Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

No, on second thought, you should be shitting your pants right about now.

My 9 year old son is joining LFG random teams, and I am coaching him on what to do in the background.

Damn.

You know, I used to make jokes about the ultimate power I held. I have a son who I can teach any kind of crazy shit to, and he’d believe it. For a while, at least. If I was convincing, sincere and made an effort to keep my story straight, it is entirely plausible that I could raise him believing that almost anything is really reals.

Amazing.

I did not use my powers for evil, unless you count sitting him on my lap and training him to say “Baby versus Rhino” and giggle while yet an infant, using my Penny Arcade t-shirt as a visual cue.

Oh yeah, that’s right. Baby. RHINO! *giggle*.

Mostly, they only giggle at rhinos. Mostly.

Okay, so there was that whole ‘take pictures of Disney characters’ butts’ thing, but hey, if I took a sneaking pic of your booty would you hold it against me?

Don’t answer that.

And if that was cool, we could maybe overlook that whole “posted it on the internet for millions to, err hundreds to… okay, for Frank to see” thing?

Note to self… don’t ask dangerous questions, or you might get a visit from The Law. We don’t got no truck with The Law, we’re all about teh kaoS around here, baby.

So.

My son is in ur groups, whacking ur mobs.

I have coached him carefully.

The rules as I made them known for a beginning are;

1. Never get in front of the tank, for that is how you face pull.
2. Never attack before the tank does, for that is how you tag team aggro.
3. Never taunt, and take Growl off your pet, for that is how you yank aggro.
4. Target a mob, attack with everything you’ve got, and if the nameplate (Threat Plates) turns red, switch to a different target immediately.
5. Always pay attention at all times. You never know when the tank will run and pull something.
6. If you are getting eaten, run over and stand on top of the tank.
7. If you are attacking as melee, get behind the bad guy and TEAR UP HIS BUTT!
8. Pass on ALL LOOT, unless it is the correct TYPE of armor or weapon and STATS.

It’s fairly simple. It is a beginning.

He started by entering instances on his Goblin Hunter, who at the time was a freshly minted 15. Cassie and I didn’t have anyone on Horde side at all to run with him, and I had given him the options for leveling;

• The Questor: Quest through the zones, killing and exploring as you go.
• The Grinder: Ignore quest objectives, kill anything and explore anything you like.
• The Grouper: Queue for randoms and pass the time between queues however you’d like.
• The PvPer: Queue for BGs to kill other people, and pass the time between battlegrounds however you’d like.
• The Skilled Worker: Grind Archeology and Gathering professions to gain level up XP.

Of course, you can mix and match however you’d like, but it’s easy to forget that there are a lot of options for gaining XP and leveling. What would he choose for his Hunter?

He chose to Group, and kill stuff and explore while waiting.

I was a little… nervous when I let him loose.

I’m sorry, but the fact is… a lot of players are pricks. It is what it is, and I’m not saying there are more pricks in WoW than in other games, but there ARE a lot of pricks out there. I tune it out, but we’re talking a nine year old, and I’m not going to shut his Party Chat off when there may be important information in there from the tank or healer.

So, I sat there hoping that, armed with my advice, he would not attract the ire of the asshats.

I don’t hold out much hope for over the long run, he’ll see it and have to learn to deal with it maturely, because there are a lot of pricks that attack people in groups without any basis for their hostility at all. There are people that just pick someone at random, and unleash their inner asshat all over them. Nothing you can do to avoid it, all you can do is recognize that the problem isn’t something you did, it’s just them being them.

Not something I like contemplating for my son, any more than I like seeing it happen to any other stranger out there that may be just like my son.

Regardless, you don’t learn or grow by being wrapped in bubble wrap and sheltered in a box. You can’t prepare yourself to fight evil if you don’t even know it exists. In our modern world, learning to deal with internet bullies and online harassment is probably one of the most important lessons we need, so might as well get started sometime.

I’ve watched him in instances, and he’s outstanding.

He doesn’t say a word in chat, because he doesn’t type all that fast, although he does like typing in “/say Hello”.

