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The OverAchiever: The 25 most entertaining achievements, part 3
Every so often, I get tired of the self-seriousness that infests some of (OK, most of) the other work I do here and get the urge to write something purely for fun. After our series on evil achievements and the relentless misery of School of Hard Knocks, I'd like to spend some time on achievements that are nothing but an absolute joy from beginning to end. This week we continue our series on World of Warcraft's most entertaining achievements. This is the full series to date, if you're just catching up with us: OverAchiever: Pure Win The 25 most entertaining achievements, #25-21 The 25 most entertaining achievements, #20-16 The 25 most entertaining achievements, #15-11 (today's post)
Scorchling not available in this year's Midsummer Fire Festival
Looks like mini-pet collectors are going to be unable to get the Scorchling this year. Aredek posted in the official forums that the Scorched Stone is no longer on the Ice Chest's drop table from Ahune. Aredek I'm afraid that the Scorchling does not appear to be available this year, folks. I cannot say for certain whether or not it will be made available in the future; however, we encourage you to share your thoughts on the Suggestions forum if you would like to see the Scorched Stone be obtainable in some other way. source It's unclear why they elected to leave it out this year, however it almost looks like it might have been a simple error rather than a design decision. Either way, the historical drop rates for this were so low that most players won't be able to tell the difference. Also, despite this, the Lil' Game Hunter achievement is much more easily obtainable now than it was this time last year, with the introduction of many new sources for non-combat pets. Still, that's a very cute fireball.
The OverAchiever: Pure win
Every so often I get tired of the self-seriousness that infests some of (OK, most of) the other work I do here, and get the urge to write something purely for fun. After our series on evil achievements and the relentless misery of School of Hard Knocks, I'd like to spend some time on achievements that are nothing but an absolute joy from beginning to end. The following is an entirely arbitrary set of five achievements that I personally believe are a hoot. Eventually, I'd like to expand this in the same fashion as the evil achievements series, and I'd welcome any comments or suggestions on your own favorites. Namely, what makes certain achievements fun? Is there any achievement you've made a point of getting on each of your characters?
Patch 3.3.3: Account changes for Murkimus
Gladiators, rejoice! Or at least those of you that participated in the 2009 Arena Tournament -- Murkimus, gladiator murloc extraordinaire has been changed as of today's patch. The pet, which was previously only available on whatever character you used the code with, will now apply to your entire Battle.net account. So if you claimed your Murkimus on one character, be prepared to receive a surprise in the mail on your other characters when you log in. Watch your fingers, that spear is sharp. Here's the full announcement: Bashiok With the release of patch 3.3.3 those who received the Murkimus pet for their participation in the 2009 Arena Tournament will notice that the pet is being changed to apply to their entire Battle.net account and all associated World of Warcraft licenses. If you previously claimed a Murkimus code for one character on an account this change will mean that all characters on that account, as well as characters on any other World of Warcraft licenses registered to the same Battle.net account, will receive a Murkimus in their in-game mailboxes. With this change you'll finally be able to play any of your characters, stand up defiantly, and exclaim "I'm Murkimus!" source So Gladiators, enjoy your pet -- on whatever character you'd like. I'll be over here, wishing I'd participated in it!
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Companion pet and mount updates
Another PTR build has been deployed on the public test realms for patch 3.3.3. We'll be seeing some new pets and mounts it seems. I admit I'm not as dedicated to pets or mounts as my friends are, but that doesn't mean I'm not interested in any new updates. Mounts The Celestial Steed has been added into the game and it looks to be an all around mount that can function is a ground mount in the old world and a flying mount in Outland or Northrend. There are no screenshots of it yet, but my guess is that it's a horse with wings that could double as a constellation. Check out the picture above for an idea.
New pet and mounts achievements coming soon
You're a pet and mount maniac. You've hunted down every noncombat pet you can find, gotten a lucky roll on every rare mount you can possibly pick up, and after long last, you've earned both the "Lil' Game Hunter" and "Mountain o' Mounts" achievements. But still, you want more for some reason. More pets, more mounts, more achievement points.Good news: Bornakk says that there will still be more to find. While he says they won't be upping the achievements every time they bring out a patch that has more pets and mounts to collect, they will definitely add in new achievements periodically for collecting both noncombat pets and mounts (and, though he doesn't say so, we'd assume they'll add in extra rewards besides the achievement points, including extra pets or mounts to be earned at each level).So if you are in fact a collecting master and have already earned the 75 pets and 100 mounts (a much easier feat than it used to be) for both maximum achievements currently in the game, just be patient. There'll be new goals to go after soon.
