daily-quests
Latest
Shattered Sun Offensive phase 2: Sun's Reach Armory
The second phase of quest and NPC progression on the Isle of Quel'danas began a couple days ago on the US PvE PTR. Yesterday I covered the retaking of Sun's Reach Sanctum and the second phase is all about the building just across the road, the Sun's Reach Armory. The Armory is infested with demons, as you can see in the screenshot, and the new daily quests are all about driving them away.First of all, let me state that the daily quests from phase one were still available on the PTR even after the Sanctum was taken from the Wretched. The names and quest text are a little different to reflect the changed state of the Isle, but the quest objectives and rewards remain exactly the same. It should be safe to assume that this trend will continue throughout every stage of the Shattered Sun Offensive.
Are daily quests leaving casuals behind?
Daily quests have come a long way from when they first appeared. They first seemed to be the perfect solution for those stuck at level 70 with nothing to do, the casuals who really didn't feel like moving on to the 10 and 25-man game, or just didn't have the time to. They were a great way to break up the monotony of making money by grinding mobs with lucrative drops or mining and herbing. They also let you progress slowly and steadily towards that magical 5000 gold mark and your own epic mount. Sure, they're still good for all that, but they've also gotten to be so much more. So really, what's the deal with dailies now? Let's look at it after the break.
The changing face of Shattrath and the new Shattrath dailies
With patch 2.4, there's a lot of eager eyes cast towards the Isle of Quel'danas and the Sunwell. But what about elsewhere? Silvermoon City is not the only place to see some big shakeups. There's a new flavor to Shattrath City as well, as the Aldor and the Scryer begin to work together to take down Kil'jaedan the Deceiver. A lot of familiar faces, as promised, have shed their former Aldor and Scryer ties to join the Shattered Sun Offensive, and it's bought some new activity to the capital of Outland that you'll want to check out before you go running back to Azeroth to look for a Magister's Terrace group.
Breakfast Topic: Gearing up for the patch
With all the buzz about patch 2.4 notes and the public test realm it's time to start gearing up for the Sunwell Plateau. Those brave enough to enter the newest high end raid will be getting a shot at some pretty awesome loot. Many players are chomping at the bit to see the new end-game content and add to their repertoire of daily quests. The patch will feature a brand-spanking-new 25-person instance that finishes off the Burning Crusade raid progression. The new instance will prove more challenging than the Black Temple. Players should be adorned in Tier 6 gear, and can expect better drops including the legendary Thor'idal, the Stars' Fury. Even after the patch goes live, it will take some time for guilds to unlock the final bosses. The first three bosses will be available to all adventurers, but players will have to perform daily quests for Shattered Sun reputation before the last three bosses become available. Are you ready for the new challenge? If you're interested in seeing the end game content, but not in a raiding guild, be sure to check WoW Insider's GuildWatch. Our Mike Schramm regularly serves up information on guild progression and recruiting. If you're currently in a raiding guild how is your guild preparing for the new raid content?
All fires are not the same
I've noticed lately while running around and doing my daily cooking quest that some flames are not the same as others. This seems rather silly to me. After all, a flame is a flame, right?For those of you that don't cook in WoW, I'll fill you in. You need to find a cooking fire every time you want to cook something. Everyone has the ability to make a simple fire, but this requires reagents, and is not something that people normally waste space on. So instead of making your own fire, you can find a premade fire, stove, kettle, etc... and cook your food there. These heat sources are spread out all over major cities and out in the wild.But, there are oddities. For example, take these two kettles - which are the exact same model.
Happy Groundhog Day!
Today is Groundhog Day. I would recommend you all go watch the like-titled movie with Bill Murray in it while doing your dailies. A quick scan of my TV guide reveals its on just about every cable network. For those of you that haven't seen the movie, I'll give you a spoiler: Bill Murray repeats the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over again, somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,650 times.Sound familiar?Enter the world of raiding.While the game play itself can be very fun and exciting, no one can really argue that at times it's nothing more than a long grind. This is okay to some extent, but has the game moved too far into grind mode? There's a lot of reasons to think that it has. First, we have the dailies that for most players are their primary source of income (in the game, we hope not in the real world). Every morning I wake up about an hour early just to hit the dailies on a couple alts to make my gold. It's really a necessity for me; there is no way that I could afford the two hundred plus a week in repair bills without it.
