It is no mystery that I am an ardent lover of all things druidic. This quest basically deals with all sorts of druidic dealings which will come to fruition in Cataclysm, and will play out also whenever we get to see the Emerald Dream (well, more than just a little acorn-filled grove surrounded by elite ancients of war). If you don't know what I'm talking about, go finish up your Icecrown Loremaster Achievement. The entire quest deals with the Nightmare and lore leading up to the Hyjal zone and the Barrens revamp and sundering. This quest is assuredly going to disappear. No doubt about it.
Who can do it?The level cap for this one is 10, making it the most easily doable one of the lot. Unless you're getting run through the dungeon required to start this quest - Wailing Caverns, though, it really behooves you to get up to about level 15, when the random dungeon finder will queue you for it automatically. Otherwise, you're basically good. To solo the thing, it pays to be at about lvl 25-35, lower if you're more confident, and higher if you want it to go quickly and without deaths.
Start this is where?
The Quest begins off of a little green gem, whose icon looks like the Essence of Eranikus, that drops off of the end boss of the Wailing Caverns. It's a really, really annoying dungeon if you haven't done it before. In fact, it's really annoying even if you have. To spare yourself the trouble, follow your group leader, mind the jump, and if you are soloing hag upon wowwiki's every word.
Already had the page open for Wowwiki...
HAHA! This time, I'm actually going to TELL YOU what to do! Innit strange? If you still want to do it on your own, fine. I'm not going to stop you. However, you'd be a little nutty to do so.
Blizzard had a grand idea for a number of 'Mystery Quests' to be scattered throughout the world - like the one to find Jitters (easy) to the one from the scroll in the bottom of the bloodsail ship (harder) to the one from the dwarf in southern westfall (completely and totally insane). This is one of those 'mystery' quests - and Blizzard never made one after Vanilla, because they basically stunk. As this quest should be done simply for the lore, and more so to get you to run WC before it implodes in a bronze dragonflight paradox of insanity, it does not behoove you to run around the barrens and ask every person whether or not they know about a little green prism-thing. I'll spare you the trouble.
Basically, after you loot the gem, run to Falla Sagewind next to the flight master in Ratchet. She has no Question Mark. This is supposed to make the quest more 'mysterious'. In actually it makes it just eighty times more annoying if we didn't have wowhead. But, we do! After this it's simply a little jaunt up to your major druidic city (TB/Darn).
What crap do you get from this?
Not... much. If you haven't done the instance before, you get an achievement. Woo! Might even be a FoS someday.
You get to pick between two items. The Talbar Mantle, a very low level shoulder gear - once cool, now nulled by heirloom shoulders - and Quagmire Galoshes, a pair of decent tanking boots. Nothing spectacular, but a bit of XP and major city rep comes alongside.
So... That was totally not worth it.
You might think so. You got to do a really, really terrible dungeon. One that Blizzard will probably... hopefully... remove. Even its druidic awesomeness doesn't make up for the fact that it sucks. You ran around through a city to find a mob with no question mark over her head. Then, you flew an annoyingly long way back to an underused faction city you might not even have the flight route to, in which case you would have run or taken an arduous journey by foot/boat/zeppelin. Then you talked, finished the quest, and got a one of two low level greens.
HOWEVER. You now get to see WHY the barrens will be half a lush tropical forest in Cataclysm. You got to see the first warnings of the Emerald Nightmare, which Malfurion will come back yelling about. You destroyed the corrupted creations of the dream, and witnessed the power it has, first hand. This is Cataclysm's lore IN ACTION! The world is evolving before your very eyes! Live it! Breathe it! The Azeroth around you actually exists. It may not make up for the fact that you just ran WC, but hey, you did it. This is what too many quests were like pre-BC. So if you complain about how you have to go joust again, or your quest to pick up citizens on gryphonback is too long, or your grinding in Grizzly Hills isn't as much fun as it should be - you can now look back upon your arduously annoying journey and think, huh. This isn't so bad after all. In fact, this game might just be entertaining.
No comments:
Post a Comment