Greetings, denizens of Azeroth, the Shadowlands, and some other random locations! Today I’m here to share a tale of epic adventure, outdated unlock methods, and dubious game design. If you aren’t interested in a lengthy story, sooorry, but I fear this is not the thread for you, ‘cause, here, the journey itself is our destination.
Having just navigated the labyrinth of intricacies surrounding a fickle achievement (A story for another day!) I decided that, as a miffed mount collector who recently returned to the game after skipping much of Shadowlands, I wanted to go collect something easy. I set my sights on the not-so-mighty Hirukon and the Deepstar Polyp it drops. A quick look on Wowhead revealed what I thought to be a suuuper straightforward path to this goal. Oh, how wrong I was!
If you’re here to hear a tale of fishing woes, you’re outta luck! There was no way I was gonna waste my time fishing up some stupid slime with a 1/1500 drop chance. This was supposed to be an easy one! So I traveled to my nearest Auction House, which happened to be sharing a mount with me, and bought the Strange Goop needed to start of process of creating the elusive Aurelid Lure necessary to fish up Hirukon and guarantee a 100% drop rate for its mount.
The first step was to go see Baroness Vashj, who was in the middle of nowhere in Maldraxxus, but that was no biggie for me because I had Wowhead so I found her right away. She asked me to retrieve three ingredients, and the hunt began!
Collecting the first one, the Pungent Blobfish in Zangarmarsh, was eaaasy. Like I said, I was using Wowhead. It told me exactly where to go! I prepared for two more mundane trips, ignorant to the madness awaiting me.
Next, I had to go to Nazjatar to collect a Flipper Fish. I took the portal to Dazar’alor and stumbled upon an uncanny nightmare: A city bereft of all other players. Oh no! I was phased! You see, this monk has never been to Nazjatar before, and I thought I could waltz right through a portal! How utterly naïve I was! Desperate to get the ephemeral Flipper Fish, I scoured the depths of Wowhead to find a path forward and learned I had to do a bunch of BfA quests to open the portal. Not! Happening! But I’ve played WoW for many years, so, undeterred, I formulated a plan. I would mail the Strange Goop (necessary to loot the Flipper Fish) to my level 50 mage, who has done lots in Nazjatar. With her, I was able to easily reach the zone and snatch the Flipper Fish from the water. After I fished it up, it bounced around on the ground in an unreasonably annoying manner. I needed to click on it and hope it would stay still long enough to be caught. Here, frustration began to set in, but my erstwhile companion, Wowhead, had warned me of this trial, so I stayed strong! After a couple of minutes of fumbling, the Flipper Fish was miiine! Little did I know, this hurdle was the least troublesome I would face!
Now I was feeling particularly wary. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me! I knew the portal to Vashj’ir, where I would find the final item, Coilclutch Vine, wouldn’t be open to my unworthy monk who hadn’t done some lowbie quest to unlock it. I thought it would make way more sense to use my mage to go to Vashj’ir. She’d had been there plenty of times in search of Poseidus, after all! So she jumped through the portal, got on her Vashj’ir Seahorse, and went for a little ride. Eventually, with the help of a friend who knows all, I found the Coilclutch Vine hiding in some corner. I zoomed toward it, eager to put this ordeal behind me! I got close, and…
Huuuuuuh? What’s thisssssssssssssss? ‘Requires level 60!?’
A level 50 couldn’t interact with it! I got fooled twice! What malfeasance was this? Why would only the last ingredient require level 60? In the depths of despair, I hearthed and mailed Strange Goop and Flipper Fish back to my monk. It’s true, the mail never fails, receiving my items intact made me wanna wag my nonexistent tail, etc. It was time to use unconventional methods!
I traveled to the circle of Cataclysm zone portals in Orgrimmar. Sure enough, the Vashj’ir portal was there, but I couldn’t click on it! At this point, I was no longer frustrated; I was just laughing. The game was just so petty about letting me go to a zone from five expansions ago! Since all the other portals in the ring worked fine, I teleported to the Twilight Highlands, scooted over to Dun Morogh, and flew to Vashj’ir from there. Yup, you can get in that way! After spending a minute sweating bullets at my dropping fatigue bar, I finally entered the zone proper and resolved to make my way to that obscure location and bring this quest to its end. I opened my mount journal to get my Vashj’ir Seahorse so I could…
…Find that I didn’t have it! That’s right! For some reason, this is one of the only mounts that isn’t shared across all characters on your account despite being neither class, covenant nor faction specific! I totally felt like I was being trolled! Giggling, I flew to the area in the sky above my target, dropped into the water, and swam to the Vine with Fabious. Lucky me, I didn’t even come close to drowning! At long last, it was done.
I returned to Baroness Vashj, gave her the stuff, got the fabled Aurelid Lure, and went to Zereth Mortis. There, I was easily able to find a group willing to help me kill Hirukon in the hopes of getting the mount without having to go through all the silliness I had gone through. I got it no problem! +1 mount to my collection! Thank Haruhi!
So, why’d I write all this up? Mostly because, in retrospect, it’s hilarious! I thought you guys might enjoy this absurd little journey. It also illustrates the punishment that awaits those who dare switch mains across expansions and offers a stark reminder that the world of Azeroth (and all those other places) is utterly unnavigable without the threads of Wowhead, an external website, tying it together. Maybe my suffering and tears of mirth will inspire some change in the future! Probably not.
Thank you for sharing in this journey! What do you think?