Hyjal Kids, Hyjal Wife

My pace is definitely slowing down and that's perfectly fine. I still eked out enough xp to hit level 43 questing in the Hinterlands, but a significant amount of playtime was devoted to traveling to the four corners of the world: literally Darnassus, Gadgetzan, Booty Bay and… well, the Hinterlands are close enough, being a bit north of Arathi and just south of the Plaguelands. This now marks a couple of days in a row I've spent inordinate amounts of time airborne to tidy up the quest logs a bit. "Keep yer feet on th' ground", indeed.

At first, the Hinterlands pitted me against some local troll tribes to collect necklaces and check cages for a captured hippogryph. At least I think it was a hippogryph. I was a little fuzzy of the details and between fighting owlbears (more eggs!) and searching the forest floor for feathers may have warped my memory. I vacillate on whether or not quest items should glow out of convenience, but I think the mild frustration made the payoff more rewarding.

Next it was over to the coast to take a "snapshot" of an elite turtle. (The goblins had cameras long before the S.E.L.F.I.E. was a thing.) This required dodging level 48 wolves (that could prowl), before falling off a cliff onto a beach swarming with (non-hostile) turtles that were even higher. Brave Fluffers found and distracted the one truly horrific giant turtle while I got close enough to take the shot and scoot.

Finally, it was time to investigate the top of a troll-infested ziggurat to look for whatever wasn't in those cages earlier. It was a death trap that I knew how to handle. "FLUFFERS! SIC 'EM!" The poor wolf ran back and forth tagging everything around, which afforded me enough time to ascend and fall down the other side. One heroic feign death, a revive pet and a LOT of apology meat later, I'm done with the Hinterlands for now.

As an aside, thanks to South Park, there's a running gag about going from level 1 to 60 by only killing boars in Elwynn Forest. This is very much possible in retail, thanks to level scaling. Last year a player named "Ianxplosion" did precisely that by slaughtering 19801 boars. In Classic you'd have to range farther afield, but I believe there are boars at pretty much every level range. That's pretty much how I feel about wolves. No matter where I go lately, it's miles and miles of wolves. I'm still hating myself for dropping skinning, but I'm sure as hell not changing out engineering now. So. Many. Damn. Wolves. Fluffers, you're the only good one.


So. Many. Damn. Wolves.

From there it was to Darnassus to turn in quests, then back to Feralas to continue a chain. The next one is recommended for level 50, so that's not happening in the foreseeable future. While there I joined a quick escort mission with a couple others to rescue a robot chicken.


Not this one.

I've learned the hard way that escort missions are simply not meant to be solo'd and this proved to be no exception. The chicken was beset upon by packs of 3-4 higher-level enemies several times along the journey. We also discovered that failing to let the stupid motherclucker gain aggro meant it would make a beeline for the horizon while we fought packs of yetis, apes, and (of course) wolves… and fail the quest as we were no longer by its side. Yeesh. Second time was the charm and it was off to sunnier climes in Booty Bay.

Stranglethorn now has a promising bounty of quests out of the southern tip, so I'll likely stick around for a little bit before heading out for adventures unknown.

For those interested, today's title comes from the first guild name to make me laugh out loud in a long time.