ÜBRS Alles

Fresh from my Nathanos kill, I giddily decided it was time to properly skill up my new weapon skill a bit before I actually needed it for more than being a stat stick. For once I knew just the place to go.

In the ass-end of the Eastern Kingdoms there's the Blasted Lands, home to the Dark Portal. It sits menacingly inside a crater with various demony things standing silent vigils or generally skulking about the place, lowering property values. Around the rim of the crater, mixed in among felguards taking their felhounds for felwalkies, are Servants of Razelikh. What makes them special is that these level 57 thingies can only be killed when you have some quest gadget I have yet to see. For my purposes, they are immortal target dummies that hit back.

The execution was ridiculously simple: pull a Servant and let Fluffers tank while I swung every 3 seconds and change. Periodically heal Fluffers. When mana is nearly completely gone: dismiss pet the pet, get another couple of hits in, and feign death to reset. All total over 35 minutes were spent fighting the same mob and I only had to reset twice. Somewhere in the middle of all of this, a warrior wandered up and tipped me a gold to shoot it for a while himself to raise his bow skill. Periodically he'd stun the mob and throw a bandage on my pet, so that helped keep things going.

The only sour moment was when I realized in my haste to make with the slashin' I had forgotten to buff my intellect, which would have helped out a bit. Still, I was pleased that I had gone from 1 to 240 and change with very minimal effort. About ten minutes after my warrior buddy skedaddled, I left to join an Upper Blackrock Spire (UBRS) raid a guildie was organizing. Oh boy, a chance to progress my Onyxia attunement!

I made my way to Blackrock mount, climbed a giant chain suspended over molten lava, scurried along a narrow ledge, then hopped onto a balcony mere meters from the portal. As a paladin and I awaited the arrival of the rest of the team, I joined our Discord and mused at our party composition. Out of ten people we had no mages or warlocks and I was the only hunter. It was Plate Mail Central with a couple of priests healing. Blinkers, our raid leader, said that we'd be making use of my trapping skills, since we had no other form of crowd control. This set me into a panic.

You see, I've never actually "trapped". Although I bought the skills, I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever actually used the ice trap to any effect. Worse still, I could only place the trap at my feet-- I couldn't throw them like I could in retail. I hastily alt-tabbed to see if Trap Launch was a thing I'd forgotten to pick up, if it was a talent in the Survival tree or what. I could find nothing. Well, maybe they wouldn't REALLY need crowd control? We'll see.

It started off very rocky for me. The first section of the dungeon is fighting in very close quarters, which was fine for everybody else-- they were all melee. My damage was horrifically low as I tried to edge myself into a firing range without "butt-pulling" other packs of hurt. The next sets of mobs were worse as they constantly charged and knocked back ranged players. I steadfastly resolved myself to be a good hunter regardless. Growl off. Passive pet. Dismiss the pet before trying to sneak around mobs or drop from ledges.

We avoided a couple of bosses. Our prize was at the end of the dungeon and we were focused on getting there in more or less one piece. By the time we had made it to and downed the next-to-last boss (which thankfully was cake for ranged DPS), we had had only a few deaths and I was breathing a sigh of relief.

"Ok, Magrom", the raid leader said. "I'm going to need you to trap square." Oh, God.

"You are aware I can't throw traps right?" There was a brief pause and then laughter. "Yes!"

"The thing is... I've never trapped before." There was a pause and then a lot less laughter. "Well, not in Classic at any rate."

The raid leader responded matter-of-factly, "Ok-- time to learn, I guess."

Turns out, it's cake. Place an ice trap out of the area and when the tank pulls, use Distracting Shot to peel the marked target off and run it over the trap. Flawless execution the first time and every time afterwards. W00t! I'm now more useful!

Impressed (and likely surprised) by my quick uptake, Blinkers then asked if I was ok to kite the boss. "Never done it before, but I'm willing to try!" A person who used to main hunter years ago explained and it was close to what I imagined it to be. Set your Mark to speed boost, distracting shot to aggro the boss, run like the freakin' wind, and shoot it a couple time along the was to hold aggro. When the adds are death, feign death.

I buffed. I shot. I ran. I shot more. I ran like a freakin' schoolgirl on fire. Then I got caught on the dungeon terrain for a moment and then I was really on fire. The boss had caught up to me, stunned and then engulfed me with flames. As I ran around uncontrollably seconds from a fiery end, the raid leader called out. "Ok! Adds are down. You can feign death now."