Regardless, he’s been rocking the place, and I’ve seen other players offer to trade him items that he could use, and I have yet to see anyone be mean to him at all.

In fact, he’s been doing so well that when he wanted to queue in randoms on his Feral Cute Kitty O’ Doom Druid, even though he is level 56 and had some massive places in his instance list, I let him give them a try.

He did so well in a Sunken Temple run, that the others asked if they could requeue as a group and do it again. And again. And again, even.

So, he’s doing well. I’m very proud of him.

Throughout it all, he finds the funniest things to get interested in.

I’ve been letting him go solo to see what he’ll get into. I’ve been pushing him on his Death Knight, who is level 82, to explore. As I’ve said to him, “there is very little in the entire world that has any hope of hurting you. You can travel wherever you’d like, get in the face of just about anything, and eat their lunch. Except here (points to Twilight highlands).

So, why not go looking?

He spent some time killing Hogger and clearing out the Stormwind Stockades. He liked running the instance solo, and feeling powerful.

When we did Children’s Week, he saw all of Nagrand, and went nuts.

His big thing has always been ‘rock guys’. I don’t know what it is, exactly, but he has loved elementals in the game for as long as I’ve played WoW, and rock dudes are his favorites.

He would love to see me kill rock dudes, and watch them split up into smaller and smaller rock dudes. Absolute favorites.

Well, he saw the rock dudes in nagrand, and spent the next two days killing rock dudes, then water guys, then I showed him the fire guys on the Elemental Plateau… he had a blast.

Then he went off the grid. I was raiding, and wasn’t watchig him too close. Next time I looked over, he was in Shadowmoon Valley, and he went on a demon killing spree that was unprecedeted.

He found the entrance to Black Temple all on his own.

He LOVED killing Uvoros the two-headed demon dog. The GIANT two headed demon dog.

That led me to show him the Petopia website, and I had to bookmark it onto his desktop and let him spend an hour browsing the awesome pictures of tamable pet designs.

And then… he went to Hellfire Peninsula, and without any prompting from me in any way, began hunting Fel Reavers across the entire landscape.

And now… he has come full circle.

He has discovered the Raging Colossuses, the giant rock guys around the red crystal just to the west of the Temple of Telhamut.

These are the holy grail of rock guys.

You see, when you start attacking these guys, they get a little smaller as you damage them, AND they make MORE rock guys.

He has also noticed… the Raging Colossus has, ahem, “Tushie Cheeks”.

This has been a new source of giggling amusement.

To the Blizzard graphics designer that decided ‘rock guys’ needed tushie cheeks? Well played, sir. Well played.

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I am being summoned to watch as my son kills another Fel Reaver, or, as he says, Watch him “Demolish a Fel Reaver of Doom”.

Watching my son destroy a Fel Reaver in fiendish delight, and exclaim with joy as the pieces fall apart and drop, scattering all over the place, is magical.

In a previous Cub Report, I mentioned that Alex was a huge fan of dragons, dragon mounts, and the golden dragon mount in particular.

We redirected his love of dragons (seriously, he brings home books about dragons from the school library) by running his Death Knight through the Culling of Stratholme timed run, and getting him a nice dragon mount that way.

He was quite happy, and everyone went on about their lives.

Easter time came, and with it the Noblegarden Egg Hunt.

Alex decided that hunting for eggs was the appropriate action for a worgen Druid, and proceeded to camp out in Goldshire for eggs.

His goals? Well, his first goal was to maintain rabbit form uptime as close to 100% as possible. The angst he displayed when the buff began to wear off was adorable… to a point. Thankfully, with the egg basket reward, he could have buffed run speed without being in a form other than bunneh.

Alex also decided that his chosen method was a mix of both camping and chasing… chasing until he found out just how vicious grown adults can be over digital eggs. Holy crap, people. Really?

His reason for collecting? The white bunny ear hat, the BLACK bunny ear hat, and the, of course, yes, the 500 egg mount.

Sigh.

