raptors and spiders around Arathi until we got new levels; Kate's now 35, I'm 34. The plan next was to head out to the part of Arathi where we'd found all the mithril outcrops before, but as we were on our way there we decided to make a detour to the southeastern part of Arathi to look for the gold veins that are supposed to be there. We found a bunch of Ogres and then further east was Witherbark Village (but no gold - there were other players around and I suspect they mined it all out before we got there). There are quite a lot of bad guys here, and we were able to get quite a lot of XP and also a fair amount of cash - most of them dropped at least a silver piece each.

We still have to find an area called Drywhisker Gorge for a quest that we'd picked up a few days ago; I suspect that our next foray will take us that way. The way I understand it, we'll find the gorge east of Hammerfall, north of where we were around Witherbark Village.

Mel'Thandris

Another short foray as we didn't have a lot of time; this one took us back out to Astranaar and then east and north along the Felwood road to try to find the Shrine of Mel'Thandris. We found it on the west side of the road not far from the Felwood border. There was a little bit of fighting with the wolfmen that the quest information mentioned, then we were able to read the Tome of Mel'Thandris, which was the quest objective.

From there we cut through Night Run and Satyrnaar to get back to Forest Song to close out. That gave us 2450 XP and the next quest in the chain which is to go out to Darnassus to talk to someone there. No doubt that will give us another quest, but at least it should be quick and easy - a boat trip to Auberdine then a flight to Teldrassil, and we'll be there.

One More Quest

Xavian

We didn't have a lot of time but we were able to take care of one more quest in Ashenvale; this one meant heading out to Xavian and whacking satyrs to collect their horns for Illiyanna - it seems that Illiyana has a vengeful streak because of what the Xavian satyrs did to Anilia.

We had to collect sixteen horns each, and it took quite a while because maybe one satyr in three would drop a horn. Between us Kate and I probably knocked down something like a hundred satyrs to fill the quota. Along the way I got about a quarter of the way to level 34.

Back at Forest Song we closed out the quest, which also closed out the chain leaving just one more quest or chain remaining in Ashenvale. I'd picked up three or four greens that could go for auction, so I headed back to Ironforge to take care of that and also to buy a handful of mana potions to replenish the stock I carry. Next trip we should be able to finish that last remaining quest and then we can move on.

Action Bar Action

When I reached level 32 I got a new spell or two, as happens with most level-ups. I now have quite a repertoire of auras, seals and blessings to use, as well as protection and healing spells that are all useful in a fight.

The problem was that I no longer had enough slots on the main action bar to hold all the actions I find myself using. As a result I had to move one or two rather useful things to action bar 2, including the button that I use for drinking a mana potion in a fight. As a result I now have to scroll or key to bar 2, hit the button I need, then switch back in a hurry - and in a fight, that's inconvenient and more than a couple of times ended up with a wipe for me, Kate or both of us because I fumbled the moves.

What's happened is that I'll be watching Kate and keeping her health up from a distance, and I'll fire off Holy Light; that increases my threat and a nearby mob will attack me from behind. While I'm dealing with that, Kate's still fighting and her health is suffering; then I'll get my attacker off my back and try to help Kate, but my mana is too low (Holy Light takes quite a bit). So I try to switch to bar 2 so I can grab mana and switch back, and by the time I've got it sorted out it's too late.

What I needed was a way to put more actions up on screen so that I don't have to switch bars, and I'd seen screenshots showing layouts that allowed that and assumed that it was managed by an AddOn. So I spent two or three hours over a couple of days trying to find an AddOn that does this, without any luck.

It turns out you don't need an AddOn for this; the interface options allow you to 'move' action bars up so that they're permanently available on screen. Once I found that out I enabled the lower-left and lower-right bars and now my problem is solved. Doing this means losing bars 5 and 6 from the scrollable list, but that's not really a loss; in fact I currently have my trade skills on bar 4 and I'm seriously considering moving those on-screen by enabling the right-side bar - that way I'd never need to worry about scrolling the bars at all.

The dumb thing is that I read about being able to enable these bars weeks ago, and there's even a mention of it on one of the tips that comes up when you enter the game - I could kick myself for not remembering. I'm going to make a point of checking out all the available option settings to familiarise myself with them properly.

Back to Ashenvale

We had five outstanding quests in Ashenvale and we decided to head back there and clear a couple of them, so we made our way out to Forest Song and from there headed south through the Warsong Lumber Camp. The first objective was a quest to knock out Gorgannon and Diathorus the Seeker in the area around Demon Fall Canyon near the southern border.

Diathorus was first - he was actually hidden away in a barrow den, the entrance to which is up the hill on Demon Fall Ridge. It took us a little while to find him - these barrow dens are mazes - but we did eventually and that was the end of that. He's a level 32, non-elite. We figured the trick for finding the way out of the barrow dens is to always head uphill (which in hindsight is obvious, really).

Next was Gorgannon - we'd run into him before so we knew where he was, at the other end of the canyon. He's also a level 32, non-elite, and went down easy.

The next quest was to take out three insane druids in the Dor'Danil barrow den to the west. This was a little trickier; we found two of the druids (Taneel Darkwood and Uthil Mooncall) easily enough but the third, Mavoris Cloudsbreak, eluded us for so long that the other two had time to respawn and we had to put them down again (they're not tough, though). We got there in the end, though, and found our way out.

The next quest meant heading to the Bloodtooth camp further west again, so we headed that way.

Now, a little digression: we have a quest on our list that means going to Thousand Needles, south of The Barrens, and the obvious way there from Ashenvale means going through The Barrens itself. The problem: the gates into The Barrens are guarded by level ?? Horde sentries. I've been trying without success to find a back way through, and in fact the other day I came up with an alternative when I realized that you can take a boat from Menethil Harbour to Theramore in the Dustwallow Marshes just north of Thousand Needles and east of The Barrens; I was thinking we could get directly into Thousand Needles without having to go into The Barrens at all.

