Is this a Timeless Isle rort?

In the Timeless Isle there is the capacity to earn special “bloody coins” currency by adopting the mantle of Ordos and killing others. Get enough coins and there are some nifty non-combat rewards and even a cool mount for 500x of the buggers. On my PvE realm flagging like that is still a dangerous act, as many folk will take the opportunity to fight and the buff takes away a lot of your health. I imagine that on a pvp realm it is one hell of a fast and deadly activity.

I found a group of characters up on the very northern tip of the Isle who appeared to be having their own little Ordos party, where I can only assume they take turns dying and killing each other. A good idea really, but is it a rort?

To be fair they may not have been switching to kill each other for Bloody Coins. Perhaps there was some other RP activity going on, and I’d just found the new tunnel for the DeepRun Tram? I wasn’t invited to join them, and perhaps that was a good thing.

To get there I was riding over the water well beyond where any monsters or quests go, and it was very still and quite. Good on these players for finding a nook to sequester themselves. More power (and blood-coin-thingys) to them.

Happy Killing, TyphoonAndrew

Have you noticed the gap?

I noted when running around after work on Tuesday night that the buff for extra Valor was still on my character, yet the cap had been refreshed back to 0/1000.

Like a good little grinder I’d almost finished farming my 150×4 of the bloody barrens boring grind-fest, so I got my last 35 oil, and parked at the quest giver.The ugly troll gave me the quest as expected.

Unexpectedly turning in the quest got me 300 Valor not 200. The What? +50% Cool!

Apparently it also works on the Isle of Thunder and disappears if you change zones or change maps. Yes it appears a bug, and likely unintended. I can’t say I’ll panic and plan to do this just for an extra 100 Valor each week, but it was a surprise.

Related articles

• 300 vp on tuesday (ownedcore.com)

Helping a player, or facilitating laziness?

While wandering through some daily quests on the weekend a random player asked me about where to find motes of harmony. I thought it was funny that I’d written a post about this, and that Google keeps telling me it is one of the most popular (or at least often clicked) items I’ve written.

When I tried to speak to the player I found him a little…(ahem)…daft.

Where you get motes? .. Try the farm. Or kill the turtles in Karasang Wilds.
What farm? … The Tillers faction farm.
What do I do? …. Plant the songbell seeds
Then what? ….. (at which time I decided that the player was pulling my leg and I stopped responding)

Arrogant or not, there comes a point where I think a reasonable person will just stop responding. I was not sure if I was helping a player, or actually facilitating their ongoing laziness. If that player cannot google an answer, and also knows so little about the current expansion to know how to use a seed on the farm, then I’m not sure there is a point of reference.

It also makes me consider how many of these things I have, and so far I’ve crafted well over 5 items, which take 6-8 of the Spirits of Harmony. Then I have a bank with 100, and about 140 which I carry. That is around 240 motes left after spending around 350 motes on gear; total around 500 motes. If I’d actually been farming each day the number would be in the thousands but I gave up long ago after the gear was almost meh.

I think that a player should have found a use for them, or looked up where they come from after having them drop from random creatures.

Helping or hurting, I’m not sure.

How do you get to 1000 valor per week?

I’d like to know how other players get to the 1000 valor cap per week? My method is constrained by small blocks of time, and a desire to alternate activity. I do:

• as many dailies for valor and rep as I can fit in while waiting for a queue
• x1-2 scenarios and x1 instance run per day, for the 3 nights a week I play. As a priority the Instance comes first, as it rewards more VPs, although the Scenarios can be quick.
• rarely I’ll do one or two extra daily quests before work, or on an off-night. Only 10-20 VPs worth at a maximum.
• even more rarely I get to kill bosses in a Raid or an LFR. Typically this happens if I don’t get a raid spot and I also get a night with no distractions. Once a month typically.

How successful is the strat? Its generally not enough. I get to around 650 VPs per week, although on a great week that might be almost 900 VP.

Is this the fault of me as a player not having enough time, or the fault of game design?

Given I spend approx 9 hours playing a week broken into small chunks of 45 minutes to 1.5 hours (if not raiding) I’m very comfortable saying that it is my schedule which affects the lack of capp’ing Valor points. Adding a night, or even 1 extra hour per day would make a huge difference on this time, and that is my long term plan – to spread play into “off-nights” but only doing stuff that is very easy to be interrupted in.

I’ve posted about the Valor rewards themselves being poor, and it may appear to be an attack on the overall system. The facility for obtaining Valor is fine, but the reward rate (5x per Daily) feels very low, but has not totally prohibited gear upgrades.

