Enuhal's journey through Azeroth - World of Warcraft Classic 1-60 on a fresh hardcore server

[Enuhal]

Enuhal's journey through Azeroth - World of Warcraft Classic 1-60 on a fresh hardcore server

Introduction

Recently, Blizzard has released fresh classic era servers for World of Warcraft, both softcore and hardcore, as part of the 20th anniversary celebration of the game. I used to be an avid WoW player not that long ago - I played vanilla as a young teenager, from the beginning to early WotlK, stepped into the private server world for a few months and returned for the release of classic, where I played until the release of the Cataclysm pre-patch (and completed all the raiding content that I had missed during vanilla). Since I'm playing a lot of single player RPGs in no-reload mode, I've thought about doing a simliar challenge for WoW a long time ago already, before official hardcore servers existed or the hardcore community even really took shape. My first real attempt at actually playing under self-imposed hardcore rules ended in the Hillsbrad Mines, when a couple of dwarves, called to aid by a named miner in there, spawned unexpectedly on top of me. I chose what was essentially a dead server for this challenge, so things played out a bit more like in a single player game. By the time I started a second attempt, the hardcore community had started forming, and with my previously gained experience and a couple of tips and tricks from other players, I was able to succeed this time around.
However, eventually the official hardcore servers arrived, and I decided to try and make it to level 60 on those as well. However, this time around I failed again, going after the Ashenvale water elementals and their leader, Tideress, too early. At this point I stopped playing hardcore and eventually quit the game at the end of WotlK classic, but it did irk me that I didn't manage to reach level 60 on an official hardcore server - so, when the annivsersary servers came around, I decided to give it one last try.

I'm playing, as pretty much always, a tauren druid. Enuhal is actually the name of my original tauren druid from vanilla times, and I've leveled a total of 8 druids in WoW, 4 of them all the way to 60 (and in two cases later on to 70 and 80 as well, though leveling is much easier in the expansions). Aside from playing on the european hardcore server, Soulseeker, I am also playing in self-found mode, which means I can't trade with other players, use the auction house and send/receive mail (except from quest NPCs). I aim to level almost exclusively by questing, and mostly by myself, but I will team up with other players to avoid griefing during killquests or for especially dangerous/elite areas and quests. Dungeons are something I will mostly avoid entirely (there might be exceptions), even though I do enjoy tanking a lot - I just don't like the idea of being entirely reliant on strangers to keep me alive. At least in outside elite areas, there is always a way out, even if they're as big as Jintha'Alor. Most of the run has already been played - I decided against concurrent updates because posting a run that might end due a disconnect - a frequent danger in a game played on online servers with no disconnect protection - seemed a bit unsatisfying to me, so I wanted to wait if there'd be a worthwhile story to tell.

My setup is extremely light on addons, and I don't even have weakauras installed, contrary to what I would use for raiding. Here is the full list:

Auctionator (purely for vendor prices of quest rewards - since we're playing self found, auctions aren't available anyway)
Druid Bar Classic (allows us to see our mana while in animal form)
Gathermate 2 Classic (allows our map to remember herbalism spots)
Deathlog (gives us a notification whenever someone on the server dies)
Nova World Buffs (I mostly have this for infos on layering, might also help in felwood later on)
Questie (this gives us some information on quest, saving me from having to look up too much stuff on wowhead)
Rarescanner (alerts us to rare spawns in the area)

And that's pretty much it. Let's enter Mulgore!

 

[Enuhal]

Part 1 - Mulgore

As all tauren do, we start at the Red Cloud Mesa, make sure our configurations and addons are all working as intended and start questing. There's nothing dangerous in this introductory area, and we have a little bit of luck by looting a 6 slot bag early on, which is a very nice find:

Spoiler

After 48 minutes, we make it to Bloodhoof Village, our new home for a couple of hours:

Spoiler

Before we start questing around the area, we move to Thunderbluff in order to learn our primary professions, herbalism and alchemy. Alchemy gives us a constant supply of healing and mana potions, plus temporary (essentially permanent as long as we have the herbs) stat boosts of various kind. It always struck me as a bit strange that Tauren, who get a racial bonus to herbalism, don't have a trainer for what should be their favored profession in Bloodhoof Village. Well, we don't find too many herbs early on anyway, due to the high server population, but the questing goes rather well - especially as we find a recipe for the elixir of minor agility:

Spoiler

That's a pretty good find for the early game - once we get acess to switthistles, this will be a great elixir to add to our arsenal.

I did spend some time to train fishing, mostly to improve our cooking. Cooking is our most important secondary profession (the only one that really matters), as the stamina and spirit bonus from cooked food is quite valuable during leveling - we only use fishing to get past the first ~120 cooking skill points, as there is a distinct lack of meat in the early horde zones. While I do learn first aid as well, this is really not needed for a druid during leveling (though, starting with silk, making bandages and selling them nets you a slight profit) - I might use the very occasional bandage late in the game if I ever run into an area where I have to heal after pretty much every mob and consequently run low on mana.

Eventually we find a few decent herbs and brew up some potions of minor defense and lion's strength (later adding in minor troll blood), and we also buy two more 6 slot bags. Nothing of notes happens during the next couple of quests, though we decide to retreat from the dwarven digsite at one point, destroying their tools at Thunderbluff instead, as we're at risk of getting swarmed. We get to level 10 - time for the first druid class quest to gain access to bear form. Our first talent point goes into Nature's Grasp, a great safety option (future points will go into feral talents, as we want Feline Swiftness as quickly as possible - we will go all the way to Leader of the Pack and return to Balance for Omen of Clarity, getting Furor only in the final few levels). To get bear form, we need to beat Lunaclaw, who can be pretty tough - Deathlog shows us that, from time to time, druids actually die here - so we take the safest route by keeping our foe under entantling roots during most of the fight, patiently making use of the 5 second rule for mana regeneration if needed:

Spoiler

Patience is one of the most important qualities needed for successful hardcore play in WoW. I would also mention awareness of your surroundings and game knowledge as the other two most crucial ones. Something like reaction time, while useful, is not actually that important if you manage to avoid most unneccessary risks.
Since we're basically in the Barrens already we take a quick walk to the various flight points for later, also turning in two fetch quests. On our way, we spot perhaps the most deadly inhabitants of the place, the elite alliance patrol - we make sure to stay at a safe distance:

Spoiler

Back to Mulgore. We 're about to face the highest level enemy in the zone, Arra'chea - we find the semi-rare Ghost Howl nearby, providing us with another useful quest:

Spoiler

While we fight Arra'chea, a flatland prowler joins the battle, which is potentially a bit scary, but bear form is defensively very powerful and can withstand quite a beating. While this might look close, I still had a healing potion ready to go (the main reason I didn't use one earlier on is because Arra'chea can stun, and getting caught out of form is very dangerous for a druid):

Our next round of questing in northern Mulgore nets us another 6 slot bag - great!

Spoiler

And we encounter Mazzranache, our second rarespawn, though he drops nothing of note.

For our final two quests in the area, we have to enter the cave to the east - there's this unofficial rule in hardcore classic: "Never enter a cave" - as there is a good chance of getting trapped in there by respawns with no good way to flee. I can't really afford to stick to that rule - I need all the questing experience I can get since I'm skipping most dungeons. However, both quests in there are kill quests, so there's no reason not to team up with two other nearby players who are doing the same thing, so this turns out rather easy for us:

Spoiler

We're leaving Mulgore at level 12. On to the Barrens!

