So, after getting 30 Naga claws and turning it in, I got the quest to plant the seeds at the pump stations and the Elite quests to kill the mini-boss Naga. We rode along the South end of Umbrafen Lake and I ran through about 7 mobs and stopped right at the pump controls where there were another 7 or so Naga and slaves.

I start taking a beating and healing Phrixus’ minion, but it’s an all-out battle. The next thing I see in chat is, “run” and my heals to Phrixus came up “Out of Range.” That plea/command was followed by “L2run lol,” which is my normal joke to him for stopping to fight when we get dismounted by a daze. I keep healing myself and his minion next to me, and the mobs start dropping one by one.

Phrixus is still in bad shape and says, “u just aggroed like 10 mobs, i’m not that good yet,” to which I confidently (okay, arrogantly) quipped back, “i am.” That was at 11:01. At 11:04, he bowed to me in the midst of a hug pile of bodies and said, “ok, you kick butt / i was getting owned by them.”

Here is how to survive an all-out battle:

• Devotion Aura for durability
• Keep the caster back
• Don’t aggro casters
• Blessing of Sanctuary on tank(s)
• Heal with Flash of Light
• Use potions early for cooldown
• DO NOT LOSE YOUR COOL! (it’s only a game, lol)

That is why I play a tankadin. Why do you play your class?

• you are a draenei
• you are a paladin
• you are level 12

If those 3 assumptions have been met, please continue for a picture-perfect walkthrough.

Once you are assuredly level 12, get your little toon self to Exodar and pay a visit to Jol, Paladin Trainer (39,83 in The Vault of Lights). She’s a cute little number, and will tell you study the [Tome of Divinity] that she gives you when you accept her first quest in the Redemption chain. Find the book in your bags and just click through the pages. No one really reads that stuff anyway, right? If you did, you wouldn’t be reading this guide.

Turning in the quest gets you 460xp and lets you get the next quest.

Still called Redemption, the next part of the quest sends you out to Bloodmyst Isle to resurrect a Young Furbolg Shaman. I found one at 65,78 in Bristlelimb Enclave. To make the most of my journey, I combined it with Saving Princess Stillpine (68,81), which involves killing High Chief Bristlelimb (non-elite) pretty close to the shaman. If you can’t kill the chief, you suck as a paladin and should give up playing a pally now, before you waste any more of your time. Seriously, you have no idea how much pain and suffering I just saved you there.

There will likely be a Bristlelimb Warrior or two in the area to clear out before being able to perform the spell without aggroing any unwanted attention. Once you have the all-clear, perform the resurrection.

After you get back to Jol, she grants you the spell: Redemption, Level 1. If this is literally your first day playing WoW, then I suppose you need to know that this is the resurrection spell that paladins use, making you very sought after for groups where the potential for dying is high. That way, everyone can go to the bathroom while you hoof it back to the corpses and rez everyone, leaving you to hold it a while longer.

My sincerest apologies that this isn’t as long as the other class level guides, but… well… they didn’t put much imagination into this questline. Check out the Level 12 Blood Elf Paladin Walkthrough for a more creative story and process to get the spell. My experience so far with these Alliance starting area quests is that the Blood Elf starting area is much more interesting and I’ve got quite a few readers and writers around here to back that sentiment up.

Do we have any real Draenei starting area fans around here? What are you seeing that we aren’t?

The Voidwalker is the second summoned demon that you are able to get and the quest becomes available to you at level 10. The Voidwalker does minor melee damage, but is a formidable tank that has gotten me out of some really bad situations let me tell you.

Now I currently am using Cartographer as my map add-on, the coordinates I will be giving work with what ever add-on you will be using. I like Cartographer, however as pointed out by some of my guild mates; I have a really bad UI setup and really need to learn how to set up a better one.

So when you reach level 10 you will need to go to Murder Row in Silvermoon City and go in The Sanctum. (74, 45) It’s the last building on the right hand side before you enter the Court of the Sun. There you will find the Warlock Trainer named Talionia; she will give you a quest called The Stone, which requires you to obtain a Voidstone from the Dead Scar.

Now at this point I highly recommend you visit the Auction House and buy whatever upgrades you can afford. While the mobs in the area where you will be going are only 10-11, there are a lot of them ,so you will need all the help you can get. Also, I would suggest that you go to the inn in Murder Row (79, 57) and make that your home, just for ease of this quest’s completion.

This quest will require you to go into the Ghostlands so, unless you have the flight point, you will have to take the path all the way down. I hear the run is beautiful, especially this time of year! As soon as you cross the bridge going from Eversong Woods into the Ghostlands (48, 11) make a right and go down the river. You will see a small waterfall at 43, 13 and below there you will see a bunch little blue glowy things. Those are the Voidstones.