Anyway, on our way to the Bloodtooth Camp we crossed the road that leads down into The Barrens and Kate went down toward the gates. I wasn't going to go but I'm glad I did because this time I noticed something I'd missed before - a gap in the hills just east of the gates. We followed it around and, lo and behold, found a fence with a smoking gap in it. We went through, and we were in The Barrens. Problem solved.

Moving on to the Bloodtooth Camp I used Dartol's Rod to transform into a furbolg, thinking that was the way to get to the boss furbolg Ran Bloodtooth. It wasn't, and we had to pretty much wipe out the camp to get away. It turned out that the furbolg we were looking for was Krolg, who lives on the south side of Mystral Lake. We found him, transformed, and talked to him; he wanted us to go back and wipe out Ran Bloodtooth and four of his guards. We did, and went back to Krolg. The next step was to go back to Astranaar with the news, and Ran Bloodtooth's skull, so we swam across Mystral Lake and headed north to the road, then west to Astranaar.

At this point I needed about 14,000 XP to get my next level and I thought that with three quests completed we'd probably get about half that. We were pleasantly surprised; we closed out Krolg's quest in Astranaar then flew out to Forest Song to cash in the other two - and Kate got her level 34 with the XP we got, and I was just forty-eight points short. I went up the rise toward Satyrnaar and found a spider to squish, and that got me level 33.

Not only that but all three quests were the last in their respective chains, so all in all it made for a very successful trip: we both got new levels, we're down to two quests remaining in Ashenvale, and we found the back door into The Barrens.

On our next trip out that way we should be able to finish the two remaining quests, and then we can think about making our way to Thousand Needles.

Mining for Greens

We didn't do a great deal in the way of pushing our characters forward this time around; Kate went out to the Wetlands marshes and I ran the Deadmines again, both of us to gather stuff to sell and to auction. Nothing in either area is at a high enough level to give any XP.

Down in the Deadmines I pushed a little further than last time - as a level 32 Rhahk'Zor was a fight but not too bad, and when I got to the Mast Room I took on the first batch of goblins three at a time. I'd hoped to clear out the goblins before taking on Sneed's Shredder but I timed it badly and had to fight the shredder and a leftover goblin together, and when the shredder went down that left Sneed and the other goblin with me in a weakened state, and it was a wipe. The second time through, of course, it was much easier.

I got a little way past the Mast Room but by then my packs were full so I decided to stop, and I hearthstoned out to Ironforge.

I'm not sure how Kate got along but I picked up the usual stack of linen and wool, a lump of copper and twelve lumps of tin ore. There was also the usual pile of poor quality weapons and armour, and of course the stuff I was really after - Uncommon quality 'green' items. We shared out the ore - half the tin I'd picked up in the mines went to Kate and she gave me half the copper she'd picked up in the Wetlands.

After selling the vendor trash and auctioning off the greens, I decided to have a bit of a blacksmithing-fest; I pulled all the ore and metal bars that I've been hoarding in the bank and took the whole pile over to the Great Forge. Smelting all the ore pushed my mining and smelting up to 199, then I made as much stuff as I could and got my blacksmithing up to 143 - a couple more points and I'll be able to learn more plans. All the stuff that got made went to the auction house, together with some other odds and ends such as mana potions and melon juices that I don't really have a need for any more. And that's where I left it for the day, with probably something like twenty auctions in place.

Eastern Arathi

I'd hoped to get back out to Ashenvale to close out some of the outstanding quests but we didn't leave ourselves enough time to make that worthwhile; instead I flew from Darkshire to meet Kate at Refuge Pointe and from there we headed in the direction of the ogre-infested mine to the west. The idea was that since we were both very close to our next levels, we might as well whack a few relatively high-level mobs to get the necessary few points to make those levels, which we did in short order.

From the mine I suggested heading northeast toward the hills, with the idea of finding some ore deposits and then continuing east along the base of the hills so that we could map out more of the region.

We did find a couple of iron deposits (no gold, sadly) but mostly we just ground our way along the hills, finding an Alliance-run farm at one point and then an area with level 39 elementals and a level 42 giant - we stayed well clear of that. A little further along we found Hammerfall, a Horde enclave guarded by level ?? sentries, and again we stayed well back. From Hammerfall we followed parallel to the road and closed the circle when we arrived back at Refuge Pointe.

We were thinking of going back to the mithril-rich areas that we knew well, but time was against us by then and instead we hearthstoned back to Ironforge, where we smelted the ore we'd picked up and took care of the usual auction/bank business. I almost forgot to get my level 32 Paladin training; I got updated Blessing of Might and a new Aura, and an update to another spell (I forget which right now).

I'm hoping that we can get back to Ashenvale soon; I'd like to clear down some of those old quests but more than anything else I want to find a way through to the Barrens so that we can get to Thousand Needles.

Stilwell's Hammer

Kate wanted to grind for XP around the marshes in Wetlands; I could have done that but I wanted to get the Paladin-only quest off my list - I had three of the four items I needed and I just wanted to finish it since it was so close - so when Kate flew out from Ironforge to Menethil I took off for Southshore.

Southshore was being raided in a big way when I arrived - the Hillsbrad Foothills Local Defence channel filled up with messages about it as soon as my Gryphon got into range, and I could see a lot of fighting going on down near the inn, so as soon as I landed I ran out of town to what I hoped was a safe distance. At level 31 I'm nowhere near strong enough to be part of trying to fight off a raid, and getting involved would have been pointless. So I got ready for the wilds (firing up an aura, sharpening my axe, etc.) and headed west.