 

[Enuhal]

Part 2 - The Barrens, and a little bit of Durotar & Silverpine

After a little bit of early Crossroad quests, I make a short trip to Durotar, doing the high level quests in that zone, including a venture into Skull Rock and a battle against Gazz'uz, the enemy that racks up the most kills against hardcore characters according to Deathlog. However, I'm already at level 14 at this point, which most people who face him are not, so the fight is not that all that tough, though still a little bit close. Back to the Barrens, we only team up for the quillboar killquests, working solo for the remainder of the leveling process until level 15, at which point we do the second druid class quest, which grants access to our first poison dispel - a lot of people skip that quest as it involves a very tricky fight at the top of a mountain, a 1v3 battle against the burning blade - however, with our elixirs and with a planned use of a healing potion, we get the desired results:

Spoiler

Shortly after this, after reaching level 16, I decide one my dungeon policy for the run - as we've recently visited Skull Rock, we've unlocked all possible quests for Ragefire Chasm, the lowest level dungeon available for horde, and I decide that I will try my hand at this one, but no others after that - the reasoning is as following:
a) This one comes very early in the run, so restarting from this point in case of failure wouldn't be as bad.
b) This dungeon is the only one with essentially zero mechanics outside of what you'd encounter during regular open world questing, so messing it up (unless you venture into the laval, which results in instant death) is kind of hard, even with complete strangers on your side

My group includes two other druids - one as a healer, also at level 16, and one on level 14 who is just kind of there (I am the tank, as this role gives me the most control over the situation, and I am very confident in my bear tanking skills as this has been my primary role for the entirety of classic), a level 14 mage and a level 16 rogue. Things go fairly well - for one of the pulls the healer has to use a mana potion, the rest is rather easy, even though some party members do a few weird and risky things at times. Still, I am, in the end, entire reliant on the good judgement of my healer for my survival, which does reinforce my decision that this is the only dungeon we're doing. Well, RFC quest turn-ins do get us to level 17, which is very welcome:

Spoiler

Later on, I would see on Deathlog that, on average, people actually don't die THAT much in dungeons. The risk does, in the end, not seem super high, contrary to my expectations. Still, I feel better being in total control of my fate myself.
One of the quests for RFC, shared with us by a party member, leads us to the Undercity, which is a great reason to do our waterform quest, which has us entering Silverpine Forest. Undercity is notorious for its buggy and deadly elevators, and we take great care anytime we use one of these. Silverpine is a pretty deadly zone, as it houses multiple Sons of Arugal, high-level elites that will kill you if they spot you. I've put them in a target macro that I am constantly using, so whenver one is close by, I will hopefully notice it in time. Since we're already here, we do some of the easier quests in the zone - we skip out on the quests surrounding The Weaver and a big questchain against the worgen, plus everything on Fenris Isle or in Pyrewood Village - all of these can be pretty deadly or annoying. And indeed, we do spot a Son of Arugal, just in time before we would've run into it:

Spoiler

We now pick up improved bash, which makes bash + healing ourselves into a more viable strategy (though bash has a tendency to miss - I honestly nowadays prefer war stomp + regrowth + rejuvenation).
Enuhal picks up the sea lion pendant, and back in the Barrens (where we've left our hearthstone), we get to level 18 with some quests at Ratchet. We move north to the venture company goblins, getting the second half of the sea lion pendant and doing the sampophlange questline, plus the harpy quests. After we finally get our water form, we have enough silver to buy all of our current class skills. I use almost the entire arsenal of the druid class during leveling (except for rebirth, cower, and maybe tranquility/hurricane, though I can see use cases for these), so I don't like to skip out on anything. People will tell players to only pick up specific very important skills to save up gold, but they usually care about having the gold for an early mount - I don't. I'm fine just having travel form for a long time. Eventually we will have enough gold either way, but I don't care if it's very late in the game.
A quick tour of the south-east of Crossroads allows us to get some nice gear upgrades from the raptor/turtle/centaur quests, and we return to the north for one last time, for the harpy quest and samophlange finale. Interestingly enough, there is no one actually going into the north-eastern cave to kill the boss for the manual cover, so I have to venture in by myself. This is a bit sktechy, and at one point I have to fight three enemies at once, but with warstomp + heals we win that fight even without using a healing potion. Boss Copperplug falls to the claws of our bear form:

We close out the northern Barrens with the final part of the centaur questline and the Guns of Northwatch, both of which I do with a party for safety and to avoid griefing each other (especially important for the escort quest). This gets us to level 20, so we gain access to cat form - due to the one point we had put into Nature's Grasp, we don't have Feline Swiftness quite yet, but we will be at that point soon. Just the easiest southern Barrens quests do get us to level 21, so now we finally move a bit faster.

Next time, we shall venture into the Stonetalon Mountains while returning to the Barrens from time to time, and will also tackle the level 20-30 zones, Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothills.

 

[Alesia_BH]

I don’t know what this is but I like it already!

I have some catch-up reading to do for sure.

Btw, sorry I didn’t follow the PoE run too closely. I was genuinely worried about PoE2 spoilers. I don’t have any intention of playing WoW so that won’t be a problem here. Looking forward to it!

 

[BelgarathMTH]

This is a cool idea. I've never seen a WoW run written up as a documented "no-reload" run. It would have to be classic-WotLK, because starting with Cata, they nerfed the questing combat so bad a hardcore run would be fairly meaningless, plus the Deathwing event causes constant unavoidable dying in Cata.

I'm currently leveling a paladin and a priest in Anniversary Classic on Dreamscythe, so not hardcore officially, but I like to play as though I'm in hardcore without actually being in hardcore. So far, the paladin is to level 21 with no deaths, and the priest to level 20, but there have been several close calls where I was sure my "no-reload" status was over, and I only escaped death with a sliver of health left.

Good luck - I hope you make it to 60!

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Part 2 - The Barrens, and a little bit of Durotar & Silverpine

After a little bit of early Crossroad quests, I make a short trip to Durotar, doing the high level quests in that zone, including a venture into Skull Rock and a battle against Gazz'uz, the enemy that racks up the most kills against hardcore characters according to Deathlog. However, I'm already at level 14 at this point, which most people who face him are not, so the fight is not that all that tough, though still a little bit close. Back to the Barrens, we only team up for the quillboar killquests, working solo for the remainder of the leveling process until level 15, at which point we do the second druid class quest, which grants access to our first poison dispel - a lot of people skip that quest as it involves a very tricky fight at the top of a mountain, a 1v3 battle against the burning blade - however, with our elixirs and with a planned use of a healing potion, we get the desired results:

Spoiler

View attachment 13475

Shortly after this, after reaching level 16, I decide one my dungeon policy for the run - as we've recently visited Skull Rock, we've unlocked all possible quests for Ragefire Chasm, the lowest level dungeon available for horde, and I decide that I will try my hand at this one, but no others after that - the reasoning is as following:
a) This one comes very early in the run, so restarting from this point in case of failure wouldn't be as bad.
b) This dungeon is the only one with essentially zero mechanics outside of what you'd encounter during regular open world questing, so messing it up (unless you venture into the laval, which results in instant death) is kind of hard, even with complete strangers on your side

My group includes two other druids - one as a healer, also at level 16, and one on level 14 who is just kind of there (I am the tank, as this role gives me the most control over the situation, and I am very confident in my bear tanking skills as this has been my primary role for the entirety of classic), a level 14 mage and a level 16 rogue. Things go fairly well - for one of the pulls the healer has to use a mana potion, the rest is rather easy, even though some party members do a few weird and risky things at times. Still, I am, in the end, entire reliant on the good judgement of my healer for my survival, which does reinforce my decision that this is the only dungeon we're doing. Well, RFC quest turn-ins do get us to level 17, which is very welcome:

