The Cenarion Expedition

I have a need.

Okay so it's really more of a WANT, but I went and screwed it up.

It kind of bothers me that you can screw this up so easily.

There is no warning, no way of knowing how gleefully questing your way through the outlands you can make it MUCH more difficult to get what you want later. Well, no warning if you don't read blogs or guides.

Unfortunately I didn't read too many blogs until AFTER I had reached 70 on Tigersoul.

!!DO NOT DO ANY QUESTS!! for the Cenarion Expedition until you have reached Honored with them!! It will save you lots of money and grinding later on.

Granted I am about 40% through Revered Status, so I'm getting there, but I want Exalted!

Give me that Earthwarden, Nethercleft Leg Armor, and Cenarion War Hippogryph!! (Okay so I probably won't get that mount... Too expensive!)

If you want to do it right - do what Nasirah says and you won't regret it. Unidentified Plant Parts aren't that hard to find or expensive to buy. When you are stuck at revered, the only way of getting more rep is to run Regular Steamvaults, Heroic Slave Pens, Underbog, or Steamvault, AND turning in Coilfang Armaments.

So here's a quick monetary reason why BUYING 360 plant parts is preferable to Buying MANY armaments later on.
10 Unidentified Plant Parts for Identify Plant Parts repeatable (up to Honored) quest:
Cost: 1-3g for 10 from AH. Possibly cheaper if you are lucky.
Reputation Gain: 250 CE Rep - plus a bag of junk that might have Uncatalogued Species for more rep when you reach honored.

1 Coilfang Armaments for Coilfang Armaments repeateable (up to Exalted) quest:
Cost: 10-15 g EACH from AH.
Reputataion Gain: 75 CE rep. Nothing else.

As you can see... it's a LOT more expensive to get Armaments later.
I have 8168/21000 rep. That means IF I were crazy and wanted to spend gold to get up to Exalted, I would need to turn in 172 more Coilfang Armaments which would cost me a minimum of 1,720 gold! Not to mention it would take FOREVER to turn in 172 armaments to the quest-giver!

So I will be running SV with my guild, or Heroic SP/UB in order to get this. We ran Heroic Slave Pens last week and got about 2k rep, so I only have 6 more dungeon runs to go. That might not seem so bad - but with my schedule, and my guild being mostly in an opposite Timezone, organizing dungeon runs can be a hassle.

So take it from me. Spend a couple hundred gold on Plant Parts when you are lvl 60 and get yourself to Honored that way. THEN do the quests. You'll end up richer for it in the end methinks!

An Update

It's been a busy time what with a new baby and work and all. I've also been reading a lot, most recently the A Song of Ice and Fire books by George R. R. Martin. (I'm only on the 2nd book A Clash of Kings) Yes I actually found out about this through the blog of the webcomic Looking for Group. Usually I hear about good Fantasy series but somehow missed this one. I also read all the available books by Brandon Sanderson who is finishing the last book in Robert Jordan's amazing Wheel of Time series. I actually might like a lot of Brandon Sanderson's work more than Jordan's. It'll be interesting to see how the 12th book turns out. His downloadable book Warbreaker is really good too. So if you don't want to go to the library and like reading PDF books... go check it out!

Tigersoul has been on a bit of a hiatus - he really wants the Shattered Sun Pendant of Might but is seriously sick of dailies. He's getting low on cash for some reason and needs to get a group together for a Heroic Sethekk Halls run to finally get Swift Flight Form. He also needs to get back into the Arena scene. I think we need to start our teams over before the next patch fixes point buying. I haven't bough points and don't plan on it - our ratings just stink right now and so I think it'd be a good time to start over!

Katryona dinged 68 last night (which took me WAY too long but I got in a bit of tunnel vision there) and became honored with Aldor's too. Finally I can get the Aldor quests in SMV and start turning in Marks of Sargeras instead of the less available Marks of Kil'Jaeden. By the time she reaches 70 she will definitely have enough to buy the regular riding skill for flying and make a helicopter. Did I mention I think engineering is fun?

Silverthorne is finally 35 and is almost to my 275 Enchanting goal so I can disenchant all the otherwise worthless high level greens I find while farming/questing. While going from 33 to 35 I discovered the joy that is Shadow Priest (without shadowform yet) utilizing Vampiric Embrace, Power Word: Shield, Shadow Word: Pain, and Mind Flay = Pure Awesome! I was amazed at the quests I was easily completing. Oh yeah - Psychic Scream is handy too. Almost invulnerable and self healing while inflicting pain is awesome!

