Welcome to Ged's Guide to World of Warcraft™. Ged's Guide features quest guides, walking you through the quests step by step, ensuring that you complete them successfully, first time, every time.
Wednesday, 7 October 2009, 17:53.
Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the "Find by name" box at the top of the left-hand column has changed. Gone are the buttons to search quests, NPCs, factions etc., to be replaced by a single button marked "Go". What's going on?
What's going on is that gedsguides.com has moved into the cloud! We are now hosted on App Engine, Google's contender in the cloud development and web-application hosting race. I wish I could say that this was because we needed to scale transparently to millions of simultaneous users — LOL! — but in fact it's because by hosting our media files on Amazon S3 and our database and web server on Google App Engine, we reduce our monthly hosting bills from twenty dollars to twenty cents.
The changeover is not without its inconveniences though, and the new Find-box is one of them. Whereas before, you could type in any slice of the title of a quest, faction or whatever, and expect to get the thing back in your results, now you will need to type whole words. So whereas before, if you were looking for Raene's Cleansing you could, in theory, have typed "ne's Cl" and would have got the Rane's Cleansing quests back, now you'd have to type "Raene", or "cleansing".
In fact, things are a little better than I've just made out: we do word stemming, which means that the system chops the endings off words before comparing them, in order to get their essential meaning and ignore details like singular/plural, present/future/past, and so on. So you could also type "cleanse" in the example above, and would still get back the right answers.
The new system definitely doesn't like meaningless slices though. If you search for something that isn't a real word, or a name, but is just an arbitrary jumble of letters, it doesn't come back with nothing, it comes back with everything in the database! (And that takes an awfully long time.) I don't know whether that's a feature, a bug, or just evidence that I haven't mastered this new tech yet, but in any case, don't do it!
Sunday, 23 November 2008, 00:35.
Every toon you log in today (23rd November) gets an achievement, WoW's 4th Anniversary — and a cute little baby bear companion pet in the post!
So you right-click on your bear and it gets copied to your collection of pets. But the bear stays in your bag...??? You log out, go and do some work, come back, log in, and the bear's still there. What gives? Now it says "Already known," so why is it still there?
The bear is account bound, which seems to be a new thing. This means that, even if you only log in one of your toons today, and tomorrow you log another of your toons and it doesn't get the achievement and it doesn't get the bear in the post, the toon with the bear can post it to all your others and they can learn the spell and send it on!
That's excellent news. Make sure at least one of your toons on each server keeps his bear present (and if you've got a banker character, that's the one to use). That way, even toons that you create in future can have a pet if you post it to them.
Monday, 6 October 2008, 03:59.
Patch 3.0.2 is here, and I've been playing it for a few days on the public test realms. First impressions are ... it's incredible!
Amazing! I was expecting something like the harbour at Ratchet. In fact, we've got something that puts Menethil and Theramore harbours to shame — it's enormous. Possibly even slightly over the top. There are gryphon flights round the harbour for sightseers!
At Auberdine, the ships that went to Theramore now go to Stormwind harbour. At the other end, the berth at Theramore that used to be for Auberdine is now for Northrend (or will be when WotLK comes out; in this new patch the ship doesn't dock yet).
It's all change in the throne room at Stormwind Keep as King Varian Wrynn returns from his "holiday" abroad. Lady Katrana Prestor and Bolvar Fordragon seem to be gone [I'll need to check that they haven't just been moved slightly]. The little boy is still there, but no longer the centre of attention. Word is that Onyxia's Lair no longer requires attunement. How that plays out with the Hidden Masters quest line and with BRD, I don't yet know.
One odd thing though: the Missing Diplomat quest line still exists. My PTR hunter has just interrogated Slim Jahn in the Wetlands, and is off to Theramore to pick up the trail...
The first time I clicked my mount icon on my toolbar, it cycled and I got a message saying something like "this mount has been added to your collection". That's it, nothing else happened. Disturbed, I looked in my bags for the mount trinket, and it was gone!
A couple of frantic posts in the trade channel later, and I found out that you now get a new "Pets" tab in your character window, even if your not a Hunter. It goes between Character and Reputation, and it contains two sub-tabs: one for mounts, the other for companion pets like parrots, chickens, sprites, cats and so on. If you are a hunter, you get a third sub-tab there for your current combat pet, if it's out.
