Two of the biggest milestones for rogues in World of Warcraft: Classic comes at level 20 and 22 when you get the quest to unlock poisons and the ability to train the vanish skill from your trainer. Both of these massively increases my survivability. In softcore World of Warcraft: Classic these are practical and convenient. In Hardcore World of Warcraft: Classic these are pure lifesavers.
A dangerous quest
Unlocking poisons is done through the level 20 class quest for rogues. To complete it you need to infiltrate a tower in the Northern Barrens that's crawling with hard hitting enemies. I've never done the quest myself before but I've heard rumors of how dangerous it is. While poisons are strong there's no way I'm risking my character to get it just yet. I waited until I hit level 24 before trying this.
Before that I also hit level 22 which let me unlock vanish. There's no quest required to get this as its simply trained at the class trainer. It's a huge milestone though as vanish lets me go invisible and drop combat if something gets to dangerous. It's like a get out of jail free card for whenever I fuck up. It's said that it should be impossible for rogues to die after getting this. We'll see.
At level 24 I felt safe enough to give this poison quest a try. I had gotten some decent gear upgrades from doing the Wailing Caverns dungeon. My damage and survivability was feeling quite good at this point and if at any point I felt like I was going to fail I could just vanish and come back at a later time.
I was quite surprised at how easily the enemies in the tower detected me through stealth. I should probably have used my distraction skill to have them turn away from me more. I didn't end up in any real danger on my way to the top of the tower. I needed to kill these enemies for my quest anyways.
On the top however is where the danger lurks. The boss here, Grand Foreman Puzik Gallywix, is a level 23 elite. He would have been a sure death at level 20 and he's still a danger at level 24. I prepared by drinking several potions to buff me up and made sure I would wait it out until all of my cooldowns were ready.
The fight went a lot better than I expected. I played it smart and used my stuns and bandages early to give myself some breathing room. I used a health potion just for safety sake as well and when I left the battle I still had more than 80% of my health remaining. Preparation really goes a long way to help you in in Hardcore World of Warcraft. I never felt like I was in any real danger.
Now that I have my poisons I'm going to feel a lot safer out in the world. I'll have poisons that deal extra damage for me and I'll have poisons that will slow down enemies, making them less likely to pull more enemies towards me when they start running away.
Next stop: Stonetalen Mountains.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.