Because screenies might be interesting – here are some recent achieves, and some which while recent are for really bloody old content. Finally huh.
If nothing else, getting achievements means I am doing something sort of productive in wow. Not majorly productive – like gearing, or getting a something really rare; but I am getting somewhere.
Booyah, I’ve finally killed Oon, and got the pile of yuck that he drops when killed. It killed me more times that I killed it, but Oon probably stopped getting achievements for player death a long time ago.
Despite all the spite we still see poop jokes in wow. Good on em.
I’ve only done a handful of heroic scenarios and the Dark Heart was pretty tough all told. I joined the team and found that it needed all my concentration to keep alive and swinging. Yes, heroic scenarios are actually challenging. That is good. Bring them on.
My alts are getting to the levels where I can start gathering some of the fun things, like the treasures of Pandaria and the rare kills. That aspect is more enjoyable to me that the leveling process. 
I’ve been hunting and completed the “Is Another Man’s Treasure” achievement, and now have my shiny new title, the Relic Hunter. It was a short but fun journey which leads me to ponder some of the other achievements and special things I might be able to do during down time.
My gathering has not stopped though.
So far my main has now got about 22 of the 25 or so items which you can find to get the achievement, which only requires 20. I plan to get the others slowly over time.
My alts are still gathering these too. I have two Jade Infused Blades and two Jinyu Staves, and will be working on a few more Pandaren Mining Picks, and hopefully at least two of the caster neck items. Each find is nice in terms of silly feedback reward, and also 300k experience to a leveling character. Not to be sniffed at.
There are a set of gathering achievements in Pandaria which are based upon finding low and high quality items which appear randomly throughout the zones. These are generally the domain of the folks who love achievements like “The Loremaster”, which is to date one of the best titles I think there is in the game and which is also actually achievable without a world ending amount of hard grinding. These collection set is Bounty of Pandaria, Finders Keepers, Lost and Found, One Man’s Trash, Riches of Pandaria, and finally Is Another Man’s Treasure (wowhead has a good guide on this). The end goal for all of them is the in-game title “the Relic Hunter“. Another great title, more so because I think the number of players who have it will be rare (around 5%) but also because it demonstrates that the player is dedicated and probably slightly insane.
As of this post I have all those achievements done except “Is Another Man’s Treasure”, which requires the player to find 20x of the special BoA or exceedingly rare items which spawn randomly in the game world. At the moment I am up to 18 of 20 items. So close, which makes it frustrating and rewarding when I get each of the last ones.
Aside – I almost never actually do this type of completionist / gathering / farming / achievement stuff, but I love this type of thing when it gives quasi-tangible rewards. In this case a title, the gold from the low quality items, and the Bind to Account items from the good rares.I am going to pass the BoA items down to my alts, and also hang onto some of them on my Death Knight main as they are actually still oddly and slightly handy.
It feels like this set of “quest chains” were well designed and have tangible rewards directly related to the effort.
There are approx 5-7 more items I could find to get up to the 20 rares found which are needed, but they are the rare of the rare, and often very highly desired. That means farmers, campers, and lots of competition all the time. Even in the short time I’ve been watching some of them I’ve seen regular character also flying past in patterns very similar to mine.
On two occasions I got to an item with a few seconds of somebody arriving, and in one case was beaten to an item by the skin of my teeth.
I am enjoying the challenge immensely.
I am also considering trying to get more than one of some items on my account by farming them with alts as well. The Mining Pick is an example where it gives a +10 to mining skill when carried.
A character wielding two rare weapons might be a tad selfish for all the other Relic Hunters, and a character with two of the same rare can look darn good. A great RP set should try to make others jealous.
Happy Hunting, TyphoonAndrew Continue reading
Like almost everyone I try to kill Alani each week. That dragon is probably so sick of being tagged that it might just stop hanging in the air too close to the Storm King. It is a great sounding achievement.
Its been a busy few weeks, where I’ve not been able to do much in terms of solid play. Instead I’ve scattered around with getting some odd Achievements. Here are the screenies for Attention to Detail in Scholo (pick the right wizard chic), Over 9000 (getting too many achievement points), and Time Flies (healthy guild rep on my alt druid).
