Category Archives: Achievements
Realm First – Archeaology Achievements!
What a whirlwind the Cataclysm launch has been so far! After being griefed by login servers and losing at my [Realm First! Illustrious Cooking] bid I threw my all into Archaeology.
It’s been a long time since I’ve even done an all-nighter so I have to admit I wasnt tremendously confident I’d be able to pull it off. Throwing in there the big unknown about how much advantage dwarves would have with their [Explorer] racial I was in for quite a ride.
After 17 hour 23 minutes I hit 450 Archaeology and got the realm first achievement. I was so relieved as I’d truly believed up until that point that there was some phantom out there slightly ahead of me. I wanted to sleep at this point but needed to press on to 525 for the second realm first achievement.
Boy did those skill gains not come fast, though, and it wasnt until 22 hours 30 minutes in that I hit 525 and got the second realm first achievement. After one of the longest stretches at the computer ever I had surprised myself and done it! Definitely one of those rare obsessive achievements I think I can be proud of!
Here’s the screenshots of the 450 and 525 whispers:
I owe a lot to my amazing girlfriend, Suzanne, who booked in leave for the day after launch so she could be around to keep me awake and motivated. Also a big thanks to Frozome, Khaosbane, Larina, Malevola, Mercy, Raphael and Tyrok for being around to chat with me and provide support through the hours.
I suspect that to some people these kinds of achievements might seem silly or way over the top. I think the important thing to note is these endeavors are not your standard friday night ‘nerding it up’.
They’re the kind of challenge that comes up once every couple of years and are instead about a (relatively) short period of very focused gaming toward a specific objective. Exactly the kind of thing the ‘massively obsessed’ among us live for!
Posted in Achievements
Tagged archaeology, first, grandmaster, illustrious, rare, realm
Patch 4.0.3a Observations – Part 2
A couple more observations from my playtime tonight:
- New mob in the BRD Bar – Dark Iron Brewer. You can choose a dialogue option to get drunk with him
- Only the old (pre-sundering) version of [Dartol's Rod of Transformation] works outside Ashenvale. Bad luck if you didnt already get it!
- The emperor in BRD no longer calls the rest of the mobs in his room when you attack
Still going..
All the post-patch ‘new’ stuff – updating as I go
Hey Folks,
Thought it might be worthwhile posting the ‘oooh!’ stuff as I come across it tonight. I’ll keep updating this post as I go. Don’t forget to check out the forums as well for further information.
- You can buy a [Gilneas Tabard] in Darnassus next to the flight master. This gives you rep with Gilneas (new Worgen race) while running dungeons. Unsure which dungeons yet. UPDATE 2 – Working for rep gains on non-heroic deadmines! Also reports of rep gains working in Stratholme!
- New fishing achievements are in! Fishing around for the [Limnologist] and [Oceanographer] one as I go.
- There’s a bunch of new achievements in general tab including another /love squirrels one. Locations when I find:
[Alpine Chipmunk] – Winterspring – Spread all over, ignore the wowhead dots. - Lots of new ‘complete x quests in y zone’ things to do in the old zones.
- As a druid I’m already finding my Teleport: Moonglade spell to be invaluable!
- Just looted a [Golden Pearl] from a clam fished up in Azshara – wonder how common these will be now?
- No 50 exalted reputations achievement – new highest is 45. Boo!
- New achievement [Iron Chef] for learning 200 cooking recipes. I’m already at 168/200 on Saate. You guys?
- This is win – nuff said! [Unidentified Cooking Utensil]
- I will not access the world map by pressing TAB to view my pip-boy. I repeat, I will not access the world map by pressing TAB to view my pip-boy.
- Jumping into the gaping water filled hole (aka ‘The Sundering’) in Stranglethorn vale will occasion death.
- Redridge appears to have been hit worst of all – they have a boulder on the road near the bridge that needs moving…
Continuing my exploring! What have you found?
Update 25/11 – Raimondas emailed me with a link to a post he wrote on all the changes impacting insane.
The price of insanity?
Have been pulling together some numbers recently and started thinking about this. How much does the [Insane in the Membrane] achievement cost in terms of gold and hours? I’m talking about your average person who pays the average price for all their librams/pristine black diamonds.
I have a habit of recalling achievements completed as being much easier and less time consuming than they were. So keeping that in mind here’s what what I’ve got so far:
Bloodsail Honored
5-10 Hours to grind to honored?
No gold cost
Steamwheedle Cartel
20-30 Hours to grind?
No gold cost
Shen’dralar
84 Librams x 200g = 16800g
84 Pristine Black Diamonds x 200g = 16800g
15-20 Hours to farm mix of 84 stitchings/skins of shadow/blood of heroes?
5-10 Hours of time checking AH?
1-2 Hours of time to turn everything in?
Ravenholdt
1405 Junkboxes = 18 Hours of pickpocket grinding
OR
1405 Junkboxes = 14050g if paying someone else
Darkmoon Faire
120 Epic Decks x 350g = 42000g
10-15 Hours of time checking AH?
1-2 Hours turning in?
OR
How long if herbing and creating cards?
Help me out guys! What needs to be adjusted? Obviously for pricing information we’re looking for cross-server averages rather than specific “well on MY realm” high/low examples.
Posted in Achievements, Insane in the Membrane
Tagged Achievement, gold, hours, insane, price
Quel’Delar and Patch 3.3
So patch 3.3 is upon us! After logging in to check out the new patch stuff like the Random LFG system and achievements I ended up having a pretty fun time.
