Monday, December 30, 2019

Why do I do this, Part Whatever...

Az's penchant for getting me in trouble led me to Azshara today, stealthily sneaking along and swimming among the elite Giants out there. It wasn't exactly how I planned to spend part of a Sunday, but I wanted to clean out my quest queue as I was starting to acquire Alterac Valley quests.

And yes, that meant I wandered into Alterac Valley at a severely overwhelmed L51.

I kind of hoped* that the L60 toons would be isolated from the rest of the L50-L59 toons, but as soon as I joined the entrance to AV I discovered I was one of a handful not at L60. And I was the only one lower than L55, which wasn't a good thing.

That meant that enemies had a beat on me no matter whether I was stealthed or not, and I lost track of my deaths after about 7 or so.

Still, I actually got a killing blow in, and I participated in 6 HKs, not too bad for someone who was grossly outleveled in that BG.

And because of that misadventure, I decided I was going to wait on AV for a couple of more levels before I try again.

***

But back to Azshara...

I had that one quest you pick up in the Mage/Priest/Pally area in Ironforge to go get some rubbings of runes in Azshara, and both the rubbing kit and the flare gun were taking up space in my bags. So between those things and my full quest log, I decided to run on over to Azshara and knock that quest out.

However, I didn't count on the adventure of trying to find the island where the Biggs knockoff** was going to land.

The quest said it was an island off the coast of the southern peninsula, but did you notice there were a LOT of islands in the southern peninsula? And what qualifies as "off the coast", anyway?"

So I spent upwards of 40 minutes swimming from island to island, checking each one I could climb up on for a place for the Dwarf pilot to land. After the first attempt of firing the flare gun I discovered that I should be looking for a specifically built platform, so at least I now knew what to look for. But the time spent dodging regular enemies and elites that were 4+ levels higher than me didn't make this any easier.

I finally found the island as the very last freaking island on the map. Figures, I suppose, but I didn't want to assume that and then have to double back if I found I was wrong.

After that long waste of time, I shot off the flare, talked to the pilot, and then discovered that for my reward I'd have to go visit the original quest giver anyway.

"If that was the case, why make me run around for upwards of an hour?" I grumbled as I hearthed back to safety.

***

I had yet another quest to take care of, and one that led me to Felwood: the ooze collection. I'm almost worried about what that gnome wants all this ooze for, but Ironforge isn't my home, so off I went up to Felwood to perform the ooze collection I'm sure everybody wants.

It was then that I discovered that the Emerald Circle outpost doesn't have a flightpoint in Classic (it did by the time Wrath came along). So I collected oozes and then decided I ought to wander north to see if I could sneak through to Winterspring. As of this writing, I'm parked outside the tunnel entrance, debating whether I've enough flash powder to vanish my way through the cave network.

There's foolhardy, and there's crazy. I prefer to think that Az is on the side of the former, but given that I've got some screenshots of Az in the Western Plaguelands at L28, maybe the latter is a more apt description.

But one thing is certain: I'm not exiting this expedition without acquiring a flightpoint.

Somehow.

And if that means having Az run naked though the tunnels so as not to lose equipment durability in the event of multiple corpse runs.... Well, I hope those Firbolgs enjoy the show.




*Given that I don't read the forums, I just play.

**Biggs Starlighter from the original Star Wars movie.

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