Dropping Bombs - a Love Story

2/7/2010

Hey, just wanted to throw up a quick post about the Lovely Charm Bracelets that people are so eager to get for the meta achievement. As Markco pointed out, you can farm for them in Ulduar. However, what if you've never been to Ulduar, or don't want to go? I think it requires a raid group to do it as well...

Well, since I just recently spent a LOT of time in Icecrown for Loremaster, I immediately thought of 2 quests that I did a few times. Riding the Wavelength, and Total Ohmage. Since you don't have to loot the mobs to get the Lovely Charms for the Bracelet, ANY quest or action that you do that allows you to kill mobs near your level in a quick fashion will suffice. And dropping bombs on all those mobs in the Bombardment netted me about 40 charms in 3-4 minutes.

This is especially helpful if you're looking to get those dailies done for lower level alts, and don't have the time to go out and kill with each of them.

As of 2/6/2010....

I just wanted to jot down what I have at this point in time, compared to my meager achievements of a few months ago. I think I had 1 or 2 titles then, and maybe 5 exalted reputations. Feel free to think to yourself "TL-DR," and move on.

As of now, I have 16 Exalted reps (5 home cities, Netherwing, Sporeggar, Sha'tari Skyguard, Shattered Sun, Scryers, Argent Crusade, Kirin Tor (mainly leveled off cooking and fishing dailies), Sons of Hodir, Horde Expedition, Sunreavers, and the Oracles (finally!)).

11 unique tabards including one from Shadowmoon Valley .

65/100 mounts.

75+ pets.

472/550 Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms, 615/685 Kalimdor, 15/90 in to Hellfire and Back with all the other Outland zones done. Summit of Stormpeaks and Into the Basin are my only completed Northrend zone achievements, but I'm 112/140 in Icecrown.

I'm 2187/3000 on the Seeker achievement, plus 1474 dailies equalling 3661 total quests done.

Merrymaker and Hallowed make 2/8 for the Violet Proto-drake grind.

Titles: I can now call myself Bloodshrike the Ambassador, Chef, Crusader, Merrymaker, Explorer, Hallowed, or Pilgrim. Or affiliate myself with Of Orgrimmar, Sen'jin, Silvermoon, Thunder Bluff, Undercity, and the Shattered Sun.

Out of Phaze

So, Bloodshrike, and ONLY Bloodshrike, will be going for the Loremaster achievement. I'm not going to put myself through the misery of slavishly trying to complete all those quests again on another character. I'll do the rep grind for certain factions if they have recipes that that toon needs for their profession(s), but I'm done with being a perfectionist.

I guess this whole thing kind of spun off from me doing the Icecrown quests. I'm currently about 104/140 on them, and I grouped with a BE rogue for a few of the group quests. One in particular was kind of funny. See, I only really got into Northrend at about level 76. I did all of the Sholazar Basin quests by level 77, then came back to Northrend for the Storm Peaks, and I know I got 80 before finishing the quests there.

When I finally started in Icecrown, I went straight to the Argent Crusade, did the intro quests, then became an Aspirant. I did those quests for 25 days, becoming "Champion of ..." and "Exalted Champion of .." at the same moment, since I was already exalted with all the home cities. It wasn't until about halfway thru Revered that I realized that the OTHER quests in Icecrown probably would help boost my Argent Crusade rep, so I wouldn't only rely on the dailies for the rep grind. Doh!

Needless to say, when I finally hit Exalted with the AC, I had over 180 tokens to spend. The first 50 went for the teleport Tabard, and another 120 went for my clothies to level up in style.
I also spent about 10kg for another teleport, though this one actually helps me kill stuff faster.
So, between the tabard, ring, 3 engineering teleport devices, and my hearthstone....I'm almost a mage!

