Alterac Volley » Achievements

Glory Of The Hero

Nance — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:07:56 +0000

Over the course of the last few weeks, I’ve been devoting almost all of my playing time towards finishing up the rather daunting, to me at least, Glory of the Hero achievement. I’m proud to say that as of last week I wrapped up the last few required achievements needed and now I’m flying around on the fancy Red Proto-Drake you see above.

I wanted to write a short post about the individual achievements we struggled with the most so that anyone else thinking about taking a run at this has a basic idea of the challenges ahead of them.

Difficult Achievements

Watch Him Die
We really had a hard time with this one at first, and after several failed attempts at off-tanking the guardians we eventually decided that an all out DPS race was in order. So we zerged the Gatewatcher with all the DPS we could muster and after one bad attempt we pulled it off successfully on the second try.

Less-rabi
For us, the real struggle here was our group makeup. We rarely had the right people on at one time with the right number of interrupts so several attempts were made with PUGs and it never came together. Eventually, for my achievement, we managed to knock it down on our third or fourth sday of attempts. The trick here is to remember that after the boss is below 50% health he transforms every 5 seconds so you really have to be on the lookout to interrupt him. We found it easiest to count in your head to five instead of relying on a mod to tell you when the transform was coming.

Chaos Theory
The secret to this achievement is to make sure you clear out all of the trash leading up to the boss. That includes the stuff in the corner, behind the platform, that leads up to the boss himself. When the fight starts you need to stay at range of the rifts and just DPS the adds down as they come to you. In between you attack the boss until he goes immune at which point the entire group falls back down the ramp as the tank keeps aggro out of range of the rifts attacking the rest of the group. By the end of the fight, there will be dozens of adds coming at you so it’s a DPS race to finish.

Make It Count
I think Occulus is one of the worst Heroics out there. The flight mechanic is annoying and kind of buggy but the actual fights themselves aren’t that difficult. This achievement was really just the result of practice from doing the other Occulus related achievements in the game. The one tip I have, aside from practice makes perfect, is to not bother looting anything the entire time. You might find those seconds you save pretty valuable at the end.

Worth The Effort

In the end, trying for Glory of the Hero was a lot of fun. The mount is cool, for sure, but the real reward was the entertaining groups we put together as we all tried to finish. Doing the same Heroics, over and over, can get stale pretty quick (even if you’re trying to gear an alt like I was) so a bit of a challenge thrown in the mix now and then made things very entertaining. I recommend everyone gives it a shot if they have a decent group of friends to help them out.

One More Mount For The Week

Nance — Sat, 23 May 2009 20:10:33 +0000

I was minding my own business today, running some Argent Tournament dailies, when a tweet from Danial at Less QQ, More PewPew caught my eye. He mentioned getting the Ambassador title on his character and I immediately realized that since I recently got that title as well I now had enough Exalted reputations to finish the Leading the Cavalry achievement.

It turns out this achievement is painfully easy to complete once you have Exalted reputation with the five main cities of your faction. Before I got started I only had 21 out of the 50 mounts I needed to complete the achievement and get the Reins of the Albino Drake reward. A few quick trips to each Horde city and I was buying up 8 and 80 gold mounts left and right. I had to finish up in Nagrand, of all places, to buy a few Talbuks and I was done.

The whole process only took a few minutes of travel and maybe 2,00 gold or so. I actually bought a few more mounts than I needed and ended up with 56 total by the time I stopped.

Bestowing Some Titles

Nance — Mon, 11 May 2009 04:41:06 +0000

I realized on the very first day of the Argent Tournament that this would be a great opportunity for me to finally finish off the reputations I needed for the Ambassador of the Horde achievement.

Well, after faithfully doing the Argent Tournament dailies and turning in dozens and dozens of Champion’s Writs I was down to one last reputation: Silvermoon City. I burned through the last few thousand points of reputation with the extremely handy A Donation of Runecloth repeatable quest.

The final turn in, that pushed me over into Exalted, led to the following completed achievements:

And these three titles:

Ambassador Nance
Nance of Silvermoon
Crusader Nance

That’s without a doubt the most over-the-top set of rewards I’ve ever received for turning in one quest.

Achievement Guide: The Diplomat

Achievement Guide: The Diplomat

Nance — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 13:30:58 +0000

Over the last week or so, when I wasn’t doing dailies, I was trying to wrap up the grindtastic The Diplomat achievement for the cool title and WoW street cred it offers. This achievement requires Exalted status with three somewhat out of the way factions: the Kurenai (for Alliance), the Mag’har (for Horde) and then Sporeggar and finally Timbermaw Hold.