Happy Killing.

Related articles

• Raidboss Valor Reward Increased (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• wow p5.1 Valor Grinding Update by Ask Mr. Robot (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Shieldwall VP rewards (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Gearing up for an adventure (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• Dungeon and Raid Requirements (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)

A few nice things like kills, achievements, and factions

A few nice things happened in the past few days; so this post is a long-ish one.

Firstly I was able to join the raiders for our Guild first Elegon kill – booyah! That is a poor fight to be melee but we did it with a few characters playing up close and personal.

The tricks in the fight are plentiful, mainly based upon how to manage the stacks of the damage debuff so that you (a) increase your own damage to Elegon, (b) don’t take too much regular “pulse” damage, (c) don’t die when the large elemental style adds explode on death, and (d) gathering the sparky-adds in the third stage.

Now we head off to the Emperor fight, which is even worse for melee – with the “fun” mechanic where you watch which way the animation goes to dodge, and need full raid awareness, and luck, and manage the adds. I’d rather be doing many other things – grumble.

I finally gained Exalted with the Tillers (yippee), and very underwhelmed with the rewards. As rewards there is a tabard, a Yak, a few cooking recipes, and a basically useless knife. I didn’t expect the earth, but the rewards along the lines of automating the farming (like the bug sprayer and watering system) would have been good, or reducing the instances where we need to perform maintenance on crops?

Like what types of things you ask?

An actual scarecrow (not the toy), which reduces the chance that you get the birds, or rat-thingy infestation. Or anything which makes doing the dailies a little faster, now that the rep is at maximum.

I still have to get each bloody NPC’s individual rep to maximum so not out of the woods yet. Overall I’d like Farmer Yoon to actually be animated around the farm doing things…like farming. It actually looks like I did a lot of the farming and he just stood there. That lazy son of a bitch owes me more than a “thanks pal!”. If he walked around and did things it would go a long way to making it feel like we both did the work.

Is there a faction or way I can now get back down to Hated or At War so I can kill him? Do the Mogu need a champion?

I also happened to get the achievement Chef de Cuisine for 10 points when learning the 2x cooking recipes from the Tillers, indicating 160 recipes known. I don’t like cooking and these two additional recipes are all but useless. Meh, but yay +10 points!

Upgrades via Valor and Justice points soon – interesting news.

Some information via MMO Champion on how the items will be upgraded in patch 5.1. Basically PvE players get the option to use Justice to increase lower level gear by about 8 levels (463 to 471), and Valor gets two steps of 4 levels each costing 750 Valor per increase (489 to 493) and then (493 to 497).

As an offering its not bad – perhaps… I don’t have a sense yet if all gear will have this option, or if it will be only selectable items. If the items themselves are rare, then I can’t say much positive about this offer, as it will do nothing to stop luck being a major factor in improving gear. The point seems to be that effort can get a reward which is absolute. It would give reasons for the daily quests rewarding Valor, as it would have a permanent and tangible use beyond the initial purchase.

Related articles

• Random stuff from MMO Champ and Blue Posts
• A thought about the Brawlers Guild

Really farming Motes of Harmony

I wrote a post a while back about farming for Motes of Harmony, and the one thing which really gives fantastic return is the Tiller’s Farm. Its a safe 10-12 (or more) motes a day if that is all you did. And that effort takes about 15-30 minutes max. Sheesh, if you’re not doing it – get on it.

Granted you need the rep to unlock the seeds, and that takes some grinding. However these dailies grant cash and side rewards, with motes on top. It really feels like something that the game got almost perfect in Mists of Pandaria.

With a slow steady effort even a slow player can get a fair reward for time spent. Regular readers and followers of all the news will know this, but the impact of 10 free motes per day is a huge potential source for new gear, or even money if you are happy to craft gear to sell. The seeds are cheap, and you are in effect paying for the effort. Players with alchemists are doubly blessed due to the metal transmutes too.

Happy Farming, I mean killing

Where to farm Motes of Harmony?

If you have 200 of these things, you’ve cheated!

Motes of Harmony are the new shiny that we all need, and they drop randomly when you kill stuff. What I’ve seen is (obvious) that the greater your rate of kills and the easier the kill target, then the overall better rate of farming.

What I look for:

• A spot where there are lots of mobs
• Is safe-ish in case you need to go afk
• Has a reasonable drop rate
• Is not in the middle of nowhere

I found a few options:

• the Lost Souls, in Kun Lai Summit, who are level 87, passive yellow mobs, with about 220k health. They have approx 10% drop rate. Their special powers are interruptable. The down side is that they drop almost nothing else of value, so it will be boring.
• Mischievous Snow Sprite, see http://www.wowhead.com/npc=59693
• Sea Turtles in Karasang Wilds
• Turtles in Jade Forest
• or (obviously) run Instances, as the more trash, the more motes.

