Alone in Silithus

Mabel's halfway between 61 and 62 now, and she's finally moved to Outland. Yes, yes, I know she could have gone at 58, but anyone who knows me will understand why she didn't - she hadn't finished Azeroth! I realise I'm in a tiny minority who plays like this, but it makes perfect sense to me. I don't play for gear or loot or gold - I play for the experience of playing. I love questing, and I particularly like visiting areas that I've either never been, or not been for ages. This is quite apart from the fact that I don't like to leave zones with quests undone or unfinished. (I'm OK about missing out whole zones, though - at least the early ones. For example, Gianetta has just finished the Bloodmyst quests, and she's moved straight to Duskwood, omitting places like Darkshore, Ashenvale, Westfall and Redridge. But she'll do all the zones from Duskwood onwards.)

All of the above should help to explain why I spent the whole of last night alone in Silithus, the last of the Azeroth zones (yes, I do have a specific order I have to do them in!) And I do mean "alone" - I kept doing a "/who" to see if anyone else had joined me, and they hadn't. A Horde guy did turn up just as I was about to leave, but that was the first player I'd seen in 12 hours. I felt kind of sad for the mobs, actually! I saw Setis - a rare elite that I've never seen before - and he was just wandering around aimlessly. I suppose you could argue that he (and other mobs) might prefer NOT to be killed, but it seemed so sad that they were just being totally ignored!

I did all the stuff I could do solo. I'm realistic enough to know that the chance of getting even a friend to help me do the other stuff is slim to zero - I can't even persuade any of them to do Plaguelands stuff, let alone Silithus! So I abandoned stuff like Glyph Chasing and Into the Maw of Madness... but I made a note, as I always do, of which quests I haven't done, so that I can go back later when I can solo them. (Iolanthe recently went back at L70 to do Into the Maw of Madness - not easy even then! But although she did die a couple of times, she finished it. Very satisfying!)

Mabel also spent quite a few hours (and gold) doing the Tier 0.5 armour chain. I doubt that many people have done that since the expansion came out, because (as everyone knows) you can get better gear from an hour or two killing trash in Outland. But as I said earlier, I don't play for gear, and that chain is not only great fun, it also has loads of XP! Mabel and Iolanthe are now both stuck on the 45-minute Baron step of it, but I hold out hope that someone else in the guild will want to try that sometime - although, knowing my luck, they'll do it on the spur of the moment on a day when I'm not online!

An alternative to counting sheep

I've been an insomniac all my life, albeit to varying degrees. It's not too bad at the moment, but there was a time, six months ago or so, when I was lying awake for ages every night. That was until I discovered a way which so far has succeeded in getting me to sleep every time...

It has a few variations, but the one I use most often is to try to think of WoW locations starting with each letter of the alphabet in turn. e.g. Auberdine, Booty Bay, Chillwind Camp, Darnassus... This would be much too easy if unmodified, so I usually restrict it to places I've visited that day, or in the last few days (depending on how much I've played). The idea is, you see, for me not to actually get to Z - I need to get stuck on one, because that's when I generally fall asleep. If I made it to Z I'd have to think of something else to try!

Now of course most letters are easy and have many options. But there are a few that aren't. P has been a frequent problem, unless it's one of the days when I've been through the Plaguewood in EPL. I can hardly ever think of anywhere else that starts with a P. J is OK if I've been in STV (Jaguero Isle, Janeiro's Point), Felwood (Jaedenar, Jadefire Run) or the Hinterlands (Jintha'Alor). I can always remember that there's Jerod's Landing in Elwynn Forest, but since I never go there, that's not much use. But there aren't many others. X is only Xavian (NE Ashenvale) as far as I know, but I'm usually asleep before I get to X. Which is just as well, because for Y I can only think of the Yorgen Farmstead and Yojamba Isle, and although there are quite a few for Z, I can only usually remember Zoram Strand (possibly because if I've got to Z, my mind is in Ashenvale anyway after Xavian).

Most of the others are easy enough, although when I spent a few days playing only Madmargaret (my only Horde character) I discovered that the only place I can think of starting with an I is Ironforge, so I got stuck earlier than usual! I did find O and U easier than on Alliance days though, because of Orgrimmar and the Undercity.

(I have spent quite a while searching for a complete listing of WoW locations, but so far I've been unsuccessful - this one is the best I've found, and it has quite a few omissions.)