"Ok. I'm not feigning."

"Oh? Oh. OH!"

The rest of the team finished up the fight and I was the only casualty. As I lay on the cold stone floor, I mused that this is how Fluffers must feel as the usual Noble Sacrifice. My UBRS trial by quite literal fire was complete.

After a quick resurrection, I scooped up some blood from the boss. We called it a success, hearthed out and disbanded. I returned to Winterfell to do the final series of corpse runs through the Cave of Draconic Hell and turned in the blood to the quest-giver.

She smiled and handed me a necklace in return.

Magrom triumphant! I'm now attuned to Onyxia's Lair.

Steppe Brother

Next, my wanderings led me from Searing Gorge south through Blackrock Mountain and down to the Burning Steppes. As I rode through the wasteland, which was far more barren than The Barrens and most desolate than Desolace, I was startled by how... empty it was. There were no teeming throngs of murderous hellbeasts waiting to dine on me-- mostly scorpions and wargs hanging a... oh, here they all are.

So it seems there's a few densely clustered packs of hurt scattered around the area. There's a mountain covered in ogres with a tunnel network within and most of the southeastern map has a fairly sizable population of whelps and elite drakes and other draconian entities. Lovely. I found the flight master and a few quest givers nestled up in the mountains. Of course one of the quests would amount to "eradicate all the ogres", but at least I knew where to find those, so off I went.

Ever so slowly I worked my way around the outer ring of the squat mountain, taking on mages and brutes as I went. Fluffers howled nervously. There were a lot of ogres, but several other people were also decimating the populace with aplomb. I began to wonder if I needed to adjust my positioning in case of respawns. As it was I was leapfrogging another person-- when I received a random party invite. I generally don't refuse them, so I found myself teamed with Jaxthrax.

Jathrax was a level 56 Druid who was killing time and ogres before tanking a Strat run for his guild, Willingly Suboptimal. We had a fairly decent level spread between us, but between Fluffers and myself we kept pace with his DPS. I relied mostly on auto-shot to cut back on the time spent recovering mana with a few timely bursts as the situation called for it.

Fluffers likes to think he was the star of the show. Ever since I put my 31st point in Magrom's Beast Master tree, he's been enjoying getting superbuff for a bit every couple of minutes.


Size matters.

After we cleared out the ogres, we dove straight in to clearing out the elite draconian menace. We synergized well as a small team and when he finally had to go, I had made both serious progress on my next level and a friend.

It was a good night in the Burning Steppes.

Into Tanaris

Putting a blissful week of vacation in tropical lands and the jungle behind me, it was time to return to virtual tropical lands and the jungle. In my absence, my competitive guildmate had yet to hit 40, so that seems to be that for now.

Back in Stranglethorn, I teamed up with a couple of ragtag groups to finish off a couple of lingering quests, namely killing a few pirate captains and annihilating that damn gorilla from the previous update. These went much smoother than expected, with only a few harrowing seconds. With much of it behind me, it was time to venture to new stomping grounds and that meant Tanaris, but in my usual indirect way.

First it was a flight to Nethergarde Keep in the the Blasted Lands to turn in a quest... only to find too late I was missing item I needed to hand in. Sure enough, I had stuffed it in the bank for safe keeping (and to free up the precious inventory slot). Ah, when will I learn? (Spoiler: Never.)

I returned to STV and took the boat to Ratchet. Rather than go straight to Tanaris, I stopped by Theramore to take care of a little side business.

In Theramore's Keep, there's a quest to unlock First Aid 226-300. For all the flak I give the "retail WoW" experience, it's important to remember that in Vanilla/Classic, nearly ALL of the quests are of the "kill 10 rats", "collect 10 bear asses from 30 bears", "click static things", "escorts", and FedEx deliveries. Anything outside of those 5 are rare. With this quest, you're given a roll of 20 bandages and must heal patients around the ward, giving care to treat the worst off first. The quest fails if too many people die from being neglected too long. It isn't a hard quest by any stretch of the imagination, but it is novel enough to provide entertainment.