Spoiler

View attachment 13476

Later on, I would see on Deathlog that, on average, people actually don't die THAT much in dungeons. The risk does, in the end, not seem super high, contrary to my expectations. Still, I feel better being in total control of my fate myself.
One of the quests for RFC, shared with us by a party member, leads us to the Undercity, which is a great reason to do our waterform quest, which has us entering Silverpine Forest. Undercity is notorious for its buggy and deadly elevators, and we take great care anytime we use one of these. Silverpine is a pretty deadly zone, as it houses multiple Sons of Arugal, high-level elites that will kill you if they spot you. I've put them in a target macro that I am constantly using, so whenver one is close by, I will hopefully notice it in time. Since we're already here, we do some of the easier quests in the zone - we skip out on the quests surrounding The Weaver and a big questchain against the worgen, plus everything on Fenris Isle or in Pyrewood Village - all of these can be pretty deadly or annoying. And indeed, we do spot a Son of Arugal, just in time before we would've run into it:

Spoiler

View attachment 13477

We now pick up improved bash, which makes bash + healing ourselves into a more viable strategy (though bash has a tendency to miss - I honestly nowadays prefer war stomp + regrowth + rejuvenation).
Enuhal picks up the sea lion pendant, and back in the Barrens (where we've left our hearthstone), we get to level 18 with some quests at Ratchet. We move north to the venture company goblins, getting the second half of the sea lion pendant and doing the sampophlange questline, plus the harpy quests. After we finally get our water form, we have enough silver to buy all of our current class skills. I use almost the entire arsenal of the druid class during leveling (except for rebirth, cower, and maybe tranquility/hurricane, though I can see use cases for these), so I don't like to skip out on anything. People will tell players to only pick up specific very important skills to save up gold, but they usually care about having the gold for an early mount - I don't. I'm fine just having travel form for a long time. Eventually we will have enough gold either way, but I don't care if it's very late in the game.
A quick tour of the south-east of Crossroads allows us to get some nice gear upgrades from the raptor/turtle/centaur quests, and we return to the north for one last time, for the harpy quest and samophlange finale. Interestingly enough, there is no one actually going into the north-eastern cave to kill the boss for the manual cover, so I have to venture in by myself. This is a bit sktechy, and at one point I have to fight three enemies at once, but with warstomp + heals we win that fight even without using a healing potion. Boss Copperplug falls to the claws of our bear form:
View attachment 13478

We close out the northern Barrens with the final part of the centaur questline and the Guns of Northwatch, both of which I do with a party for safety and to avoid griefing each other (especially important for the escort quest). This gets us to level 20, so we gain access to cat form - due to the one point we had put into Nature's Grasp, we don't have Feline Swiftness quite yet, but we will be at that point soon. Just the easiest southern Barrens quests do get us to level 21, so now we finally move a bit faster.

Next time, we shall venture into the Stonetalon Mountains while returning to the Barrens from time to time, and will also tackle the level 20-30 zones, Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothills.

I watched a video of a hardcore group running Ragefire Chasm the other day. Based on the voice chat instructions the one experienced player in the group was giving to their tank, I thought it was extremely risky.

First, there are several extremely large mobs blocking some places in the path forward where they needed to carefully pull no more than two out of the many. A clueless tank you don't know or can't communicate with could have easily wiped them in those places by rushing forward carelessly.

Second, one of the bosses has a knockback attack into the lava if you fight him on a bridge. The experienced player instructed the tank to pull and kite the boss back off the bridge and face him to a cave wall while the rest of the group stayed back and refrained from attacking. Even one member of a random group who didn't know about this could easily have wiped the whole group right there, I thought.

I notice you're fighting in bear form, so you were probably tanking the dungeon yourself, but personally I wouldn't have taken the risk of having clueless dps who might have overpulled or pulled early.

The thing I don't like about the idea of doing dungeons in hardcore is that you lose so much control to other players. Clueless or careless players can and will end your run.

I'm glad it went well for you, though. Whew.

 

[Enuhal]

I don’t know what this is but I like it already!

I have some catch-up reading to do for sure.

Btw, sorry I didn’t follow the PoE run too closely. I was genuinely worried about PoE2 spoilers. I don’t have any intention of playing WoW so that won’t be a problem here. Looking forward to it!

Thanks WoW is certainly very different in style to the pausable party-based singleplayer RPGs we usually write about in these kind of threads. No pausing, no turn system (though the 1,5 second global cooldown, which is very present in the classic version of the game, does make it less action-y and a bit more relaxed compared to something like Diablo 2 Hardcore, which is a lot more about execution), a decent amount of RNG, and an absolutely huge game world with other player potentially aiding or interferring with any progress. Less complexity in terms of mechanical character development and tactics (there are three skill trees and a bunch of abilities, but it's not like controlling a six person party with huge spellbooks on multiple characters) but a lot more chances to mess up with all the dangers in the game world, such as roaming high level elites, patrols in general, caves that are essentially death traps, random crowd control or bad RNG when you're already in trouble or just failed pulls of too many enemies/overconfidence in what your character can handle. Luckily, druids are very good at getting away in the open world (less so in dungeons and caves, where entangling roots/nature's grasp, the movement speed bonus from feline swiftness or travel form don't work).

This is a cool idea. I've never seen a WoW run written up as a documented "no-reload" run. It would have to be classic-WotLK, because starting with Cata, they nerfed the questing combat so bad a hardcore run would be fairly meaningless, plus the Deathwing event causes constant unavoidable dying in Cata.

I'm currently leveling a paladin and a priest in Anniversary Classic on Dreamscythe, so not hardcore officially, but I like to play as though I'm in hardcore without actually being in hardcore. So far, the paladin is to level 21 with no deaths, and the priest to level 20, but there have been several close calls where I was sure my "no-reload" status was over, and I only escaped death with a sliver of health left.

Good luck - I hope you make it to 60!

First of all, good luck with your own classic leveling experience I think the classic version of the game really offers the best leveling experience that WoW has ever had (while I prefer TBC for raiding and endgame content in general). A decent amount of difficulty has already been taken away from leveling in TBC - it's less noticeable, but the total experience needed is reduced, some elites are turned into non-elites and additional quests have been added in (mostly in dustwallow marsh), which helps with potential dry spells. WOTLK intensified those adjustements even more (up to the introduction of heirlooms) - which is the reason Blizzard has stated that, unlike the non-HC anniversary servers, the HC servers will not transition to TBC once all classic phases are over, as HC is best experienced in classic alone. But yeah, I think Cataclysm hardcore would be pretty pointless.

I watched a video of a hardcore group running Ragefire Chasm the other day. Based on the voice chat instructions the one experienced player in the group was giving to their tank, I thought it was extremely risky.

First, there are several extremely large mobs blocking some places in the path forward where they needed to carefully pull no more than two out of the many. A clueless tank you don't know or can't communicate with could have easily wiped them in those places by rushing forward carelessly.

Second, one of the bosses has a knockback attack into the lava if you fight him on a bridge. The experienced player instructed the tank to pull and kite the boss back off the bridge and face him to a cave wall while the rest of the group stayed back and refrained from attacking. Even one member of a random group who didn't know about this could easily have wiped the whole group right there, I thought.

I notice you're fighting in bear form, so you were probably tanking the dungeon yourself, but personally I wouldn't have taken the risk of having clueless dps who might have overpulled or pulled early.

