Out And About

by Gimmlette

I don't remember this being here.

This is from the Tanaan Jungle starter quests, specifically the quest that frees Gul'dan from his prison. I was running around deactivating the crystals and saw this. I don't remember this crystal having a sword through it when I was through here on Gimmlette. Is this something I can obtain on my warrior? Was it added later? The sword design is one a number of one and two-handers use. It's huge, so I'm guessing it was an ogre's. It's not big enough to be Mannoroth's.

Does anyone remember? Did I miss this the first time through, which wouldn't be unusual?

Quest Hub

by Gimmlette

So I was running a 5-man obtained out of the inn in my garrison. Generally, I just accept whatever the quest is that the guy with the blue ! over his head has for me. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to the actual quest. (I do wonder what Mylune is doing with all those tiny peachicks I bring her. Why isn't my garrison overrun with peacocks of various sizes?)

Anyway, I ran an instance with guild mates and then went to my inn to turn things in. One of the quests required this as a turn in; something I had automatically looted off the boss at the end of Bloodmaul Slag Mines.

First of all, I had to actually go back to Shattrath City to watch the drama unfold between Cro and the fruit vendor. "Oh yeah. Flavor in Lower City." Then, here I am, turning in a head I've stuffed into my bags.

"Bring me the head of X" quests are a staple of the game. I don't remember how many I've done over the years that I've played. There doesn't seem to be a "head count" (pun gleefully intended) of just how many you would encounter while leveling. At one time, I entertained the idea of doing, but never completing, as many as I could, sticking these heads into my bank. I have a bunch of new toons, made to save a particular name that I stumbled upon and liked. I should start to level one of those and see just how many of these I can find. At the very least, opening my bank to see a whole bunch of heads staring back at me will make an interesting screenshot.

Casually Guilded: Making Money

by Gimmlette

Making money can be one of the most frustrating things in this game. Everything takes coin. When you hit the major cities, there are all sorts of enticements for you to buy. If you get into Transmog gear, or collecting pets and mounts, the costs can add up on top of the money necessary for you to not run everywhere or to fly fast enough to get to Galleon before he dies. It took me 4 months, but I managed to save enough to buy the Alliance chopper added in Warlords. Let me tell you how I did it.

First, let's look at a brand new character.

I have a brand new dwarf shaman here. New toons start out with the clothes on their back, a backpack and a hearthstone. You have zero copper to your name. Start your drive to 1 or 100,000 gold by taking quests. Take every quest you can.

If you are at some location where there are a number of quests, chances are very good they are all in the same place. If there is a quest that says, for instance, "Take this letter to Ironforge", it's going to take you away from completing the rest of those quests. Don't take that one. Finish all of these and then take the quest that tells you to go somewhere else. Sometimes, you'll be sent back, but not always. Then you have old quests in your log. Clear them out before moving on.

Be sure you know what you're asked to do. Yes, that does mean you'll have to read a bit of the quest text, but if you know you have this one, involving Rockjaw invaders and one to pick up archeology fragments and one to find beer and it's all in the same place, you will save time. Plus, you have an idea of what you're going to make.

Turn everything in at once. Don't take any follow up quests until you've turned everything in. Then you can assess if you want to do the follow-up quests. I am a completionist so I'll generally do them, but if you have leveled by turning in quests, it might be to your benefit to go to the Hero Board in a capital city to see where it sends you. Higher level quests have bigger rewards. That's your call as to how much you want to do in any given location.

Loot everything; every little thing. The Rockjaw Thumpers dropped only gold, but as you get higher level, you'll start getting all sorts of junk on the mobs. Loot it all. Stacks of the most ridiculous gray items can vendor for a surprising amount of gold.

Here's one of Gimm's bags.

I vendor every gray and white item I get. Green and blue gear is sent to a bank alt to be put in the Auction House. I put it up once and if it doesn't sell, it gets vendored. I don't need it disenchanted because my enchanter has a boatload of materials. The gold is more valuable to me.

With Warlords, you can see, at a glance, what is considered vendor trash and what might be something you want to save. If you have outfitted your toon with heirloom gear, then selling any and all gear they get, unless you want it for Transmog, will net you a nice sum. It all adds up over time.

One of the people in my guild with a large number of alts says that power leveling with heirlooms and without spending money other than for the basic mounts and mount speeds you need to get around, will net you 15,000 gold when you reach 100. I can't confirm this but it seems like it could be true. When I sold everything I felt I didn't need on this toon, I had 7.5 silver for 45 minutes work. That's not too shabby. She is not wearing heirlooms so the total could have been more if I'd sold the gear she got as drops and as quest rewards.

Don't hesitate to use money as a guide to which piece of gear you should take from rewards. Mobs at low levels are pushovers and you can easily take on mobs 2-3 levels higher than you in just what you get as quest rewards. You will want to upgrade gear every 5 levels, or so, but if you are power leveling, those levels will go by very fast.