I'll need to return to the Keep as my First Aid improves as the good doctor there is the only one who teaches you how to make the most advanced bandages and I love bandages. Not for me, though. I slap them on Fluffers like they're going out of style. It's a lot more mana-efficient than Mend Pet and I can always imagine he looks like a cross between the cereal mascots "Fruit Brute" and "Yummy Mummy"


But never this cute.

So into Tanaris I fly. I'd adventured here briefly before, picking up the low-hanging fruit. Figuratively, not literally, since it is a desert, after all. So many pirates. The east coast is crawling with pirates and they had to be culled by the score. In the far west, the mobs start getting serious, with silithids hitting level 47-50. My coastal cleansing had taken me to the lofty level of 45 and I was itching to try my luck. It was slow going, but I eventually felled enough to complete another quest.

I continued my explorations further to the southwest, looking for mithril, when I came across a turtle with a quest. Ok, Mr. Turtle, what do you need? An escort mission? OH, JOY! I accepted it, because I wanted to see how badly it would suck and when I failed, I could always drop and pick it back up again. (cough)

Yeah. What I wasn't expecting was a timer to appear. "29:59"... oh, dear. Turns out it wasn't as bad as I expected. Instead of following a set patch, he follows behind you (slowly) and you have to guide him from the far SW of the zone to the far NE to meet up with his wife by the coastline, aggroing every damn thing along the way if you're not careful.

I am very careful when it comes to matters of the heart and I can proudly say:

"A turtle has made it to the water."

Hyjal Kids, Hyjal Wife

My pace is definitely slowing down and that's perfectly fine. I still eked out enough xp to hit level 43 questing in the Hinterlands, but a significant amount of playtime was devoted to traveling to the four corners of the world: literally Darnassus, Gadgetzan, Booty Bay and… well, the Hinterlands are close enough, being a bit north of Arathi and just south of the Plaguelands. This now marks a couple of days in a row I've spent inordinate amounts of time airborne to tidy up the quest logs a bit. "Keep yer feet on th' ground", indeed.

At first, the Hinterlands pitted me against some local troll tribes to collect necklaces and check cages for a captured hippogryph. At least I think it was a hippogryph. I was a little fuzzy of the details and between fighting owlbears (more eggs!) and searching the forest floor for feathers may have warped my memory. I vacillate on whether or not quest items should glow out of convenience, but I think the mild frustration made the payoff more rewarding.

Next it was over to the coast to take a "snapshot" of an elite turtle. (The goblins had cameras long before the S.E.L.F.I.E. was a thing.) This required dodging level 48 wolves (that could prowl), before falling off a cliff onto a beach swarming with (non-hostile) turtles that were even higher. Brave Fluffers found and distracted the one truly horrific giant turtle while I got close enough to take the shot and scoot.

Finally, it was time to investigate the top of a troll-infested ziggurat to look for whatever wasn't in those cages earlier. It was a death trap that I knew how to handle. "FLUFFERS! SIC 'EM!" The poor wolf ran back and forth tagging everything around, which afforded me enough time to ascend and fall down the other side. One heroic feign death, a revive pet and a LOT of apology meat later, I'm done with the Hinterlands for now.

As an aside, thanks to South Park, there's a running gag about going from level 1 to 60 by only killing boars in Elwynn Forest. This is very much possible in retail, thanks to level scaling. Last year a player named "Ianxplosion" did precisely that by slaughtering 19801 boars. In Classic you'd have to range farther afield, but I believe there are boars at pretty much every level range. That's pretty much how I feel about wolves. No matter where I go lately, it's miles and miles of wolves. I'm still hating myself for dropping skinning, but I'm sure as hell not changing out engineering now. So. Many. Damn. Wolves. Fluffers, you're the only good one.


So. Many. Damn. Wolves.

From there it was to Darnassus to turn in quests, then back to Feralas to continue a chain. The next one is recommended for level 50, so that's not happening in the foreseeable future. While there I joined a quick escort mission with a couple others to rescue a robot chicken.


Not this one.

I've learned the hard way that escort missions are simply not meant to be solo'd and this proved to be no exception. The chicken was beset upon by packs of 3-4 higher-level enemies several times along the journey. We also discovered that failing to let the stupid motherclucker gain aggro meant it would make a beeline for the horizon while we fought packs of yetis, apes, and (of course) wolves… and fail the quest as we were no longer by its side. Yeesh. Second time was the charm and it was off to sunnier climes in Booty Bay.

