The late 30s are a great time in WoW. You're crusing around through some nice zones, hanging out, looking forward to getting your mount and all your new skills at 40 ... then suddenly you hit the brick wall of the Underwater Quests.

For some strange reason, most of the 30-40 zones (at least Hordeside) suddenly sprout a ton of quests that require you to become a deep-sea diver. Whether it's killing murlocs in STV, looking for sunken treasure in Desolace, or questing for those pirates on the south coast of Arathi Highlands that no one ever finds until like their third character, you'll be spending a lot of time underwater.

And underwater is rough. Unless you're a shaman, a warlock, or an undead character, you can only spend 60 seconds underwater until you begin to rapidly die. This means you have to come up for air after every couple of enemies. However, this isn't the most annoying part of undersea quests. Just like in the Mario underwater levels, the underwater enemies of WoW often defy physics in their rush to kill you. Nagas and murlocs often swim through walls and the sides of ships to get at you. The addition of a vertical dimension to aggro also means you can end up pulling a lot more than you intended. And sometimes you think you'll finally have gotten in attack range, just as the enemy freezes you and heads 10 yards away to keep casting frostbolts.

Underwater quests are so common and provide so much experience that I mostly just suck it up and do them. However, I know a good number of people who won't even dip their head below the surface without a shaman, a warlock, or a supply of underwater breathing potions to back them up. How do you deal with questing in the briny deeps?

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Quests, Leveling