Enjoying the quest Thorn and Paw

Recently, I took my character Larrs (Level 20 Bard/Fatesinger) through the Druid’s Deep story arc.  I had only done this series of quest a couple of times prior to this point so I haven’t really learned all of the aspects for these particular quests so I decided to do them on heroic instead of epic, especially since Larrs is under geared and these quests are level 24 on Epic Normal.

Larrs starting his exploration of Thorngap.

One of these particular quests is Thorn and Paw.  The quest giver for this particular quest is Kirinel Zay who is located close to the other quest givers for these quests out in Eveningstar.  On heroic, these quests are level 17 on normal.  The purpose of the quest is to travel to a location called Thorngap which is located in some remote area of the King’s Forest.  The hope is to find the druid Halsaime, who appears to have something to do with the disappearance of Oriphaun.  Another was sent to Thorn Gap, Peron Uthe, who was somehow infected with some type of illness and now the hope is that we can investigate Thorngap in hopes to find clues to Halsaime, Oriphaun, and this illness.

Larrs looking to find his way into Thornhollow within Thorngap.

When you first enter the quest, you get the sense that Thorngap is much more ‘wild’ than the other areas of the King’s Forest.  The area just appears to be more like a jungle with multiple levels of vegetation growing here and there as opposed to the high tree stands that compose the main explorer area of the King’s Forest.  The enemies you encounter are not diverse although they can be quite challenging.  These enemies include wolves, dire bears, bears, vine horrors, red musk zombies, and a few named druids and their pets.  You will also encounter a red named dire bear, the den mother.  The druids and their pets have the potential to be extremely potent and you have an optional to defeat them all.  The den mother is a very large dire bear who tended to knock me over quite a bit.

Larrs in the midst of battle and a druid’s firewall.

The layout of the quest is “windy”.  As you make your way through Thorngap you will come across “dens” with sleeping bears that are walled off by vines you can’t get down.  However, when you destroy the corresponding corruption nodes, these get destroyed and you can then fight them and look for corruption seeds which can be destroyed as another optional objective.  Destroying the nodes are also necessary to weaken extremely thing vines that block primary path routes, which are typically guarded by one of the named human druids and their pets.  Also, there are few interesting pit fall traps, loaded up with spikes just waiting to catch the unwary, which I thought was a nice touch to this quest and added some atmosphere.  The coloring of the vegetation sometimes made it hard form me to determine the next route to take because I had a hard time noticing what was a passage and what was just shading but overall the map isn’t very complicated.

Larrs looking for the corrupted seeds in Thorn and Paw.

Well, I guess it make sense to have to face off against some druids.

Overall, the quest was fun and different.  Fighting through the various vine horrors and red musk zombies and taking on the packs of wolves and bears was different and fighting the named druids was interesting.  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting!!