08-05-2004, 05:56 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-06-2004, 12:54 AM by Refrigerator.)
WoWReport#2
![[Image: WoWimage025.jpg]](http://img65.exs.cx/img65/3997/WoWimage025.jpg)
THE BEAR!
Welcome to the next part of my druid ramblings! Bonus points to anyone who can count the number of bears in the last picture of my last post!
A few levels after I got bear form, I started questing in Darkshore, so thatâs mostly what Iâll talking about this time. Also, Iâm never using notepad in Win2k again, as it screws with the format a LOT. :(
So, the first time I went to Darkshore was when I was exploring the city of Darnassus (which was not a wasted hour and a half; I know my way around there pretty well now), just after I jumped off the local waterfall. I saw an odd pink glowy thing surrounded by big runestones, which intrigued my curiosity, but my suicidal instinct urged me to jump off the waterfall first. Guess which instinct won? :lol:
So, (eventually) I walked into the circle of runestones with a pink aura around them, and lo and behold, I was teleported to the outer edge of Teldrassil! I followed the path before me, which split two ways. One led to a pier and the hippogryphs, and the other led to a hut where their eggs were kept. My first visit to Teldrassil, I wasnât quite a high enough level and was annihilated by the level 10 Moonstalkers.
On my next trip to Darkshore, I was more prepared. The Moonstalkers were so scared of me, they ran up trees trying to get away. :lol: At first, I disliked Darkshore, just coming from beautiful Teldrassil and itâs purple sky. I really like the atmosphere of Teldrassil. Very well done. In contrast, Darkshore was, well, dark, gloomy, and sort of boring. It never lightened up, even when it was daytime. Eventually, though, I came to love it, and see how it was actually quite nice.
And now, for another dead sea animal lying half-decomposed on the beach picture!
The first quest I got in Darkshore was one where I had to gather some mushrooms from a dangerous cave. Wonder what he wanted those mushrooms forâ¦? At the time, it was red for me, so weâll come back to that later.
I donât remember exactly how this line of quests started out, but I liked it, overall. The first one (I think) asked me to trap a Rabid Thistle Bear and bring it back here. First I had to lay a trap on the ground, then lure a Rabid Thistle Bear into it. Then, once the trap had released and stunned the rabid thistle bear, I had to target it and type â/sootheâ. After that, the bear would just follow me around.
This wasnât very hard for me, I just set the trap while I was fighting the bear, and it worked fine. For some reason, MANY other players couldnât get the /soothe part to work, and assumed it was bugged. Not sure if it was bugged in their case or whether they just couldnât type⦠:lol:
Once I had caught the bear, I had to bring it back to someone in Auberdine, the town in Darkshore, for him to study. He finished studying the bear and proclaimed that the Rabid Thistle Bears had to be destroyed, then told me to kill twenty(!) of them. Surprisingly, this quest didnât take very long and was actually quite enjoyable compared to some⦠It was also very group-friendly. Thistle bears are quite plentiful, if you know where to look.
After I had killed enough of the bears, he commissioned me to kill the Den Mother. This one was red (really hard) to me too, but by this time I had found a few friends to play with, and we easily killed her and her two cubs, after waiting a few minutes for her to respawn. The hard part was finding her. The map showed a cave, but the cave was partway up the mountain. Also, a wide area around the cave was crawling with thicket bears. Overall, it was an enjoyable quest line.
One quest that was NOT fun was in the ruins of BashalâAran. I talked to the spirit of a night elf that was surrounded by a blue glow, and he asked me to collect, I think 8 magical earrings from the Grell-type demons around the area. Just for me and one other person to collect them took more than an hour. Weâd kill maybe 10 Grells for each earring. And each of us needed 8 separate earrings. Thatâs a lotta Grells. By the end of it all I was so sick of Grells, never seeing one again would be too soon. Eventually we finished it, but right after that, we had to start killing the numerous Satyrs in the area⦠Fortunately, we only had to find one this time.
Frequently when the Satyrs die, they get stuck in their dying animation, and just stand there, dancing. Well, theyâre not really dancing, but it sure looks like it! Itâs hard to get a sense of motion from a screenshot, but Iâll try and explain it a bit. The satyrs are sort of staggering a bit, then beginning to fall over, but right about then their death animation resets to the beginning again. Rinse and repeat. :lol:
And now, for another dead guy floating in the water picture!
