Azuarc's journal, day 4 -- a zone in the life of a...er, a zone.

Yesterday was a quick overview of Hellfire Peninsula to explain the gist of how the zone was set-up, to give a feel for what Outland will be like. I didn't capture a great deal into the actual flavor of the zone other than that it's an orange craggy wasteland.

So, as best as I'm able, I'm going to revisit HFP to tell you about my travels through the zones. Mind you, it took me about 3 days of VERY solid playtime, doing nothing but grinding out quests before I could empty out my log. (Well, ok, I ran instances one night.)

This is going to be very long, perhaps TL;DR. That's intentional. The moral of the story's at the bottom. Skip ahead, ye of little attention span.

Here's my map of Hellfire again, for reference. I marked my trips out of town along the way.

The Stair of Destiny is where the dark portal is. In fact, that's how the in-game map is labeled. After catching a flight over the Legion Front to Honor Hold, I reported to the commander...who sent me to his two leaders on the east and west flanks of the fortress.

By the time I had collected all the quests that were immediately available for a neutral-with-Honor-Hold level 60 that has no prerequisite quests completed, I had a quest log of a whopping five total, and absolutely no idea which direction to take off in.

So I simply went. I went north looking for orcs. And I found them, a whole ton of them, along the Path of Glory. Problem was, they were all level 63, and often in small packs. I got gang-banged crossing the road until I found myself close to the Horde stronghold of Thrallmar, where I found some easier orcs that were dropping the quest items I needed.

I went east from there and found an area with all the demons I needed for another quest, although they were heavily overcamped. Turns out, this was the Horde area, and the Path of Anguish (where the quest recommends) was on the opposite side of the road. I returned to town from there.

Trip #2

Well, I didn't find too much that I needed on that northward trip, so I thought maybe I'd go south this time, again out the western side of the town. The first thing I encountered was a mine underneath Honor Hold, which was apparently filled with demons. I explored it briefly, but, not finding any quests, I continued on past a bunch of helboars and an area of burrowing rock creatures toward the zeppelin crash. Hey look, more questgivers!

The goblins had a quest to collect ravagers eggs in the southwest, so I went looking for that. Along the way I found areas filled with voidwalkers, more orcs, and plenty more helboars. The ravagers weren't too bad, but if I pushed far enough through their nesting areas, I found the entrance to Terokkar Forest. I was tempted to forge on into the next zone, but I figured I'd finish what I was doing first.

After that, one of my new quests was to find some place called Expedition Point, east of Honor Hold, so I took off in that direction, picking up zeppelin parts along the way. Quests there sent me to destroy the towers in Zeth'gor and to the Legion Front. I went to Zeth'gor, which was a Fel Orc fortress with a bunch of towers I had to mark for gryphon riders to bomb. Pretty cool.

Trip #2.5

I was starting to amass a lot of cloth in my bags, and I wanted to get some new bandage recipes. I overheard in general that the First Aid trainer was in the Temple of Telhamat to the northwest, so I went looking for it. A bit of a hike, but mostly along roads once you got past the ramparts. And sure enough, another six quests were waiting for me there. I simply hearthed back when I was done.

Trip #3

I had a return trip to make to the zepellin crash for another turn-in. Curiously, the mine foreman would now give me quests. I turned in my quest, and came back up for the mine, which is filled with small kobold-like demons called Gan'arg. The mine was very camped, so I didn't bother with the follow-up at the time. And when I returned to the western tower to turn in quests, there were more waiting for me. Quests around here are like hydra heads, chop one off and three new ones sprout!

From there, though, I had a bunch of quests sending me westward. It turns out there was plenty to still do in the east, but I wanted to see what was further out. I have a cautious, but curious nature. The Great Fissure was my initial destination, filled with strange creatures the likes of which I had never seen before.

