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Breakfast Topic: What's the most difficult thing in the game to farm?
My warrior recently found herself farming a lot of Khorium in order to build her Turbo-Charged Flying Machine, and while flying a seemingly endless number of circuits in Nagrand in order to get the metal (which is a rare spawn on other Outland ore nodes), I started to wonder where this farm fell in relation to other grinds. Khorium sometimes cooperates by spawning regularly, but this time, it was its usual, awful self. I'm sure the Burning Crusade-era players can relate. And yet, somehow I still don't think that khorium is the worst thing in the game to farm. Off the top of my head, I can think of others that are or have been equally bad or worse: Non-combat pets A lot of farmable non-combat pets (e.g., the dragon whelps, the firefly, the Fox Kit) have a 1-in-1,000 drop rate and a limited number of mobs up at a given time. Combat pets Waiting for a particular pet to spawn somewhere and then finding and taming it before someone else does can be maddening if you're consistently unlucky. Fishing Accomplished Angler is justifiably famous for being stuffed with requirements full of RNG. Let's talk about the year it took me to get Mr. Pinchy's Magical Crawdad Box! On second thought, let's not. The Scepter of the Shifting Sands quest This disappeared in Cataclysm, and with it went all the work that went into farming up bug parts and Elementium Ingots, which is where I got stuck in the chain. (So close, and yet so far.) The Insane This almost goes without saying, although it's easier these days than it used to be. Your thoughts, readers? What's the toughest thing in the game to farm?
The OverAchiever: The silver coins of the Dalaran fountain
Every Thursday, The OverAchiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we're still after that last coin from the Eventide fountain. Welcome back, folks. We return this week to the next installment of our miniseries on the Dalaran fountain's magic coins. Getting all of the coins will grant you A Penny For Your Thoughts, Silver in the City, and There's Gold in That There Fountain, with the completion of all three granting The Coin Master and one more notch toward Accomplished Angler. It's really in the set of silver coins that you get a sense for just how dangerous this fountain can actually be. Most of the people who tossed coins into it never saw their wishes come true. Of those who did, most probably wished they never had. Why is this fountain's existence even tolerated by Dalaran's municipal services? Is it considered an historical artifact or something? EDIT: This guide is now finished! You can find the full series here: The OverAchiever: Dalaran's magic fountain The OverAchiever: The silver coins of the Dalaran fountain The OverAchiever: The gold coins of the Dalaran fountain
The OverAchiever: Dalaran's magic fountain
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we detour back to Dalaran with a fishing pole in hand. I'm actually writing this on July 4, so I'm in the mood for a little fun while we're waiting for the dust from patch 4.2 to settle. If you've been around the site before, you've probably seen my worshipful odes to the Dalaran fountain, which I still think was one of the best and most brilliantly eccentric parts of Wrath of the Lich King. (I think archaeology's very similar overall, even if Blizzard's still working out the kinks.) While I took a look at some of the coins almost three years ago during the Wrath beta, it occurred to me recently that we never actually did a guide to them and their importance to WoW's mythology. So here's the deal: You're in a magic city. The city has a magic fountain. Lots of very important, somewhat important, and unimportant people in the world made wishes and tossed coins into the fountain, and the fountain (being magic) remembered them. Some of the wishes are funny, many of them are sad, many are quite thought-provoking, and a few are simply tongue-in-cheek references to the Warcraft universe (Archimonde's is probably the standout here). If you fish all of them up, you'll get A Penny For Your Thoughts, Silver in the City, and There's Gold in That There Fountain, with the completion of all three granting The Coin Master. So if you're going for the fishing meta Accomplished Angler (ha ha! sucker!), you'll need the coins even if you're not interested in the lore behind them. You monster. Warning: If you're still playing your way through The Burning Crusade and Wrath content, there are a lot of lore spoilers in here, so be careful. EDIT: This guide is now finished! You can find the full series here: The OverAchiever: Dalaran's magic fountain The OverAchiever: The silver coins of the Dalaran fountain The OverAchiever: The gold coins of the Dalaran fountain
The OverAchiever: The good, the bad, the ugly, and the weird
Every Thursday, The Overachiever shows you how to work toward those sweet achievement points. This week, we reminisce on that auld lang syne ... that nobody really misses. It occurred to me recently that we've never really done a retrospective piece on achievements. Sure, we've rounded up stuff like entertaining achievements and evil achievements, but we've never really looked at their impact on the game as a whole. There's an article in that, but it won't be this one. New Year's Eve is tomorrow, and I'm in the mood for some brainless fun. While I was writing this article, a number of the achievements that came to mind were the product of tier 7 raids, and I think I know why. Wrath raiding achievements were the first time Blizzard had experimented with their inclusion in raid content, and the implementation occasionally had some bizarre results. There was also the pressure cooker of having to finish Glory of the Raider before the rewards disappeared (a very belated announcement), and there was never that sense of urgency with Ulduar or Icecrown achievements. Anyway, let me know what you think.