Now, back to the magic mushroom quest. We had to look for mushrooms in a cave which happened to be just across the river from the Den Motherâs cave! Me and my other 2 party members had to gather 5 of a common kind of mushroom, found throughout the beginning of the cave, and 1 of a Death Cap (I think), which was way in the back, past all the tough monsters. This cave had monsters that were several level above us, and it was also the first time I fought any naga. These baddies introduced a new factor in the fight: Frost Nova. Maybe. Sorry, Iâm not entirely sure of the name, but âfrost novaâ describes it well. When they cast this spell, a ring of frost burst out from them, and anybody it hits gets chained to the ground for a while. If youâre only a melee fighter and this hits you when youâre out of melee range of the mob, youâre stuck sitting there waiting for it to wear off. It also prevents running, which is sometimes quite annoying.
We got all the way up to the last room, but then, in an accident, (I donât remember what it was, but probably a bad pull. Even at lower levels, that can be dangerous.) my two party members were wiped out. I was saved by a level 20+ dwarven rogue who was passing through. He stayed with me to make sure respawns didnât kill me and even offered to escort me to the Death Cap, which was now within sight. If you could see through the monsters guarding it, that is. Once my party members resurrected in the cave, the rest was fairly uneventful. Got the Death Cap, fought our way back out.
Now, I think itâs time to discuss the bear a bit, eh? :D The bear is essentially a warrior in a nature disguise, as far as I can tell. In bear form you get 2 more hit points per point of stamina and + X to hp. Also a bonus to power, but itâs not quite as significant as the health. The bear also has a taunting ability â Growl, which is probably my most used ability. Unfortunately, I find Growl is resisted quite a lot, and in lower level areas, there is no point trying to draw agro, because by the time you do the monster is dead. When it happens 5-6 times in a row, it just gets plain annoying. :(
The other attacks the bear gets relatively early are:
Maul: Adds 18 damage to your next attack.
Demoralizing Roar: Decreases enemies attack power by 25 (AoE)
Bash: Stuns enemy for 2 seconds.
Enrage: Increases your rage by 20 over 10 seconds, but decreases armor by 75% for that duration. Goodbye damage reduction. This ability is quite useful, because often itâs really hard to generate rage as a bear when you first get into combat. Looking at this skill again, I suppose thatâs exactly what itâs for. Itâs to help the bear get enough rage to draw the attention of the mob(s) via growl. If nobodyâs hitting you, then you donât need armor anyways, so thereâs no reason not to use it!
And, now for another beautiful bear picture. Stay AWAY from the light!!!
In solo play with the bear, (not very often) my pattern usually looks something like this:
(1)Enrage
(2)Engage mob in combat
(3)Demoralizing Roar
(4)Wait until I have enough rage, then use Maul.
(5)Repeat step 4 until mob is doing something I donât like, such as running away, or casting a spell, in which case I use Bash. Go back to step 4.
In team play with the bear, (and only whenever there is a need of a tank) my pattern usually looks something like this:
(1)Enrage
(2)Growl. Growl again. Growl until the mob stops resisting Growl and turns towards me to fight.
(3)Demoralizing Roar
(4)Wait until I have enough rage, then use Maul.
(5)Repeat step 4 until mob is doing something I donât like, such as running away, or casting a spell, in which case I use Bash. Go back to step 4.
As you can see, pretty much the same except for the Growling. My bear growls a lot. When fighting lower level guys with a group, when even a spellcaster can tank anything just fine, I only use Maul, as by the time I get the mobâs attention, itâs dead. Thatâs happened enough times that I have realized to not waste rage doing that by now.
Also a question for the warrior players out there: How exactly is rage generated? Is it based on how much youâre getting hit, or how much youâre hitting, or both? Does the amount of damage dealt matter?
And now for â just joking, sorry. This is just a picture of the ghost realm, for those that might not have seen it. Note that there must still be oxygen, of a sort, in the ghost realm, because my torch is still burning. But itâs ghostly too. I sure hope the ghost of my torch doesnât come back to haunt me⦠Also when I was walking around in the ghost realm, I found this bizarre portally thing. I couldnât click on it or do anything to it. I have no idea what it is, but I suspect might have something to do with PvP, because there were a few horde members raiding Darkshore at that time. When I got my body back, I went to check it out again, but there was nothing there.
Back to the rambling for a bit :P
As I continued questing through Darkshore, I gradually started getting farther and farther south, where the enemies were tougher. Eventually, I got to Ashenvale, and Astranaar, but didnât stay there for long. Before I started questing there, I took the boat from Darkshore to Menethil, then a few gryphon rides later was in Westfall. Thatâs where I spent most of my next levels. More on that later. In WoWReport#3!