Once you acquire the Voidstone you will be presented with another quest: The Rune of Summoning. Where you will need to go to the Goldenmist Village, if you just follow the river all the way down to the west you will come to another, much larger waterfall (30, 9) just jump off and you are there.

The building in the center of town is where you will need to go, it is actually the first building you see on the left hand side when you swim to shore. The area is surrounded by the Quel’doei Wraith and Quel’dorei Ghosts and they are level 10-11 mobs.

You will need to fight your way up to the second floor of that building to a little room where the summoning circle is located (27, 15). Now if you die and you very well might I suggest that you try and see if you can rez up on the second floor it will make it much easier.

Now once you have cleared the area of all mobs you will need to stand in the summoning circle and right click on the Voidstone to summon the Voidwalker. You will have to fight him so ensure that you are at full health and mana. Once he is defeated the quest is complete. Now at this point you will need to go back to speak with Taliona again to turn in the quest. Now you can hearth back to the inn or what I recommend you do before that is go down to Tranquillien and get the flight point (45, 30). It will save you a trip later.

Once you turn in the quest with Talionia you will learn a new spell; Summon Voidwalker. He and all future Demons require a Soul Shard to summon.

So congratulations you have yourself a new Voidwalker, or VW for short, also known as the blueberry.

I hope you have better luck with the names than I have had: Juk’gak, Helkrast, and Makvhug.

Seeing that the UI indicated a level 51 gray elite named Ironback, I sat up a little bit when I saw SilverDragon pipe up that it had spotted Ironback. A quick hop on over to Petopia, and I learned that Ironback is a rare elite beast that just so happens to be tamable. I wanted him for myself, or Huntr, actually. As a level 62, it should be a pretty easy feat, but still a special pet due to the rareness. Some research reveals that the respawn time is between 12 and 24 hours. Time to go fetch Huntr, and quickly.

The Location

As I mentioned, Ironback was swimming along the northern coast of The Hinterlands, just East of the waterfall from the highland. The approximate coordinates came out to be 83, 48.5, just to the west of where Paladr accidentally aggroed him and had to die to leave Ironback there. /silly pally. Let the screenshot and dot speak for itself. The map location will read The Overlook Cliffs.

The Tame

The steps are about as mundane as possible, with only two things to really be aware of:

• opposing faction on PvP realm
• Gammerita – a roaming aggressive turtle who will aggro you if she wanders while you are standing on the shore

Of course, the basic tactic is to drop a Freezing Trap to ice block Ironback while you tame him. So, place the trap on the shore and swim out and hit him with a Concussion Shot and spin 180-degrees and swim back to shore and just past the trap and immediately start spamming Tame Beast, which you conveniently have on a toolbar, right?

If all goes as I have foreseen, your tame should end at the exact moment the ice block breaks. There is an awkward moment when it does, because you are not quite sure if OldIron is a friend or foe until you see him join you at your side. Feed him some fruit and he will begin to smile. Congratulations, you now have a pet with a great skin, cheap food, and more armor than he knows what to do with.

The first step is to go back to Bloodhoof Village in Mulgore to speak to the Druid Trainer Gennia Runetotem (48.5,59.6) who will give you the quest Heeding the Call part 1. She basically tries to build up your weak self-esteem as a sucky lowbie and informs you that Turak Runetotem in the Cenarian Circle’s main tent on Elder Rise in Thunder Bluff personally wants to train you.

Being the gullible little level 10 toon that you are, you fall for her sycophantic drivel and head up the road to the North to get to Thunder Bluff. I won’t insult your intelligence by showing you a map of Mulgore to show you Thunder Bluff (TB) or Elder Rise, because they will show up on your map, however I will show you a great shot in the evening and make the rest of this walkthrough entertaining, as usual.

When you get to Turak Runetotem (76.3,27.7), he gives you a spell right away: Teleport to Moonglade. You are supposed to use the spell to travel to Moonglade, which happens to be both the name of the quest and the spot between Felwood and Winterspring. You can’t get there as a lowbie without teleport or a summon from someone already there.

Before leaving TB using the teleport, you should grab a quest from Arch Druid Hamuul Runetotem in the same tent as Turak. He will give you a quest that takes you to the Crossroads. More on that later, but grab it anyway and you can thank me later. Also, if you have 5g 80s, you can buy 3 limited availability recipes that will net you about 10-18g on the AH. With that said, make sure your hearth is set to TB, click the spell, and head on out. Once in Moonglade, you need to seek out Dendrite Starblaze in Nighthaven, who happens to be in the building right behind you if you are facing South upon arrival (56.3, 30.6).

