Questing in Sholazar Basin and the Storm Peaks

We started off with the daily cooking and fishing quests in Dalaran; the cooking quest just meant running around Dalaran a little bit, but the fishing quest sent us out to River's Heart.

Sholazar Basin

Our first task was to complete the fishing daily, which was to catch a Ghostfish and figure out its secret (which is that eating one makes you invisible for a short time).

We continued questing where we left off with a series of simple quests: switching on two activation consoles at Maker's Perch and Maker's Overlook, on opposite sides of the basin, to power the Waygate; passing through the Waygate to find and activate the Etymidian, a weapon which is actually a large automaton.

We left it there, with the last quest ('Reclamation') not done yet because a workmate who is also player told me that even with his level 80 Paladin he wasn't able to complete this quest solo. I may have a go at it anyway, just to see if it's that bad.

Storm Peaks

We moved on to K3 and continued with some quests we'd left off there: collecting a power cell for a Goblin transporter pad, getting the pad working then knocking down various baddies. Then there was a repeat of the quest we'd done earlier, laying land mines.

The last quest in K3 meant jumping on a rocket that flew us automatically to a crash landing in Frosthold, not too far away, and there we started more quest chains.

I lost count of the number of quests we completed, but the XP we gained was enough to push us from about a third of the way to level 79 all the way up to about eighty percent, and there are still quests to be done around there; one more good session today should get us to level 79 and a good way toward level 80.

Back to Sholazar

After making another titansteel bar for auction and doing a little fishing I met up with Kate in Dalaran so we could run another cooking daily quest (which was actually a repeat of the one we did the other day, picking mushrooms in the Dalaran sewers). We passed on the fishing daily - it would have meant going into Wintergrasp, which we're not sure we're ready for yet.

Once we were done in Dalaran we decided to fly back to Sholazar to take care of the quest to knock down the level 77 elite that had wiped us both twice last weekend. This time, thanks to indestructible potions and better timing with the item that reflected his spells back on him, he wasn't so lucky. We closed out the quest and got another to check out the Lifeblood Pillar nearby, then another to blow a horn at the top of another pillar and another to gather spirits from elementals... we still haven't finished the whole quest chain because we ran out of time, so we'll be getting back to that later. We've made a big leap forward toward level 79; another few quests like this and we'll be there.

Fly Fishing

We started late the last couple of days, not really leaving enough time to make any progress toward the next level. That's not to say that we haven't made progress in other things, though.

With time being short I've been concentrating in three areas (and Kate's been doing something similar). First, I've been making titansteel bars; each needs three titanium bars (or six titanium ores) and some other things, and you can only make one every twenty hours but it's worth it because even if I have to buy some of the ingredients on auction the profit margin is still very good - one bar sells for seventy or eighty gold.

Second, I've been fishing for Borean Man o'Wars to make Black Jelly, and the way I've been doing it has been to fly along the coast of the Borean Tundra with my Fish Finder enabled on the minimap, watching for schools of the things. It's not that I need Black Jelly specifically, but until you reach a skill level of 425 at cooking this is one of only two recipes that will give you any skill points. I was at 424 for a long time until yesterday when I finally got the extra point and at that time both of those recipes stopped giving more skill points. From 425 there are only two more recipes you can get that will advance you toward a 450 skill level; both recipes can only be bought for Dalaran Cooking Award points, and the only way to get those is to complete the daily quests from Katherine Lee in the Hero's Welcome inn in Dalaran.

So the third thing we've both been doing is running those quests. The other day we got one award point and yesterday another two for a total of three - enough to buy one of the two recipes. We'll be continuing to run those daily quests for a little while at least.

In addition to the cooking dailies, there are also fishing dailies that give you some money and a bag of fishing goodies. We didn't know about these quests until yesterday and we tried the first one, which meant fishing for corroded jewelry in the Dalaran Sewers. These are more daily quests that we'll probably continue with, at least as long as they continue to deliver cash, goods and XP.

Icecrown, Dragonblight and Storm Peaks: Level 78

Icecrown

As I mentioned, I started off a little way behind Kate (about 160,000 XP) and I decided that I might be better off, at level 77, knocking down baddies around Icecrown since the flight point at the southern end is almost within sight of Dalaran. Sure enough, right outside the camp where the flight point is located there's an area that's pretty well loaded with those undead spider-like creatures, and they respawn pretty fast.

I spent a short while there then decided to move north and found another area with some large bug-like baddies. I knocked a couple of them down but for some reason I didn't get any XP off them and I couldn't loot them either; very odd. So I got airborne (it's great being able to fly around) and headed east, thinking I might have a bit more luck in Storm Peaks.

There did seem to be more stuff around but I didn't stay long because it occurred to me that I needed worm meat (to get a few more points on my cooking skill). I made my way to K3, bashing stuff as I went, and from there I took a flight to Fordragon Hold in northern Dragonblight.