SNEAK PEEK: Next time, on WoWReportâ¦
![[Image: WoWimage034.jpg]](http://img63.imageshack.us/img63/3367/WoWimage034.jpg)
THE ANGRY SEALBAT!
THE BEAR!
Welcome to the next part of my druid ramblings! Bonus points to anyone who can count the number of bears in the last picture of my last post!
A few levels after I got bear form, I started questing in Darkshore, so thatâs mostly what Iâll talking about this time. Also, Iâm never using notepad in Win2k again, as it screws with the format a LOT. :(
So, the first time I went to Darkshore was when I was exploring the city of Darnassus (which was not a wasted hour and a half; I know my way around there pretty well now), just after I jumped off the local waterfall. I saw an odd pink glowy thing surrounded by big runestones, which intrigued my curiosity, but my suicidal instinct urged me to jump off the waterfall first. Guess which instinct won? :lol:
So, (eventually) I walked into the circle of runestones with a pink aura around them, and lo and behold, I was teleported to the outer edge of Teldrassil! I followed the path before me, which split two ways. One led to a pier and the hippogryphs, and the other led to a hut where their eggs were kept. My first visit to Teldrassil, I wasnât quite a high enough level and was annihilated by the level 10 Moonstalkers.
On my next trip to Darkshore, I was more prepared. The Moonstalkers were so scared of me, they ran up trees trying to get away. :lol: At first, I disliked Darkshore, just coming from beautiful Teldrassil and itâs purple sky. I really like the atmosphere of Teldrassil. Very well done. In contrast, Darkshore was, well, dark, gloomy, and sort of boring. It never lightened up, even when it was daytime. Eventually, though, I came to love it, and see how it was actually quite nice.
And now, for another dead sea animal lying half-decomposed on the beach picture!
The first quest I got in Darkshore was one where I had to gather some mushrooms from a dangerous cave. Wonder what he wanted those mushrooms forâ¦? At the time, it was red for me, so weâll come back to that later.
I donât remember exactly how this line of quests started out, but I liked it, overall. The first one (I think) asked me to trap a Rabid Thistle Bear and bring it back here. First I had to lay a trap on the ground, then lure a Rabid Thistle Bear into it. Then, once the trap had released and stunned the rabid thistle bear, I had to target it and type â/sootheâ. After that, the bear would just follow me around.
This wasnât very hard for me, I just set the trap while I was fighting the bear, and it worked fine. For some reason, MANY other players couldnât get the /soothe part to work, and assumed it was bugged. Not sure if it was bugged in their case or whether they just couldnât type⦠:lol:
Once I had caught the bear, I had to bring it back to someone in Auberdine, the town in Darkshore, for him to study. He finished studying the bear and proclaimed that the Rabid Thistle Bears had to be destroyed, then told me to kill twenty(!) of them. Surprisingly, this quest didnât take very long and was actually quite enjoyable compared to some⦠It was also very group-friendly. Thistle bears are quite plentiful, if you know where to look.
After I had killed enough of the bears, he commissioned me to kill the Den Mother. This one was red (really hard) to me too, but by this time I had found a few friends to play with, and we easily killed her and her two cubs, after waiting a few minutes for her to respawn. The hard part was finding her. The map showed a cave, but the cave was partway up the mountain. Also, a wide area around the cave was crawling with thicket bears. Overall, it was an enjoyable quest line.
One quest that was NOT fun was in the ruins of BashalâAran. I talked to the spirit of a night elf that was surrounded by a blue glow, and he asked me to collect, I think 8 magical earrings from the Grell-type demons around the area. Just for me and one other person to collect them took more than an hour. Weâd kill maybe 10 Grells for each earring. And each of us needed 8 separate earrings. Thatâs a lotta Grells. By the end of it all I was so sick of Grells, never seeing one again would be too soon. Eventually we finished it, but right after that, we had to start killing the numerous Satyrs in the area⦠Fortunately, we only had to find one this time.
Frequently when the Satyrs die, they get stuck in their dying animation, and just stand there, dancing. Well, theyâre not really dancing, but it sure looks like it! Itâs hard to get a sense of motion from a screenshot, but Iâll try and explain it a bit. The satyrs are sort of staggering a bit, then beginning to fall over, but right about then their death animation resets to the beginning again. Rinse and repeat. :lol:
And now, for another dead guy floating in the water picture!
