Yes, page 132 lists as “helping” a flagged player which includes all forms of buffing, healing, dispelling, etc.
Dead Mines (Westfall) is levels 20 to 22, Blackfathom Deeps (Ashenvale) is levels 20-27, Stockades (Stormwind) are 25-29, and Gnomeregan (Dun Morogh) is levels 30 to 35. Most players don’t even know about BFD, but if they knew better they would go hit it after completing Van Cleef (I know I didn’t know what levels it was). So basically the Eastern Kingdom continent has more low level instances to play through than Kalimdor.
Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I was paired up with someone, and at level 15, we walked the entire length of the zone and the only quests we had were orange ones that we couldn’t do even as a duo (the only exception was that I had a druid-only quest that was yellow). We also explored part of Ashenvale to see if there was stuff there, but after getting nearly demolished by higher-level mobs and Horde characters, we decided we weren’t ready for that zone yet. Again, if I missed an entire line of quests, my bad, but it’s not like we just got off the bird, took a quick spin around Auberdine, and threw up our hands.
As for grouping with others, I guess you could say that no matter how high the quests are. But the point of the game is supposed to be that it’s solo-friendly, which it definitely is for the other Alliance races, and for NEs up to level 12. I’ll take another look around and see if I can find these other quests, but I know I’m far from the only person who had this problem with the Night Elf lands.
Well, I don’t know what to tell you. I was paired up with someone, and at level 15, we walked the entire length of the zone and the only quests we had were orange ones that we couldn’t do even as a duo (the only exception was that I had a druid-only quest that was yellow). [/quote]
Now I’m even more confused… I’m having trouble conceiving of a druid/X pair that wouldn’t be able to do orange quests as a duo… what class was the other person? You had healing and tanking both covered (albeit not simultaneously, but it’s still doable). I can’t imagine any class the other person could be that wouldn’t make that work, unless you’re both very new to MMOs and just don’t have the innate skill level to be able to figure out how best to approach the quests. (No offense intended in that statement, I played EQ a long time and often take for granted what is a revelation to newcomers to the genre.)
The only quests I can think of that are tough at that time are the underwater ones, the prospector quest (which probably would have been red), and maybe the… well… no… that’s really it. Was it just that some of the quests you had were the “collect X things from critter Y” and you weren’t seeing drops and got fed up with them?
Warrior. We had orange quests to get junk off sunken ships, get mushrooms out of a cave, and I forget the third one. The problem was that there were too many aggro monsters in too small an area, and we had no real CC (I have Entangling Roots, but most of the time it takes longer to cast it than it actually holds). We’re certainly not some kind of MMO super-leets. It’s the warrior’s first MMO. I have lots of time in EQ and DAOC, and some in AO and Shadowbane, but I’ve always been a pretty casual player rather than someone who expects military precision from my group. Part of it may be that I’m somehow fucking up playing a druid; I have a much easier time with my rogue, that’s for sure.
But I really think the quest distribution for the NEs is significantly worse than it is for the other races. I had no problem with the NE quests up to level 12 (either solo as a rogue, or duoing with the druid + warrior), and I’ve had no problems with the Azeroth-side quests (up to level 35). I find it hard to believe that I’m suffering a mysterious MMO Skill Defecit just in Darkshore.
Rywill,
I hate to blame the victim here - but if I gather you’re around level 12 and questing in Darkshore there are tons of quests that should be more than appropriate for you. I count in the neighborhood of 20 quests up to level 14 alone. Did you do all of them already?
JD
Warrior. We had orange quests to get junk off sunken ships, get mushrooms out of a cave, and I forget the third one. The problem was that there were too many aggro monsters in too small an area, and we had no real CC (I have Entangling Roots, but most of the time it takes longer to cast it than it actually holds). We’re certainly not some kind of MMO super-leets. It’s the warrior’s first MMO. I have lots of time in EQ and DAOC, and some in AO and Shadowbane, but I’ve always been a pretty casual player rather than someone who expects military precision from my group. Part of it may be that I’m somehow fucking up playing a druid; I have a much easier time with my rogue, that’s for sure.
But I really think the quest distribution for the NEs is significantly worse than it is for the other races. I had no problem with the NE quests up to level 12 (either solo as a rogue, or duoing with the druid + warrior), and I’ve had no problems with the Azeroth-side quests (up to level 35). I find it hard to believe that I’m suffering a mysterious MMO Skill Defecit just in Darkshore.[/quote]
That sunken ship quest where you have to get the two lockboxes in Darkshore should be a lot higher level than it is. It’s currently lvl 14, yet I remember having problems completing it at lvl 19ish with a group.
I think part of the problem is that the murlocs are supposed to be spawning in the upper part of the ship, but they fall through and you end up with 30 murlocs on the lower level. Any time you try to aggro one you get 4 more.
Well, there are more quest lines than those three, so you missed some along the way.
As for playing, though, I find that the EQ model (or the DAoC or anything else) isn’t as good as you’d expect. Warriors have some issues holding aggro, but in general the “tank while I stand back here” idea doesn’t work well. For a warrior + druid with up to three mobs, this is how I’d play it: Warrior gets one, gets an immediate regeneration, then I’d regenerate myself (the druid) and either tank one mob while the warrior took two or tank two as a bear while the warrior took one. Also useful to moonfire the mobs that are actively being beaten on (at the least).
Druids have some very nice spells that cast quickly and keep running. This is useful so that you can pop in and out of were form and do other things while the spells have effects. If you were getting more than three at once, then the quests were either truly to big for you (that mushroom quest comes to mind; that place is vicious comparatively), or you need to figure out aggro ranges on mobs better.