Stranglethorn now has a promising bounty of quests out of the southern tip, so I'll likely stick around for a little bit before heading out for adventures unknown.

For those interested, today's title comes from the first guild name to make me laugh out loud in a long time.

A Matter of Reputation

With steely resolve, I decided it was time for Magrom to schmooze with the kinfolk and work on his less-than-stellar reputation. I combed down Fluffers and his beard for fleas, then returned to Ironforge.

Ironforge is not the ghost town it is in retail. Being the cornerstone of industry and engineering, as well as convenience to a number of northern zones, there's no real reason to take up residence in Stormwind over it. I filed that away in the Big Pile of Things I Could Have Done Better Sooner and set my hearth to a lovely dwarven lass by the city's entrance.

Now bristling with dwarvish pride, I set forth to make a name for myself by steamrolling through Loch Modan. I picked up every single quest I could find and obliterated everything in my path. In short order I returned to town ready to empty my packs of assorted animal entrails and ogre heads while I regaled the locals with tales of my derring-do.

I turned in the first quest. "5 reputation". Huh? I turned in another. "2 reputation". Oh. No. The most I got from a single turn-in was 15 and I needed thousands to reach Honored. So, it turns out that if quests are grey to you, not only do you get a pittance of xp, the reputation rewards are ALSO reduced by 90%. Oh, gods. I have erred most severely.

There was one single quest I had gotten from the area that was yellow-- and it wanted me to gather reagents (read: miscellaneous animal bits) from the Badlands to the south. Ok-- fine!

I ventured forth, passing by Uldaman, and walked into a scene from countless Road Runner cartoons-- just with significantly more coyotes. Towering cliffs ringed the area and wide open grassless plains between. Small rock outcroppings broke up the otherwise featureless landscape and there were so many delicious animals. Fluffers was positively salivating as he leapt towards the nearest plainstalker. I kind of wish I had bumbled into the area a level ago, as it is significantly more fun that the Swamp of Sorrows, but the creatures here go up to at least the low 40's along the south western edge, with promises of many whelps (handle them!) to the east.

The bulk of the landscape is covered with level 37-40 critters, making it Yet Another Skinning Paradise but, more importantly to me, there's quite a lot of iron ore and some mithril. MITHRIL! I actually grinned as Magrom's pick bit down into the first sweet, sweet chunk of the stuff. I wasn't earning significant reputation, as the quest givers were few and far between (and most wanted me to go to Uldaman) but by god I was going to be wealthy enough that the reputation didn't matter so much.

The only pain point is that there's no proper flight point in the zone, but it isn't a far run from Loch Modan's southern town of Thelsamar. In fact, I'm pretty sure the run is shorter than the Stormwind to Arathi flight.

I hit level 38 whilst pulling apart stone elementals for a series of "collect rocks" quests, which seemed thematic for Magrom and kept at it as my bags filled with ore (Mining 215 baby!) and decently valuable vendor trash.

After returning home and clearing out the inventory, I assessed my situation. I have maybe 30 gold's worth of skill ups I was stoically ignoring and the people of Ironforge were pretty impartial to my heroic mining efforts. In fact, on top of everything else, I'd need another four and a half gold to become a licensed Artisan miner, so that's also on hold for now.

BUT…I now have saved up over a hundred gold so I am SET when I hit level 40, which is comforting. I'll be heading back to the Badlands over the weekend with the goal of obtaining a nice white ram by Sunday night. Afterwards, I intend to drink myself silly and buy all the skills I can!

My Hearth's in the Highlands

My hearth's in the Highlands, my hearth is not here
Seven minutes of flight time, and chasing o-gier.
A-chasing the raptors, iron ore I fol-low
My hearth's in the Highlands, cause gryphons are slow.

Continued my conquest of the Arathi Highlands, farming the ogres and iron found along the southern border with some juicy raptors and spiders nearly for both variety and animal bits to feed the never-ending meat pit that is Fluffers' gullet. Thus my ascent to level 37 was relatively uneventful.