The last item I needed was Jordan Stilwell's smithing hammer which he'd left in the stables in Shadowfang Keep, west of Hillsbrad in the Silverpine Forest, when the Horde had invaded and forced an evacuation. I made my way in that general direction and soon found Pyrewood village and Shadowfang Keep.

The Keep is an instance, and all the bad guys in there are level 18/19 elites. I had no trouble taking them on three at a time down as far as the cells. There was a wizard in the cells that I had to release so that he could unlock the door leading into the courtyard; the yard beyond is filled with bad guys. Taking on four at a time was a challenge and I got wiped once, but not the second time; I found the stables and the hammer, and got out.

The fighting in Southshore was over by the time I got back. I'd used up quite a few of my 'cheesehead' Turtle Bisques so instead of taking off right away I went to the river to grab some turtle meat, then went back into town to clear out my pack and do some cooking and repairs. With that done I flew back to Ironforge and went to see Jordan Stilwell with all four of the items he needed.

Stilwell took the items and made me Verigan's Fist, a very powerful two-handed mace. My two-handed mace skills aren't too good so I decided to find somewhere, not too high level, to practice up. I settled on Duskwood and flew out to Darkshire, where I did a little foray out of town to whack a handful of spiders. By then it was getting late so I parked in the inn there in Darkshire and packed it in for the night.

Arathi

Kate had switched from the huge two-handed sword she was using to two swords, dual-wielded, and needed to get out somewhere to build up the skill level so we started out in the marshes north of Menethil whacking murlocs, crocalisks, raptors and the occasional gnoll until our backpacks were pretty much stuffed with junk to sell, then went back into Menethil for repairs and so on.

We thought that after all the mining we've done it was time to concentrate on getting another level so we flew back out to Refuge Pointe so that we could get some XP from the level 33+ mobs in the area - and if we ran across any ore to mine, all to the good.

So we headed out east and north, beating up ogres, raptors and spiders. Kate's dual-wielding skill was paying off in that she was even able to take down level 36 spiders single-handed. We actually made it up into the hills that we'd had so much trouble with the other day and mined some iron.

The rest of the time we circled eastern Arathi, belting mobs and mining when we could - it's a good area for mining. When we finally decided to call time we'd picked up quite a pile of iron, mithril and even a couple of pieces of tin and gold. Not a bad haul.

Hillsbrad and Arathi

We went back to Southshore and headed north from there along the river, mostly to look for tin veins - there are supposed to be quite a few in the area to the north of Tarren Mill. Unfortunately I went just a bit too far north at one point and got noticed by guards at the gate into the Alterac Mountains. We made a point of staying clear after that and instead headed east, back across the river and toward the gap in Thoradin's Wall.

On the way we found a path leading northeast from Durnehold Keep and followed it out of curiosity; it leads to The Hinterlands, an area that's too high level for us just yet but at least we'll know the way when the time comes.

Back at the wall we went back through the gap into the Arathi Highlands and made our way to Refuge Pointe so that we could open up the flightpath that we forgot about the day before. From there we went back east hoping to get back to the mithril vein that we'd found, and we got lucky - we found several mithril veins, spread out a bit but not terribly far apart, so we spent most of the rest of the time camped out and circling the area to gather as much of the stuff as we could.

As a diversion at one point we went through a cave into the cove to the south of Stromgarde Keep and swam around the coastline to see what was round the corner - and found a bunch of Booty Bay guys with a ship. From there we swam further and eventually swam underneath Thandol Span, coming back into Arathi by going through a camp of Dark Iron dwarves.

I also explored around the west side of Stromgarde and ended up in a bit of trouble - I slipped on a steep slope and ended up in the water. I went north around the coast but because of the steep slopes I wasn't able to get back on land until I was all the way back at the Hillsbrad Foothills, and I had to fight my way past six or seven Naga. From there I was able to make my way back by going over Thoradin's Wall (there's a ramp that gets you onto the wall, then you can jump down the other side) and then back south to Stromgarde where I'd started.

After all that messing about, camping out waiting for mithril to respawn was relaxing by comparison. We did that until we'd gathered a reasonable pile (or rather, until Kate had - my mining skill isn't high enough to let me mine mithril just yet) then we headed back to Thandol Span, mostly to give us a chance to whack a few raptors for XP, and hearthstoned back to Ironforge.

Going Back for Gold

We decided to go back to the Arathi Highlands to try to find the gold veins north of Stromgarde, but it took us quite a while to get there because we spent a long time in Wetlands whacking murlocs, crocalisks and raptors to get a bit more XP toward our next levels. This time we went north from Menethil through the marshes that we're already familiar with, then east exploring new ground until we met up with the road north into Arathi.

One thing we wanted to do was get to Refuge Pointe because there's a flightmaster there, but we got sidetracked and basically forgot. Instead we retraced our steps west back to the mithril vein we found before; Kate was able to mine it this time. From there we went north, crossing the road and heading in the general direction of the gold veins as I remembered their positions from the maps. We didn't get that far, and in fact it was all we could do to grab a couple of bits of iron.

Mining is never as easy as you might think, because it seems that every area that has anything worth mining in decent quantities is also infested with relatively high-level mobs. In this case the hills on the north side of Arathi are crawling with level 36 spiders which made it difficult to even get close enough to spot the mineral outcrops. We made our way west along the hills and left the spiders behind, but apparently we also left the gold behind (and everything else, for that matter) because we never found a single vein. We did at least get our levels - I'm now 31, Kate's 32.

We found ourselves at the wall separating Arathi from the Hillsbrad Foothills and a little way down from the north end found a gap leading through. It looks like this gap is not the main gate, because when we found the main road we could see the gate where the road passes through - and it looks like that area is patrolled by Forsaken riff-raff in groups of about four. These are the same guys that attacked us on the road in the east the day before; it looks like they stick to the east side of the wall, though, so as long as we kept our distance we were safe.

