Quest Spotlight: The Green Hills of Tedium...or, Stranglethorn
by Mike D'Anna 
Apr 25th 2006 at 10:00AM
After leveling several characters of varying types into the 30's and spending more than my share of time in the
lush, tropical, yet deadly oasis that is Stranglethorn Vale, I decided that, with my latest character, I would actually
try and do something with all those annoying pages that kept filling up my backpack; even after reading how un-rewarding
& tedious the quest was (especially for a Hunter), I decided to actually attempt to piece together The Green Hills
of Stranglethorn.And, since I'm just the type of idiot who doesn't like to take shortcuts with things, I decided that I would find all the pages myself, without buying them from the Auction House. How hard could it be?, I thought, I find the darn things on every single monster that I kill! It HAS to be pretty easy, right?
Well, read on to find the answer...
First of all, let me just say that if I had a time machine, I would rather go back and spend the hours I wasted on this quest watching reruns of Family matters dubbed into Burmese. It would have been a lot less frustrating trying to get through it, anyway.
For those of you who have never attempted or found the quest, The Green Hills of Stranglethorn starts in Stranglethorn Vale at Nessingwary's Expedition to the north, and consists of collecting several lost pages from the eponymous tome off basically any monster in the zone, combining them in the right order to make three chapters, and returning them to the dwarf Barnil Stonepot at Nessingwary's.
This has simply got to be one of those quests that I'm sure began with the developer's best intentions, but once it became evident late in the process that it was just too unwieldy, they decided to push on through because they had already added the stupid things to all the loot tables for the area. Because i cannot rationalize for the life of me why any dev in his right mind would think that, at the stage in the game where I would be in Stranglethorn Vale to receive this quest, I'd also have 57,000 bag slots open to carry all the pages required. I wouldn't exaggerate if I said that literally 1/4 of my time spent on this quest was spent running back to the vendor to clear up more bag space.
I also see no good
reason, aside from sheer malignancy, to have the pages & the chapters be numbered in a completely arbitrary fashion,
instead of chronologically, and to have to open three different screens within your quest log to find out the order
needed to turn the various chapters in. Sure, it's not a huge deal, but with a quest involving so many different things
to keep track of in the first place, the least they could do is put all the relevant info on one quest page.And, in the end, I must confess that, after spending literally an entire day & a half wandering around, slaughtering everything that moved within that whole zone while avoiding kill-happy Horde the entire time, in the end I still had to end up visiting the AH to complete the quest. I walked in ashamed, with my helmet-clad head hung low, but I did it...I was at my wits end.
Now sure, you could say that the Auction House or trade channel is, in a way, an integral part of this quest; that it's not meant to be completed without the help of others. Well, sir...to you I say hogwash; just make the darn things unique & yet trade-able, so I won't have to keep picking up 37 copies of page 24 & hoping I can sell them for a few silver to allay my frustration.
Finally, though, I assembled
all the chapters & turned them in for my reward: a pair of plate boots (which I knew I couldn't use ahead of time),
a couple of armor kits (yippee!), and some healing potions. Be still my heart. Although I knew of the rewards ahead of
time & still elected to do the quest, I still couldn't help but be disappointed in the end, and I'm pretty sure I
wouldn't have been much less so had I been a Warrior or Paladin; the reward is just simply weak, by any standards.Sure, at it's heart, it's just a simple gather & return quest...but it's one of the most tedious, time-consuming gathering & returnings I've ever seen, and the very least Blizzard could do is offer a class-based choice of reward items. The XP is decent, but it wasn't anything spectacular, and there wasn't even any money involved to sweeten the deal.
So, I guess it's my own fault now that I have an irrational fear of gorillas & that every time I see a tiger, I want to puke; I think I'll be avoiding Stranglethorn Vale for a while. I'm sure there are worse quests out there (Deep Ocean, Vast Sea, anyone?), but for me, this was quite possibly the most boring time I've ever had playing WoW...and that says something, 'cus I've spent an awful lot of time fishing.