(Please don’t take this as me saying “You suck, you should have been able to do this.” It’s not… I think you missed some quests, but the ones you list are, indeed, tough at that level. Especially mushrooms and the ship. My main character is a druid, and I’ve found their versatility amazingly powerful, which is why I was surprised when you were saying you had trouble as a druid. There was one quest that I soloed that I’m absolutely positive nobody else at my level could have soloed because I was a druid and could heal, DoT, and then shift to bear form and do mana-free damage until I regenerated mana to do more healing and dotting as I escorted some dude out of a cave, fighting 2-3 monsters at a time.)
There’s 2 fishing quests in auberdine… one for the dwarf on the shore, one from the gnome up top. There’s the buzzbox series of quest. There’s Bash’al Aran or however it’s spelled which is a series of 3 progressively harder quests. There’s Ameth Aran (again horribly misspelled I’m sure… damned elves) which has a quest or two directly, then one given by an elf on the docks. There’s the tower of Althalaxx stuff which would’ve been doable by a duo at level 15 I believe (at least the first part). There’s the cleansing of the furbolgs. There’s the sea turtle, the dead thresher, and the nasty lockbox quest (the latter is bad, the first two aren’t). As a druid there’s also the poison cure quest and the sea lion quest (though again, the sea lion quest is kinda rough).
There’s more that I’m forgetting… involving the naga up north, but those were a bit above you at that level I believe. There’s the series that starts with trapping the rabid thistlebear which ends with the one I described soloing above. There really are plenty of quests there I think. You may have missed some and given up on others (like the dwarf fisherman quest which start with fishing which you can’t actually skill up in Auberdine, but you have to go back to Darnassus to skill up fishing to come back and catch the grouper). But I do think there’s roughly as many quests in Darkshore as in westfall. They’re just a bit more scattered and varied and a bit less of the “Take letter A to point B” type. Which I can see would be not as good or much better than what other races have, depending on your viewpoint.
There is no direct connection from Badlands to Burning Steppes (There should be though). You can run from Badlands to Searing Gorge and then through Blackrock Mountain to get to Burning Steppes though. There is also a Horde flightpath in Steppes now, where there wasnt in beta. Its at the quest givers that hang out in the center of the map on the North wall.
olaf
That’s because the underwater quests are all friggin difficult. There’s at least two more of exactly the same mission structure. One is in menethil and the other is in the Arathi Highlands. They are all awful because of
a) an insanely high mob respawn time
b) mobs that aggro (and subsequently pass through) the sides of the boat
c) mobs that aggro in three-dimensions
d) For hunters (and I assume mages), mobs that can hit you through collisions, but you get constant “line of sight” errors
e) a time limit because of the need to keep coming up for breath if there’s no alchemists or warlocks around
For the sunken ship in Darkshore, I think most people end up killing “some” of the murlocs, then dying and respawning on top of the chest, then dying and respawning outside. Sure, you die twice, but my experience is you die more even when doing it as a properly formed, level-appropriate group.
My apologies if this is an uber-n00b question, but I only started playing yesterday…
How can I use special abilities and attacks while stealthed? When I enter stealh mode, my quickbar is replaced by another blank one. Do you have two quickbars, one for stealth and one normal, and you have to drag your abilities to each of them manually?
That’s the easiest way, yes. There are multiple abilities that only operate if initiated from stealth, so you get a separate bar to place abilities while in stealth. (As a side glitch, stealth only brings up the stealth bar when used from the first ability bar.)
Last time I checked, priests could also trick you into flagging yourself for PvP. You start fighting mob, priest uses Mind Control on mob, you stop swinging at it. If you don’t realize what happened and click to attack again you are now flagged for PvP.
What mouselock said. The best thing to do is go into stealth (getting the new blank bar) and drag everything you need in there. When you get a new ability that would be useful (or that is only useful) while stealthed, you have to go into stealth mode and drag the ability down there. It’s kind of odd.
And I have the same bug about multiple bars–if you have “bar #1” up and hit stealth, you get the special stealth bar. But if you have “bar #2” up and hit stealth, you get bar #2 again. It’s a bit of a pain–right now I have my “solo” bar in slot #1, and my “grouped” bar in slot #2. That means my “grouped” bar has to have my stealth and nonstealth abilities all crammed together.
You cant mind control tapped mobs now.
olaf
Just switch back to bar 1 when you go to stealth, the seventh bar will be there. I don’t think this is a bug or glitch, seems like it works as intended.
It would probably not be difficult to write a script that just moves you to bar one when you go into stealth. I have no idea how, but judging from the other magic that cosmos is capable of, it sounds trivial.
Just as a note, I’m a horde player who hearthstones in XR, because there are a lot more flight paths from it than Org.
Lorini
I hope not, because that’s a lousy system. It’d be a lot better if you got switched to bar #7 when going into stealth no matter where you started. I (and I assume a lot of rogues) have separate skill sets for soloing (max damage) versus grouped (aggro management). Using the “switch back” system, if I’m grouped, an encounter would go “steath - switch bar - cheap shot - switch bar again.” That’s not very efficient (or fun), and in fact, the smarter thing is to just keep cheap shot as one of the skills on bar #2 (which is what I’m doing now, but that kind of defeats the purpose of having a stealth bar to begin with).
For what it’s worth, Darkshore quests brought my NE rogue up to 19 or 20 in the open beta. After Darkshore was exhausted, i only had to tough it out for a level or 2 before Ashenvale quests were doable. And i’m speaking in strictly solo terms here. It actually ended up being easier to solo than it was to form a party.
I know that if I use /stealth in a macro, it seems to switch the bars properly no matter which bar I put the macro in. I could be mistaken however.