From the Grassy Plains of Mulgore

As of last night Operation: Casual Horde is a go!

The night before I took the two highest rated class/race combos from how I was feeling and created both characters, say hello to Greenborne the Druid and Bind the Undead Mage. The Blood Elves missed out I’m afraid. I spent a lot of time thinking about which one to actually play and despite the flurry of voting that has occurred on the poll today I already made a start last night. Say hello to the newest member of the Horde!

Yes, I went with the druid! Now to be seen running across the plains of Mulgore, I’ve played a couple of Taurens in the past so have a little familiarity with their quest chains. However, as I had decided this was going to be a casual project I was going to just have fun grinding out some low levels, or so I thought. With 3.1 being released I’ve updated a lot of Add-ons and as I was going through my list I saw I still had TourGuide installed. For anyone unfamiliar with this particular add-on it is a series of guides with on screen waypoints that tells you where to go and what to do, it gives you an order for taking quests as well as when to hand them in for the most effective and efficient levelling. I decided to throw this into this little project to see how it turns out. To start with I picked the “Mulgore (1-12)” guide and followed what it told me to do, I even got shown a quest that I had never seen before right there in the Tauren starting village, it certainly is a great little levelling aid and working through it keeps me playing despite the fact that the process of getting up to level 20 with a Druid is one of the most trying in the game.

Taking things slowly I got to level 10 before finishing last night, I just need to complete my Druid quest at the border of the Barrens to unlock bear form, I’ve also been reminded about some of the horribly low drop (or maybe I’m just unlucky) rates for some of these early quests. Due to the fact that I am not trying to power level my way through the content I have also take time to pick up the two gathering skills I’d pre-selected to try and earn me my cash to get through the game. I settled on Mining and Skinning so I only have one resource to track. I know the ores will sell for more than the leather but I can switch to a profession later on if I want to. I also took Cooking and First Aid and can make Heavy Linen Bandages as well as having Boiled Clams available to cook once I get the resources. I’ve always liked trying to keep on top of my tradeskills as I level and it’s quite easy to let cooking drop off as you go. I’ve never done it properly on this side of the faction divide yet so am looking forward to uncovering the differences between my Alliance characters.

After doing all the running around I logged off in Thunderbluff I logged out there after returning from Moonglade, I’ll finish up the bear form quest later (maybe tonight, I want to try and get 20 over the weekend but have other stuff I want to spend time doing as well so not going to be sat in front of the PC all weekend), but here is how Greenborne looks after those first 10 levels of his grassy homeland.

I sent him over the Baby Blizzard Bear and bought a Prairie Dog. The achievements I completed during the first night were “Can I Keep Him?” “Explore: Moonglade”, “Level 10” and “Journeyman” for my Skinning and Cooking. Not a bad night and I certainly didn’t rush through anything.

Spell rotations for the first few levels; As you only start with Wrath as an offensive spell I just fired off two of these and then beat things down with melee. At level 10 I cast Entangling roots and then 3 Wraths if the target is lower level than me and 4 if it’s the same level or higher. This eats up a lot of mana and even with Thorns and Mark of the Wild up you don’t have a lot of damage mitigation. Cooking and First Aid help here as you have options to replenish your health without eating more into your limited mana pool. My one and only talent point so far has gone into improving my Mark of the Wild. Once I get my bear form, and later on Cat form, I’ll more than likely be exploring the options on the Feral Combat tree.

In late breaking news I’ve also found out that Roop is coming over to the Horde to try out a PvP themed Orc Hunter, as I want to be PvP viable on this character as well it may be that if we get to top level Arena may be something in our future, that’s something I haven’t done before which may be interesting. Stay tuned for more about this as it develops and I’ll provide another update after the weekend on how little calf Greenborne deals with moving from Mulgore into one of my favourite ever zones, the Barrens!