I am the worst quester in the entire universe of MMO worlds. People know this about me. I know this about myself. They work around it; I work around it.
I’ll put in a good 5 or 10 minutes of effort into figuring out a quest’s detailed objectives, then I’ve had enough of that and will google up a spoiler. If I’m no closer to knowing what the hell I have to do after 5 or 10 minutes, I figure wasting even more time isn’t going to solve the problem.
Obviously, I won’t ever be the first to solve an epic quest. I’m comfortable with that.
For example, the revamped Silithus zone in the much beloved World of Warcraft has several quest lines for the higher level player. Soon after the revamp, I rode out there. (And when I say “ride”, I mean I actually had to ride my damn horse there because they moved the griffin port so I had to learn the flight route all over again. Fun.) Hot damn, there were many quest NPCs and there was a strong possibility that one of them might be worth a damn.
One of the quest lines is for a cooking recipe. I know this because the quest log shows the quest under Cooking. (My mom was right. I am smart.) I also know that A. the tougher recipes usually give a nice temporary stat buff and B. these are usually easy quests. Yay and yay.
Here’s the quest text:
Look for information about cooking Sandworm Meat at the Twilight’s Hammer camp west of Cenarion Hold.
How simple is that. Quest “information” usually indicates it’s some paper or it’s in a crate, maybe it’s an NPC you have to hail and such. (Well, the Warcraft equivalent of hail.) Since Cenarion Hold is the Silithus outpost with the griff port, this couldn’t be much easier.
If I was a different person, it couldn’t be much easier.
I do a slow loop of the zone, stop off at the elementals to farm two or three Essence of Airs (ka-ching, ka-ching), and next door is a Twilight Hammer camp, sure enough, almost directly west of Cenarion Hold. I have to kill some of the Twilight Hammer for a different quest, which I do (ka-ching, ka-ching), and life is good.
Soon, all I have left is this THEORETICALLY easy cooking quest.
Foton thinks: Hmm, maybe I missed one of the little camps here with the crate, I’ll check again.
And thinks: Hmm, maybe one of these bozos out here took it already and I have to wait for repop.
And thinks: This is definitely west of that town.
And thinks: If I was an NPC assigned to watch that shithole of a town, I’d be pissed. Wonder who they ticked off to get that crap assignment.
And thinks: If I was a designer, I’d name NPCs after people I hate and assign them to a shithole like that.
And thinks: Goddamit, if this is a repop thing … (trails off into thoughts of fire and destruction)
Asks the guild: Anybody done this Sili-whatever cooking quest yet? *hears crickets chirping* (Note: I’m already looking for a spoiler. Think that was about 3 minutes this time.)
I alt-tab out to Thottbot to end the torture. In this situation, it’s isn’t very revealing. I recheck my position on the map.
Foton thinks: Ok, there’s that shithole town and here’s west of that shithole town. FFS. I’ve checked everyw … oh. Hmm. Wonder what’s that little building icon next to Shithold that is also directly west.
I wonder no more. It is also a Twilight Hammer camp … the CORRECT Twilight Hammer camp. I got my info, rode back to Shithold, quest completed. Racked up a new set of quests.
Foton reads: Make 10 worm nutballs and return to Annoying NPC for a reward of questionable value.
And thinks: Where the fuck am I going to get worm nuts? Worms have nuts? Ok, now I wish I didn’t have that mental image.
Alt-tab.
One of the great things about adding new non-instanced high level content is that it brings some world PVP back into game somewhere other than BRM. I’ve just been flying out to Cenarion Hold to pick up some faction and catch beef with alliance outside the town. Fun stuff.
if you had the fp before the zone revamp, your fp still worked…. just so ya know. didn’t need to ride out there
Weird. Mine was gone when I stopped off in Gadget. I hadn’t used it in 4-freaking-ever, but griff master told me to saddle up. Think she called me a noob too, but I don’t speak dirf.
EDIT: ok, my alt has the griff point still, so either I was drunk on the main without realizing it, or there was something goofy with that. AFK Gamer regrets any implied complaints regarding the Shithold griff point. No, really.
Wait, are you trying to say that your technique is somehow wrong? I don’t understand. That seems perfectly reasonable to me! 🙂 Seriously, that’s how I quest all the time. I feel like going to thottbot before I’ve even read the quest description might be taking it too far, but other than that… If I follow the directions and go to the spot they say and I’m still confused, then come one, thottbot is there to help!
And cooking recipes are rarely as easy as they should be, since the darn animals seem to decide that they’re keeping their meat to themselves whenever it becomes a quest to get an otherwise frequent drop. Darn smart food.
The hops for the Thunderbrew quest in WestFall drop so rarely now my group had to share theirs with me or we would have been killing the Harvest Reapers for a f—ing long time. And I have to kill 30 Goretusks to get 3 of the Livers for that Westfall stew recipe.
yea my questing theory is the most xp the fastest… so if i need to go to a guy and i don’t remember who/where he is, then thott/alla will tell me so i can get my xp faster. i did all this shit the first time through, none of my alts should have to suffer the same fate 8)