Community Project: Achievements

This is the first category for the “Warcraft Community’s Top Things To Do Before WoD” community project. Below are plenty of ideas submitted by the community (whose contact details are at the bottom) via twitter, in-game or blog. Have fun!

The Feat of Strength

DoctorHannah is a big fan of the feat of strength you achieve from earning 9,000 achievement points and told me that it’s one of her “greatest achievements”. Well, if that’s not enough of an accolade I don’t know what is! There are many ways to go about earning those points doing things you enjoy or something new you might want to try. As Velgana states, “it allows you to focus on the new content that comes out, without having to sweat about going back into the old world”. Lots of the MoP achievements are now much easier than at release, so don’t let that put you off!

Proving Grounds

@clewdacris is a big fan of the proving grounds, resolutely stating that they “really help you improve”. If you are a beginner or trying for the Endless roles, the solo scenario just requires grit and determination to progress. There’s no pressure, as you’re alone, and you can try a Tank, Healer or DPS role as you prefer. Not convinced yet? Well, there’s a title and achievement points up for grabs plus the bragging rights when you reach gold. An excellent guide can be found here.

Sky Race 

This is one of my favourite achievements. The Sky Race is part of the Order of the Cloud Serpent dailies group and rep grind. Even if  you hate grinding reputation, it’s worth getting to revered so you can take part in the Sky Race and ride your Cloud Serpent to victory! It’s a lot of fun and there are several achievements to gain too: from finishing the race, to beating your competitors and coming first.

 

Rare Mounts and Mount Farming

This was one of the most popular responses within the community.It seems like everyone is using the calm time to grind those pretty new mounts and the achievements/feats of strength that accompanies them. As the Mistress of Faff points out: there’s 250 mounts to collect to earn that beautiful Felfire Hawk in WoD – the sooner we get on it the better! Twenty20 makes an excellent point to the community – actually, *most* of these mount runs are old content and therefore soloable, which at a time when many people are taking a break, it’s very handy! Some of the prettier dungeons, like Vortex Pinnacle and Magisters Terrace make Tome want to stay in there forever and make the farming seem less arduous.

@witty_warlock and I agree that the Argent Tournament is an excellent way to go about mount farming. Don’t get me wrong, it’s an absolute nightmare of a grind and unless you do it on multiple characters daily, it’ll take you months. However, with over 10 mounts available (not to mention the pets, tabards and banners!), it’s an excellent – and easy – way to earn more mounts.

I love this meme by dressedtocuddle.blogspot.com – bang on the money!

 

There are some more fun mount grinds out in the world: @elpheagle can give more information on the 9,999 bone farm from the Isle of Giants which awards the Bone White Primal Raptor. Whilst farming these, there’s also a chance at a Primal Egg, which when hatched, awards one of 3 raptor mounts – you can go back and hunt for all 3! Axa suggests The Netherwing Drake grind which is now very easy with an addon and multiple dailies per day… nothing like the TBC days, it’ll take you only a couple of weeks and awards multiple pretty drakes.

In WoD, a new mount feature in-game will enable us to see where which mounts we have not yet earned, plus where to get them – like the pet window we have currently. Until then, use the links above and Google ’til your finger pads are worn away!

Challenge Modes

We argued about putting this in the achievements category as it doesn’t really fit anywhere. However, I won so here it is. Challenge Modes are a new feature that MoP offers in order to test your mettle against the bosses of Pandaria with scaled gear and a time limit. @trimbleirl is a big fan, stating that although they “are tough if you’re not prepared” they are totally worth the hassle. We recommend finding a good group of pals, or trying OpenRaid and giving it a shot if you have the time. They’re fun!

Meta Achievements

I had to put this in here, as there are so many other achievements in-game that earn you a greater reward when completed as part of a set. For example, world events, raiding and dungeon metas, PvP and so on. There are too many to mention here, but they are exceptionally varied: from old to new content, PvP to PvE, levelling to end-game, that there must be something that interests you. @Aleveria loves to have a goal to work towards and I agree when she states that a whole day can be lost working towards it!

Contributors________________________________________________________________________________________

• @clewdacris via twitter
• Wow_axa
• @aleveria via comment
• @missysmojo – not featured but worth reading!
• @anne_rotman via comment on twitter
• Doctor Hannah
• Velgana
• @Ngakma via twitter
• @TrollingAzeroth via twitter
• @elepheagle
• Twenty20
• Tome of the Ancient
• @trimbleirl via twitter
• ALT : ernative Chat

Furblogs and Timbermaw Hold

Today I was casually farming for my Winterspring cub, when I realised that by killing the Furblogs I was gaining Timbermaw rep – 22 rep per kill was adding up and I was already honoured with Timbermaw Hold. Off I went to Wowhead (which has a brilliant guide by the way) to discover that it’s an insanely quick rep guide! Bonus!

