The rest of the team

For the last week or more we haven't played our regular characters, or at least not much. Instead we brought Kate's Human Warrior out of retirement and did what we could to push her skills up, not least because she can do Alchemy and that means she can create powerful potions that all our other characters can make good use of.

We wanted to be able to take this character into fairly high-level areas, places where there's no way she could survive alone. To make that possible I brought my Draenei Paladin back from Gadgetzan and accompanied her around Redridge Mountains, mostly, and some other places.

I've also gone back to my own Human Paladin, running quests in the Westfall and Redridge Mountains; at the moment he's finishing up some quests in Duskwood and he'll be going back to Redridge very soon to finish up some quests in that area. He's up to level 27 and he's taken the place of the Draenei Guy as protector of Kate's Warrior, now that her level is closer to being in line with the areas we're in. We have an idea to head to Stormwind, possibly today, and take care of four quests in the Stockade - a place neither of us have ever been before. Kate's plan is to push this character up to level 35 as fast as possible because until she reaches that point she's stalled with the Alchemy training.

I'm also planning on bringing my original Human Mage back into the picture. He's been an Auction House stooge for several weeks and I've set up a new character to take over the duty. The plan is to completely rework his talent build (I may change his specialization from Fire to Arcane), re-equip with the best armour I can manage, check to make sure his training's up to date then take him on a trip out to the Eastvale Logging Camp for riding training and to buy a horse. Once that's done he'll pick up where he left off with open quests.

However I don't want to spend too much time on these other characters; I'd like to get my Draenei back to Tanaris and continue questing.

Tanaris and Feralas

We headed out southwest from Gadgetzan to find the Noxious Lair, where we were to splat some Centipaar bugs and collect the insect parts for the Water Co. representative. I don't know what I expected but the Lair is pretty scary looking - a bunch of craters edged with what look like insect legs sticking up in the air a hundred feet or more. And they twitch, like they're alive. Creepy.

The Centipaar bugs are nasty, too - wasps and ground crawlers with levels from 47 to 50. The first couple we whacked weren't too bad but we made the mistake of going deeper into the lair, and that made us very vulnerable because we'd be whacking away at one of the bugs and then another would get a bit too close and then we'd have two of them on us, and then we'd be surrounded by three or more. I know I got wiped at least four times and I'm not sure how many times Kate caught it.

So we moved back to the north side of the lair for the last couple and things went much easier. Not every bug dropped the parts we needed but enough did that it didn't take us too long, and with that out of the way we rode back to Gadgetzan to hand over the parts.

We have a couple of open quests for which we need to go back to the Pirate enclave where we'd taken down Andre Firebeard, but I wasn't in the mood to go back there just yet. Instead we took a flight over to Thalanaar in Feralas and rode west from there intending to find some Screechers - flying snake-like things - for a quest a Night Elf in Steamwheedle Port had given us.

From Thalanaar we went a little bit north to pick up the road then went west through the forest. Feralas is reminiscent of Ashenvale in that it's heavily forested, but to me it seemed nicer. Maybe it's just me but Ashenvale seems dark and oppressing somehow, where Feralas is lighter.

We made good progress on the road and it was looking as if we'd get all the way to the Vale where we'd find the screechers without incident. Then we found Camp Mojache, a Horde settlement; the road went right into the camp, and at the gate were two guards, at least level 57. Luckily we saw them first.

We got off the road and headed south and then west, bypassing the camp, and before we knew it we were in the right place to find the screechers. The problem here is that there are lots of gorillas and bears around, and the screechers tend to wander across quite a range, so we'd chase after one only to get too close to a bear or a gorilla (or a bear and a gorilla) and have to fight those off and by the time we'd done that the screecher was even further away.

Luckily we only needed three each, and for each one we had to wave a special wand to gather the spirits. When we'd done that we spent a few minutes knocking over Hippogryphs - there's a quest back in Gadgetzan that needs an egg, but neither of us found any and we didn't hang about doing that for long; maybe the eggs we need come from a different area. We went north to pick up the road but before we got there we ran into a camp of Yetis and had to fight our way through.

When we reached the road we had a choice - go east and have to bypass Camp Mojache again, or go west and hope for the best. We went west.

The road brought us to the coast and we found a jetty, and after a short wait a boat showed up and we hopped aboard. We had no idea where the boat was going; for all we knew we were about to be taken right into a major Horde city, so we were especially watchful when we got to the boat's destination. Kate was the one to spot Darnassus-faction Night Elves on shore and then the boat pulled in at Feathermoon Stronghold, a Night Elf outpost on the north shore of an island.

The stronghold doesn't have much, but it does have a flightmaster. We explored a bit, including riding all over the small island to fill in our maps, and then we returned to the flightmaster and took off back to Gadgetzan, where we packed it in for the night. Next trip we'll run out to Steamwheedle Port to close out the Screecher quest, then we'll decide where to head next.

Tanaris

There was no pressing need to get back to Ironforge right away so instead we took off from Thelsamar and went south to Booty Bay to take care of a quest on the coast nearby, to collect some orders and a map and knock down ten swashbucklers. Getting the documents wasn't a problem but the swashbucklers are thin on the ground and don't reappear quickly; with other players trying to run the same quest and in at least one case, basically killstealing, this took a lot longer than we'd hoped. But in the end it got done, and we returned to Booty Bay and took the boat to Ratchet (forgetting to close the quest out in the Bay - we'd have to come back for that later).

From Ratchet we flew down to Gadgetzan as the majority of our open quests were (and still are) all around Tanaris. The first one we took care of took us west to Sandsorrow Watch to collect a water sample from a pool for the Gadgetzan Water Company representative. While we were doing that we were attacked by a couple of huge bugs, but they weren't too bad (my two-handed sword with the Fiery Blaze enchantment is really paying off) and before long we were ready to head back.

We didn't go direct - there were a couple of small encampments with bad guys to the north side and we went that way to explore a little and also get some more XP. It was during this bit of exploration that we found Zul'Farrak, which is important because we have some higher-level quests inside there that we'll be getting to soon.

Back at Gadgetzan we closed out the quest by handing over the water sample. The XP pushed me to level 45, and we got a new quest: the bugs that attacked us are basically sucking the water sources dry and the Water Co. rep wants us to investigate further, so we'll be doing that shortly.

The next quest we took on was one we'd tried before - to get the head of wanted pirate Andre Firebeard from the enclave on the southeast coast. That first time we weren't strong enough; this time we were ready. We went south across the desert, and I helped Kate get to her next level by whacking her tagged targets (basilisks, mostly) to speed things along until she got it.

As before we went around the south side of the hills surrounding the enclave and approached from the beach, climbing over the hills to get to the enclave fence, and getting inside by going around the end of the fence where it meets the water.

That was about as far as we'd made it before - we'd got surrounded and overpowered. This time was very different and we were able to take these guys on, even four at a time. The Hammer of Wrath spell came into its own here - I was able to stop the baddies running off to get help when their health got low. We'd pretty much wiped out the camp before we found Firebeard, and when we did it was quite a fight because as is usual for the bosses he had three or four friends helping him out. In this case it didn't help him and it was all over fairly quickly. We headed out of the gate on the north side of the enclave and swam around the headland to the beach not far from Steamwheedle Port, where we were to take Firebeard's head for the reward.