The thing I don't like about the idea of doing dungeons in hardcore is that you lose so much control to other players. Clueless or careless players can and will end your run.

I'm glad it went well for you, though. Whew.

I think being the tank gave me a decent measure of control, as I did all of the pulls and made any timing decisions (if one of the other players would have started doing any pulls, I would have asked them to stop, and if they didn't I would have left the party). I noticed pretty early on from their playstyle that the healer knew what they were doing, so I felt confident enough about my own survival to continue. It's true, there are still some potential pitfalls, but since everyone played with enough discipline and without rushing forward, I wasn't too worried about that one - and in RFC, there is still a decent chance to get away, as the dungeon isn't very large and I had swiftness potions ready. But yeah, in all future dungeons a lot of these risks increase by quite a lot, and I am a bit perplexed by, comparatively, how few dungeon deaths I am seeing on death log. It seems like most hardcore players, at least on my server, do actually play very, very carefully in dungeons, otherwise the numbers should be way higher.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 3 - Stonetalon Mountains, more Barrens, and some Ashenvale and Hillsbrad Foothills

We team up with a warlock for the tauren escort in Stonetalon Mountains, and find a Shaman and Hunter for Besseleth, the elite spider queen. A team-up with a shaman for the elite-part of Earthen Arise nets us a pair of new bracers. I sadly didn't take any screenshots of this early venture in Stonetalon Mountains - basically, we do everything outside of the valley leading to Desolace and the area up top leading to the alliance base. Ending up at level 23 after that, we return to the southern Barrens.

During a fight against a quillboar for "Weapons of Choice", we suffer our first disconnect. This is one of the big downsides of hardcore WoW - if your internet fails, you might just simply die. There is no recourse, no appeal, if you disconnect in a bad spot you might just be dead with nothing you can do about it. Now, in my case this was a router shutdown, so there was no immediately loading back in in hopes of salvaging the situation. So, when you disconnect, your character doesn't immediately disappear from the game world - they stay on the server for about 20-30 seconds (accounts vary, never tested it myself) - so, the question is, can your character, if they are in combat (which I was) survive their current situation for that long? If you're facing more than one opponent or an alite, or are simply on low HP, the answer is almost certainly no. However, if your health is looking good and you're only dealing with one opponent, you stand a decent chance at survival. In my case, our enemy was already badly hurt. When I was finally able to log back in, I was still alive (though not exactly in a healthy spot) - and our foe lay dead before us, presumably having died to our "thorns" buff - I was actually able to take a screenshot during my disconnection (you can see that something isn't quite right as I am shown to be in bear form while my action bar shows my caster form spells), and one right after I logged back in:

Spoiler

Well, that was certainly terrifying. Let's hope it doesn't happen again.

After more southern barrens quests, we finish up at level 24 and even take down Isha Awak, the first time I'm fighting a mob 3 levels above us (and thus orange) - not super safe, but we still had a potion ready:

Now, a little bit of Ashenvale - this is where my last hardcore character died, so I will only do lower level quests here during this first visit. Two players team up with us for Torek's Assault, and the Warsong Outrunner for the area-wide fetchquest is literally at the furthest spot possible, almost at Azshara:

Spoiler

By random happenstance we are able to get the Ashenvale Hunt done, despite being underleveld for it - we were just in the area for both the hippogryph and the cat when someone higher level player was fighting them, and they invited us to team up - the bear we hunted down ourselves. For now, we don't do the water elementals, the satyrs and the furbolg cave, leaving at level 25 while we move towards Tarren's Mill. On the way we can do some high level silverpine quests such as Beren's Peril. Our visit to Hillsbrad is quite successful, as we are able to finish all non-elite quests in the area (except for the level 30+ ones), teaming up for the higher level "Battle of Hillsbrad" parts, such as the town hall and the mine. There is a close moment at the townhall where we have to escape, but with Nature's Grasp and a potion, we make it out (no screenshot, I was too focused to think about taking one).

Back to Stonetalon - we're now at level 27, perferctly reasonable for the higher level quests around here. Even Gerenzo, whom I would usually skip - I only did that quest because someone else was searching for aid, and it still feels a bit scary moving around these heights with tons of opportunities to fall off and die:

Spoiler

We ended up having to solo the Bloodfury Ripper, a dangerous elite harpy, as there was just nobody to be found to team up with. Not my ideal choice, but I didn't want to leave the area without finishing that questline, so I ended up using entangling roots and starfire to soften up the harpy, eventually taking the fight into melee combat with bear form - quite close, honestly too close. I should have rooted her for longer:

Spoiler

A return to Ashenvale lets us finish up all the remaining quests there, with the exception oif the shredder pages - we never find enough of them (which in turn makes me decide that I won't even attempt the Stranglethorn page quest). A group is gathering for Tear of the Moon and the Alliance Patrol in southern barrens, so we decide to join, as we're at level 28. Since we have done Ordanus in Ashenvale (in a group of 3, since this encounter is absolutely deadly), we now have both quests for "The Den", and find a party for this first non-dungeon elite area. It's fairly easy, honestly, and gets us to level 29. Now we can move on to Thousand Needles (we still have the Hillsbrad Elite Quests open when it comes to the 20-30 areas).

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Man, losing a hardcore run to a technical glitch would be so frustrating and heartbreaking! I'm really happy for you that your luck held through a DC.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 4 - Thousand Needles and the early parts of Alterac, Arathi and STV

We move to Thousand Needles, where we get to level 30 after some early quests - we get travel form, which is a big boost, and take that opportunity to buy the profession books for cooking and first aid. Teamups are required for parts of the "Test of Faith" questline (especially the harpy cave) and the elite panther - a decent amount of people actually die in this zone, so we're very careful with everything we do. After we hit level 31, we finally have enough funds to buy a level 12 bag, which costs a pretty hefty 9 gold from the Thunderbluff bag vendor. Shimmering Flats is left for later, and we move to Tarren's Mill, again, this time for the elite quests - the same group we find for those also does Frostmaw directly after, which is quite a bit above our level but safe in the numbers we show up with, and gets us our very first useful helm:

Spoiler

Strangely enough, while we fight our way to Frostmaw we find Helcular's Rod, which has, without exaggeration, taken me an entire level of grinding on another character before. The second part of that quest is one of the rare quests that I am skipping entirely, as it requires travel too close to Southshore, where high level alliance guards could easily spot and kill us. Getting the turtle stew recipe and doing the first raptor quest in Arathi gets us to level 32, which means we get access to ferocious bite, a pretty big tool for our cat form arsenal.
We return to Thousand Needles for shimmering flats - I really do enjoy questing here, a very efficient part of the area, though it's not great for herbalism. Still, with level 33 secured, Arathi, Alterac, STV and Desolace are now pretty wide open.

My choice is to get to STV first, where there are quite a few lower level quests. Sadly, we have our second experience with a disconnect here - while fighting an Elder Stranglethorn Tiger. Again, the games does still let me take screenshots while I am disconnecting. Luckily I was on pretty high hitpoints and still had a healing over time effect from regrowth on me and apparently barely took any damage while before my character disappeared from the gameworld, so I wasn't in a very scary position when I was finally able to log back in - here's the before and after:

Spoiler

This is a different stranglethorn tiger than the one I previously fought, I think (once again it was a router issue, so I wasn't able to log in for 5 minutes).

