I hit 20 on the shaman two days ago, and promptly started the level 20 water totem quest. I’m almost regretting that now, and wishing that I had held off for a little bit, or at least tried to convince my group to come along with me to do it. The first portion was alright, head to the city on Azuremyst Isle, and talk to the shaman trainer there. Great, no problem. He sends me to talk to a giant water elemental, who’s on Bloodmyst Isle. Well, of course since I left my home land at level 6 to go adventure with a dwarf, I had no clue where that even was. After talking with some friends I found out it’s actually an island north of the city. Alright, swim way out there, and I need the complete opposite side of the island. Of course. It couldn’t just be nice and simple. I use thottbot to look up the quest and get the locations I need, assuming that will make things easier.
The water elemental sends me on a quest to collect 6 pieces vials from other water elementals, up north. You’d think I could just walk there, but no, there are cliffs in the way and I need to walk 10 minutes out of my way up and around in order to get to where I need to go. A few kills later, I’ve collected my 6 vials and I return only to have him tell me he needs special water from a fountain in Auberdine.
Wait a second, Auberdine? Isn’t that the night elf town way out — yes, yes it is. Of course I’ve never been there yet, having hung around Westfall and Lakeshire the past twenty levels or so. I sigh inwardly to myself and begin the walk, picking up flightpaths along the way. I find the location of the fountain I need which is of course surrounded by level 24 elementals that like to quickly add. I’m level 20, and they hurt. I try to fight one, promptly get an add (remember, I’m not twinked) plop down a snare totem and run away. Rinse repeat. This is obviously not going anywhere. So I decide I’m frustrated enough with the game for one night and logged.
Today I think I’ll just run my 49 hunter there (who does have flightpaths) and kill the elementals leaving their corpses on the ground so they don’t respawn so fast, and run my shaman over to the fountain while everything is dead. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to wait until tomorrow when my group is on again and try to hack our way through the level 24 mobs. Of course, this is not the end of the quest. No, that would be too easy. Once I get this water I travel way back to the elemental who asked for it to begin with – and then I’m not sure what. I didn’t look the rest of the quest up to peek.
Shesh. I understand sending us all over to accomplish these goals, but for a level 20 quest, this one is hard. I’m almost starting to wish I were twinked up a little now. On the plus side, the quest (plus killing random things that got in my way as I traveled) has pushed me almost to level 21, so it was not as though the evening was a total loss. Tonight is my EverQuest Nostalgia night (see post below) so I won’t be playing WoW, but I already let my group know that will be a Friday night deal for me. I failed utterly at convincing any of them to come test the waters, and I’m sure more then a few have chuckled and laughed at this whole nostalgia expedition. Ah well.
I know how you feel, I have a shaman on Cairne named Akuto – level 70 now. I remember when I had to do the quest for the water totem for mana spring … man did I hate it or what! In fact I delayed that quest by 30 levels (never had use for that totem soloing…) and ended up actually doing the quest when I was around level 67!!!
One of my most frustrating moments in WOW is the level 20 Warlock quest that sends Alliance players into HORDE territory on multiple occassions. It’s brutal death walk out to the Barrens, to Rachet twice and then Ashenvale which used to be a one of the prime attack spots for world PVP. I tried for hours to make it to the Barrens. By the time I reached the second part of the quest I had no Soul shards and my durability was all gone. However, since the trek there was so bad there was no way in heck I was going to HS out and come back. I decided to log off and set my alarm for 3 AM when the server would be less populated and that’s the trick that worked. That quest was one of many thing frustrating for Alliance that seemed to have low to mid level content in Horde territory while the opposite wasn’t true.
Guildies did come out more than once to try and help but you are too much of a target running thru Horde territory where they get to choose the manner of the fight since you can’t attack them first. Some of those class quests seem a bit over the top for the level. I knew other Warlocks that were telling me to wait 3 or 4 levels past the when you got the quest to complete them because of the distance, level and amount of mobs you often had to defeat to accomplish the tasks.
I love that picture – your sitting in one of my favorite zones of the whole game, Westfall. I think Goldshire to up to Hinterlands is the best leveling run in the game. I LOVE the whole defias storyline. The feeling of leveling/living in a virtual world IMO drop sharply beginning with Hinterlands.
Don’t worry, the water totem is totally worth it.
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Oh wait . . . it’s not. If you have too much trouble just leave it for a few levels, the low level water totem spells are barely worth the mana they cost to cast.