We returned to Gadgetzan and flew back to Ratchet for the boat to Booty Bay, and closed out the quest we'd taken care of there; from there we went to Ironforge to close out the quest that Theldurin had given us in the Badlands yesterday. Kate was disappointed with that one because it gave less than 1,000 XP, so she didn't want to take on the next quest in that chain but I've checked into that and it turns out the next quest would give us 5,600 points; we may end up taking it after all, but we'll see.

We spent a little time in Ironforge taking care of the usual business and then made our way back to Gadgetzan via Menethil and Theramore, and parked ourselves in the inn ready to continue questing next time. As far as I remember we still have at something like eight quests in the desert and another four in Zul'Farrak. We'll have at least one more level each before we're done in Tanaris, I think.

Badlands

There's a quest we've had on our list for a while, to find Theldurin the Lost, so we flew out to Thelsamar and from there went south into the Badlands for the first time. The Badlands is what I expected the Barrens to be - a vast expanse of rocky desert. The area is rife with wolves and vultures, mostly around level 36 give or take a level or two.

We found Theldurin on the far side of the Badlands, near the southern border, and he had another couple of jobs for us. The first was to go up into the hills nearby and recover three fragments of the Scroll of Myzrael from the elementals there. This is part of the quest chain that began all the way back in the Arathi Highlands where Myzrael had asked us to help set her free from where she'd been trapped underground. Theldurin told us that doing this would not be a good thing, and we need the scroll to make sure that she stays trapped.

We went up into the hills and found the elementals but it took a while to find all three fragments - there weren't many elementals about at first, and we had to knock down quite a few before we'd gathered all the fragments. But we got all the fragments in time and went back to Theldurin, who put them together to reconstruct the scroll. The next step is to take the scroll back to the Shards of Myzrael back in the Arathi Highlands, but it'll be a while before we're ready to do that.

The other task he had for us was to go to Uldaman (we'd passed the place on the way down) and locate the Tablet of Ryun'eh, so we went north.

On the way we found the only vulture that wasn't anything close to level 36: a level 55 elite that attacked me before I knew it was there. It was way too much for either of us and although we made a dent in its health, we didn't stand a chance. We steered clear of its range after that, and I made a point of checking every other vulture I saw to make sure there weren't any more elites around.

We also found another questgiver, camped on a hill; he wanted a Drake Heart and in return would give us a fiery enchant for our weapons. This was too good to pass up, so we went east to the area where the drakes were. When we got there we found quite a few whelps and also an area with four or five full-grown elite drakes, all level 43-45. We assumed that the bigger drakes would have the hearts we needed so we spent quite a while knocking them down (they weren't as tough as I thought they'd be, considering that they were elites) but we didn't find any hearts and sure enough, when I checked the quest details, it turned out that the whelps were the source. So we went after more whelps and eventually both got the hearts. With that done we rode back to hand the hearts over and got the enchants - my two-handed sword now does some serious flame damage.

We continued to Uldaman and made our way inside. Uldaman is a dungeon and it's pretty full of troggs but we didn't have too much trouble fighting our way through and finding an ancient chest containing the tablet. Uldaman also has at least one instance and we went through for a little exploration before heading out.

Returning to Theldurin with the tablet, he gave us another task: to find Yagyin in Ironforge. We decided, before we left the Badlands, to run around a little to fill in some of the gaps on the map. There's an Ogre camp in the southwest and a Horde settlement somewhere near the western border, but other than that the area doesn't have much, and once we got back to the road we continued north back into Loch Modan.

By this time it was late, and I was pretty tired so instead of getting back to Ironforge we checked into the tavern in Thelsamar and packed it in for the night.

Taking Care of Business, Aaaarrr

There were no questin' this time, naaarrr; we had a number o' trinkets gathered that we needed to take to ye House of Auctions, an' as I said 'fore, it were high time I got meself a new blade more suitin' me new level. I been usin' the same single-handed axe atime an' it be good at slicin' up the monsters, but it ain't strong enough in them thar new areas we're startin' to wander, naaarrr.

So we went to ye Auction House an' put the trinkets up, an' I got me some new potions as I was gettin' low, an' I looked an' found a real nice two-handed blade that were the business but I didn't get it, naaarrr, cos it were seventy-five gold an' that were too rich for my purse. But seadog Katey had a sword she'd picked up somewhere, aaarrr, an' it be a honey an' even better than that other one, an' she let me have it, yaaarrr.

It been a while since I used a two-hander so I needed a bit o' practice 'fore I go a-whacking, so I took meself outside Ironforge and sliced up a couple o' boars but they was too easy; one whack an' there were bacon all over. So Katey and me went to the Aaaarrrathi Highlands and I put meself up against some o' them raptors an' spiders an' them Rumbling Elementals yonder at the Circle of Inner Bindin', an' now I be ready to go on a-questin'.

An' if you're wonderin' why I be talking like this, it be because today be International Talk Like a Pirate Day. YAAARRR!

Stranglethorn Vale and the Swamp of Sorrows

We abandoned four remaining low-level quests in Ratchet and took the boat to Booty Bay, and once there we took on three quests and headed out into Strangethorn Vale. Eventually. It took a little while to figure out how to get out of Booty Bay, since it's accessed through a short cavern/tunnel but I didn't know that, or where it was exactly.

Stranglethorn Vale is much better matched to our levels than the Barrens, with a lot of level 41+ mobs, mostly Gorillas (at least in the area near the Bay - they may get harder further out).

The first quest was to take the heart from a Gorilla called Mokk, as it was the only cure for the Stranglethorn Fever that was killing a character back in the Bay. To get the heart we had to locate a witchdoctor in a cave to the northeast; the doc used his shadow magic to summon Mokk, but while he did that we had to keep a couple of other Gorillas off his back. Once they were gone, Mokk appeared and we were able to get the heart.

The second quest took us out to the cove north of the Bay, where we found a bunch of bad guys camped and a document, plainly the object of the quest, sitting out on top of a barrel. The only way to the document was through the baddies so I tried to pull just the nearest, and as is standard operating procedure for me, managed to get the attention of at least four of them including a shadowcaster. I should have fired up my shadow protection aura, but didn't; when my health was low I should have fired up Divine Protection, but I clicked the wrong button and got wiped. Luckily the boneyard is real close, but in any case Kate was able to take down all the guys that had been attacking me in the time it took me to get back and into fighting shape. I must remember to set the various buttons in the same positions for both my Paladins; I've been playing the Human Paladin while Kate was sick, and I got used to the different button positions, and that's why I clicked the wrong one at a crucial moment.

We read the document but then had some confusion over where we had to go for the third quest, so rather than waste too much time on it we went back to the Bay to cash in the two quests we'd completed and the rep boost was enough to get us to Friendly status with the Booty Bay faction. Of the four Steamwheedle Cartel factions that leaves just one to get a better rep with - the Everlook faction, based in a high-level area in northeast Kalimdor (by high-level I mean 55+, well beyond our current levels).

