The Kajaro Trading Company was always Sassy’s show, and nobody knew that better than me. Sassy, Ace, Izzy, and me — the four of us had been tight since we were roommates at ACMME. She cooked up the Kaja’Cola scheme, and I drew the short straw to play front man and run interference with Ace and Izzy to distract Gallywix. Me “dating” Chip was part of the big smoke & mirrors plan… well, that and Ace always had eyes for Izzy instead of me.
I had a tremendous amount of fun playing through Kezan and the Lost Isles with Kazuliza and Kermione. I loved how the NPCs traveled and leveled up right alongside me. When I arrived at the docks outside Orgrimmar and found myself all alone, I felt abandoned and lonely. I ran through the Goblin Slums frantically looking for Ace and Izzy and the starting zone trainers. Where had all my friends gone? I was relieved to rediscover them at Bilgewater Harbor in Azshara.
The thing about Kezan and the Lost Isles, though, is that once you’ve done them, you can’t go back ever again — not even to visit the ruins, the way you can with Gilneas. I have therefore created two quasi-clones of Liza who will stay forever suspended in limbo.
First up, Katrixie, wheeling and dealing on Kezan.
The first phase of Kezan ends after you turn in all four of Give Sassy the News, The New You, Do it Yourself, and the Target Dummy quest from your class trainer. Then the party begins; whether you turn in all four quests or only three depends on whether you’d rather enjoy the party or have your buddies in the car with you as you buzz around Kezan. Whichever option you prefer, do NOT do Life of the Party — upon completion of this quest, the zone phases again and you can no longer enjoy Kezan as it was in “the good old days”.
The only things you can get kill XP from in the first phase of Kezan are the level 1 Tunneling Worms in the Kaja’mite mine. If you do the quests first and don’t kill any extra worms when you’re on the quest for them, you’ll end up at about level 3. You can then grind worms to level 6. Alternatively, you can grind worms all the way from level 1 to level 6… but by then the quest XP will have devalued enough that you won’t level again. So Trixie is stuck at level 6.5. I chose to suspend the zone by not doing her class trainer quest. I may decide at some later date to do that quest and shift the zone into party mode, and then leave it in that state forever.
Second, Kalexia, living the wild life in the jungles of the Lost Isles.
Lexy has the Irresistible Pool Pony in her quest log and in her bags. You can go one quest farther before the zone phases, but I’d rather keep the IPP in my inventory to play with. (Please Blizz, can we have a Pool Pony as the gift from GreatFather Winter this year?) Alas, the only place you can use the IPP, even in the Lost Isles, is the Vash’elan Spawning Pool. I chose this as the stopping point because it represents the best period of the Goblins’ sojourn on the islands — afterward, things just get worse and worse.
You’ll be about level 8 by this point, plus or minus a level depending on how much grinding you’ve done along the way. The highest level mobs on the island are the level 11 Jungle Panthers, so you’ll be able to get to about level 16 from mob grinding. After that, you can still get XP from mining and herbing, but the KTC Train-a-Tron Deluxe only provides Apprentice and Journeyman profession training. Your class trainer will have access to all the spells of your class (yes, even the level 85 ones), so you can keep learning new spells. You won’t, however, be able to get riding training, so you’ll still have to run everywhere on the islands.
Edit: in March 2012, I decided to move my Time Capsules to a different server. At that time, I re-rolled Katrixie as a Rogue and took her to the Town-in-a-Box stopping point.
I re-rolled Kalexia as a Warrior and kept her at the just-before-the-party stopping point.
I just went through a similar agonizing dilemma on my priest, who had one of the initial Deepholm quests where you recharge someone’s totem. It turns out that as long as you’re on that quest, you can pop out that totem anywhere, so I had great fun throwing it out in dungeons and proclaiming to be the first Forsaken shaman. ;D Tragically, I had to eventually finish it because you need to, to unlock Therazane, and I will eventually need the shoulder enchant from them. T_T
[...] to establish the exact quest sequence boundaries of the zone phasing, I suspended two alts in a Goblin Time Capsule. The first time I played through Gilneas, nothing really stuck out to me as spot I’d want to [...]