Your Guide to Dailies: Unlocking Blade's Edge
Once you are familiar with the daily quests offered in Skettis, you will begin searching for more dailies. After all, you can complete up to 10 of them per day. By completing only two or three, you are bypassing a large amount of guaranteed gold. Unlocking these quests will also increase your grind toward a nether ray flying mount.The next step then is to set your sights on Ogri'la and the Skyguard Outpost in Blade's Edge Mountains (see map above). Unfortunately, you won't be able to fly up there, do a little dance, and expect them to hand you out the quests. In fact, you might as well buckle in, because the upcoming chain is long and involved. Fear not; by following this guide, and consulting the map, you should be welcomed by Ogri'la in no time.It all begins with a naaru residing in the Terrace of Light, a long way from the mountainous regions inhabited by ogres.
Other patch 2.4 reveals: Fishing quests, Pally gear, and Spellsteal tweak
Lots of activity today over on the forums from the Blizzard CMs. A few miscellaneous items in patch 2.4 that are sure to make people happy: First there is the fishing daily. Blizzard is continuing their trend of increasing the number of daily quests we can choose from. Drysc tells us that in 2.4 we'll be able to visit "the mysterious old man" near Silmyr Lake outside of Shattrath for the quest. Second, all of the Retribution Paladins will rejoice with the increase in damage their gear will provide. While we haven't been told exactly what the changes will be, we were told that overall stats will be tweaked. Third, Mages will enjoy a minor tweak to their Spellsteal ability, in that it will no longer override a buff that's longer in duration. And finally, healing grace will now reduce the chance that all of your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.
Can you smell what The Rokk is cookin?
With the release of patch 2.3 every cooker level 275 and up found a new way to make an easy 7g a day with the daily food quest. While it might not seem like a lot, an extra 49g a week is a night's repair bill if you're a tank. The only downside to keeping up with the daily quest is the rather annoying farming you need to do. Some of the mats for the food items are spread out in rarely visited places in Outland. While we've covered the wonders of this daily quest before, there is a great little trick to cut down on the time necessary to farm the food... and that is to create you own cupboard of food! While your cupboard might seem bare and filled with mostly Ramen Noodles at first, within a couple weeks of quests you'll find yourself well stocked with all the gourmet items you could ever want. Besides the items you need to have the quest in your log to get, you can store a TON of premade food that'll cut down on your quest time dramatically. The items you want to save up are:Warp Burgers (from Warped Flesh) Roasted Clefthoof (from Clefthoof Meat) Mok'Nathal Shortribs (from Raptor Ribs) Crunchy Serpent (from Serpent Flesh) Now the key to getting these items, instead of having to go and farm them day after day, is to select the reward of a "Crate of Meat" when turning in the daily quest. The crate will drop the raw form of the above food often enough, and within two weeks time, you'll have more Mok'Nathal short ribs then you know what to do with! In fact, after a month of doing this quest, your cupboard will be so large that you can sell a large portion of it on the AH and make quite a nice bit of gold. Happy eating!
Fixing healing in BGs with daily quests
Reader James sent along this shot as an example after he saw my post a while back on how bad the state of healing in the BGs is, but actually, I think it's an improvement-- sure, most of that Paladin healing was probably on themselves, and especially the second Paladin was spending just as much time doing damage as he was healing, but really, this isn't too bad-- you've got at least two Pallys and two Priests who are casting heals the BG.I think that certain people are healing in BGs than when I wrote that post back in October-- I've been in AB quite a bit lately, and I've seen more healing Paladins in there than ever. But I do think that Blizzard could still stand to offer some rewards to players for doing the right things (including healing) in the BGs, and I am convinced, as we've said on the podcast, that daily quests are the way to do it. Blizzard should offer daily quest bounties for doing x amount of healing, standing a few meters from an objective while it's captured (to encourage people to fight on the flags), and for doing all the other things that people really should do in BGs but don't do as much.They shouldn't offer a quest for doing damage or making flag captures (because everyone already does that). But Blizzard should go out of their way to incentivize stuff that's less heralded like this-- the more reward they place on healing fellow players, the more people will step up to do it.
Your guide to dailies: Skettis
Now that you have unlocked your daily quests in Skettis, it is time to actually do them. Many players, myself included, were introduced to dailies in the same way we learn about most quests; we just try them. When we become frustrated, we turn to the Internet.Because of the repetitive and somewhat obligatory nature of daily quests, it is important to not only master them to minimize such frustration, but also to understand exactly what you are gaining in the long run. Knowing exactly how many rewards you are racking up will keep you doing these quests even when you don't feel like it. This will help you reach your goals, whether they are epic flight, the Cenarion Expedition flying mount, or anything else, you will need to be diligent if you want to save enough gold in a timely fashion. Follow through the jump for a detailed walkthrough of each daily quest, as well as a few different summaries of your loot, put into perspective.