Since we'd got the rep boost we were after we didn't worry too much about the third quest right away. Instead we flew out of Booty Bay to Darkshire, with the intention of finishing up a long-overdue quest on the coast of the Swamp of Sorrows. Getting there means heading east out of Darkshire and racing through Deadwind Pass - a level-55+ area sitting between Duskwood and the Swamp. Not knowing what to expect in the Pass, we fired up as much protection as we could, saddled up and went non-stop. We needn't have worried so much; neither of us saw any living thing anywhere near the road, and we got through to the Swamp in probably no more than a minute or so.

The Swamp of Sorrows is moderately high level - about 35-45, I think - so for the most part the baddies there aren't a problem. We did have something of a close call when we went through a village thinking that there was no real threat; unfortunately something hit me with a Stun and knocked me off my horse, and the next thing we had four or five bad guys on us like a cheap suit including yes, you guessed it, another bloody shadowcaster. However we had something like eight levels on these guys so, as close as it was, we were able to get through it and carried on to the coast.

The target of the quest was to gather twelve crawler legs each (the crawlers look like big crabs) and this was pretty straightforward since there were plenty of the things around the beach, they respawn fairly quickly and many of them dropped two legs so we didn't have to find two dozen of the things to bash up. The only complication was that there were a fair number of level-41 crocs around, and they had a tendency to wander into range while I was in the process of knocking down a crawler. It was after fighting off a croc that had done that very thing when I hit level 44, and Kate hit her 45 very quickly after that.

It was getting late by the time we'd got all the legs we needed so rather than riding back through Deadwind Pass we hearthstoned straight back to Ironforge and spent a little while tidying up - vendoring junk, getting repairs and most importantly getting class training (I picked up a new spell that'll let me throw a hammer at an enemy for 300+ damage provided that said enemy has 20% or less health). That left just one last thing - a quick trip out to Theramore to hand over the crawler legs and get the quest points. So we took a gryphon ride to Menethil and jumped on the boat, took care of the quest and then checked into the inn right there in Theramore for the night.

Next time in I want to spend some time in the auction house before we head out anywhere; it's pretty obvious that my weapons are underpowered for my level, since it takes me way too long to knock down the bad guys, so I'm planning on finding the most powerful two-handed sword I can afford. After that I think we'll probably be heading back to the Hinterlands to finish up some of the outstanding quests there.

Working for Steamwheedle

We left things with a handful of low-level quests in the Barrens, all given out by characters in and around Ratchet. As low-level quests we knew they wouldn't give us much XP but the idea was to boost our reputation with the Steamwheedle Cartel factions. One of the quests we'd finished up before had pushed our rep with one of the factions (Gadgetzan, I think) to 'Friendly' and we want to do the same with one or two of the others.

The first quest - chosen because it was the closest to Ratchet - was to gather some raptor horns. We headed out of Ratchet to the plain to the northwest and found a couple of raptors, but they were few and far between and didn't drop many horns. According to QuestHelper there were more to the south so I rode down there to have a look around, and found a whole raptor village; Kate followed me down there and finding the horns was quick work after that.

Next stop was the Wailing Caverns to the northwest, to take a bottle of 99-year old port from Mad Magglish. We were exploring the caverns when Magglish suddenly appeared next to me - he'd either been stealthed or perhaps someone else had got him a little earlier and he just happened to respawn while I was standing there. Anyway he got whacked and I got the port, and we waited for him to reappear so that Kate could get him. And waited. And waited. I was about to suggest moving on and coming back later, when he showed up again and that was that.

We didn't have a lot of time left but we decided to take care of one last quest in the far north, to collect a mysterious piece of kit called a Samophlange from a Venture Co. installation. To do this you have to operate a console then close three valves, then go back to the console at which point you find you need to get the key from Tinkerer Sniggles nearby. With the key you can then open the console and grab the Samophlange. All extremely easy at our levels, although I imagine it'd be quite a challenge for the level 14-15 players this quest is plainly aimed at, since at every step you're being attacked by the Venture Co. guys trying to stop you.

Our time was up; we headed back to Ratchet and closed the three quests out, and both got a reputation boost to 'Friendly' with the Ratchet faction. We still have a couple of quests left to do, but since we already got the rep boost I don't know that it's worth spending any more time in this area. Instead we may abandon those and take the boat to Booty Bay to take on a few quests over there - that should get us another rep boost with the Booty Bay faction as well as giving us a chance to explore around Stranglethorn Vale, which I think is higher level than the Barrens and so would bring us more XP along the way. We'll see.

The Scythe of Elune

Kate wasn't feeling well and didn't feel up to playing, so I didn't do much either though it did mean that I had time to take care of the Scythe of Elune quest that's been sitting on my quest log for far too long.

I'd left off with my Paladin sitting in the inn in Ratchet, and from there Duskwood is quick and easy - a boat trip from Ratchet to Booty Bay then a flight direct to Darkshire. Once there I sharpened my axe, conjured up my auras, jumped on my horse and headed south out of town.

What I was looking for was "evidence" of the Scythe; I found it in the form of a mound of earth inside a mine surrounded by level 29 worgen, down on the southern border of Duskwood. When I fiddled around with the mound, the ghost of Velinde Starsong appeared with a message; if I remember it right, the gist was that the Scythe had been lost.

Completing the quest meant riding back to Darkshire to see Jonathan Carevin; he sent me back to Darnassus to take the news to the Night Elves there, so off I went by gryphon, boat and hippogryph. In Darnassus the person I had to see accepted the news and that was the end of that quest chain at last.

With that done, I flew direct from Rut'theran Village all the way back to Ratchet and back at the inn, packed it in. I must remember to check, when I go back in, that I got all my arms and armour repaired.

The Barrens

We didn't have a lot of time so we only really took care of one quest - to find an emerald in a mine in the northeast of The Barrens. We took off out of Ratchet, going east first to the river that separates the region from Durotar, then following the river north.

Most of the beasts in the area are very low level - 14 or 15 at most. However we found a Horde outpost near a bridge that leads over into Durotar, and there are some level 40 Horde guards watching the bridge presumably to limit Alliance access to Orgrimmar.

We went over the bridge for a quick look before coming back and heading north. Something rather odd happened about then; Kate and I were both affected by a "Sap" spell, but we couldn't figure out for sure where it came from. There was a level 16 Undead player nearby and at first I blamed him; I tried to attack him but presumably he wasn't in PvP mode because I couldn't do anything, and if he wasn't PvP that would imply that he wasn't the source of the spell (although I have to admit I'm not 100% familiar with how the PvP mode works; we're not in the habit of whacking other players, even if they are nasty stinking unwashed Horde).

Anyway we carried on north and the Sap attacks stopped. We found the mine and started knocking over the baddies in and around it and I found an emerald fairly quickly, dropped by one of the goblins not far into the mine itself. Kate wasn't so lucky and had to wipe out everything in the mine, twice, before finding her emerald.

Once we were done there we headed back to Ratchet but rather than retracing our steps we went west to the Gold Road (the main north-south road running the length of the Barrens) then south. We found a Horde outpost at The Crossroads and kept our distance, but other than that it was a straight run to Ratchet.

We closed out the quest and although it gave us a little XP the main thing was that we are now considered "Friends" of that faction. To try to up that reputation a bit more we had a look around for other questgivers, taking on another three or four quests. They won't give much XP - they're too low level - but they should be quick and easy, and the rep boost can't hurt.

