Congratulations to Gerne for reaching max level, making them our 11th The War Within Pacifist Challenge champion! Gerne’s total journey was 238 days, 11 hrs, 7 mins, 31 secs, with a /played of 1 day, 10 hrs, 32 min.
This is Gerne’s first Max Level Champion in The War Within expansion. 
Why did you choose this challenge to play? Gerne said, “I’ve always loved challenge runs in games, and came across your website and that’s just right up my alley so I immediately made a Pacifist character, died in The Barrens in mid-20s, deleted him, and repeated. This time I wasn’t being a silly goose and went with Undead Rogue, which was vital for mid-game.”
What path did you take to level and were there specific reasons for those choices? “Early game was pretty much how I expect it goes for most people: Run around getting that sweet exploration experience, then having plenty of conversations that go along the lines of:
Quest Giver: “Please go kill 10 of-“
Me: “Nope.”
Kind of felt bad after a while escorting people to all these places then leaving them abandoned there in hostile territory and walking away…
Diagram 1
I went methodically zone-by-zone through Kalimdor, then Eastern Kingdoms doing any quest I could find where the objective didn’t say to kill anything (also making sure to fully explore each zone as much as I could). I probably should have looked up a guide or something but was stubbornly determined to find my own way so I probably missed a tonne of opportunities lying around.
After that I went off to Shadowlands for a bit and flew around exploring then tried to do stuff in Bastion but that was silly too because Night Fae are objectively better than Kyrian and nothing will change my mind. So I left Shadowlands and went back to Kalimdor, because that’s when I remembered I was an Undead Rogue. So off to Thousand Needles I went! (See Diagram 1). That entire zone is flooded, but Undead don’t need to breathe, and there’s no hostile mobs in the entire north-west half of the zone underwater, (a few patches here and there but for 99% of it you’re safe).
That means I was free to mine and gather herbs for experience in near total safety, as long as I was careful to stay in the happy zones. Rogue lets me Vanish when I make mistakes about that. I got into the groove of just gathering and mining while listening to stuff on YouTube (which will now include your podcast) so it wasn’t nearly as tedious as it sounds.
That’s pretty much it for the whole run. By this point that gathering-mining loop was rather chill so I did that all the way to 70, then flew around Khaz Algar doing the same thing.
That’s how I got all the way up to 70-80!
Did you have any close calls while leveling this character? Gerne said, ” The worst one was low level in the Barrens, this area here are Elites for some reason:
I can’t remember the exact level, somewhere in the 20’s probably since I couldn’t fly yet. But I was running around exploring at time and ended up in here. ‘Oh what’s this place? Lots of building and big looking enemies and stuff around’ and wasn’t paying attention to the stats of the enemies, which in hindsight sounds really bad. So I ended up in the middle of an area full of Elites, completely surrounded, with no easy way out. Took a good while of waiting for them to walk away so I can slowly work my way out of that one. (See Diagram 2).
Diagram 2
After that I was too careful to lose it again! So I just played it safe. Nothing nearly as heart-stopping but a lot of turning around only to see a “Level ??” walking towards me so I quickly flew away, especially in the new zones with the bees, and the wolves just to the west of them. sadly nothing of note worth going into a writeup.”
Do you have any advice you would give to someone else thinking of trying out Pacifist Challenge? “Rogues get Vanish – Outlaw Rogues get ‘Hit and Run’ talent for an extra 15% movement speed. When you can fly, use normal flight and not Skyriding! Being able to hover, not rely on charges to move, etc is invaluable even if it’s slower. Hop before moving forward! This way you go up first before moving forward. You don’t want to do it too fast because you’re nervous about the big monster coming towards you, accidentally cancel the mount because you did it too early before it can complete, and nearly run off a cliff… Not that I’d know or anything… kind of tying into the last question…
I did Rogue for Vanish, but Mage might have been better if I had to do it again for Invisibility working nearly the same way, but also having access to their bubbles and teleports.
Undead – not having to breathe was huge for hiding in water to avoid big enemies early. While the rules allow professions, don’t take fishing! It’s allowed, but killing all those fish defeats the spirit of the challenge.
Play Horde over Alliance, Lok’tar Ogar! That’s not related to Pacifist but still good advice in general.”
Congratulations once again to Gerne on becoming our 11th The War Within Pacifist Challenge champion, and best of luck with your future challenge adventures.