Over the last week, Alex collected about 150 eggs. Oh yeah, and Cassie and I gathered the rest on his character. We made him finish it out, and then he went and did another 50 to get those black ears.

So, he has a mount, and he has black bunny ears (which he wears) and he has the white ones he got as a drop, along with four pet bunnehs, one for him and three to send to his alts.

It was a bunny extravaganza. He also has about ten of those bunny wands, so it’s going to be a long year of bunny parties.

He now cannot fly or fight for an hour, because he won’t do anything to cause his bunny buff to drop early. I fully expect his Druid to remain unplayed for the next six months, just so he is still a bunny.

Oh yes, and the Easter Bunny brought one other thing for Alex as well.

There might have been a golden dragon found inside one special egg.

He was just thrilled beyond words! He was having a sad face because he didn’t want to play his Druid and lose the bunneh buff™, but THIS caused him to forget that completely in his excitement!

The Easter Bunny gave it to him, and he is very happy, but we all know that the Easter Bunny has help, right?

In this case, the Easter Bunny was helped by a wonderful reader named Kyre, who decided to go out of her way to make a little boy’s heart light up with gold one day.

Now, Kyre decided to send Alex a golden dragon mount, and while he was told it was from the Easter Bunny, Cassie and I both know who it was that did that for him, and from both of us and from Alex too, thank you very much for your generosity.

And now, let me be the first to tell everyone else, please don’t send us any gifts. While it was very sweet and he is very happy, at the same time we have an arrangement, you and I.

Come closer, that I can whisper it in your ear.

I write stuff, and so long as you find it amusing, you read it. No gifts needed, no monetary encouragement required, no ads to skim past.

Sound good? I never feel that I am offering you top value in my writing here, so offering me gifts makes me feel just a little bit like a thief. I’m just writing this prattle, and you’re giving my son a moose. Er, pony. DRAGON! Right, dragon, sorry.

I think we got the better end of that arrangement, is what I’m saying. Not fair to you, not at all.

Now, once I get my fantasy novel completed to my satisfaction and in e-book form, then you might see me pandering here, okay? But until that time, this is all just between friends, you and I.

We’ve got an arrangement.

Now, that being said, I’m going to go buy Alex the new golden dragon pet, so he can have the pet next to him as he flies. He is going to freak!

Thank you again to Kyre, and also to everyone that continues to read, you are all my family, and it pleases me no end that we all get to be dysfunctional together.

Good afternoon, everyone.

We’re back at home, safe and sound, and just in time!

I heard there was some news about WoW or something released, but screw all that… time for a new Cub Report!

We arrived back in town late Thursday night, and celebrated our trip to Walt Disney World resorts with some Death Knight leveling.

Alex and I were level 78 in Sholozar Basin Friday morning, and today we’re level 80. While that doesn’t sound very impressive, we’ve covered a lot of ground.

We only did about half of Sholozar when it occured to me that we could easily hit 80 without ever having seen Icecrown. That just wouldn’t do!

Off we went to report for duty at Argent Vanguard, and I proved I know my cub well.

He quickly grasped the concept of attacking the undead spiders, and loved how rescuing web wrapped people could cause a spider to erupt, sending you flying.

He instantly adapted to the situation as any true role playing group leader would… by sending the least suspecting, or most trusting, person in to ‘test’ for traps for him. “Look, if I attack them and a spider pops up, I go flying! But if I send my ghoul in for me, he gets blown up instead of me! That’s so cool!”

Ah yes, a future 1st lieutenant in the making if I ever saw one. All he was missing was a 10′ staff to give the ghoul to use to poke the webs.

Alex loved the phased aspect of the Argent Vanguard and Argent Pinnacle. The idea of the world changing through our actions is a powerful one, and he loved it. The final aspect of it, holding off waves of undead as the pinnacle is claimed, was very exciting for him. He threw me for a moment as the battle was won, expecting an immediate change in the area. I took him back to turn in the quest, and then made the special trip to the Pinnacle, and he loved the fact it was now ours, that we had made that happen. A more positive version of phasing than the Death Knight starter area, and it captured his imagination much better.

