WSG - New Beginning

Well, I haven't posted in nearly two weeks and this blog frankly just doesn't have a lot of readership. But that's okay, I will be starting a new blog with wider ranging subject matter. For those of you who stopped by once in a while, Thank you!

Happy New Year!

Hi everyone, back from the holidays. It seems like it's been forever since I've played with the holidays and all the family events, but it's officially 2007 and I'm back on track.

I did manage to gain a couple levels over the holidays and I am now level 32. Because I helped out a few friends here and there, I am a little higher level than is called for my level according to Joana's guide. Because of this, I pretty muched skipped 29-30 Hillsbrad foothills and 30 - 30 Alterac mountains and I am heading straight for Arathi Highlands. I scanned ahead in the guide an I am pretty sure these quest lines do not overlap with any quests later on. It's something you might want to think about in case you find yourself in the same position. It's no fun doing gray quests. :(

I am also debating on whether or not to make the switch to a different profession at level 40 (8 levels away). Once I hit that level, I will need to upgrade to plate mail. I guess what I have to decide is whether or not the gear and skins I can create/acquire are worth the gold they fetch. I already plunked down 5 gold for Artisan Skinning so I suppose I have one foot in already.

Hope everyone had a nice holiday!

Level 30! Woohoo! Halfway to 60.

Finally hit 30 tonight. So many things open up to you as a hunter when you hit this level. Feign Death, Frost Trap Arcane Shot Level 4...save your coin. Cost ~ 6G to get new spells at this level.


I'll be taking my laptop with me to North Carolina next week. While the kids sleep I'll try to get an hour here and there!

Real Life strikes again

I am hovering a few thousand XP under 30. My wife got sick this weekend and I wanted to spend some time with my friends at the San Diego Chargers v. Kansas City Chiefs game so I was not able to play much Warcraft this weekend. I'll definitely be playing tonight and will post an update as soon as I hit 30.

Level 28 almost to 29

Sorry I haven't posted in a couple days. Real Life(tm) calls now and then! Here is a shot of me doing the Destroy The Legion quest right outside of Splintertree Post. I got a couple of new pieces of armor and a new gun for when I hit 30...which will hopefully be tomorrow night! I nearly leveled 28 - 29 this evening, just a couple more bubbles to go...

Not much to report...Thousand Needles Lvl 27

I am getting back on track after taking a little detour to help someone in Ashenvale. I am currently in Thousand Needles. The mobs are a lot tougher down here. I may go off script here and tame a Needles Cougar. Since the spirit of this blog is Warcraft Strategy Guides, one I can recommend without hesitation is a site called Petopia. It has information about all things related to Hunter Pets. Joana's guide recommends a Savannah Huntress through level 32 or so after which she says to tame a Stranglethorn Vale Tiger. Presumably it's for the attack speed which is a lightning 1.3. According to the Petopia guide however, the Needles Cougar is one of a few cats who has a 1.2 attack speed. This is among the fastest attacks in the game and killing things faster is definitely a theme in Joana's guide. I will tame one and place a picture here tonite! And to those of you reading this blog, thank you. It's nice to have visitors!

Last night in the canyon behind Sunrock...

/Vent

I went and did the three quests down in the canyon behind Sunrock Retreat: New Life, Elemental War, and Harpy's Threaten. Great XP down there. I was getting 300+ xp @ level 25, for killing harpies (until double XP bonus wore off). So anyway, I'm tooling along down there...not really in any danger since I have tracking...the only thing to worry about is once in a while the Chimera's and Tree Elementals patrol around and cross paths so you get double mobbed. I usally switch the pet to the other target to gain aggro and keep fighting. So another player came up as I was killing a lvl 29 Ancient Tree Elemental. The mob was 4 levels above me, but Darncat and I have it totally under control...so said player does an invite during the battle (he's not helping, just sorta standing there) since I have everything under control I hit accept as I knew I was going to need a hand for the rest of the harpy quest -- kill x number's of enemies quests always go faster with 2 people. Next thing you know tree elemental dies and drops a totally nice leather belt and HE wins it (I without thinking clicked Greed as is common etiquette). The guy doesn't even offer to give it back. I just sat there and fumed. I didn't want to make a big deal out of it, but I just don't think it's very classy to take a rare item that dropped like that under those circumstances. I'm a softie so I don't even bother asking for it. My character flaw to assume other people are going to treat you nicely. He didn't even help with the kill and the game awards him the totally nice drop. Ugh. I'm over it now. Just wanted to vent.

