Well, my paladin hasn’t been as far as Thorium Point yet. I’d actually forgotten about it. My tauren hunter grabbed the FP there just a couple days earlier, so it was probably stuck in my brain as being a Horde FP, though it’s actually neutral. But until I actually fight my way to the FP, the tunnel between Loch Modan and Searing Gorge is still much more convenient than riding through Badlands. There are a few areas in Searing Gorge that I think will actually be easier to get to via the tunnel, i.e. fewer mobs to fight through.
My pally was originally entering Searing Gorge simply to go kill the beast Pebblekitty mentioned (Margil the Rager, or something like that) and bring its horn back to Pebblekitty - I didn’t have any actual quests there, so the plan was just to run to the Southeast corner, kill the beast, and run back out. Along the way I whacked some Dark Iron dwarves and found the injured Ironforge dwarf in their camp, so I ended up accepting the quest to escort him out of Searing Gorge. As luck would have it, both of those quests ended up sending me to talk to the same guy in IF, so it saved me a trip. Either way, I spent the whole time in the Eastern end of Searing Gorge, nowhere near Thorium Point.
InvisibleWombat, thanks for the info about vellums, that will be helpful should I make an enchanter in the future. I had never even heard of them before — where do you buy them? I don’t recall ever seeing them at a vendor.
My personal rule on entering any new zone is to find out if it has an FP for me, then grab it as soon as possible. As soon as I can enter Hellfire Peninsula I’m going straight for Honor Hold.
Right now I’m level 57, and it’s like squeezing blood from a stone trying to get some last few quests to hit 58 and enter the Portal. I’ve been working over the collection quests in the Blasted Lands all day today; it took me three hours today just to collect enough Vulture Gizzards for both me and my GF. (I have a higher tolerance for the grindy crap she does, and these particular quest items aren’t linked to the quest itself.)
The Portal is neat as hell, too. I haven’t gone near it yet, but even though it’s not as big as I expected it to be, it’s still ominous and cool as anything.
Actually, as there is a major war going on between the Outland side of the Dark Portal and pretty much all the rest of Outland, you have an automatic flight point for Honor Hold. Before you go through the portal, pick up the quest from the guy for your faction in the camp around the Portal in Blasted Lands, then go talk to the guy he tells you to. That person will direct you to the flightmaster at the Portal, who will fly you to Honor Hold (or Thrallmar for Horde) as if you already had the flight point.
I find the discussion of the in-game music interesting. Do most of you leave the music on when you’re playing? I’ve tried a few times, but the repetition gets to me eventually.
I absolutely love the way they’ve integrated iTunes control into the game. I’ve built a big Warcraft playlist (a lot of Opeth, Therion, Dimmu Borgir, Trans-Siberian Orchestra…), and the list is longer than any play session I’ve ever had.
You’re welcome. I get my vellums on the auction house, but if you have an inscriptor friend, he can make them for you.
Amazing what you discover when you’re trying to level up Mining. My pally is in Westfall looking for Tin, and I’ve discovered a wizard tower in the southeast corner that I never knew was there. And, strangely, it’s full of a mix of lvl 22-25 Defias and Venture Company mobs … that are unlootable.
Also, a “back way” into STV. And there’s some sort of ruin on the other side of the mountains on Westfall’s southern coast. It doesn’t look easy to get to, but now that I look at where it is on the map at www.mapwow.com, I’ll bet it’s actually gate through which Van Cleef and his crowd were planning on launching that big ship they’re building in there.
If you go into the key bindings in World of Warcraft, you can assign keys to iTunes play/pause, iTunes volume up/down (which is independent of the volume on ambient game sounds and such), and next track/previous track.
The really cool thing (especially if you tend to run in full-screen mode) is that whenever you switch tracks, it briefly shows the name of the song at the bottom of the screen, making it easy to find stuff.
If you hate iTunes as much as I do (no, I DON’T want to install Quicktime, TYVM!) you can use Winamp and get similar functionality as InvisibleWombat mentioned.
In Winamp there is a hotkey page. I set mine to CTRL-ALT-RightArrow for next track, C-A-LeftArrow for previous, etc. And there are a ton of functions you can assign. There also is an option to display the song info as it changes.
jayjay I really wish I’d realized that flight path deal earlier. I sent my Shadowpriest on the long walk to HH a couple years ago, and then my Death Knight just a few months ago. That’s not an easy walk!
Edit: I should mention that Winamp is capable of playing protected iTunes and WMA files. Winamp, it really whips the llama’s ass!
This isn’t a personal criticism toward you, GildedLily, but the guy you talk to on the Stair of Destiny outright TELLS you to go to the flightmaster to get to HH (or Thrallmar).
Oh I don’t doubt that I even sat there and read the quest as it was given to me. I just always skim quest text so I end up lost and confused quite often. I also tend to play at times while not in the most, err, attentive state of mind
Since I’m trying to level up my pally’s new Mining profession, I have a question:
Do different types of ore deposits have different respawn times? Or is every node on its own little clock? I’m using the maps at http://mapwow.com/ to help me locate Tin and Silver nodes, and I’m really not having any luck. The copper nodes all seem to be where the maps say they’ll be, but I go to the area where I should find a Tin or Silver node, and there’s nothing there. I’m mining in low-population zones (Stonetalon, Ashenvale, etc) so I’d think something would show up.
I don’t know the answer to your question, although it seems to me subjectively that not all nodes are on the same clock. But I just wanted to check that you are using the invaluable mod Gatherer with the Gatherer_wowhead database addition?
I read somewhere, I don’t recall exactly where, that each vein/deposit is actually attached to several different nodes in the area. The map might show three potential spots along a certain ridge, but only one vein will appear in one of those at any given time. There’s also a respawn timer which is pretty long. There’s really anywhere from 1/5 to 1/10 (WAG) as many actual veins/deposits available on the map as there are potential nodes that Gatherer or MapWoW will show you. Mind, they’re still very helpful, because they do direct you to the spots where metals can appear so you don’t waste time hunting in dead spots.
Maybe Im wierd, but I rarely go out specifically to forage, I simply pick any herb I run into as I am running around doing quests or grinding mobs. I also admit that unless I am in a hurry to get somewhere fast like for a group ,I tend to run/fly on my own so i can forrage and kill mobs along the way…