Dragonblight

East of Fordragon Hold, just south of the crossing into Crystalsong Forest, is an ice canyon (the Crystal Vice) and leading off from that is a deep cave filled with Jormungar Feeders; most of them drop worm meat. Here I was able to get the twenty bits of worm meat I wanted and get some XP at the same time. It worked out perfectly; I walked out of the cave with the meat, I'd gathered enough XP to be even with Kate on points, and Kate had finished up with auction house business. I flew back to Fordragon Hold and we made our way to the goblin settlement at K3.

Storm Peaks

There were three quest givers at K3, and between them we got five quest chains in the area to take care of. We had to gather charred aircraft parts, retrieve a toolkit from the middle of a minefield (without flying - the minefield is surrounded by turrets that shoot down any flying mounts), recover supplies stolen by gnolls, lay land mines, use a bomb to blow up a mammoth, and get ore from a cave just north of K3.

One quest chain took us into Sifreldar Village and we had to go into a mine in disguise - this turned out to be quite a long chain and involved freeing dragons and prisoners while airborne, fighting on armoured bears, and finally jumping from dragon to dragon using harpoons while circling the Temple of Storms a very, very long way above the ground.

Thanks to all these quests we made level 78 and got some way toward level 79. I think we've cleared pretty much all the quests out of K3; the plan at the moment is to move on to Frosthold next, where we know there are at least three more quest givers. At the rate we're going we'll hit level 80 sometime in the next few days.

Closing on 78

We spent most of the time in Sholazar again, pushing through the leftover quests out of Nesingwary Base Camp including a small chain that involved tethering a mammoth then riding it into battle against a high-level dragon on the north side of the region. The mammoth didn't make it but at least by the time it croaked the dragon's health was down to something like ten percent, so finishing the job wasn't that hard.

I'm about sixty percent of the way to level 78; Kate's a little way ahead at about seventy percent, so I have a little catching up to do but it shouldn't take long. I may stay in the Sholazar Basin to do this but it depends - the baddies will be giving less XP so I'll have to bash that many more of them, and even as many as there are around it may be quicker to move to a slightly higher-level area. Zul'Drak, perhaps.

The Flying Explorers

We had a number of open quests in the Howling Fjord, mostly out of Valgarde but also some in the area east of there, across the river. Mostly they were the usual take-down quests but there were a few that were particularly interesting: in one, you disguise yourself as a robot so that you can gather data crystals; in another, you control a hawk as it gathers eggs; and in one you shoot flaming harpoons to destroy enemy buildings then finally ride one of the harpoons to land yourself in Valgarde.

After running all of the quests Kate was about eighty-five percent of the way to level 77 - ahead of me by about twenty percent. I spent some time in the area of Crystalsong Forest near Dalaran, knocking down high-level baddies to try to catch up, but I found that I was spending more time running around looking for baddies than I was actually fighting and getting points. I decided to move on to the Sholazar Basin because the cobras and crocalisks are thick on the ground there, especially in the marshy area west of River's Heart, and even though they're lower level than the ones in Crystalsong it didn't take too long to get level with Kate.

Once Kate joined in we started running quests in Sholazar - a couple from questgivers in River's Heart but mostly the ones from the Nesingwary Base Camp to the west. Some gathering quests, of course, but with a couple of more interesting ones thrown in. For example, one involved being a co-pilot in Pilot Vic's plane to run a reconnaissance mission, and you end up having to fly the damaged place back to a safe landing. In another you have to take down a level 77 elite by using a magical item to reflect his attacks back on him - we failed miserably, twice, so we'll have to go back to that one. One small chain of quests has you locating a plane engine and some parts, and at the end the plane is rebuilt, creating a new flight point at the Nesingwary camp.

Thanks to the quests we finally hit level 77 and shortly after that we got our cold weather flying training from Pilot Vic - and so at last we can fly in Northrend!

We finished up a couple more quests in the area then went flying - first to get to the two last areas of Sholazar that you can't get to on foot, finishing our mapping of that region, and then continuing into Icecrown. I went a bit too far south at one point and entered Wintergrasp, which resulted in a warning that it's a no-fly zone and I was about to be automatically dismounted. I turned back north as fast as I could.

We mapped all of Icecrown from the air, only dropping to ground level for two flight points that showed up on the minimap. That left only the Storm Peaks to map, so as late as it was getting we went for it. Again, we found a couple of flight points in the south and got our first glimpse of Ulduar on the north coast. But the highlight was when we finally hit the area called Narvir's Cradle; this was the last area we needed to finish exploring the Storm Peaks, and Northrend, and the World! We now both have the title 'The Explorer' attached to our names.

It doesn't mean we've explored every corner of the world, of course - there are a lot of areas that aren't part of the achievement and so we're always finding new places that are on the map but we just never got close to before.