The next step was to train level 80 skills, and fulfill on a promise I had made.

Alex loves mounts. He loves mounts and pets.

Ahem. ALEX LOVES MOUNTS AND PETS.

When the golden dragon mount was released, for the first time I saw my son with lust in his heart. He wanted a dragon mount.

I promised my son he could HAVE a dragon mount… that once he reached level 80, we could get him a dragon.

He had hit level 80. The time had come.

So off I went on my Druid to the Caverns of Time.

What, you didn’t think I was going to drop that kind of REAL money on a golden dragon, did you?

Well, I almost did, but that’s why Cassie is in charge of the Bear household. She set us straight, and I improvised.

I did Bearcat through the Culling of Stratholme, Cassie blasted mobs on her Rogue, and Alex did his best to pull aggro. Damn, that boy likes to Death Grip stuff.

As an aside, the Feral Druid/Rogue combo was able to clear the timed instance with 9 minutes to spare, in case you were thinking of doing it yourself. Everyone should have at least one dragon in the stables.

One run through Culling of Stratholme heroic, one dragonoid dead, one Bronze Drake won and delivered to Alex the Death Knight, 4000 gold coughed up by Cassie so he could train epic flying and learn the mount. 

The moment when Alex stood in Stormwind at the trainer, mounted his bronze dragon for the very first time, and took to the air with a whispered “awesome”?

Priceless.

I asked him, now that we were level 80, where did he want to go next. Mount Hyjal, mountain of fire and reclaiming the earth, or Vash’jir, sunken undersea world of mystery and seahorse mounts.

Off to Vash’jir we went!

I was glad of one thing. On the Alliance side, I’ve never understood the whole “Budd” thing, with him seeing a shiny and diving overboard. I thought it was childish and stupid.

When Alex was with me, sound on and seeing everything for the first time? He was wondering wtf right along with me.

I guess it wasn’t childish after all. Just stupid.

Have you taken the time recently to stop and look at Vash’jir? The damn place is gorgeous. For a child that had just spent time at Epcot doing Turtle Talk with Crush from Finding Nemo, the Nemo ride, seeing all those vibrant colors… they nailed that feel.

You get a seahorse to tame and ride, there are slowly swimming sea turtles, sharks, large claw dudes, crabs, colors and activity everywhere.

Yes, I know the actual gameplay in Vash’jir is kinda sucky.

One thing right off the bat, you do a LOT of quests before ever seeing your first gear upgrade. In Mount Hyjal, the gear is thrown at you right from the beginning. In Vash’jir, we died multiple times against the crabs and naga and gilbin, basically whenever one of us was on our own and got swarmed by two opponents.

One thing Alex asked was, how come Death Knights can drown and need an air bubble? Aren’t they already dead? Umm…… oh, look at that sea turtle!

I may be a Bear and can’t parry, but apparently I can still cast distracting shot. So… why the hell DO Death Knights drown? Are they only mostly dead?

What about Undead players? Are they not really quite dead dead? What does that mean when they cannibalize others?

Let’s not go there.

Stepping away from the game for a moment and taking stock of why we were dying so much, I realised we had leveled so fast that we still had mostly crafted level 72 gear on. When I checked Alex, I saw that he had somehow acquired a set of leather bracers, epic SPELLPOWER bracers, equipped on his character.

Oops.

Another thing Alex loves are gear sets. So, I sent Alex off to bed for the night, and then built an entire set of level 80 blacksmithing crafted tank plate for him, along with the level 81 two handed sword. I farmed ore for a few hours, Lierthes gave me a lot of Obsidian Bars, but we got it done. A full and complete set. I made some Redsteel pieces for myself too, but he got a full set, and that was the goal. When we got up on Saturday, I sent him off to check his bank, and helped him equip it all.