Dailies are another source of fairly easy income. Low level toons can do the fishing and cooking dailies in the major cities. Hubs in Mists of Pandaria, such as here at Niuzao Temple, have multiple dailies in one location. You can easily clear 50 gold from these hubs; sometimes over 100 depending upon what the mobs have on them which can be vendored. Dailies are designed to be reasonably quick with a good payout. Once you learn where everything required is, you can bang out quite a few in a couple hours.

Finally, you can play the Auction House, particularly if you get a blue or purple bind on equip piece. Unusual pieces are sought after for transmog and can pad your coinage totals very nicely. Other people find the auction house to be great fun, for figuring out which materials to buy low and sell high. If you have gathering professions, selling the raw materials makes money, but not in vast quantities unless you happen to be on a low population server where people are leveling a lot of alts. That being said, all it takes is one person to be looking for Dreamfoil or Fel Iron or embersilk and they will pay whatever price you have listed for the materials. If you choose to "play" the Auction House, get an add-on to help you and read the Undermine Journal.

Do not buy gold. That is an offense which will get you banned. Also, don't pay money for a leveling service. Those are not a prevalent as the gold offers, but they are still there. You don't need a leveling service. Even if you have 2 hours per week to spend trying to make gold, you can do it without paying someone. You have to give them personal information, too, which can compromise your computer. Just don't.

I find money fairly easy to make in this expansion. It's not boatloads of money and it's not instant, but in the 2 weeks since spending 100,000 to buy my Alliance chopper, leaving me with 250 gold, I've made 9,000. There are a lot more suggestions for making gold on web sites such as WOWHead.

As a casual player, you have just a limited amount of time to do all this game has to offer. Having more than what amounts to pocket lint can make the whole gaming experience much better. I hope these suggestions will help you add to your wallet.

Quest Hub

by Gimmlette

Today's Quest Hub could also cover "Throwback Thursday".

Before the Cataclysm, before Wrath of the Lich King, before Burning Crusades, at the end of the original game, there was a server wide event to open the gates of Ahn Qirag. People collected materials and resources to deliver to the Cenarion Circle in Silithus in order to ring the gong which opened the gates to the 20 and 40 man raid. I was not a part of WOW at that time. I only know the bits I was told. But, long after the gates were opened on each server, through Burning Crusades and Wrath of the Lich King, you could still pick up and do the quests to create the Scepter of the Shifting Sands, the actual tool used to ring the gong and open the gates.

To make the scepter, you needed to go all over the world, collecting materials and fighting bosses. I started on it toward the middle of Wrath of the Lich King before finishing it. The premise was you needed to collect pieces of fire, ice and nature to assemble the scepter. One of the threads took you to Azshara and a shark named "Maws". I don't remember the other one but the nature one had you reclaim a well-known dragon.

I don't remember how I got this, whether I found it in a run of Sunken Temple or somewhere else. I knew this was leading to the final boss fight, the final step for the green shard. I'd done most everything solo. It was very easy to accumulate stuff, even the elementium required for steps in the quest chains. (There were 3 corresponding to the three colors.) I bought a lot of that off the auction house because people were just dumping it and no one wanted it.

In total, there are 18 steps to this final boss fight. At step number 8, you get this quest.

(Yes, I took a screenshot of every step, figuring it was monumental that I could do it and some day, I'd want to remember.)

The agent and I headed to Moonglade from there. Once in Moonglade, there were a series of steps to confront Eranikus. You know Remulos in Moonglade? He has a few quick quests and then you never talk to him again. He factors hugely in the scepter quest line. That really is why he's in Moonglade. He was responsible for calling and then confronting Eranikus. Omen's return during the Lunar Festival is interesting, but you have not lived until you see a green dragon materialize from across Lake Elluneara and come toward Nighthaven.

What was also incredibly cool was that you did this event in real time. Phasing had only started with Wrath so anyone who was in Nighthaven, and this is the druid training area, could see and interact with someone doing this final quest.

I'd had no trouble up to this point. I have a bear. I'm good. How wrong I was. Eranikus attacks Nighthaven and seeks to kill the druids and Remulos in particular. Your task is to keep him alive. Eranikus threw corrupted druids, shadow elves and minions and lots and lots of nature damage at you. I tried to deal with it and several level 50 and lower druids in the area came to help, but we were overwhelmed and killed. Fortunately, you could just run back, talk to Remulos and start the encounter over again. By the 4th wipe, I knew I had to ask my guild for help.

Several people came to help, more out of curiosity at my claims there was a green dragon in Moonglade. We were joined by a bunch of low level toons until we had a nice raid group of 10 people. I started up the encounter and we battled. It went on for a good 10 minutes, wave after wave of mobs, nature damage, dying and running back. It was intense, but so satisfying. In the end, Eranikus is confronted by Tyrande. He claims she abandoned him. She rebukes him and he thanks her for purging his corruption and heads into the Emerald Dream.

It was an amazing fight. I was very sad it was over.