My guildies redeemed the human race by giving me a couple free Elixir of Defense so I could finally make Toughened Leather Gloves.

Level 25 - 3 levels in one weekend!

The Horde leveling guide is really worth the money. I was wondering how it was going to be impactful once I started to get in to the 20's and now it's evident that combining the quests is really the heart of the guide's genius. Leading up to the 20's, it's not as noticeable, I ran 3 quests together in the Stone Talon Mountains last night; Stonetalon Peak and the area around the lake are terrific spots for Medium Leather and at level 24 the XP isn't bad either!

The brutal part was killing all the Twilight Runner's to collect enough whiskers. I must have killed 50 of those things to get the 5 necessary to finish the quest. I hope to reach level 30 by Friday!

Leatherworking - Level 22 Update

For speed leveling, the guide doesn't recommend any professions except for First Aid. However, since I am not specifically power leveling my character, I took Leatherworking and Skinning as my 2 primary professions. This is working out really well for me as the two professions have synergy ~ one provides the resources for the other. Since much of the guide focuses on The Barrens early on, just about everything is skinnable - save the humanoids and at least they drop linen and wool. I hit 135 in Leatherworking last night and now I can create my first Blue piece of armor. Toughened Leather Gloves, AC: 61, Agi: 6, Sta: 3, Spi: 6. I can't wait to drop a few of these in the auction house to make some money!

Halfway to Level 22, a friend and I ran up to Zoram Strand. He is a level 20 Shaman so he was able to use Ghost Wolf form and I used Aspect Of The Cheetah. About halfway between Splintertree Post and the Strand, make sure you watch out for the Night Elves on the run out there! That is Alliance territory and if you enter their town, the guards will attack you and your PVP flag will be enabled. As long as you stay to the left of the path when you get near the town, you'll be fine.

Section 4, In Stone Talon Mountains

I recently got the Aspect Of The Cheetah spell. This spell let's your character run ~ 30% faster than normal walking speed. If you follow the guide's build spec for your hunter skill tree, by the time you hit level 21 you will be running 36% faster than regular walking. The guide recommends Pathfinding 2/2 which raises it an additional 6%. This is a beautiful thing. It drives me nuts is how long it takes to walk everywhere in this game! Chalk one up for realism I suppose. :) The only thing that takes getting use to is switching aspects when you are about to enter a battle. I had to learn this the hard way. If you forget and you're stuck in Cheetah mode you will be dazed for a few seconds if you get hit.

The Stonetalon section of the guide is very short and is designed to take you to level 21. I had a bit of backtracking to do because I got in a rush. A tip I want to give regarding Goblin Invader's and Super Reaper 6000 quests together is to do Goblin first before you head to the reaper machine. I tried to do Reaper first and never got the drop for the manual you are supposed to recover. These may not be related but after I finished invader's, the manual dropped on the very next kill when I went back to the big machine with all the VC Operators.

One last thing (if you've even read this far...sorry about crit'ing you with Wall of Text) but on Deepmoss Spider Egg's, if you are soloing, it can come in really handy if you drop an immolation or freeze trap right in front of the egg carcass before you pick it up. This will freeze at least one of the potentially multiple baby spiders that pop out and give you a better chance in case they call for help and their huge spider mom shows up. If it wasn't for a friendly Shaman who was questing nearby I would have died before I figured this out.