The OverAchiever: Evil achievements
I love achievements, but sometimes you look at them and realize that somewhere on the development team lurks a sadist of the highest order -- and not just any sadist, but one with a business plan and an unwitting audience of 12 million players. What are evil achievements? They're the soul-killing rep grinds, the raiding milestones that required sacrificing a farm animal to get, and even fun pasttimes like battlegrounds into which a sizable dose of misery has been added. Eventually you just want to grab the nearest developer and shake him back and forth, screaming, "What the hell were you thinking?" Below are three of my top picks as the most evil achievements in the game, chosen via the scientific rationale of hating life and myself while doing them. They're selections from a lengthier OverAchiever I've been slowly assembling on the 25 most evil achievements in the game. While my main's a hair's breadth from the It's Over Nine Thousand! feat of strength, there are still quite a few achievements (many of them PvP-related) that she's missed, and I think it's pretty easy to underestimate the agony-value of achievements you haven't personally done. So, rather than simply ignore them, I'd love to get some commenting feedback on the worst, most annoying and most soul-destroying achievements of which you've been a part. Some may disagree on the ultimate difficulty of the following three achievements, but I remain undeterred from my belief that every single one has been milked from the angry teat of Satan himself.
The OverAchiever: More Accomplished Angler
This week we'll finish our look at the Accomplished Angler meta-achievement. As with all matters concerning WoW fishing, El's Anglin is your best friend here, and more particularly their page on fishing-related achievements (which also addresses a few we don't cover here, as they're not part of the Accomplished Angler meta). Continuing from our previous article on the first set of Accomplished Angler achievements: The Old Gnome and the Sea Apparently someone at Blizzard is a Hemingway enthusiast. At any rate, this achievement's easy as pie, and you'll get it after fishing successfully from any pool of fish in the game (although it does have to be fish -- it can't be the wreckage pools you need for The Scavenger). You can get this doing either of the following achievements --
The OverAchiever: Accomplished Angler
Once WoW's most disparaged profession, Fishing has experienced a resurgence in Wrath -- and it may get even better in Cataclysm, with developers studying fishing from other games like Animal Crossing in order to make it more fun. As far as I'm concerned, as long as they cook up another distraction like the Dalaran fountain in Cataclysm, I'll be happy. As with everything else concerning fishing in WoW, El'x Extreme Anglin' is your best buddy and a fantastic source of information on where to find fish, drop rates, information on pool spawns, and Fishing achievements. Accomplished Angler is a very work- and time-intensive meta-achievement, so I've taken the liberty of splitting this guide up. The first set of achievements you'll need: Grand Master Fisherman Sorry, folks, there's no real way to shorten this one; you've just got to keep fishing. One of the nice things about the profession is that you can level it anywhere -- the only penalty to leveling it in an area with higher "fishing skill" than you currently have is the amount of junk you'll catch versus actual fish. But on your way to Grand Master, you'll have put a lot of work in towards:
Breakfast Topic: Fishing is awesome
WoW is a many-faceted game. One of the facets that I've really been enjoying recently is fishing; after getting my Dark Herring last weekend, I only need to polish off my last few Northrend pools to ding Accomplished Angler on my rogue. I also pulled up a sea turtle last weekend, and let me tell you, that thing is fun, especially because I don't have my flying mount yet (three more levels to go on that character), so it's the fastest way I have to get around aquatic areas. I'm impressed with the way they've expanded on fishing in Wrath of the Lich King, especially with the new fishing dailies and the other changes that came to my favorite secondary profession in patch 3.1. My biggest gripe is that the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat still evades me. The fishing gods even went so far as to taunt me with a Battered Jungle Hat last time I turned in the daily. That's just not cool, man. Not cool. Has anyone else been having a great time fishing lately?
