Leveling with Hangfire

10\23\07
Level 19 on my Ally druid Hangfire, almost 20. I finally, finally took down Murkdeep (quest from the Wanted poster in Auberdine) in Darkshore. Seriously, I think they changed him in the patch. The quest log says something about him protecting the murloc village, but it doesn’t say anything about having to run a gauntlet before taking him on.
When I’ve killed him before, he’s always been in the center of the murlocs huts, by or on top of the fire. I use a ranged attack to tempt him out to me, and just concentrate all attacks on him. As soon as I kill him, I take off before I’m killed by the adds from the village.
Now….he’s not around at all. I was level 16 with my druid, feeling cocky because I had engineering bombs and some regular healing potions, in addition to being able to heal myself. I decided to try to take him down at an early level, since I was down there getting remains on the shore to turn in. No Murkdeep anywhere. I had downloaded Lightheaded (gives you notes on each quest that pop out of your quest log) this weekend, and some of the notes mentioned said that you need to start killing the Warriors and Hunters in the village. They’re about lvl 16-17, so I figured it would be good XP, and still pretty easy. I kill all the murlocs in the village, and Murkdeep runs out with 2 more murlocs, and kills me before I had a chance to recover from the last fight.
I tried again, with the same result. Again, Murkdeep waited until I had cleared the village, then 3 coastrunners came running out of the water to attack me, then Murkdeep came while I was recovering. It reminded me of the Horde quest “King of the Foulweald” in Ashenvale. Waves after waves coming at you, with very little time to recover.
I finally decided to go run some other quests in Darkshore, and come back when I was lvl 18, since that was the level of the quest. I came back at 18, and buffed up to the max (All scrolls, strider stew, coarse weightstone, Mark of the Wild, Thorns) before starting to kill the village. I kill the last warrior, and 3 coastrunners attack me. I toss a Bronze Bomb to wound them all, put up a target dummy to distract them, cast a renew, and start chopping them down individually. I kill them, and 2 warriors attack me. I kill them, and now Murkdeep with his 2 buddies appear. I’m tired of doing this quest by this point, so I’m just concentrating on staying alive long enough to kill him. I toss my last bronze bomb to damage them all, bring up a target dummy, cast a renew and healing touch, and work on Murkdeep. A few Moonfires and maces to the face later, and Murkdeep dies. I loot him, and take off running to shake pursuit. Booyaka!After that, I decided to go to Ashenvale since I was so close, so I picked up the escort quest of the narcoleptic druid to Maestra’s Post. He’s annoying to have to wake up, but I had done the quest before, so I just hugged the mountains to the east on the way down, and didn’t have to deal with any ambushes on the way down. He helped with fighting beasts too; after they got close enough to hit me, he would attack them. I dropped him off, turned in Delgren’s note for the Tower of Althaxxx quest line, and continued it by picking up a Soul gem from the undead wandering around north of the post. On Lightheaded, they complained about an insanely low drop %, but I picked it up on my third kill. I ran into the Shrine of Aessina first, because I had mistakenly sold off all the Herbalist glove patterns (+5 herbalism gloves) I had picked up before, so I needed at least one to send to my leatherworker, so he could make it and send it to my enchanter for the +5 herbalism enchant, and she’ll send it back to my druid. I love having all the professions!