We stuck to the road and followed the signs to Southshore where we were able to open up the flightpath, sell junk and get repairs done. We even took on a minor quest to catch a few turtles, the reward for which was a recipe that we can use.

We'll probably be messing around in this area for a little while; it's a good place for levels and hopefully for mining - once we get another level or two to even up the playing field with the damn spiders.

In the meantime we decided to set Ironforge as home base; it's a lot more convenient than the Exodar. We both need to have a big push on advancing our fishing skills (Southshore has stuff that's good to fish for but requires a higher skill level than we have) and I need to find some decent amounts of tin so that I can push my blacksmithing up - I need to get it to at least 145 (it's 124 at the moment).

Going for Gold

Kate wants to mine gold so I did a little checking to find some good areas for that, and it turned out that the Arathi Highlands was one place that we could try. It has quite a few gold veins around and it's just north of Wetlands so we could get there pretty easily. We still have a handful of open quests in Ashenvale so we're not quite done there and we'll have to go back soon, but I for one liked the idea of a change of scenery so off we went to Menethil Harbour.

We headed east to the base of the mountains then followed them so that we could watch for ore to mine. While I was doing the checking earlier I'd found that there was supposed to be a gold vein in that general direction, but we didn't find it - either the information is wrong or someone had mined it out before us. I have no idea how long it takes for gold veins to refresh but it seems that it's a lot longer than for copper, so we gave it just a minute or two then moved on.

When we'd gone far enough east we turned north to hit the road toward the Arathi Highlands, which runs past Dun Modr on the way. I was under the impression that Dun Modr was a safe place but I was wrong; we were attacked by Dark Iron dwarves, which surprised me because I thought dwarves were Alliance. I don't know exactly whose side these guys are on. It looks like they mostly stay to the west side of Dun Modr and away from the road, so it wasn't hard to get past them and continue north over Thandol Span and into the Arathi Highlands.

We headed west along the border hills so that we could watch for gold. The area has a lot of level 33 and 34 spiders and raptors, which at my current level 30 are a challenge but not impossible one-on-one. We found Stromgarde Keep, but we didn't find any gold. What we did find was a Mithril vein - and Kate was spitting because her mining skill was 173, just two points short of what it needed to be for mithril.

I went inside Stromgarde Keep to explore. It appears to be a ruin, but there are Alliance guards in one part and Horde in another. Other than that, though, there's nothing of interest. Now, it turned out that my memory had failed me slightly about where to find the gold (I've got a stinker of a cold and I guess I was a little muzzy); the main concentration of gold veins is east of Thandol Span, not west. So we found the road north of Stromgarde and headed east.

This was a mistake. The eastern side of Arathi is tougher than the west, with level 37+ raptors (and I suspect they're higher still further east). We were okay until we left the road to cut south to where the gold is, but after that we had no hope. Together we can handle one level 37 beast, but it's a hard fight. Any more than that is just too tough - and one thing to remember is that you don't get XP for almost killing an enemy.

We went back to the road for safety for a minute, and it turned out it wasn't safe at all - we were attacked by four bandits of some kind. We were saved by a level 38 mage who happened by. Then we were all attacked again by another group, and this time we helped save the mage by wading in and with my Holy Light to give the guy a health boost; in return he offered to enchant something and we both got +5 strength added to our bracers. The next move was pretty obvious - we weren't safe off the road or on it, so we hearthstoned out.

We'll be going back to Arathi, probably very soon, but we should stick to the western end. Apparently there are gold veins in the western part but they're further north than where we were, and in any case Kate's mining skill is now up to 180 so we can go back to the mithril vein we found.

In the meantime I learned a valuable lesson from the Mage, and that is that my level 30 mage is built all wrong. This guy can take on four level 36+ bandits, while my guy gets ripped apart by just one level 27 raptor. I put it down to inexperience, since my mage was my first WoW character. I'd like to be able to continue his progress but I realise now that I need to be more careful about equipping him, and I'm also considering unlearning his talents and rebuilding from scratch.

Eastern Ashenvale

We decided to continue and perhaps finish off exploring Ashenvale and hopefully pick up enough XP along the way to get our next levels, so we flew out to Forest Song. From there we went northeast to try to finish up that last corner of the region, but we didn't get very far before spotting some very powerful (level ??) mobs - dragons, or something like that, walking around in groups of three.

In the distance I could see structures that I think are the ruins we're supposed to find for one quest, but we couldn't see a way to get around the bad guys. At one point Kate got just a little too close and we found out just how powerful they were when one of them went after her and spit poison - it was an instant wipe, one shot. We can't hope to take on something like that yet.

There may be a way around by taking the road a little further east then cutting north, but for the time being we decided to head south and try to find Felfire Hill.

So we cut through the Warsong Logging camp, whacking scouts and others as we went, until we reached a river. The area on the other side turned out to be Felfire Hill, and we were able to knock out two quests there and both got our new levels on the way.

Further to the south we found a canyon leading up into the hills and while we got some more good XP around there we didn't find any back way into the Barrens as I'd hoped. Perhaps there's something further west, but for now we'd done enough and we decided to head back. We followed the road north back through the lumber camp until we reached the main east-west road but instead of going to Forest Song right away we went east since we were close to the border with Azshara. We came to a bridge and just beyond that we found Talrendis Point, an Alliance outpost with a flightmaster. We were able to get repairs done there, then we flew to Forest Song (even though it's not a long walk) to close out our completed quests and from there we hearthstoned to the Exodar for the night.

The Money Pit 2

One of the items I need for the Paladin quest is a shipment of ore that comes from a dwarf in Thelsamar. The first task in getting hold of this is to find the dwarf; this sounded like a quick and easy thing to do so I flew to Thelsamar while Kate was finishing up auction house business.

