Anyway, lets get onto the Cenarion Wildlands, the major new area of Desolace. The druids of the Cenarion Circle have come to Desolace and seemingly REBORN the land, it's a lovely temperate climate in the middle of this desolate zone :). Obviously I am coming from the breadcrumb via the naga quests at Ethel Rethor. Firstly you are given many menial tasks around the zone, culling air elementals, weeds... I mean Lashers, collect some Aloe Thistles and take samples of blood of the Thunder Lizards.
These quests are all nicely in the same area (other than one :/), to the west of the wildlands, the air elementals and lashers have plenty of abundance and are easy to take down making those quests pretty straightforward and generic kill quests. The Sampling of Blood quest I am sort of torn on, since I'm usually a "DO FIRST ASK QUESTIONS LATER" type of person, I continually ended up killing the Thunder Lizards before using the Quest Item on them to spawn the leeches, this was particularly annoying because it has a minimum range, so you can't use it if the Lizards are in melee range. However, I do like the twist on a generic kill quest, to loot leeches and use quest items and such, so although it was a little frustrating I don't really mind. The thunder lizards also had a very annoying habit of using Thunder nova when they were about to die, and apparently since they were casting means they can't die until the cast finishes, don't know if this is a bug or the idea was that they do this nova before dying that you can't stop ^^.
However, this last quest to collect the Aloe Thistle is just ridiculous, you need 10 and there are like 2... spawns in the area where all the other quest objectives are, even spread around the wildlands there are like only 5 thistles really, most of these are in the graveyard, and you shouldn't really be going there tbh. I really think the thistles need to spawn FAR MORE to the west of the Wildlands, along with all the other objectives. It's not like you can save it and do it whilst questing in the area, it is actually a pre-requisite to the next couple of quests.
Which, involve planting seeds in fertile ground, and calming down enraged kodo's, although I was kinda semi-torn on the whole "TENDERING THE ZOO" type quests we have here, they do fit well with the theme, it's just they lead to alot of boring generic quests for a while, which is unfortunate imo, however the zone has been lacking these really ^^.
Both quests are quite easily completed in the area south-east of the wildlands, there is a small bug with the bowl for the "De-raging" Kodo's quest, if you accidentally go too close to ghostwalker post, which is where some of the kodos are, you aren't able to place the quest item to de-rage them. Since they are elites, I almost died because of this bug... I wouldn't think it would be that hard to fix, so I'm putting it down as a bug since it was a little annoying. I did really like how both of these quests were really fast paced, you just had to use your quest items like 10 times total and not even wait and the quests were done. Whilst sometimes immersion means watching and taking longer, I did appreciate the fast paced flavour of these quests.
Now, onto the actual "major" quest of the zone, at least imo since it encompasses the next 3 or so questing hubs. In Vanilla there are the 3 centaur clans: The Kolkar,Magram and the Gelkis. Now, in vanilla you were told to ally with 1 of 2 clans, with the third being always hostile iirc. However, the Cataclysm has caused a massive power shift in the zone. The Magram clan were driven out of their home by an invasion of the burning blade, they took over the Kolkar clan and the Gelkis now are the power-house of the centaur factions.
Now, the Kolkar Clan Khan, the leader of centaur clans, has come to the Cenarion Circle, and more specifically you, to help unite the factions against the common enemy of the burning blade.. I'm going to point out here that this storyline is just really good, FORMER ENEMIES UNITING, that's like warcraft in a nutshell and it's nice to see some parallels here in this zone with the player perhaps taking on the function of Medivh from warcraft 3. Kinda cool imo. Anyway, you are first sent out to free Kolkar from being imprisoned by the Magram. You are also to recover stolen Cenarion Circle supplies.
You can also pick up the breadcrumb to ghostwalker post, (You could have gotten the quests from this area already) I would definitly suggest making all these quests only available once you're finished in the first centaur area, just to make the quest cycles cleaner.
Both quests don't have a real lot of synergy, but at least they are paired and aren't alone per-say. Heading on over to the encampment there is a signpost with the direction to cenarion wildlands directed as "AWESOME NEW CENARION CIRCLE QUEST HUB!?!?!?!" or words to that effect, obviously not anything major, but something that will probably be changed, even if it's amusing ^^.
The Magram warden is a little tough, he comes with 2 adds (I believe they are all linked, when i pulled the warden the other 2 came at the very least). However, overall he goes down pretty easy so I'm fine with the 2 extra adds, all chars should have that 3rd tier talent here, which should make these adds manageable.
The Cenarion Supplies are basically in all the huts, they are perfectly fine to get to, it could just do with some synergy with the warden quest, perhaps having supplies in with the prisoners would provide that synergy and make the quests go somewhat quicker.
Heading back to the Wildlands we are given the task to rally the survivors of the Kolkar centaur and attack the Magram in a show of strength! You get to ride into battle on top of a centaur, pretty cool animations here. You are given a vehicle interface and told exactly when to use the 1 key to trigger the attack, a pretty neat way of twisting the sort of normal KING OF THE HILL type quests. Upon triggering it lots of Kolkar centaur spawn and lots of weak defenders try and swarm the hill, overall a lovely quest, I would have perhaps wanted more defenders attacking just to make it a little more of a THIS IS SPARTA!!?!!!?!?!!??!!?!? feel, since well who doesn't love that sort of heroic struggle
Eventually the Magram Khan shows up and he gives you a quest to win the favour of the Magram Clan, GET THEM SOME FOOD! Now, I would really like the Magram centaurs to go unfriendly here, since you kinda signed a ceasefire when accepting this quest, it seems strange you can still slaughter Magram centaur whilst getting food for them so they can survive.. Just feels odd and makes the quest hand-in a little more lengthy than it should be.
The Basilisk Flank's are pretty much 100% drop rate, and there are just plenty of them so the quest is fairly trivial. Handing it in gains the loyalty of the Magram clan, and now they turn neutral. The quest map is slightly bugged here showing the wrong position of the Khan when trying to hand-in the quest, it updates when you get near the wrong position, but obviously this is somewhat buggy.
After handing this in we are told to head towards the Gelkis Clan and slaughter the khan's sons... seems a little harsh for centaur looking to rebuild the land and unite... You also gain a Shadowprey Village Breadcrumb, which is fine aswell.
However, Before continuing with this quest line it makes more sense to do the Ghostwalker quests, so that's what I'm going to do :)
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