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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.
Breakfast Topic: The game's most famous rare
I was taking my main through the new set of Northern Barrens quests recently when I found myself running across rare spawn mobs a lot. This in itself isn't all that surprising; you'll run across rare spawns pretty commonly whenever zones aren't occupied by eager levelers. I saw Elder Mystic Razorsnout, Swiftmane, and for the first time ever, Humar the Pridelord. Humar is well known as a popular hunter pet, and until Wrath, he was the only black lion in the game. And that got me to thinking: What is the game's most famous rare spawn? If I had to settle on one, my vote would be the Time-Lost Proto Drake, which has driven legions of players to the nuthouse in an endless struggle to find it, let alone kill it. Close behind would probably be Loque'nahak, another famous hunter pet. Curiously, it feels like most of the game's really well-known rare mobs are actually fairly recent additions to the game, although people who played during classic WoW might disagree.
The Daily Quest: Preparation
WoW Insider's on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Final push time! Patch 4.0.1 is fast approaching, we have a release date for Cataclysm, and the world is about to change forever. Here are a few posts from around the blogosphere about preparation -- quests, mobs and guilds. Let's take a look! Yelling On The Internet takes a look at the guild side of preparing for Cataclysm. The blog Glimpses of Azeroth has a bunch of really great posts about the rare spawns of old-world Azeroth. An Eternal Odyssey has been covering quests you should do before Cataclysm, including Only One May Rise, the quest for the Scepter of the Shifting Sands. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment, and you may see it here tomorrow! Be sure to check out our WoW Resources Guide for more WoW-related sites.
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)
The OverAchiever: 5 lucrative achievements
Last week we discussed a set of achievements likely to drive the average player to the poorhouse. This week, in the spirit of consoling people who may not necessarily have a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth in their immediate future, I'd like to present a series of 5 achievements where at least one of the following is true: They're an unusual means of making gold in a way people wouldn't necessarily expect, or: It would be almost impossible not to make a pile of gold while doing them. Now, a disclaimer; the most obvious picks here would be achievements like Got My Mind On My Money or The Bread Winner, but they're more a record of your previous looting and questing rather than being something you really have to go for consciously. I'm on the lookout for slightly more interesting ways to grow rich from achievements that are not so directly concerned with moneymaking:
Patch 3.2 PTR: Finding the Raptor Pets
For those of us who like to collect stuff in WoW, one of the cooler announcements for patch 3.2 was the inclusion of a whole new set of raptor hatchling pets, dropped around the world by rare and elite raptors. Of course, it was also an announcement of dread for serious collectors who can tell horror stories of killing thousands upon thousands of slimes and dragons for rare pets before. But will it be all as bad as that? WoW fansites have been on the case.Mania, maven of Hunter pets, has also been looking into the drop rates and drop mobs, and has compiled a handy chart on her blog. Between Mania and the news on Warcraft Pets, it seems we can mostly confirm that the rare raptors (such as, for example, Takk the Leaper) will always drop their pets, while those that drop only off elites have a very rare drop rate more similar to the aforementioned slimes or dragons.
The Queue: Buzz buzz
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Today's edition of The Queue is a pretty short one, but it's an important one. I'm making a change to the format of this column, which will be explained in our very first question of the day. Why is it so short? When you read the answer to the question, you'll understand. I just ran out of steam after pulling that off. elstor asked... "What's with the music lately? Why did you have to start this?!" It's something we did for giggles once, people liked it, we kept doing it just for kicks. I'm pretty bored of it though! We should pick a new Whatever of the Day instead of songs. Extreme Stunt of the Day?Read this edition of The Queue while doing a kickflip out of a burning building and through the moving blades of a helicopter, then land in the middle of the ocean where you will wrestle a shark. While covered in bees.
Northern Exposure Map helps you hunt rare game
One of the more time consuming set of achievements to get is the rare spawn killing achievement, if only because you need to compile information on every spawn, then head over to their spawn point and wait, then hope you grab the monster before someone passing through sees the Silver Dragon and gets the loot gleam in their eye. We can't really help you with the last two, that's up to you. What we can do is help you with the first. For the Northrend achievement, Frostbitten, that we have a map submitted by tipster Mike, player of Paksenarrion on Bonechewer. It's a hand color coded map of Northrend that shows where each require rare spawns. It's pretty basic, and Mike admits he took most of spawn information from sites like Wowhead and Thottbot and has only managed to find about half of them himself, but it's a nice start. Myself, I doubt I'll ever seriously pursue Frostbitten unless It's the absolute last achievement I have to work for or some such. Still, for those of you who seek the bragging rights that come with a massive luck-based time sink, maybe this map will help. And if nothing else, Northern Exposure only requires you kill one of the rare spawns, so knowing thier spawn points can at least help you keep an eye out while you quest and pick up that quick achievement.
The Queue: Bloody rare
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.We had no maintenance today, what a pleasant surprise! Rolling Restart Tuesdays are always a nice breath of fresh air. Or wait, was that what regular maintenance Tuesdays are for? Hmm. I can't keep this 'fresh air' concept straight at all so let's just start on the Q&A. Etcee asked...Can you explain exactly how rare spawns in Northrend work? I've heard multiple theories - from "Every 20 or so hours for spawn," to "Only one rare mob is alive at a time, and the next one doesn't spawn until that one dies," etc.
Five old world vanity pets you may have missed
It's a good time to be a pet collector. We're getting recognition, cool toys for our pets, and even an achievement series especially for us. If you're new to the world of pet collecting, or have just dabbled in it so far though, you may be struggling a bit to get those last few pets for the achievement. In the spirit of helping out my fellow pet enthusiasts, here's a few rarer or lesser known old world pets that you might have overlooked, especially if you started the game after Burning Crusade.
The Queue: Finding treasure where there's no treasure to be found
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.Another day, another Queue. Forgive the awful quality of the screenshot above, I tried to show off Malygos' righteous beard but the guy doesn't sit still, even if you ask him nicely. He's a crabby son of a lich sometimes. Well, let's forget about him and dig into today's questions. As always, if you have a question for The Queue, leave it in the comments section below and we'll get to it in a future edition. Magebleck asked... As a mage, my main weapon is almost always a Staff with some good stats to it. Since Wrath of the Lich King has come out I have read several places that there are now some really well speced staffs that are "Bind to Account", such as the Dignified Headmaster's Charge and the Grand Staff of Jordan. I understand that their stats scale with level, but how does one go about aquiering these new "BtA" items?
Ask a Beta Tester: Raids, rare mobs, and more raids
We've had a lot of class-specific questions lately (especially Hunters) here on Ask a Beta Tester, but since I don't play every class, I can't answer all of those. However, I've forwarded some of them on to our motley crew of bloggers, so we'll hopefully be able to answer you soon. Until then, let's get started on some other things, shall we?Robert M asked a pair of questions...Is there going to a difference in the number of badges the same boss drops in the 10 man and the 25 man?There isn't a difference in the number, no. However, there is a difference in the type of badge. The 10 and 25 man loot is tiered, and the 10 and 25 man badge loot is tiered in a similar way. The badge loot you can get from grinding 10-mans is not the same as grinding 25-mans.Will you be saved to a raid in the 10 man and not be able to do the 25 man that week? it seems like a 25 man geared toon could help the guild in the 10 if its a slow week or some of the raid members have a RL issue.The 10 and 25 man raids have separate raid IDs, so doing them both in one week won't be an issue.Read on for more answers to your questions!