Variations on this theme... sometimes I am strict with myself and only allow settlement names and not zone names, but then I end up relaxing this when I can't think of an H other than Hinterlands :p (I know there's Honor Hold and Hellfire Citadel, but since Iolanthe's been stuck on everything for ages now, I've hardly spent any time in Outland, so I can't use them.) Sometimes I try to think of NPC or quest names, but that's much too hard. I got quite a long way with herbs once, but I don't think I've tried that since, although I did try the more general version: items I might have in my backpack.

Hopefull all this will help to explain to my guildmates why I sometimes get giddily excited when visiting places like the Jagged Ridge :-)

Niggles

Each of the posts I've made on this blog so far have turned out much longer than intended - this happens to me a lot :p But this will be short, I promise.

There are several things in the game that make me grind my teeth in irritation every time they come up. I know that just about everyone has this reaction to the misspelling of "rogue" as "rouge", but there are others! (And I'm not really counting other examples of misspelling, much as it irritates me, because I realise that some people find spelling really difficult.) For me the two biggest ones are "draenei" and "Outland". With "draenei" it's the pronunciation - it's very clear from the opening voiceover when you CREATE a draenei that it's pronounced DRANN-eye rather than DRAIN-eye. Yet just about everyone gets it wrong. I hadn't realised how much this annoyed me until I started listening to WoW podcasts (I only listen to two, and they're great, but this one thing drives me mad. Although they can't pronounce "shaman" either, most of the time, which is almost as annoying (to be fair, I think it CAN be pronounced either way, but I think SHAR-man is more correct), and one of the presenters on one of the shows can't pronounce - well, anything!)

With "Outland" it's the fact that it's NOT "OUTLANDS". Yet many, many people refer to it in the plural form. I never dare say anything, but it annoys me every single time. Other similar niggles: let's see... Use of "shadow labs" annoys me. I'm fine with "shadow LAB" or "SL" but it's short for LABYRINTH, not labyrinths, as far as I know. Also, Mana-Tombs without the hyphen. This didn't annoy me at all until I read on WoW Wiki that "although the instance itself is called Mana-Tombs, the entrance area outside the portal is called Mana Tombs without the dash". I know it's quite unreasonable of me to get annoyed by this, because the chances of other people having noticed this fact are minimal. So I'd never mention it - but it annoys me!

There are a few abbreviations that annoy me too. DM always annoys me, because it always meant Deadmines to me, until suddenly everyone else started using it for Dire Maul. (If I'd ever DONE the whole of Dire Maul I might have got the hang of this, but as it is I think of Deadmines first if someone says "DM".) SV is a recent one, because although it's obviously "steamvault" (note to those who aren't sure: that's not plural either, plus it's ONE WORD and has a "the"....) my mind always insists on interpreting it as "Shadowmoon Valley". And - this is a silly one - OMW. I *know* it's "on my way", but my mind ALWAYS reads it as "oh my word!" I hate my mind :p

Oh, and while I'm doing niggles, I may as well confess that I also really, really hate: the word "gratz"; people who announce EVERY SINGLE DING; people who use game-specific slang (e.g. "imba") at every possibile opportunity; people who use any of the following: m8, l8r, pls, thx....

If you're a friend of mine and you do any of these things (I mention this because lots of them do!), I can forgive you because I love you, and I know *I'm* far more annoying than any of you, if we're keeping score. But if you're a stranger - PARTICULARLY one who calls me "m8" - you are *not* going to endear yourself to me this way.

This is already longer than I'd intended, but there is one more that's a perennial niggle but is in a different category to the others. It's the rested XP. It says, if you hover over the XP bar, something like "you are rested - 200% of experience gained from killing monsters". Yet every time I kill a monster, I only get 150%! And this is the case even if I've got WEEKS of rest. It does go correctly back to only 100% when I'm NOT rested, but as soon as I am - 150% again. Is this just me? I'm amazed no-one else has made a fuss about this, if not. (To be specific, it's things like "spider dies, you gain 500 XP (+ 250 XP rested bonus)". That's not 200%, it's 150%.)

Next time - I complain about the alphabet :p

Touching bonfires

Well, the Fire Festival's about to end, and if I can get through a few urgent real-life tasks, I plan to reward myself by going and watching the fireworks in Booty Bay - or maybe there'll be some Outland ones too? I think they'd look pretty over Zangarmarsh, but I imagine it'll be Shattrath if it's anywhere.