Soulsword is still at 46. It is hard to play him. My guild officers want me to get him up to 70 and spec Protection so we can have another Tank option other than our Feral Druids (one of which is also me). I like tanking all right... but do I want to be one of the ONLY tank options in the guild? Good thing I'm the guild leader...

The Druid Army isn't doing much lately. Too busy with other things (Mostly Rogue leveling and Shattered Sun dailies) - but they are building up some good mats for professions and Treesoul ALMOST has bear form. Yeah I know it's pretty sad. She's level 9 and it REALLY doesn't take that long.

At Last We Greet You, Karazhan...

Last night was so much fun that I was on for about 3 hours longer than I should have been.

Which then caused me to stumble into work MUCH too late. Lovely. Not good.

So here's what went down...

FIRST - I logged onto my rogue, got all the mats necessary - and made those wonderful Deathblow X11 Goggles that I wanted, then quested and farmed more mats getting my mining up to 367, and TRYING to get to 62 so I could "Show my pride" and actually WEAR the goggles. (Thanks for the comic reminder from an anonymous commenter - Scout Report is fun!)

Then my guildies logged on, and we have been planning on finally finishing up the now not totally required Kara attunement. We were expecting to take one or two of our members through Old Hillsbrad to get ready for Black Morass. We invited a 66 Ret Pally in the guild to come along to fill our group. Good that she came too, because there were some good blue upgrades for her!

Final setup was 70 Feral Druid tank, 70 Subtle Rogue, 70 Holy Pally, 70 BM Hunter and 66 Ret Pally. Durnholde is easy now. My guildmates do an amazing job as well... although we definitely need a bit more experience getting it perfect... I have to charge down mobs going after our hunter at times because we aren't focusing on the target I'm mainly tanking (Multiple mob pulls).

"Hey lets get Black Morass out of the way too!" I say

"I don't think we can handle it... Especially not with my heals" says our better-than-he-thinks-he-is healer. (He's awesome)

"Well let's go anyway!"

CHARGE!!! 18 waves later... Ba-da-bing that was EASY - but you know what? Probably the most fun I have ever had in an instance! I think we will continue getting others through the Kara Key process just because getting through the dungeons and BM is a great learning experience. And its FUN.

We only had one death on Temporus the 2nd boss - But that was only because the Hunter was a bit trigger happy and got a bunch of aggro before I'd even engaged him! The jerk didn't even drop the Hourglass of the Unraveller for us Other than that Chrono Lord Deja and the final boss Aeonus were pushovers.

My tactic on all the rifts and bosses was to position myself between the boss and Medivh, and when a new mob spawned and headed off towards Medivh (Stubborn bums have to be physically hit to stop them from bee-lining to Medivh - so no easy Ferocious Roars or Faerie Fires :( ) I would target and swipe him or lacerate just as he got close to where the Rift-boss was. That was usually good enough to keep them on me. Swipe was especially effective in getting the attention of those little whelps that spawn in 3s. Other than that we had our hunter and rogue picking up the runaways as well as burning down the Rift-bosses to close the rifts. We did a really good job.

It was also nice to laugh at the naysayers who said we couldn't do it!

After turning in the CoT quests I am almost Revered with KoT (hit honored on the way through), so I picked up the Heroic CoT key and the pattern for Drums of Panic. I have a feeling these will be fun in AV, AND even better it allowed me to finally cap my LW! 375 yay!

So of course we had to go into Kara to see what's up in there. Even just the front area is a lot cooler than many other instances - there's just a... Aura to the place that the developers really put some thought into this one. We died a couple times - but I turned in the first quest from the outside (and died) and now I have to find some diary.

Awesome night.
- Cool goggles for my rogue (and Tigersoul is jealous)
- Maxed Leatherworking
- Karazhan Master Key obtained for 4 of my guild officers so we can now organize runs
- Began discussing changes to guild structure to allow for some very laid-back Kara runs.

We'll see how it all works out.

Ogri'la Attunement for everyone!!

Last night we got a bunch of our new 70s (and some of the older ones) "Attuned" to Ogri'la.

I would have rather been getting us Keyed for Kara, even though that may be obsolete VERY soon. I still want it done.

Anyway, the Big Bear Butt Blogger has some excellent guides on Daily quests, but this one here on becoming Neutral with Ogri'la is very useful.

