Cheated by the mechanics: Gnomore

Gnomore pictorial 19-22.

Long and winding story short, Gnomore made it from Duskwood to Ratchet in one run and lost the status of clean slate due to game mechanics. Yes, Gnomore is not clean and 'kill less' anymore.

I won't go through the rest of the adventures except for these two pictures, which show I struck my two 'main' objectives:

The rest of the story goes to telling how Gnomore the Pacifist became Gnomore the Shameless Killer Bastard.

Pretty soon after gaining the mount(s), Gnomore headed towards Loch Modan. Along the way there is a camp at Helm's Lake, in which there is a quest Entombed in Ice: You have to rescue six Dwarf Mountaineers from Ice Blocks into which they have been entombed by the shameless Tidal Elementals (or something).

Naturally it's on Gnomore's genetics to go and SAVE people from fate more horrible than dead. Without a second thought Gnomore started banging the Ice Tombs into pieces.

This should have been a warning sign.

Without thinking it any further, Gnomore just bashed the Tombs into smithereens, saving the suffocating Mountaineers on the way.

"Frozen Mountaineer gasps for air and shivers from the cold."

On the third one - after getting several records on the highest damage done, I checked the kill board.

Alas, it was too late: third Mountaineer rescued and three kills done! I was speechless, powerless and dumbfounded. After the initial shock I got infuriated. Crappy game with faulty mechanics, posing that the Ice Tombs are CREATURES which you KILL. Stupid Blizzard!!!

So the quest killed my kill board, making it six "uncategorized" creature kills (as seen in the Armory page), and made me seriously doubt if it's worth to continue this project. 

Lies, damned lies and statistics.

Despite of my doubts I decided to play the full session and I found out that even though the game itself spoiled the actual fun by luring me into "killing" in the game terms, it did very little to my joy of playing the character. Even more so, as I got the mount and got into travelling more, I got back into the joy of discovering new sights and if you add Archeology to that equation, you can see the amount of potential fun for this character.

In the end, Gnomore was left into Ratchet, with a bit over 1k gold in his pocket and some archeological finds in his stash.

I leave you with this stern looking professional and final thought.

Should I really continue with Gnomore or start a new one?

Gnomore: From Dawn till Dusk(wood)

Gnomore pictorial 17-19.

So, last time we left Gnomore to Redridge, sitting in the Inn. My great big intention was to let him rest over the week and then go out and about and get that Lunar Festival suit on him. However, over the week I suddenly got this feeling that I might not be able to visit Moonglade in time to do that, so I made a quick run over and...

Got the suit! And found out the flight point, set out there nearby the entrance to Timbermaw Hold, tunnel leading to Winterspring and Felwood.

After which Gnomore did some sailing and arrived to Stormwind in one piece, in one nice piece of clothing.

Even though I've stated that I won't be using the dailies to level up too much, I still had to see how the cooking and fishing dailies work for the lowbie character. To my - positive - surprise, they work exceptionally well, as you can see from these two pictures.

Got the dailies done, got the rewards and got a level. Not shabby for a half an hour extra. After which I checked the mailbox, only to find out that Gnomore had gotten some 120g richer than before: even stronger evidence on the fact that money is abundantly available in the game to everyone taking the first step to sell stuff in AH.

Fast forward back to Redridge. As you may have already noticed, Gnomore has been more or less running around, like a heated bunny on a cool summer day. This mounted - and dawned to me - as soon as Gnomore started to plunge deeper into the Redridge area.

Oh, crud! Herbalism at cap, I had forgotten to check that while in town to train it. Needless to say, it was time to hearth back to civilization to get this done.

Double crud!!! In the running around I had also forgotten to set my hearthstone to Stormwind instead of Darnassus! Oh, what a loooooong day this was about to be. To cut the pictorial story shorter, I trained, sailed, ran and sung sad songs found some nice recipes to sell in the AH before embarking to Redridge. The pictorial part shows you that I'm adamantly convinced that the game deliberately tries to hinder my travels by putting both herbal and ore nodes to such places that there is a bodyguard right next to them: be it bear, wolf or an eel underwater, there is always a bug to bug Gnomore there.

