Results tagged “Loremaster”

At 10:50 last night, almost exactly 2 months (to the minute) after entering Northrend, Andro completed her Loremaster of Northrend achievement and with it the Loremaster meta-achievement. It's been a fun journey and is a natural corollary to my tendency to explore and try to follow the story - but good to see some recognition for those of us not raiding or taking part in battlegrounds.

For the most part its been an adjunct to Andro's wandering through the world - only at a couple of points have I gone out of my way to do things for the achievement (and that principally for the Loremaster of Kalimdor, which took several weeks of faffing to complete, done partially before Wrath but finished over the Christmas holidays).

The main bugbear of Kalimdor (and to a lesser extent Eastern Kingdoms) was the fact that the "quests completed" list was on a continent basis (as opposed to Outland and Northrend where its by zone) so working out what you've missed is a swine (and there's not much overage in Kalimdor, hence them changing the number of quests needed in 3.0.8). Finding them all was a 3-stage process: Hit all the main quest hubs (with "low level quest" flagging on), which got me to about 670/730, a general wander round of areas I'd largely missed when I did the zones (mainly the lowe level ones) which got me to about 700/730, and then a trawl of wowhead for the remainder (many of which are drop-started). In stark contrast I completed Eastern Kingdoms pretty much just going from quest to quest and was a grand total of 1 quest short of completing Outland when the achievement system activated.

In Northrend, most of the zones are straightforward with sufficient quests to do the achievements without too much hassle (and for the most part soloable). Zul Drak was the main exception, with if memory servers, only 101 quests in total (of 100 needed) several of which are quite tough and/or involve groups. Icecrown was the other annoyance, needing a rather substantial 140 quests to complete and with a rather large number of group only quests. While Andro was able to solo some of the 3-mans (or to 2-3 man some of the 5-man quests) completing this bit of the achievement requires grouping - she got to about 125 completes before needing to group up, and even after hitting 140 has a decent stack of group quests (with their often very nice rewards) to complete.

I have to give Kudos to blizz for a very engaging storyline that draws you in and pulls you along. It was a rollercoaster (and one that isn't yet done) with some high drama, low humor and outright scary moments.

So what's next? Two things reallty: advancing professions (which means gathering mats) and getting kitted up for doing higher level instances. That'll involve a number of rep grinds (and boy, are there a shed load of dailies in Northrend, particularly in Sholazar, Storm Peaks and Icecrown), some of which are already underway (Andro's Exalted with 2 factions already and honored/revered with the rest). Annoyingly, the faction she really, really wants to grind is the only one that can really only be done via wearing the tabard in level 80 instances - the Kirin Tor (I don't count the 150 rep points from the cooking daily). Given many of the other factions have half a dozen or more dailies each, this strikes me as rather odd (or I'm missing something ...)