Grindy, grind, mc-grind, grind. Happy killing.

Updates:

• The Tiller’s Farm. Its a safe 12+ motes a day with very little effort.
• The Daily Blink have a good segway about Motes.
• This was hotfixed to not work anymore: The Easiest Black Prince Rep Farm + easy Motes/Cloth 85+ (ownedcore.com).

Related articles

• [Guide] Windwool Cloth, Motes, Greens, and EXP grind. (ownedcore.com)
• [Guide] Easy mote of harmony farm spot (ownedcore.com)

Swift White Hawkstrider found

Having a few tank characters payed off today as I was able to grind MgT for the Swift White Hawkstrider Mount, this time it dropped. Booyah!

It was my Pally Tank who killed Kael’thas to “find” the mount, but Mortigen the Death Knight who has the Orb of the Sindorei – which makes him look the part.

Or look really silly as a huge toon on a white chicken.

ta-da Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake!

It takes roughly 2 minutes and 29 seconds to kill Slabhide. The mount has a 1% drop rate. I killed him approx 8 times (so my mod tells me), but I know I’ve done it more than that while leveling on Normal mode. Ta-da Reins of the Vitreous Stone Drake.

It is a beautiful mount, and it was a great weekend.

Such a silly silly wow’er

My wow’ing has increased recently, and as I’m playing more I find that my memory is flawed in some aspects of the game, and an optimal approach is somewhat harder than it used to be. I’m becoming a silly wow’er. As a positive I am enjoying wow a lot again, just in time for the expansion.

For example:

I remembered too late that Normal mode dungeons can be run many times each day, as they do not have a 24 lockout. This means that I could run the Stonecore normal many times a day for the rare mount, rather than once as I was. Doh.

As running normal for mounts is easy I was also doing Heroic UP in Northrend for the Blue Protodrake that drops there too. Imagine my joy in finding that I did not change the difficult after running Stonecore on Normal, when the mount only drops in Heroic mode. Doh, back to the entrance I go. It did seem a little easy.

The weeks activity was not all silly though, as I’ve started alt’ing around again. This time I am concurrently leveling a Mage (51), Warlock (83), Shaman (46), Rogue (50), and Priest (80). My suss is that I can cycle through these characters using the rested experience boost and then switch toons. So far with so many characters I am always playing in rested. Its great.

The reason that I chose these classes is because all my other class characters are already 85. I do get slightly disinterested with some content when you have to play it three times. Often though doing the same content with three perspectives give me an idea for the differences in the class. The squishy factor of a Priest and Warlock are concerning when compared with how tough and mean all the plate wearing classes are (yup, all my plate wearers are max’ed out, not a surprise really).

During the leveling I can sometimes (if the family don’t need help) queue up for a instance and smash monsters in a team. The times when I do this with guildies I get a very quick reminder that I’m a scrub when it comes to playing multiple classes. However when I play in randoms I find that I smash the charts and perform well. That might mean my guildies are very powerful (true), and also might mean that even a total scrub who stays out of the fire is valuable.

It’s a nice reminder of the golden rule: you do zero dps when you’re dead. Happy killing, alt’ing, and noobing.

TyphoonAndrew

Farming for a Legendary or two

With the chatter about the new caster staff in Patch 4.2, I’ve realised that getting Legendary item must be one of my priorities that I am god awful at.

Thus far I am in the middle of three paths:

• The Hand of Rag – which has been in progress for a very long time. The Eye of Rag is the only item I need, and I’ve not seen one in many years.
• Shadowmourne – I’m up to the serious stage where you start collecting souls, but I have the bloods already.
• Thunderfury – just got the Garr binding last night, and now adding BWL and all the additional farming to my already long list of junk to do.

I can’t imagine getting even one of these complete. It also makes me think that a Warrior wielding a Legendary weapon in each hand would be overly cool, and make me very envious.

It also makes me think that I may as well add the other legendaries to the list. I’m sure there are players out there with 3+ items – got to have goals afterall. In for a penny…

Happy farming, see you in Molten Core.

Invasion Farming

The invasion brang all sorts of opinions about what and how to have world events. Everyone had an opinion, and usally this leads to arguments.

However something that a heck of a lot of people seem to be taking advantage of is the invasion attacks, and the free purple loot you can get.

