I am currently playing a "make your own class" version of World of Warcraft, in hardcore Iron Man mode, and am loving it! So much so that when I finish this -- and I have all confidence that I will -- I want to try Ascension's NIGHTMARE mode! Which is basically Iron Man mode but all enemies deal a hell of a lot more damage.
My character is a fiery fire wizard. I have a shaman's magma totem, healing totem, and flame shock ability; a mage's fireball and fireblast, and conjure water, mana gem, mage armour, and intellect buff; a paladin's blessing of wisdom; a priest's shield and flash heal; and a warlock's imp and drain health.
It all seems to have come together pretty well so far! I'm currently level 40ish and I've had no major issues when it comes to facing enemies. I'm easy killing things 4-5 levels above my own and I feel like an all powerful force of FIRE!
That's not to say that things can't kill me.
I may have had one teeny issue with the following mob:
These evil little things can shield themselves against fire, making them immune to me! And I may have had to quickly heal and flee before returning with an interrupt in tow.
Luckily my drain health isn't fire based, and I'm fairly sure there aren't that many enemies in the game that can do that, so I'm not altogether perturbed. But still, it was quite a shock going from murdering everything in seconds to finding something that made itself immune to me.
The audacity. 😂
I'm absolutely loving the loot system in this private server. I feel as though I'm playing WoW but with Action RPG loot settings!
When I first started the Iron Man mode, I was a little bit worried about gearing up my character. Turns out there was nothing to worry about. I have never found more random loot in my entire 12-year WoW experience. I'm getting greens and blues, all with spiffy enchants, all over the place.
Just like in Diablo or something most gear you find is useless, but there is the occasional good one! 😁 It literally took me til level 20ish to replace my level 4 staff, simply because none were dropping for me. I was getting swords, bows, axes, everything, just took forever to get a staff.
Thanks to allllll the loot drops, I was able to make enough gold to buy myself the training for riding and a mount. In fact, I had more than enough.
So used to the amount of gold necessary in normal WoW, I prepared myself for a 40g training fee. Only to find the training fee for level 20 was a mere 4g and the mount was 9g.
So I spent the rest of my gold on bagspace!! 😄 Much needed bagspace. Because there is SO MUCH LOOT. And I can't buy the good netherweave bags because I'm basically on Solo Self-Found. I mean, I could do tailoring and do it myself... but... well... I don't want to. 🤣
The levelling in this does not feel like a slog in any way whatsoever.
In retail WoW, with no heirlooms, my blood elf might be level 8 as she traverses through the Orb of Translocation to get to Undercity and then Orgrimmar. In this, I was level 13.
Although, in saying that, it's entirely possible that the levelling slows down once I hit Burning Crusade content. We'll see!
Being a special game-mode, whenever someone completes the Iron Man challenge or dies during it, it's announced to the whole server. And I've seen plenty of people dying in it, then the flood of /world chat begins, "Oh man, glad I've already done my Iron Man achievement! It was so painful."
I haven't come across anything painful really? So, I'm bracing myself for a sharp difficulty increase come Burning Crusade.
Anyway, I'm at about level 40 right now, so I am a bit past the halfway mark for this challenge! 😄 I just felt like shouting about how fantastic this private server is. I haven't really -enjoyed- WoW in years.
May I reach the end of this challenge and earn myself a glorious victory!
Until next time!! 🙃