Rusted-Proto-Drake
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The OverAchiever: Mountain O' Mounts from achievements
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, 10 little points are all that stand between us and a new ... something. Many of the mounts this week be familiar to you if you've read The OverAchiever: Pimp Thy Ride, which I wrote before the Cataclysm content patch with an eye toward the number of people who wanted to slap a 310% mount on their toons before it had to be trained. Sadly, none of the mounts described in that article, barring one, will grant Master Riding for free now. Also read: Combining The Ambassador and Mountain O' Mounts Mountain O' Mounts in Outland Mountain O' Mounts in Northrend Mountain O' Mounts in 5-man dungeons Mountain O' Mounts in raids
The OverAchiever: Pimp thy ride
As you've probably already read, players will be able to purchase 310 percent flying speed from trainers in Cataclysm. While this is good news for people who hate raiding, think arena was shat into existence by the most sociopathic among the development team, or spent School of Hard Knocks trying to drown themselves in the nearest body of water, the bad news is that buying your way to super-fast flying will run you a cool 5,000 gold. Outrageous, says this dyed-in-the-wool cheapskate. For anyone else who'd rather die than part with a centavo of hard-earned gold, the good news is that having even a single 310 percent flyer in your stable is enough to get you the skill free. Fortunately, there's plenty of time to snag yourself one of these coveted mounts before Cataclysm hits, and just as fortunately, each mount is the reward (or subject) of an achievement. Strategy guides for obtaining each of the remaining 310 percent mounts is definitely beyond the scope of this article (although I'll probably devote an edition of OverAchiever to nabbing the Rusted Proto-Drake, above) but we can take a visual tour of the fast flyers that any hard-working player can still get in Wrath of the Lich King.
The Queue: Introductions
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Good afternoon, everyone! As you can see above, I'm pretty much at a loss as to what to write as the intro today. When you write one of these things every other day for, oh... eternity, it gets pretty hard. So I'll pass the intro on to our Editor in Chief today. Elizabeth Harper wrote... Welcome back to the Queue, in which Alex is too lazy to write his own intro. So today we've decided to crowdsource it and take one random word from each member of the WoW.com team. Those currently online managed to assemble the phrase, "Delicious pants ibuprofen." Now, on with The Queue. Mordockk asked... "Do you gain Ashen Verdict Rep from the 10man instance as well as the 25? Any daily quests associated with it?"
Ulduar drakes not being removed anytime soon
Blizzard simply can't make up their minds about this, can they? The Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes, which are rewarded for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider on Normal and Heroic, were slated for removal at an unspecified time in the future after patch 3.2's launch. The reasoning was that it would be easier to acquire them with Coliseum gear, and they were meant for cutting-edge players only. However, Eyonix has just announced that they are not planning on removing these proto-drake rewards from the achievement in patch 3.2, and furthermore, they don't plan to do it "in the foreseeable future." In the event that they do change their minds again, you are promised a one-month warning. So get back to those hard-modes! Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Ulduar proto-drakes will get one-month warning for removal
The roller-coaster of "will they or won't they remove the Ulduar raid drake rewards" seems to have come to a definitive answer. The rusted and ironbound proto-drakes will be removed, but they will give us "about 1 month of warning" so you can make a final push if you really want it. The drakes are rewards for completing Glory of the Ulduar Raider (and the 25-man version). Bornakk points out the parallel with the Arena mount rewards, and says that this is no accident: these are supposed to be rewards for the "top tier" of raiders, and letting people earn them with more powerful equipment from higher raids would defeat that purpose. Therefore, he says we should expect it to go this way in the future, as it was with the Naxx drakes. As a side note, he says they may be removed when patch 3.2 comes out or some time after. This suggests to me that they think there's a decent chance patch 3.2 will come out less than a month from now. If they knew it was going to come out later, they'd just give the one month warning a month before they expected the patch to drop. Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!
Ulduar proto-drakes gone in patch 3.2
When patch 3.1 came out, the Plagued and Black Proto-Drakes, which were rewarded for the normal and heroic tier 7 raid meta-achievements, respectively, were removed from the game. You can still do the achievement, but it doesn't give you a drake any more. The thinking behind this was that people would be able to come back with Ulduar gear and complete the achievements (relatively) easily, and Blizz wanted the accomplishments of those who had done the achievement pre-Ulduar to stand out.It looks like the Rusted and Ironbound Proto-Drakes are going to receive the same treatment in patch 3.2: they will no longer be attainable. These are the drakes that are rewarded for the Ulduar raid meta-achievements, on normal and heroic. This is interesting because it implies that we'll get a new tier of gear in patch 3.2. Information about what the expansion of the Argent Tourney is going to bring PvE-wise is still pretty scarce; we know there will be some 5-, 10-, and 25-man content, but we're not really sure what it'll be like yet. All we've heard so far is "Think Ring of Blood or Amphitheater of Anguish, but more epic." Here's hoping for PvE arenas.Edit: To clarify, players who have the mounts already will of course keep them. You just won't be able to get them after 3.2 if you don't have them already.
Ensidia snag world-first Rusted Proto Drake
Yesterday Ensidia completed the 10-man achievement Glory of the Ulduar Raider, giving them the first Rusted Proto-Drakes in the world. The 25-man version has yet to be cleared by anybody; the Ensidia member who posted the news mentions that he feels the 10-man achievements are significantly easier than the 25-man ones, though I'm not sure if this would still be the case if they were doing 10s in 10-man gear. In other news, the Rusted Proto-Drake (second mount shown in the video above) is one of the coolest-looking mounts I've seen in WoW, though in my opinion the best mount in Wrath so far is the Mimiron head.
Plagued and Black Proto-drake rewards to be removed
Bornakk had some news today that might send a lot of raiding guilds into a frenzied rush to get those raid Achievements. According to him, Blizzard will be removing the Plagued and Black Proto-Drake rewards from the Glory of the Raider and Heroic: Glory of the Raider meta-Achievements respectively. Blizzard believes that with guilds progressing into Ulduar and getting significantly better gear, those Achievements would be trivialized. So the 310% mounts are sadly going the way of the Amani War Bear.With Patch 3.1 already on the PTR -- although without Ulduar yet -- the clock is ticking for aspiring drake riders. All hope isn't lost, however, as Blizzard is introducing two new reward mounts to go with the 10- and 25-man Ulduar raid Achievements. Pictured above as mined from the PTR files by MMO Champion is the Ironbound Proto-Drake, which I suspect is the reward for the Heroic Ulduar Achievments. There's also a Rusted Proto-Drake, which is likely the reward for the 10-man meta-Achievement. For those of you working towards the Plagued and Black Proto-Drakes, you don't have long now! Hop to it and don't die! Patch 3.1 brings us Ulduar, dual specs, significant changes to all the classes, and more! We've got you covered from top to bottom with our Guide to Patch 3.1.