Farming

I was already honoured, from levelling and doing Loremaster, so I only needed about 30k of rep. I decided to do a couple of final quests then grind the furblogs by the lake in Felwood for the feathers to hand in. You can also grind them Winterspring side for the beads, but the mobs are more spread out so it’s not as time efficient.

Anyway, off I went to do laps around the lake and within an hour, I was exalted.

Rewards

There is an achievement for being exalted with both Timbermaw and Kurenai. We already had this though. For me, it meant I finally hit 40 exalted reputations. The achievement for exalted also made me /giggle:

I also got some enchanting and tailoring recipes I was missing when I hit friendly, so it’s worth doing it if you’re a completionist like myself and want all the recipes for your professions.

At exalted, you can also buy an item which changes you into a furblog!! Jealous much?

Can you spot the imposter Mage?

Monday Moan #28

Only a niggly moan this week, but one which I think can be really easily solved.

Isn’t it annoying when you’re trying to search for that achievement but you can’t remember where it is?

WHY ON EARTH ISN’T THERE A SEARCH FUNCTION ON THE ACHIEVEMENTS PAGE????

Hmph.

Hunting Hoplings

We have been hearing a lot about the Hopling from Stormstout Brewery, so today I thought I’d go hunt it out.

What to do

• Queue for Stormstout Brewery HC as normal
• As you zone in, buy 5 Ling-Ting’s Favourite Tea from the vendor on your immediate right
• Complete the instance and let the others leave
• Use this macro to help locate them:

/tar Golden Hopling

/script SetRaidTarget(“target”,1)

• Starting at either end, spam the macro in each part of the instance – outside on the walkways as well as in the room. Remember to face in different directions, the little blighters are everywhere! Just make sure you kill all the hostile hozen first… although some do remain partying the night away!

• You need 30 for the achievement:

After completing the achievement, you’ll get a lovely letter from Aunty…

… and this will contain your hopling. He’s cute, enjoy!

We. Are. DRAGONSLAYERS!

With some guildies and a group of awesome Twitterfolk, off we went to Bastion of Twilight (BoT) Heroic to kill Sinestra to get the title: Dragonslayer.

The Raid

This went pretty well, all things considered. Our line up was 2 tanks (DK/Warrior), 2 healers (druid/monk) and DPS (4 mages, 2 hunters). There were a couple of hairy moments with the Ascendance Council, where we hoped to just nuke it but it didn’t work. After a couple of tries, we understood we had to get them down to equal health before phase 3, and got them down.

Sinestra

It took us a while to understand all the different mechanics of this great lady. We finally got her down after about 6 pulls with 2 tanks, 3 healers (priest, druid, pally) and 5 DPS (3 mages, 2 hunters).

Phase 1

Wrack: this is a debuff that lasts a minute and ticks harder each second, eventually ticking for 10% of your max health every second, but spreads to two others in the raid when you dispel it. The Priest (myself) was responsible for dealing with this and using damage control. It was a compromise in the end – spreading the damage out amongst the raid for the duration of it.

Orbs: We all lined up on the right side of the room then when the orbs appeared, kited them out to the left and towards the back. It took some practice not to hit anyone else but once we got it, it was ok.

Phase 2:

Adds: the tank collected the adds and kept them at the back of the room.

Mana Shield: All ranged were responsible for getting this shield down, was a nuke

Eggs: Once the shield was down, two DPS went  for the eggs and killed them. Everyone else was killing adds.

Phase 3:

Tank swap here

Spritecaller: this was causing us the most problems – if you don’t get him down before he casts “Unleash Essence” then the raid wipes due to the 10sec massive AoE he does. He spawns after the eggs are killed.

The rest of the phase is identical to Phase 1. Wrack needs to be controlled again, which is harder as the raid takes more damage as the phase is longer. We saved all cooldowns for this phase.

Overall, this was all about management of positioning. It was nice to do this raid and have to think, and I’m so happy those able to join got their titles after all their hard work!

Thank you to @Sophrosyne_wow, @AdmiringAzeroth, @SarahEd1981, @ElisaAnttila, @Legolene, Peppermint, Garias, Allenis and the other couple of pugs who helped us out.

What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been…

My adventure started exactly a year ago, when I had just dinged 90 on my first character – my mage. I didn’t know anything about achievements, but I asked Mr B why people were hunting fires and my own interest ignited (good pun, eh?).