I found the dwarf and it turned out that the shipment had been stolen by ogres on the far side of the Loch, so the next job was to go and get it back. It took way longer to get to the ogre camp and back than it did to find the shipment - it was in a box in plain sight in the middle of the camp.

Back at Thelsamar the dwarf had to 'purify' the shipment, then it was all mine. Kate had finished her stuff and we decided to join up at Sentinel Hill and have another run through the Deadmines.

And that's basically what we did - we stripped everything we could, bashing diggers and mining ore, all the way to the instance portal. We deliberately didn't group when we went through the portal, so that we'd each have our own private instance and so potentially double the take.

We came back out with more ore, cloth and weapons although it seemed to me that I didn't get as much this time. All the same I still picked up half a dozen or so 'green' items that are now up for auction - most of the stuff I auctioned yesterday sold well and made a fair pile of cash and I expect this latest lot to do well too.

Of course doing that didn't get either of us any closer to the next level so I'd say it's time to get back to Ashenvale and finish up the quests there. I think by the time we've finished mapping the last unexplored areas I'll have got level 30 and Kate should be up to 31. After that, I'm not sure what we'll be doing next; if we can't find a way into the Barrens we may have no choice but to go south and start exploring Desolace.

The Money Pit

The Deadmines: That was fun, can we do it again?

We held off finishing up in Ashenvale and instead I took on the Deadmines to find the wood I needed for the Paladin quest while Kate took her level 30 Rogue into the marshes north of Menethil Harbour to gather stuff, mostly Tangy Clam Meat.

The Deadmines are a hell of a lot easier with a level 29 Paladin than with a Mage, that's for sure. Even so it's no walk in the park once you get past the instance portal because the Defias Enforcers, Overseers etc. are elites and even at level 17 they can take quite a lot of punishment. I had no problem taking them on one at a time but two was a struggle and if a third joined in the fight (or even just a couple of non-elite Diggers), staying alive was a real challenge.

Many mobs (especially the human/humanoid ones) will, when their health gets seriously low, run off to get help. My Mage could stop that pretty easily with a ranged spell but Paladins don't really have any ranged attacks; the closest thing I have to that is the Judgement spell, and it has a cooldown of something like eight seconds. As a result I can't always use it to stop someone running and in that case the only thing to do is run after them - but if they're going for help there's a risk of running right into a crowd of the helpers. So sometimes the best thing you can do is let the buggers go then finish them off when they come back, and hope you're in shape to deal with any helpers they bring with them.

The reason I mention this is that at one point I was attacked by two diggers and had to let one of them run while I took care of the other. The wounded digger ran around a curve in the tunnel and when he came back it was with big help, in the form of none other than Rhahk'Zor, the level 19 elite Ogre with the big hammer.

With my Blessing of Might, Devotion Aura and a whole bunch of other stuff we were close to evenly matched and it was looking about 50/50 who was going to win. What gave me the edge was my Surprise Move - when my health got down to about a quarter I fired up Divine Protection and while he whacked away with no effect for eight seconds I was able to heal myself with Holy Light, shore that up with Gift of the Naaru and drink a mana potion. Rhahk'Zor didn't last long after that.

With him gone it was on to the Mast Room and Sneed's Shredder. I got the attention of one of the woodcarver goblins near the door and unfortunately one of his friends noticed and joined in; shortly after that a third wandered a bit too close, but by then the first one was almost gone and thanks to a well-timed stun I survived the fight. At that point I looted the goblins and found that one of them had the wood I needed for the quest. Considering how close it had been with Rhahk'Zor at level 19, I wasn't at all confident about taking on the level 20 shredder and then Sneed himself. Now I had the wood I didn't have to worry about that and I made my way out of the mines.

I may go back, and here's why: although I didn't get a single XP the whole trip, I still came out with tin ore (nineteen chunks), iron ore (one chunk), silver ore (two chunks), about ten items of weaponry and armour good enough to auction, almost forty pieces of wool cloth and I think about eighteen of linen, plus a reasonable amount of cash and some vendor trash, and of course the quest item wood I went to find.

There are tin veins and at least one silver vein down there, but the diggers themselves drop ore too (one dropped four, count'em, four, chunks of tin ore) and in fact I think I got as much ore that way as I did from mining ore veins. On top of that the Defias often drop good 'green' items and more than a silver piece in cash. If I'd taken the time to whack every digger in sight, instead of just those that got in my way, I reckon I could have at least doubled the amount of ore I walked away with, and that's without even thinking about getting past Sneed's Shredder. It definitely makes sense to think about another trip in the near future.

Closing Quests

Things went pretty much according to plan. Starting from Astranaar we found our way back out to the moonwell to hand over the last piece of Dartol's rod to Shael'Dryn, who reassembled the rod. The next step was to recharge it, which meant taking it to a 'hidden' shrine not too far away (not that well hidden, actually - we'd been there before). We took the charged rod back to Shael'dryn and got the next quest step which was to take it back to Astranaar, or in our case to hold off until the next time we happened to be there.

From the moonwell we went east to the Felwood road then retraced our steps to Night Run and up to Xavian. The quest we had there was to find Anilia, who turned out to be having a really bad day - more than halfway dead in the middle of a camp of level 29+ Satyrs. We had some tough fighting here to clear a path to the almost-dead Anilia and close that quest. With a last breath Anilia gave us the next step - to go further north into the camp, retrieve the stolen Branch of Cenarius from Geltharis, a level 32 Satyr, and return it to Illiyana in Forest Song. Here we managed to sneak along the side of the hill to find Geltharis without having to fight all the way through. Geltharis was pretty tough but went down soon enough and gave up the Branch.