Not only do you get a nice shiny new "Mount" button there for mounting your - erm, mount - but you also get a list of mounts (that's the collection that the message was talking about). You can select any of them, click the mount button, and ride. The great thing is that you can now have all your mounts available for use — your old level +60% starter mount, your first +100% fast mount, your PvP fast mount, your first, slow flying mount, your second, fast, flying mount, your flying nether ray mount, your dragon mount — and they don't take up any bag space!!! Hurrah!
The companion pets tab presumably has the same interface (I didn't test it), so you can now have all your companion pets with you wherever you go. This is important!
Hunters, the combat pets sub-tab doesn't have a list like the other two, so you can still only have one combat pet with you at a time. That's what the stable masters are for, and they are still around.
Opening the character window, selecting the pets tab, selecting the mounts tab, selecting a mount, pressing "Mount" - it sounds slow, and it is. Luckily, you can drag a mount icon from that list to a toolbar slot, and use it just like before.
Also on the plus side, once you've dragged a mount icon from the list to your toolbar, it will now light up and dim according to whether you can currently mount or not. And the number of places that you can be mounted has increased too: inside certain buildings for example, and on the deckways at Booty Bay.
Finally, if you ever got a non-combat pet as a quest reward and then had to get rid of its trinket from your bag because some fabulous purple dropped and you had no room to pick it up, you'll be relieved to know that you will be able to reclaim your old pet from any stable master. Nice one, Blizzard!
The new pet skills and talents system works, and works well. It completes the move away from special abilities for individual pets (e.g. tamed rares) to a more homogenised system.
Pet species are now grouped into three different types: aggressive, defensive and mixed. You can see that an aggressive pet would be good for raiding, and defensive pet might make a passable tank in a 5-man dungeon, while the mixed type is supposedly best for PvP. Each species of pet also has its own special abilities — for cats it's stealth and rake, tallstriders can kick dust in their enemy's face (I kid you not), and so on. Species abilities go on the pet's toolbar. Pets automatically learn the next levels of their toolbar skills as they level, so there's no more having to go tame a new pet in order to learn Bite level 7! Pets also get a single talent tree dependent on their type. Every fourth level they get a talent point, and you can spend that point in their talent tree in a similar way to your own.
I have to say I was never keen on the move away from individual pet attributes. If a particular named beast in the Badlands or wherever had superior speed or faster attack, I couldn't see why every hunter wouldn't be able to go there and get it, at some time or other. The new system seems to represent the logical culmination of the move away from that point of view, and so I suppose I shouldn't like it — but they really have done it well. If Blizzard are determined to homogenise standard pets, then at least they have come up with an excellent implementation of that strategy.
And then again, Blizzard have thrown a sop to those who like their pets to be unusual: high-level beast masters (it's a 51-point BM talent) can now tame beasts that used to be untameable, such as the giant raptors in Un'goro Crater or hippogryphs from Feralas! They still shrink to normal size (if perhaps just a touch on the large side?), but they keep their appearance otherwise. For the purpose of exotic taming, some mobs have been reclassified as beasts that weren't before, e.g. Hazzali Sandreavers (silithids) in the Gaping Chasm in Tanaris.
Based on the frequency with which I saw them on the test server, the current favourite exotic pets seem to be:
You can now purchase four stable slots, up from two. Hurrah!
At long last, you can see how long the buffs and debuffs on your pet have left to run. This information is available from buffs and debuffs that you mouse over when you have targetted your pet; it is not available from hovering over the buffs and debuffs on your pet's party portrait.
If your pet is a lot lower level than you when you tame it, it will automatically be boosted to just 5 levels below yours, as soon as it tames. They also seem to level faster than before. Also, because the notion of pet loyalty has now disappeared as part of the talent overhaul, pets seem to need much less food after being tamed than they used to when they had to build up loyalty. All in all, Blizzard have made it easier and cheaper to tame new pets, while somewhat reducing the need to do so!
Entangling Roots now works indoors. Finally, finally, finally! Druids will be dancing in the streets over that one. In other news, Hurricane can now be continuously cast, which puts it on a par with mage and lock AoE spells. Also, at long last Druids get a resurrection spell (Revive) that doesn't have a cooldown; like other such spells belonging to pallies and priests, it cannnot be cast in battle.
The range of helpful totems has gone up from 20 yards to 30 yards. This should show up in better party performance over time.
Grace of Air totem has gone! What on earth do they think they are playing at? That was one of my favourite totems! Apparently the Strength of Earth totem will get an additional agility bonus to compensate. Yeah, right.
Tranquil Air totem has also gone. Supposedly its threat reduction has been redistributed into other talents, though I wonder if that affects all classes or just shammies? Oh well, I suppose it frees up some toolbar space.
