Northern Barrens Exploded

Northern Barrens was a change from Durotar. My slightly dinged up Troll Druid followed the multiple quests leading into the zone to find things were a little different than they used to be. The very first quests were, you guessed it, collect plainstrider beaks and kill quillboar. The main differences this time was that the quest givers were now right at the entrance to the Barrens cutting down on running time drastically. From there you ride on a caravan and defend it from attacks up to another outpost.

Here you meet up with the legend of the barrens, Mankrik. Unfortunately he once again tells you to collect 60 tusks. The other quests in that area have more interesting mechanics including capturing a prisoner then choosing between torturing it or rewarding it in order to get information. Another quest from this hub involves you finding a kodo near the quillboar den and collecting grain sacks for it. In my personal experience there were not enough grain sacks in the area and it would probably be a good idea to skip that quest.

The next quest takes place on another more difficult caravan ride to the Crossroads, I say more difficult because you use two buttons instead of one. Crossroads has its usual quests such as the oases and the hunting quests which and with Echeyakee. The centaur quests are still in as well but with slightly different mechanics making for less run time and a better overall experience.

After that you fly to Ratchet to begin the goblin portion of the barrens and begin the massively updated pirate quests. I'll leave the mechanics of them for you to see but they are much better and involve much less running back and forth than they used to. The only other real quest from the barrens leads you to kill and trap some raptors which was quite easy, but the boss raptor seemed to have a slightly long respawn time. From here you take a boat ride north up the river to do the Samophlange chain. It seemed the same as before but with one more quest tacked on the end.

Last but not least you kill harpies in the northwest corner. Overall Northern Barrens had some fun new things at the beginning but seemed to taper off near the end. I would recommend playing through it until you finish the pirate quests, then grabbing the quest from Crossroads that leads to where my next article will be focused, Ashenvale.