We fought our way back out and went downslope to Satyrnaar, where we liberally beat things up for XP before going over the rise into Forest Song. After handing back the Branch of Cenarius (which I think ends that quest chain), selling some of the junk clogging our packs and getting repairs done, we flew back to Astranaar to hand over Dartol's Rod to Raene Wolfrunner at the inn. It turns out that Dartol's Rod will turn you into a furbolg for three minutes, and the next quest is to use this ability to be able to talk to a furbolg at a camp to the south (probably Bloodtooth Camp that we found yesterday). We'll take care of that shortly.

We hearthstoned back to Exodar to take care of the usual business then called it a day. We didn't get to explore any further, so we still have areas to explore and quests to complete north and south of Forest Song, but I think we'll get to that next time. One particular thing I want to do is explore along the southeastern border to see if there's a way through to The Barrens that doesn't mean trying to get past the Horde guards manning the gate we found the other day.

Southeast Ashenvale

It turned out that we'd already been to Silverwind Refuge on an earlier exploration of southern Ashenvale - I recognized it as soon as we got there. There isn't a cooking trainer there, but there is a trader named Shandrina who sells an expert cookbook for 90 silver. Kate had 96 so buying the book left her pretty much flat broke, but this was our first stop out of Astranaar and we had a lot of exploration and questing ahead, and plenty of opportunity to gather stuff to recoup the cash. Kate read the book and that pushed her maximum skill level up to expert level (225, I think). I don't know if the book taught her any new recipes at the same time.

Silverwind Refuge is on the north shore of Mystral Lake in central southern Ashenvale. From there our plan was to scout east and then north, mapping the last of southeastern Ashenvale and ideally finding our way back to Forest Song. On the way we had quests to complete.

We hacked our way east and found the Silverwing Outpost where we had a quest to close out, in the form of a message to be given to one of the NPCs. There's an entrance to a battlefield instance; I need to read up about battlefields and arenas, although I know at the moment we're way too low level to take these on. I suspect that when we get to much higher levels we may need to enter a battlefield or arena to progress, but we'll see about that when the time comes.

The next milestone was the Bloodtooth Camp a little further east, where we had a raging battle with a bunch of furbolgs. Just a little to the east from there is the north-south road leading down into the Barrens, and leading off to the northeast from this road is the back road into the Warsong Labour Camp. The last time we tried to go up this road we were attacked by a bunch of enemies and only just made it out in one piece. We're quite a bit stronger this time around but we didn't need to head that way just yet.

Instead we went north, keeping to the east side of the main road. We had a quest here that said that some druids who'd been keeping the last part of the magical rod (last heard of in the July 28 post), had been in this area and been wiped out. We were looking to find traces of them and hopefully find that last part.

There are slime creatures there. One attacked me and I took it out, and it exploded (as slime creatures do). In with the bones that it flung out there was a box; I opened the box and found the last part of the rod - another quest complete. It also answered the question of what had happened to the druids.

There was a trail leading northeast and we followed that. This led us to the Dor'Danil Barrow Den - another place on our quest list, where we were supposed to pick up a bottle of poison to be returned to someone at Forest Song for analysis. There were five or six pretty tough guys around a tent, with the poison bottles out in plain sight on a table. I was hoping to make a discreet intervention, pulling the bad guys out one at a time, but it ended up being something of a free-for-all. But we pulled through and got the poison.

At this point our plan - to continue to explore in the general direction of Forest Song - went a bit pear-shaped because we decided to explore the underground Barrow Den itself. There were quite a few bad guys in there but not so many that we couldn't handle. However the place is a maze and we ended up getting lost trying to find our way back out, and in the end we gave up and hearthstoned out to the Exodar. What we should have done then was just take the minimum time to sell junk and make repairs, then head right back to Forest Song and finish exploring. Instead we stayed in the Exodar too long, ran out of time and had to pack it in for the night.

So the plan for the next trip out that way is to fly to Astranaar then head north to find the moonwell where we can close out one quest by handing over the last part of the rod that we found. From there we go cross-country, back through Night Run to Xavian, where we have a quest to complete, then on through Satyrnaar to Forest Song, where we can close out the quest with the bottle of poison. After that we can go either north or south - we have a quest to find the Howling Vale to the north, and somewhere to the south we have to locate Felfire Hill where we have two more quests waiting. With those done I think we'll have completely mapped Ashenvale and have most if not all of the quests done, and be ready to move on somewhere new.

There's something else that we want to do, at Kate's suggestion: we have a pile of 'grey' quests in Darkshore. I was going to abandon them but Kate wants to do them - they won't bring much XP but they could be worth doing for the quest rewards, and it'll give us an opportunity to finish mapping the area. I think we can take care of most them in a single sweep along the coast. We may do this right after finishing up in Ashenvale.

I also still have my Paladin quest, but that means going to the Deadmines and Loch Modan and these areas are so low level that Kate wouldn't get any XP - the only reason for her to do them would be for dropped items, a little cash, and maybe to do some mining. Kate suggested that she could do something more productive while I run these quests; they shouldn't take long, after all. One option would be for her to go mining in the Dagger Hills while I'm in the Deadmines, and find a similar mining area in the hills around Loch Modan while I take care of my own thing in that area.

We have one outstanding quest from Forest Song that takes us to the western end of Thousand Needles, an area to the south, beyond the Barrens. The big question right now is how to get there - the last time we went near the gate into the Barrens we saw that it was guarded by two level '??' Horde sentries. I have no idea how we're supposed to get past them.

Forest Song and Dance

Yesterday we got virtually no XP on our travels, so we decided that our best bet to get some good XP and close out some quests was to locate Forest Song, a settlement in northeast Ashenvale. We already had two or three quests for which we needed to find the place and as I think I mentioned before, eastern Ashenvale is a very hostile area so we expected a challenge.

After getting stomped by a guard right outside Splintertree Post two or three days ago, I didn't think we'd get to Forest Song using that road. Sure, we could have tried to keep our distance and sneak past, but having already seen the area I didn't rate our chances.

