So begins the first quest for the Sons of Hodir faction. Although you could not tell that from anything in the quest. The task at hand - rescue the goblin menfolk of a village that had been attacked by an army of women. Called the Silfreden, these women look like vikings, except that they are blue hued. Any resemblance to the Na'vi, you wonder? Oh come on, everyone knows who the Na'vi are, right? Blue giants living on Pandora. Pandora, the planet. Avatar, the movie. Well, no, they really don't look much alike. But those floating islands on Pandora sure do look an awful lot like the floating islands in the land of Nagrand in Outland. Hmm, I wonder where James Cameron gets his ideas from? But I digress.
The goblins live on their mountaintop retreat called K3, a sleepy little snow covered pair of igloos with a fence that obvious did not keep the Silferden out.
The town of K3
Wild flew to the Silfreden village and rescued the goblins, and in a second quest returned to discover more trouble in the Forlorn Mines operated by another race of uglies called the Hyld. Wild finds Lok'lira, an old crone held captive in the mine. She tells him there is another goblin being held captive there, and that she'll help him if Wild will help her. She's no looker, that's for sure, buy hey, Wild's here, why not help? Wild goes looking for a named Overseer to kill, noticing that there are two other players apparently on the same quest chain. One is alliance, and he thought it great fun to slaughter the Overseer each time she spawned, although he was obviously farther along in the chain. Wild was too fast for him, though, as I tagged the mob first and got my kill for the Crone.
Tucked away and half hidden from view in the mines was a level 79 elite hostile named Mildred the Cruel. The Crone wanted Wild to go talk to her. Should I kill her before or after I talk to her, Wild wanted to know. Ahh, but she had a different plan. She disguised Wild in the form of the mine overseers, so that 'ole Mildred would be fooled. Wild's disguise looked better than the Crone, but I'd still be the last pickup at the local tavern on free ale night.
Wild's Disguise
Disguises are typically fraught with problems, from losing them when shapeshifting to simply having them break at not so good moments. This was a heavy duty disguise, though, which Wild spent a lot of time in and never failed him, even when he shifted to flight form and even when I used weapons my disguise obviously didn't have, like druid spells. That was a pleasant surprise.
Thinking Wild was an Overseer, Mildred set Wild to doing Overseer stuff - punishing exhausted miners, killing some as an example to others, and other less savory duties. Wild's reward was to go kill a special prisoner that had tried to beat Mildred at her own game by taking part in their sacred competition. That prisoner was the Crone, and with the key Mildred gave Wild, he freed her.
The scene shifted to Brunnhildar Village with the Crone in disguise in the heart of the enemy village. Wild, also still in disguise, is talked into signing up for the sacred competition. Isn't that why you were put in chains, Crone? Wild asked. Yea, she said, but remember that goblin fellow you were supposed to save? He's in the competition already - and you can save him by taking his place. Wild's not sure he cares whether the goblin is saved or not, but the competition did sound like fun.
Seems the best way to get into the competition is to kill the organizer of the event, which Wild does. What followed was a series of challenges to get ready for the main event. Wild had one on one fights with a few npc challengers (they had no chance against Wild), became a bear rider in a couple of easy events, and rode the bear mount to defeat a chained elite used as target practice. The elite was a little tougher trial, but still no match.
Then it started getting really interesting. In the quest Cold Hearted, Wild flew to an iron giant controlled city called Dun Niffelem, where proto-drakes (dragon mounts) had been captured by the giants. Wild had to mount a captured dragon, freeing it from its chains, and then rescue enemy sisters. Don't forget that Wild is still in disguise, doing the bidding of the Crone.
At this point Wild has completed all 16 quests in the chain and he still has no rep at all with Sons of Hodir. This chain then led Wild to another quest chain that was unobtainable until the last one had been completed.
Starting with the quest The Last of her Kind, Wild is set more challenges having to do with competing in that sacred competition, and yes, still in disguise. One of the more challenging tests required getting on a bear mount and jousting with other bear mounted npcs. Now Wild knows where Blizz got the idea of the Argent Tournament. I had no idea that there was jousting going on before that tournament was introduced. Wild is a poor jouster, and in a small enclosed ring with several hostile npcs, Wild did get himself killed once when I got ganged up on. Wild did get the six kills he needed, and that led to The Drakkensryd, which was the most fun of all.
