Friday, January 25, 2008

The Joy that is Darkshore

Ahhh, Darkshore! Some backstory for those of you not in the know...Night Elves have their main City on an Island off the coast of Kalimdor (one of the two continents that make up Azeroth, the world where World of Warcraft takes place (until you go to Outlands, which will be a blog entry when Artaois gets to level 58). The City is named Darnassus, outside of which is where all the baby Night Elves start at first level. This area takes you up to levels10-12, depending on how fast you want to get to the mainland.

From Darnassus, you can fly on a hippogryph or take a boat to Darkshore, which is where a lot of the quests are that you will do in the "teen" levels. The main "village" in Darkshore, on the coast, is Auberdine. Now here is where the rant comes in...Darkshore is too freaking big. It takes forever to get from one place to another. The other area like this in the game (Stranglethorn Vale) was also a pain until the powers that be at Blizzard decided to put a second flightpath in, which really saves time getting from one end to another. They really, REALLY need to do this with darkshore, as you can spend a good 25 minutes running from one end to the other.

That said, the quests here are all relatively easy, with two exceptions (Remtravel, and the Tower of Athalaxx quests). Soloing is easily accomplished, which is good, as I have to Guildfriends in the vicinity currently and I hate pickup groups (PuG's), as I usually get saddled with a moron.

All ranting aside, I am really enjoying playing this character. I had always steered clear of druids in the past as they always seemed to general to me (is it a tank? A Healer? A DPS caster? A rogue? it's actually all of those, depending on your playstyle). There's something to be said for throing a couple spells at something, then shifting to bear form and eating the monster's face.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

New Year, New Character



Welcome to the Blog! Here, I intend to track the growth and accomplishments of Artaois, my Night Elf Druid on the Uldum server. I have other characters that I also enjoy playing, and they may make appearances here from time to time. But I intend to mostly devote time to watching Artaois grow and evolve as a character.

The first 10 levels of the game can be pretty dull. In fact, the quests have just started to get kinda interesting, so now is as good of a time to jump in as any. Artaois just reached level 15. As a Druid, he's mainly focused on his shapechanging abilities now (Feral Spec), and can turn into a bear for combat. He has also taken the Herbalism/Alchemy , which allows him to create many useful potions. His secondary skills (Cooking/Fishing/First Aid) are also coming along very nicely.

Below I've attached some screens, so we can see our hero in action.