You all know I love my achievements, so this one seemed like the ultimate long term goal… I hoped I could do it within the year, even though we were offline for most of the Winter Veil (we got married!). It has taken some commitment, especially for the PvP achievements, but I’m happy to announce that today, I finally achieved it!

This takes me up to 12805 achievement points. I suppose the only question is: which do I work on next?!

Loving my Violet Proto-Drake!

Achievement-o-holic

The last 24hours has been a day of achievements for me, which I have enjoyed immensely.

Firstly, my guildie, Hapie, and I ran some dungeons for mounts. I wanted Ashes of Alar but it was not to be, but Hapie did get the Azure Drake from the Eye of Eternity which he was really happy about!

Then, we ran some HCs with the guild and I managed to get a couple of achievements which I’ve been after for a while but find hard to do in LFG as you get moaned at for not dps-ing:

Glintrok Rock N Roll is just a speed run of Mogu’shan Palace, which was easy with 3 raid-ready guildmates. We were running for valour and the guild challenges which keeps our cashflow nice and steady.

Respect is from Shado-Pan Monastery, you need to bow to all the kungfu guys after you defeat them (you know you’re doing it right when they stand up afterwards!). I recommend making a macro to do this – but it’s not particularly difficult with enough dps to cover your absence whilst you do it.

The Tranquil Master – I didn’t even realise this was available until Mr B said I only needed the Sha of Despair to complete it. Luckily, Hapie (I think he wants to make it up to me that he got the mount!) had the quest to summon him so off we went to Krasarang Wilds to finish the job. Easily done with the two of us and I got a rather fetching title which I shall wear for the day – replacing my favourite Loremaster one – to honour Hapie’s help.

Thanks for all your help buddy ❤

Mrs B’s Noob Guide to Fishing

Following on from my Archaeology guide (http://wp.me/p34kY5-2p), it’s now time for some fishing.

Fishing on my raft with my “Dragon Fishing Pole” (requires, Anglers – revered)

There are loads of good fishing guides, but as with a lot of WoW things, it doesn’t tell you the basics in laymans terms. That’s what I’m here for!

The Basics

• 4 secondary professions: Archaeology, Fishing, Cooking, First Aid
• Learnt from the appropriate trainer in each city: ask a guard then look for the arrow on your mini-map (I didn’t realised it showed you the way – thick or what!)
• Broken down into levels of 75 points (although you can train the next level after 50 points) which you need to go back to the trainer in order to progress. I definitely did not grind for an hour before realising I couldn’t gain more points because I hadn’t trained…
• Accessed by pressing ‘P’, clicking ‘Professions’ (the little tab at the bottom of the pop up page), then pulling the icon out (shift+click) onto your toolbar. (N.B. You can bind this button to a key so you’re not clicking it every 17seconds – it’s much faster!)

Fishing in 3 steps:

1. Use the ‘fishing’ button to cast the line – it’s like a channelling spell, click it once and watch the magic
2. Hover your cursor over the bobber in the water (look, it turns into a funky fishing icon!) – when it bobs (can be tricky to see, having the sound turned on helps, as it makes a splashing sound), click it
3. Loot the fish

Getting Started

• You need to be level 5 to learn the skill
• You don’t need to have a pole or a lure, but you can purchase these from a fishing trainer in a major city – some poles/lures give extra fishing skill so they’re worth investing in
• DO THE DAILIES! They give you bonus skill points and a loot bag – you can get lots of cool stuff from them. Also, the Darkmoon Fair once a month gives extra easy skill ups too
• You can fish anywhere – as long as the water is deep enough. You could level it all in one place – but this is incredibly boring.

Levelling Up

• This is the boring bit… you cast your line… and you wait. REMEMBER TO TRAIN EVERY 50-75 LEVELS.
• I reccommend you pick the highest level zone for your skill and fish there. If you’re levelling cooking at the same time, you will want to do some research about where to get the fish you need
• Pools: these are little nodes where fish congregate, dotted around any body of water – salt or fresh. You’re more likely to catch fish rather than junk grey items, so they’re better to fish in.
• Weather Beaten Journal: your best friend. This is looted from either a daily reward or fished from a wreckage (floating piles of wood) dotted about in coastal waters. Once you get it, learn it, and turn on ‘track fish’ (the magnifying glass by your mini map). This will show all fishing nodes as yellow dots, making it much easier to see them.
• You can also loot and buy fishing items which increase your skill, I would really reccommend you equip these as it’s quicker and easier to fish with them. Totally ruins your transmog, but heyho.

Achievements

Again, for an achievement-holic like I am, this profession holds a lot of excitement. It’s also a big – as Mr B would say – “time sink”. You spend hours doing these achievements.

