My level 32 Hunter is, once again, completely lost in Ashenvale. Well, that’s not exactly the truth — I have the map and whatnot, but it’s the confounding terrain that’s got me turned around. Pretty zone, irksome navigation. That’s my review on Yelp. But at least I’m still moving along at a fair clip, blasting through quests and mobs with equal abandon. I keep taking small breaks to fool with my Druid, but it’s not nearly as fun as this character, so I give up and come back before too long.
My gear isn’t changing up that much. I’ve had the same blue axe since Deadmines in my late teens, and only occasionally does something drop — sometimes just cloth — that is technically an upgrade. I suppose I could either go hunt down dungeon groups or shop on the auction house, but I don’t have the time nor the money. So forging ahead solo and hoping for drops or even quest rewards is my approach.
One of the wild and wooly aspects of Vanilla is its sometimes-bonkers itemization. You can find some really interesting (and often, non-optimal) items, such as this sword I came across. It’s got a chance to add nature damage, which is cool, but the weird thing is that it requires you to have the herbalism skill to 100. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a weapon require a gathering skill before!
Here’s another example of vanilla’s wonkiness: You’re in your mid-30s? Here, have some ripped, ragged pants that show off a weird amount of skin!
One of my biggest points of contention with these 20th anniversary servers is that they had to start us back in vanilla. Not only did this give us the least best version of all of these classes, but it locks us out of certain combos — namely, Draenei Shaman and Blood Elf Paladins — until the expansion unlocks in a whole year. And since I wanted to play a shammy most of all, my choices were to roll somewhere else, wait a year, or see if I could bond with a cow shaman. So I’m going to give the last one a try for a bit, see how that goes and perhaps start a journey to level cap and beyond. Who knows? I’ve got a year to mess around here anyway, so no great loss if it doesn’t work out.
And if nothing else, I get a nice tour through one of my favorite MMO zones of all time, Mulgore, right smack dab in the middle of a drab and gray winter. That can’t be bad for the mood, right?