Happy hunting, TyphoonAndrew
Getting to 35 reps is something that I’d not planned on. Fundamentally now that Exalted does not grant a mechanical benefit, it is just something that might happen. Still a very long way to 9000 pts.
I’ve been getting the odd and strange achievements recently, and instead of sliding them by there are screenshots.
Firstly here are some shots from the Blacksmith quest-line to use the Thunder Forge, then onto some random shots from doing daily quests, the 5000 quest achievement, and also getting Mortigen’s Black Prince reputation to Exalted. Then another for looting 50k gold.
Standing atop the Thunder Forge
Mortigen staring at the forge itself after clearing up the Mogu hanging around the entryway. This forge really deserves more attention, it is beautiful.
The Achievement for Pay to Slay, which I don’t understand the meme for.
And the Achievement for 5000 Daily Quests. Jesus that is a lot of regular activity.
And I am also now Exalted with Black Prince.
And then “Got my mind on the Money”, to loot 50k gold.
Goal: Get through a LFD run without bad mouthing another player, being rude, or otherwise being an asshat.
Awards: A sense of pride and happiness, and 10 points.
Rarity: Priceless.
A quick toon update, with great news everyone… Mortigen finally got a Putricide kill, which completed the Plague-works achievement for him. As my best geared toon (especially in dps set), it was odd to have it done as an undergeared tank (5kgs). I have only respect and awe for the healers keeping me alive through all that, and for the way everyone finally got our roles right. We took a set of characters which were not perfectly geared or experienced, and still managed to kill him. While I think some folks might have been frustrated by that, I was darn pleased that it worked. Any of a few folks would have preferred different roles, but the team got it done.
Huzzah Insidious-Nagrand!
At the very end the fight felt very epic, with us running out of health, mana, B-res, and floor space. In the final seconds I was inching backwards into a corner of free floor space, trying to survive long enough to ping my tank cooldowns again. Every second counted.
The fight is interesting, in that the degree of randomisation in the placement of goo pools and thrown goo, really makes or breaks the fight. I am still unsure why we use a strategy that has the tank walk the boss between two points, rather than in an ellipse, which seems more logical to me. Keeping two paths were the tank can run the boss feel better.
The Abom/Tank can assist by trying to keep some walking paths through the muck clear, but sometimes there is literally nothing than can be done, as I saw on many attempts. It is a great mechanic and somewhat frustrating to see a goo-ball fly out and strike somebody, especially when that is where you’re walking backward towards. With Aussie lag, I’m never sure if the boss is moving when being kited or not till a little later than I’d like, and often folks are calling for a move after I’ve started to go, but before the boss has any idea.
Can a Tank turn side-on and angle-strafe move him, rather than backward walking? Seems that if he is still in the forward 180 degrees it should be ok.
I like the guys in my guild, they’re happy to help but don’t take advantage. Cool guys. The guildmaster gave me a kick in the bum and helped me get the last two Instances done. Mortigen is now a Champion of the Frozen Wastes.
This is one of two titles that I want. Woot.
Achievements are funny things. They help us measure up, give us new targets, and re-live old experiences. But there are things that are important to the experience of playing WoW that are never tracked.
Which firsts should be tracked, maybe by account, and what is missing that you’d like to see?
We have Bind to Account items (BtA predicted), and personal achievements for characters now, and these are really cool features. The attaining of achievements has become more than a “grats” opportunity and many players relish the experience of gathering as many as possible.
Other players view these as distractions, and if you’re such a player then please return later as you’re not going to like what is following.
The next step in evolving and broadening the player experience is making Bind to Guild (BtG) items, and Guild Achievements (GAs) included in the game as well. A Guild is a fundamental choice for a massive selection of the WoW community (my opinion), but we have not seen an advance in treatment of Guilds in the same manner as we have seen in Characters.
Don’t get me wrong, this is no gripe; I just want to push for more.
As a start lets look at the pros and cons:
Cons
Pros
Blizzard blue has announced that it will soon be possible to solo some of the old world instances, where before a team was needed. Basically another change to help the old world content, and while the responders on the forums will say its to cater to the casuals, this actually caters to everyone. Nice change. Continue reading
TyphoonAndrew's - Eye of the Storm 