I warned him there was a tradeoff. Gear is either optimized for damage, or for defense. If it does one, then it’s gonna be weak on the other. I did the whole “hands leveling” thing to show him that if something is high on the one side, it’s low on the other, and he went “oooh” and nodded his head just like he knew what I was talking about. I thought that was promising, after all how many Druids over the years have failed to understand the difference between Stam stacking and Agility/Dodge?

I’ve noticed that with the tanking gear, his damage output is about the same as mine… but he’s got 12k more health than I do now. He’s over 30k while I’m still in the 22k range.

Needless to say, we don’t get eaten by crabs anymore. We didn’t even need the special lotion!

There is so much in the game right now that is fun.

I know that there is a ton of info, clarification, and confirmation that got released today about mists of Pandaria. I’m glad to see it, and I enjoyed reading through some of it. Most of it was just a confirmation of what we were already told, along with a billion screenshots.

As an experienced player, I walked away from the big fancy info dump saying, “A new character slot, female pandaren look GREAT, and pet battles will be really real and really released and pets will be shared on account. Freaking awesome.”

Yep, that was all I really cared about in the info dump.

But as cool as the next expansion will be… this one was pretty damn good. There is still a lot of fun left on the table. Alex needs to get his Druid to 60 and see what Flight Form is all about. I’ve never finished getting Archeaology pets and mounts. I haven’t played PvP with Gnomer, although that might be corrected soon. He’s putting together a ‘who would I like to see die’ team, and my name came up. Or something like that.

Yes, I’ve heard what the final patch of the new expansion will be about… and why they felt the need to announce that plot twist a year and a half before it would drop is beyond my understanding, but okay.

For now, the Cub and I are happily playing the game, he’s got his own dragon to ride, and we can sing along as we kill fishies, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, what do we do, we swim, swim….”

In the time since we last visited Alex’s Adventures in Azeroth, he has rapidly climbed through the levels, until he is now a stones throw from being a level 50 feral worgen druid.

How have we gone so far in so short a time, even with the Recruit-A-Friend XP bonus?

Well, Cassie has begun running Alex and myself through instances, and with that bonus the levels are flying past.

RFD, Scholomance, Stratholme live and Stratholme undead, just that fast we are already up to being able to do the delving deeps of Blackrock Depths. With each instance, even with Cassie’s level 85 presence, we see two or even three level increases when you count in the quests.

As we chased after Cassie in the Scholomance, Alex suddenly announced that “my official nickname is the Cute Kitty of DOOM!”

And he IS a cute kitty of doom. He loves dashing and pouncing. He also really loves having Cassie clear the way of mobs so that Alex can loot them. He’s cool with that.

Nice work if you can get it, but I hated to break it to him that in normal groups, you can’t just run around looking cute and once everyone else kills all the stuff enjoy the loot. 

Then I stopped and thought about my recent Dragon Soul LFR runs. Now that I really think about it…

We completed Stratholme Undead a few nights ago, and I checked to see what the next instance was up on the list. Blackrock Depths? Oh, I love BRD. I have ALWAYS liked BRD, even when it was a mammoth unbroken slog for 5 hours, when you had to go in four damn times to sync everyone up on the escort quest for Onyxia attunement because someone forgot to clicky before we started, etc. I know that place by heart, all of it’s twists and turns and tricks.

I informed Cassie of our destination decision for the next night of playing, and she put her leather-clad foot down.

NO MORE RUNS.

At least, no more runs until we had quested through, in her words, the “must see quests” of Badlands.

Awww :(

Just kidding.

In the Badlands, there are a few quests that both Cassie and I loved when we did them, quests full of humor and style.

There are a lot of quests throughout the revampled Cataclysm 1 – 60 areas that Cassie lumps together as ‘gimmick’ quests. Gimmick quests can consist of many things, but the core of a gimmick quest is anything that replaces your normal, familiar character mechanics with a new action bar and new abilities only relevant to that one quest.

Cassie doesn’t generally like gimmick quests. She’s playing her character to play her character, not to (as an example) suddenly be the driver in a tank simulator in order to proceed with the story in that area.

All that aside, the quest that Cassie knew Alex HAD to do is an early quest in Fuselight.