Since Tiger Mastery, the final quest in that chain, gets us a pretty big glove upgrade, we fight Sin'Dall despite being three levels below him - not much of an issue in bear form:

Now we do a first round of Alterac questing, and I notice that there's currently a group killing the elite ogres there - I am not yet ready for that, but I take the opportunity to sneak inside their area to see if the pretty rare vendor recipe for frost oil is up - and it is:

Spoiler

With our alchemy skills and the ability to buy a gyrochronatom from random engineering supply vendors, this means that we can do an additional questline the the badlands that requires a few profession items (we only have to skip the last part, which requires bracers from blacksmithing) - this also means that we can get a trinket with a sprint effect from there, which is great.

A quick trip to Swamp of Sorrows and Badlands to get flight paths, turn in breadcrumb quests and do the green whelpling quests is next on our list. After all that, we make it to level 35. Our cooking is now temporarily maxed out at 225 and won't get any higher until we find 12 giant eggs, which will take a very long time, but it doesn't really matter - every recipe we are actually going to use only requires 225 in cooking anyway (all the +12 stamina/spirit ones). First Aid just reached 210, but we have not found any mageweave yet, and herbalism is well beyond 225 already. Alchemy is at around 200.

We return to Alterac/Arathi for a bit, doing the mid level quests in both zones. The fleshstalker raptors are a bit tough at level 35 due to their lifedrain, but we get pretty lucky with their hearts, which usually have an abysmal droprats, so while we have to kill a lot of them, the quest doesn't last incredibly long:

Spoiler

With the first half of both of these areas done, we reach level 36. It's propably time to go to Desolace now, as we need at least level 38 to realistically continue in any of the previously visited areas.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 5 - Desolace, Dustwallow Marsh and a return to previously visited areas

Arriving in Desolace, we side with the Gelkis centaur clan and get in some very efficient questing - I must be one of the few players who enjoys this zone (though I admit, the visuals could be more appealing); Most of the quests here are around mid-level, though we can't quite complete all of them yet. Still, we are able to luck out on the timing for both caravan escort quests, both times aided by another player. However, we also suffer our biggest scare so far, outside of the disconnects: On the way to the northwestern part of the area, for the underwater/island quests, my awareness is less than stellar as I don't notice a deepstrider giant approaching me - I am caught completely off guard, and this elite giant hits HARD. I activate Nature's Grasp, which is still not improved by further talent points, and get very lucky that, despite the only 35% chance, the giant immediately gets entangled, allowing us to get away in travel form - the hitpoints I've lost in this screenshot are the result of only 2-3 hits (one of them being a crit), so you can guess that we really could have died here if not for the quick success on Nature's Grasp:

Spoiler

Well, we get to level 37,5 - but we need more experience, so we travel to Dustwallow Marsh (with some soothing spices in our bags) for the early part of that zone. The dragon quests in the south have to wait for later, but the early quests work out quite well. One of them involves swimming to the Theramore Docks, but guards generally won't reach you here - not that there's no danger, as high level elite sharks patrol these waters:

However, we stay far enough away as to not get in trouble and reach level 38. Now we move back to northern Stranglethorn, where we do the mid-level quests of the area, including the Vile Reef, an elite underwater area (two combinations of words a WoW player never wants to hear). We team up with an undead rogue (thankfully undead, otherwise they would not have been able to stay underwater for very long - our water form really helps a lot here). The southern Arathi quests are our only real underwater content still left after that. In any case, we even take down an elder saltwater crocolisk, first softening it up with some roots + starfire before finishing the fight in bear form (the key here, since our mana is very low, is to make use of the 5 second rule to take pauses and regenerate mana before going for starfire and rooting again):

Spoiler

Now we make a visit to the Swamp of Sorrows for the northern quests there, at the draenai camps (we team up with a mage for the escort and Noboru). The visit also allows me to train alchemy past 225, and we end up at 243 after some potion crafting - having now obtained most of the available recipes. After that, we move further north, to the Badlands, where we can do most of the quests already, having just gotten to level 39. There is a big ogre patrol and a high level rarespawn bird in this area, so we have to be quite careful, but the actual questing is very efficient. We make it to level 40, though we don't pick up our new skills quite yet as we're close to Arathi/Alterac, where we want to do a few higher level quests - Stones of Binding, and the syndicate quests (we team up with a priest for their leader). Now we get our level 40 skills, which gets us a ton of new abilities, including dire bear form and innervate, which should make sure that we won't come to have any downtime inbetween battles.
A quick round trip takes us back to Desolace for the high level quests in the zone - I can't find anyone for The Corrupter - luckily, this demon only has melee attacks, so we can root him forever:

Spoiler

We're able to team up with a hunter and a warrior for the finale of the centaur questline, something we would never hope to tackle by ourselves. Next, we turn back to Dustwallow for the jeweled pendant, though it drops very quickly, and turn in some stuff at Shimmering Flats. Now back to Arathi for the elite quests there - we quickly find a group for Fozruk (someone is looking just as we arrive). No luck for Stromgarde right away, so we turn to The Crown of Will questline in Alterac instead - it's easier than I remember and gets us to level 41 (we're just a party of 3 for that one). This means we get Leader of the Pack, great especially for group content, such as the upcoming Stromgarde. We finally do find a full group for that one, and everything goes quite well:

Spoiler

After doing the entire sigil questline, we're done here for now - the underwater quests still remain, but first we do some more alchemy - getting to 265, buying/learning the remaining vendor recipes (except for the major healing potion recipe in Winterspring). Herbalism is already at 280. We also do the 225 first aid quest, having now found enough mageweave cloth. In other news, we did find an 11 agility/10 stamina hammer in Stromgarde, which is now our new weapon. Chest and Bracers are in need of an upgrade, for everything else we now have something out of a 30+ area by now.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 6 - Mostly Southern Stranglethorn

We're stuck in Swamp of Sorrows for a bit after buying the last two trainer recipes for alchemy with a few minutes cooldown on our hearthstone and take the time to pick some blindweed, getting our herbalism to 290, so now we can officially pick any herb we would want (as there is no use case for black lotus for us), and the blindweed, together with some sungrass, should also get us to high enough alchemy for every recipe that we will be able to get.

We move to southern Arathi for the underwater quests here - this area is quite dangerous, as you are in cramped shipwrecks where random nagas can add through the walls/floors, you will get netted and can easily drown (luckily we have water form, so that's not really a concern), and some of the quest items are really hard to find:

Spoiler

However, everything goes according to plan; Most interestingly, the nature protection potions I have made for leveling alchemy greatly help against the spellcasters here. I have, sadly, sold most of them due to a lack of bank space, something which I really regret by now, as they have been extremely effective. We visist the badlands for a bit for the higher level elementals here, getting our first trinket, the Nifty Stopwatch:

Spoiler

We find a group for the first part of Broken Alliances and are now almost done with the zone (except for the final part of that questline, but that one's level 50 elite).

