With my last update about my time on the Emerald Dream server, I had finished with the quests in Eastvale and had been sent off to the Westbrook Garrison. There I would be expected to help solve their gnoll problems, including the most famous gnoll in the game, Hogger.
I was feeling a little bit of trepidation about just running out and assaulting Hogger right away, so I decided to run down a couple of side tasks in Goldshire just to help me warm up. It is a heck of a place.
Sometimes it is a strange place…
The first was to pick up a trade skill. By this point, while I had only died a couple of times, I was using up health potions at a rapid rate. So I decided to pick up herbalism and alchemy and went looking for the trainer in Goldshire.
But where was the trainer?
I ran in and out of all of the buildings I could find in Goldshire.
After looking around for a while, I eventually had to ask a guard for directions. A good thing they put that feature in. The guard pointed me to a path up a hill in the distance. I headed that way and, after fighting off a few wolves and a couple of stray Defias, I found the herbalism trainer.
Up the path on the hill…
That was a location I had clearly forgotten about. I think it is easier to get to the crazy cat lady’s house in Elwynn. I might have to log in to WoW on my daughter’s account to see if the trainer has been moved down to Goldshire proper since then.
Anyway, I got my training. One of the pluses of a quiet server is that there is plenty of herbs to harvest.
Herbs in range
Though I have to admit that having earthroot growing right outside the trainer’s house is a bit of a tease. You need to skill up some before you can harvest it. I also noticed that I failed on some early harvest attempts. I had forgotten about that.
You might also have noticed, if you looked carefully at the top picture in the post, that Vikund has a shield on his back. In my run through Eastvale, he managed to get a decent drop. A weapon upgrade with a significant boost to DPS. It even had stats! However, it was a one handed mace, and if you have one hand free, you might as well use it for something. So I bought a cheap shield from the armor smith in Goldshire.
Herbalism and harvesting under way, I then stopped in at the paladin trainer in Goldshire, as he had a quest for me. A class quest. More things from the past. The quest sent me up to the Cathedral in Stormwind, made me speak to anybody with half an interest in paladin’s there, and ended up turning me around and sending me out to Stonecairn Lake.
The lake which is over by the Eastvale Logging Camp. The one where the murlocs live. The one I thought I was already done with. Running back and forth builds character, right?
So I headed out that way, harvesting as I went. At least I could couple the two tasks. I got out there and, rather than consulting the quest text, about which I only recalled something about wizards and a big stone thing. I found the wizards pretty easily.
Frost shield blues
I managed to tear my way through them okay until I go to the stones in the center, which showed a “click on me” cog wheel when I moused over the center one.
Stones at rest
Of course, once I made it to the stone and clicked on it, a window came up that said, “Hello, Vikund.” That is the sign that you are not clicking on the right thing. This stone was not for me. So I dragged up the quest log to actually read about what I was supposed to do. While I have detailed memories of a lot of the quests in Elwynn Forest, I have only really made one paladin, so I have only done this once… and that was probably in 2006, the era which this server is set to simulate.
Anyway, what I was supposed to be doing was finding the mostly dead body of Henze Faulk and revive him with a magic dingus, because mostly dead is slightly alive. And the dingus did its thing, and Henze arose to give me a quest update.
You’ve been mostly dead all day
Henze’s big revelation from mostly beyond the grave was that I needed to murder a few rogue wizards to see if any of them happened to be carrying important papers of some sort. Because that is what the Defias does, they hand out secret plans and papers to low level operatives. It is part of their henchperson empowerment program.
I hit the jackpot on the first wizard, pick up the papers, and was directed to head back to Stormwind. Mission, as I keep saying, accomplished.
But I had run all this way, I figured I might take a moment to explore. There is that area just north of the lake and I could not for the life of me recall what was up there. So I went to investigate. And I found gnolls.
Do gnolls fight gnomes?