Last night, a friend and I teamed up to get through Tribes At War and Consumed By Hatred. Two quests that go together like Peanut Butter and Chocolate. Mmmm, Chocolate. Anyway, per guide instructions I flew up to Orgrimmar and got all the spells I could get at level 20. I had not done this since level 12 I *think* and it cost me a whopping 2.5G to do it! :P

Then I noticed there is a pet trainer, since the guide doesn't mention this, and I have never played a hunter before, I never bothered to talk to the guy. Apparently I was missing out on all kinds of stuff my pet could learn! I had no idea I could be training my pet that way. I thought pets just discovered what they could do along the way....so I trained my pet for Natural Armor R3 and Great Stamina R3 and Growl R3.

With these enhancements I am much more confident about attacking multiple mobs at once.

Here's Darncat and me running back from Camp Taurajo. See the nifty cool trail effect? That's from Spirit of The Wind.

Level 20 in 7 days (24 hours of playtime)

I hit level twenty last night, and while I might complain about the guide in some of these blog posts, this is by far the fastest I have ever leveled. I believe this is partly due to the fact that I am playing a hunter; You are intrinsically grouped with your pet. This is a huge advantage in WoW; and you are not as gear dependent as other classes. Furthermore, from a money standpoint, I have accumulated ~ 3.5 gold at this point, never at level 20 did I have this kind of money. Regardless of class, the information is equally as relevant. When I roll my next Alt, I will use 7 days as my baseline and see how close I can come with another class. Since I will know the quest progression and completion steps a little better, this may offset the fact that I will not be using a hunter.

I started using a gun (that I got from the Serena Bloodfeather quest as a reward) instead of the bow. I was worried about this since I get a bonus as a troll for using a bow, but I quickly realized the rate of fire of the gun was faster (2.1 vs. 2.5), which allows me to fire off my hunter skills more quickly.

Additional details...

Just a little fun fact for you:

The way I play is windowed, with the guide up in one window and thottbot.com up in another. This allows me to quickly switch back and forth. If you don't have a large enough monitor, you can always use ALT-TAB. The other thing I do is read the various WoW forums out there for little tidbits about how to play the game better. Whether that be class, profession, or gear specific. There are *many* games within the game!

Section 4 Barrens, Level 17

The beds are comfy in Crossroads! Okay, things are starting to pick up speed now that I can dish out the damage. The guide is definitely paying for itself and after only a few hours (since my last post) I hit level 17!

During the Kill Grundig Darkcloud quest I figured out I could sneak in from the back of the hill and pick off the brutes one by one that are around him. What I thought was going to be a pain was actually pretty easy, thus, I didn't even bother with the video for Section 3.

Level 15, Section 3

Hi everyone. I find myself in Crossroads and just hit level 15, but I'm only halfway through the level 12 - 15 section of the guide! There are at least 15 more quests to do. :P I'm not sure what to do here and the guide doesn't really say, but I think I will continue with the quests as long as they are yellow in my quest log. If they go green, the Time : XP ratio goes way down and I will just abandon unless it's on my way. I'll have to consult the video for this section closely and see when Joana hit 15.

Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

Here is a shot of me and my pet (A Savannah Huntress) in crossroads next to Sergra Darkthorn. I thought for sure it would be busy today since everyone is off for Thanksgiving, but it was pretty dead last night. Anyhow, I am officially into the 2nd of 49(!) sections in the guide. My timing is no where near Joana's at this point. I think it's taken me double the time that she's played to get to the same level, this probably has something to do with the fact that I stop and AFK to blog and look things up, still, expect to have to stop and look things up if you aren't familiar with the game. I hope everyone has some family to spend time with today, I'm looking forward to some turkey a little later with my parents, wife and kids. If it's just you and WoW, then at least treat yourself to a good meal today!

Edit: 11/24/06 - Missing from the guide in this section is the Meats To Orgrimmar quest you get from Zargh the Butcher. The guide says to take all quests in Crossroads, but this one is never listed to be turned in. I think you have to take it, the money you spend flying there and back to Orgrimmar is rewarded back by Zargh and is worth more than 1200 xp when you finish the quest.

Flexing Trolls and Walter the Crab

Here is a friend of mine flexing next to a huge shark in South Durotar, me, and my pet crab Walter.

Last night in south Durotar...ding level 12!