Windwall Totem has gone. I was never quite sure it was really doing anything anyway.
It looks like Windfury Totem has been nerfed: the effect is now a flat 20% melee haste. I do hope that they haven't done the same to the shammy's own Windfury Weapon effect, as that would be a real blow to enhancement shammies.
You can now water-walk while in ghost wolf form. Hurrah!
Demonform! I saw a lock in Demonform and thought it must be a blood knight at first, but that's WotLK stuff so I took a closer look. Most impressive visually.
Demon Armor no longer does health regen in-combat. Supposedly, it now increases the effect of healing spells, but I think that's probably the final nail in its coffin. Fel Armor rules!
"Drain Soul will now cause four times the damage if the target is at or below 25% health," says the patch notes. Ouch! Warlocks were already overpowered in PvP, this is just going to make that worse.
Puzzling changes to Infernal: it now only lasts one minute, down from five. What is the use of a one-minute pet? Is it a complete nerf, or do they envision some purely tactical, situational use where the blast effect of the summoning and the rampaging of the infernal itself will finish off a group of enemies?
The biggie here is that the poisons skill tree is gone, completely. You now have to buy your poisons directly from the shady dealers and other rogue-style vendors (perhaps they may also show up in the loot list from pickpocketing from time to time, like their ingredients used to). I suppose that this will free up a fair bit of bag space, but I will definitely miss that rather soothing, blowing/bubbling noise as my poisons brew.
Similarly, Vanish no longer requires Flash Powder. The writing was on the wall for Flash Powder when they similarly removed the reagent requirement for Blind a while back. Again, rogues will see an immediate bag space benefit.
Subtlety rogues can no longer use Shadowstep to get out of druid Roots. I think that's a bit of a shame.
The impassable, slightly translucent dome over Dalaran has been replaced by a much more transparent magical veil, still a pink dome but now more like the sort of thing that covers the eco-domes in Outland. That is to say, you can not only see right through it but also walk right through it! Inside is a vast crater that covers the area where the city used to be. No monsters or NPCs yet, though there are some things that look like they may become entrances to sewers or tunnels in the WotLK expansion.
There's now a countdown timer on the PvP flag. Right next to the shield or the rosette there's a little legend that says "5 m" or whatever. No more hiding behind trees or shadow melding because you don't know how long you've got left to wait!
The flesh eating worms that sometimes jump out of the zombies in the Raven Hill Cemetery in Duskwood used to be quite small things, about knee-high to a human. No longer, they are full-sized mobs now (though still have very few hit points) and can be quite startling.
Wednesday, 26 March 2008, 08:27.
There's a lot to think about and write about in this patch, and I'll be updating this article probably many times over the next few days, as the implications of the changes sink in. When the contents are more or less finished, I'll give it a restructuring and a bit of a polishing, but for now, it's just my impressions and reactions in no particular order.
Old Man Barlo stands on the Shattrath side of Silmyr Lake. He had a quest for me that took me to Stormwind (Orgrimmar for Horde characters) to fish for a baby crocolisk. Took about ten casts to get it, and the reward was a bag with just over 7 gold, some fishing lures, and a white dagger that required level 70 and sold for over 4 gold.
There's a new NPC, General Tiras'alan, who stands near A'dal in the centre of the Terrace of Light in Shattrath City, who has a quest for you (presumably only if you're level 70) called Enter, the Deceiver... which takes you to "Archmage Ne'thul at the Isle of Quel'Danas, north of Quel'Thalas" (I get a little frisson of excitement just reading those words).
More importantly, the quest text also informs you that Flight masters in Ironforge and Silvermoon City will get you to your destination. So that's how you get to the new content, at least for now. When I got to Ironforge, the flight master's map of available destinations had a new location: an island to the north of the main land-mass, labelled "Shattered Sun Staging Area" (and costing an enormous 25 silver to get to). Minor questions to be answered: Do you have to be on this quest, or to have completed this quest, in order for this destination to be available to you? Do you have to be level 70? Do you have to have TBC installed (almost certainly yes, one would think)?
I noted that it was displaying on his map as a direct flight from Ironforge, not going through any of the other flight stops to the north such as Chillwind Camp; so it seems likely that it really is only available from the Ironforge guy. Also, the flight only took a few seconds rather than the several minutes that the distance would lead you to expect: so it's a "special" flight in some way.
When you get to Sun's Reach Harbour, there's a boat moored right next to the flight master: Archmage Ne'thul is on the bridge of that boat, and handing the quest in to him will pay for your flight and give you your first 25 points of reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive. Be careful when you get thre: the building directly in front of the ship is in friendly hands (and there are some quests there for you) but all the others, even very near by ones, are enemy-held.
