Monday (5 Nov) - Honeydew Village

Monday (5 Nov) - Honeydew Village

I get the "panda" thing, and am getting used to seeing the things running around. Not sure I'm ever going to call walking, talking pandas "cute" though. What does get on my nerve is how "cute" everything is "intended" to be in the panda world. "Honeydew Village?" Gag.

When Fist first entered Pandaria, she was on a zeppelin that had taken fire and was well on it's way to crashing and burning. She didn't have a lot of time to think, as she was rushed to a big .50 caliber type gun and told to strafe and kill anything and everything she could hit. Then it got worse, when the gun bucked, threw Fist off the zep and plunged her to her death. Upon resurrecting, she located a handy portal (in the middle of sparse forest) that returned her to the burning zep. After attempting, unsuccessfully, to save the zep, she was rushed back to the ground and into the battle that got her killed again (recounted in the previous post).

All of this summarization is for a reason. When Fist had to log out, she was no where safe, but had no idea where "safe" might be. So Fist hearthed to Org. When she wanted to return to Pandaria, she had to figure out how. That turned out to be a new portal located in the Valley of Honor in Org. Taking that portal sent her to Honeydew Village. Aha! Fist now had her safe haven.

Fist is 38% of the way to level 86.

Fist returned to Honeydew Village later in the day. With Fist's help, the horde was able to repulse the alliance forces that had controlled an airfield.  Once in charge of the airfield, the mostly insane horde commander, Nazgrim, had Fist criss-crossing the areas around the airfield and killing the local Pandaren creatures as well as the locals, called Hozen. The highlight was a one on one battle against a local level 84 elite, Dook Ooken, which Fist won handily. Killing Ooken sent the Hozen into a panic, petrified of the horde invaders.

Fist then encounters Loremaster Chu, a Pandaren mystic who takes Fist under his wing and introduces her to Pandaren ways. There is a series of mostly non-combat quests that does a good job of convincing Fist that cooperation is better than combat, and that Fist should try harder to understand the local hozen, instead of killing them. This Fist does, by saving some hozen and offering them food at one of the villages. Fist is now "in" with the hozen.

Fist is also now 54% of the way to level 86.

Editorial: I think Blizz has a made a mistake with the pacing of the expansion. I understand the reason for having players on foot instead of on flying mounts. Blizz spent a lot of money and energy creating Pandaria and they want us to see it. Even more important, from a bottom line perspective, is they want it to take time to complete. On a flying mount, things can be done ten times faster than on foot. So, I get it.

However, and this is a big however, quest hubs are so far apart that just getting back and forth takes up far more time than the quests themselves. Instead of providing quests that take time and effort and thought to complete, most of the time spent in game is just getting from one place to another. What is even more quizzical is that the roads and paths provided for traveling are not safe. It's not that players are entering zones way above their level, and getting waylaid by higher level creatures near the roads. That has always been the case. In the Jade Forest zone, all of the players are at minimum level 85, with creatures of like level. They are no danger to travelers, yet the hostile creatures crowd the roads and paths, forcing combat or at minimum slowing players down. It simply isn't necessary to make foot travel even more irritating than it already is. Regarding the distance between quest hubs, Fist could make Honeydew Village or the airfield her home base, which would put her a little closer to the current action. But, she would have to give up her home base in Orgrimmar, and be stuck in Pandaria. Honeydew Village is a village, and it does not have the kind of resources and access that Org does. I'm not even sure how to get back to Orgrimmar if Fist didn't have her hearth set there.

So, Fist is doing what she can. She got Wild to craft her a boot enchantment that increases her foot speed by 8%. Not great, but even a small improvement is better than none. Fist contemplated carrying around flasks that increase speed, but these are short duration flasks and not worth the bother. Fist has her own roll maneuver which bumps up her speed by 25%, but it, too, has limits. Also, and most irritating, is that the speed enchant and the roll do not stack, so her max burst speed is still 25%, not the 25+8 33% she thought she would get.

The bottom line is that Fist gets bored tracing and retracing covered ground and getting routinely interrupted while on supposedly safe roadways, and so she just hearths home to Org. Which is a large part of why her leveling has been so slow.

End Editorial.