A Matter of Reputation

With steely resolve, I decided it was time for Magrom to schmooze with the kinfolk and work on his less-than-stellar reputation. I combed down Fluffers and his beard for fleas, then returned to Ironforge.

Ironforge is not the ghost town it is in retail. Being the cornerstone of industry and engineering, as well as convenience to a number of northern zones, there's no real reason to take up residence in Stormwind over it. I filed that away in the Big Pile of Things I Could Have Done Better Sooner and set my hearth to a lovely dwarven lass by the city's entrance.

Now bristling with dwarvish pride, I set forth to make a name for myself by steamrolling through Loch Modan. I picked up every single quest I could find and obliterated everything in my path. In short order I returned to town ready to empty my packs of assorted animal entrails and ogre heads while I regaled the locals with tales of my derring-do.

I turned in the first quest. "5 reputation". Huh? I turned in another. "2 reputation". Oh. No. The most I got from a single turn-in was 15 and I needed thousands to reach Honored. So, it turns out that if quests are grey to you, not only do you get a pittance of xp, the reputation rewards are ALSO reduced by 90%. Oh, gods. I have erred most severely.

There was one single quest I had gotten from the area that was yellow-- and it wanted me to gather reagents (read: miscellaneous animal bits) from the Badlands to the south. Ok-- fine!

I ventured forth, passing by Uldaman, and walked into a scene from countless Road Runner cartoons-- just with significantly more coyotes. Towering cliffs ringed the area and wide open grassless plains between. Small rock outcroppings broke up the otherwise featureless landscape and there were so many delicious animals. Fluffers was positively salivating as he leapt towards the nearest plainstalker. I kind of wish I had bumbled into the area a level ago, as it is significantly more fun that the Swamp of Sorrows, but the creatures here go up to at least the low 40's along the south western edge, with promises of many whelps (handle them!) to the east.

The bulk of the landscape is covered with level 37-40 critters, making it Yet Another Skinning Paradise but, more importantly to me, there's quite a lot of iron ore and some mithril. MITHRIL! I actually grinned as Magrom's pick bit down into the first sweet, sweet chunk of the stuff. I wasn't earning significant reputation, as the quest givers were few and far between (and most wanted me to go to Uldaman) but by god I was going to be wealthy enough that the reputation didn't matter so much.

The only pain point is that there's no proper flight point in the zone, but it isn't a far run from Loch Modan's southern town of Thelsamar. In fact, I'm pretty sure the run is shorter than the Stormwind to Arathi flight.

I hit level 38 whilst pulling apart stone elementals for a series of "collect rocks" quests, which seemed thematic for Magrom and kept at it as my bags filled with ore (Mining 215 baby!) and decently valuable vendor trash.

After returning home and clearing out the inventory, I assessed my situation. I have maybe 30 gold's worth of skill ups I was stoically ignoring and the people of Ironforge were pretty impartial to my heroic mining efforts. In fact, on top of everything else, I'd need another four and a half gold to become a licensed Artisan miner, so that's also on hold for now.

BUT…I now have saved up over a hundred gold so I am SET when I hit level 40, which is comforting. I'll be heading back to the Badlands over the weekend with the goal of obtaining a nice white ram by Sunday night. Afterwards, I intend to drink myself silly and buy all the skills I can!