Three Barrel Cove is a very interesting explorer zone and fun to explore in

Cantlin enjoying exploring Three Barrel Cove.

I always found the explorer area of Three Barrel Cove a very interesting and fun zone to adventure in and I like how the current storyline for Baudry Cartamon foreshadows the area.  I know that this particular explorer area isn’t run very often by the heavy power gamers because the quests in the area don’t hand out the highest amount of experience for their levels, but I always felt that the explorer area itself was wonderfully done after the area was revamped after so many updates ago.

I’m not sure how many people remember but the first edition of Three Barrel Cove was nothing more than a ramshackle pirate town at the base of volcano.  The only quests located in the area was the Scondrel’s Run, Garl’s Tomb, The Fire Caves, and Guard Duty.  The “explorer” area itself was like the way Threnal is currently, where you kill a few mobs and get a little amount of xp and so forth.  LOL, I remember once getting lost in the small city and getting killed by a bunch of pirates and a minotaur. 

Man have the times changed.  When Three Barrel Cove was revamped the explorer area was expanded tremendously.  The scenery was beautifully laid out and the water views and vistas were laid out nicely.  I always enjoy it when my characters hit the level 5 to 10 range and run out there to get the explorers completed.  The pirate theme fits the area very well and I enjoy the area being littered with ship wrecks and ruins.  It gives the explorer area a nice unique feel.

I also like the expansion of the forested areas on the island and feel it was a good mix of “animal” mobs with the spiders, hyena’s, and wild dogs.  Also the various races of pirates was an interesting and fun thing to come across with pirate orcs, hobgoblins, minotaurs, and kobalds. 

I hope that the developers will come back and revisit Three Barrel Cove and turn it into a epic level area for our higher level characters.  It will be cool to come into this area with some higher level toons and have some new things to accomplish.  I can imagine a technique that was set up for Gianthold, only in Three Barrel Cove the random encounters could be centered around pirate based themes.  Wonder if it could somehow be linked to the Crystal Cove?