Fuselight is a gnome city perched high atop a rocky peak in the Badlands. The ‘must see’ quest is called “It’s Goat Time, Baby“. The quest consists of you taking a blasting stick and walking around the perimeter of Fuselight, blasting goats off the peak.

When you use the blasting stick, the goat is launched away from you as if shot from a cannon, to fall into the canyon beyond.

If you haven’t done the quest yourself, I’ll let you ponder that mental image for a second.

Okay, let’s move on.

I took Alex to Fuselight, went through the prelim quests, got him his blasting stick and the OMG quest, and then got taken violently ill and had to leave him be. I came back to the office a half hour later to find him STILL blasting goats off the peak in delight, or as he put it, ‘goat punching’. He was still going at it enthusiastically and experimenting with arcs of travel, shooting goats at distant peaks, and generally delighting in goat punching mayhem.

I showed him how, by moving around to be on the other side of the goat from Fuselight facing in, he could punch the goats to land INTO the city, and thus could begin shooting goats at buildings, NPCs, and yes, other players. Much more fun was thus had.

If a few friends felt like it, I imagine a little game of Tag could be conducted by shooting goats at each other, but I would never do such a thing myself. It would be unseemly.

What surprised me most about this was the quest item activator button.

On most quests, you are given a task, say “punch 12 goats off the mountain”, and the button appears next to the quest on your screen. You can easily push the button to use the item, activate the goat punching blast stick, whatever it is while you do your quest.

Once the 12 goats or whatever requirement is complete, generally the button vanishes off your screen. You might still be able to use the item, but you’d have to open up your bags and click on it from there, or drag it to your button bar.

For this quest, he must have punched, I’m not kidding, hundreds of goats off that damn mountain, and the button never vanished.

Makes me wonder if Blizzard knew people might like to keep that quest and item active forever, and come back every once in a while for some therapeutic goat punching.

As we ran around punching goats, Alex taught me something I didn’t know about the game.

When we group up in a party, Alex likes to mark himself with a skull and me with a star, so even in the crowded streets of Stormwind City we can find each other. We run around everywhere marked.

As we were running around Fuselight, Alex decided he wanted to involve his non-combat pet in the action, and so went to click on the pet and mark it with a diamond.

I started to tell him you couldn’t mark non-combat pets, and before I could, he did! Put a damn mark right on his pet bunny.

… yes, Alex the Bunnyslayer runs around EVERYWHERE with a pet bunny. What?

I prefer to think of it as Alex being haunted by the ghost of bunnies past.

The other ‘must do’ quests in Badlands in my opinion are the tall tales told by a certain dwarf, gnome and orc over near Dragon’s Mouth.

Alex was enthralled at the idea of the first quest, where I promised him he’d get to punch Deathwing in the mouth. I neglected to tell him that it is Deathwing in his mortal incarnation, and so he was very disappointed when he finally saw him. Note to Blizzard – the child in all of us would like to punch Deathwing the GIANT DRAGON in the mouth, please. Much obliged.

Along the way, something came up that reminded me of just how long the memory of a young child can be.

He was controlling the dwarf Theldurin and punching his way up the Scar of the Worldbreaker, punching through rock walls and Earth Elementals, and he says to me, “I like punching rock guys. It’s been a lifelong dream of mine.”

His saying that instantly threw me back to years ago, when I was leveling a character in Badlands, and he was watching me climb up into those southern areas of the Badlands where Earth Elementals gather. I’d ride up there or run up there, kill the elementals and mine the surrounding ore. Had to have been during Burning Crusade, and he would watch me play, see me kill ‘rock guys’, and then ask me if he could play my character to kill them for a while and I’d let him kill rock guys for a while.

Years ago this was, so it had to be when he was five or six, and here we are now, fulfilling his ‘lifelong dream’ of punching rock guys himself with his own character.

Ah, that all of our life ambitions could be so easily realized.

As of today we’ve completed the ‘must see’ quests of Badlands, and hopefully tonight we’ll be able to go through the joy that is Blackrock Depths.