The bright side was - though - to be of help to a little girl who had lost her necklace.

Helped her with a ding.

As Gnomore started to work around Redridge, I got a bit sidetracked... and found myself in the Blackrock Pass, staring out into the higher level area. Of course I had to get Gnomore there, in little pieces if nothing else worked. It turned out that that was the only way in the end...

But finally Gnomore was there!

At this point I remembered where Gnomore was supposed to be, so I flew him back to Redridge and continued from where I had initially found out that I had not trained his gathering skills properly. There are extremely interesting - and daunting - orc settlements in the area, with Black Dragon Riders and all, but I didn't that put Gnomore off. After some careful planning, several avoidance maximizing side steps and - surprisingly - no running back, this was a sight for sore eyes.

Friendly faces and kinred spirits hiding at the end of the known world to rescue! After gaining yet another (third) flight point in the area, Gnomore set off and... I'm convinced that the game is really being nasty on me, making my finger twitch for the Smite, Holy Fire and all things that kill, maim and cause discomfort.

Well, off Gnomore went anyhow. After circling around the area, I found a very, very disturbing sight.

I don't know about you, but to me this was a very hard blow in the face, gut and all. You see, this is the first time I - at least consciously - encounter extreme brutality from a player faction, rather than from the NPC faction. I can generally understand that the demons and fell creatures do brutal things (like burn people to crisps just for fun, or leech the lifeforce out of them to power their engines or pay the player characters to do their torture... no, forget the last one!), but to make the player to believe that it's ok to treat the other player faction this way... not cool. Maybe the mentality I'm having while playing on Gnomore is starting to rub on me, but I don't find this proper in the game anymore.

Granted the game is rater 12 and above, but still. As I haven't played much on the horde side, I don't know whether there are similar brutalities in the game, at least I don't remember seeing such as I was playing on my undead hunter alt way back after Shattering struck. I feel it was cleaner and in "a not enjoying this but we have to revenge" way tolerable.

The discussion aside, Gnomore finally made the exploration and I guided him to Duskwood, where he's resting from the hard days work, just few thousand short of next level. Which will be 20, mount and Archeology!

I wish you take the time to go through the pictorial, for this was just a condenced version of the whole and there are some pretty nifty pictures not shown in here.

Curious case of Gnomore

Gnomore pictorial 16-17.

Gnomore started this time from Darnassus and cashed out some AH sales. Now he's sitting on 440+g with some sales in AH and gaining more ore and herbs to sell as he goes.

Now there is the Love is in the Air going on, and even though I resent the whole thing of seasonal events and daily quests, Gnomore took on doing the Something Stinks chain. As stated earlier, Gnomore was about to go back to Elwyn Forest to continue the adventures and seek for more Lunar Elders. This was a lucky shot as such:

Needless to say, there was a lot of running about to catch the big bad culprit of the pheromone scents. Firsts running, then some awkwardly familiar gobling phrases.

This does remind of a certain sociopathic goblin blogger, doesn't it?

Then it was off to Elder coins. Which in turn lead to a quest in Westfall which really is an annoyance: it forces the player to kill homeless. There were a couple of these revelations over this play session: first a quest which teaches the player to be selfish to succeed and then the one to beat up the homeless people.

Now the annoyance part of the latter comes out if you don't want to beat up the homeless who gets pretty irritated in your questioning her or him about the murder on the road. You see, you cannot outrun them. They follow you till you die. Abandoning the quest on the run doesn't help, the mob is neutral to all so the guards don't help and you cannot fly because you are in combat.

And even after that, that homeless damsel stays guarding your white bones till you run away.

How fun and enticing is that for a dedicated fan.

Later on I got to Redridge, where the player ushering has been taken to the right direction.

Yes, your presense triggers the NPC's to speak to you, giving directions to the next quest giver rather than just having a quest to go to talk to the guy. Granted, you lack the few exp for not having the quest, but then again, it's repaid in the next quest reward.

In Redridge you can see the first real changes to the questing and triggered events, something that I didn't so much notice in Westfall. The next odd thing came out with a quest that updates on the run.