By then we were out of time, so we checked back in to the inn there in Ratchet for another night. Next trip I guess we'll go after those low level quests first, but after that we'll probably go somewhere a bit more challenging so that we can push for new levels.

Eggs

We went back to the Hinterlands to clear up a couple more quests; the closest and therefore the first one was to dispose of a pesky wizard and his spider minion who live in a cave southeast of Aerie Peak.

We got to the cave and got rid of the couple of guards at the cave entrance, then went in; the first time, Kate took on the wiz while I kept the minion busy and so to complete the quest we each needed to deal with the other opponent, which meant waiting for them to respawn. We weren't sure how long it would take for them to reappear and we considered moving along to the other quest, but that was some distance away and we didn't think we'd have a long wait; sure enough the guards reappeared after just a couple of minutes and we didn't have a long wait after dealing with them before the wizard and the spider came back too. This time Kate tagged the spider with an arrow and as soon as it moved I dashed in to wallop the wizard.

The other quest was to recover five stolen Gryphons eggs and meant going back behind the same wall as the day before. As I mentioned at that time I'd tried to jump to the top of the wall from the nearby rocks, without any luck. This time Kate tried it but in a stroke of genius thought to do it on her Elekk, which moves 64% faster than we can on foot and appears to jump higher, and landed neatly on the top of the wall. From there it was just a matter of dropping down on the other side and fighting our way through some spiders and trolls.

The area behind the wall has three large pyramid-like structures with a stone staircase leading to the top of each; at the top of each structure there are three or four baddies, including a shadowcaster who'll conjure up a nasty-looking minion if given the chance. Three of the eggs are sitting in a tray partway up one of the pyramids and standing right next to them is a good guy with another quest (which means going to the Swamp of Sorrows - that makes two quests we have to go out there for). The other two eggs are sitting on an altar near the foot of the same pyramid.

We had quite a battle with one of the shadowcasters; he did a lot of damage, and at the same time his minion was attacking me from behind as another bad guy joined in. The damage took my health down fast and I wasn't watching closely enough - normally I'd have fired off a Divine Protection spell but I timed it badly, got wiped and had to run back from the boneyard near Aerie Peak. Other than that, though, the area wasn't too bad. Once we'd got all the eggs we went northeast to find the spot where we knew we could get out by going over the rocks, and went back to Aerie Peak to close out the two quests for a total of 13,000 XP. Not bad at all.

That cleared up all the quests in the Hinterlands that we could take on at the moment; there are more, but they're rated for level 48+ which is a bit beyond our reach right now, so we'll come back when we've each gained a couple more levels. We had another quest to close out - the one from the day before where we'd collected fifteen feathers. This meant a quick trip out to Rut'theran Village and got us another 6,060 points. After that we checked quests and found that Kate had picked up one in Ratchet that I didn't have, so we made a quick flight out there so I could get the same quest on my list. That quest is in the Barrens and with no pressing need to return to Ironforge, we checked into the inn in Ratchet for the night.

Feathers

Kate didn't want to do the Scythe of Elune quest in Duskwood (I may end up running this one myself just to get it off the list) so we went back to the Hinterlands and cleared up a couple of quests.

The first was one we'd picked up in Rut'theran Village on Teldrassil; for that one we needed to pick up fifteen Wildkin Feathers each. It took a while; at first it went well because the feathers are large and out in plain sight, and we got about half the quota each fairly quickly. But then things slowed right down - it looks like each feather takes about thirty minutes to respawn so once we'd found all we could in the area all we could do was run back and forth, getting attacked by wolves and owlkins, until some started to reappear. Once they did, it only took a couple more circuits around the area to pick up the last few we needed.

The other quest was to find the remains of someone called Featherbeard and meant getting past the wall that runs northeast-to-southwest on the southern edge of the Hinterlands. At one point we'd thought it might be possible to jump onto the top of the wall by climbing up the cliffs and rocks at the southwestern end, but it seems to be just a bit too far to jump.

At the other end of the wall, however, you can climb up the rocks and drop down on the other side. There's a group of four baddies down there, all about level 45. One of them ran up the rocks and attacked Kate while she was mining a mithril vein on the rocks; he didn't last long, leaving just the three so I jumped down after one of them - a shadowcaster - thinking that she was far enough from the others that I wouldn't attract their attention. This didn't go as planned - one of the other two got a bit too close and came to see what the fuss was; at the same time the caster summoned a nasty-looking minion, so for a moment I was one against three. Kate jumped in pretty quick and between us we made short work of it. Kate took care of the last one while I reloaded on health and mana, then we carried on along a path that runs behind the wall.

Featherbeard (or rather, his body) was lying on a stone table on top of some sort of building. We were able to get what we needed, and by then it was getting late so we hearthstoned out.

Level 43

We weren't terribly far off new levels and we had a good number of points toward them "banked" in that we had a handful of quests completed but not cashed in for points. So before we went a-bashing, we made a trip to Rut'theran Village on Teldrassil to close one out then took the long flight south to Gadgetzan to close out another two there. Well I had two; Kate had three because she'd whacked Caliph Scorpidsting a day or two ago, and I hadn't. It made sense for me to get that one done - among other things it delivers over 7000 XP - so we went out to try to find him.

One of the other quests we'd closed out led to another which meant knocking over shadowmages, rogues and assassins; these baddies were all in the same area as Scorpidsting and so we were able to deal with this one while we were searching for him. As it happened, though, there were other players looking for the same guy and basically getting under our feet. One in particular, a blood elf, was very annoying - jumping and running all around us, standing real close during the fights, and just being a general pest. But after a while he buggered off and I was finally able to get Scorpidsting to myself.

Once he'd been dealt with we had just a few of the other guys to clean up to finish that other quest and once they were done we rode back to Gadgetzan to close out (and I think it was the quest XP at this point that pushed Kate to level 44 and me to 43), clear the junk from our backpacks and get repairs done. By then it was past time to finish for the night and so we hearthstoned back to Ironforge.

With the extra level we're ready to start the quests that'll get us the mechanical chicken pets (yes, it sounds silly - but also fun, and that's what it's all about), but I think before we start out on that road we want to finish up some older quests; in particular I'd like to get done with the Scythe of Elune quest in deepest, darkest Duskwood then head east from there through Deadwind Pass to the Swamp of Sorrows to gather the stuff we need for a quest that was given to us in Dustwallow Marsh. We may do that today.

The Quest for the Robot Chicken

Before we began...

My cooking and first aid skills have been coming along pretty nicely the last few days and are both up about as high as I can manage for the time being. Of the secondary skills that just leaves fishing somewhat wanting, so I may take some time out to address that. Or maybe not; I don't know that it's actually necessary, so I don't consider it a priority.

The primary skills have been lagging a bit, though. I can only advance mining/smelting by finding mithril ore and smelting it, and at the moment even smelting the stuff isn't getting me many points, so I need to get out and actually mine some of the stuff so that I can learn to mine higher-level minerals.

