New Items: High Warlord's Spellblade


Azuarc has usurped the rest of this update to add the fifth day of his journal! (Sorry, Tyr.)



Azuarc's BC Journal, day 5 -- the tribes of Zangarmarsh

Two days ago, I wrote about Hellfire Peninsula from a general "this is a BC zone" perspective. Yesterday, I focused on Hellfire again, to illustrate just how in-depth the zones are. (I assure you, I didn't write a tenth as much as I could have.)

Today, we finally get out of Hellfire and into Zangarmarsh. Zangarmarsh is very...blue.

Not surprising by its name, it's a swamp, but it's got an eerie mystical feel to it that makes it not resemble any other zone in the game (except for the second Blood Elf zone, Ghostlands, which is also an expansion zone.)

But one of the defining characteristics of Zangarmarsh is that there are many factions. Here's the map for reference's sake:

You'll notice that the entrance from Hellfire Peninsula immediately places you in the Cenarion Refuge. The Cenarion Expedition is a reputation apart from Cenarion Circle, and they have a strong showing in certain Outlands zones, especially this one and Blade's Edge Mountains.

You don't actually *need* Cenarion Expedition faction to progress in the zone. You start off neutral, and that's good enough to get their quests. However, they do have a quartermaster that offers certain things when you reach particular reputation levels.

And yes, there's tradeskill recipes mixed in there, but there's other items that will make most players want to eventually get exalted with C.E. as well.

So, Az, with this new reputation stuff, how hard is it to get to exalted?

Well, I don't know about exalted. I haven't bothered. But I was nearly at friendly by the time I got to Zangarmarsh because of the druids in western Hellfire, and eventually reached honored through basic questing.

However, if I had been more concerned with faction, there is a repeatable quest to turn in items that can drop from literally just about everything in the zone, and there are enemies of the Expedition (Nagas) that you can kill for small gains as well. This is especially important because it includes the mobs inside Coilfang Reservoir, the zone instance.

In fact, there are quite a few different groups in Zangarmarsh who all hate each other:

1) The Alliance, centered in the Draenei town of Telredor with an outpost at Orebor Harborage. Telredor is on top of a giant mushroom and takes an elevator to reach. Don't get on or off prematurely!

2) The Horde, centered in the Troll town Zabra'jin with an outpost at Swamprat Post. Nothing interesting for me to say here, except that Zabra'jin got in my way quite a bit and those guards hurt.

3) The Cenarion Expedition, primarily just in the refuge, have one of their members far to the southwest. You'll see these guys later.

4) The Darkcrest and Bloodscale nagas, who are up to no good at every body of water. To be more specific, they're pumping the water out of the swamp and into Coilfang Reservoir for reasons unknown.

5) Tribes of Broken who are fiercely independent. The Daggerfen and Umbrafen are openly aggressive, while the Feralfen keep to themselves. None are keen on trespassers.

6) The Ango'rosh Ogres, who have been expanding beyond their holdings in the northwest into the Hewn Bog.

(You don't need a picture of the ogres. They look just like any other blue ogres.)

7) The fungal giants, who used to live in the Hewn Bog. They've been chased out by the ogres, and now they're all in Quagg Ridge and The Spawning Glen in search of food.

8) The Sporeggar, a tribe of mushroom people, who are mortified at the giants eating their young in the Spawning Glen. They also aren't too keen on the naga to their north.

9) The wildlife. Strange luminescent creatures live in Zangarmarsh, like nether rays, spore bats, and fen walkers. The waters contain eels, pirahnas and hydras.

10) The Kurenai, a tribe of Broken that live to the south in Nagrand. They are initially unfriendly to Alliance, but there is one in Orebor Harborage who will let you perform some tasks for him, which paves the way toward neutrality.

Now, not all of these groups are willing to cozy up with you, but there are some that you can make your friend. Obviously, you start out on good terms with your own faction. You also are neutral initially with the Expedition. The group you'll be working hardest on in here, however, is the Sporeggar. Just when you think you are out of quests in the zone, you realize there's most to do with the shroomers and get up to neutral with them. Then, suddenly you get more quests for the zone, and a bunch of quests for Coilfang as well, which have some pretty nice rewards.

Did I mention they have a quartermaster as well?

So even when you're "done" a zone, there's still more to do. However, it's not nearly as mindless as "kill the same teddy bears in this village as everyone else is trying to, over and over, so you can make the other teddy bears happy." It moves faster. It's more varied. Put simply, it isn't a total drag. Here's my reputation window without even trying...I even threw away all the faction drops for the Cenarions. (The Kurenai is high because of later questing in Nagrand.)

So that's reputations in Burning Crusade. And pretty much, you know everything you need to about Zangarmarsh now. Here are a few other tidbits for you:

-There are a number of assassination quests -- go find one particular mob and kill him. The first is to kill a Fen Walker named Boglash. A word of warning: these quests, at least right now in the beta, are all on fairly long respawn timers, and people tend to tag them as soon as they spawn. I suggest you group up for these.
-Boglash is JUST north of Umbrafen Village, Sporewing is barely into the Dead Mire in the southwest, Blacksting is along the north edge of Feralfen Village, Lord Klaq is right in the center of the cave, Terrorclaw is on the southern-most island in the lake, and I never went looking for Magresh. But copy-and-paste that so you don't need to ask in general later!
-Save any white-text item that drops in multiples and doesn't have an apparent use, including the ground spawns. You might not know what a Glowcap is for immediately, but you'll want it for faction turn-ins later!
-Swimming quests suck, and the eel quest in particular has a low droprate. Use the free water breathing potion you get at the refuge.
-The PvP objectives in the zone are *similar* to the ones in Hellfire. There's two spires, and then a central one. I haven't done the PvP here, so I can't be too specific.
-Don't get in over your head in the naga areas or Quagg Ridge when you're alone. It's easy to get overwhelmed.
-You can pretty well move across the zone east to west. Remember how I said the other day that zones are typically divided neatly into two? The divide here is right through Serpent Lake, the twin spires, and the west side of Feralfen Village.
-There are two entrances to Blade's Edge Mountains from here, (one through Orebor Harborage,) two ways into Nagrand, and one into Terokkar Forest where tomorrow's topic lies.