Southshore
Our next major goal is to reach the racetrack in Thousand Needles, and we've got some sidequests to do along the way.
Scene 1: A Lesson in Diplomacy (level 31)
Return to Stormwind. (You did talk to Watcher Backus earlier, right?) Speak with Elling Trias once more, and he'll send you after a charming fellow in Old Town named Dashel Stonefist. Dashel is in the very center of Old Town. You need to use one of the alleys to reach him or you'll just circle without finding him. As soon as you discuss matters with him, he and his friends try to jump you. Focus on Dashel – get him to a certain point in his health and he will call off his dogs and talk things over. Return to Trias.
Then you will be sent to Menethil Harbor to talk to Mikhail in the inn. As soon as you do, a gentleman that calms himself Slim will try to escape the inn. If you stop him, he will fight back along with his friend. This fight can often be very challenging for a single player, but often the other passersby will help.
After getting Slim to surrender, he will agree to talk to you once more in the inn. This will lead you into Theramore, but we have some other matters to tend to first. While you're going to be heading for Theramore anyway, talk to Vincent Hyal about his brother. Then you will need to make two side trips.
Quests completed: The Missing Diplomat (a bunch…I lost count after 12)
Scene 2a: Answered Questions (level 31)
Set your hearthstone in the Menethil Inn. Take the boat to Auberdine, travel to Darnassus, and finish Answered Questions. Hearth back.
Quests completed: Answered Questions.
Scene 2b: Southshore (level 31)
We're going to Southshore for utility reasons. You do have a quest that takes you there, and there are quests to do in Southshore. But we won't be doing them. The only point to this trip is to get two flight points and the First Aid manual.
Take the road through the Wetlands, and follow the split to the north. This road will cross a bridge into Arathi Highlands. When that road ends at a T, you will find the Refuge Point nearby, where you can get one flight point.
Go west along the new road to the ruined fortress of Stromgarde. There's lots of nasty things in Stromgarde, so after you enter, immediately turn right, stay to the right, and follow that wall around over a bridge to Deneb Walker, a vendor. He seems innocent enough, but he holds the key to your First Aid skill ever passing 150. You've probably got tons of silk piling up by now. Buy the book for 1 gold, plus the two bandage manuals, and return back to the road.
The road will cross into Hillsbrad Foothills through Thoradin's Wall, and you can take it the rest of the way to Southshore. Get the flight point on the outside of town, and return to Menethil.
Quests completed: Southshore
Flight Points acquired: Refuge Point (Arathi Highlands), Southshore (Hillsbrad Foothills)
Scene 2c: Theramore at Last! (level 31)
(Note: while we're discussing taking time out to hit different cities, make sure your class doesn't have a crucial quest to perform at level 30. Shamans, for example, have the Call of Air, which is as painless as going to Exodar, talking to someone outside of Exodar, and returning. At the very least, make sure you train your level 30 skills to the best of your finances.)
After all this run-around, you can finally take the cruise to Theramore. When you get there, grab the quest They Call Him Smiling Jim outside the inn, and Highperch Venom inside the inn. Then talk to the commander in the barracks. Hit the flight master too, of course.
Quests completed: Answered Questions, James Hyal, They Call Him Smiling Jim, Southshore
Scene 3: Thalanaar Adventure (level 31)
Leave town by the road. Follow it to Sentry Point, the first tower. Rather than finding Hendel there for The Missing Diplomat, you will find Archmage Tervosh, who will tell you where to find him. You are welcome to attempt to kill Hendel now – he is along the path we will be taking anyway – but chances are he will simply pound your face in. Got friends?
Stay on the road all the way to the Barrens. At the zone edge, where the golden savannah grass begins, you will find the ruins of the Shady Rest Inn. Inspect the shield hanging on the fireplace, and continue along the road. When you reach the Gold Road, go south. (PvP server folks will probably want to avoid the road and just cut in front of Bael Modan.) The end of the zone is a Tauren elevator. Jumping = death unless you can levitate or slowfall, but the graveyard is at the bottom if you do jump. At the bottom, to the right side of the road, is a dwarven skeleton with a journal. Take it for the quest it gives you.
More road following! It will fork shortly after the Great Lift. Take the right (west) fork all the way to the end of the zone. As you are entering Feralas, turn left and head toward the Elven encampment known as Thalanaar. There is a flight point here, plus you have two quests to finish. Don't bother with the Crone of the Kraul. Nobody in Alliance EVER goes to Razorfen Kraul, except maybe for the warrior quest.
There is one other item on the agenda. Follow the southern zone wall east until you reach the funny lumps on your map that mark an area inside the mountain walls. That area is called Highperch, and it is up a ramp into a wyvern nesting grounds. You'll have to kill quite a few wyverns to get the venom you need, but at least you get lots of Bright Eyeballs!