Hi everyone, I should mention something about how I am reviewing the guide. I am performing every step in guide to keep this review as accurate as possible, but in my travels, a couple of times I've already bumped into people who have helped me or whom I have offered to help on the various quests. That's the beauty of WoW in my opinion. Total strangers helping each other out. If you're soloing though, this will affect your overall XP which in turn can affect the amount of XP you receive for each quest. It's probably not by much, but if you are speed leveling, which is the purpose of the guide, this is something to keep in mind.

While the guide does the majority of things solo, the videos show other players questing at the same time. Since other players might be killing mobs you would normally encounter solo, this will definitely impact the difficulty of the quest.

On last thing, if anyone can tell me what the wacky voiceover/music is playing in the videos, drop me a line (so I can go to their home and beat them).

Woohoo! Level 10

I hit level 10 last night. So that's 4 levels in just a couple hours of playtime. I did have to grind a little along the way. If you don't hit a certain level (in order to have the right spells), finishing certain quests can be really tough. The guide is very good in pointing this out. Nevertheless, I must have died 4 or 5 times trying to finish Vanquish The Betrayers solo. I finally asked in General chat if anyone was doing the quest and teamed up to finish things pretty easily. If you are bent on finishing quests solo or no one else is around, keep your armor and weapons upgraded and a few potions handy.

Watching the videos is the key to this guide. In the lower right corner, Joana uses a CosmosUI Addon to indicate what quest is happening while she runs from place to place. The first couple videos are 30 minutes long so this is helpful when you are trying to find your place.

Also, the guide has links to every quest that point to the Allakhazam website. I find that I prefer Thottbot instead. The community there (while colorful) is very helpful when you are trying to finish a difficult quest, or just trying to find out where the heck Gar'Thok is located.

Quick Update

I just hit level 6 with my Hunter. That's not very exciting I'll admit, but it does put me at the halfway point through the first section of the guide which covers level 1-12 Durotar. One of the minor annoyances of the guide so far is it doesn't suggest what you need to do as far as weapon/armor/skill upgrades. I suppose that's not really important at low levels and it *does* show you Joana hitting the skill trainer in the video for that particular section, but it can be easily missed if you are bouncing around the video between grinds. Even so, the videos are a huge help as it points you exactly where you need to go to finish the quests.

Just read an article about the Burning Crusade expansion over at Digg.com you might want to check out. Can you say flying mounts?

The Burning Crusade expansion pack is due for release on January 16th of 2007! I've already pre-ordered my copy at Amazon.

Level 1

Hi everyone, I rolled a Troll Hunter named Sylexis and started following the guide's steps today. I've started in the Valley of Trials (SE of Orgrimmar in Durotar) so it's a lot FedEx(tm) gatherer style missions and killing boars. You have to pay your dues to get to level 60 right? Nothing too useful from the guide at this level (1-5) since everything is pretty straightforward. As advertised, the guide has a link to a video showing Joana running around the Valley of Trials collecting quests etc. This makes it kind of nice as it's not always clear where to go to pick up new quests. To the right is a pic of my Hunter AFK while I type this sitting next to a Cactus Apple for Galgar's Cactus Apple Surprise

Let's get right into it!

The first guide I am going to review is an immensely popular one around the web. Alexa.com reports over half a million hits per day to the site. I'd say that's pretty popular. Anyhow, I went ahead and purchased the guide tonight and here is what I can tell you about the ~ 8MB download so far:

• It has a decent layout with easily readable text -- nothing fancy here


• It's long! Dozens and dozens of pages, the author said he spent over 6 months working on the guide and it shows.


• In addition to the quests guide, there is a nice tips section at the very bottom of the guide (this should be at the top in my opinion since you build your skill tree as you go)


• The guide has built in copy protection which doesn't play very nicely with Mozilla Firefox. Works great in IE.
  

Since I won't be using my main WoW account for this review, the next thing I have to do is sign up for a new account and roll a character.

So the review begins...

ps. If you're an Alliance player, don't worry. Brian Kopp's 1-60 Alliance Guide is the next guide on my list!