However I did spend some time yesterday, before we headed out, trying to advance my blacksmithing. As I've been gathering ore and smelting it I've been adding the metal bars to my collection in the bank, and I'd reached the point where the sixteen-slot bag I was holding them in was overflowing. I had over eighty bars of iron, for example. So I grabbed all the metal and took it over to the Great Forge and (literally) hammered through as many levels as I could, using high-level 'orange' plans to make as much stuff, and more importantly as many points, as I could, and at the same time free up some bank slot space. I started at level 147 and made 171 before I ran out of iron. I need to mine and smelt more iron, and perhaps some copper and tin for bronze, before I can go further. I think I have to get to 200 before I can train at the next level (Artisan, I think).

Anyway since all the stuff I made (and there was a lot of it) was free or pretty cheap (the ore is free; I had to buy some extras, such as flux, dye and leather), I was able to push it all out to the auction house on buyout at under market price. Hopefully I'll make some decent cash off the stuff, but if not I can always vendor it and get something back.

OOX-09/HL

I mentioned yesterday that when Kate hit level 43 I was just a couple of thousand points short of level 42 and went out into the wilds near Aerie Peak to whack a few wolves to make the level.

What I neglected to mention was that one of the wolves dropped an OOX-09/HL Homing Beacon; this thing is a quest starter, but it requires level 43 and so I had no idea what it did. So yesterday I did a little research and found out that it begins a quest chain that ends with you getting a neat little item - a mechanical chicken pet. It's only a pet - it can't help you out in a fight - but it sounds like a bit of fun to have. I mentioned it to Kate, and that set our plan; we had to go out and find another OOX-09/HL so that she could also have a pet mechanical chicken.

We flew from Ironforge direct to Aerie Peak and headed out east. According to the information I'd looked up the homing beacon was a rare drop from the owlbeasts but since I'd got one from a wolf we started with the ones in the area I'd been in at the time (WoWWiki didn't mention the wolves dropping any; I should set up an account and correct that). We spent a while in that area without any luck so we made our way southeast toward an area where we knew there were a lot of owlbeasts.

We whacked some owlbeasts and I found another OOX; that was a mistake. The damn thing binds on pickup and the beast carrying it was my tag - there was no way Kate could get hold of it. Having learned a lesson we grouped up and I set for free-for-all looting.

We whacked away for a good while - at least we got some good XP along the way since the owlbeasts and wolves were mostly level 42-44 - but we didn't find another OOX. By then we were running out of time and about to pack it in when a Silvermane Wolf dropped another OOX. Kate grabbed it; mission accomplished. We hearthstoned straight back to Ironforge and that was that for the night. Next trip, we have four or five quests that we can close out and that may give us enough XP to push us up another level, or at least be very close so that it won't take long to make the difference. As soon as I get to level 43 we're going on the hunt for the Robot Chicken.

Questing all over the World, part 2

Arathi Highlands

We started this time by going back to Arathi to deal with the Rod of Order, which meant taking it to the Circle of Inner Binding and clearing a path through the rumbling exiles to the obelisk in the middle. We touched the Rod to the Obelisk, the ground shook, and the next thing we knew there was a level 42 giant standing next to us. Luckily for us, unlike Fozruk this one didn't have an entourage of kobold minders and so wasn't a problem to deal with. The next step in that quest chain means talking to Gerrig Bonegrip back in Ironforge so that went on the list for later and we headed west.

Before we'd left Ironforge this time I'd done a little checking on where to find the things we needed for the 'cooking' quest in Gadgetzan - giant eggs, Alterac cheese and zesty clams - and saved us some time by pre-buying what I could. I'd made a quick solo flight to Stormwind for the cheese, and got all the clams and most of the eggs from the auctions. All that left us needing was three eggs each, and one suggestion was to take them from Owlbeasts in The Hinterlands.

The Hinterlands

The Hinterlands was an area we've been wanting to explore but it was too high-level for us the first time we went in. This time I was up to 41 and Kate was at 42 which put us into the right range, and the place is pretty close to Arathi so off we went through Thoradin's Wall into the Hillsbrad Foothills and north through the woods, and we found ourselves in Aerie Peak.

We took on a handful of quests from the people there and headed east into the Hinterlands to take care of those and find our eggs. The quests involved thinning out some of the wolves, opening some cages where the local Witherbark baddies might be holding a rather important captured Gryphon, and taking the necklaces from those same Witherbark Trolls. While we did that we found the owlbeasts we were looking for and got the last handful of eggs we needed.

By the time we'd done that Kate had made level 43 and I was very close to 42 so I went back out solo to whack a few more wolves to make up the difference, and with that done we went up the path to the flightmaster up in the highest part of Aerie Peak to get a flight to Menethil Harbour and from there we caught the boat to Theramore.

Tanaris

From Theramore we flew directly to Gadgetzan and closed out the cooking quest by handing over the ingredients we'd gathered, then we spent a little time roaming the little town to see what was there. I was surprised to find not only a bank but also an auction house - but it's a neutral auction house and as far as I could tell only had a few hundred items up for sale, compared to the Alliance auction house that typically has over twenty thousand.

Tanaris is about the same level as the Hinterlands - high enough to be a challenge and be good for XP but not so high as to make a trip into the wilds a suicide run - so we decided to take on a few quests and explore a little. We headed east along the road toward Steamwheedle Port on the coast but before we'd got very far we ran across some Wastewander Thieves and Bandits that one of the quests wanted us to knock over and we ended up heading south into their territory.

We cleared up the numbers required by the quest, then Kate suggested going after the pirate Andre Firebrand (another quest, from a Wanted poster in Gadgetzan) since according to our information he wasn't too far from where we were. Here we got into a bit of trouble because as we made our way in the direction of his Pirate enclave we encountered scorpids, basilisks and other creatures of higher and higher levels until we began seeing things that were level 47 and above. We managed to find our way around to the Pirate enclave and we even got inside the compound; Kate pinged one of the level 45 baddies with her bow, hoping that we could deal with these guys one at a time, but he dragged one of his mates along; we weren't doing too bad but then one of them ran off to get help and we weren't quick enough to stop him and a few seconds later we had another three or four of them all over us and that was the end.

By this time it was getting late, so we resurrected just outside the enclave fence and hearthstoned ourselves back to Ironforge. Not a bad trip at all - a good number of quests taken care of, another level up for both of us and we're both now masters at cooking so we can make some things that'll really help. We have more open quests in both the Hinterlands and Tanaris, so we have to decide which we want to take care of first the next trip, or whether we want to go somewhere else - we have an open quest I'd like to take care of that means going through Deadwind Pass and out to the Swamp of Sorrows; two more areas we've never been to and that I'd like to explore.

Questing all over the World

Arathi Highlands

We started out by flying to Refuge Pointe with the intention of finding Fozruk the giant and taking the Rod of Order from him. Fozruk's path takes him over a wide area so I started off by trying to locate him, the idea being to keep track of him until Kate could get there.

I found Fozruk not far from the Circle of East Binding - he and his three kobold friends were moseying along in the general direction of Refuge Pointe. However his path took him through the Circle of Outer Binding and I didn't want to get into a fight with the elementals there and fall behind, so I circled around the south side. When I got to the other side, though, he didn't show up. I have no idea how I lost him.