We're both just around halfway to level 78 and as far as I'm concerned the next major milestone will be to gather the five grand we each need to be able to get the next level of flying training and buy our epic mounts.

You Can't Stop The Signal

...But the TV companies can still scramble it

One of my Christmas presents from Kate last year was the boxed set of the TV series Firefly. I'd been interested in seeing the show since we'd watched the spin-off movie Serenity - which hadn't made a hell of a lot of sense at the time, but I was intrigued and I wanted to understand more.

Before I allowed myself to watch it, I wanted to finish watching all the episodes of Babylon 5, which meant buying seasons 3, 4 and 5, and so I did – watching two or three episodes almost every day, and then also the TV movies (including the awful A Call To Arms – what the hell were they thinking?). There were a lot of episodes. It took weeks.

Finally I got to where I felt comfortable starting on Firefly.

What can I say? This show is bloody excellent. It's usually classed as 'Space Western' rather than hard SF, because it's set in a star system where many of the worlds are remote, so these places have a western pioneer trail-like feel; like all good SF it doesn't focus on the special effects, concentrating more on character and story.

Excellent show, as I said – and yet only eleven episodes were shown before it was cancelled (the DVD set includes three other episodes that had been filmed but weren't shown at the time). The fact that the show had a loyal following is illustrated by the fact that Universal made the feature-length Serenity a few years later. So, what went wrong?

The TV company that aired the show the first time round, that's what went wrong; specifically the program scheduler that decided to not show the pilot episode first (may his/her soul roast for eternity in hades). The pilot episode that sets up the entire series and shows how Simon and River Tam join the crew of the ship in the first place, and why they're there. The episode that hooks you in and leaves you gasping for the next episode, because you want some answers to the questions it asked. The TV company didn't show this one first (apparently they showed it at the end of the run) so I imagine viewers were pretty damn confused by the episodes they did see. A great series, brought low by one idiot.

Anyway, I watched all fourteen episodes then watched Serenity again (and this time it made much more sense), and then I put them to one side for a bit and I've now watched the first eleven episodes again with the last three coming soon.

If you haven't seen Firefly, watch the first episode. If you like it (that is, if you then can't live until you've seen the second episode, etc.) then go out and buy the set. And the movie. And write to Fox and tell them to bring Firefly back.

Level 76

We Must Fly

For the last couple of weeks we've been spending most of our time in Northrend, in part for exploration, but also to gather materials for sale. It took us an age to get from level 74 up to 75 because we spent more time gathering and getting our other skill points up (we're both Grand Masters at all the skills we have, and I'm not too far of maxing out fishing and cooking), but then we powered through and hit 76 fairly quickly, thanks mostly to a series of quests in the area around the Westfall Brigade Encampment in the Grizzly Hills.

Grizzly can be a rough area, even at these high levels. There are elite giants wandering from south to north along the coastal strip, and they move faster than they look – you might see one some way off and think you have the time to knock down a wolf or two, then the next thing you know the bugger's on top of you. Mostly a zero survivability situation, although at one point I did manage to shake one off me by running for it and jumping into the sea.

Still, there are a lot of quests in the area including a handful that take you into the ruins on the coast east of the encampment; all good for XP, and you get to meet Harrison Jones (looks like Indy, talks like Indy, but doesn't have a whip). Right now we're pushing hard for level 77 with one major goal in mind – to get our cold weather flying training so that we can fly. Among other things we both want to get our Explorer achievement and title and there are places we just can't go until we can fly, which we realized when trying to explore an area on the east side of Sholazar Basin; it's way up the side of the crater and it turns out you just can't get there on foot. I don't remember if I mentioned this in an earlier post, but we completed our explorations of the Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and Outland and we've covered all but four or five of the Northrend regions, so we really don't have much more to do for that.

Of course, being able to explore these high reaches isn't the only advantage – I'm expecting that just as in Outland, being able to fly gives a better chance of staying out of harm's way. The next big step after that will be to put together enough cash to buy an epic flying mount, but at five thousand gold it'll be a while before we get to that point. (At least, I think it's five thou... I may be wrong.)

Children's Week

We decided to have a go at the children's week quests. Starting in Stormwind City we got the quests, which entailed taking an orphan to places all over the world. There was a similar quest starting in Shattrath. The orphans could be called and dismissed with a whistle, thank goodness, or they wouldn't have lasted ten seconds in some of the areas we had to take them to.

So the rest of the time was spent taking them all over the place - Darnassus, Thousand Needles, Nagrand, Auchindon, Hellfire Peninsula, Loch Modan, maybe a couple of other places. It was an interesting distraction and made a few points, as well as ending with a couple of new pets - a turtle and a weird, floating, one-eyed alien jellyfish or something.

Since then we haven't done much. I desperately need to go mining some more, to keep the funds rolling in, and I'd like to quest for more points toward level 77, but Kate's been sick so we haven't really done anything like that. Hopefully we'll get back into that soon.