At the start of this quest Wild was handed a harpoon, and given a dragon to ride. The dragon flew to the Temple of Storms, one of the tallest towers in the game. The dragon mount only has a couple of commands, one to hurl the harpoon and one to dismount. Unlike many flying mounts used in quests, there is no parachute if you dismount while airborne, and it's a very, very, long way down. The dragon mount can't be guided, either; it circles the temple at varying altitudes, along with a number of other npc ridden dragons. The task Wild was set was to defeat ten of those hostile npc riders.
Wild had to fool around in flight for awhile to figure all the above out. I tried casting the harpoon a few times and got out of range messages and other nonsense, and then finally Wild's harpoon struck a dragon. A large chain was attached to the harpoon, and Wild was pulled off his mount and into the backseat of the hostile dragon rider. Wild was momentarily surprised, and the hostile attacked. The battle that ensued was a short one, and the npc lost. The npc, dislodged from his seat, was sent screaming to his death. Wow, was that fun! Wild went after more riders.
Wild was probably halfway to his ten kills when something different happened. Wild launched his harpoon, snagged a dragon, and was pulled to the dragon like every other time. Only this time Wild was not deposited in the back seat, but in the driver's seat, dislodging the rider and sending him screaming to his death without a fight. Whoa, now that was really cool! I wonder how I did that? It happened a couple more times before Wild got his ten kills, but I also noticed that I didn't get a kill credit when that happened. Well, no matter, Wild had another problem to figure out. Such as how to get off this thing and turn in the quest.
Wild's dragon circled and circled. The quest had to be turned in to a fellow named Thorim at the top of the temple. Quick, where have you seen Thorim before? He is an ice giant and one of the bosses in Ulduar.
Wild eventually remembered that the harpoon could be used to strike certain points on the temple itself. Wild tried several times to hit one of those but the dragon he was on never got close enough. Wild thought about dismounting the dragon and then popping into flight form while falling. I think that would have worked, but I was concerned that doing that might cause the quest to fail. So Wild had to use the harpoon to get onto a dragon closer to the top, where Wild was finally able to snag a temple post and wound up clinging to the temple ledge. Wild got his quest done.
Oh, and what about those dislodged riders that Wild didn't have to fight? Welllll . . . it seems that if you fire your harpoon at a dragon that has another player riding it, well, ahem, well, you sort of knock them off their dragon. And if you aren't a druid with flying form, it's a long way down. Oops. :D
There is considerable lore associated with Thorim having to do with his brother killing Thorim's beloved, and the whole thing is pulled from Norse mythology. Blizz did a good job with this.
Thorim tasked Wild with ridding Dun Niffelem of the iron giants that have taken over by picking up boulders and hurling them at the level 79/80 elites, which spawn dwarves to help Wild kill the elite. Lots of fun. Even more fun is using snowballs to kill a number of fire based mobs that move about around the giants. Eventually Wild killed the leader of the iron giants to complete the quest.
That ended the second quest chain of eight quests. If you are keeping count, that's 24 quests total. So far. And still nothing about the Sons of Hodir.
Now comes three more quests, Forging an Alliance, The Refiner's Fire, and Spark of Hope. Actually, Forging an Alliance is when Wild did the snowball throwing. I was getting a bit confused at this point. Up to that point the iron giants had still controlled Dun Niffelem, but after that quest the area "phased" and the frost giants had again taken control, and the town was friendly. Now, at last, Wild had a Sons of Hodir faction listed in his list of faction reps. Wild was neutral with Hodir. Neutral!? Neutral!! That's all, after all that!?
Well, Wild was mollified when he did the latter two quests, both easy. Each quest rewarded Wild with 22,000 rep with Hodir. That is a HUGE amount of rep. When those two quests were done Wild's rep with Hodir had catapulted past Friendly and deep into Honored.
There were still more quests Wild could do to further earn rep, as well as several dailies that is another way to add rep. Rep gains for these quests were greatly increased in patch 3.3, making it an even faster grind. But Wild had an even better shortcut. An item called Relic of Ulduar drops off of almost every mob in Storm Peaks. Those relics can be turned in for Hodir rep. They are so common they sell cheap on the AH. Wild bought about 400 relics, spent 15 minutes feeding relics into the quartermaster giant at Dun Niffelem, and reached the top level of Exalted with Sons of Hodir.
The shoulder enchants are superb, and some of them are Bind on Account, which means they can be bought and sent to other players on the same account without them having to have the rep. The quartermaster also sells two mammoth mounts. Wild bought the cheaper one (the expensive one costs 8,000 gold). Ain't it cool?
Wild's Mammoth Mount
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