You want to head east out of the Crossroads following the path all the way to Ratchet, there are literally a fuck tonne of quests here in Ratchet, however first we will hand in our 2 quests, the collecting the horde payroll just is a simple turn-in and like GO INVESTIGATE type quest, which is cool: I'll come on to why these quests are particularly cool in Cataclysm in just a bit.
On the way to the Forsaken hand-in we pick up a quest to like kill some humans, always a good quest, remember now that ratchet is really a horde quest hub specifically in cataclysm, whilst I am sure it is still neutral for alliance, the whole zone is basically a horde-only zone for quests, so I doubt there will be many, if any, quests for alliance here. Heading into the Inn we hand-in the Horde quest, and basically trigger some awesome dialogue.
Again, highlighting the tensions between the horde at the moment, I think its cool and adds to the ambience of the place. It is also nice it sort of relays events you haven't done yet (wrathgate) and puts them into context in the future, which basically 1-60 is, without ruining exactly what happens in Northrend so it doesn't ruin a new players experience there, which is a nice touch. It also helps apply culture, and like I said, I am a big fan of story through quests and /say dialogue, it helps the quests flow better and makes things far less pedantic and far more dramatic.
The other quests here are like kill a named raptor, kill some pirates, meet up with a couple of pirates, and 1 last quest which is to retrieve some schematics. Again cool quest, you go into the inn where you just were for the forsaken and like "CLUB" the engineer guy unconscious by interacting with him, this in turn starts some massive brawl in the inn, with the forsaken girl being most amused by your actions, it's a nice subtle quest really. Handing this in gives you a quest to go blow up a ship.
Now, like I said before, whenever theres a BIG AREA FULL OF QUESTS, I prefer to do quests in an opposing area first, in case there are extra quests for the big area, since usually if you are given a bunch of quests at the same time, with 80% being in 1 area, they won't lead onto quests in the second area.
Regardless, the investigation quest involves us going up to some wreckage, now this is the AWESOME thing about cataclysm quests like this, the new feature: Auto-questing, which is basically like instead of trecking back to the quest giver and handing in the quest, on certain quests you just hand-in the quests right at the objective and get a new quest given to you, overall it means less travelling time and a far more immersive story line.
This is the first incarnation of the auto-quest we have seen thus far in our first 2 zones, a mechanic which is probably under-used in the early zones imo, however as we will see later there is probably a good reason for it. Anyway.. we receive additional instructions to follow the tracks and find out who stole the goods.
On the way we meet a troll npc who like decides to replace every r with a w like some sort of child, reading his quest text and dialogue and like the quest items are amusing :D. He gives you a quest which is pretty cool interactively, you lay a trap on the ground it makes a raptor call and a raptor comes running, it then zaps them and turns them into a tiny raptor which you then loot from the trap. Pretty nice animations and interactivity in the quest, if I had been smart I might have used it to help kill the named guy for the other quest, which is actually tough.
However, here comes the problems of auto-quest, whilst doing that other quest I get the other quest completed.. the auto-quest hand-in triggers and I hand in... but alas no follow-up, which means trekking ALL THE WAY BACK to ratchet to pick up the follow-up, obviously this quest is bugged and should auto-trigger the follow-on there and then.
Basically the follow-on is just kill raptors and loot back the stolen silver. Now, going on to kill the named for the other quest here.. this is actually really difficult for the level, I mean I'm level 15 here and we are forced to face a level 18 named with 2 level 16 adds, thats pretty damn tough for a level 15 new player to solo, I died once because I basically pulled an extra mob on top of that. If the intention is for this quest to be completed after the like pirate/human missions down south, then I suggest the quests, including the investigation, be only available once said other missions are complete.
Anyway, after barely killing this named and collecting the silver from a chest we head back to Ratchet, there are plenty of raptor spawns for the quest, so completing it is rather trivial. I also dinged after killing the named here, which was nice although would have preferred to have dinged before ^^.
Handing in both of these just ends their quest chains and we are forced to head south towards the Humans and Pirates. Now I have to say I was fairly impressed with the walk from Ratchet southwards down the coastal path, it is laden with stealth commandos who jump at you when you get too close... really awesome feel to that. You also need them for your quest to get medals, which is also good. Nice synergy...
My only problem with this is that you end up with like 5-7 medals before you even get into the camp of humans LITTERED with mobs and you have to kill a good more 3-5 mobs to complete the quests here. I would say the amount of mobs need to be toned down a little, it was really hard to not pull multiple mobs at a time, and not pull the named, meaning pulls of 3 members... which is pretty tough to deal with for a newer player and rather pedantic waiting for patrols to wander off so you don't pull that many.