Our goal is to continue to play until Alex the Druid reaches level 55. At that point, he will achieve a second ‘lifelong dream’.

He will be able to create a Death Knight.

From the moment I upgraded his account, he has spent some time every couple of days on the ”New Character” screen, choosing the Death Knight class and trying out the appearance on various races.

I’m frankly curious to see what he finally chooses. I’ve told him you can only ever have one Death Knight on a server, so he has to choose his race and appearance wisely. Whatever he picks is going to be exciting for me, since I deleted my old Death Knight (that I had even bought the DK undead flying mount for!) just so I can pick the exact same thing and level with him.

I told him that you can’t create a Death Knight until you have at least one character to level 55, and so that is a burning goal of his. Will he continue playing his druid past 55 once he has a Death Knight? Only time will tell.

Perhaps having a kickass looking transmog set for his druid will help. Effraeti was kind enough to design one specifically for him, in his favorite color, orange, and he is delighted and excited. Maybe exploring throughout Outlands looking like a pumpkin will do the trick?

His delight in the goat punching quest, his fun at punching his way up the Scar until he punched Deathwing in the nose… those were both memorable moments in the game, epic moments that I know he will remember long after he’s forgotten questing on his druid.

Which brings me to my question for you, dear friends.

What other quests in the game would you consider to be the “must play” quests?

What are the quests that, if your friend were to start playing the game for the very first time, you would say to them, “Oh you’ve GOT to go do this, this is so cool!”

I have a few others in mind, one small chain in particular on Horde side I love, but I’d really like to hear yours!

Another step in the saga that is the continuing tales of Alex, 8 year old WoW adventurer and novice Worgen Feral Druid.

The saga has taken a turn, and I don’t know what to think of it.

There are bonfires, cooking fires and campfires all over the place in lower level zones. Quest givers stand around campfires, Innkeepers stand near burning braziers, there are little flames at building entrances here, there and everywhere.

When you stand in these fires, you get rewarded with a gentle ‘poof’ of smoke from your butt.

There is no other way to say it… my son loves to stand in the fire.

‘poof!’

You ever wonder where those people come from? The ones that just stand in the fire? Now you know. They like to see the gentle poof of smoke coming from their butts.

Alex loves Druid Cat form, running at high speed through the jungle, using Dash for a burst of speed immediately followed by Darkflight to keep that rush of movement going for as long as possible. When he gets the Stampeding Roar talent, he’s going to be buzzing like a ferret on Red Bull. I can see it coming, oh yes I can.

One thing I have learned in playing with Alex and going at his speed is that no matter how excited you are about the next quest, there is always time to stop and notice the small critters and insects that populate a zone… and kill them. Snakes, rabbits, small deer, cows, sheep, roaches, you name it, he kills it. And proudly announces it as a running commentary.

“There’s a snake! I pounced on it, I got it! Oooh, there’s a roach! Got ‘em!”

…. okay. I know mommy doesn’t like you to kill critters, but you can kill all the roaches. I grew up in South Florida, I approve. Kill all the roaches. In fact, Blizzard, show me some good old South Florida house lizards, we can kill all those little bastards, too. I’ll make a Mage just to perpetrate a house lizard holocaust.

His favorite critters in the game at the moment are the rats. Or, as the logic train he pointed out to me goes, “cats eat rats, and I’m a cat, so I’m pouncing on my lunch!”

And that brings me to his true, most special love.

Feral Charge.

He started out getting addicted to Skull Bash, which you get at level 22. We’d be hunting Worgen in Darkshire, and he would have me wait while he lined up carefully on the target, inching forward slowly to get within the 13 yard range of Skull Bash so he could fly through the air, pouncing on his prey.

Skull Bash obviously isn’t supposed to be a charge, it’s supposed to be a spell interrupt with a short range leap, it just brings you to your target, that’s all. Alex doesn’t know what mana cost increases and stuff really are, or spell interrupts, or PvP functionality. What he does know is he had a pounce that let him slam into his enemies from a distance. Gotcha!