Instead I suggested trying to find a back way, by going up the road toward Felwood and seeing if there's a way to cut east from there along the base of the mountains - essentially going behind Splintertree Post and ideally coming out on the road further east.

We were almost at the Felwood border and I was beginning to think we wouldn't find a way up into the hills, when we found a trail leading a bit south of east off the road. It's a wide path through the forest, with a fair number of bears and spiders, and the first place it leads to is Night Run, an area filled with level 26-27 Satyrs. There was also a red crystal - one of two that I needed for the Tower of Althalaxx quest (Kate didn't have this quest). After clearing out the area we followed the trail, which turns northeast. There are more spiders and bears here (level 25 and up) so we were getting pretty good XP already.

The trail brought us out on a riverbank, and a little way further northeast we could see what looked like a bridge. This turned out to be part of the ruins of Xavian, a derelict settlement of some kind centred on another small lake. There appears to be at least one invisible spider here (or of course it could have been a different kind of bug) - Kate was getting attacked with something spitting venom. I could even see the squirts of green poison, but neither of us could see what was doing the attacking. Luckily whatever it was didn't follow for long.

We scouted clockwise around the lake until we found the next part of the trail, leading southeast. This brought us to Satyrnaar, which is loaded with (surprise!) Satyrs. Again, another burst of good XP, and I also found the second red crystal here. Once we'd explored the area we found a short trail leading south over a rise and onto the road. Great stuff - we'd done exactly what we'd hoped, bypassing Splintertree Post. Forest Song was just a few steps along the road on the north side.

Forest Song has about four quest givers, a trader who can do repairs, a flightmaster, and that's all - no inn, no forge, no trainers of any kind. We took the quests on offer, sold junk, got repairs, and saddled up.

First on the agenda was to go west over the rise and back into Satyrnaar. Two quests here: to find the Lost Chalice (it's sitting on the corner of a small square building surrounded by a low circular wall on the northeast side of Satyrnaar), and to gather five piles of wood.

After taking care of these we were both very close to levelling so we decided to hang around a little while longer and get the last few points we needed. Kate hit level 29; I'm now 28.

We went back over the rise into Forest Song and closed out the Chalice quest, then headed out for the next quests. This took us to the Warsong Labour Camp, directly south just across the road. Here we had to collect fifteen more lumber piles to go with the other five and complete that quest, and also to take down ten Horde Scouts, five Deforesters, a couple of Shredders and Overseer Gorthak.

Finding the lumber piles, scouts, deforesters and shredders is easy. What's harder is actually getting them without getting walloped. We found that the Warsong Peons will call for help when attacked - more than once we found ourselves getting surrounded and wiped. However it didn't take too long to get all we needed from them, and that just left Gorthak.

There was no clue where in the camp we'd find him, but there's a larger building inside a stockade just east of the road running through the camp. That was the obvious place to look. We didn't knock at the gate into the stockade - we climbed up a rise and jumped over, cleared a path through a couple of shamen, then restored health and mana and ran into the building. We knocked down two or three more shamen and found a large room in the middle of the building - the obvious place to find Gorthak. There were shamen left and right just inside the door so I went left and Kate went right.

I lasted about ten seconds. Somehow Kate was able to get out of the building with severely depleted health, but at least in one piece - we both thought she was a goner but the shamen didn't follow. Because my corpse was inside the building I had to get very close to the outside wall before I was in range to reincarnate; I was still gearing up again when another damn shamen saw me, and in seconds I had three of them on me. I tried to run for the gate so that I could get in healing range of Kate, but with three of them on me and another three on her we didn't stand much of a chance. At least this time I went down much closer to the stockade fence so we were both able to bring ourselves back outside.

We reappeared back on the same hill that we'd jumped over the stockade fence from earlier. Kate stopped to trade me some melon juice she'd picked up, and it's a good thing she did because I happened to turn the right direction to see Gorthak standing in a building just a few yards away. So much for the obvious place to look. We circled the building to find the entrance; there was one shaman inside on the lower floor, and Gorthak was alone upstairs. Easy in, easy out, quest complete.

We took the road north out the camp, knocking down a couple of scouts that got in the way, and were back at Forest Song in a flash with two more quests to close out. With that done Kate hearthstoned back to the Exodar. I flew to Astranaar and ran to Maestra's Post from there to close out the Tower of Althalaxx quest before zipping back to the Exodar myself, and we took care of the usual bank and auction house business.

Kate has about maxed out her cooking training; to go higher she has to find a higher level trainer. We were both pretty sure there was one in the Old Town in Stormwind so we took a trip there but when we got there we found that the trainer doesn't offer anything that the trainer in the Exodar doesn't, so it was actually a waste of time. We took advantage of the mining and blacksmithing facilities, and I got my level 28 Paladin training in the Cathedral of Light, then we made our way back to the Exodar.

I did a little checking afterward and found that there is one cooking trainer that handles expert level, and it turns out that she's in the Silverwind Refuge - an area apparently not far from Forest Song and that we need to find soon anyway. So I'm guessing that our next trip will be taking us back out that way to continue exploring the region. We do have one other thing we have to do; we did very little mining on this last trip and we're both really short of cash, so we need to make mining (especially iron, silver and gold) a priority.

Windshear Crag and the Blackfathom Deeps

Kate had a new axe that she wanted to be able to use, and to do that she needed to get axe training. The trainer in the Exodar doesn't do that so we took a trip to Ironforge to take care of it. As we passed through Auberdine on the way I went to see the Night Elf Thundris Windweaver as part of my Paladin-only quest, and he gave me a sub-quest to collect a corrupted Kor Gem from Blackfathom Deeps.