Finish your business in Highperch, and go back to Theramore. By hearth if you remembered to set it.
Quests completed: Reclaiming the Charred Vale, Lonebrow's Journal, Highperch Venom, The Black Shield, The Missing Diplomat (up to the last segment)
Scene 4: Off to the Races (level 31)
More traveling to come. Fly back to Thalanaar, and head down the road to the east. Take it until it ends – be careful around Freewind Post; the guards tend not to like Alliance very much. The end of the road is The Shimmering Flats, a large salt flats area that is littered with various wasteland creatures and rocket car parts. Rocket car parts?
At the center of the flats, you will find a racetrack where gnomes and goblins feverishly try to invent the best rocket car they can. They even enlist your help. There are six quests in all to grab here – four from the gnome area, one from the goblins, and one from the master of the races. These quests are grindfest city, but it doesn't seem so bad because you're doing quests at the same time.
Before we do any of those quests, though, let's finish one other important affair. Go south-southwest to the zone exit. Watch out for level 35 basilisks. The path through the edge of the flats leads to the goblin city of Gadgetzan. There's an inn here, a flight point, even a bank. There may be none of those things at the race track, but at least if you need to stop for the night or get back here quickly, you have that option. The flight master is outside the town walls on the south side of town.
Flight points acquired: Gadgetzan (Tanaris)
Scene 5: The Shimmering Flats (level 31)
Back at the racetracks, let's take stock. We've got quests to (1) kill turtles, (2) kill scorpions, (3) kill basilisks, (4) kill buzzards, (5) collect junk off the ground, and the sixth one is a delivery quest. In fact, at any time of your choosing, if and when you need to come up for air, fly to Ratchet to finish Parts for Kravel. You'll end up making this additional trip anyway.
There is a lair for every one of the creatures we need to kill. The car parts just come along the way. Start off by heading due west where the scorpion lair is. Don't dwell on killing the tougher scorpions. Just pick off what you can, and continue north. The northwest area is the bread basket for getting started – there are car parts, plenty of turtles, which often have the worst droprate, and various other things in the way. Kill it all. Hang out in this quadrant for a while, until you start to complete some of the quests. Run back to the tracks and sell at the ice cream vendor if you need to.
East of where you've been grinding, at about 12:00 actually, is the turtle lair. The trouble with the turtle lair is that each spawn can be the low-level or high-level turtles, and because turtles are passive, everyone just kills the low-level ones until they respawn as high-level turtles, and then they leave them. These is a massive difference between the two in difficulty because mostly everyone here is in the 31-33 range. This is why it is strongly encouraged for you to hunt down the turtles in the northwest corner first.
You probably shouldn't need them, but the basic kind of basilisks are all clustered about the crater south of the turtles. If you rotate further around the flats, in the east is the vulture lair. Considering the scarcity of the buzzards overall, it is recommended that you hang out here, kill as much as you can, and come back later if everything is dead.
There is almost nothing in the southeast quadrant of the flats. At the south-center is a series of ruins with the two tougher types of basilisks. Be especially cautious around the gazers. They are level 35 and will be extremely difficult for a level 31 or 32 character. This particular quest is a kill count, so grab a partner if it helps you.
And then back to the scorpions in the west. In the southwest corner is a set of ruins infested by silithids. Leave them well enough alone.
Altogether, questing here should take about two hours unless you're on a PvP server and getting royally ganked, or if there's a lot of spawn competition. (Horde do these quests as well, and tend not to think much of you being here.) When you are finished, try to keep eight pieces of turtle meat away from the vendor. You may want them later for a Southshore quest.
Quests completed: A Bump in the Road, Hardened Shells, Load Lightening, Rocket Car Parts, Salt Flat Venom, Parts for Kravel, Delivery to the Gnomes
The Run-around (level 32/33)
You probably gained a good level-and-a-half in the Shimmering Flats, but as you complete each quest, you'll note that basically every one of them has a follow-up. The reason we are here, now, is because several of the quest lines lead right into the very next zone we will adventure in. You do not need to worry about Razzeric's Tweaking, but the other quests are all generally pretty relevant and will send you to Ratchet and/or Booty Bay. Parts for Kravel does both, one at a time.
Go make those deliveries, and then settle into Booty Bay to embark on your adventures in Stranglethorn Vale. There are a ton of quests in "STV" that will completely fill up your log, so if there's anything else you had any intentions of doing, such as running Gnomeregan, or finishing the Missing Diplomat…go do it now.
Your quest log should essentially be empty of all quests that didn't come from the racetrack when you move on.
