Geared up Anyth and set my sights on adventure. Now that [M|Z]yrial are “legit” players, it was time to get the rolling ball o’ hurt going— friends with (referral) benefits! Myrial (Mrs. Rogers) and Kartok (Car talk? Karbon? Oregano?—I can never get his name down right. It's Jacob's latest alternate character) lagging behind a couple of levels, Team Yrial found itself plowing through Westfall like a pack of wolves through a Burger King (not a pretty sight). We had a mission: get Deadmines-ready. This was going to be a bit of work, for as I recalled DM had something like a level 16 or so requirement, but people used to freak out if you brought someone along who was under level 19. Triple xp being what it is, I need not have worried.
After dinging a couple of times, we headed over to Lakeshire to get a new batch of quests and a happy new flight path. Returning to Stormwind, I picked up a number of useful abilities to slap into my bag of tricks: the “I can run slightly faster skill” and “fire traps” being chief among them. Surprisingly enough, my pet wolf seems to be getting triple xp as well, as he is easily keeping pace with the rapid level gains and staying about a level behind at any given point.
We had the manpower and the time, so what to do with it? After some waffling on Deadmines or not, opting for the Random Dungeon sounded like a good idea to me. Even with two members being moderately overgeared, I figured the level difference with the elites in the ‘Mines would have caused serious problems. Also, I haven’t done hardly any of the “vanilla” dungeons, primarily because it used to be such a bitch to get a group back in The Day, and since it was ALL new to half the group, it would be All Good.
Ragefire was our first stop and we might have been able to four-man it. Our randomly assigned fifth was a paladin new to the class, but it rarely showed. I spent an embarrassingly large amount of time at the beginning trying to get my pet to stop taunting and there was the entire “LAVA BAD!” episode with Zyrial, but overall it was a fun and fast run and the random reward bag gave me a piece of gear far superior to anything the dungeon itself would’ve rewarded. I’ll likely outgrow just about everything in a couple of days playing this character, so it’s hard to get –too- excited about drops, but it’ll make those couple of days easier.
By the time we finished, we were all 17-18 and the dungeon button glittered merrily in the evening light. Oregano pushed it and almost instantly we were in hell: the Wailing Caverns. I was amused to note we had gotten another paladin. This labyrinth of a dungeon sucked harshly, although the xp flowed like water. When it was described as “a maze of twisty passages, all alike”, I laughed it off with a grue joke. When we had spent fifteen minutes aimlessly searching for “the monkey in the corner”, I had long since stopped laughing.
At some point during all of this I hit 21 and realized with horror I hadn’t spent my talent points… since level 11. GLAH! During a mana break, I alt-tabbed, picked a solid marksman pve build from the forums, and corrected that quickly.
The highlight of the trip was after we had found and slain the last boss required to awaken the sleeping druid. Taking a shortcut, Oregano leapt off a high outcropping and the rest of us followed. What follows is exactly my thoughts in those last 3.5 seconds: That must lead back to the beginning. Right then. Gods, that’s a long drop. Like really long. Oh crap—no Slow Fall. Tank died, Zyrial died….this is gonna-- *splat* …followed shortly by the deaths of the other two party members. We had all jumped off the proverbial bridge because our friends had. If only I had listened to parental advice years ago! I came close to waking The Wife with my laughter, but it was utterly hysterical.
As a perk, the death allowed us to circumvent having to find our way through the maze back to the beginning, so it was worth a few silver in repairs. Only in MMOs can suicide be considered a travel expedience.
We finished the dungeon without further incident and returned to Stormwind to train and take care of business. Now at level 22, there were an insane amount of new skills to purchase—I still need to see what they all do and slot them on the ol’ action bar.
My next goal is to return to the Land of Emo Elves (blech) for the sole purpose of picking up my feline mount—Hi ho, Kittycat….AWAY!
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