Now we travel to southern STV - still a ton to do in that zone, as it has a huge level spread. Enuhal starts out by hunting tons of elder mistavale gorillas - the sinew takes a long time to drop, our longest farm for a single quest item yet (about 45 minutes):

Spoiler

Sadly, we suffer another spot ot router trouble when fighting a bloodsail mage - this one ends up quite close. We log back in on very low hitpoints with the still-alive wizard immediately casting fireball at us. Only the immediate use of a healing potion keeps us alive (didn't take a screenshot upon my login, though). Well, we're still alive, at least, though if this ever happens while we're fighting multiple foes or an elite opponent, we are most likely screwed.
The Akiris quest gets us to level 43, and we start dealing with the skullsplitter trolls and bloodsail buccanneers (teaming up with a shaman for the final part - this one gets a bit tricks as totems seem to add mobs through the floors of ships, so we have to actually flee once). After pulsing blue shards and the zanzil quests, we only have the high level elite stuff left and move to Swamp of Sorrows and Dustwallow for the high level quests (43-45) we've left around there, and for Cortello's Riddle, which will get me a 14 slot bag. Wouldn't you know it, I actually find a very rare golden pearl at the beach:

Since I'm playing self-found, this is basically worthless, sadly - otherwise it would've been a pretty huge find. The final murloc quest here takes us into a rather dangerous cave, where we have to make sure to avoid the level 50 swamp talker:

Spoiler

We find a pretty good group for the next bunch of STV quests (against the elite ogres) and end up getting our revenge on a deepstrider in Desolace for our last quest in the swamp - roots and starfire only here, as we've soon how hard those will hit:

Spoiler

Our final stop for now are the Hinterlands - only the very few low level quests here, such as the skulls, the spider poison and getting Cortello's bag. We take the flight path and leave for now, as we're going to Feralas and Tanaris next (with a quick stop in Arathi as we found a group for the final part of the princess questline), where leveling will be quite efficient compared to all the travel we had to do for the last few levels. Enuhal also buys the PvP trinket in Orgrimmar. As PvP is disabled on hardcore servers but this trinket is still useful for PvE, blizzard made it buyable for 20 gold. This gets us out of fear/stun/charm effects once every 5 minutes.

Also, I propably should mention what the two duration-less buffs that Enuhal constantly has are, as they are somewhat unique to hardcore servers: The one with the green mountain in the background marks a self-found character, the grey/blue one is "soul of iron", which just means that the character has never died.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 7 - Feralas and Tanaris

We are close to level 46 as we arrive in Feralas, and are quite happy to find a druid trainer here, so we don't have to go back to Thundebluff to train our new abilities. Enuhal starts with the easy gnoll and ogre quests. At this point, I learn that, during this time, frontshredding was possible in this version of classic (It has since been patched - actually it was patched during this very run, and I will note when it was no longer possible for me). Frontshredding, for those who don't know, is a mechanic that used to be available on some private servers, but not in official vanilla/classic. Basically, shred is a very strong combo builder attack with the downside of it only being usable from behind your enemy, which is usually only possible during the opener or in group content. However, frontshredding works around that by using the wonky hitboxes of WoW mobs - you could move far enough into the hitbox to be considered behind the enemy, press shred and move back again - usually you shouldn't be able to do this, as the mob would either move back or turn around to avoid this being possible, but on the anniversary servers, this technique was available for a time. I, personally, never had the opportunity to do this before, so I decided to give it a try - I even reset my talent points to include "improved shred". As long as it was available, I had quite a bit of fun with this - it greatly increased our killing speed in the open world (though it was by no means crucial for anything).
After dealing with the grimtotem tauren, we move on to the second ogre questline, which infamously is lacking severely in shamans which you have to kill, forcing us to go into every crevasse of the map, including caves - and here we get a random epic drop, which is sadly pretty much useless for us (honestly, only a warrior would propably make any use of that one, and even for them it's not that great):

Spoiler

Since we're playing self found, we just have to vendor it, which is quite a sad feeling. At level 47, we leave Feralas for a bit (we're going to return for the higher level quests later on), making our way to Tanaris. On the way, we take along a hippogryff egg - and get the best possible result:

That's nice! The reward is still very little, but I won't complain. Also, we're at about the point where alchemy will just turn into a flat +25 agility for us (and, I guess, a steady supply of healing/mana potions, but we've not been using those very frequently). We won't find any herbs for any other useful potions we have recipes for anymore in these higher level areas, and since we're not doing fishing we don't even get the armor potion. All other useful recipes would be drops, so unless we get very lucky we propably won't see any of those.

Tanaris is actually pretty full (we haven't seen too many people outside of STV in the 30-45 range), the wastewander/pirate spots attract a lot of people, including AoE-farming mages, so it takes a while to get our kills. "In the Field" is our big creature killing quest here, and we end that one with the chicken escort quest (we've already done the one in Feralas together with a warlock, this time a rogue does the quest with us). This gets us to level 48, and through LFG chat, we find a group ofr Broken Alliances part 2, which gets us a very nice leather chestpiece that we'll propably wear until level 60. Since we're in the area, we start the "Ledger from Tanaris" quest - not very time efficient, but I've already noticed that we basically can't afford to skip any quests. Not having lots of rested XP and not doing any dungeon quests, plus the fact that in Phase 1 no quests in Silithus will be available, means that even having enough quests to reach 60 without grinding might get close. After we're done with the ledger, we continue questing in Tanaris, so we visit the southern half of the region, finishing our first expedition with the turtle escort:

Spoiler

We have to return south once more for the finale of the silithid questline - nobody else seems to be doing that one, so we have to move inside of this rather scary cave system by ourselves:

Spoiler

While the plan is to go back to Feralas now, we make a bit of a detour - someone is looking for help for the Monogrammed Sash quest, as the giant is up, and since it has a fairly long respawn time we want to take that opportunity - basically, we use entangling roots level 1 to spam roots as our ally, a mage, spams frostbolt. However, they're not interested in the followup right now, and neither of us has the materials anyway. We quickly do the two low-level opening quests in Azshara and get the flightpath, do the low level furbolg quest in felwood, get the flightpath (and our final important cooking recipe), and find a group once again for another high level STV elite quest, Message in a Bottle. "Facing Negolash" still remains in the area, and I decide to finally farm the buzzard wings we would need for that one - directly after, I find a group for the nearby searing gorge overseer elite quest, which I didn't intend to do at this point, but the opportunity is too good not to take it, as this enemy is pretty tough (a warlock ends up perma-fearing the overseer, which is kind of neccessary since he's pretty damn tough). Right after that, we find someone for Facing Negolash, a hunter - I just heal their pet while they kill the giant. The dodge trinket is a very useful reward for us.

My hearthstone is still in Tanaris - since we're on the eastern continent, we decide to pick up the mushroom for the Noggenfogger quest from the hinterlands. Since we're already there, we also take the biggest conscious risk of the run so far. After searching for a while and not finding anyone, I decide to try the chicken escort quest here by myself, which is a rather dangerous undertaking (we will have to fight at least 3 enemies at once, two times). Surprisingly, even with a hostile wolf added into the equation, our powerful dire bear form and the help of the chicken, plus the availability of frenzied regeneration and war stomp + regrowth + rejuvenation, allow us to emerge victorious without even using a potion, though we do have to let the chicken suffer a bit to avoid taking too much damage:

Spoiler

We're also farming some wildkins to pick up 12 giant eggs for the cooking quest in Tanaris.

By the way, we were actually planning to go to northern Feralas for a while now - the detour to the eastern kingdoms really got to be a very long one! Well, now we finally make it to our destination, farm water elementals and shrunken rock giants, yetis and hippogryphs (for long elegant feathers, which we will need for a hinterlands quest) and get to level 50. Since the hippogryphs are limited in number and only one of the various types has these feathers, we fly to Azshara for a time where there are more hippogryphs to find. Since we're here, we do the "Stealing Knowledge" quest, after a stealthy visit to the naga city, and turn in the various quest items all over the world. Finally we finish up Feralas with the harpy quest, teaming up with a shadowpriest for the elite one. Next up, we will do the very efficient and rewarding quests in the Hinterlands.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 7 - Hinterlands, Searing Gorge, Blasted Lands, Un'Goro Crater and Burning Steppes

You may notice that we have a mount now - this was not a priority for me, but we just got enough gold to afford one, and 20% more speed for outdoor travelling is still a nice boost.

