Concerning flight points, part 4

(The first three parts are here, here and here)

Well, I've been working on my flight points again in the last few days. Patience now has all the flight points, and I'm partway through Elsie's tour. I haven't been going out of my way to collect coins at the same time, but I've got quite a few. When I've completed the flight points, I plan to try and clear as many coins as possible on all my characters. (I ran out of time last year, so only Iolanthe has most of them - but I do have lists to tell me which ones the others haven't got. Sad or what?) Oh, and I realised that Gianetta and Hebe didn't have the new Zul'Aman flight point, so I took them both on an excursion.

Anyway, I promised an update to explain what effect the new graveyards etc. have had on insane flight point runs. The answer is: not as much as I'd thought, mainly because the new graveyards are not in the most useful of places, in my opinion (although it's possible that Blizzard didn't have players like me in mind when deciding where to put them!) Felwood is still the biggest nightmare, and there is no new graveyard there. I mean, come on - how hard would it have been to put a graveyard at Jaedenar?!? That zone is HUGE! Also, I made a big mistake - I came down from Moonglade instead of up from Ashenvale (because I'd got to Moonglade through the moonlight) and this turns out to be far, far worse. My advice to you: don't do that.

The first place I noticed changes was Tanaris (and Un'Goro). The run from Gadgetzan to Marshal's Refuge is now a bit easier. The Tanaris bit isn't that different, despite the addition of a new graveyard, because it's not in a helpful place - it's down in the south central part of the zone, so the only effect is that halfway through your slow death-every-step run, you start resurrecting in the new graveyard. It's just as far to run back to your corpse from there as it was when the only graveyard was Gadgetzan. However, once you're in Un'Goro, things are a bit improved. I knew there was a new graveyard over near the centre of the zone, but I never saw it while doing my usual run round the edge. Nothing was different until I died up near Fungal Rock, and woke up in another new graveyard... at Marshal's Refuge \o/

I tried a new method of getting to the Thorium Point flight point, because I knew there was at least one new graveyard in Searing Gorge (near the Cauldron) and that could only make things worse if I'd used my usual run-through-Badlands method. (You'll recall that this method had already become more painful thanks to the addition of a new graveyard in the Badlands - the only thing that made it bearable was the fact that as soon as you set foot anywhere in Searing Gorge, your next death took you to Thorium Point.) I'd just got the Morgan's Vigil flight point, and I decided to go to Flame Crest to get the coin. (This is easy because there's a graveyard there.) While waiting for the rez sickness to wear off, it occurred to me that it was probably worth a try going through Blackrock Mountain. Which I did, and it wasn't that bad - certainly nowhere near as the Badlands route. I did die a few times, obviously, but it wasn't too bad - and when I died in Searing Gorge, thankfully it *was* Thorium Point where I ended up, rather than any of the new graveyards. So I'll be using this route again.

There's also a very slight change to the Light's Hope Chapel run, because the graveyard at Darrowshire seems to have moved to Crown Guard Tower. This doesn't make a huge difference to the method listed in my previous post though, and in fact it's a good thing in terms of the Lunar Festival, because there's an Elder at Crown Guard Tower, and I doubt I would have bothered going out of my way to see him if I'd gone via Darrowshire.

And, finally, the new Zul'Aman flight point. Unsurprisingly the worst bit about the run to this one is getting away from Light's Hope Chapel. There's probably no way of doing this without dying several times (although next time I might experiment with running the long way round - it's Browman Mill that's the most dangerous). But once you're on the road you can go most of the way without being attacked, and then once you're in the Ghostlands it's easy. The only thing that puzzles me is this: if they can connect Ghostlands to the rest of the flight network (you fly through the portal) why can't they do the same for the Exodar? It's REALLY annoying!

Must sleep now. And try not to be haunted by a chilling line in the next patch notes: "Monstrous Kaliri have learned how to chase players going straight up." Argh!