Previously our run up to Zul’Farrak moved from the Hinterlands to Booty Bay. This past weekend we got a bit closer to the dungeon as the group took the boat across from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor and flew on down to Tanaris.
Tanaris is where Zul’Farrak is located, so we were at least moving closer to our destination. But our group of four still felt a little light on levels to tackle the instance. Our lineup as the afternoon started:
- Moronae – level 47 night elf druid
- Viniki – level 46 gnome warrior
- Ula – level 45 gnome mage
- Skronk – level 45 dwarf priest
So we decided to tackle some of the quests in the area first, hoping to squeeze another level in for everybody across the board. Gadgetzan was quite amenable to that plan. There are lots of quests in the area.
Also, it has a Mos Eisley vibe to it
If you can find all the quests… and there are some behind the buildings and two as part of a notice board… you can fill up your quest log pretty quickly. When I scouted ahead I dumped all the quests I had left from Stranglethorn Vale (all of which I could go get again if I wanted) and anything else I was unlikely to pursue and found that all my local quests, including the ones from down the road at Steamwheedle Port, and all the Zul’Farrak quest I had gathered, totaled up to 17 quests.
That is quite an investment for your quest log. But Gadgetzan isn’t a bad place to stick around for a while. It has vendors and supplies and a bank and access to the neutral auction house. The latter isn’t great, but you can sometimes find a few things you need.
So when we got online on Sunday afternoon and met up in town we had a list of things to go after. The first tasks were with the Wastewander mobs that hang out between Gadgetzan and Steamwheedle. Those involved slaying some specific mob types, collecting water pouches, and bringing down a named mob.
We actually went too far into their territory to start with, running into the mobs that are part of the second set to be slain in a follow up quest. We moved a bit north and found what we were looking for.
Wastewander camps
A few of the mobs in the camps were bugged. Specifically, the ones under the shelters would suddenly go into “evade” mode and run back to their spawn point and reset if they got pulled anywhere. You had to go slay them where they stood, but at least you could slay them. Something in the back of my brain says that this was an issue at some point back in the day as well… authentic experience… but I could be wrong.
We also stumbled over the named mob pretty early on, knocking him over to finish another quest. We then went back to town to pick up round two, the second check list of mobs, during which everybody also got their water pouch drops.
After that it was on to Steamwheedle Port.
The Tanaris coast has nice beaches
We actually had a quest from last week in Booty Bay that sent us out to the coast. There we turned that in, picked up a couple more quests which, along with the other wanted poster quest from Gadgetzan, all pointed us toward the Southsea Pirates and their camp a ways down the coast.
The Southsea Pirates are another spot I remember from the history of the instance group as it was where we picked off after the long break when Earl had to move to New York and then Ula and Skronk moved back to California. We did a warm up round with the pirates before heading off to Zul’Farrak.
My pally back in the day
We all also seemed to share some collective memories of trying to do this area solo with various classes during the vanilla WoW time frame. They seemed to all involve some pain. But as a group venture it is a pretty good area to hit.
The checklist kill quest is easy enough to do solo, but all the more so as a group.
The named mob you need, the vile pirate Andre Firebeard, isn’t impossible solo, but is definitely easier with a group.
But it is Stoley’s Shipment, the follow on quest from Booty Bay, where have a group can be critical. The quest is simple enough. You just have to go pick up his missing shipment in one of the building.
It is the pile of boxes in the two story building
The problem is that the mobs are close by, often hiding around corners, so it is really easy to accidentally proximity pull the whole building. As a group we burned through it pretty quickly, but later we saw a druid go in there solo and come running out shortly thereafter with half a dozen mobs in tow. We ran over to help him, pulling mobs off of him, but he died. Still, we cleared out the rest of the mobs, gave him a ress, then ran back in to clear the way for him.
Not everybody in the area was so nice. We went over to the dock in the pirate camp where the last type of mobs, Southsea Swashbucklers, were located. As we setup to start picking them off, a mage that had been sitting off to the side mounted up and rode through all the mobs. I thought he was trying to grab them all for a freeze and burn. But somehow the all managed to get trained right on to us.
We had a fairly frantic battle for a bit, but managed to tamp everything down and came out the other end okay.
The victims strewn about us
But we couldn’t tell if the mage had done that on purpose or by accident, and if we should be mad that it was kind of a dick move or happy because we pretty much filled up our swashbuckler quota in one quick go.
We made it onto the ships at the port… this is a little out of order, we went there for Stoley’s shipment, thinking “shipment might mean on a ship!” and failed to find it, moving over to the buildings later as bits and pieces of memory floated into our consciousness. But there was the Captain’s Chest in the far ship, which needs the Captain’s Key, a drop that comes in the pirate boxes that are occasionally found on mobs in the area, along with map fragments for another quest, and some random items.
However, once we got off the ship Viniki got the key in a box, so we had to go back and open the chest. There was an upgrade for Moronae in it, so it was worth the effort.
The one quest we did not finish involved pirate hats. Everybody needed to get 20 and they are random drops off of Southsea Pirates. However, even having to kill about 50 such pirates doing the other quests did not get anybody close to that total. I think Skronk topped the list with nine. So we decided to maybe not stay to the bitter end farming for hat drops.
Of course, I went back the next night with Tistann, my level 45 hunter, and did all the quests AND got the 20 hats all in one go, though it was not pretty. A quest like that with 20 drops favors the solo player.
Anyway, we took down any pirate on our path out of their cove, then rode on back to Steamwheedle.
Time to turn in quests
We turned in our quests, by which point all of us had gone up a level. There was one more quest line to run down, so we flew up to Ratchet to take the boat back to Booty Bay to turn in the one that originated there. And that was about all we had in us… or about all I had in me anyway. But we’re about far enough along that I think next time we’ll just head to Zul’Farrak and start in on it. There are a bunch of quests we can close out and we have the mallet, so we can summon Ghaz’rilla and maybe get that Carrot on a Stick trinket.
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