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The OverAchiever: Hunting rares and you -- A guide to waiting around for months
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the thrills of real-life hunting (lots and lots of waiting around) are yours to be had in-game. Admit it: You still get a little thrill of excitement whenever you run across a rare mob. There's always that thought that this -- this -- is going to be the time you kill something with a silver dragon around its portrait and something fantastically rare drops. Maybe it'll be a world drop like the Lei of Lilies. Maybe it'll be one of the game's first epics, a Staff of Jordan. Maybe you'll go out of your way to kill something and find a plate Of the Boar shoulder on it, and you'll wonder why you bothered in the first place. But hunting rares is, as they say, the triumph of hope over experience. There are four achievements in the game concerned with hunting rare mobs, and they'll keep you running around Outland and Northrend for a while. These achievements might get a lot harder when Mists of Pandaria hits due to cross-realm zones. They're not exactly easy to do right now, but they certainly won't get easier if you have to compete against a raft of off-server players. While we're not 100% certain that that's how things will function, right now I would classify these as achievements to do sooner rather than later. The only reason they weren't listed in that column is because I didn't think of them, but a few canny readers made the Cross-Realm Zones + Rare Mobs = Oh Shiznit connection.
WoW's 18 easiest achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, the phrase "low-hanging fruit" comes to mind. While I collect suggestions for our next article on evil achievements, I thought it might be amusing to turn toward achievements that are considerably easier to get. The 17 achievements (and one Feat of Strength) in today's column are all things that you can do without any real preparation. I'm going to ignore the super-obvious picks (Shave and a Haircut, anyone? You don't need me to tell you about that) and head straight for the more esoteric stuff. I'm also going to bypass extremely expensive achievements that, while quick, will bankrupt the average player, so nothing like Grand Ice Mammoth. (Looks like I need to update OverAchiever: Straight to the poorhouse, come to think of it.) I briefly considered including achievements that you can only get at the end of a long quest chain or reputation grind but canned that idea too. For example, Skyshattered is relatively easy these days with a 410% mount and a little practice, but you'll only be able to access it after a quest grind, so nuts to that. I also eliminated You'll Feel Right As Rain, Critter Gitter, and Fungal Frenzy for that reason. They're all easy, but you can't just toddle off to get them unless you've already put some work in. These are all achievements that the average player -- assuming a friend or two, a tiny bit of luck, and a little time -- can just run out and get whenever he or she wants.
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)