Quests available at Quel'Danas include Erratic Behaviour (repeatable) giving 150 SSO rep; The Sanctum Wards (low drop rate) for 150 SSO rep; Magister's Terrace (find a friendly spy inside the Magister's Terrace instance; this turns into a series of quests); and The Missing Magistrix (this seems to be referring to the Shepherd's Gate instance, which requires a raid group).
There are other, Sunwell-linked quests, available in good old Shattrath: Lord Torvos and Emissary Modin on the Terrace of Light (outside the dome) give dailies Sunfury Attack Plans (dreadful drop rate: I collected 11 Sunfury Signets while killing blood elves for this quest; gives 250 SSO rep and a Badge of Justice) and Gaining the Advantage respectively. And it looks like there are quest lines available from your Shattrath faction: I've found Crisis at the Sunwell for the Aldor so far.
Update: I haven't got any Badges from the SSO dailies in a couple of days! I don't know whether this is just a question of chance, or whether you stop getting the badges once you reach Friendly, or if you only get them in the first few days of the invasion, or what, but I am going to find out! Update #2: They are random. When you can a bag of Shattered Sun Supplies as part of your quest reward, it will always contain a level 68-ish green item, it may also contain a Badge of Justice. The probability seems low, about 1 in 5 or 6. Either I was lucky that day, or Blizzard has it set that all the supply bags drop badges on the first day, in order to drum up interest. If you have a limited time budget, and would like to concentrate on SSO dailies that include Shattered Sun Supplies as part of their quest rewards (not all of them do), look here on the faction page.
So it turns out that the initial situation at Quel'Danas is not going to be the final situation. What we have here is an attempted invasion by the forces of the Shattered Sun Offensive, and they are trying to take several key points in order to build a proper bridgehead on the island. The first objective is to take the Sun's Reach Sanctum. Once that's been taken, new quest-givers appear inside the Sanctum with new daily quests for you. The next objective then seems to be the Sun's Reach Armory.
The big annoyance for Alliance players, at least in my battlegroup, has always been that while the Horde almost always win Warson Gulch, Arathi Basin and Eye of the Storm, the Alliance usually win Alterac Valley. Hence the Alliance players use AV rounds as their way of grinding honour points. Which means that Alliance players can often have 100 AV Marks in their bank, max out their purchases of PvP healing and/or mana potions using a few more, and then watch while any other AV marks they may win sit inaccessible in their mailbox until they are deleted.
So reading in the 2.4 release notes that there was going to be a way of turning in Marks of Honor for Honor Points made me whoop with pleasure. At last, a way of turning those excess AV Marks into something useful. Except, no. Turns out the Alliance Brigadier Generals (and presumably also their Horde counterparts) have a quest for you that involves handing in one of each type of mark, one from each battleground. Begging your pardon Blizzard but this is not useful to the vast majority of players, only to those who have already got all their PvP armour and weapons, and for whom the marks are now irrelevant.
With the opening of the Sunwell the Throne of Kil'jaeden has changed. This is the big, natural amphitheatre in the north of Hellfire Peninsula, which was always inaccessible except by flying mount. When TBC first came out this was, I think, empty. A later patch filled it with fire elementals and mostly elite demons, and a raid-level boss (though not Kil'jaeden himself) occupied the throne.
Well the boss and the elite demons have gone. In their place are non-elite demons and some elite blood elves. There is now a daily quest from a Shattered Sun Offensive NPC in Quel'Danas that takes you, via a portal, from the Isle of Quel'Danas all the way to the Throne of Kil'jaeden in Hellfire Peninsula. Once you get there, a Shattered Sun operative has two more quests for you. The rewards for one of these quests is five of the higher-level turn-ins for your Shattrath faction: either Marks of Sargeras or Sunfury Signets, so you can see that Blizzard seem to want to speed up your progress through the TBC reputation mill, perhaps in time for you to buy WotLK later this year.
PS the fire elementals are still there, and with this area now being a lot safer than it used to be, this is now a good place to farm motes of fire.
Sunday, 18 November 2007, 23:01.
Patch 2.3 is without doubt the most significant in a while, certainly bigger than 2.2, possibly bigger than 2.1.
If you have Honored, but not yet Revered, standing with Honor Hold / Thrallmar, Cenarion Expedition, Lower City, the Sha'tar or the Keepers of Time, then you can now get the heroic instance keys that were previously only available at Revered.