Weekend warcrafting

13th October 2008 – 7.58 am

Continuing her questing in Hellfire Peninsula in the Outlands Sapphire finds out just how starving some Hellboars are when even the merest sniff of meat sends a dozen of them hurtling in her direction at once. It is a little irritating, because it means a path has to be cleared between the pigs and her quest objective, adding some extra time to a task that really ought not to take that long, but once the pigs' motivation is realised it is easier to work with.

Knifey was called in to action, ready to do anything for a woman with a tail, and sent to Winterspring to hunt bears for their meat so that both his and Sapphire's cooking skills could be raised to a level that let them cook in the Outlands. Cooking without fishing is a little awkward, but then fishing itself is a whole new level of tedium and being able to avoid it seems to me to be the better option. Knifey was sent to Winterspring because he can plough through mobs rather more quickly and he can also take advantage of any thorium veins that surface.

Cooking with bear flanks only gets me so far, though, and I have to visit Silithus to get a new recipe from the innkeeper before hunting sandworms for their meat. Both Sapphire and Knifey have to do this individually, because the recipe is retrieved from a quest. Apart from marvelling at just how few sandworms appear to be made of meat, this means that Sapphire has to ride from Gadgetzan, through Un'Goro Crater and onwards to Silithus. She takes advantage of this trip to scare a couple of goblins in those two locations with a mechanical yeti, which is quite amusing. As for Knifey, he apparently has made the trip before, much to my surprise, as well as having completed a couple of quests for the Cenarion Circle, reaching a friendly reputation with them. Maybe my cat has been logging on for some rogue DPS action when I haven't been around, as I cannot remember going anywhere near Silithus with Knifey.

With cooking and first aid raised to the old skill level cap of 300 on both characters it is time to get some Outlandish training, so I send Sapphire back to Shattrath using her hearthstone. I have yet to get her the flight point for the Temple of Telhamar and rather than heading to Honour Hold and riding from there I decide instead to take a scenic route through Zangarmarsh, sneaking up on the Temple from the other side. Not quite being 61st level I wonder if this is such a good idea, travelling through a higher-level zone, but I quickly notice that all of the mobs are around my level and conning yellow.

I grab the flight point at Telredor and ride onwards to Hellfire Peninsula, with the ride to the temple being rather more perilous than casual meandering through Zangarmarsh. After picking up the first aid manual I turn my back on the red dusty landscape of Hellfire Peninsula and return instead to the moist lands of Zangarmarsh, to continue questing in a new zone. There are plenty of quests to keep me busy and more will open up with the imminent new level, although there could be downsides. Missing out on half of the peninsula will cost me a whole chunk of XP that could make future questing more challenging, particularly as I started in Hellfire Peninsula as early as possible when reaching 58th level, and I will be missing out on a lot of possible reputation gains from quests. However, there are far more quests than are needed in the Outlands, so I don't think I'll run out soon, and the reputations from Outlands factions will probably be far less useful in a month's time when the Wrath of the Lich King expansion is released.

Sapphire's jewelcrafting skills improve up to the 300 mark and I have solid plans to get her enchanting equally as advanced soon. Knifey ran around mining thorium for Sapphire's jewelcrafting and getting to 300 wasn't too onerous, but as there is no easy way to gather enchanting materials it is still a pain of a profession. To end the weekend of progression Sapphire reaches 61st level after a handful of quests in Zangarmarsh and Knifey reaches 63rd level in a less glamorous manner killing bears in Winterspring, the fallen corpse of the bear and his small stature almost entirely obscuring the personal fireworks that herald a change of level.

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