I seem to have spent most of the last week or two touching bonfires. Santuzza and Iolanthe both did most of the quests last year, including the one where you steal flames from the Horde cities. The one I really wanted to do this year was the one that sends you into high-level instances, because both Santuzza and Iolanthe tried and failed last year, and I *really* wanted a Spirit of Summer. Well, Santuzza is still only level 60, so there didn't seem much point in trying again (because that's what she was last year - long story why she hasn't progressed, which maybe I'll explain sometime). But Iolanthe, at 70, was ready to give it another go - and she succeeded! More of that in a minute, though.

This year I've taken Mabel, Katisha, Gianetta, Hebe and Madmargaret on the Bonfire Tour of Azeroth. This was made much easier by the fact that three of them already had all the flight points, and I combined Gianetta's and Hebe's tours with detours to pick up flight points, so that all my Dragonblight characters now have all the non-Outland flight points. And in doing so I set a new personal record, because Hebe was only 17 when she started \o/

I didn't bother trying to take any of these characters to the in-instance bonfires, based on the fact that I'd already failed with a L60 character who could stealth :p Neither did I try to steal the opposition flames - didn't fancy trying it with Mabel due to her lack of stealth, and none of the others were high enough level to hand in the quest (although they could have got the flames - a bit unfair, but at least I knew about the restriction before I wasted hours trying!) I did try to see how close Madmargaret could get to the Ironforge bonfire, just out of curiosity, and the answer turned out to be that the guards saw right through her stealth as soon as she set foot on the hill up to the city gates, so she gave up.

It actually took Madmargaret a LOT longer to finish the tour than any of the others, but that's because she has no money at all, so she had to either run places despite having the connecting flight points, or do a few quests to make money. But because I'm finding it really difficult to be a rogue, doing quests tended to result in lots of death, and the repair bills used up all the money the quests were making. Very frustrating.

Anyway, a brief guide to the bonfire tour (I'm not going to bother describing exactly where ALL the fires are, because other sources have done that perfectly adequately):

The Festival of Fire (Alliance): Darnassus, Stormwind, Ironforge. I'd forgotten exactly where the Stormwind bonfire was, and spent quite a while riding round looking for it until I remembered - unlike the other two, it's not in a location you're likely to pass anyway. If you're a Horde character trying to steal these flames, I imagine the Darnassus one would be the easiest (being outside the actual city) but I could be wrong - I only tried Ironforge, as I said above.

The Festival of Fire (Horde): Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunder Bluff. I had trouble finding the Orgrimmar and Thunder Bluff ones with Madmargaret, despite having seen them last year when I stole them. But I can tell that if you ARE stealing them, the Undercity one is a piece of cake - it's not actually in the city, and there are no guards nearby. Thunder Bluff is stealthable fairly easily (in fact I think I found it more easily when I stealthed to it than when I ran to it normally). But the Orgrimmar one is at the far end of the city and involved a LOT of deaths when I stealthed to it.

Note that although there are now bonfires in Silvermoon City, the Exodar and Shattrath City, and you can pick up and hand in all the festival quests at any of them, and interact with the bonfires, they don't actually feature in any of the quests.

Flickering Flames in Kalimdor: Darkshore, Ashenvale, Stonetalon Mountains, the Barrens. These are all easy enough, just annoyingly far from flight points.

Flickering Flames in the Eastern Kingdoms: Westfall, Wetlands, Hillsbrad, Silverpine. Ditto. I remember thinking these would be harder, mainly because I'd never been in Silverpine Forest until I went there to touch the bonfire for the first time (last year), and I only knew it was a Horde area. But of course it's a very low-level Horde area, and I didn't get attacked. Madmargaret had a bit more trouble getting to the Westfall one, but that's because she'd forgotten it was an Alliance area :p

Wild Fires in Kalimdor: Winterspring, Azshara, Un'Goro, Silithus. Assuming you have all the flight points, the only one of these that's hard is Azshara, and that's a NIGHTMARE. Even Hebe, at level 17, managed Winterspring and Silithus without dying. Un'Goro is a bit harder, but if you already have the Un'Goro flight point you can just run round the edge of the crater, and shouldn't die too many times. (See flight point post 2 for details.) Don't be tempted to run to the Un'Goro bonfire from Gadgetzan, though - it's 10000 times harder. Azshara, though - ARGH. Not only is it miles from the flight point, it's miles from ANYWHERE, with lots of high-level mobs around, so you'll die every few steps as soon as you leave the road. And to make things worse, when you're halfway across the zone you start getting taken to the Southridge Beach graveyard (before then, you go back to Talrendis) and it's a long way round fron there, due to the VERY ANNOYING CLIFFS. It's even longer if you forget which of the many inlets is actually a way up from the beach (most of them aren't, and you don't find out until you run to the end). And just to make your day perfect, when you DO get to the bonfire there's a giant spider that scuttles round it, and it kills you before you can open the flame. Your only chance is to wait there (as a ghost) until some helpful player comes along and kills the spider. (Or, of course, get a friend to go wth you and do so for you - but if you have that option, you won't need to read anything I have to say.)

