World of Warcraft secrets: Windle Sparkshine and the tauren village

This week’s Shared Topic on Blog Azeroth is about World of Warcraft secrets, suggested by Syl from Raging Monkeys.

What WoW secrets have you discovered on your long journey through the world of warcraft? What unexpected, surprising or delightfully ‘pointless’ things have you chanced upon that add something special to the game for you?

Most people only do what the game tells them to do like go where the NPC tells you to go and do what the NPC tells you. One of the reasons I started to love this game is because you can go anywhere you want, you can explore everything.

I believe there are many secrets out there that we don’t know about. Secret NPCs who only become visible when you’re dead, like the one in Blackrock Mountain for the Blackrock Depths key, secret places, items, quests etc we just have to find them.

With secret I mean things that the game doesn’t tell you where to go to find it. Like Syl wrote about: Sheddle Glossgleam who polishes your shoes but there is no clue which tells you about it.

I’ll tell you about another NPC I find entertaining and that is Windle Sparkshine.

Windle Sparkshine is a gnome NPC in Dalaran. At 9:00 PM server time he walks around and lights the lamps in the city. When he is done you can purchase Windle’s Lighter and help him light the lamps he missed.

First time I noticed him was an evening when I was bored just hanging around in Dalaran, and I saw this little gnome pointing with his wand on the lamps and it lighted, so I started to follow him around and when he was done I purchased a wand and lit the ones he forgot. Then people started to ask me what I was doing and how, so I told them about Windle and they went to buy wands.

It seems to me that not many people have noticed this little gnome lighting up Dalaran every night, maybe they are too busy or afk, or never in Dalaran at that time. But I think it’s sad that some people miss out on these, maybe small things, but fun things which make the game more entertaining and more real.

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I want to share another story with you, about a special place, a secret place that not many people have been to, because there are no hints or clues telling you about it anywhere.

I’m one of those players who don’t follow the normal path when I go somewhere, I always have to read all readable books and talk to all NPCs and read what they have to say.  When I started this game I spent a lot of time exploring the zones, I ran from north to south and west to east, and the question was always “How can I get on top of this mountain?”.

So I am an explorer who wants to see the whole world from all possible perspectives. I’ve already told you about some of my adventures and now I will tell you about another one which is the tauren village on the coast of Silithus. It’s not hard to get there, only a 10 minute swim, but I don’t think many people have been there.

I discovered this place myself when I was on a mission to swim around Kalimdor to look for secrets like this. I was almost done, had been swimming for some hours and not found anything, was about to give up, just had to swim around Silithus and Un’goro to reach Tanaris.

Then I saw something in the horizon. It looked like a house. So I continued and what I discovered looked like a small tauren village. A hut, windmill, another mill, haystacks, fences, canoes and a weird tent. All this on the coast of Silithus. But there are no NPCs, mobs, quests to go there or anything else. So why is it there?

I checked Wowwiki for information on it and found this:

It was probably meant originally as a stronghold of the Horde, Cenarion Enclave, or Grimtotem tribe. Due to its somewhat hard to reach position — by swimming or water walking, thus making use of the aquatic form — it might have had also something to do with druid training.

I’ve been there many times after I first discovered it back in TBC. There is something special about the place, maybe because I love taurens and their architecture. I’ve spent hours just sitting in the little house in that village and listen to the music there. The music is so different, I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard it before elsewhere, I don’t think so. It’s so relaxing to sit there a late night by the fire.

By the way.. The music in that hut is the same music, but different mix, of the new Cataclysm Thunder Bluff music.

If you want to read more about secrets and hidden places in WoW, be sure to check out my other adventures and secrets I’ve explored. And if you know about any other secrets in WoW I’d love to hear about them!