Kurenai / Mag’har

Of the three Exalted reputations you need I think you’ll find this the easiest. In fact, many of you who are level 80 and have been playing the game for awhile probably have this one done already. The ogres in Nagrand drop an item called Obsidian Warbeads that can be turned in 10 at a time for 500 reputation. Kill enough ogres, collect enough warbeads and you’ll be at Exalted quickly enough.

Sporeggar

This one can be easy as well, especially if you’re willing to spend a little money during the process. There are two repeatable quests for the Sporeggar that you must complete, over and over, to reach Exalted. They are Now That We’re Still Friends… and Bring Me ANother Shrubbery!. The first can easily be soloed by any level 80 player over and over. There are a large collection of Bloodscale mobs just north of the quest giver. As for the Shrubbery quest, I’ve written extensively about collecting Sanguine Hibiscus before but you can either grind for them in the Underbog or buy them in the Auction House for about 5 gold a piece.

Timbermaw Hold

This last achievement requires the most grinding that I’ve seen in-game in a long, long time on my character. You’re going to be spending a lot of time in Felwood completing this part of the achievement. In the north and south of the zone are Deadwood mobs that drop the quest item Deadwood Headdress Feather and give you 20 reputation per kill up to Revered. By the time you hit Revered, if you’ve collected 350 of the feathers along the way you can finish the repeatable quest Feathers for Nafien 70 times in a row to hit Exalted.

Achievement Guide: Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich?

Nance — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 17:34:50 +0000

This particular Achievement Guide for Did Somebody Order a Knuckle Sandwich? is a little unorthodox for two reasons: #1, I can’t guarantee you’ll actually complete the achievement using this technique and #2 it’s only viable for people who have yet to finish the infamous Wrathgate quest line.

The Wrathgate event, for those of you that don’t know, is a long series of quests in the Dragonblight zone that culminate in an excellent quest called The Battle for the Undercity. I won’t give any plot spoilers for those of you who haven’t seen this yet but, during this particular quest, you are more or less a spectator to events happening around you. You can still fight and attack but, in reality, what you do has no particular effect on the outcome of the quest.

This is where the Knuckle Sandwich achievement can come into play. Since you can attack but not be killed this is a great chance to power level your Unarmed fighting skill. The Battle for the Undercity quest has tons of elite mobs and several bosses with massive totals of hit points so you can just stand next to them all and wail away with your fists and watch as your Unarmed combat skill rises and rises. If you manage to get in on the event from the start you will be awfully close to 400 skill by the time the final boss is downed.

I did this on my Holy Priest recently and, even though I didn’t start punching until halfway through the second boss, I still got my skill from 1 to 246 by the time the quest was over.

Achievement Guide: For The Horde!

Nance — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 16:02:14 +0000

The For The Horde! achievement, which is really the culmination of four separate achievements I’ll detail in a second, was one of those things I never thought I would be able to do in my WoW career. On my server, with a 2-to-1 Alliance to Horde ratio, I’ve seen countless failed attempts at this achievement and the quest for the awesome Black War Bear.

But on early Friday morning, when the server population was very low someone started a PUG and I decided to join. After a long wait we finally had 40 people and we were ready to give it our best shot. Here is the order we went in and our technique in each of the Alliance cities:

#1 – Death to the King!
It was decided that we would start in Ironforge. Traditionally, this has been the hardest of the four achievements to get on Greymane-US since getting to King Magni Bronzebeard takes a lot of coordination and travel for the group. Also, he’s the most “bunkered” of the four in my opinion and the area surrounding his chamber is usually crawling with players.

Getting to Ironforge is an interesting process. Our technique was to have one Warlock build and two other players travel to Booty Bay and then take the teleportation thing to Gnomeregan. Once they were inside Gnomeregan they built one of those Warlock portals and summoned everyone else. We were outside of Ironforge in no time.

Our theory about an early morning raid having a good chance at success was spot on for this part of the achievement. We met very, very little resistance in Ironforge other than the expected attention we got from NPCs. We tore down Magni in relatively short order and as soon as he was down we mounted up and headed for the tram right around the corner.

#2 – Storming Stormwind
Once everyone was on the tram we took it straight to Stormwind City for our date with King Varian Wyrnn. We waited inside the tram station for our group to gather back up again and when we were ready it was simply a matter of rushing the portal and taking the quick run to the king’s chamber.

Again, we met with very little opposition aside from NPCs and we had him down in no time. As soon as he dropped a few mages popped portals to Orgrimmar and we left the Eastern Kingdoms halfway done with our run at For The Horde! And the last two kills would turn out to be even easier than the first two.

