WoW 4.2 Firelands dailies pro-tip

This is only going to interest those who are actually playing WoW and working through the Firelands dailies content, but I figured I’d post it anyway because it’s been irking me for a few days now.

The dailies come in several phases, and one of those gives you the choice of unlocking either the “Druids of the Talon” quests or the “Shadow Wardens” quests. You’ll end up unlocking both in any case, but since I have 2 level 85 chars I decided to pick different ones to open first on each character, just to compare what they were like.

It may be just me, but the Druids of the Talon content is a pain in the ass. The initial daily requires you to talk some druid type through some really nasty fire, said fire being stupidly deadly and full of mobs that want to tear your poor escort druid to shreds. Deaths the first time: 3. So maybe I suck at that – the point is, the initial daily for the Shadow Wardens just requires you to fight your way up a slope, and if anyone else is also fighting their way up you can jump in at any point. And remember, you’ll be doing this one too every day.

After that, the Druid dailies include ones that have you jumping across a chasm on little platforms — or, in my case, just jumping off the edge because I know I’ll get caught by an NPC and whisked to where I need to be. Why put in elements that nobody in their right mind wants to do once, let alone for 20-odd days? Once you’re over the chasm you have to use various hot air flows to get up and down ledges — again, interesting the first few times, yawnsome and irksome after that. In comparison, the Shadow Warden quests just require you to squish spider eggs or save spider victims, kill said spiders, and mess with a few tough (but handleable, certainly for my pally) evil droods.

Aside from all this the Druid dailies aren’t as slickly designed — I had to spend an inordinate amount of time looking stuff up after my third head-scratching “WTF? Did we do something wrong?” moment (I was duoing with a friend at the time). I didn’t have to look anything up for the Shadow Warden dailies, which is as it should be. Give me quest text that is sufficiently descriptive and a map I can consult and I’m good to go.

These are dailies we’re talking about, not dungeons, and they shouldn’t take all day or make me grind my teeth at the unnecessary level of “Look what we did! Aren’t we clever?” inserted into the quests at every conceivable opportunity.

So here’s the pro-tip: if you haven’t yet unlocked those 150-mark Druid or Shadow Warden lines, do the Shadow Warden one first. You’ll end up doing the dailies for both, but if you pick the Druids first you’ll have do those dailies twice as long as you’d have to if you picked the Shadow Wardens. I realise people’s mileage for this kind of stuff varies, and some folks might love the platform-like feel of the Druid dailies. Me, I just find them tedious and I really wish I hadn’t picked them first on my hunter. Bleh.

Oh, and here’s another tip for those doing the Break-the-Blue-Marks Enduring the Heat Shadow Warden daily. I died a couple of times the first time I did the quest because, duh, I didn’t realise that fire is bad and will burninate even my paladin if I stay in the lava pools long enough. I also had to learn that the critters in there aren’t supposed to be fought – there are too many of them and they respawn too quickly. The idea is purely to run around breaking marks (which also kills any fiery critters in range), and in the last couple of days I’ve developed a pretty good route for them. It’s by no means the only way to do the cave, but it keeps you moving steadily and doesn’t involve any backtracking except for one unavoidable dead-end, which minimises your exposure to the fiery critters chewing on your ass.

Here it is:

1. Head inside, hit the first blue mark;

2. Hang a left and run past the next blue mark (you’ll hit it in a bit and destroy all the fiery buggers on your ass), hanging a left again up the ramp to the blue mark that’s hidden in a corner. Destroy it.

3. Backtrack to the mark you just ignored; destroy it.

4. Run up the ramp to the platform in the center of the cave and destroy the mark up there.

5. Bear left (at least on the pic below) down the ramp and hit the mark at the bottom.

6. Look to your right as you’re facing the cave wall, and you’ll see a mark in the distance on the other side of a lava pool. You can reach it by running to the edge of the pool and finding the hot-air updraft. Stand near the draft (if you’re in range you’ll see air-effects around your feet), make sure you’re facing where you want to end up, and jump. Whoosh, you’ll get carried over. Hit the mark on the far side.

7. Keep running forward and hit the updraft on the far side, aiming at the seventh mark which should be visible. Destroy it.

8. Follow the path with the cave all on your left and hit the final mark. Run like hell to get out.