I finished the basic kill quest in the area, but there was another there that was marked as "group" in my log to kill the Rock Flayer Matriarch, a nasty 63 elite. I got hosed by her, which might help explain why the quest says in it "Recommended players: 2"

So I ran away, tail tucked, and turned in at the Temple of Telhamat, and from there I remembered finding the entrance to Terokkar by the ravagers and decided to take a quick glimpse beyond the zone. Down the road to the west, I found Zangarmarsh. That was as much as I could take for one night.

Trip #4 (Day two)

It seems like every time I returned to Honor Hold, I found new quests where I thought there were none. New quests sent me to the Path of Glory, into Helfire Citadel, to the Expedition Armory, and out west near where I was on the last trip. But I had some other ideas in mind for what to do next.

I left east this time, heading toward the Legion Front, killing a ton of demons to get some quest drops that I stuck into a couple of the demon portals to blow them up. (Don't ask; you'll understand when you read the quest.) At some point in there, I hit 61.

After that, I was poised to blow up some much larger gateways guarded by massive elites. So, well, I bombed them. The commander was impressed, and flew me out to Shatter Point, a gryphon staging point, so I could help them out there. Shatter Point is a curious place, though, because it's literally a tower sitting on a floating asteroid in the middle of nowhere. A little work there, and they sent me on to Honor POINT.

The guy at Honor Point wanted me to attack the demon forges on the northern hills, but they were too overcamped, so I moved on, exploring the northern edge of the map to the west, past Thrallmar to their mine. Curiously, the questgiver for the Thrallmar mine is a goblin, and so I was able to do their quests...

The Foreman there gave me there quests before I even stepped into the mine. He had me (1) recover some items in a nearby gulch, (2) rescue three peons from the Northern Rampart, and then (3) walk his dog. Well, actually, it was a felhunter. And I was walking it so I could check his poo to see if he had eaten a key. So yes, I was actually digging through $#!7 for that quest.

That was enough for me. I hearthed back to Honor Hold and looked for a shower.

Trip #5

I reviewed my quests and realized I had a lot of southern stuff to do still. So I did it. I started off killing buzzards in the Valley of Bones, en route to Zethgor to do some quests I should have done earlier, and moved west into the ghost-filled Expedition Armory, cleared that area out and finally went into Void Ridge with the voidwalkers gone wild! that like to spawn in groups of three. And turned the quests in.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Trip #6

At this point, the east half of the zone was pretty much cleaned out, but there was a bunch left in the west. (Beginning to see why this took me three days of 8+ hours each?)

The initial quests I had sent me past the Great Fissure to talk to a couple dwarves in the boondocks, who, you guessed it, gave me more quests to do. Ravagers to kill. Strange birdmen to reckon with. Fun stuff like that. Fortunately there were people in the area to help me with the elite ravager I couldn't handle before.

The birdmen are called arrakoa, and you'll see a lot of them in Terokkar Forest, but there's a small cove of them in Hellfire at the Den of Haal'esh. Those birdmen also have a bunch of high-level owls that I was tempted to tame in place of Orly. I just have a hard time abandoning my pets though, even ones that started off as a joke. Ya rly.

I hit some quests for the temple in the northwest at that point, clearing out the demon-infested waters at the Pools of Aggonar, and slaughtering lots of orcs at the Mag'har Post in revenge for their murdering of a Draenei pacifist.

I returned to the Temple to wrap up, and ran instances for the rest of the night.

Trip #7 (day 3)

I don't know about you reading this, but I was pretty bored at this point of Hellfire Peninsula. I wanted to be done and move on. It might have had something to do with the torture of general chat.

So I cleaned up loose ends. Lots of loose ends. Loose ends at those forges in the north. Loose ends with the orcs at the Gorgaz outpost. Loose ends with the birdmen in the Den of Haal'esh. Loose ends outside of Hellfire Citadel. Loose ends in Honor Hold itself. Loose ends from group quests I overlooked earlier. So many loose ends. I dinged 62 in those loose ends.

But once my quest log was looking a bit tidier, only the west-most extreme of the zone remained...or at least I hoped. I reported to the Cenarion Post to find...I had at least 5 more quest chains to do. Ugh. Are we there yet?