And yes, I'm aware of the Hemingway reference...
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, How-tos, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Quests
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
joey Apr 25th 2006 10:21AM
You hit the nail on the head. It is a MMORPG!!!! You were never meant to do the whole thing by only collecting the pages yourself that is why they are not "QUEST ITEMS" and you can trade them with other people.
While I appreciate your attempting to do this without interacting with other players to help complete your collection, you have only yourself to blame for the pain therin inflicted.
It's inventory intensive and could have been just a tad better construted however its very good xp. And when I am leveling characters I've always enjoyed the easy XP it gives, taking ususally no more than a few gold to complete and a few quick trips to both auction houses. Like most quests in the game, you are by no means required to do them, and this one verges on FREE xp for those willing to share.
Even the AH is not nescssary for the inventive. A quick "trading x for x pages" will ususually result in a positive response and quick quest completion.
PodMonkeys Apr 25th 2006 10:22AM
I completed this one the hard way, just out of principle. No AH purchases of pages here. Of course by the time I completed it, I already had better boots. :P It was tedious, but with all the pages being dropped, I figured why not.
I didn't worry much about bag space, although I did have to purchase some new bags and bag slots at the bank.
jason Apr 25th 2006 10:54AM
1st time through: NE Hunter. Collected all the pages by hand (or by bow & arrow), turned it in and vowed to never return to that forsaken coast.
2nd time through: NE Druid. Collected most of them by hand (or by claw), then mingled on the trade channel looking for those who needed my extras and had the ones I needed. Vowed never to return to that forsaken coast again.
3rd time through: Human Warrior. Collected whatever pages I managed to get while questing, went to trade channel and traded around again. Had begun to hate goblins and anything that looked like a pirate.
4th-8th time: Horde. Gathered all the pages on my Troll Shaman, sent all extras to my bank. Each time through, sent any extra to the bank and collected the entire set x10 each. I will never have to go through this quest again, and neither will my guild mates.
tibbsy Apr 25th 2006 10:55AM
While I agree with you at some level, I can't help but ask why you didn't research whether the quest was worth doing beforehand? You should have known LONG before you embarked on the page-hunt that you would only get a pair of boots as a reward.
The first time I did the quest, I just gathered pages while I was doing other quests in STV. There are hordes of troll-hunting quests or some Kurzen-killing quests (at least on the Alliance side) that force you to drop mobs that would give you pages. By the time you get through them all, you're already half-way to the full book or more (depending on luck). Every now and then I'd check the auction house (now that the neutral auction house is in BB, things will be much easier), and pick up any pages I didn't have. I'm not surethat I endured the pain and suffering that you did. LOL.
As a player that enjoys PVP, I love STV because it's always packed with gank-savvy players that aren't utterly impossible to kill (though you do ocassionally get that band of 60s that just happens to be bored and is running around ganking lowbies for no reason). On my server, I find that Horde, particularly Undead, are the most common culprit for lowbie ganks.
jpc Apr 25th 2006 11:17AM
Get a mule and send all the pages to your mule until you've got nearly all the pages and buy the last few at the AH. Cash it in at the same time as you finish the other quests in nessingwary so that you never have to go back to that gank-trap again.
Mat Apr 25th 2006 12:03PM
The trade channel is definitely you friend on this quest and as long as you don't have anything smaller than a 10 or 12 slot bag in your inv, you should be fine.
Ysidro Apr 25th 2006 12:08PM
I just gathered pages as I completed other quests. The only suck thing about it was the space it took in the backpack.
Really, it was easy experience. I don't understand what all the fuss was about. Unless you are single-minded and have to finish EVERY QUEST in the order recieved, you will get them all with very little trading and AH action. Besides, it's easy to trade on the trade channel, and you get to meet a lot of folk who look upon you kindly for being willing to trade or give away extra pages.