Hinterlands questing might be our most efficient stretch of gaining experience since the early parts of the barrens. There are a ton of rewarding, quick and efficient killquests out here. In fact, we even find a second random world epic - The Blackskull Shield, an item we sadly can't even equip:

Spoiler

Now, just imagine if we'd been a warrior - with the mace we found in Feralas and this shield, we would have an epic defensive weapon + shield at level 51. Also, this is propably my first time finding 2 epics during leveling - pretty insane, though sadly in the end they are completely useless to me.

During our hinterland questing we find a group for Jintha'Alor, the closest thing there is to an outdoor dungeon, but still much easier and with more escape routes, plus the rewards are absolutely superb, including a great neckpiece and trinket that we're extremely likely to wear until 60. Everything goes well, the group is quite disciplined and careful. We finish up the area and move to Searing Gorge, another pretty good (though rather small) questing area. Here, we encounter another disconnect, our fourth one, while fighting a dark iron steamsmith. I was at about 3/4 or my maximum health, and once again we manage to survive - the enemy is dead when I log back in - did they die to thorns? Did another player kill them? I can't tell, I'm just happy that I didn't die to a disconnect yet.

We make it to level 52 and have to kill some fairly dangerous elites for "The Flame's Casing" - no group to be found for this at all, so I have to root + starfire them for a while before turning to bear form:

Spoiler

After around 5 enemies we get our quest item and can move on to the final part of that questline, which involves some elite enemies in theory, but we can just sneak up the towers in cat form, light the fires and stealth again, as our level is high enough for the elite guards not to notice us.

After that, we move to the Blasted Lands, typically a crowded area, where the difficulty for the very few quests here is finding enough basilisks and vultures to kill - and the second, more important constant job is avoiding Teremus the Devourer, a raid boss dragon moving around the area that will outright kill you if he get to you - you can see him faintly in the background here, marked with a blue square:

Spoiler

I decided to invest some gold in buying dual-spec (which is available on anniversary servers for 50 gold once you're at level 40) to get a strong tanking spec ready in case we need it, and we also buy some level 45 water. There is no further use for gold now in self-found mode... we can buy nothing else of value.
Now we move to Un'Goro, the last questing area in the game that one could really describe as "efficient". Mission #1 here is to avoid any encounter with devilsaurs, roaming high level elites that can easily fear and kill you. Mission #2 is to avoid getting feared into anything dangerous by pterrodax dinosaurs. The area is pretty big and full of quest targets - alsmost every enemy here provides something for some quest. We only have to team up for the super dangerous "Pawn Captures Queen", which is not marked as being an elite quest, but you face multiple waves of enemies in a deadly cave. The sketchiest part of the visit is propably "The Mighty U'Cha", which we have to do alone as we can't find anyone who's on that quest. Another cave, full of gorillas, and some of these can call for help. Notably, they may call for help from upstairs, which can cause big groups of apes to descend on you. This does actually happen once as I fight my way through the caves, but luckily I've cleared everything carefully and am able to retreat once I notice the stampede, since the respawn time of these enemies is long enough - eventually we make it to the boss and take him down:

We teleport to Moonglade directly out of the cave for a short visit to Felwood, just for the ooze quest there, as the finale of that questline gets us to Un'Goro again. That's all easy enough - it is a bit sad that we haven't gotten any gear upgrades since Jintha'Alor, but the ooze quest gets us to level 54, which is a big one, as we get a new rank of shred and feral faerie fire. Next, we visist Burning Steppes for a bit - there are very few quests here, but every bit of experience helps. Once again we have to move into a high level cave, but everything goes well:

Spoiler

Next, we will move into northern Kalimdor - Azshara, Felwood, Winterspring.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 8 - Azshara, Felwood and Winterspring

There are very few quests in Azshara, and we've already done some of them - still, we've yet to visist the blood elf camp to the north. Getting the equipment for the nearby goblin involves a rather sketchy pull of 3 surveyors - we root one of them and have to fight two at the same time, trying to avoid death by blast wave:

Spoiler

In the end, the rooting plus the old warstomp + regrowth + rejuvenation do the job. After we're done with the quests around there, we have to find a rune for Kim'Jael, and so we hunt down some naga sirens. Also, we quickly visist Arathi to learn the final bandage for first aid.

Felwood questing is next up, and it's very nice to often fight with a songflower buff. There are two quests that lead us to a satyr camp, which is especially fun for us - we've been carrying around elixirs of demonslaying for a while, but never had to fight any demons since we've been able to brew them up. Now we get to use them, for a very powerful 265 attack power increase:

Spoiler

As we're here we also start the long Jaedanar and Linken questlines, though we will need aid for some later parts of these. Once we've done the second Timbermaw quest and gotten to unfriendly with the furbolgs, we cross their cave system to enter Winterspring. Right as we leave the tunnels, the three Winterfall runners spawn right atop of us - luckily, mobs often do not immediately attack upon spawning into the game world, which grants us the time to get into cat form and stealth away:

BTW, when I played original classic I spend a lot of my time between raids farming these Winterfall runners, as they spawn again pretty much right away when they're killed, so this is a good way to get strength-boosting jujus and Winterfall Firewater, important feral raid consumables. Well, this time around it's better to avoid them until later. We get the flight path, though sadly the healing potion recipe is out of stock as we arrive. Back to Jaedanar - we end the questline with the help of a warrior, which gets us a very nice glove upgrade. I don't recommend going in there alone. Now some more progress for Linken - this involves a quest that was impossible to do under hardcore rules before official hardcore servers, as part of the quest requires you to die to be able to see a certain ghost - now it just takes you to 1 hitpoint:

Spoiler

We are able to progress to the final part of the questline, though a group for that one is hard to find for now. At least we get to level 56, which is quite useful. So, now we're going to Winterspring, where we start with the level 60 elite quest to the south - of course we're not going to fight any 60 elites, but we want to do this one early to get access to the Cache of Mauri. Getting the crystals is, sometimes, easy enough - some are simply available in the valley outside of the range of any of the giants - for some of them, we have to do some more risky things, such as rooting a giant and taking the crystal while it's crowd controlled before fleeing:

Spoiler

Strange Sources nets us a cloak upgrade, and upon our return we get the major healing potion recipe, so we are now full on vendor recipes for alchemy that don't need reputation or dungeon quests as a prerequisit.
As we log back in the next day to start the various killquests in Winterspring, we find out that front shredding has been patched out. Back to using claw as our primary attack - it was fun while it lasted! On the other hand, we finally find someone for the Linken quest finale - that one's a bit dangerous, we have to use our first healing potion in a very long time due to sudden burst damage from Blazerunner, but we make it out alive. No screenshots, the situation was a bit too hectic to take one.

There are some sketchy things we do while on the Winterfall questline, such as inspecting a cauldron in the northern felwood furbolg camp while surrounded by 4 furbolgs (approaching in stealth) and running away with Nature's Grasp:

Spoiler

Or taking on the three Winterfall runners by ourselves, with the help of roots:

Spoiler

We even find a hunter to team up with for High Chief Winterfall, take out the orange level 59 berserk owlbeasts in bear form for the final quest of that line, and are only missing the last two elite beast hunting quests for now. We reach level 57 and quickly pick up the two Hydraxian Waterlord quests for Silithus/EPL, and enter Silithus for "Stormers and Rumblers" and the "Ruins of Southwind" quest - even the first part here isn't easy, as almost every enemy killed spawns in a higher level enemy, directly attacking you:

Spoiler

However, the second part, called "Hive in the Tower", is essentially suicide without a group, and literally no one is searching for one for this quest, so we have to skip out on it for now. At least we do find one for Brumeran and later on Shy-Rotam. Shy-Rotam is pretty dangerous, end we end up perma-rooting them with level 1 root-spam while a mage does the damage with frostbolt and polymorphs the add. Now, we have to leave Kalimdor - there's only "Hive in the Tower" left on the entire continent for us to do, so we must move to the east to find more quests for our final levels.