#3 – Immortal No More
Once we all hit Orgrimmar we ran to the flight master and took the flight to Zoram’gar Outpost on the western side of Ashenvale. A quick run north to the small Alliance town of Auberdine was next. When we all got there we waited on the dock for the boat to Darnassus.

Once we hit Darnassus it was just a matter of running through all of the guards at the dock, into the portal and then heading right to the room where Tyrande Whisperwind is. We took her down so fast, in fact, that some people got to the party late and didn’t get credit for the achievement. This ended up being the only mishap we had during the whole adventure.

We headed back to the dock and got on the boat going back to Auberdine.

#4 – Putting Out the Light
The last achievement had us on a trip to the ghost town known as the Exodar. Back in Auberdine, we grouped up again and took the boat to Azuremyst Isle. Once we got inside the Exodar no one was really sure where to go but we eventually found Prophet Velen and took him down to finish the achievement.

The Reward

Once you complete For the Horde! you immediately receive a piece of in-game mail with your bear mount. Afterwards, you could see about two dozen Horde players running around Dalaran on their new mounts. It was a pretty cool sight and I was glad I decided to get involved with the group.

Quick Tip

If you’re interested in trying to complete For The Horde! I can’t recommend enough the time of day we did it at. On my server, the population on the Alliance side was so low before noon that through four city raids I only racked up a total of 20 honorable kills (and I’m pretty sure four of those are the NPCs in each city we killed). We basically steamrolled the Alliance cities in about an hour, including travel time, with little opposition. It couldn’t have gone any better.

Video: Bleeding Bloodhoof

Nance — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 19:30:08 +0000

I always play on the Horde side of things but I’m posting a video of an Alliance achievement today. I was lucky enough to hop on my bank alt, Daugherty, in Thunder Bluff just as a giant swarm of dazed and confused Alliance players arrived to take their run at the Bleeding Bloodhoof achievement.

So sit back and enjoy the four and a half minute movie of Alliance players running in the wrong direction, heading too far up the giant totem pole and finally succeeding in another successful city raid on Greymane against zero Horde resistance.

To be fair, it’s pretty easy to get to Cairne Bloodhoof if you know where to go. It’s about a 15 second run from the elevator. By the time the Horde players got together enough people to fight off the attack it would probably be too late anyway.

Achievement Guide: Critter Gitter

Nance — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 20:59:23 +0000

The Critter Gitter achievement is a requirement for the Chef title so I thought I’d put together a quick guide showcasing the easiest place to complete this task. Before you get started make sure you have ten Critter Bites on you. You can find the recipe for the Bites at your faction’s cooking trainer in Dalaran.

I think the easiest place to finish this achievement is in Icecrown at the coordinates 65, 21. If you fly to the Shadow Vault, in the far north of the zone, you can get to this location on your flying mount in a matter of seconds. At 65, 21 you’ll find a ice flow load of Glacier Penguins. It’s simply a matter of landing and throwing ten of them your Critter Bites. I’ve attached a, most likely unnecessary, video to this post showing you this achievement in action.

Quick tip: I think that this location in Icecrown is the future home of the Argent Tournament everyone is talking about. If that is the case then anyone looking to wrap this achievement up might want to get it done before the 3.1 patch is released.

Daily Quest Guide: Aces High!

An Overachieving Weekend with the Lunar Festival

Nance — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 14:25:04 +0000

I went in to this weekend with a lot of holes to fill in my experience running Heroics. There were some instances, like Gundrak, that I’d run on regular but hadn’t on Heroic yet. Then there were several I’d never seen the inside of at all like Azjol-Nerub and the Halls of Stone.

The Motivation

I decided to jump in and finish these Heroics because I suddenly became swept up in the To Honor One’s Elders achievement for the ongoing Lunar Festival world event. Wrapping up that achievement grants you the title of Elder. I thought that was kind of cool and two of the required achievements, Elders of the Dungeons and Elders of the Alliance, seemed like interesting challenges for a lazy weekend.

As of this morning, I’ve made serious dents in the Lunar Festival achievements. I think I’ll have them all wrapped up by the middle of the week as a matter of fact. Then I’ll run around for a few months as Elder Nance until I get tired of it and switch to something else.

If you haven’t checked out the Lunar Festival yet and you are a big achievement nerd like I’m becoming than I highly recommend you give it a shot. Some of the achievements can be done in seconds while others will take you hours of traveling and solo dungeon clearing to complete. It’s also a great opportunity for players like myself that missed out on some of the old dungeons or have never take the initiative yet to see all of the Heroics that Wrath has to offer.