Anyway I met up with Kate and we followed the road west, all the way to the Circle of West Binding, and still didn't find him so we went back eastward. Kate found him, not too far from where I'd lost him earlier. I guess because Fozruk is in demand, we weren't the only players in the area so things got a little confusing. I knocked down two of Fozruk's kobold hangers-on and was about to join in with the giant-whacking but by the time I got there it was too late - he'd already gone down.

We picked up the Rod of Order but rather than continue on with it to the Circle of Inner Binding we decided to get back to Theramore and continue with some of the quests in Dustwallow Marsh.

Dustwallow Marsh

Our first quest was to report to North Point Tower; the guy there wanted us to go on to Tabetha's Farm.

Before we did that I for one needed spider meat, so we went west to the Darkmist Cavern. We spent a long time there - I think more than half the time this session was spent here. Kate in particular gathered a huge amount of mithril and iron and between us we gathered enough spider meat to last us quite some time.

When we were done there we carried on down to Tabetha's Farm and got a couple more quests that involved going to the village of the Grimtotem Taurens (who it turned out had been responsible for burning down the Shady Rest Inn while two people were inside). Burning down all their tents, for one thing, and gathering seven Grimtotem armaments. It didn't take long and the next step was to take the news back to Theramore.

We didn't do that right away - the long stretch of fighting in the caves earlier meant that our packs were getting full and we needed repairs, so we went back to Ironforge to take care of those things before returning to Theramore on the boat.

In Theramore we closed out the last couple of quests from the chain that had started at Shady Rest Inn - putting flowers on the graves of the victims, which was a rather moving touch for a game.

We flew back to Mudsprocket and from there went out to the Den of Flame to take care of a couple of quests for Brogg the two-headed Ogre. One quest was to use a totem that he'd given us to gather Black Dragonkin Essence; the other was to collect a banner that he wanted.

The Den is full of level 39-41 Dragonkin and they respawn rapidly. Also the den itself isn't very big inside so it didn't take long to find the banner and to get the essence that we needed. With that done we went back to Mudsprocket to close out. I think that means we only have a couple more quests in the area, and at least two of the oustanding quests mean travelling to other regions (for one, we have to find The Swamp of Sorrows in the Eastern Kingdoms).

Tanaris

We had two open quests in Tanaris, and with so many quests cleared in Dustwallow we were ready to make our way out there, so off we went; from Mudsprocket north along the road then west into The Barrens, south to the Big Lift and into Thousand Needles. At the lift, one of the guards decided to attack and just for fun I jumped - forgetting that Kate had set to follow me automatically. As I thought, we ended up as ghosts at the graveyard just a few yards from where we'd 'landed'.

Thousand Needles is a weird looking place - basically a gorge filled with flat-topped spires of sandstone-like rock. This time we went southeast from the lift until we reached a point where the spires ended and we came out into a huge open area - the Shimmering Flats, which looks like a salt flat.

The road to Tanaris took us across the flats, with a small detour to the Mirage Raceway. Apparently the Gnomes and the Goblins have races here every month; that's something I'd like to see. This time in though, there was nothing going on so after a little exploration we continued south across the flats and into Tanaris.

The first thing you see coming down the road on the south side of the hills separating Thousand Needles from Tanaris is Gadgetzan - a neutral town primarily occupied ny goblins. We had a quest here - to find the chef who would be able to advance our cooking skills. However, it wasn't quite as simple as that - he wanted us to go out and gather a dozen Roc eggs first.

Tanaris is a sandy desert; there's very little out there apart from things that look like Hyenas and Scorpions. It's also a relatively high-level area; most of the creatures I saw were level 43, give or take a level.

We scouted around a bit, but only came across two rocs and neither dropped any eggs. By this time it was getting late; we'd covered a lot of gound and gained a level (I'm now 41) so we decided to call it a day and head back to Ironforge.

Dustwallow Marsh

I headed right out to the Circle of West Binding and whacked away at the Fire Elementals; thanks to the rest bonus I got 400+ XP for each one and although I didn't time it I think it took about twenty minutes to hit level 40.

By that time Kate had gone on ahead of me to Theramore so I flew back to Ironforge, dumped the vendor trash, put the Burning Charms from the elementals in the mail to Kate, got my stuff repaired then hit the Paladin Trainer. I always get all the training I can, regardless of the price, on the basis that you never know what you're going to need. In this case I picked up upgrades to a bunch of skills plus a new aura, and the main thing I was after - the ability to use Plate Mail.

Next stop was the auction house. I was planning to spend some time to get a good combination of kit but with Kate already out at Dustwallow Marsh I wanted to be quick, so I just picked up a new plate belt and breastplate - both pretty cheap, or at least well below market price - then took off for Menethil and the boat to Theramore.

There were two more quick stops in Theramore: one to grab some arrows for Kate, then a visit to the Trauma Surgeon to learn how to make Runecloth bandages (so now I need to find some Runecloth to push my First Aid up to 290). That done, I rode out to meet Kate near the Bloodhoof village in the northeast.

Kate was whacking level 36-37 raptors and we knew we could do better so we rode out to the west side of the marsh with the intention of finding the level 40-41 mobs we knew were out there. On the way we found a spot (just west of the road to the south of Brackenwall Village) where we could take care of two quests - one to gather some feathers from raptors, and another to take down one particular raptor. It took a while because only maybe one raptor out of three would drop the feathers we needed (we needed five each), but the boss raptor we were after was, despite the fact that he was huge, only level 39 and didn't take long to knock over.

Both of those quests had come from NPCs in Mudsprocket so we made that the next stop and closed those out. We had another outstanding quest - to pick up eight stalks of Wyrmtail, a herb that grows in the area just south of the settlement - so we headed out and took care of that one too.

While out in that area I noticed an area - an island, really - that was wall-to-wall with level 41-42 Dragonkin. These looked very like the creatures we'd seen out in northeast Ashenvale (like the one that had wiped Kate in two seconds with a single spit of poison). For a minute I considered taking one on but these guys stay so close together that I didn't think I could do it without attracting others, so I decided to leave them for later. In any case, they're gathered together in some kind of camp and my guess is we'll get a quest that'll mean taking them on sooner rather than later.

We ran back to Mudsprocket to close out the Wyrmtail quest then flew back to Theramore - Kate wanted me to show her the vendor that sold the good arrows, since they're actually hard to find. This particular vendor is very close to the flightmaster and sells arrows for characters up to level 55.

While we were in Theramore I vendored some of the trash items I'd picked up and got repairs done. By then it was getting pretty late and I was thinking of just checking into the inn right there, but Kate wanted to check the auction house and I want to do that first thing on the next trip, so we hearthstoned back to Ironforge and left things there for the night.

Almost to level 40

We spent a little time looking at new talent builds for Kate's Warrior, to see how the points might be better distributed to increase her damage. I came up with a build the way I would do it, but I have to admit that since I've never had a Warrior character I can't say that it would be the best way - Kate knows better than me how she uses her Rage points and fighting skills during a battle, and I can only guess. All the same I think that what I put together would boost her damage and increase the rage points. It would be nice if the WoW Armoury pages would let you experiment by applying a talent build to a character to see how your damage is affected, but it doesn't do that, so the only way to know what the impact would be is to try the build out and see what happens.