Pictured here is my Pally farming for Necrotic Runes.

You need about 10 runes to finish an intro quest, and then 15 runes for each of the purchasable Shoulder and Glove slot items. That is 40 runes for two epic items….awesome! I’ll be taking advantage of these on all my toons. If only the other Chest and Leg items were available for purchase!

Those you’ve got to get from a rare spawn, and given how rare they are, and how heavily farmed these are – good luck! I have only had two drop, and one I could not use (mail drop for a cloth squishy, see below).

As a prot pally I am used to him being able to aoe solo grind 5-7 of these at once, and I think the best I did was a staggered chain of pulls, totalling about 20 mobs before they all died. The runes have about a 20-25% drop rate from what I can tell. It took less that 2 hours to get 2 epic items, both which were cross-grades, but still worth it.

Similarly my Druid has new Gloves and Chest for healing, and my Priest has the Gloves and Shoulders. I’d love to get the Chest and Leg drops for the Priest, but the time is tough to spend, especially if I can’t get a group session going.

And that is a key for these areas, the guys who did the best went in with at least 3 in the group, and blasted their way through everything. I saw a pally x3 (2x prot, 1x ret), shaman (ele), mage combo totally domainate the area I was in last night; great to watch, horrid to complete against.

If you have a late 60s or level 70 toon who has not got epic gloves or shoulders you should do these events.

Warlock farming

I noticed a cute trick a week ago that I had to share. Warlocks with a bit of Demo can sacrafice their Felpuppy for Mana return, then put up the Armour buff that regens health. This equates to huge mana and health return! I was farming the Elemental Plat for motes of fire and air, and had zero downtime. Zero….as destruction.

SB, SB, SB, ShadowFury. Deathcoil or Fear is something goes astray. That rocks! I know affliction can multimob farm, but I can drop 3 mobs in a sequence, faster than dot/dot/fearing them. 28 motes of fire, and 5 motes of air in 30 minutes.

Where to farm motes?

A guildie asked an excellent question today: Where is the best place to farm Primals?

Update: If you mean Motes of Harmony – See this post.

Now what this really means is where is the best place to farm for motes, and I suppose you need to consider:

• Which mobs will drop them (best advice is to use something like Allakhazam)
• How crowded the spot is at different times (we play as Aussie times, which makes farming better on US servers).
• What level the mobs are, because 2 levels lower means much faster kills.

The list:

All – For almost any motes go to Nagrand’s Elemental Plateau, it can be heavily farmed though. In the off-peak hours is sometimes not over crowded (and if I see you there I’ll banish your mobs 😛)

Motes of Air – Shadowmoon Valley where the quest chain for the Netherwing Faction is. Also south of Area 52 and the Air Elementals in Nagrand are good.

Motes of Fire – Blades Edge in the North East area, just beyond Gruul’s Lair. Stacks of Imps and Fire Elementals that are not level 70. Apparently elemental guys in Zangar Marsh are OK too. Shadowmoon Valley has Fire Elementals, just east of the middle. Lastly the Elementals in the Throne in Hellfire Peninsula drop them too. Also take a look in Hellfire Penninsula.

Motes of Water – Skettis area, always packets, and I’ve done 15 motes an hour easily there. The lakes just outside Shattrath and also in northern Nagrand are not too bad either (fishing is good too).

Motes of Earth – Mining is good, or the Earth Elements in Nagrand, Shadowmoon Valley, or Netherstorm.

Motes of Shadow – Nagrand in the Ogushin spot in the middle of the map. It’s surrounded by Voidwalkers that love to drop motes. The drop rate was recently reduced (or so I read), but this is still a good place. Netherstorm and Hellfire also have Voidwalker-types which drop motes.

Motes of Mana – a place called Wizard’s Row in Netherstorm. Really hard to grind as you need to pay attention to the other mobs, but ok drops.

Motes of Life – Zangarmarsh 64s in the North East corner will drop these motes, but I haven’t been there for ages so can’t speak about the drop rate.

Engineers – can make the Mote Extractor, and gather Air, Shadow, Mana, etc from gas clouds. My Paladin uses this toy regularly to gain a few motes each tour around the maps.

(ps – this is a direct amalgamation of a few emails, which some of the guildes wrote. Credit to them for knowing thier stuff)

Edit: Fixed some typos and added some extra areas.

Related articles

• Where to farm Motes of Harmony? (typhoonandrew.wordpress.com)
• [Guide] Super fast motes of harmony for professions (ownedcore.com)
• The Easiest Black Prince Rep Farm + easy Motes/Cloth 85+ (ownedcore.com)