Patch 3.1 achievements round up
Everybody loves achievements, right? ...no, I guess not. Some people like achievements, right? Yes! Patch 3.1 brings a lot of cool stuff for you guys to do as well, so here's all of it in a nice little package for you to pick through. Have fun! There's already a few people ready to pick up the Insane title, but we'd like to assume most of you are slightly less insane. Only slightly. For you guys, we have a get to completing Insane in the Membrane. As of today, the Black and Plagued Proto-Drakes are gone for good. A batch of brand new achievements have been added to the Noblegarden event, which has been extended to a week and will begin on April 26th. Note that you will need these for What a Long, Strange Trip Its Been. We've posted an early version of Ulduar's achievements, too! Chef de Cuisine is getting a bit easier for Alliance players. They can get their hands on Dig Rat Stew on their own now! In exchange, Lil' Game Hunter is becoming easier for the Horde. Enjoy your Sprite Darters and Westfall Chickens! The Argent Tournament has a load of its own achievements as well. If you enjoyed this stuff, keep an eye on our achievements column, The Overachiever. We'll probably be going over a lot of this, especially the Noblegarden and Argent Tournament achievements, in the coming weeks. Patch 3.1 is live and it takes us into Ulduar, delivers us dual specs, and brings significant changes to all the classes! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1 and the official patch notes!
A random pet macro for your noncombat buddies
This is pretty simple (I know there are a few versions floating around), and just a few minutes with the macro API will probably get you something just like this (or probably better), but if you, like Bornakk, have so many noncombat pets that you don't know what to do with them, this macro that a guildie gave me a while back might help. Plug this text into a macro, save it as "Critter" and throw it on your toolbar./run CallCompanion("CRITTER", random(GetNumCompanions("CRITTER")))As you've probably surmised, it'll choose a random critter from your noncombat pets and bring it out for you to play with. As I said, this is super-simple -- you could add /dismount on to the front of this and use it as a one-stop "dismount and summon pet" macro, or I'm sure our commenters (who are much better at this macro stuff than I am) will have lots of other ways to play. We posted a more complicated one a while back, and you can still replace CRITTER with MOUNT, but this one's even easier than that.But like Bornakk, I tend to collect way too many noncombat pets and I can never choose which is my favorite. A random macro like this helps pull out a friend I haven't seen lately.
The OverAchiever: Lil' Game Hunter
Every week The OverAchiever gives advice, walkthroughs and guides on completing your latest Achievement obsession. This week we look at how to track down 75 critters with a minimum of pain.At some point in your pet collecting career, it's best just to give up and admit you're obsessed. When Lil' Game Hunter went live with 3.0.8, I started looking at my options to get to 75 pets. Most people shouldn't have too much difficulty reaching 50 (Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart), but 75 is a little unnerving. I don't have any of the Collector's Edition, Trading Card Game, or fan event pets, and I also play Horde. That leaves me without access to the Sprite Darter Hatchling, and on a lot of realms also makes it harder and more expensive to get the White Kitten, on top of being more expensive to get the lion's share of the faction-specific pets (which, naturellement, are Alliance). What's up with the Horde and pet hate? Sheesh. So that was somewhat worrying, and I approach this achievement with one question in mind: is it possible to do this without having dropped money on CE, TCG, or event pets?
Dough, a deer: engineering a Little Fawn
Given my history as one, you'd imagine that I have a fondness for ungulates. You'd be right! And by introducing a baby deer pet as an achievement reward for collecting 75 pets, Blizzard has effectively doomed me to a life of waaaant. I mean, I like achievements well enough -- I'm not as crazy about them as some of my guildies are, mind you-- but I seriously hate farming, and a lot of pets require rep grinding or luck of the RNG. No thanks. I'll admire from afar. I'm not the only person who wants a deer anyway, though (who wouldn't!), and that desire's resulted in some creative tinkering by those under the recently-lowered achievement cap and still fawning over the, ah, fawn. Some have even been kind enough to share their tricks of the trade for grabbing Baby Deerest. Foreverdarkness over on the venerable wow_ladies LiveJournal community relayed her admittedly creative way of grabbing that final pet -- dropping her beloved Skinning and picking up Engineering to farm herself up a Bombling. The pet's only available to engineers, as it's BoP, but you can still summon it even if you're no longer an engineer, so she set to work grinding through the skill points necessary. There was another problem, though--you can only get the pet as a random reward when you renew your membership as a Goblin Engineer. So, she repeatedly renewed her license at 2 gold a pop, which, given the history of RNG, could have resulted in a lot of dough for a little doe. She was lucky, though, and (achievement in hand) was soon able to bring her diminutive deer along for a trip to scenic Naxxramas. I was hoping she'd keep her engineering skill, as skinning is hardly a skill that our Little Fawn would approve of, but alas! The appeal of Master of Anatomy is too high. Can't win 'em all!
Lil' Game Hunter achievement now set to 75 pets
In patch 3.0.8 there is a new achievement call the Lil' Game Hunter, which you get upon collecting a very large number of pets. The achievement gets you the pet pictured above, a little fawn. He's cute, and hopefully won't stop in his tracks when he sees my motorcycle's headlight.Previously the achievement required getting a total of 100 vanity pets, however that total has now been lowered to 75. That is much more accessible for people to achieve, and really requires just a little bit of farming and AH watching. Definitely within the grasp of more people than when it was 100, which would have required more-or-less getting your hands on some super rare pets and/or ebayed TCG loot cards (a subject which some feel is borderline ethical).Click on the above image to get a better view of the fawn, and start collecting now!I plan on taking him for a walk through Elwynn Forest when I get him.For help with tracking your non-combat pet collection, head on over to the most excellent Warcraftpets.com.