Wild Fires in the Eastern Kingdoms: Blasted Lands, Searing Gorge, Hinterlands, Plaguelands. Assuming you have all the flight points, Hinterlands is the nightmare one on this list. Blasted Lands is fairly easy - it's right by the road, and even Hebe only died once trying to get to it. It's equally easy for Horde despite them having to run from Stonard - the road is no harder than the one from Nethergarde Keep. Searing Gorge is a bit harder, and I died a lot working my way to it from Thorium Point, but it's not too far. There are lots of spiders etc. nearby, and it took me a few goes before I managed to open the flame without getting eaten. Plaguelands is easy if you approach from Darrowmere Lake - see flight point post 3 for details. You will probably die a couple of times when you get close, but not as much as you might expect. I'd recommend Horde to do this too, despite not having the Chillwind Camp flight point. But the Hinterlands - ARGH. Well, it's not too bad for Horde, but for Alliance it's right at the other end of the zone from Aerie Peak, and there are many deaths lying in wait for you en route. The bit near Aerie Peak is by far the worst, because it's quite a run till you make it to the road, and there are wolves and owlbeasts and trolls all over the place. You'll see a LOT of Aerie Peak graveyard while making your way to the road. Once you're on the road, it's a bit better, and the bonfire is right by the road (albeit a long way down it). When you get closer you'll switch to the Overlook Cliffs graveyard, but don't be tempted to use the spirit healer there, because then you'll have the hassle of getting back to the road again, even though it looks closer.

A Light in Dark Places: Dire Maul, LBRS, Scholomance, Stratholme. I'm very unfamiliar with all of these instances (long story) so this was great fun. It was also really hard to solo, even at 70. But I did it \o/ Dire Maul took ages, but it would have been much quicker if I'd done some research first (I'd never been in the north or west bits EVER), because then I would have realised that I needed to kill the wandering Eyes before they spawned pairs of elite demons. As it was, I had to kill the demons, and they were quite tough, and this wasn't helped by them being inseparable. Also, the dogs didn't see me most of the time, but every so often I lost concentration and walked too close to one, and that meant rapid death. What really helped in the end was that I remembered I had some frost oil and a thorium widget in the bank just in case I ever managed to persuade anyone to go through Dire Maul with me, and I went to get them and hence managed to trap the wandering named ogre, and that made all the difference.

LBRS was quite easy eventually, in that it was possible to stealth to the bonfire - and touch it - without killing anything at all, but I got very, very lost and had to go out and back in again several times. As a bonus, though, I think I know my way round most of it now!

The Scholomance one would have been fairly easy to stealth to if it wasn't for the fact that you can't get to it without a unique key that can only be obtained by killing one of the mini-bosses (Rattlegore). This took me a really, really long time (well, not so much him, but his friends), but I did it in the end. It turned out to be impossible to actually OPEN the locked door without unstealthing and aggroing lots of things, but they were easy enough (with the help of my pet trees).

I knew the Stratholme one would be hard, because just about everything in there can see through stealth. I've tried soloing it many, many times, because I was really keen to finish the quests I had in there, and I can't persuade anyone to go in with me. But I discovered that, although if you stealth you get jumped immediately, you can actually get through lots of it without any of them seeing you, if you DON'T stealth. It took me a few goes to work out which way to walk in order to not die - all the info I found suggested that hugging the left wall was a good plan, but I died every time I tried that, whereas walking diagonally through the zombie crowd and over to the right worked quite well. Then I forgot about the rats under the bridge, so they killed me a bit the first time I got to that point. And then of course when I got to the bit where all the Scarlet/Crimson guys are, I forgot I needed to stealth to walk between the two guards at the entrance, and died again.... At least after all that, when I finally DID make it to the bonfire, I managed to touch it without being attacked. And the Spirit of Summer was mine at last \o/

Anyway. Firework time!