One thing I neglected to mention in a previous update was that I took the time to (finally) do something I should've done a couple of weeks ago-- locate and install a version of the Auctioneer app that is classic-friendly. I have a fairly inefficient method to my farming which, contrary to the opening bit, involves porting back to Stormwind twice a level to resupply, load up the AH, and generally do dick-all for a bit before getting on the 7m10s flight back to my hunting grounds. Yes, I COULD be doing a lot of that better. I could move to Ironforge, which is significantly closer. I could just fly over to Southshore and mail everything to Hiddenpocket and let her deal with all of the AH shuffling. Honestly, the long flights give me a chance to stretch my legs and/or play Peggle.

As an amusing aside, the Peggle for WoW has a dozen different WoW-themed levels with its own talent trees. Earn talent points by beating or fully clearing levels and… well, it's more fun than it sounds and you can set it to auto-close when your flight lands.

Looking to mix things up a bit, I took a detour down to the Bog of Eternal Stench-- err, I mean the Swamp of Sorrows. The Swamp of Sorrows was originally one half of the area formally known as "The Black Morass" before some orc terraformed half of it into the Blasted Lands by opening a portal to Outland. The Swamp contains the village of Stonard, one of the few Horde outposts in the Eastern Kingdoms, and has no Alliance flight paths at all. I nipped down to Nethergarde Keep to pick up the FP there, before heading back into the swamp proper.

I don't have very much positive to say about the place. The zone has an unappealing green filter over it and it's a swamp. You can't really put much of a spin on a couple of square miles of downright fugly terrain densely populated with crocs, spiders, and jaguars. There were only a handful of quests I could find and none were particularly "fun". Kill a few dozen rats, fetch a bag, and escort an idiot through an entire village of things that will swarm and kill you. In a way it was a bit like a crappy version of Dustwallow Marsh, but without the charm.

After nearly a half-level, I decided I was done with the place (for now) and returned back to Stormwind and-- great googly moogly! Wealth had poured in from many auction sales and I was now sitting above 80g. Level 40 mount! Here! I! Oh, crap.

Magrom's a dwarf. Specifically a dwarf who's been adventuring almost exclusively in human territory. While the humans honor Magrom's achievements, the dwarves are barely "friendly". What this translates to directly is I'm not getting a large-enough break on the dwarf mount and you can't buy cross-race mounts unless you are exalted with that faction.

So now I get to choose: go back and waste a day or two cleaning up level 6-20 quests trying to raise the rep a bit or suck it up and pay significantly more for my mount at 40? Either way I'll NEED to fix the reputation by 60. That's literally hundreds of gold difference.

Arathi Khan

After exploring a bit of Hillsbrad around the coastal city of Southshore, everything finally clicked. Hillsbrad itself is a fairly low-level area, but the quest hub serves the entire tri-state area, as they were guiding me north into Alterac Mountains and east into the Arathi Highlands. Right then!

First I headed north to confront members of the Syndicate and a bunch of bloodthirsty yeti and ogres. Exploring the side of a mountain, I saw several nodes of beautiful ore. As I raced to each, a tauren riding a kodo raced me to each, beating me handily. For a half-second, I wished it was a PvP server so I could teach this jerk a lesson by--oh yeah, by dying horribly to him, since he's obviously at least 5 levels higher. I'd just have to mine elsewhere.

As I circled the area, I found myself up against a small wall placed into the side of the mountain. Odd, but there was a small gap I could hop through, so I did. I slid down a short hill into a ruined city (Alterac, proper) packed with elite ogres about 3-4 levels higher than I was. Oh, this would end well.


Rude.

Barely escaping, I realized I'd have to go back in to secure a book for a quest. Terrific. Fortunately, I had a plan. I'd run in sans Fluffers and flop in the doorway. Summon fluffers to distract the Big Bad level 40 elite guarding the bookcase, grab the book, and be out lickity-split. Most of this plan worked flawlessly. Most.

What I wasn't counting on was halfway through the operation a well-meaning idiot running in and trying to save Fluffers. Oh god. It was a paladin...and pulled aggro off the wolf. "Run past! Get the book!", I yelled. Fluffers continued a tug of war for the attention of the ogre. "Seriously! Just grab it and go!"

The paladin replied, "Oh. I don't need it. I was helping YOU!" Oh, for the love of-- ok. We'll do it the hard way. Gun blazing, we took down the ogre, with my valiant savior surviving with a wisp of health. I thanked him for his assistance and we parted ways...mostly because I then got killed by another ogre.