I had a few quests already to the Ruins of Sha'naar, and now I had one more, so I went there and found more quests at the ruins! An hour or two later, and that was done.

I returned and turned in, and got to turn a Helboar radioactive, which is always a plus when you have a big raging reddish-gray boar get even bigger and ragier.

I had seen a hunter kiting a bunch of really huge elite giant things down the road earlier, and I had the quest for it now, so I figured I'd try that myself. I imagine quite a few classes could do this as well, since the road is completely clear and the mob doesn't run fast at all.

So I cleared out Sky Fall Ridge, thinned the ravagers blocking the road to Zangarmarsh, and finally said "OK, I'm done," and took that road to Zangarmarsh.

Now, that was a LOONG explanation of what I did across three days. And I wasn't even all that thorough. Why did I write all of this, you might ask?

Because Outland is only seven zones. The original WoW was over fourty. One question I found myself frequently asking was "just how long is seven zones going to keep me occupied? Won't I just hit 70 in like 3 weeks anyway? What else is there really that's going to be interesting about the expansion?"

Well, those seven zones will take you a while, notwithstanding the competition you'll have for quest mobs and stuff during release. But you'll have new reasons to PvP. You'll have new instances to run. And chances are *JUST HELLFIRE PENINSULA* will be enough to keep most players entertained for quite some time.

And in the end of those three power-gaming sessions, I was level 62. And a quarter. Since then, I've been playing for another two weeks, and have not quite made level 67. It's going to take even the power gamers a good long while to get to 70...like, y'know, three weeks. But they won't be highly successful grinding in a corner somewhere because outdoor mobs are worth the same experience, and levels take about triple the experience -- with as many quests as there are, all offering over 10k experience -- questing goes pretty quick when there aren't too many other folks to deal with. My only concern about HFP is that Hellfire Peninsula is the only zone really designed for level 60. When I went to Zangarmarsh the first night, most of the quests were gray. I don't know how much I'd be able to do trying to grind to 61 to get access to those quests and the ones in Terokkar.

And a few tips regarding the zone:

-Empty your bags of anything that won't be useful during leveling so you don't have to keep returning to town, and you can actually pick everything up. You aren't raiding AQ; leave the NR gear at home. Likewise, do bring everything you will need. (Repaired armor, ammo, reagents, potions, etc.)
-Buy Nethergarde Bitter from Nethergarde Keep before passing through the portal so you don't have to make a return trip.
-Group with people. When it isn't a collect quest, it's to your advantage, and there are some quests simply not meant for one person.
-Every 300+ trainer can be found in your starting town except First Aid and Fishing.
-The leatherworker is next to, but outside the inn.
-THE FIRST AID TRAINER IS IN THE TEMPLE OF TELHAMAT!
-Everything around the Path of Glory that you need for quests will not be on the other side of the road, except for one quest that asks you to destroy some siege machinery. The rest has Horde- and Alliance-only stuff on their respective sides of the fence.
-The two exits are both to the west. You probably want to go to Zangarmarsh next, but Terokkar is also an option. The major city in Outland, Shattrath, lies between those two zones.
-Hellfire Citadel has two sections of it you might be interested in if you need to run an instance, The Ramparts and The Blood Furnace.
-THE FIRST AID TRAINER IS IN THE TEMPLE OF TELHAMAT!
-If you're not against that sort of thing, the PvP objectives give you a nice 5% damage boost for controlling all three towers. Of course, it's hard to make use of that when you're too busy holding the towers.
-Don't go base jumping. It's hazardous to your durability.
-Enjoy the bombing runs.
-THE FIRST AID TRAINER IS...ok, Horde, it's probably in Falcon Watch. I'm guessing. But for the Alliance, IT'S IN THE TEMPLE OF TELHAMAT.

Have fun on release day. You'll understand soon enough.

Going to explore the wonders of the Zangarmarsh tomorrow. And I promise, it won't be a book report. If you've got a specific aspect of the expansion you'd like to see me cover a little bit, send me a PM. Maybe you'll think of something I've forgotten.