There's not been anything in the game which comes close to the epic nature of this. Oh we had our legendary cloak quest and currently have a legendary ring quest, but they have all been about gathering copious amounts of materials. They don't call on you to go over the whole of an expansion to get things and kill bosses. I know that in addition to the elementium from Blackwing Lair, I had to get drops off certain bosses. When I fought "Maws", I had to make sure I brought friends because the buoy used to summon him was one use. If you failed, you had to make another one.

In downing the bosses, in finding hidden NPCs, in collecting the materials needed, I felt that I really was on a mission, even though the end result was not something I could ever use. It's a mace and hunters can't use maces. You could only equip it when you were going to ring the gong. After that, it was useless. I still have it in my bank. After doing all of that, there is no way I'm ever deleting that thing.

This is the kind of quest that doesn't appeal to a lot of people. I would say most players just want to get their quest, do it and turn it in. Chain quests are of the "ewww" variety. Blizzard has gone to the "collect thousands of things" for legendary items. I don't think a legendary needs to come of a quest line like this. An epic experience that sends you all over the known world battling mobs in dungeons I haven't been in in years appeals directly to my sense of adventure. They take a lot of resources to develop, program and test. That kind of thing is not where Blizzard's focus is. I think the game is a bit diminished because of it.

Quest Hub

by Zylostout

One of the things I like to do is see the sights. I love it when you find things you wouldn't normally come across by just running the normal quests. In Stormwind Harbor, if you stay on the upper level and go all the way to the north end of the harbor, you will find Thargold Ironwing. If you talk to him, he will offer to give you a free tour of the harbor. Well, of course I had to go!

The gryphon who flew me around provided a very smooth ride; no loop-de-loops. But there was no informative commentary either. Stormwind could fatten the official coffers by offering those tape recorded commentaries you can get at art exhibits.

The flight takes you way out by the lighthouse and I had to hang on as we came pretty close to the light. I have to say, they should also offer sunglasses for when you pass through the lighthouse light.

It was a lovely flight and a great way to see a different side of Stormwind. Plus, you don't have to tip your driver.

Quest Hub

By Gimmlette

This column will be the occasional "Hey, have you done" or "You gotta try this" which introduces you to or remembers some great quests. Our first one comes from Zylostout.

There's a quest line you can do in Loch Modan where you get to disguise yourself as a bush. I thought to myself, how far can I go while I am in this disguise?  Is this a magical disguise, good for all sizes? If I mount up, will I be a giant bush?  Well, I couldn't go very far and I wasn't a giant bush, but a bush riding a horse is an interesting effect none the less. The bush is the last quest in a rather amusing quest line that starts with "Who's In Charge Here?" and ends with "Axis of Awful". 

(Editor's Note:  That's the Modan Monster in the background. His [her?] model is the same as any other kraken in the game only he/she is a light blue. He/she exists only to antagonize at level toons who happen to be in what's left of the loch to kill crocs or to get a better view, not that I would know about that.) 

Throwback Thursday

by Gimmlette

Jumping on the meme where you go through the documentation of your past and post a photo or a song to your blog or to Facebook, I thought I'd post photos from my 8 years of WOW playing. I've got a "few".

Raise your hand if you remember the world dragons; Ysondre, Tarer, Emeriss and the one above, Lethion. I remember when Spectacular Death decided we'd take these on. Ysondre was considered the "easiest", while it was a toss-up as to whether Emeriss or Lethion was hardest.

Each dragon had a special attack. I don't remember Ysondre's. Tarer would split into several shades. You had to endure that phase while dpsing the correct shade. Hunter and warlock pets knew so you needed to have at least one of those classes in the raid so you could target the pet's target. I don't remember Lethion's attack but Emeriss, shudder. I considered him (her? Do we know the sex of these dragons?) the hardest. He did a boat load of nature damage and, when you died, a mushroom spawned on your body. Anyone close to the mushroom when it exploded took concentrated nature damage. It was awhile before we were able to get Emeriss down.

August 8, 2009 Tarer group

They spawned in 4 locations: Dreamer's Rest in Feralas, Serdane in Hinterlands, east of Forest Song in Ashenvale and Twilight Grove in Duskwood. You never knew which dragon would be in which location. Generally speaking, Twilight Grove and Forest Song were the most frequented. People forgot, usually, about Dreamer's Rest so you could often find one there when all the other places were empty. They were not tied to one location so one time Ysondre might be in Twilight Grove. The next time you went there, it could be Emeriss. They also had their own loot table with items you couldn't get anywhere else.

They were removed with Cataclysm and there is a quest chain in Feralas that discusses what happened to the world dragons after the Cataclysm. If you remember them it's interesting to do the chain, if a little sad. At the end of Wrath, the dragons were little more than loot pinatas. Their areas are given over to other things now.

I miss them. I don't know if their loot was moved to another mob or to a world drop or removed altogether. The fight mechanics were unique and needed some problem solving to surmount. At level 70 and in the early stages of level 80, you couldn't expect to solo them. I wish they had just been updated for Cataclysm.

Oh well, things come and go in the fluid nature of this game. I'd like to see them come back as rideable mounts. Now THAT would be an homage to some great dragons.