My next quest took me east into Arathi to investigate rumor of a new plague. This is a fun little series of quests I half-remembered that involves jumping a pack of baddies to kill a courier, then culminates in an escort mission through an orc village. For these I teamed up with a rogue who was also looking to complete them and they went smoothly for the most part. It was a little harrowing when add after add jumped us, but fortunately the escortee was a pretty capable druid in her own right and the novelty of not having to trotside along an infirm idiot was a nice change of pace. (At least that's what Fluffers told me.)

Best of all, the side trip showed me where I could find a giant unspoiled field of raptors and spiders ripe for conquest. Spacious enough that solo fights are a breeze and not so spread out that I'd have to run vast distances between battles. Finished the evening at 36.

New skills are now 1g26s each and I'm being even more selective about my purchases. With that whole "level 40" closing in fast, I'm starting to seriously doubt I'll have mount funds before 42.

Wallowing in the Dust

Finished my trek to 34 in the Shimmering Flats, then headed by to Stormwind for another round of "Oh, my God-- where did the money go!?" Training skills, training pet skills, and a nice new weapon and scope watched nearly 10g evaporate into the ether. Fortunately, people seem to really like buying turtle meat, paying between 60s and 1g for a stack of 10, and I have no small supply of it after the Turtlegeddon that got me to this point.

I cooked some of the mystery meat I'd been collecting from scorpions and basilisks and that was enough to cap my cooking at 225. To go any higher, I'd need to pick up a quest in Gadgetzan, which required hunting level 40-something critters for eggs as well as other things. I'd need around a dozen or so plus other things and the eggs were selling for around a gold each in the AH, so that was just gonna have to wait.

My bank stays in a constant state of stuffed… and this is with me having 2 extra bag slots. I had created a bank alt, HiddenPocket, to store some of the things I might want to stockpile, but honestly I've been getting more use out of her just mailing her things and then rejecting the mail. This effectively gives me dozens of extra bank slots that last for a month for a couple of silver per transaction. Still, no excuses. Time to do some housekeeping, which meant it was time to throw even MORE money away and level up engineering.

I shoveled everything I could into Magrom's sacks and pouches. Anything leftover not remotely related to crafting got thrown up on the AH or into Fluffers' ravenous maw. Unfortunately, I'm to the point where new recipes are only available in Ironforge, so I had to commute to get any real work done. This led into a series of "Och! I cannae believe I forgots t' pick up MORE heavy stones." and another few gold disappearing into recipe costs and raw supplies. Net result? Magrom's now the proud owner of 190-something Engineering skill and a flock… a FLOCK…of exploding sheep.

These ba-a-a-a-a-ad boys will sit around for up to three minutes and charge off to the nearest threat leaving behind a crater of gunpowder and wool. They are decidedly a LOT more entertaining than the usual dynamite, grenades, and bombs, but are best deployed on battlegrounds that haven't been released yet. Guarding a flag? Plop down a sheep. You might get sapped or polymorphed, but that flag will be defended. Plus, exploding sheep sound.

To my disappointment, I still don't have a use for the iron I've been stockpiling. Mining continues to be my albatross. Although I can now mine gold I can't locate, I'm still a few crucial points shy of smelting steel, which is used for the more exciting engineering recipes I'll be getting to…probably next week.

But, with lightened heart, load, and pockets, I searched for adventure and found myself back in Theramore. The swampy, marshy lands of Thera--OH MY GOD THAT SPIDER JUST APPEARED OUT OF NOWHERE. Seriously, the place made me really regret scrimping on "Track Hidden", but it wouldn't have mattered because of all the beasts. The marshy terrain is surprisingly hilly with just enough cypress and tupelo trees to ensure you aren't going to see the spiders, raptors, and crockolisks that will start dogpiling on you out of nowhere. The coastline is densely covered with murlocs after a point and the turtles up to that point are fiercely fought over to complete a quest.

Consequently, I stuck to "the plan" of questing. One of the absolute joys of the zone is a couple of locations (notably a burned out inn), which have several interactable objects that give quests, but don't glow or have any indicator that they are special until you mouse over them. Literally, you're just told of an inn that was burned down at the Barrens border and actual exploration leads to quest discovery. That's the sort of thing that's so delightfully immersive about Classic. A Redditor summed it up nicely, "Classic is a videogame that tries to simulate a fantasy world. Retail is a videogame that doesn't want to be anything more than a videogame." (Which is fine. Different things for different people.)