At least it's not too expensive - for my own character I decided to move a couple of points and spend them where they'd be more useful, and to do that I just needed to go to a Paladin trainer and unlearn - it cost one gold and gave me blank talent trees and thirty points to spend. I'd printed out the original build and marked up the changes I wanted to make, having first checked them out using the online talent calculator, and it took just a minute to drop the points in place the way I wanted.

Thanks to a pile of Mageweave Cloth that Kate found for me, I was able to push my First Aid skill up to 240; to advance I needed to see the Trauma Surgeon in Theramore again, so I made a quick trip out there to take care of that.

Kate's been spending most of her time in the auction house, since she's been doing a lot of auctioning and so on, and she was still busy taking care of business so from Theramore I headed back out to the Arathi Highlands to push on toward level 40. As before I spent a while whacking Rumbling Exiles around the Circle of Inner Binding, but after a bit I decided on a change of scenery and took a horse ride to the Circle of East Binding not too far from Hammerfall. The elementals there are Cresting Exiles and tend to drop Enchanted Water (which replenishes a lot of mana) and Cresting Charms which would go to Kate - there's a Warrior-only quest she may get that you need the charms for.

I was hoping to hammer on through all the way to level 40 but I was running out of time and ended up having to cut it short. I went back to Ironforge, vendored a bunch of the junk I'd picked up and put a couple of items up for auction, then gathered some more of the Mageweave Cloth that I'd left in the bank and pushed my First Aid up to 260. The next step to advance that skill means going back to the trauma surgeon for training in how to make Runecloth bandages and at that point I'll have to see about getting hold of some runecloth before I can go much higher. I could have run back out to Theramore but it was getting late so I'll take care of that next time.

All the same I didn't do too bad - I started off 27,000 points short of level 40 and left off needing around 8,000. I should be able to make that in about twenty minutes so by this time tomorrow I should have that level and hopefully be re-equipped with better armour and weapons.

Grinding for XP

We didn't do much of anything this time - Kate spent most of the time looking for good equipment to give her Warrior the best possible stats, and meanwhile I flew out to Arathi again to whack some more Rumbling Exiles around the Circle of Inner Binding, purely to gather more XP to get me up to level 40. I'm now only about 27,000 points short of that target, and as soon as I get the level-up I'll be able to use Plate armour - my plan is to completely re-equip at that point with the best weapons and armour I can afford.

I could have spent longer in the area but I felt like I'd done enough for one session and flew back to Ironforge. I did make a short trip out, to take a look inside Gnomeregan - we have a quest or two down there but the main reason for going was pure curiosity since I've never been there before. I didn't spend long, only making my way as far as some kind of train station and making a short foray inside the instance portal. I don't know that it's worth bothering with - like the Deadmines it's full of relatively low-level elites (I was attacked by five at one point and although it was a close thing I was still the Last Lifeform Standing) so you can whack away at dozens of them and not get any XP, and I didn't pick up any dropped goodies better than some silk, linen and wool (although I did find a handful of some kind of unidentified dirt-encrusted objects which appear to be quest objects and may be worth something).

Next trip I'm planning to make a big push on XP (probably in Arathi again, but we'll see - Dustwallow Marsh has quite a few level 40-41 beasts, and frankly grinding in the same area over and over gets old pretty quick).

Talent Scout

I did a little bit of research to try to figure out why Kate was having the problem with her damage and it looks like my analysis was right - the majority of Kate's talent points have been used in the Protection tree (Warriors have talents in Arms, Fury and Protection of which Arms appears to be the one related to damage). I'm betting that rebuilding the tree with most of the points in Arms will do the trick, but there's no way to know until we try it.

One thing I did know is that unlearning your talents costs money, and it costs more each time you do it - but I had no idea what that cost is. As it happens it's not too bad; the first time you do it, it costs one gold, the next time it's five. Each time after that it goes up by five gold to a maximum of fifty. The price goes back down again over time, at the rate of five gold per month until it hits a minimum of fifteen. The point is that right now it's affordable, so what we could do is rebuild Kate's talents and if it doesn't work out it wouldn't be a great loss to unlearn them and set them back the way they are now.

In fact for that price I may rebuild my own talents - for the most part they're how I want them but I do have two points on a talent that really doesn't do me much good and would be better spent elsewhere, and I certainly don't mind paying one thin gold to have things exactly the way I'd like them.

More Questing in Dustwallow Marsh

Kate got very busy in the auction house - I'll come back to that later. In the meantime I started off around 70,000 XP behind her, since I was almost exactly a level behind (which means I've caught up a bit from where we were a few days ago). Hitting level 40 opens up some new areas that would be a challenge for Kate while being basically death zones for me, so I still want to close that gap; if I let things go to where we're too far separated on levels, it'll make things harder than necessary on both of us.

So while Kate was in the auction house I flew out to the Arathi Highlands to find some mobs to whack - I wanted mobs that were high enough to make decent XP without being so high that I could count on being wiped if I got attacked by two or three. The Arathi Highlands has elementals in the various Circles of Binding that are around level 38-39, which was about right (although I'm fairly sure I could take on two level 40-41 mobs without too much trouble - but there really aren't any that I can think of in Arathi so the elementals would have to do).

I started off in the area just northeast of Thandol Span, knocking over level 37 raptors for a short while, but after that I spent most of the time whacking the elementals around the Circle of Inner Binding near Stromgarde Keep. Doing that I was able to collect something like 14,000 points - not a bad chunk.

While I was there I did a little bit of mining, but not really to get the ores - Kate and I both use quite a few Heavy Stones to make sharpening stones (Kate uses twice as many as me, because she's dual-wielding two swords compared to my single one-handed axe) and we'd used all the ones we had and so were limited to coarse sharpening stones which aren't quite as good. Heavy stones come from iron deposits, of which there are quite a few around Arathi, so when I was pretty much done gathering points I made a pass along the southern border from Stromgarde all the way to Witherbark Village looking for iron. I was able to collect ten stones; not as many as I'd hoped for, but better than none.

By the time I was done there Kate was about ready so I flew back to Ironforge for repairs, then we made our way back to Dustwallow Marsh. There we still have several outstanding quests so we started cracking through a handful. The first was to capture six raptors, using a special rope that we'd been given. It involved fighting the raptors until they were weakened anough to catch, then using the rope on them, and other than accidentally wiping a couple by not being quick enough with the rope it wasn't at all difficult.

We returned to the quest-giver and he gave us two follow-on quests, both in the Bloodhoof Village to the northwest; one was to free five captured Theramore Guards, and the other was to drop raptor bait near the windmill in the middle of the village - the bait would attract the raptors we'd just caught, which had now been trained to attack the bad guys.

We got to the village and whacked a few of the Bloodhoofs to get the keys we needed to release the captured guards, then in the village itself we freed the guys and dropped the bait. It was quite funny to watch - within a few seconds of dropping the bait five or six raptors strode into the village and started attacking the Bloodhoofs. In hindsight we could have timed it better - it would have been the perfect diversion to make it easy to get out of the village. As it was, Kate did the right thing by keeping her elekk off the road a safe distance to the north; I wasn't so sensible, thinking I could outrun the baddies, and basically got knocked off my elekk and attacked by four of them (wipeout!).