Plus, when you are one page away, go trade or buy the last page, get the chapter made. Saves a lot of space.
This quest was a small pain, but honestly you guys are making too big a deal out of it.
Ysidro
Tomazed Apr 25th 2006 12:09PM
I think its the dumbest way to do the quest...
my girlfriend try this way and I kept telling her she was going the really hard way...
Have you ever tried to drive with no wheel? or try to jump off a cliff thinking you will fly and.. damn, you forgot your wings at home ;)
For sure, this quest can be a bit disturbing for the nOOb getting to stranglethorn... but when you know how to do the quest the easy way, this is one of the best XP you can get...
first, you have to known what to do... there are five quest to do here. the first tell you to return the complete book, the four other to return each of the four chapter.. you must take the first one to be able to take the others,... you have to take each at leat once (even if you abandonned it after) to see which page are needed to end the quest...
when this is done, make up some free space on you bags (and I mean it.. at least 20 slots) because your not gonna farm the page.. you gonna do anny of the stranglethorn quest and gather all the pages by the way!
the pages drop from any humanoid of the region. so while you will be doing all the quest that require killing trolls, killing bucaneers, killing venture Co goblins, you WILL get a lots of pages... more than you need...
all you have to do is watch the /1 chat for the people willing to trade because you will get page twice or more.. its a very simple quest if you pay attention...
or you can buy some if you don't have page to trade..
on my server pages sells around 10-15 silver each... that's quite cheap in my opinion for the huge XP boost at the end...
finally, on my guild, there is one mule dedicated to this page so If a player of the guild need one, we can always look for it in the bank of the mule :)
always do this quest... that's my advice
Eric Apr 25th 2006 12:15PM
50 silver at AH for the few pages not dropped by mobs I needed to kill for other quests anyway = 6000xp! Very easy quest for great XP. No point in doing it the hard way. Save your efforts for other more intersting quests where full item retrieval from the environement is mandatory.
my 2 cents...
Selli of Kul Tiras Apr 25th 2006 2:04PM
I had no problem with this quest...except for the stupid page 16...page 16 will always haunt me in my dreams...
hikaru Apr 25th 2006 4:05PM
This is unquestionably ONE OF THE BEST QUESTS TO COMPLETE, period.
You can do it while it's deep red and get A VERY HUGE CHUNK OF XP, with NO KILLING INVOLVED.
I complete this quest with every single one of my characters.
STV is one of the best levelling zones ever. There are hundreds of quests, and you're good there for nearly a dozen levels. The page quest is easy because the pages drop off every humanoid type in the zone.
Kill a mob and get the page? Send it to a bank char. Just keep sending all to a bank char and let him collect the pages. When you want to finish the quest, look to see if you're missing any. If you are, check out the gobbo auction houses. They're always filled with pages, which you can get cheap.
Or, even better, TRADE EXTRA PAGES to people for ones you're missing. Every day there will also be people who just GIVE EXTRA PAGES AWAY FOR FREE.
This quest is beyond simple. It just takes some time and organizational skills: something that the original poster seems to lack.
Bang for the buck, arguable the best quest series in the game, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE LEVELLING UP AN ALT.
elle Apr 25th 2006 4:40PM
Um... is it wrong to have never been to STV? I did my 30s in Arathi, Southshore and Scarlet Monastery, then went straight to Tanaris.
Did I really miss that much? That quest sounds like it sucks all ass.
hash Apr 26th 2006 5:04PM
This quest is useless, way too much work for not very much reward. Especially on a PvP server, where everytime you turn around, horde or allies, theres a red 60 ready to pimpslap you into next week.
Again, on a PvP server, STV itself is a waste of time to do at level, save a few choice quests. The time can be spent in other zones of the same level, but with 20% of the gankers around to slow you down.
keelinn May 29th 2006 2:20PM
i'd rather gnaw off my own leg than spend another month and a half in STV. and you thought Barrens chat was bad...