Coldridge Valley

A Gnome mage named SneekyPeach has begun her adventures in Azeroth. But if you're here for a 100% first person roll playing blog, you'll be disappointed. 'Cloth and Fireballs' is a blog space dedicated to the progression of a 'World of Warcraft' character, but I'm not much for the whole first person experience.

That being said, You've joined me on day one of my new mage adventures, and I plan to continue blogging about SneekyPeach as I progress through the ranks.

A little bit of background about my WoW experience first and then on to opening area excitement.

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SneekyPeach is my third devoted WoW character, but she is my first ever Alliance character, my first Mage, and my only character who will not be assisted by an 'older' player. As I have two other characters to nurture, and in order to keep the blogging experience nice and easy, I will attempt to play only on Saturdays and blog on either Saturday or Sunday. Though, to be honest, I did say the same thing for my Druid character who has quickly become my #1 devotion, leaving my higher level hunter rotting in Dalaran.

I chose to roll a mage because I prefer to fight at long range, and I chose Gnome because, of the alliance races available to roll a mage, Gnomes have the best opening attributes - especially Intellect, Spirit and Mana which are important for caster classes. They also have an aptitude for engineering, which I am considering as my profession on this character.

Gnomes begin their lives in Coldridge Valley, an area of Dun Morogh reserved for levels 1-5. We start out with a single offensive spell attack, fireball. Offensive spells are our bread and butter, but we also have our staffs to bash enemies that get to close. The idea is, however, to kill your enemy before it comes to that point. Nothing in this part of the area will attack you until you attack it, so feel free to run around and practice your timing and range.

So we gather our quest and are off to fight wolves. The fire has a 35 yard range, so target, get to the sweet spot and start firing. This is a nice one because the cool down time matches the cast time; in other words, it's ready to start again as soon as the shot leaves.

We progress very quickly through the ranks, killing first wolves, than toggs, boar and then trolls, and hit our training milestones with flying speed.

At level 2 we get a second buff, this time to boost our intelligence, Arcane Intellect. It increase our mana and our chance for critical hit, so always have this equipped. At level 4, we get 2 additional new spells--one offensive and one helpful; Frostbolt, a damage dealing spell which hurts the target as well as slows its advancement on you--a way to give you an extra spell in before the target reaches meele range--, and conjure water, helpful to regenerate mana. The trick there is you need mana to conjure water, so try to remember to always keep a conjure in your pack. It takes up a bag slot, but well worth it. Also, you're conjure will disappear when you log out--keep that in mind.

In no time at all we are ready to leave the starting zone. Climb up to the pass, journey through and march yourself on over to Kharanos. One of our quests brings us a delivery to the inn; excellent, because I was headed there anyways. Time to log out.