Thursday 1 October 2015

Terrifying Devil-Bears...

I was questing through Duskwood the other day on my lowbie warrior.

Full heirlooms and music playing in the background (The Raconteurs if you are interested... Jack White is a legend!) so not really paying much attention as people do these days on their umpteenth alt. 

I had done enough quests to move on to the next zone but decided to fully complete this one and see the end of the storylines.
 
I often do this with alts, fully complete a zone I haven't done for a while then skip that zone completely on the next alt... and this is probably why my alts often stop for a time in the expansions, they just don't have the options of levelling routes.

Anyway, back in Duskwood, I opened up the Raven Hill cemetery quests and was asked to go kill some bears. 
(I've never heard of people eating bear meat outside of Azeroth but it seems to be somewhat of a delicacy, maybe I'll ask for it in my local Waitrose.)

I was hit by a sudden recollection from my Warcraft past!  These bloody bears!
Back in the day, before I found the joys of Shamanism, my first ever char was a (not so) sneaky Rogue. 

He was questing merrily through Westfall, minding his own business, when he stumbled across all these bears with skulls on their portraits.  Not knowing what this meant, and feeling quite powerful having just got a new dagger, he charged in!
And died.  Fast.

Hmmm... release, run back, try again.  Dead.

Ok, I think I'll leave these bears alone.

Release, run back, get attacked by a bear. Dead.
Release, run back, run two yards, get attacked by a bear. Dead.
Release, run back, run two yards, get attacked by a bear. Dead.

Uh-oh.

It took me forty minutes to make it out of those woods then swim across the river before those bears left me alone.  I was astounded!
What were these devil-bears?  How was anyone supposed to kill them?

I couldn't wait to tell my friend about them when he logged on (my only friend in WoW at that time), these terrifying bears that killed you with one swipe of their massive paws. 
He was at level cap, I wanted to see if he could kill one.

As it happens, I forgot about it for a couple of days and just carried on levelling. 
My rogue was level 40 when I remembered about the terrifying devil-bears and I dragged my friend (through Westfall and over the river) to see them.

They weren't there! 
There were just some normal bears milling around (which had a proper level number instead of a skull on their portrait!) and I could kill them easily.

But they were right here, I insisted. 
Ah well, they've gone now.

It was quite some time before I worked out what had actually happened that day, where they came from, and why they disappeared, but I'll never forgot those terrifying devil-bears.

My Warrior killed a few extra just in case some other poor soul had wandered off the path.

Moral of the story:  You don't know what you don't know until you know it.

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