mage-quests
Latest
Arcane Brilliance: Mage guide to quest rewards -- the early levels
It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that proves each and every week that there's no such thing as too much warlock hate. You might think there's some kind of limit, that at some point a constant stream of warlock hate crosses the boundary of good taste -- but you'd be wrong. Each joke at the expense of a warlock, like each episode of Breaking Bad, is more satisfying than the one before it. On a related note, Bryan Cranston is a god. Nothing in the above paragraph can be disputed. I'm realizing something as I level the stinking warlock you guys thought it would be fun to have me create, and that's how incredibly fast the leveling process is these days. Gone are the days when your best bet was to pick a zone and then quest it out before moving on to the next one. I was over-leveled for the first quests in Ghostlands before I was even halfway done with Eversong Woods, and I wasn't even trying that hard. In fact, I was more actively engaged in finding new and creative ways to get myself killed than I was in questing efficiently. The fact is, you can now absolutely pick and choose while leveling. Which zone? Which quest? Do I want to just bag the whole thing and hit some random dungeons? If something is unsavory -- say, you find yourself shackled to a quest in which you need zhevra hooves, only it is becoming rapidly apparent that none of the zhevra you're killing actually have feet -- you can skip it with negligible consequences. You're just going to come back and do it later for your Loremaster achievements anyway, right? So today, and probably in the coming weeks (I have no idea if I'll attempt to bring these guides to you consecutively, but I might), I'm going to try to provide you with something of a sightseeing guide for your accelerated tour through Azeroth. But instead of pointing you toward destinations like Hoover Dam or the Louvre, I'm going to direct you toward a selection of particularly worthwhile quest rewards. If you do nothing else in these zones, do these quests. Today we'll focus on classic WoW, and hopefully tackle Burning Crusade and Wrath rewards in the coming weeks. So gather your robes about you, plant your staff firmly into the path ahead and bring lots of conjured water. Our destination today? Phat loot.
Arcane Brilliance: Five things every Mage should do before they ding 80
Each week Arcane Brilliance waves its wand and conjures a column about Mages. Then Arcane Brilliance turns the column into a sheep, sets that sheep on fire, and then freezes it into a flaming-sheep-sicle. This flaming-sheep-sicle-that-used-to-be-a-Mage-column is actually tastier than you might think, but also quite deadly. Having created it, Arcane Brilliance then proceeds to find the nearest Warlock and hurl the tasty-flaming-sheep-sicle-that-used-to-be-a-Mage-column-of-death at that Warlock, killing him or her instantly. It's the flamingest, frozen-sheepingest, tasty-deathiest Warlock-killingest column on this website, let me assure you. Contrary to popular belief, Mages do not simply spring to life at level 80. Just like other, lesser classes, we too must begin at the lowly level of one. Even Mages must put their robes on one leg at a time, place one frail foot in front of the other, and trudge across Kalimdor, the Eastern Kingdoms, Outland, and finally Northrend until our experience bars progress from the left side of the screen to the right side a total of 79 times. Once upon a time, this process took awhile. An average trip to level 60 used to require the following: Approximately 192 trips from the north end of The Barrens to the south end...on foot, uphill both ways, fending off Mankrik's wife and Chuck Norris with a stick. Actually setting foot in Desolace. Getting dismounted several hundred thousand times in Dustwallow Marsh because you'd strayed across three inches of water. Having to wait several hours to turn in every quest in Hillsbrad Foothills, because the questgivers in Tarren Mill and Southshore are always dead. Getting eaten by a giant and improbably stealthy Devilsaur in Un'Goro Crater at least a million times, and always as far from the nearest graveyard as possible. This is all fact. Sadly (or totally not, depending on how sado-masochistic you are), leveling is no longer nearly as grueling and refining an experience as it once was. It's entirely possible to skip a whole lot of the early-game content these days, and come patch 3.2, PvP experience will allow us to skip all of it on our way to level 80. Still, there are some things I feel we're missing out on as we cruise through the old-world content these days. Follow me beyond the jump for a list of five things every Mage should do on their way to level 80.
Arcane Brilliance: Leveling your Mage, 20-40
Each week at some point on Saturday, Arcane Brilliance brings Mages together from every corner of Azeroth to discus how awesome we are. Five seconds later, the discussion degenerates into a whole lot of whining about Warlocks. Someone ninjas all the manna biscuits, a scuffle breaks out, a million Frost Novas erupt at once, and the very fabric of the universe is sundered when everyone tries to Blink away simultaneously. Then the next Saturday arrives and we get together to do it all again. Secretly, you see, we enjoy sundering the universe. We're Mages. That's just how we roll.Level 20! Grats! Last week we talked ourselves through the first twenty levels of Magehood, from our humble beginnings slaying kobolds in Elwynn Forest or boars in Durotar to sheeping adds in The Deadmines or Wailing Caverns. This week we'll take our maturing Mages through the next twenty levels, all the way to level 40, halfway to Arthas. Numerically, anyway.When you ding 20, you've reached what could reasonably be defined as your first major milestone within World of Warcraft. You have 11 talent points under your belt, which means you likely have a clearly defined specialty for you Mage, whether it be Frost, Fire, or Arcane. You've now got access to many of the spells that set you apart from other classes, and are learning how to use them. You've hopefully been into an instanced dungeon or two, and have some grasp on your role within a group dynamic. And now, at level 20, you get to do a whole mess of new junk, and all of it is awesome.Join me after the jump for a more specific quantification of how awesome.
