Mania’s Arcania

(You can read all of Kaet’s adventures, starting with why I’m doing things this way, by checking out the series Table of Contents at the end of this post. Alternatively, if you are here primarily for juicy pet-related news, feel free to skip these bits — they’re optional.)

Okay! Time to jump back into the swing of things! As I started this session, I was sitting in Westfall at level 18 with a level 15 white crab named Niffis and a number of quests still to do in Westfall and Redridge. The Westfall quests all involved the lighthouse keeper at the Westfall Lighthouse, so I headed towards the coast to deal with the pesky murlocs.

On the way, I dropped by the Alexston Farmstead to pick up some flasks of oil for the lighthouse keeper. And … hey! Make that a level 16 crab! They grow up so fast …

I also took the opportunity to kill a level 19 Dust Devil. He looked just like the one that killed me over and over a few levels back — hiding behind a hill by the inn and jumping out to smack me whenever I tried to go anywhere. But I had my revenge! I killed him and took his Magic Dust. (Hmm .. I bet this stuff would also help with taming an Enraged Ravager, and it’s not soulbound!)

Over on the coast I settled in to killing murlocs. The bloody things are deadly. I don’t have any problem with them one at a time, or even two or three at a time if I have to, but there are hundreds all bunched together. I turned on Track Humanoids to try to keep them from sneaking up on me in the middle of a fight, but Old Murk-Eye managed it anyway. Thankfully, two humans were nearby and heard me screaming, and came to help out.

And hey, it turns out I needed to kill Old Murk-Eye anyway! Convenient. When I turned in his scale, the lighthouse keeper (Captain Grayson) gave me Grayson’s Torch — which gives off a very useful light in the dimness of night, even underwater! Unfortunately I put it away as soon as I start swimming or firing my bow, but it’s still quite pretty. Then it was back to the murlocs.

You know, it’s really odd to see a murloc casting Holy Smite. I didn’t realize they had religion. Should I feel bad about slaughtering them? Of course, they don’t seem to feel bad about slaughtering me …

Unfortunately the rest of the murlocs I needed were way, way up the beach. Why do designers do that — put half the things you need half-way across the zone? *sigh* When I finally did find the last murlocs I needed, the Coastrunners, half of them were grey to me. This was a yellow quest still, mind, and one I got by venturing into an area thick with level 16-18 murlocs, but it requires me to go all the way back to the beginning of the zone and kill level 12-13 creatures.

While I was wandering up the coast I ran across a pool of Oily Blackmouth, so I stopped to fish for a bit. It is very important, when fishing in murloc-infested waters, to remember to swap your weapon and your fishing pole again when you are done fishing …

Actually, I’m going to go off on a bit of a tangent here, so please bear with me. I saw a WoW developer say something recently about how they want to improve the fun factor of fishing. I’m all for that. I’m the sort of compulsive player who levels fishing on every character, even though I find it fairly boring. I was excited when they put in the fishing pools because I expected that they would let me level fishing while I went about my normal business, instead of needing to set aside time to park myself on a beach and stare at a bobber for hours.

But unfortunately fishing pools didn’t live up to my expectations. I think a major reason I find fishing annoying is the fishing pole — or rather, the fact that it has to be wielded. Can you imagine how annoying it would be if you needed to swap your melee weapon for your skinning knife after each kill? Or swap in your mining pick every time you saw an ore deposit? Another reason I am not fond of fishing pools: you have to aim. I am no good at aiming. It takes me forever to get the bobber inside the bloody pool.

If I were the designer in charge of making fishing more fun, I know exactly what I’d do:

• Remove the requirement to be wielding the fishing pole when you fish at a pool. You could still wield the pole if you wanted to, and you would still wield the pole to fish in open water (not at pools), but at fishing pools you could leave the pole in your bag and still fish.
• Let you start a cast by clicking on the pool, just as you do for ore and herbs. You could still cast the old way in open water or at a pool if you were wielding a pole.
• Make fishing pools conform to the grey-thru-red con system as it’s used by the other gathering professions. In particular, this means that you’d be able to tell when you moused over a pool how it compared to your skill (without lures) and you’d be guarenteed a skill-up on successful casts in orange pools. (The current “one skill-up every X casts” system would still apply to open-water fishing.) 
• Make pools a tad more common, especially at low levels, and add a few more fun things to pools that aren’t available otherwise — cooking recipes and ingredients like Deviate Fish, for example.

Hmm … that was a little more of a digression than I intended. Aren’t you glad I’m not the designer in charge of fishing? *grin* Well, that’s going to do it for me for this session. I’m trying to keep these sessions a bit shorter so I can play more often, and I spent most of this one thinking about fishing. Ah, well …