You can take it, but you cannot decline it. Where is the choice, really? Take and abandon, thank you.

All in all, pretty short and all around the world trip. Next time Gnomore will have a quick visit to Moonglade to get his Festive Suit and we'll see where that leads to. Remember to check the pictorial with more commentary on the travels.

See Darkshore and die

Gnomore pictorial 15-16

So it all started in Darnassus again, where Gnomore got a nice package in the post: Rogues Deck from a dear friend, my banker character. The AH ventures with inks and stuff weren't as profitable as pure herbs and ores, netting only some tens of gold instead of hundreds, so from now on the herbs will be sold as is. Selling ore in bars is yet to be tested, but that should be more viable route all in all.

Ain't that Darkmoon Robe lovely?

This time there was no doubt about the route to go: it was Darkshore all time. The main attraction was the map with Gathermate data:

All those possibilities!

So yes, sue me because I'm using an addon. Several in fact. All which help and guide me. All I have to do is run around and collect stuff while avoiding creatures.

But then again, that's how this game is played nowadays. And Blizzard is even providing us with their integrated guest helping system to counter the use of Guesthelper kind of addons, which still are out there.

Ahem. Back to the adventuring part. Darkshore has changed a lot. Where there were Nagas in the Ruins of Mathystra, there are now trolls.

And these trolls are actually working for their living!

While going through the area, Gnomore dinged level 15, allowing the use of Dungeon Finder. As the decision was made that this would be bending the rules of being a pacifist, I only made a mental note of it. This is just a step towards the mount at level 20, nothing biggie.

What never ceases to amaze me is the fact that now that I'm not whacking through the content I see all these wonderful, strange and beautiful sights everywhere. Look at these screenshots!

But let's pull back to the middle picture. As Gnomore was trekking down the eastern side of Darkshore, there was this thundering sound of waterfall, and thus I found traces of the real Cataclysmic Shattering inland.

As seein in the earlier picture, the waterfall is quite huge, for a small lv15 character it's enormous. And the maelstrom at the bottom... H-U-G-E.

And fun...

WHEEEE!

As you are pulled in the whirl, you get to another place: I think this is the first one to actually do that to a character and I feel sad for the ones who do not take the opportunity to test if they can survive the maelstrom. You see, this place grants you a free achievement...

And offers you the possibility for the Easter Egg achievement if you kill that one bad demon in there. This one:

I feel SO cheated because of this. I had no other option than get out of there and make my final comment about this whirly thingy.

So off we went. Those whirly thingies became the main attraction on the way to Explore Darkshore. Let's see how many ways...

But none of them was as fun as the Maw of the Void.

There was only one chain of quests Gnomore could go through to help this guy to keep one of the whirlies alive.

Oh, yes. Malfurion Stormrage. And the only chain which I could through was the one with Furbolgs and Fire Elementals. Yes, they killed, I collected and in the end, I protected the cleansing totem against an assault of several fire elementals and one construct I think. Sadly I was not able to relieve Malfurion from his duties, so he could flee to Mount Hyjal to greet the levelling players in there. Gnomore is such a sucker.

The totem quest happened nearby the fire whirly thingy, but it was so hectic, I was so exhilariated and excited that I forgot to take snapshots out of it. I didn't kill anything and didn't even die! Proof:

Then it was running here and there. But what struck me odd was the fact that even the ghosts of the Ancient ones had moved when the Shattering hit. I had always thought that ghosts were bound to a certain spot, but it seems that the Shattering has moved that certain spot for some - or majority in Darkshore! - of the ghosts around Azeroth.

After a while of running there were only two places to visit.

Master's Glaive, which the nasties are digging up to reveal the monstrosity killed by the Glaive, and Nazj'Vel, the new town/cave of the Nagas, both seen in the picture up there.

To conclude the ventures this time, the last picture.

To see Darkshore and die. Didn't die a lot, but that last one was appropriate one.

Gnomore is level 16, parked in Darnassus and about to take on the Eastern Kingdoms for more: time to explore them to the same 'level' and get that mount up!
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PS. There are more pictures in the pictorial album with more wittier captions and with lots of room for comments. Feel free to (ab)use the albums!
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