Goblin country
Last time we pushed deep into the Eastern Woods. This update we opened the woods on the far side of Temuair. Take the Western Woodlands road off the map and you land at the mouth of a long chain of hunting circles, sixteen of them, and we have been through every one.
The east was a slow climb, mantises up to faeries. The west starts where the east leaves off and keeps going well past it. The first circle drops you among wolves, kobolds and goblins around level thirty. From there it is goblins for a good while: Goblin Soldiers, then the bigger Warriors, then the heavy Guards, each circle a tier meaner than the one before.
Keep going and the goblins give way to Hobgoblins and the walking-mushroom Shriekers you met deep in the east, and at the very end of the chain the fey turn up, Faeries and Wisps, in circles that run up near level a hundred and twenty. So the western woods are the high country. If the crypt and the east carry a hunter to about seventy, this is where you go after that.
Each beast drops what it should. The goblins and kobolds give up their skulls, a Goblin Guard now and then a Goblin Helmet, the hobgoblins a Wooden Club, the wolves their fur and locks, and the Shriekers, Faeries and Wisps at the deep end will sometimes part with a strong healing or mana draught, a Mor Ioc Deum or an Ard Ioc Deum, even a Faerie's Wing. The rarest things on these lists, the gem and god-touched gear, still wait on systems we have not built, so for now it is skulls, wings, potions and coin. Same as the east.
Every circle reads its right name now too. They used to come up as a generic "Western Woodlands 1, 2, 3" jumble; glance at the map name or use your Look skill and you will read "West Woodland 8-1" and the rest, in order. Go if you have the levels for it. The early circles are a step past the crypt; the far ones are not.
Throttler wants a wife
Out in one of the deeper western circles stands a brute named Throttler, alone in his stretch of wood. Talk to him and you find he is lonely. Goblins took his last wife, he says, and he would dearly love another, and would you be so kind as to find him one.
So you take the job and head to Mileth. This is the first quest in our world you finish by saying something out loud. Stand near one of the women of Mileth, Riona at the inn, Aingeal in the tavern, a few others, and say "Throttler Wife". One of them will take pity, press a letter into your hand, and send you off with some choice words about that brute out west. Carry the letter to Throttler and he is yours in gratitude forever: a hundred thousand experience and a mark on your legend for playing matchmaker.
It will not work unless you have taken the quest from him first, and you cannot farm the letter off the townswomen, so it is one favor, one wife.
Two gardens, and a horse you cannot kill
The west was the big job, but we also filled two corners of the Eastern Woods that had been sitting empty, the ones the crossroads gates pointed at with nothing behind them. The Enchanted Garden and the Wasteland have their wildlife now, mantises and vipers and wasps, the Wasteland being the gentler low-level twin of the pair.
The Enchanted Garden also holds something you should not swing at. A pale steed sacred to the goddess of compassion, the Glioca Horse, wanders the grass there. You can try to fight it. You will not win.
Three quarters of a million health, almost no experience for the trouble, nothing to drop, and it will not so much as chase you. It is there to be a horse. Leave it be.
New faces in quiet places
A few people moved into spots that had been standing empty.
Down where the world map sets you at the mouth of the Kasmanium Mines, there is a weathered watchman now, Sennaan. Ask him what waits below and he will tell you of the war raging in the deep warrens, the Draco against the Grimlok, and warn you that only the most seasoned Aislings have any business going further down.
And two keepers settled into the Eastern Woods. Coibhi, an old druid who tends the standing stones in the grove off the Enchanted Garden and will talk your ear off about the four elements if you let him. And Rowena, a gentle woman in a hidden clearing deep in the trees, who sits and listens to the song of the sylvan folk. Neither sells a thing or teaches a thing. They are simply there, which is the whole of it.
