Paladins Progress

My paladin in WoW Classic made it to level 53 last night.  Considering I had only just posted about him making level 50 a bit ago, that is spirited progress for me.

Of course, I have two characters closing in on level 60 and I am out playing the third highest level character.  But he is in the midst of what I might call the last sweet spot for quests in the progression towards level cap in WoW Classic.  It is a fun stretch and, while the road to 60 never hits a slump the way it does in the mid-40s, this is an unusually fertile stretch.  At 50 a few zones become options and, while you do have to swap between them to stay on the middle path to keep quests in your level range, it is a pretty well marked path.

He started off in Western Plaguelands at 50, where there are lots of undead, making it a very happy place for paladins.

Take that undead

Then went off to Felwood to get in the first few quests there, securing his reputation with Timbermaw Hold before he left, so he can now run the tunnel without issue. But most of his time so far has been spent in Un’goro Crater.

Un’goro Crater

There are a couple of lead-in quests in Gadgetzan that send you off that way, and once you get to Marshal’s Refuge, plenty to keep you occupied for a stretch.

There was a point in time when I wasn’t exactly thrilled with this zone, way back in vanilla.  Something about it set me off.  But now, returning to it, the quests there are a very good mix of getting things done and grinding mobs for a bit of extra xp.  That balance keeps progress going and keeps you from having to go off and grind some mobs on your own just to keep yourself aligned with the level steps in quests.

And, as a side note, I ended up with a quest for Sunken Temple that the main group missed.  It is at the end of a chain of quests, so we never got to it.

By the time I finished up most of the core quests in the zone I was just a hair from 53, so went back down into the to knock out two more mobs and get my level.

Tar Lord goes down and I level up

I still have a few more quests left in the zone.  My pally is an engineer, so he was able to make the mithril casing for the Chasing A-Me 01 escort quest, but he got mobbed by apes and failed it.  In another level or two he’ll be able to walk that through without pulling half the neighborhood.

At 53 I am about ready to head back up to Felwood and carry on with the next set of quests up there.  It is also a place where felcloth drops, and we need to start collecting that for Ula so she can turn it into mooncloth.

My progress has not been exactly lightning fast of course.  I am ever distracted by some side task or another.  In addition to generally hunting for mining nodes and working on engineering, he has also been working on some of the secondary professions.

I took him over to Redridge to farm for wool cloth because he ended up stuck there when it came to first aid.  I had saved up enough cloth in the bank to get him all the way to heavy runecloth bandages, but had to go back and grind out enough wool to make the jump.  He is now 300 in first aid.

He is also 300 in cooking, mostly a side effect of spending some time working on fishing.  Skronk has some fish needs for alchemy and my pally was the furthest along that path, so I kept on going, getting to 225 and the Nat Pagle quest.

The man knows fishing

I had to go look up the fishing spots, though as I got to them I had a few “oh yeah, this location” moments, having done this quest a few times way back in the day.  I was kind of surprised how quickly I caught each of the four required fish.  The guide goes on about making sure you have the +100 lure attached and all that, but I had some nightcrawlers in my bag already, so just used those and never had to cast more than six times at any of the spots.  In Feralas I got the final fish on the first cast.  From there it was back to Nat for the turn in.

Now we can get to the drinking part

So it goes.

He has even gotten a few nice pieces of gear along the way, both as quest rewards and drops.  It isn’t that common to get an upgrade out the field at this level, so those have been welcome.  And, for a brief moment, he even has a decent look I think.

Paladin Wilhelm in Ironforge

That will probably be the most coordinated his gear visuals will be for a long time.  I recall The Burning Crusade making us all look like patchwork clowns when it came to gear.

Anyway, he won’t be my first character to level cap.  Viniki is so close that he’ll easily be the first.  But my pally will be lined up to go when WoW Classic expands.