Now, back to the magic mushroom quest. We had to look for mushrooms in a cave which happened to be just across the river from the Den Motherâs cave! Me and my other 2 party members had to gather 5 of a common kind of mushroom, found throughout the beginning of the cave, and 1 of a Death Cap (I think), which was way in the back, past all the tough monsters. This cave had monsters that were several level above us, and it was also the first time I fought any naga. These baddies introduced a new factor in the fight: Frost Nova. Maybe. Sorry, Iâm not entirely sure of the name, but âfrost novaâ describes it well. When they cast this spell, a ring of frost burst out from them, and anybody it hits gets chained to the ground for a while. If youâre only a melee fighter and this hits you when youâre out of melee range of the mob, youâre stuck sitting there waiting for it to wear off. It also prevents running, which is sometimes quite annoying.
We got all the way up to the last room, but then, in an accident, (I donât remember what it was, but probably a bad pull. Even at lower levels, that can be dangerous.) my two party members were wiped out. I was saved by a level 20+ dwarven rogue who was passing through. He stayed with me to make sure respawns didnât kill me and even offered to escort me to the Death Cap, which was now within sight. If you could see through the monsters guarding it, that is. Once my party members resurrected in the cave, the rest was fairly uneventful. Got the Death Cap, fought our way back out.
Now, I think itâs time to discuss the bear a bit, eh? :D The bear is essentially a warrior in a nature disguise, as far as I can tell. In bear form you get 2 more hit points per point of stamina and + X to hp. Also a bonus to power, but itâs not quite as significant as the health. The bear also has a taunting ability â Growl, which is probably my most used ability. Unfortunately, I find Growl is resisted quite a lot, and in lower level areas, there is no point trying to draw agro, because by the time you do the monster is dead. When it happens 5-6 times in a row, it just gets plain annoying. :(
The other attacks the bear gets relatively early are:
Maul: Adds 18 damage to your next attack.
Demoralizing Roar: Decreases enemies attack power by 25 (AoE)
Bash: Stuns enemy for 2 seconds.
Enrage: Increases your rage by 20 over 10 seconds, but decreases armor by 75% for that duration. Goodbye damage reduction. This ability is quite useful, because often itâs really hard to generate rage as a bear when you first get into combat. Looking at this skill again, I suppose thatâs exactly what itâs for. Itâs to help the bear get enough rage to draw the attention of the mob(s) via growl. If nobodyâs hitting you, then you donât need armor anyways, so thereâs no reason not to use it!
And, now for another beautiful bear picture. Stay AWAY from the light!!!
In solo play with the bear, (not very often) my pattern usually looks something like this:
(1)Enrage
(2)Engage mob in combat
(3)Demoralizing Roar
(4)Wait until I have enough rage, then use Maul.
(5)Repeat step 4 until mob is doing something I donât like, such as running away, or casting a spell, in which case I use Bash. Go back to step 4.
In team play with the bear, (and only whenever there is a need of a tank) my pattern usually looks something like this:
(1)Enrage
(2)Growl. Growl again. Growl until the mob stops resisting Growl and turns towards me to fight.
(3)Demoralizing Roar
(4)Wait until I have enough rage, then use Maul.
(5)Repeat step 4 until mob is doing something I donât like, such as running away, or casting a spell, in which case I use Bash. Go back to step 4.
As you can see, pretty much the same except for the Growling. My bear growls a lot. When fighting lower level guys with a group, when even a spellcaster can tank anything just fine, I only use Maul, as by the time I get the mobâs attention, itâs dead. Thatâs happened enough times that I have realized to not waste rage doing that by now.
Also a question for the warrior players out there: How exactly is rage generated? Is it based on how much youâre getting hit, or how much youâre hitting, or both? Does the amount of damage dealt matter?
And now for â just joking, sorry. This is just a picture of the ghost realm, for those that might not have seen it. Note that there must still be oxygen, of a sort, in the ghost realm, because my torch is still burning. But itâs ghostly too. I sure hope the ghost of my torch doesnât come back to haunt me⦠Also when I was walking around in the ghost realm, I found this bizarre portally thing. I couldnât click on it or do anything to it. I have no idea what it is, but I suspect might have something to do with PvP, because there were a few horde members raiding Darkshore at that time. When I got my body back, I went to check it out again, but there was nothing there.
Back to the rambling for a bit :P
As I continued questing through Darkshore, I gradually started getting farther and farther south, where the enemies were tougher. Eventually, I got to Ashenvale, and Astranaar, but didnât stay there for long. Before I started questing there, I took the boat from Darkshore to Menethil, then a few gryphon rides later was in Westfall. Thatâs where I spent most of my next levels. More on that later. In WoWReport#3!
SNEAK PEEK: Next time, on WoWReportâ¦
THE ANGRY SEALBAT!