Anyways, back to the original story. The BE rogue and I were about to kill the dogs and the casters for the Guardians quest, but when he came to join up with me, I couldn't see him. We could both see the monsters, but since we were in different phase stages of quest chains, we couldn't see each other. It was quite interesting to coordinate attacks on the monsters, especially since I'm a suspicious basterd, and don't trust that people are pulling their weight unless I actually see them fighting. But, we got it done with only 2 people, so it was a lot better than trying to solo it. I had tried before, and died twice while only killing one of the mobs. But, since we had also done Basic Chemistry and Coprous the Defiled, that finished my list of group quests that I need, except maybe the Banshee's Revenge. Ahh, I'll be happy to get this zone over with.

"Jump, jump, jump around!"

What's your favorite quest in WoW? There's some quests you loathe, and breathe a sigh of relief when you complete them, and others that you always enjoy, even after the 20th time. My favorite is this one. I don't know why, it's just fun to see how fast I can jump up the mountain, with as little time spent on the ground as possible.

And conversely, I really came to dislike the hunt for shiny baubles that I completed, ad nauseum, after I got exalted with the Frenzyheart, and rashly decided to go for both reps. Luckily, I did get the transformation item from the Frenzyheart on my first Ripe Jar, but then I had to start over again on the rep grind with the Oracles. The shiny treasure quest just bugs me for some reason. I don't mind killing Frenzyheart, it actually is kinda fun to send my gorilla and Jaloot into the middle of the flat rock on the north side of Kartak's hold, gather 22 of the warriors, then annihilate them with 1-2 volleys. The other quests where I have to fly around to the tops of mountains don't bother me either, as it gives me a chance to search for Loque.

This <- ^ -> way to Achievements

12/08/09

Since I'm waiting for the patch to download, I might as well post!

Well, thanks to the advice and comments of Joar and Kring, I finally got 2 achievements that have been bugging me for a while.
On the Blade's Edge
Check here for tips on how to get this. I had picked up the Orb of Grishna at one point, but I must have thrown it away, because the Ravens Wood Stonebark were still hostile to me. This achievement is very dependent on you doing 2 things.
1) Kill ALL the sons of Gruul.
2) Get all the Pick-up quests - i.e., all the items that drop that say "this item starts a quest." This item from the Bladespire Ogres is good for quite a long quest line.

I also got Nagrand Slam after deciding to run through Auchenai Crypts for Auchindoun, which is 8th in a 14 step chain quest.

Now I just need do about 78 Hellfire quests for the Achievement, and after getting Exalted with the Netherwing (sweet, sweet dragon mounts), I will never, EVER go back to Outlands with Bloodshrike if I can help it.

Woot! Download finished, time to play.

I level......Daily

11/24/09

Well, Pilgrim's Bounty is now upon us, a new title and pet available from it (though you don't need it for the World Event achievement, it's always fun to get a new title, now that I've recently started getting them.

I'm not going to delve into the specifics of the achievements much, since Darth already has an excellent write-up on them, which adds to the guides already out there.

Instead, I'll add my viewpoints from the altoholic standpoint. Before, when world events came along, I'd do some of them, then give up, because I knew I couldn't finish all of the achievements needed for the title. I figured I'd get back to them later, when I finally hit 80 with one or some of my toons. However, I had been ignoring something very, very nice that happens during these times.

Daily Quests

Normally only available to level 70's and above (unless you're a cook, which allows you to do the Dalaran cooking daily at 65), World Event Daily Quests are usually easy to complete quests that offer a decent amount of gold, sometimes rep, and most importantly, usually a bubbles worth of experience for a few minutes work. With the Midsummer fire festival, I'd log in to do Torch Tossing and Torch Catching, and gain an easy 2 bubbles of experience a day for each of my alts. That's huge for me, since months or even years can go by for a toon before they get out of a city. Banesidhe (my first mage) stayed at level 40 for at least a year, before getting up to level 46 recently with the Hallows End and I believe the Midsummer Fire Festival earlier this year. If I can get to level 48, I'll be ready to zerg out to level 50 with grinding Timbermaw rep, same as I did with Clockwrkmage on my Ally server.

So, my tips on getting some easy gold and xp for your alts, without pulling out your hair in frustration over the lore cooking quests that you think you might have to do. Don't worry about the quests that aren't Dailies, do them as you come to them, but the reward? you get from doing the "Lore" related quests isn't something you will want to rush towards.

