When the goblin's away…

My levelling adventure continues in Northrend, while I still have some free time left over the holidays. Currently I’m at level 73 and I’ve already finished most of the quests in Borean Tundra and about halfway done with Dragonblight.

Starting out in Borean Tundra might not be the best idea though – compared to Valiance Keep, Warsong Hold looks like it has been designed by some drunk and/or crazy developers, because I don’t believe any sane and sober person would design it that way. The place has about 5 levels, so turning in quests and finding trainers involves running around for a good few minutes just looking for them. There should also be a special award for making Horde start out with Scourge swarming around the fortress, while the Alliance can actually go somewhere, without being immediately assaulted by 3 mobs the very moment you step outside the city. Being level 68 at the time didn’t help at all.

Still, it’s much better than questing in Howling Fjord and helping the bloody undeads develop their blight plague to destroy everything with a pulse, something they’ve had brewing since the Tarren Mill quests (which I’ve skipped as well for the same reason). Unfortunately I still have to help them a bit in Dragonblight as a prelude to Wrathgate chain, but it’s only a few quests and they mostly involve killing the Scourge rather than some innocent villagers.

Once I finally levelled up a bit and got out to the next place, it was much better. Most of the Horde quests are similar to what I’ve done on my Alliance characters, so I didn’t have to spend too much time on them. And there are of course the neutral factions like Wyrmrest or Kirin Tor, which don’t change at all.

The instances on the other hand aren’t so good for levelling anymore. Sure, you get some quests for them, but there aren’t really that many of them, so they don’t give that much extra experience. I still do them anyway, just because the gear I get from quests is just awful for an Elemental shaman.

Unfortunately being a healer in the lower instances is not that easy – tanks that know the instances are pretty rare, and most of the time they continue their Outlandish manner of pissing me off, by running off to next pack without looking if I’m low on mana or not. I also had to buy Dual Spec already (actually I did it while I was still in Outland), because healing as Elemental was just spamming either Lesser Healing Wave or Chain Heal – not fun at all and sometimes even not enough if you also happen to have a crappy tank with you. There’s also less reasons to continue running the instances, as the first random dungeon awards you with 2 Emblems of Triumph, and the following ones only with gold and some experience, so I usually run the daily once a day (as you can use them to buy 500 reputation with Wyrmrest and other factions), and then only queue for the ones that still have some interesting loot.