Blizzard Entertainment deployed the first World of Warcraft: Mists of Pandaria beta patch. Players can now safely enter the Pandaria continent. There is a restriction, however. Players can only quest and explore the Jade Forest — located on the eastern shore of Pandaria.

There’s a new NPC named Ka Pao that teleports you to the Jade Forest. He’s either in front of the bank in the Stormwind Trade District, or in front of Garrosh’s Hold in Orgrimmar. Talk to Ka Pao (Panda Portal). It’s a temporary means to teleport to The Jade Forest.

There are currently two options: Hellscream’s Hope (Horde) / Wayward Landing (Alliance), or Dawn’s Blossom. The latter seems to be a neutral Pandaren village. Choose either the Horde/Alliance camps. Horde won’t find quests at Hellscream’s Hope. Horde players should go to the northwestern corner of the map to find the Zeppelin crash. This is where players will land after the in-game cutscene. The in-game cutscenes seem to be disabled in this beta build.

In-Game Cutscenes

On the Horde quests, only few NPCs survived the crash, including Nazgrim. You must gather the survivors, and some supplies. Then Garrosh’s Hope is built off-screen while you are still gathering supplies and killing Hozen (monkeys).

There’s a quest that straps you to a cargo-helicopter thingamajig and automatically flies you around the camp. Your job is to single-target Hozen (monkeys) from the air with a poisoned shuriken, and an AOE poison until you kill around 50.

Nazgrim is getting irritated by the yelling and taunting of the Hozen leader Yoggtord. The Forsaken Shademaster Kiryn sends you to slay him and to gather any stolen goods. Among the stolen goods is a Pandaren scroll. You take it back to its owner, Loremaster Cho, which is found in a nearby cave.

Loremaster Cho will only answer your questions if you enter in meditation throughout two quests: Cairn of Blood and Cairn of Bone. It’s a bit silly, but cracked me a few laughs. You have to click the 1 and 2 hotkeys (left and right) to keep the progress bar from depleting or filling up. The idea is to have the bar around the middle as a metaphor to have a balance in your meditation. If you fail, Loremaster Cho will splash water on your face to wake you up. Throughout the meditation, he will poke your head to keep awake if the bar goes too far to the right or to the left.

I managed to find a location near the Cairn of Blood that made me chuckle. A pop culture reference: Tiger’s Wood. Does anyone love golf?

On the third meditation quest you are sent to the Cairn of Scale. Here I laughed some more. You have to keep spamming meditate and focus buttons to have a balance, but out of the blue comes a Hozen who finds you meditating, and starts smacking you, and insulting you in a mix of English and gibberish language. Remember … you are trying to keep your thoughts balanced in meditation, and can’t get distracted. This monkey is making it hard to keep concentrated. Suddenly, a croc jumps in and eats the Hozen.

From all the talk, you learned a few things about the Hozen, and prepare a plan to stop the Hozen attacks. Grab a few jars, and some slicky fish (the Hozu’s favorite meal it seems) and place them throughout Camp Nooka Nooka as a trap.

The Hozen approach the jar to get the fish, but can’t get their hands off the jar and become trapped. The player comes to the rescue destroying the jar, and setting its victim free. This is how you earn the trust of the Hozen as Horde, and become neutral with them.