Friday, April 4, 2008

Onward to Ashenvale

Salthier and Lal hit level 20 last night! I happily learned how to morph into a Cat and Lal is busy organizing her heavy bag of spells. As a Druid, I get a new action bar for every form, but Lal is scratching her head trying to figure out how to fit all her spells in the few on-screen action bars she has.

At level 16, I obtained a quest to learn aquatic form for the druid. It turns out the quest involved traveling to underwater locations in Darkshore, and Westfall. Darkshore was no problem, we were already questing there, but Westfall was another story. It was on the other side of the world. Also, because I had obtained a few druid only quests, I had surpassed Lal's leveling curve by about 5000 XP. It really wasn't that big of a deal, and at later levels 5000 XP is negligible, but Lal was a little put off by the fact that I was always leveling before her. I decided we could accomplish my trip to Westfall and catch her leveling up to me in one fell swoop. I would go after my quest item, and she would do quests in Westfall without me to catch up.

So we hopped a boat from Auberdine to Menethil Harbor in the Wetlands. Lal really wanted to pick up all the quests here, but we had another mission. Actually, we did have one quest to turn in that involved a fossil from Darkshore that we carried to Menethil Harbor and showed to a Dwarf Archaeologist. He wanted us then to go kill raptors for some sort of relic and find another fossil in a cave. No problem right? Well, the raptos happened to be level 24ish and Lal and I were only level 19.

So we head out of the harbor and find the area where the raptors are. I charge one as a Bear, Lal is on heals and back up DPS and we take one down. No relic, no problem, on to the next one. Well the next one decided to bring in a few friends. So here I am, a level 19 bear, fighting 3 level 23-24 raptors, and Lal is frantically casting heals and watching her mana bar deplete. I manage to take one Raptor down, but then they decide to go after Lal, so I run over to taunt then, she shields, and I get them off her. That's when a spider decides to see what's going on. I'm thinking that we're going to die, but Lal pops a mana potion and continues to heal me and in the end we are standing on a pile of raptors and one dead spider. No mana, low health, and breathing heavily.

What a rush! And one of the raptors had our relic, which made it worth the trouble as well. Feeling stressed, but with a realization that we had just come out on top of an epic battle, we hurried on our way through the wetlands without further incident. We passed through Dun Algaz, took out a few Dragonmaw Orcs and ended up in Dun Morogh where we paid a visit to Ironforge, collecting flight points along the way. While in the city of the Dwarves we repaired our armor and learned a few weapon skills, Lal in daggers, and myself in 1 and 2 handed maces.

Then we hopped on the Deeprun Tram to Stormwind and ran through the woods to the coast. Ah, Westfall, we were finally here! And since this was a similar 10-20 level zone, I told Lal she could finally accept the quests and go to town. So we got Blanchy some oats, picked off some Defias Bandits and while Lal was taking down Harvest Watchers solo, I swam out to sea and got the quest item I was looking for. Lal found some Bruisweed and happily got her herablism skill over 100.

Back on a Gryphon we flew straight back to Menethil from Westfall. After turning in the fossil quest, Lal and I both hit level 20! We jumped back on the boat and ended up in Darnassus to train our new skills. I also decided to drop skinning for enchanting as skinning wasn't really doing anything but filling up my bags, but enchanting provided us each with a small bracer buff, and I think it will be more beneficial in the long run. If ever need leather, I can just get if from Elionene.

Safely back in Kalimdor, we are now eager to explore the zones of Ashenvale and the Stonetalon mountains. And maybe even take our chances in Blackfathom Deeps!

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