Anyway we closed out the quest and made our way round to Tabetha's Farm, where we had a quest to talk to Tabetha herself. From there, since it was close, I had a quest to go back to Mudsprocket to talk to one of the goblins (it turned out Kate had already closed out this quest - I must have missed it somehow). While we were there we picked up a couple more simple gathering quests, and by then it was time to call time; we hearthstoned back to Ironforge and packed it in for the night.

Building Character

Even though Kate's character is a level ahead, for some reason her damage is lower than mine and at the moment we're not quite sure why (although I have an idea, which I'll come to); as a level 40 Warrior she should have higher damage than my level 39 Paladin. The reason she's been spending rather a lot of time in the auction house is to try to find weapons and other equipment to push her damage up as high as possible, but it doesn't seem to be working out.

I'd suggested spending some time comparing characters to try to figure out exactly why my Paladin does so much more damage and where the weakness is (if there is a weakness) with her Warrior, although I've since thought about it and I think I may already know the answer: I'm betting that her talent trees may need rebuilding from scratch.

Paladins have trees for Holy, Protection and Retribution talents. Holy talents improve healing abilities and holy damage; Protection talents help with warding spells and armour. I have a few points in each of those trees but the vast majority of my points are in the Retribution tree, which enhances damage done. I think this is part of why I do so much damage, and thinking about it this may be the key to why I can take on mobs up to four levels above me.

There are a number of guides online that tell you to basically do things that way; concentrate on one talent tree and put very few points (or even no points at all) in the others. The justification for this is that you just don't ever get enough talent points - only one for each level starting at 10 - and that spreading them out evenly over all three trees results in you being mediocre in all three areas; it's better to be very good in one area and find ways to deal with not being so good in the others. In my case I do as much damage as I can and rely on the best armour I can find to compensate for the lack of points in the Protection tree.

I don't remember offhand what the talent trees are for Warriors, and at this moment I can't look up the information to find out, but I'm betting that if we have Kate 'unlearn' her Warrior's talents and rebuild them from scratch to a plan concentrating on damage, she'll see a huge improvement. So my plan for later today, before we enter the game, is to take a look at Kate's current talent build and use the talent calculator on the WoW website to figure out an optimum build, with a strategy for where to place points for the next few levels ahead.

Dustwallow, The Barrens and Thousand Needles

By following a first-aid profession guide on WoWWiki I was able to push my skill level from something like 80 all the way up to 225 fairly quickly, mostly without having to go outside Ironforge - the only exception being that at 125 I had to make a quick trip out to Stromgarde Keep to buy three books from Deneb Walker and fly back to Ironforge, which I think took less than ten minutes. Once I hit 225 the next requirement was to see the same Trauma Surgeon in Theramore that Kate needed to see for her own advancement, and by the time I was at that point Kate was ready to go so off we went.

In Theramore the surgeon had me run the same "Triage" quest that Kate had already been through. It took me four attempts to get it, which from what I've been told isn't too bad, and that got me to Artisan level with a new maximum level potential of 300.

With that out of the way we headed out into Dustwallow Marsh and east to the coast to take care of two quests - one to gather turtle tongues and the other to find Razorspine and get the sword that "Swamp Eye" Jarl wanted. With those out of the way we took the road north, west then south around the bay so that we could finish up mapping the southwestern part of the marsh.

We made our way back to Tabetha's Farm and then east to find Tidefury Cove and Nat's Landing, which is on a small island out in the bay. Nat Pagle had a little job for us - to smear his experimental shark bait all over ourselves then swim out to a wreck a little way away to see if it worked. We were in the water whacking huge lobster-like Makrura for a while, waiting for something to happen, before we realized that Nat's bait was sitting in our backpacks unused. We smeared it on and sure enough it attracted the Lurking Sharks. Luckily we only had to whack one each to complete the quest, then swim back to Nat to close it out. He gave us the next quest in the chain, to talk to Major Mills at the dock back in Theramore about the legendary sea monster Tethyr. With that done we swam back west to carry on exploring the marsh.

We found the little goblin outpost called Mudsprocket where we were able to open up another flightpath (there's a neutral flightmaster there) and close out the quest begun at the Zeppelin crash site by handing over the supplies we'd picked up, then we went back north to meet Inspector Tarem at the burned-out Shady Rest Inn on the road to The Barrens.

At the Inn Tarem asked us to check the area for clues to who committed the dirty deed; there were three clues, each of which opened an individual quest and all of which meant going back to Theramore. Before we did that we went up the road to take a look at The Barrens. I wasn't thinking of doing more than taking a quick look, but we went in a little way and found Bael Modan, a small Alliance settlement. We looked around a bit - we didn't see anything useful, such as traders or a repair shop, and we were going to move on when Kate noticed that we were close to Thousand Needles. We had a long-outstanding quest to find someone near the Thousand Needles/Feralas border to the southwest so it was too good an opportunity to miss and we headed down the Southern Gold Road.

What we found there was pretty incredible - the border between The Barrens and Thousand Needles is marked by a huge drop over a cliff. Getting down is easy - at the same spot is The Great Lift which is just a simple elevator. (Actually there's an easier way - jump. You'd get killed, of course, but as it happens there's a boneyard very close to the base of the lift, which is almost certainly where you'd resurrect.)

Both the Barrens and Thousand Needles are Horde-controlled but the good thing is that they're low level. One thing we've noticed is that for the most part hostile mobs have the sense to not attack things that are way higher level than themselves. It's not always true - some don't like it if you get too close, such as one or two of the centaurs whose camp we went through as we headed west through the area, but in general it seems to hold true.

We found the guy we were looking for - and another neutral flightmaster - so we closed out that quest and hit up the flightmaster for a quick trip back to Theramore.

At this point we had a bunch of quests to close out - the three clues from the Shady Rest, a little chat with Major Mills, and one or two others (some of which I may not have mentioned - it's not always easy to remember every little detail by the time I come to write this).

Major Mills gave us the task of taking down Tethyr. The plan was that Mills' men would fire up the lighthouse, which would lure Tethyr in, then twelve of his marksmen would be shooting him while we had to run around and blast him with the three mortars mounted around the dock. They began, the sky turned dark and stormy, and Tethyr appeared. He's a level ?? monster (I found at that any hostile marked as level '??' is at least ten levels above you or has a dynamic level three more than yours - in my case, that meant that Tethyr was at either level 48+ or maybe no more than 41, dynamic) and he has a kind of frost-blast attack that knocks you back. In any case thanks to the mortars he wasn't too tough to deal with and once he'd gone there was a little fireworks display to celebrate.

By the time we'd closed out all our quests in Theramore we were both close to new levels so we decided to head back out to the beach to whack some murlocs for the extra XP. It took a little while but Kate hit level 40 fairly quickly then helped me out while I got the extra three or four thousand points I needed for level 39.

There was one other thing we wanted to do - we had an outstanding quest in Darkshire so we took the boat from Theramore to Menethil and flew out to Darkshire. However by the time we got there we were both tired and decided to call a halt until next time; we checked into the inn in Darkshire and packed it in for the night, and we'll close out that last quest later and head back to Ironforge to take care of the usual tidy-up.