Tip #1:
Stock up! Clear out as much of your bags as you can, and stock up to 80-100-120 of each area specific item (Cranberries, Sweet Potatoes...). You never know when someone will offer gold for you to cook food that costs copper to buy. Plus, it really, really, really sucks to run out of Cranberries when you're in UC, and you only have to cook 5 more to turn in a quest. Trust me.

Tip #2:
If you can stand it, try to get as many Wild Turkey stocked up as you can. It's not a problem to replenish your stocks of pumpkins, but it's annoying to have to go out of the city to kill another 20 turkeys each day. Just try to get 60+ the first time, while you're going for the Turkinator achievement, and see if you need more after that.

Tip #3:
Try to do all 5 dailies with all your alts. It only takes a few minutes to run from a portal to where the dailies are, cook up the mats, and turn them in. Then hearth back to Dalaran, portal to the next city, turn in or pick up a daily there, and log out. Rinse and repeat with the next toon. By the time you've done this with your 10th alt, your first one will definitely have their hearth up, and will be ready to go to the next city.

Tip #4:
If you're going to visit the enemy capitals, you might as well explore the zone around there, since I doubt you'll want to come back again when doing all your exploration for the Explorer title. Darnassus and the Exodar are annoying zones to get to as a Horde, so you might as well kill 2 achievements with one trip.

Loremaster or Bust!

11/9/09
I’ve been trying to get around to having Bloodshrike on Demon Soul get the Loremaster title, since he’s the closest in terms of quests completed in Kalimdor/Eastern Kingdoms, missing only about a 100ish on Kalimdor and a little more in the Eastern Kingdoms. That’s fine and dandy, but what I’ve noticed is that it’s kinda impossible to do the Outland Loremaster without going into Auchindoun, since you stall out at 77 out of 87 quests in Nagrand at that point. I really don’t like being forced to go into dungeons, especially ones that would take me forever to solo. I’m sure I could probably get a group together for running it, since they’d appreciate having an 80 along, but I hate getting into PUG’s.

I guess this is just whining, because it’s really not that hard to get the quests needed for the Outland Loremaster achievement. Heck, I’ve still got a bunch of Consortium quests I could do in Netherstorm, including the quest line that leads up to the X-52 rocket helmet. It’s just that my philosophy has been “If I can’t solo it, I don’t want to do it.” I hate waiting around in Trade, spamming “LFG for whatever,” when I could be out completing other quests, or on an alt, finally getting around to leveling them.

One thing’s for sure, I’m not going to even attempt Loremaster on any other toon. It’s even worse on Alliance side, requiring 700 quests each for Kalimdor and Eastern Kingdoms. And, correct me if I’m wrong, but they aren’t all this easy. – Ding!

I’m also going to need to do a lot of quest catchup in Northrend too, since I mainly leveled to 80 while still in Outlands, doing all the dailies I could there. I’ve really only touched Sholazar Basin and a little bit of Borean Tundra. I guess it’s a good thing that Pallormortis, my DK, is almost to 70. It would be fun do the quests in Northred around their level, and actually get good amounts of XP for completing them, plus the quest rewards would be around my level. I’m really, really tired of doing quests that are gray to me, just to tick off 1 more number on quests completed.

Edit: Due to completing the Shadowmoon Valley quest achievement, I got some more quests to take back to Nagrand, to visit Altruis the Demon Hunter. So, I'm about 84/87 for Nagrand, and the Auchindoun quests should be filled this week, since I'm going to knock out the Thanksgiving holiday achievement on Bloodshrike at least.

And, after being 80 a few weeks, I finally remembered to visit a hunter trainer and get my level 80 spells, as well as retraining my gorilladin to be more of a tank. Doh! That allowed me to solo the quest in Netherstorm, where you have to defend Area 52 against a Fel Reaver, using a weak version that dies after a little while, leaving you to try to solo it, since there's nobody else out there. I couldn't do it at 79, but finally got it done at 80.