The 2 named people for the quest are fairly close by and go down rather easily, I like how the male has an ability that makes the player want to run away for it's duration. Nice early practice for running out of fire effects. I love the little pirate of the Caribbean references with the little dog holding the keys to the cage. presumably there is no choice and selecting the NO I DONT TRUST YOU just means you reset the dialogue and are asked the same choice, however I stupidly didn't test it out :<.
Freeing him however leads you to a quest which is like GO GET THIS HEAD OF A PIRATE which the alliance decided to hang outside their camp.. pretty awesome really you get to see the head and everything when you go to get it hanging on a tree :). Now, moving onto the blowing up the ship. There is one obvious ship in the area and diving underwater reveals a MUCH LIGHTER area of the ship which is labelled thinnest part of the hull.
Obviously you place the bomb here and get a countdown, I'm not sure what happens if you don't move, but having a countdown easily makes the player want to move away, so it encourages what it is supposed to... again another auto-quest bug with the hand in auto-appearing and the follow-up not being given to me. Kinda annoying really, since this is the only quest left in the area after taking it much later.. I'll discuss it now since like this is when you should get it. It involves going around and blowing up weapon caches, always awesome, however there really aren't that many of them, there are like ONLY 5 and they are all spread out and littered with human mobs. Since you need 5 for the quest, it seems rather pedantic and annoying, and easily frustrating if there is more than 1 person farming the quest with you.
Finally we move on to the pirates on the little island off the east coast, previously this used to be the warrior class quest island I believe and the human camp the place for the pirates, but obviously the cataclysm has forced the pirates to flee to this island :O. Anyway, we have a series of directed quests from the little quest-hub on this Island to start a mutiny, what else would you do with mistrustful pirates :D.
Firstly you are directed to kill an ogre sitting on some gold, he actually does sit on gold.. highly amusing npc because of this :D. The quest item text is also, kinda amusing referring to the fact that an ogre was sitting on it.. eww :(. Next the mutiny needs guns, and that involves going directly to where the named character is that we need to kill anyway, always good. I feel like this hut has way too many mobs in, you have to pull in 3s realistically unless you are far too cautious and take about 2 at a time, which still is quite alot for a lvl16 character.
Cap'n Garvey, the named npc, comes with 2, possibly 3, level 15 adds and is extremely annoying because of that. I feel like he is a little too tough for a non-healing class, or at least the new player who doesn't exactly have a full grasp on their character yet, I could understand him having at least 1 add though, since that makes sense. The guns are right where he is on the side, which is again an awesome touch and nice synergy between quests.
Handing in those guns we get to start the mutiny, very nice quest this is aswell, you get on the boat and blow your horn and lots of friendly pirates spawn and you take over the ship together.. really immersive and enjoyable quest, especially with good interaction between you and the original quest giver.
Once this is over you have like 7 quests or so to hand-in in Ratchet, I hearthed at this point to learn some new skills, I might attest though that running back is extremely annoying, since you have to go through those commandos (which I do like) again, and it doesn't have quite the same effect running through the wrong way :(.
Only 1 of these quests actually lead to anything, and that is to DIG UP the treasure you found with the map from that dead man's head you got. This is a nice little collect mission though, you have to go a long way round and eventually wind up at a dig site, which is obviously in the most concealed place around! Once you dig it up it spawns Baron Longshore and 2 adds, which are now hostile and don't want you stealing the treasure.
This really caught me offguard and I died from them, they are actually pretty weak and most players shouldn't die if they know they are coming. However their spawn is really nice and realistic and sort of captures the piratey feel of the area. I also like how they can kill you and you don't need to kill them, so it doesn't matter if you die to them :D. (I did check to see if you looted anything off of the baron when killing him, you don't).
Regardless, handing in this money nets you your first blue upgrade. I haven't really talked about quest rewards, because quite frankly I think they are well distributed, but I really do like the fact that armor from specific zones have like a specific look, so taking the quest rewards from a zone makes all your armor match instead of being a rag-tag bunch of gear like you would be from vanilla quest rewards.
The last quest in this hub is to take a MICKEY MOUSE-ESQUE boat up the river to the next area... Really I found this quest highly amusing because of the Mickey Mouse look of the boat, and the fact its piloted by a goblin so is about the size of Mickey Mouse.
Anyway the boat sets you down near the next quest hub.. which will be covered in the next post. OMG SLIDESHOW! :)
No comments:
Post a Comment