 

[BelgarathMTH]

Congratulations on level 55. Looks like you may make it to the 60 milestone without losing your hardcore status. (Hopefully my saying that doesn't jinx it.)

You seem to be quite an expert on every aspect of the classic game, but I suppose that's a prerequisite for any kind of hardcore run of a game. Good luck for the rest of your journey!

 

[Enuhal]

Part 9 - The Plaguelands

We have few areas with viable quests left on the map - one option, before we will have to move on to the plaguelands, is "The Stones That Bind Us" in Blasted Lands - a quest in a very long chain, much of it being essentially level 60 elite quests, but this one can be done solo - we just have to evade the patrols near the dark portal and make sure we don't run into Teremus:

Spoiler

The followup, "Kirith", requires a party, and, much like "Hive in the Tower", it seems to be one of the quest that nobody is really searching for. We now need to get around 2,5 levels out of 2 areas, which does seem a bit unlikely this late in the game, since Winterspring only gave us a single level in total. Still, the plaguelands have lots of quests compared to other endgame areas, excepting Un'Goro.

The Western Plaguelands generally feel kind of sktechy. Tons of extremely dangerous debuffs, multi-pulls and patrols. Even the first quest, burning the scarlet crusade tent, requires fighting multiple opponents at once:

Spoiler

Going into Andorhal also doesn't feel too great, with the presence of Araj and his crew, but luckily the tower quest here can be done without triggering the elite mobs inside:

Spoiler

We move to the cauldron quests, which require extensive clearing before we go for them, and the three bonus quests at the first few fields, plus the "Unfinished Business" line (only part 1 for now). Enuhal achieves level 58, and we get our final grouping of new skill levels. 4 quests still left in WPL; The first one, the last cauldron at Garron's Withering, gets us in serious trouble due to technical issues: Upon our first approach, I disconnect - okay, that's fine, we weren't even in combat. So, we log back in, and the field is mostly empty - another player must have cleared out these mobs. But just as I reach the cauldron in the middle of the field, my router shuts down and restarts again. Now there is a huge problem: The enemies, all of the field plus the cauldron lord, will have respawned once I will be able to log back in. I will be surrounded on all sides by high level spirits. Unlikely for there to be a way out. I decide that this is a fair time to use the "unstuck" feature, which can only be activated while not logged in - it resets your character to the nearest graveyard and is supposed to be used if you get stuck in an area you can't get out of (it's also limited in how often you can make use of it) - however, since we only got into this situation because of technical limitations I have no qualms about using it here. To my shock, when we log in after using it, we're only at about 1/3 of our HP, have a debuff from one of the spirits on us and are also falling towards the ground - luckily not from a great height. The game drops us off near Scholomance. There must have been a period after my disconnect where onc of the spirits had already respawned and attacked our character.
Well, we still made it out alive, and now we can actually systematicall clear the field and take on the cauldron lord:

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I do find someone for the temporal parasite quest, but have to do Unfinished Business part II alone:

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The third part, however, isn't doable - I notice immediately that the elite sentries in Hearthglen can see through stealth and abort the attempt. We have to move on to Eastern Plaguelands until we find groups for the remaining elite quests in WPL. First, we pick up a ton of quests around the area and start with the water elementals, which allows us to do the turn-in for the Hydraxian Waterlords. On our return, we find a group for the lich Araj - actually, we arrive at the same time as an alliance group, and since everyone, even without a tag, can loot his phylactery, we help them out in their battle, making this a rather easy fight. Luckily, some members of this party also need the final part of Unfinished Business, so we do actually get to finish WPL (except for the Scholomance prequest, but I can't progress if further under self-found rules due to the need for thorium bars).

In a way, EPL is actually easier than WPL - a lot more easy killquests, the elite patrols are limited to the roads, and while there are still many annoying debuffs, some of them are not quite as deadly. We use most of oure remaining elixirs of demon slaying for plague hounds (they are classified as demons), and I am able to find a group for the few harder quests, such as "The Ranger Lord's Behest" and "Hameya's Plea", plus Tirion's quest at the troll tomb. First though, we do some tomb-delving of our own:

Spoiler

Whenever we venture near any roads east of the crossing, we make sure to look out for the Crimson Courier:

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And as we're about to run out of quests in the area, a group of 3 hunters and myself forms for Duskwing and Borelgore. Now, Borelgore has really tons of HP and is the most dangerous single mob we've faced so far, but we still can perma-root him by spamming level 1 entangling roots while the hunters shoot at him:

The only thing left here is the Darrowshire Questline - we find someone for the elite part of Heroes of Darrowshire, luckily:

Spoiler

Searching up enough ghouls for the first part of that quest takes a while - now we just need scourge champions, which are very difficult to safely find - our best bet is Browman's Mill - they share a spawn with tons of other types of undead, but we get fairly lucky with the spawns and only take half an hour to get to our 5 required skulls:

Spoiler

At this point, there are only 4 possible quests left for us to do: Hive in the Tower, Kirith, The Crimson Courier and The Battle of Darrowshire - it's pretty much impossible to reliably find a group for any of these, so we will need to look for other ways to gain experience - we're at about level 59 and two-thirds, so it's not like we're missing tons of experience to 60.

 

[Enuhal]

Part 10 - Final Steps

Looking at my options for the final bit of experience, I decide to go for the cloth turn-ins first, available for each major horde faction. However, the runecloth turn-in (which grants us the most XP) requires us to do all other cloth turn-ins first, and for that we need more woolcloth, the only type of cloth we didn't find enough of during leveling. We need 9 stacks, and so we visist two gnoll camps in the wetlands that are notable for their hyperspawns (whenever one gnoll dies, another one immediately appears) - with that, we need less than 40 minutes to get the 180 wool cloth:

Spoiler

After doing most of the turn-ins, we're missing enough runecloth for the final one - so we need to farm some of that. I decide to visist the Deadwood Furbolgs for this, because they offer some hidden extra experience for taking them on - we can turn in 5 of their feathers for 550 experience each, and if we make it to neutral reputation we can turn in two more quests from their totems. Also, since this is Felwood we're talking about, we once again get to farm with the songflower buff:

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Whenever other players show up to do the nearby quest, we team up with them so we don't grief them:

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Grinding XP is a lot faster than I expected - once we finally get the 60 runecloth for the turn-in together, we already have enough experience from killing the furbolgs that the feather turn-ins by themselves might be enough:

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And here we go:

The nice thing about hardcore servers and the fact that there is a public message whenever someone makes it to 60 is that random strangers congratulate us on our achievement:

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And here's an overview on our terrible, terrible gear as we reach level 60:

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And, to cap things off, our /played to 60:

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[Antimatter]

Nice, huge congrats! Thanks for sharing all your progress. I've never played WoW, I'm an ESO player, but it's been fun to compare.

There is no hardcore mode in ESO, but I could compare a lot of things I saw both in the screenshots and your reports.