A sufficient interval having elapsed, I determined to try my underpowered Death Knight experiment again, more rigorously, this time.
I always like to choose a palomino horse for the “Grand Theft Palomino” quest.
This DK also trained no new skills and spent no talent points, but I put her in level 1 gear and gave her a level 1 weapon. I sent her a few sets of level 1 gear and weapons, so that she’d be able to swap out items if they broke. She soon picked up a Rusted Pitchfork and a grey-quality Balanced War Axe.
She succeeded in wringing information about the Crimson Dawn from the Scarlet Crusaders in only three kills, without needing to equip any of her green and blue quality +hit gear. I did, however, have to use a Noth’s Special Brew to survive each of those encounters.
Without extra armor and Stamina from gear or the self-heal of Death Strike, she typically ended combat around 35% health. She spent a lot of downtime recovering from each fight, but she made it through the Scarlet Enclave wearing only level 1 gear and using only level 1 or grey quality weapons.
When I am leveling solo, I customarily play each character all the way to level 60 in Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms before going to Outland, then all the way to level 70 in Outland before going to Northrend. After the Underpowered DK reported to the Warchief, therefore, I took her down to Silithus. That way, I could check that zone off for my project to play through every zone in the post-Shattering world, and never have to come there with any other character ever again.
It very quickly became apparent that I did not have enough of either food or bandages to eat or bandage after every combat, and that I would never get anywhere with this character if I had to endure the amount of downtime required to recover to full or nearly full health unaided. With that in mind, I have devised the following leveling conditions, which are derived from/inspired by, but do not strictly adhere to, the Thrifty and Ironman leveling challenge concepts:
*She will not train new skills nor spend talent points.
*She will advance her First Aid training, but she will not learn any other professions.
*She may purchase health-only food from Innkeepers, and she may use any health potions that she loots or receives as a quest reward, but she will not use glyphs, enchants, gems, stat-boosting potions, or stat-boosting foods. (Runeforges are allowed by virtue of being a class feature.)
*If she receives any sort of buff upon completing a quest, she will click it off.
*She will not take paid flight paths, but she may train basic, cold-weather, and Kalimdor/EK flying as she manages to accumulate enough gold to pay for it (her flying mount will be the Celestial Steed).
*She will not repair her gear or buy gear from vendors or the AH.
*She is allowed to receive gear (but not money) in the mail from my other characters, but she is not allowed to send mail or sell on the AH.
*She is allowed to collect alternate currency tokens and buy clothing or other vanity items that can be purchased with those tokens.
*She will use the lowest-level items in her inventory, preferring white or grey quality items to green or blue quality items, and replacing items only as they become broken. Her DK-specific gear is off-limits, except for her Runed Soulblade and Greataxe of the Ebon Blade.
*She will only wear items that are visually colored blue, white/silver, red, pink, or black.
I will try to keep her in white/gray quality gear as much as possible. I must admit, however, that part of my motivation for creating this character was that I thought a character with this particular coloration would look awesome in certain gear sets. Giving those gear sets to a new toon would also reduce the RP gear clutter elsewhere in my collective inventory. The “lowest item level” and “only replace items when broken” clauses should ensure that even when she does begin equipping some of the green and blue quality items I’ve collected for her, they will not provide a significant boost due to being far below her character level and/or having inappropriate stats. I’ve sold back almost all of her DK starter zone gear, secure in the knowledge that, come Patch 4.3, I’ll be able to buy it back if I really want to (and after she reaches level 85, of course). I kept the weapons, however, to provide an option for readily and reversibly increasing her power if I get really stuck on something.
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There’s something about the blue & white coloration that I just really like, so here I find myself with not one, but two Tauren Death Knights, when I originally thought, back when LK was still in beta, that I could never ever roll a Tauren DK because I couldn’t fathom how or why a Tauren would become one. So where did this character come from, and how did she become a Death Knight? With that coloration, I think she must have originally been Taunka…
For a few weeks after Patch 6.0 was released in October 2014, the blue Tauren DK coloration was changed from bright blue & white to this muted blue-gray. Although I didn’t really like it because I created the Underpowered Death Knight in part to play with the bright blue & white coloration, it did match the blue-gray coloration of some male Taunka NPCs quite nicely, lending weight to my characterization of her as a Taunka.
Not long before the forces of the Horde and the Alliance landed on the shores of Northrend and began building bases from which to begin their assault against the Lich King, a group of restless young Taunka braves from the Winterhoof tribe of the Howling Fjord had a Great Idea. Like most Great Ideas of the young and reckless, it was both very daring and very foolish. Inspired by the seafaring Kalu’ak and ancient legends of the world breaking asunder, they decided to build boats and sail southward, seeking other lands. After some months of misadventures on the high seas, they made landfall on the far eastern coast of Lordaeron. Protected by the mountains, this land was still lush and green, untouched by the ravages of the plague (of which the Taunka knew nothing).
Unfortunately for the Taunka, the shore where they landed was also the last great bastion of the Scarlet Crusade. The xenophobic Scarlet Crusaders promptly attacked the foreign, frightening bull-men. The Taunka were exhausted, starving, and ill from their long sea journey. The Crusaders caught them so off-guard that they were totally overwhelmed, but they still managed to bring down many of the Crusaders with them. Then Acherus descended, and the necromancers gathered all the dead of that battle into the meat wagons to supply the Lich King’s special new task force.
Following the events at Light’s Hope Chapel, the others called her “Tauren”, but she remembered that she was Taunka, from the Northland. Whatever name she had been given at birth, she had surely deeply dishonored it, so she renamed herself “Kaumalea” — “Bad CowWoman”. Remembering the words of the Tauren prisoner she had executed, his words about being a hero and the world being worth saving, she seeks now to regain her honor as a warrior and return to her homeland.
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The adventures of the Underpowered Death Knight continue in the Underpowered Death Knight goes to Outland