The 13 yard range ended up causing a little frustration. He didn’t know how to tell if he was in range of the bad guys to use the spell or not.

I didn’t understand the problem at first. On my UI, when I target an opponent, each button indicates if I’m in range for that spell or not by lighting up. I tried to explain this to Alex, only to have him tell me his doesn’t do that.

As I tried wading through the Interface options looking for where his was turned off, Cassie asked me what I was talking about like I was crazy. She uses a mostly default UI, and hers doesn’t put any form of range indicator on her buttons either.

WTF?

It turns out that the XPerl UI Addon I’ve used for, what, five years now or more has it built in, and since I never, ever play the game without XPerl, I took the range indicator on individual buttons for granted. Hell, I thought it was standard for the game, how else do you know not to waste time activating an ability that has a varying range? It’s one thing on flat terrain, but some of the new sloping terrain designs are deceptive, and make accurately estimating distances difficult.

So, I got Alex set up with XPerl. I would have preferred just installing an addon that would put range modifiers on the ability buttons rather than completely revamping his whole UI, but I didn’t know of one. Honestly, this subject never came up for me before. I don’t know how Cassie and other players manage without a constant visual indicator of target range. I guess you’re just that good?

I got XPerl installed on his system, and now Alex knows how to stalk up to his prey in stealth, get just within extreme range and then unleash the leaping kitty Skull Bash thunder! Pow!

He had to use stealth for Skull Bash, because the second cause of frustation was that Skull Bash’s short range meant he could sometimes face pull before using his spell.

Ah, but I had the answer for that. And it came at level 29, when Alex was finally able to spec into Feral Charge.

Feral Charge. Sing me a song of Feral Charge, for Alex is in love with you.

With Feral Charge, Alex has a leaping kitty roaring pounce that puts him behind the target and is useable from stealth, plus he doesn’t have to be as careful with range. It’s got a much longer range than he’s used to, 25 yards, so he can be less focused on range.

Alex now Feral Charges all the things. ALL the things. Mobs, critters, pirates, you name it, he tries to feral charge it.

Last night, I caught him trying to line up on me from extreme range at the rear.

“Alex, you can’t feral charge me. I’m on your side.”

“Awww. You should be able to feral charge people on your own team too!”

“…. yes son, yes you should. Sometimes, I pray for the ability to attack members of our team, Feral Charge them and gank them and gank them and gank them….”

“What?”

“Nothing, nothing. That Crocolisk looks pretty cool. You wanna kill ‘em?”

“Yes!” *manuevers in stealth to feral charge the crocolisk*

At level 31, he was able to put a point in Stampede. This to me wasn’t that big a deal. To Alex, this was a VERY BIG DEAL.

I explained to him about the haste buff and the Ravage without positioning/stealth modifier, but it didn’t register until the first time he did a Feral Kitty Charge, and the Ravage button lit up.

“When I leap on them, the Ravage button lights up, and I’m not even in stealth!” Ah, the light in his eyes, the delighted glee at free mayhem. Having one of his stealth-only abilities, which must mean it’s special, available after a charge is like icing on an already delicious cake.

Then I paid closer attention to what he was saying.

He wasn’t saying “leap”.

He wasn’t saying “Feral Charge”.

No, when he was using Feral Charge to attack the enemies, ALL the enemies, what he was doing was singing a little song he made up on the spot, and sang over and over as only an 8 year old can;

“Headbutt madness, headbutt madness, they don’t call it head buttin’ for nothin’. Headbutt madness, headbutt madness, my head to his butt, POUNCE!”

At that point, I just grabbed a notebook and put it next to my keyboard. Gotta be ready to write this shit down.

Good thing I did. Not two minutes later, as we raced through the Stranglethorn Tigers (that we vastly outlevel) to grab our last two, Alex calls out, “I’ll get the one behind you so he doesn’t attack your tushie!”

Ah yes. Even on a Dwarf Shaman, my butt makes for a tasty target.

Butt protection, isn’t that what everyone wants from their adventuring companions?