Pretty fun questline so far, huh? Nothing hard, nothing dangerous, and so far, they even included instant travel. Things are just getting started. Ok, so now that you’re here, go see Dendrite first. He is going to be really happy to see you and says that there is a Great Bear Spirit in the woods of Moonglade and that all druids seek the spirit’s wisdom at one point or another, and that, since everyone else does, you will do it too. Accept the quest called Great Bear Spirit and go back out front. From where you stand, you need to go down the hill to another building that looks just like Dendrite’s building. In front (to the south) of that building is another over to the right that has two entrances off the path and looks like a night elf inn. Inside is Lorelae Wintersong (48, 40), obviously a play on Gilmore Girls. She has the possibility of having 3 limited availability recipes and patterns for you. Take advantage of these, even if only for resale. Come back as often as you’d like, because you have Teleport.

Off to find the Great Bear Spirit (39.4, 27.8). He’s rather easy to spot. Coming out of that building on the north side, or from where you came out of Dendrite’s building, head West. You can see him from the edge of Nighthaven if your distance is set far enough. A note for skinners: even if you are around 7-80 skinning, you can still Moonfire the deer and rabbits around the area for skinning skill, as they are still green. The abundance of quarry is too hard to resist. Now, getting over to the spirit, you have to click through an agonizing list of 4-6 screens of “listening to his wisdom” that I have honestly never read and don’t care to ever read. All you want is Bear Form, right? Me too. When you are done listening to him, you’ve completed the quest and you return to Dendrite, killing and skinning if you are as cool as me. Then it’s time to hearth back to TB to speak to Turak again with the totally originally-named quest called Back to Thunder Bluff. Someone in Blizz must have been tired that day when they named these quests.

The next leg of the questline from Turak is called Body and Heart. He sends you to The Barrens just outside Mulgore to kill Lunaclaw. He provides you with Cenarian Lunardust to use on the Moonskin Stone that I’ll show you in full color wonderment.

First, travel to 41.8, 59.7 and look South. You shoud be able to see a stone glowing with a pinkish aura. Go over there and use the dust from Turak. Lunaclaw will come from the north and was level 12 for me. He went down pretty easily, but that’s just my fight. I was decked out in 4g worth of level 10 greens to give me over 300 HP/mana. The strategy was simple: cast a couple of spells, root him, use another spell, and then hit him until he was dead.

Time to save some more time and become even more efficient in your WoW exploration. It’s a pretty safe bet that you have been in Mulgore your entire 1-10 time thus far unless you went to Silvermoon straight off and are returning for the questline. That means you should be killing several more birds with this stone for future use. First, run East to Camp Turajo to pick up the flight point from Omusa Thunderhorn (44.5, 59.1). Right next to the road in Camp Turajo is Kirge Sternhorn (44.8, 58.6) who gives you Journey to the Crossroads. Wow, so now you have two quests to take you to the Crossroads. What is a Tauren to do?

Follow the directions. Go see Tonga Runetotem (52.2, 31.9) and Thork (51.5, 30.8) and turn in your quests. Go ahead and pick up their other quests, too. You can get to them soon enough. Get the flight point in Crossroads and fly back to TB and run to Turak in the Elder Rise again. Is it past your bedtime yet? It was for me. I had no idea this questline was this long. With some dilly-dallying, taking screenshots, and being meticulous about the experience, it took about 75 minutes. I’m sure it can be done in a bit under an hour, but it’s still a lot of running if you include the Crossroads. You will thank me for that later.

Now that you’re back in TB with Turak… right?… you are ready to complete the questline. Finally! Double ’bout time! Turn in Body and Heart and get ready to take a screenshot if you’re that kind of person. Congratulations, my fellow druid. You can go tank stuff now. Welcome to warriordom. You instantly get a high-threat taunt called Growl and a high-threat melee swipe called Maul. It’s now time to go run around jumping and celebrating and playing in Bear Form as much as druidly possible because it’s cool. It should be a lot easier to finish the Mulgore quests with higher armor than before. All you should need to do is switch out of Bear Form to heal if you get in a bind, but you will find yourself much less squishy now.

Now Rak’shiri for those of you that haven’t seen her is a big white saber cat with aqua stripes. See her there – a real beut ain’t she?

Nothing like seeing those glowing green eyes staring out at you from the dark I can tell you that much – crikey!

Anyway – enough of that. First things first – to get Rak’shiri, you need to be in your 57th season (or level 57 for you folks that don’t grok Ar-Pee) and it helps if you have an addon that can show you your coordinates on the world map. Growl uses and recommends Titan Panel for this, but there are lots of options.

The next thing you need in fair amounts is patience – I can’t stress this enough. Rak’shiri is a rare spawn that shows up approximately every eight hours or so. Some of you will follow this guide and nab her on the first try. Others won’t be so lucky and it could take days. If you plan to lay in a semi-permanent camp for this fine cat, I’ve scouted a good spot for you already and will detail the location later on.

So first things first – get your fuzzy-loving self to Winterspring.