In Ironforge we found the Weapon Trainer and Kate was able to get the axe training, and while we were there I got the same training myself and with that done we returned to Auberdine and flew on to Stonetalon Peak. As soon as we got there we were able to close out the quest that we'd completed in the Charred Vale (the one that involved whacking all the Bloodfuries) and that gave us a new quest that'll take us to Thousand Needles, far south of the Barrens; this is not one we'll be completing any time soon.

Kate needed to build up her axe skill so I stood back ready with Holy Light while she bashed some sap beasts. While we were doing that Kate spotted a gold vein uphill - the first we've seen, so she had to grab it before someone else did.

With Kate's axe skill up to a decent level we headed south along the canyon toward Windshear Crag to take care of another quest - this one to take out Venture Co. Loggers and Deforesters. Along the way I found a tin vein and was at last able to get the last point on my mining skill to push it to 125. Shortly after that I found an iron deposit that I could now mine, and of course there are a number of copper veins around.

The Venture Co. guys are about level 20 and so very easy, but of course the downside to that is that we got no XP from them. We had some trouble finding enough Deforesters to complete the quest until I ran across a sawmill that seems to be Deforester Central.

With the quest completed we were able to close it out quickly - the quest completer, a gnome called Gaxim Rustfizzle, was nearby at the point where the road southwest out of Windshear Crag turns north toward Stonetalon Peak. That done we went back to the peak, mostly to see if the gold vein Kate had mined earlier had regenerated (it hadn't, or someone else had mined it again shortly before we got back).

Our plan next was to hit Blackfathom Deeps but first we hearthstoned back to the Exodar to take care of other business - auctioning a couple of items we'd picked up and getting mining and blacksmithing training. Kate was able to make us both very powerful one-handed maces and I now have plans for more bronze armour and weapons.

We took the boat back to Auberdine, flew to Astranaar then took the road west to the Zoram Strand and the entrance to Blackfathom Deeps. The main quest here was to whack Naga to collect Corrupted Brain Stems (yecch) so that a Night Elf in Auberdine can try to find the cause of the corruption. The Deeps contains an instance portal but we collected all we needed outside (and one of the first Naga I took down dropped the Corrupted Kor Gem I need for the Paladin quest) so we didn't really need to go into the instance. We did anyway, just to see what was in there. It's filled with level 22/23 elite murlocs and other things and I think we explored most if not all of it.

I don't like elites; a level 22 elite has the defences of a level 25 regular mob and on top of that usually has other abilities that make it tougher still. Taking one on is as hard as taking on a level 27+ regular - but when it finally goes down you only get the XP that goes with a level 22. Thanks to this we didn't get much XP in the Deeps and combined with the fact that we got no XP in Windshear Crag, Kate is still level 28 and I'm still at 27 and little more than halfway to 28. The next quests we take on need to be in tougher areas so that we can push forward.

Some Very Dangerous Areas

Oh, no, not the Deadmines again

When I saw Duthorian Rall to close out the Paladin-only quest, he gave me another quest in the chain - to find Jorden Stilwell at the Gates of Ironforge and give him the news that Daphne was okay. I'd put that to one side as we were busy with other things, but I was able to spare a few minutes to fly out there and take care of this. That led to another quest - to pick up four items. The quest text doesn't say where to find these items and I'd assumed they were in the area around Ironforge, but as part of the quest Stilwell gives you his notes. When I eventually got around to reading them it turned out that the items are all over the place. The first item on the list is a kind of wood, and it's found in the Deadmines, and it looks like it's in the lower levels where the goblins are. This could be rough.

Mine, mine, mine

Kate and I both needed to mine some more - Kate for the materials, me for the mining skill points; I need to get that up to 125 before I can go much further. The only thing at the moment that will add points is mining tin and silver, and smelting silver. Kate wanted iron, too. So after looking at the maps on WoWHead we figured that eastern Duskwood would probably be our best bet and we headed out there.

It was difficult, because all the best stuff such as the tin veins and iron deposits are in or very close to areas crawling with level 29 and 30 mobs (and in one case I saw, level 31) and in any case tends not to be where WoWHead says - I think other players mine the stuff out and it takes a long time to regenerate. We ended up spending more time fighting (and running back from the boneyard after getting wiped) than getting any actual mining done.

My mining skill is now 124 - just one point off my target. All I need is to find one more tin or silver vein, or pick up one or two more bits of silver ore somehow.

Eastern Ashenvale (the Death Zone)

Duskwood didn't seem to be getting us anywhere because of all the time wasted running and fighting, so we went back to Ashenvale to try to close out a couple more quests. Well, actually, I went out first and Kate followed. While I was there on my own I followed the east road out of Astranaar as far as I could - I was hoping to find Forest Song, where we have quests to complete.

I never made it that far. Not long after crossing a river bridge and passing the road to The Barrens, I noticed a camp just off the road that had 'level ??' bad guys. This should have been a clue that said "Entering the Death Zone". Just a little further along there's another camp, and this one's very close to the road - and has 'level ??' guards standing at the gate. One of them saw me. I hardly put a dent in his health bar before he left me looking like leftover pizza.

We may be able to get past these places with a little care; hopefully it'll be just a matter of keeping our distance. In any case, if we can get to Forest Song we won't have to come back on that road - there's a flightmaster there.

After joining up with Kate we cleared a bunch of Furbolgs from a camp nearer to Astranaar (another quest done) and also grabbed a Moonstone from an Oracle on the island in the middle of Fallen Sky Lake. With those done, we went back to Astranaar to close out those two quests then zipped back to the Exodar.

Charred Vale

Last stop was back out to Charred Vale in the Stonetalon Mountains to pick up where we left off with the Bloodfuries in the Charred Vale. We took care of our quota and managed to do a little mining (there are supposed to be Gold veins there, but we never saw any), and on top of all that got new levels - I'm now 27.

Finally, to the Exodar to take care of business - bank, auction house, training, repairs, etc. - and then we packed it in.