Goblin Opportunity: To The Undermine

 Look no further for your next adventure than the Ringing Deeps.  It's my second favorite War Within area.  Opportunity Point, where you helped some goblins with their odd resort earlier, has expanded to encompass a new area.

 

Some foolish goblin has blown a hole in a wall leading to an exclusive goblin mining area.  Work your way in and try to find out what is going on.

 

Once you get a handle on things, take an area tour with Monte Gazlowe Bilgewater Trade Prince and Orweyna, a visionary who has seen some of what's going on here.  She's able to protect you in fights to shut down what turns out to be a huge black blood extractor.  So that's what the deal is that Gallywix has with Xal'atath. Mine huge amounts of black blood.  At least it makes sense, and she's not just lurking unpleasantly, as she does.

The deeper you go, the darker things get.

 

 Goblins are dying or going mad from contact with the black blood.  The operation can't stop for such small concerns, though, can it?

I ended today's play at a place in the Writhing Fields called Sanity's Rest, and there's much more to do in this area, before the tour moves on, I expect.

I like the story and how it ties in to what we already know from our adventures.  No plot holes yet :)

Fate of The Kirin Tor Quest

 I meant to explore Undermine last night, but once Atherne was up top in Dornogal (as opposed to buried in Ajz-Kahet slogging for the Vizier), I saw a new quest called Survivor's Guilt.  You only get this if you've done absolutely everything (Atherne is my only character who has).

Off to see Khadgar, who is apparently activated every 21 days (?) to give out this new quest line.  Why it's time gated that way is anyone's guess.

You meet Aethas Sunreaver at the ruins of Dalaran at the Tranquil Shore.  He's hugely depressed by the fate of Dalaran and the Kirin Tor, but wants to find a way to rebuild.  Khadgar couldn't make himself travel to the ruins, so it's up to you once again, hero. 

It's a good quest line. You go around collecting lost magical items that had been stored in Dalaran, and there's a  (torturous) sequence where you have to do row after row of one of those ley line puzzles (think that's what they're called) to defuse a bomb.  It makes great sense within the text of the quest, but boy, those puzzle make me nuts.

Dalaran, spoiler alert, begins again, but it will never be a repository of dangerous creatures or artifacts, and it will never float in the sky again.

 

 I personally like that it is being rebuilt. It has a flight point and mailbox, those foundational items that will surely be built upon going forward.

Fun Undermine Cinematic Until...

 The Creature pops in. Why ruin it?  

 

 That aside, these goblins are great.  I'm siding with the guy with the monocle.  Spouse watched the video and says the goblins remind him of Ferengi.  You know, they do!  

Kind of liked Gallywix, but also, his talk of deal making and some of his presentation remind me of He Who Shall Not be Acknowledged.

Sign Of The Cat

 Did you know you can make changes to your Guild Tabard now, for a mere ten gold?  I wanted to change only the background from red to black, keeping the gold edges and the open book icon.  

The interface said I hadn't changed things enough, so I went for the Cat icon I like so much used for the Cataclysm guild and ta da.  The background doesn't quite look black so I will probably tweak it.  It is hard doing transmog in fun colors and shades because they usually clash with the red.   Black goes with everything.

Dreamboats of Azeroth!

 Whoever is doing the social media for World of Warcraft these days has a great sense of fun, and dare I say likely loves the game. Teen dreams Dagren and Anduin!

Atheren At The Anniversary Celebration

 Atheren the newer character (Blackwater Raiders) has a more low key existence than others with her name, since she's not meant to be the lead character at all.  She's just a lowbie in a big pile.  I don't mind taking the time with her to try to do some of the special events that pop up. After working on quests in the event and doing two Classic Timewalking Dungeons, she's level 35, having been at 26 when her session started.

She's getting a ton of extra xp, some from the anniversary, but also an extra 25% because of the "Mentors" aka the number of characters already at 80.

First up: Balloon Riding. It's a short flight around the anniversary grounds.

There's a sleuthing event from a squibby little creature.  He has you go all over the ruins of Tanaris looking for treasure, and some others are found using a mostly useless bird in the event area.

There's a story time event. They seem to have several, I watched one featuring Baine and other unknown to me Horde characters.  Thought he should have popped the woman who killed his dad.  I would.

I'll get my three dungeons and try another quest or two, I'm not doing raids or world bosses, so I can skip those.

Atheren's January 2025 Goals and a Tiny Wrapup of 2024

 

Here we are, enjoying the fleeting moments of 2024 and waiting for the KABOOM of 2025. Let's note I started writing about World of Warcraft exclusively on this blog after the daily blogging run of Blaugust 2024 which I wrote all about on my Last Chapter Blog.

This blog will have a total of 18 posts for all of the year after I drop this hefty bomb of a post (being facetious as always).  My plan for 2025 is to return to my old blog post goal of 100 posts for the year.  A mere 2 posts a week will accomplish this lofty goal.  

I know from experience it's easier for me to meet post goals if I have some set topic or meme I can use as a framework.  I'm not sure of the form that might take.  I like the idea of writing up a mini-session review/recap after I play at night.  Dear Blog Diary, blah blah.  Pretty damn scintillating when you think of it.

I've been dividing my play time about half between the War Within and half the Anniversary Edition of Classic.  I must say the crowd starting out this time was a big warm snuggly group, some had played other versions of Classic, some no versions of Classic, some had not played the game at all in as much as twenty years.

I remember starting off in the original classic, and how my family all thought the game was really challenging to play, too hard to play was the unanimous judgement of the younger set who all bailed quickly.  The Older Smarter Tougher, by God, crowd of us just kept going until it didn't seem so tough.

This time around, I don't know if they softened the edges of things as they sneakily do, or if my time playing Classic and especially Hardcore Classic made it all seem simpler.  Same game, different rule set.

I'm playing this version as I did the Hardcore version, starting with a Paladin and a Priest as my main characters.  My Arms Warrior is catching up so she can get better armor for the Paladin.  My characters always have each other's backs.

Guild wise, I'm doing what I was doing on Pagle (Cataclysm Classic) and just letting my characters be in different guilds to see if one turns out to be really good.  I'm turning down invites for any guild whose name I wouldn't want to wear over my head, and man, there are some stinkers.  I'm also seeing guilds from Blacksail Buccaneers and Pagle advertising here.  Interesting.  Not going for any of those.

Now that my most of my characters who are the Lead Four on the campfire screen are all under the level of the War Within (they're in the Dragon Isles), they are not as fun to play, so time has shifted upwards to Atherne, so she could take a look at the 20th Anniversary Celebration in Tanaris (sorry not compelling), to the Siren Isle which has many interesting features.  Once I'd done most things and was not raising my Item Level significantly, I went back to slogging in Azj-Kahet for the Vizier.

Also, I find myself looking at the Traveler's Log for the first time because I wanted the Murloc Jammies.  Just squeaked getting them.

I am looking forward to The Undermines, after seeing a Wowcast on it.

Undermined Revealed | WoWCast

I'm no particular fan of Goblins, never having gotten out of the starter area with a character, but it looks like drag racing in the streets.  Too good.

Happy New Year, May the Force Be With Us All.