Remember though, this is a high-stakes tame in contested territory (for those of you on a PvP server) and the area you’re hunting in is positively *full* of other deadly cats. Make sure to bring plenty of bandages and don’t forget to bring along a stack of meat or fish. After all you’re likely going to need to accomplish not *one* but *two* tames to successfully camp Rak’shiri. Why two tames? Because unless you plan on abandoning your existing pet in favor of Rak’shiri, a temporary companion is highly recommended.

There are a lot of options in Winterspring when it comes to finding a temporary pet. So keep on the lookout as you travel. Good options that are very close to Everlook include the Shard-Tooth Bears and Winterspring Owls. If you don’t mind a bit of travel (and if you’ve enough level for them) any of the graceful, Frostsaber Huntresses or Frostsaber Stalkers found near Rak’shiri’s hunting grounds are also excellent companions.

Once in Everlook, talk to Azzleby and stable your existing pet. Check your bags one last time for meat/fish and prepare to move out.

Ready? Good – mount up and lets go find Rak’shiri!

First off, best thing to do is know where you’re going – so lets do a bit of map recon. Open your world map and mark a waypoint around 51.14. That’s the spot I recommend you set your camp up on. The route is simple – just follow the road south to Frost Saber Rock. There are depressions east and west of the road. Both are full of cats. The westerly valley is the one we’re after.

Now a word of warning: while never a particularly traveled environ, Winterspring is even more devoid of other players now that the Burning Crusade is live. That said, it’s still advisable for those on PvP servers to keep their professional sense of paranoia on at least medium alert. Not only are there are stealthed Wintersaber Stalkers nearby (so watch out for them) – but the scent of a rare pet attracts other hunters…particularly those from the opposite faction.

So – once you arrive and clear out one or two of the stealthed cats, you can mount the crest of the small hill around 51.13 – 51.14.

This is a good point for your high-hide. None of the big cats path through the hill and you have a commanding view of the deceptively empty valley to your north.

Okay – here’s where the patience part comes in. Remember that 8 to 10 hour spawn rate? Right. Get comfortable. A number of big cats prowl the western depression. Most are the solid white Wintersaber Huntresses or Stalkers. From time to time though, a black striped Wintersaber will path into view and get your heart racing.

Be calm – make sure to check your target – you’re looking for the tell-tail silver dragon icon to mark your quarry. When you catch the big azure striped cat he’ll likely be pathing straight toward you (or away.) Use caution – that peaceful snowy lowland is a furry valley of fang filled death. Stealthed Frostsaber Stalkers fill the valley around Rak’shiri’s patrol path. For lower level hunters, simply setting foot off your hilltop will invite an immediate attack. Unless you’re worried about your quarry getting sniped by another hunter or killed by some clueless schmuck, hold your position and watch the rare cat patrol its territory. With some careful killing or creative use of feign death you can work your way into taming distance. The rest is fairly simple – drop a freeze trap – concussive shot – and start taming.

Taming a rare spawn like Rak’shiri is one of the best parts of being a hunter. While rare spawn pets no longer have special skills or faster attack speeds, many, like Rak’shiri have skins that are unique in the game.

In fact, the only other big cat that shares the same skin as Rak’shiri is the mighty Shy Rhotam – who is the target of a Horde only quest – and almost impossible for Alliance characters to tame.

Tips For Making Your Hunt Successful

• Create a simple macro to make your hunt easier – bind it to a key for spamming while you’re camping: /target Rak’shiri
• Park your character on our camp spot and log off. Play an alt or spend some time with the spouse. Check back at the top of each hour. While it’s tough to guess Rak’shiri’s actual spawn cycle – checking back on a regular interval lets you live your life while also camping this rare spawn
• If you *can* – check for Rak’shiri right after server maintenance or nightly server resets. These actions should restart the spawn timers. It’s also a good time to catch the big cat and not have to worry about other hunters beating you to the tame.
• If you’re a skinner – and don’t mind killing some time farming – clear the valleys of all the cats. Lots of rugged leather to be had. Killing the Wintersabers won’t make Rak’shiri spawn any faster, but the leather can be sold or crafted. Use the time to practice jump-shots or level weapon skills.

There you go folks – while Aunty Growl can’t guarantee you’ll find Rak’shiri on the first try – ifyou follow this guide, you’re guaranteed (eventual) success! Stay focused, stay positive and try not to squee too loud the first time you see those bright emerald eyes gazing back at you!

Olm the Wise is one of 4 owls/owl-types in the game that has this skin color, according to Petopia.com. I did have to set my rep status to be At War with Cenarian Circle to tame him, but that was no biggie. He went right into my ice block Freezing Trap and I tamed him with only about 10 seconds of getting hit. (location: 55.7, 21.5)

Here are my screenshots. Notice his new name. 42 points for the first person with the reference.

Oh, yeah. Ding 54. 5d 10h 26m /played time.