Some quests were trickier than others. There was a painfully slow escort quest that took nearly every trick in my book to survive as the Escortee was hellbent on chain-pulling crocs. "TONIGHT YOU DINE ON MUTTON!", I screamed and supplemented my rifle with Woolen Hellfire. Even Fluffers survived with a scrap of health. We weren't so fortunate on a "collect 40 'unpopped' spider eyes from the mines near here" quest. I never even saw the inside of the mines, as the outside was thickly infested. "Poisoned, you say? For three minutes? 67 damage every 3 seconds? AND it stacks? Sucks to be you, Fluffers." *feign death* *spider is not fooled* *real death* Again and again.

Somehow through dogged (and wolffed) determination, we were able to complete it and a number of others, leaving the muck at level 35. Seeking drier climes, I returned to Hillsbrad… by way of Alterac, because idiot me forgot to pick up the Southshore flight point the last time I was there.

MUCH better than last time… I spent my last few minutes picking up over a half dozen new quests, ranging from killing tigers and yetis to hunting assassins and those coastal murlocs and…oh. my. god. "Collect ten turtle meat and soothing spices." So that's what they wanted it for.

Stock Aides

Fun Fact: Despite being the cornerstone of commerce for the Alliance, Stormwind doesn't have a damn butcher. If I wanted meat for my wolf, I'd have to either risk life and limb cleaving it from the denizens of the world or go to the Lion's Rest Inn in Goldshire. No, not that kind of meat. Seriously, that's the nearest butcher. So back to Duskwood I go to murder a hundred of Fluffers' extended family.

A bit later upon viewing the acre of corpses, not for the first time I regretted dropping skinning. Still, Engineering has been paying off in sheer convenience as I replenish my own ammo stocks in the field. I digress.

With pouches bulging with wolf meat, I turn my attention to one last quest which rewarded a 12-slot ammo pouch (Heaven itself!) and finish it quickly with help from a couple of random people. At last, I can return to Stormwind.

My Expert Fishing book hadn't sold yet and with a 15 silver listing fee it was making me a little nervous. I took to advertising in trade chat. "Tired o' bein' limited to 150 fishin'? Don't wanna swim all th' way t' Booty Bay fer th' book? [Expert Fishing: The Bass and You] now on th' AH fer jus' 1g35s." Miracle upon miracles, it actually sold. Th' pets will eat tonight!

It was about this time I heard a group looking for "2 DPS for Stockades 25+ and good to go!". I hastily offer my services and am invited. There's a round of brief, "Hey!" and "How's your night going?" that's a welcome change of pace from the silent dungeon runs of LFG Retail.

I give a quick heads up, "Doing great! Growl is off, Pet is on Passive."

This surprised the tank, a Warrior. "And you're SURE you're a hunter?"

"Dispellin' the myths since 2004."

As an aside, with the passive pet, he only attacks what I tell him to when I tell him to and once it is dead he comes running back immediately. With defensive, as long as I'm in combat he will continue to chew on random things. This gets Really Bad Fast when you have a dungeon like Stockades that has a lot of human mobs that run when low on health. Cuts back seriously on those "Oopsie! Adds!" moments that make hunters generally reviled. Same thing would hold true for warlocks, but their imps are range attackers, so it's less of an issue for them.

What followed was an incredibly smooth and speedy run, so much so the healer remarked. "This is going a lot better than I expected. I'm barely having to heal."

"I could go full huntard if ya like."

"No… I'm good."

In the end, we finished five dungeon quests and walked out with packs stuffed with wool. Between that and the wolf meat, my inventory looked like a shepherd's nightmare. Fluffers would prefer cooked meat to raw because now he is DOMESTICATED and as luck would have it, I had the perfect recipe, but…since my cooking was maxxed out, cooking the food would be a waste of potential skill-ups. Unless… oh god, here we go again.

Fifteen minutes later, I'm making a corpse run in the Barrens because I'd forgotten the main path to Ashenvale is guarded by level 40 elite Horde guards. After some judicious sprinting and Fluffers' Noble Sacrifice, I'm able to break through and walk in the Night Elven lands for the first time. Absolutely beautiful. The forests are hauntingly serene and a stark contrast to Duskwood, which are serenely haunted.

I note the quests in this area are on par with what I should be doing and I may pursue those later.