The funny, morbid, and sad coins of the Dalaran fountain
Level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. I'm serious. This completely nonsensible and illogical statement is brought to you by the 53 tiny lore moments you'll get if you'll just sit yourself down somewhere and level up fishing. Yes, it's boring having to fish up dozens of useless fish to get to the good stuff in Outland and Northrend. Yes, you could be farming up gold or materials that will help you level in Wrath. I don't care. Go fish.You see, while you'll be fishing up a lot of equally useless fish in the Dalaran fountain, you'll also get coins. No, not in the sense that you'll be fishing up ingame money, but you'll fish up coins tossed into the fountain of this very old city by 53 people, many of whom will be known to you if you've played the game for any length of time. Some of them, perhaps most of them, are funny. Some are serious. Some are heartbreaking. I admit to a touch of being a lore geek, and it was wonderful being allowed a peek into the irreverent or hopeful or sad heads of Jaina Proudmoore, Thrall, or Stalvan Mistmantle. It is idiosyncratic little touches like this that make WoW hopelessly fun to play, and it is my fondest wish that whatever person at Blizzard who thought this up is pulled off whatever they're doing right now and chained to a desk until they come up with more stuff like this.So, if you don't do anything else with your time between patch 3.02 hitting and Wrath going live...level up fishing so you can fish in the Dalaran fountain. But don't read any further if you're not interested in Wrath spoilers, because there are a few here...
Sewer fishing for fun and profit (mostly fun)
I have a confession to make; I love fishing. Most people seem to hate it, and it's certainly not one of the more popular professions to level, but I could pass a perfectly entertaining afternoon ingame doing nothing more than chatting on vent and emptying pools of delicious and lucrative fish. Blizzard made a lot of effort towards improving the fishing experience in Burning Crusade, and tons of people wound up leveling it for a shot at Mr. Pinchy, the Find Fish skill, or the high-end raiding food buffs like Spicy Crawdad and Blackened Sporefish.You'll find an array of new fish and pools in Wrath, but for my money the two great joys are fishing in the Dalaran sewers and the Dalaran wishing fountain. The fountain is actually the more interesting of the two for a reason we'll cover in a bit, but you'll also need the sewers if you're interested in a new noncombat pet and the Accomplished Angler achievement (the one rewarding the "Salty" title, which I'm sure no one in the game ever intends to abuse).Spoiler warning: if you don't want to know the disgusting but highly interesting things you'll coax out of the Dalaran sewer system, just keep scrollin'.
Breakfast Topic: The not-so-easy achievements
If you're like many of us, you've probably looked at the Achievement system coming to the game in patch 3.02, picked a few favorites, and considered getting some of them done before Wrath hits and all hell breaks loose. The last few weeks before an expansion tend to be relatively relaxed and quiet, leaving you with plenty of time to, say, Explore Kalimdor, visit zones you may have missed for 1500 Quests, or just convince more factions that you're really not so bad.Some Achievements, however, are a little tougher, particularly those that will reward your character with a special title or mount. While I'm not sure I want to think about what something like For the Alliance! is going to be like, the one that I'm most concerned about is the Fishing Diplomat one. It's an an achievement needed for Accomplished Angler, and requires you to fish something up in both Orgrimmar and Stormwind. My main is a Tauren Druid, so fishing anything in Orgrimmar is a piece of cake. Stormwind, less so. While I can stealth into the city easily enough, fishing necessarily leaves you exposed for a period of 15-20 seconds. I don't think it'd bother me as much as it does if it weren't for the team of bored Alliance on my realm who typically camp quest objectives during holiday events. While I somehow doubt they've got the numbers or inclination to cover every inch of the Stormwind canals, I'm equally doubtful that my eight-foot cow's presence in the city will go unnoticed.I don't really have that much to worry about compared to the Hordies going after Old Ironjaw (in Ironforge) or Alliance going after Old Crafty (in Orgrimmar) for the Old Ironjaw and Old Crafty achievements respectively (what sadist came up with the idea of having you fish for a 0.1% drop in an enemy city?), but one thing's certain: some achievements are going to be more taxing than others.