Some of my favourites are:

• The Coin Master: this involves sitting at the fountain in Dalaran and fishing endless hours for the coins that you can catch. If you get a GOLD coin, throw it back into the fountain. This will give you a short buff which will make it more likely to fish up another coins. You should be able to catch enough coins with the buff to catch other gold coin so you have a continual buff which helps a lot with this achievement.

On my ‘Mushroom Chair’ (Molton Front dailies) fishing at Dalaran coin fountain

• The Lurker Above: in Serpentshrine Cavern. I just like that you can fish up a massive fish and can then kill it. Awesome.
• Outland / Pandaria (etc) Angler: you know me, I like sightseeing and these achievements gets you out in the world fishing in lots of cool places.
• Tournaments: search your calendar and wowhead for more info – they’re really fun but I’ve yet to win one!

I hope I have enlightened you – happy fishing!

The Daily Grind Part 2

Mrs B ~

As I have mentioned in “The Daily Grind” (https://mrandmrswow.wordpress.com/2013/01/26/the-daily-grind/), I am not a fan of dailies.

Thibaste aka @OnTheLevelBlog on Twitter is a new real ID who shares my dislike of dailies. He nails the main issue on the head: “I just do not have the time to commit to dailies, which means my rep takes ages”. I think it’s a great shame that a lot of players are missing out on gear upgrades because they don’t have hours to commit to dailies. I hear that in 5.2  there will be a new raid players can use as a mini rep grind, but is this too little too late?

You can read Thibaste’s blog here: http://levelthis.blogspot.co.uk/

Anyway, I have pulled my finger out and I am currently doing 4 rep grinds: Shieldwall, Celestials, Shado Pan and Klaxxi and they take – if I do them all – 2 hours to complete. I am 2 or 3 days off exalted with Shado and Klaxxi so I’m feeling very smug – the light at the end of the tunnel feeling. I must admit, the mount is my main motivation, even if they will depleat my gold stock somewhat. These are my last ones (other than the Black Prince) before the two new factions come out in 5.2. *phew*

Golden Lotus

Whilst I have been grinding the various reputations, I must admit to having a few favourites.

1.  Rampage Against the Machine (Klaxxi): Riding Kovok and killing mantid. Brilliant fun and I can pretend I am a tank for 5 glorious minutes. Incidentally, I also enjoyed the quest lines unlocking the paragons: particularly killing Jiao, the large squid like creature.

1. Flames of the Void (August Celestials): Riding on a Cloud Serpent and being a Fireman by putting out the flames. Once I’d figured out how to do it, I really enjoy it!
2. Riding the Storm (Shado Pan): Another Cloud Serpent type quest (I see a theme here!). For this, you get to grapple your way through a bunch of flying serpents and beat them into submission. Awesome.
3. Jumping the Shark (Anglers): You get to beat up a shark… what could be more empowering?

The worst?

1. Golden Lotus: Not one of these did I enjoy. Perhaps it was because I was on a PvP server and spent most of my time trying to avoid getting ganked, or perhaps it was because they just weren’t fun. I suppose picking up the dead fish at the Lake was quite entertaining…
2. A Blade is a Blade (Celestials): I don’t like this as the mobs are all very close together and really pack a punch. I die a lot unless I’m grouped with someone, and you have to be careful with your positioning.
3. Survival Ring (Golden Lotus): I HATED this one: I couldn’t do it without a healer. Whether this is because I was lacking the technique, or whether it’s because I wasn’t paying attention, I don’t know.
4. Poop (Cloud Serpent): This, coupled with the other dailies on this rotation, was awful. I couldn’t get the poop without killing the mobs, and at this point my iLvl was very low and I was struggling to stay alive. Whenever this set was up, I’d skip it and just do the cooking/archaeology/fishing ones.
5. Kunzen dailies (Tillers): Mostly, I enjoy farming with the Tillers, but I really wanted to get to exalted quicker so I started the dailies. I didn’t enjoy them at all – again, I had bad gear and could only pull one mob at a time, in a place where they were largely concentrated. To stop dying so frequently, I would jump off the cliff and slow fall to get out of combat instead. Not good!

So, do you have a favourite, or a least favourite daily?

 

20 Days of WoW – Day 4

Day 04 – Your best WoW memory

Mr B ~

Defeating Ragnaros for the first time. Oh my god, it was the best feeling. No more words needed.

Mrs B ~

I don’t really have a lot, but most involve achieving goals with guild mates – completing ICC achievements, completing the bear run for the first time after failing a few times, but also, getting Loremaster was amazing. Weeks of hard work!