Which was kind of strange, because I was all the way over here as a way to avoid gnolls for a little bit. But there they were, a big camp of them. I slew a couple in order to get closer and see what they were up to. They even dropped the armbands required by the Westbrook Garrison quest. And in the midst of their camp was a named gnoll.
Fedfennel! I could not recall such a gnoll from the past, but there he was with the silver dragon around his portrait, the universal sign of somebody carrying goods worth taking in WoW.
I started to work my way closer to his camp, proximity pulling one gnoll at a time. Or trying to do that. It did not quite work out as planned.
Gnoll ganked!
I got a little too close to the wrong gnoll and the whole camp fell on me. I died quickly. And my death was made worse by the fact that the nearest graveyard was not all that near.
Tele-mort across mountains
Well, that was an inconvenient place to come back. And I was feeling like I had built up enough character from running all over Ellwyn. So I decided to take the hit and the five minute 75% debuff to everything and just revive and the graveyard. I figured I could stay out of trouble for the run back to the cathedral in Stormwind.
Which was correct, for once. I manages to avoid wolf and Defias entanglements add got there to turn in the quest, speaking to several people before I got my final reward, which was my very own ress spell.
This guy was just first on the list…
That done, I took some of my harvested herbs and turned them into minor health potions and a few armor potions. I also trained up to heavy linen bandages. I was going to go find Hogger as well prepared as I could be.
After I hit my limit of that and stowed my excess in the bank, it was time to set out in search of the big gnoll and save the Westbrook Garrison.
I found Hogger about where I remembered he would be. He was still an elite mob though, so I decided I should probably get some backup. After all, look at the bones!
I first lay eyes on Hogger
I got on the Elwynn channel and asked if anybody was up for Hogger, and actually got a couple of replies. One level 7 said they would be there once they got to the quest. Considering they were waiting for Princess to respawn, I figured that might be a while.
Then a level 11 rogue asked for a group invite and ran over to find me. She had a plan, I would heal, she would kill.
Getting stuck into Hogger
It wasn’t really a contest. I healed twice, which was one more time than I really needed to, then got in to hit Hogger myself. He was down quickly and that was that.
We both collected his paw, the quest item.
Remember when that was a WoW innovation, a quest item drop for everybody in the group who needed it? In EverQuest at that time we would have had to kill him, wait for a respawn, and kill him again to get a drop for each of us. I remember that comparison being called out in a review of WoW way back in the day.
We ran around for a bit more and killed some more gnolls for the painted armband drops. Then, in the grand WoW tradition, Punch dropped group and ran off without a word, no doubt having completed the armband quest.
I completed it myself and ran back to the Westbrook Garrison to turn in one quest, then back to Goldshire to turn in the other. And that was it. As far as I can recall, that pretty much wraps up the quests in Elwynn Forest, unless I want to go back and try to take down Fedfennel.
The next stop on the list is Westfall.
Looking towards Westfall
And in Westfall there is the Deadmines… though not before I have to kill a lot more Defias.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 
You should take down Fedfennel. For science!
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@Tesh – I suspect you just want to make me run back and forth until I cry uncle and wish for flying mounts. Death by character building.
However, I looked Fedfennel up on WoW Wiki, and he is reported to drop an 8-slot bag. That would be an upgrade from my 6-slot bags. So I might just have to go get him.
For science… and bag space!
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It’s worth noting that this paladin class quest was mandatory to learn resurrection. Back in the day I remember having a couple of run-ins with higher level paladins that had never done it and thus couldn’t res – that was a big shocker at the time! Nice to hear that you’re being a “good” paladin. :P
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There’s a hammer in your future. When you get there, you will have gone as far with a pally as I did, ever.
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“I might have to log in to WoW on my daughter’s account to see if the trainer has been moved down to Goldshire proper since then.”
Actually, my best guess is no (I was looking for a fishing trainer last Darkmoon Faire and misclicked on herbalism).
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The Herbalism and Alchemy Trainers are still in that hut, but a similar couple is in SW. The starter villages now have a Profession tariner that can train characters to 75 in every Profession.