Later on a friend, Gurry, linked the [Battered Hilt] rare drop he’d just won in the new instance. Having read up on Quel’Delar I was only too happy to part with a small amount of gold in exchange for it!
Off I went! The questline was pretty cool with a lot of little scripted scenes included. Seeing Blood Queen Lana’thyl, Being allowed into the Horde area in Dalaran, Fighting the Quel’delar Blade in the Halls of Reflection and visiting a special post-Kil’jaeden Sunwell were definitely the highlights.
I was somewhat disappointed with how easy it was and how quickly I was able to get through it. I think rare drop farming and harder instances would have made this more special. Although I was happy to get my iLvL 251 [Lightborn Spire] at the end I was somewhat reminded of the same empty feeling I had finishing my epic flight form quest – why wasnt there more?
Here’s a few screenshots of the highlights:
Posted in Achievements, Screenshots
Tagged Blood Queen Lana'thyl, Icecrown, Lightborn Spire, Patch 3.3, Quel'Delar
Undocumented Feat of Strength changes in 3.2
So you may recall my excitement at getting Thunderfury back in July adding yet another feat of strength to my collection. Well recently I heard from a reader, [Skipt of Anvilmar], who completed the questline and joined the druid-thunderfury club. One wierd thing though was that no feat of strength was awarded.
After a post on the bug forums it appears that an undocumented 3.2 change has caused this. Apparently you need to equip the item to get the feat of strength, this is somehow tied into the change allowing BOP items to be traded to others in the raid.
Now I definitely agree that this was a necessary change for some items, like the VoA mammoth, otherwise players could trade a single drop around and all get the feat of strength. It doesnt make sense that this should stop Skipt being awarded the feat though!
Let’s hope that this is fixed in a future patch eh?
Glory of the Ulduar Raider complete, and farewell to Shadowsong
So last weekend we knocked out [I Love the Smell of Saronite in the Morning] and [One Light in the Darkness] which were the last achievements we needed to get our 310% drakes.
I managed to fraps our General Vezax hardmode kill and uploaded it to YouTube to share with you guys:
In other news my guild Enraged has transferred from Shadowsong to Aman’thul which is an Oceanic server set to Australian times which means waaaaay more people around during our prime time.
More guides coming soon – I’ve been thinking about getting an Asus EEPC to do some guide work while I’m away for work, anyone used them before that can give me advice?
Thunderfury…on a Druid? Yep, another feat down! :p
So earlier in May you may recall that I made a post about soloing Garr and having his binding drop. Well since then I’ve been dragging my buddy [Zyklia] through MC every week to duo Baron Geddon to try getting the second binding.
Why? Pretty much because it was there to do hehe – I also really like the fact that it awards a kinda unique feat of strength for a druid. There’s also the delicious tears to be had from the one-binding folks that have been less fortunate than I.
Big thanks to Zyklia for coming along every week to do Geddon. Also thanks to Cerise for the mining help and to Cheebs for not-quite-gouging me on the elementium ore :p
Posted in Achievements, General
Tagged bindings, Cerise, Cheebler, Druid, Elementium, feat of strength, Galmorthal, legendary, thunderfury, Vaughn, zyklia
Three-boxing, Bindings of the Windseeker and Face Mismatches
Sooooo…A lot seems to have happened in the last few days. Having never been a person that plays alts I’ve embarked on a somewhat ambitious 3-boxing project! My decision on what class to play came down to either mage or shaman. Since I’m not overly fond of playing Draenei I ended up deciding on going with mages and so far I haven’t regretted it.
After a lot of deliberation on names (and a lot of checking what was actually available to take) I ended up settling with Kahboom, Kaapow and Kablammo. As they level up a little more I’ll record some stuff to make a video sharing my setup and ways of tackling different things.
Second up, after recently reading about a change to [Bindings of the Windseeker] that removed the class restriction I thought it might be an interesting irony to try obtaining the [Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker] feat of strength on a class that can’t even equip the thing.
I figured that the only way I wasnt going to grief someone out of the drop was to farm the bosses solo. So this afternoon I headed in and took my first crack at Garr. It was a very easy solo and guess what I got!
Next up is to gather some fire resist gear and solo Baron Geddon for the next binding. Time will tell on that one I suppose, at least now I know how all those one-binding warriors felt back in the MC days! :p
Finally I’ll finish this post with something really wierd. Two friends, Epyon and Zyklia, recently made a post on our guild forum about freaky face mismatches that had happened to them in game. I’m not sure how it happens, but a day or two after seeing their screenshots it happened to two of my 3-box mages.
Here’s a collection of all the screenshots so far:
[nggallery id=face-mismatches]
Has anyone else had this happen? Hit me up with some comments, I’d love to hear from you!
Posted in Achievements, General, Screenshots
Tagged 3-boxing, bindings, epyon, face, mages, molten core, thunderfury, zyklia
7000 Achievement points milestone passed!
Just a quick post to update the site. Ulduar has been progressing fantastically, we’re having heaps of fun in both 10 and 25 mans.
I’ve finally broken the 7000 Achievement Point mark too – what a landmark! I’m now at 7175 points and with Ulduar around now I’ve got plenty more to come. Also working on the [Frostbitten] achievement at the moment too.
Absolutely have to share a few of my recent screenshots. Check out all the fish feasts for some insanity from Khasha. The shot of General Vezax I think looks amazing too.
That’s it for now, more in a day or two – enjoy!
[nggallery id=May-Screenshots]