With an abundance of free time available over the weekend, I turned my attentions back to an old standby: questing for fun and profit. The "Loremaster of Northrend" achievement called to me with its sweet siren song and, lacking all common sense, I renewed my pursuit of it.
I had already completed the necessary number of quests in all but three of the zones. By and large, the most daunting of the tasks ahead of me was the Howling Fjords. As mentioned previously, I had leveled up in Borean Tundra, and now had a vast number of untapped quest hubs in the Fjords to investigate and complete. I was somewhere in the vicinity of 93 quests shy there and I had put it off long enough.
Over the course of Saturday I completed them all. I found the region more tedious than anything else and found many of the quests somewhat uninspired compared to the Tundra's. The experience was not without some small reward beyond the dozens of pieces of disenchant-bait I was given by the grateful citizenry. Lore revealed the origins of the humans of Azeroth and I got to re-enact a scene from Dr. Strangelove as I strapped myself onto a harpoon and shot myself halfway across the zone.
After I squeaked through the last of the quests, I returned to the opposite end of the continent and picked up where I had left off in Sholazar Basin, a region I intend to spell correctly at least once in these ramblings. Having finished the 'hunting' quests previously, I found that all that remained was a long quest chain for the titan, Freya and the tasks for the Frenzyheart puppymen, err.. gnolls.
I resented the Frenzyheart quests with a passion. Weeks earlier I had aligned myself with them accidently and 'the forums' said that the opposing faction, The Oracles (a tribe of murlocks) were the way to go. Biting the bullet, I ran the gamut of gnoll quests and gained faction with them as I silently plotted their deaths.
The surprise came when during the arc, I saved an Oracle by the riverbank and my factions flipped. The Oracles loved me and the Frenzyhearts hated me! I quickly did more research, since I thought the only way to change was by killing some lich somewhere. As it turns out, this was all part of a VERY long and elaborate chain designed to show you both sides before you choose. You had to go through the Gnoll content first! Typical, really. There were so many quests in the chain though, I never formally chose a side. Once I got the Basin achievement, I left both sides high and dry, but still in the good graces of the fishfolk.
The last area still awaits completion: Icecrown. I did what I could there, but it looks like I may be rapidly reaching the point where I'll require a team to go further. Several chains are blocked by "recommended team size: [5]" and I just can't do those. Generally, if the Big Bad has less than 100k health, I'll take his lunch money and leave him crying on the sidewalk. These typically run from 200k to 350k and are just not an option for an arcane mage with a nasty propensity for showing such bosses his soft nougat center.
It wasn't all questing for glory, though. A few idle hours were spent trouncing the Horde in Wintergrasp, getting my butt handed to me in battlegrounds, and spending vast sums of gold enchanting my way to 450 skill. I finally upgraded my cloak to a very nice PvP one and fixed a couple of enchantments that were... lacking.
All in all, an enjoyable weekend.
No comments:
Post a Comment