After some futzing around, I locate the general goods vendor that sells the [Expert Cookbook]. Silly me, looking for a cook. I buy a single copy, learn it, and cook all the meat. Fluffers chewed happily on Seasoned Wolf Kabobs as I camped for the night.

The Wolf of Worg Street

One of the more delightful things about Classic is that some key and pretty core elements of your class may go pretty much unexplained. As a result, I was left wondering why, at level 24, my kitteh still hasn't been able to learn "bite" or "claw"… or anything other than the "growl" I've taught him. After internet research, I discovered I was doing huntering wrong. This should come as no surprise to anyone, really.

What I should have been doing was taming a variety of pets, finding the ones that actually had skills (apparently I managed to get a cat that was brain damaged) and let the pet use those skills until I learned the skill and could then teach it to other pets. Ugh. Still in Duskwood, I bought a slot in the stable for a few silver so I could park ScratchFever, and went out into the world looking for animals to tame. As an aside, there's only two stable slots and the second costs five gold, so that's going to be a while.

The first animal I came across was a majestic cat. Long, lean, the color of night...and slightly lower level. Much prettier than Scratch. I terribly wanted to tame it, so I set a frost trap down and positioned myself just so and reached out my hand, beckoning. The druid wasn't having it, though, so I went off to tame wolves and spiders instead.

After taming and releasing a half dozen random animals, I started to get a little irked. None of them had skills and I was starting to wonder if I had to nurse them up to a certain loyalty level or something to expose. I went back to the internet. So, it turns out one of those optional skills I'd saved silver by not picking up was actually a bit essential for what I was trying to do. "Beast Lore", when cast on an animal, would update its tooltip to show health, armor, damage, whether it could be tamed-- and what skills it knew. DOH! Back to Stormwind.

Fast forward a bit and I'm jogging around, examining animals. I find a wolf with "bite 3" and tame it. It runs around a bit, chewing on other wolves, and I learn the skill! Hooray! I run back, pick up Scratch, teach him How to Make Holes with Teeth, and send Mr. Wolf packing. Since I was in the neighborhood, I went back to the wolves for a little grinding then happen upon a slightly larger wolf-- with 'bite 4' AND 'howl 2'. Holy crap!

I run back to Duskwood, kennel the cat, and dash back to Wolfie 2.0-- only to find him being skinned by a roving pack of murder hobos. Sigh. It takes me another 15 minutes and a couple of respawns to find his long lost brother. Turns out wolves only eat meat and fish don't count. Fortunately, my newfound friend isn't above wanton cannibalism and I was able to keep him satiated while learning his skills.

It was at this point it dawned on me: why in the hell am I learning these skills to teach the retarded cat when I can just. keep. the. wolf? The wolf isn't as loyal (yet), but is slightly higher level and a sleek black. So, "Fluffers" is now my current pet.

Then, I decided to invest in buying the next rank of fishing. I inaccurately stated I'd have to find Nat Pagle for this one-- he's Artisan level. The Expert level is from a book sold in Booty Bay. Stranglethorn would be a Corpse Run from hell and I didn't feel like swimming for half an hour, so I decided to get to Booty Bay the dumbest, most circuitous way possible: Fly to the dwarven lands, run to the Wetlands, take the ship from Menethil Harbor to Theramore, run through the Barrens, and take the boat from Ratchet. Score a bunch of flight paths and WIN!

Yeah. First time, I somehow fell off my taxi into the Burning Lands near the Elwynn Forest border. THAT was fun-- dodging level 40-something drakes then falling off a cliff trying to get back to Stormwind. The second trip attempt fared better. I arrived in Menethil JUST as the boat was leaving-- I hopped on with a split second to spare… only to realize I'd neglected to get the flight path. Sigh. So that became a not-so-quick round trip to correct before I was off on my adventure again.

It was really, REALLY nice tromping through the Barrens again as I remembered it. Lush savannah grasses, wild animals grazing and wandering, a herd of gazelles rushing past. Troll shamans dying horribly to lightning-powered rhinos. Wonderful, really, and worth the mild aggravation. Booty Bay was almost how I remembered it. The only thing missing were the dozens of skeletons; very glad I went with a non-pvp server this time.

I wound up picking up two books, one for me and one for the AH-- I figure I'll save the next guy some trouble for a minor 35% shipping and handling charge.