I have killed all of the slobbering sons of Gruul; Slaag, Maggoc, and Grulloc, but when I initially did their quests (1, 2, 3) I was lucky enough to tag along with a horde group killing the three so I didn't have to fight at all. Unfortunately I didn't know that I could also tag along for the last two parts, Grim(oire) Business, and Into the Soulgrinder.

Last night I tanked them all and Slaag was the hardest part. He has some cone shaped acid breat that comes out and knocks you back quite a bit - so the best thing to do is have all the non-tanks inside while you tank him in the doorway, with your back to the wall so you don't get knocked back much. We wiped the first time because we had no idea what was going on. Other than that, these guys are all pretty tough - but easy with a good group.

Reputation

Reputation is everything right?

Well I guess it depends what you WANT...

At least in the World of Warcraft. Increased reputation brings rewards. Weapons, Trinkets, Rings, Recipes for professions, and other less-corporeal forms like just wanting to be Exalted with EVERYBODY. Everybody possible anyway, sometimes it's just NOT possible. I mean you have to choose between Scryer or Aldor, Bloodsail or Booty Bay, Magram or Gelkis, and of course Alliance or Horde. The only way to get around this is by having an Alt have a different rep affiliation than you. And well really... that just isn't the same and probably doesn't COUNT.

Anyway lets take a quick look at my rep sheet. I am very happily almost exalted with EVERY Alliance force. Those dang Gnomeragan rep points are hard to get. 1,303 points away from Alliance Exaltation!

Now I DO have a plan, which is helped by Alterac Valley and the current Lunar Festival. I get 75 alliance points from every ancestor I get a coin from - so 18 more coins and I'm exalted. That takes a lot of time though, so I get rep in Alterac Valley. Alterac Valley for Gnome rep? How can this be?? Well remember all those quests that you USED to do in AV but now you don't because they are kind of pointless? Well... other than the polished armor buffs - I think it would be pretty difficult to summon the druid and the flight masters quests and catching goats just takes too long. BUT, if the other team is determined to Turtle (which most of the time they are these days - at least in my Battlegroup) why NOT turn in the armor scraps, medallions and (my favorite) globes to the quest acceptors in between waves. Why? REP POINTS!!! First off, you can get all the way to Exalted with the Stormpike Guard fairly easily, AND it gives you quite a bit of Ironforge rep as well. Once Stormpike and IF are maxed out, it tells you how much rep you are getting from the other Allied forces you haven't maxed yet. Currently for turning in 5 globes I get +19 rep with Gnomeragan exiles. Not bad. However. If you are playing AV for Honor - follow the tried and true method of following the masses and win - you'll probably get more honor. BUT, when the other team is turtling - might as well get some rep along with those 95 kills for the game right? Right! Mixing the coin rep with the AV should get me there pretty quick. Unfortunately I'm also trying to farm Consortium rep, Cenarion Expedition rep, Netherwing, and heck, let's throw Ogri'la and Kurenai in there too! Too much rep! It's CRAZY I tell ya!

For more info on rep, Nasirah over at "A Tale of Two Druids" has been posting some AWESOME rundowns of how to increase your rep with various factions. Lower City, Sporeggar, Kurenai/Mag'har, Cenarion Expedition and more - it's awesome! The rest of the blog is a nice read as well, focused mostly on Balance and Resto Druids. I highly recommend it!

Netherwing

Now that I have Artisan Flight and can zip around on my Silver Riding Nether Ray, I made my way down into Shadowmoon Valley to the Dragonmaw area to do the Netherwing Dailies. I have a feeling this is going to take me quite a long time to get my rep high enough for a Dragon...

But in the end, I will be MORE than pleased with Swift Flight Form! I'm on the final leg of the quest, the hardest part, killing Anzu the Raven God. LONG quest up to this one. I was fortunate to have Chalen my mage friend with me which made killing the bird spirits a lot faster. I definitely wouldn't have been able to handle that last bird - and he was happy to see 7k crits against him!

New Goals:
- Swift Flight Form - Finish the final quest. Finding a group will be quite fun I'm sure.
- Kara Attunement - Even though we are not a raiding guild, I want to get this done.
- Consortium Rep - I want Haramad's Bargain sooner than later for DPS gear.
- Cenarion Expedition Rep - I lust after the Earthwarden.
- Silverthorne to 40 - That guy needs a horse - and the ability to level up Enchanting more (although I need to get him to 55 or so to be a really useful enchanter I guess!)

And I also want to improve my blog by adding all the amazing blogs I've been reading to my blogroll and allow the wowhead tooltips to show up here on blogspot. One step at a time I guess!