There are a couple of Drop-quests in Elwynn I spend ages on when grinding out Ambassador with one of my then-19’s pre-Cata. The two I remember (I vaguely remember it to be three) are the schedule that starts The Collector questline (now an auto-drop from a named mob a regular Quest leads to) and primarily drops from those Wizards on that island, and Furlbow’s Deed that primarily drops from the Gnolls. Also, the Tower of Azora starts a Questline into Redridge that starts around level 15 iirc and the smith in Goldshire has a breadcrumb quest to Loch Modan by SW (where an elf in the Garden district has a breadcrumb to Darkshore with a surprisingly high Reputation reward).
And I just realized what an impression it must have made on me those years back that I still remember this. Damn it’s annoying Blizz won’t open Legacy servers. Sorry about the questions but I guess ED has a working mail system and allows for multiple characters?
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I was delighted to read the blog on WoW nostalgia thank you for posting it. I look back at WoW with a fondness that’s hard to believe considering it is all just pixels however its also with a sadness that I think will always be there now. This stems from being in from day one on perhaps the greatest game I have ever played in my life and losing myself totally in it for perhaps five years or so before re-emerging into the real world on and off towards 2010 and now its been six months since I have logged into my account.
I lied there actually my night elf hunter was born on day two, my wife who was my girlfriend at the time started playing a paladin on release day in Europe in 2005 and I was hooked instantly, purchasing my own copy the following day and there the adventure began for us. I jumped head first down the rabbit hole and disappeared from real life for much of the following five years or so, working part time a couple of days a week while spending practically every waking hour questing and grinding I just could not physically put the game down I was so badly addicted.
Everything in this game just clicked for me first time, checked all the right boxes, I had always gamed since early days on the Vic 20 and Atari ST and even remember the first Warcraft release but this game was something else. Back then when you levelled you had to put so much time into your character you did become that role a little bit, the friends you made and experiences online did become a part of life not just a distraction from the real world. It took so long to get to level 60 you had to really want it. Theres too much anonymity in WoW these days, you can be completely awful to people and still get in groups, you can have no idea about your class roles and still raid and get the best gear. Back in the early years you could tell who the poor players and idiots were because they would all be wearing greens and low level blues. If you wanted to get decent gear you had to be a wanted decent member of the community or no one would group with you. If you screwed a group over or were impolite the word quickly got around and with no hope of server transfer or name change you had to deal with the consequences – you took ownership for your own actions.
The sheer scale of exploration was incredible, with information so meagre early on you had to go on rumours, ‘theres tell of a strange island with creatures on it over here lets go check it out tonight’ or mithrils been discovered in this location so its worth exploring. I remember our first run from Darnasus to Stormwind around level 8-10, the hilarity of our lowest member repeatedly getting singled out by high level mobs and getting chinned in front of us over and over still makes us laugh today. A player I grouped with killing elementals in a pool in Teldrasil around level 8 became a good friend for the years that followed afterwards it really was an amazing experience.
I get sad thinking back to it because no matter if Blizzard did release an early version of WoW again it could never be the same, someone said in another reply ‘you only get to be level 1 once’ and I think that’s the bottom line. You lost your innocence now and can never repeat that experience until the next one comes along – perhaps that will never happen for me on the same scale which is why im sad looking back. For me it was that perfect game in an ideal time where I had the opportunity to play it to its maximum. Now I couldn’t spend that kind of time on it perhaps never again, the kids im teaching at school are nearly the same age as my WoW characters that’s pretty scary lol
I did log onto my wifes account yesterday to have a mooch around, I rolled an undead rogue to check out the levelling area but could not see me spending the time levelling again. Blizzard have made a lot of changes to the game and I don’t think I would even want to go back to the old version, reading some of the bugs brought back all the horrors I had forgotten about and its actually in a good shape these days. I don’t think I will play the new mists of pandera as I don’t have time but look forward to reading more of these blogs cheers!
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