Your guide to dailies: Unlocking Skettis
Whether you fancy a nether ray mount or are simply after some daily gold, you will probably want to start completing the daily quests for the Sha'tari Skyguard in Skettis. While they may prove difficult at first, with practice, you'll become faster and more adept.In order to unlock these dailies, you will need to be level 70 and have at least basic flight. This is because Skettis is nestled in the top of a group of cliffs, and cannot be reached by mount or by foot. In fact, even if you were summoned to Skettis, you would only be able to do one of the two daily quests, as Fires Over Skettis entails bombing eggs while in flight. You will also need to complete two quests to gain access to your dailies. The first of these unlocking quests, Threat From Above, can be completed without flight, provided you can get a warlock to summon you to the Barrier Hills, an area above and behind Aldor Rise, Shattrath. In fact, the second quest, which takes you to Skettis initially, could also be completed with the help of a warlock. Your dailies would then be unlocked, although you would still need flight for one, and want flight for the other. In addition, you would need to be summoned to Skettis every single day to actually complete the one daily you can do without flying.Follow through the jump for an in-depth walkthrough for unlocking your dailies, as well as a bonus look at some non-daily, repeatable quests you can use to boost your reputation with the Skyguard.
.jpg.cf.jpg)
Breakfast Topic: To daily or not to daily?
Ah, daily quests, how I love and hate them. For a short time commitment each day, level 70 players can run through these repeatable quests for reputation rewards and financial gains. It provides some easy cash, but at the same time the same quests, day after day, do become tedious. (Though Blizzard did add a variety of dailies in patch 2.3, the new already seems to have worn off.) So today I ask: what do you think of the daily quest grind? Is it easier than simply grinding mobs for drops and cash, or are daily quests simply a new version of the same old grind? Do you do your dailies?
Phat Loot Phriday: Delicious Chocolate Cake
Seeing as food has been on our minds this week at WoW Insider (with both the new Well Fed Buff column and Maureen's World of WarCrafts), I figured we'd give the foodies in the audience something to pine for this week. Expect more big pointy sharp things only available from late game raids next week.Name: Delicious Chocolate CakeType: FoodDamage/Speed: N/AAbilities: "If you spend at least 5 seconds eating, you will become Very Happy for 1 hour." What does Very Happy mean? Nothing, except that you get a buff that lasts for one hour. Does the buff do anything? Nope, nothing percievable. Does it at least kick off a negative debuff? Nope. Does it replace one of your current buffs? Nope. Is there any reason to eat this cake at all, besides that it gives you a useless Happy buff? Of course! It's cake! If you are the kind of person who leaves comments on a Phat Loot post complaining that a useless piece of food is not Phat Loot, go eat some of this cake. Hopefully it will make you Very Happy, and then we'll all be that way. How to Get It: This recipe is actually new in 2.3-- it's a reward hidden in the food given to you by the cooking daily quests in Shattrath. When you finish the daily quest, you get Crates of Meat and Barrels of Fish, and this recipe, which is BoP, will be randomly hidden in one of those from time to time.And despite coming from a high level daily quest, the cake is actually only level 1, so it's pretty easy to make: you need your Simple Flour (8), 4 Ice Cold Milk, some Mild Spices (4), 8 Small Eggs, a whole Flask of Port (yowza! you can get those from most of the bartenders in the major cities), and 3 Mageroyal. Which means that there is apparently no chocolate in this cake at all, and that means that, even though I shudder to say it (as much as I like Portal, I think the meme died about a week ago), the cake is indeed a lie.But it is tasty. And who doesn't want a Very Happy buff?Getting Rid of It: A vendor will give you 1s 25c for it, but a better option would be to just go around passing them out, or give them away to guildies as birthday presents for the next year. I've heard rumors that people don't know what they are, and that they've been selling on the AH for hundreds of gold, but if you were unlucky enough to sell out for one of these, just remember that there's no sense crying over every mistake. You just keep on trying 'till you run out of cake.
WoW, Casually: December 7 - 13 activities and making cash
Each week, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.This week I want to talk about how and why we should be making some in-game cash, but first let's get the schedule out of the way.Darkmoon Faire: It's still going on in Elwynn Forest, just south of Goldshire. This weekend is your last chance to turn your stuff in, redeem tickets or just get shot out of a cannon.Arathi Basin: The Call to Arms is for Arathi Basin this weekend, meaning shorter queues for getting bonus honor and your AB marks. If you are Alliance, this forum post is great for all BG strategy . If you are Horde, like me, well then you can wait until Zach posts his Arathi Basin strategy or just go back and read my brief summary.Battlegrounds: If you are trying to get a complete set of the Season 1 gear (and if not, why aren't you?), you should be doing a little bit of Battlegrounds a day. I try to do the BG Daily quests every day, not so much for the honor, but to force myself to get the marks from the different BGs. The fact is that I am a huge AV fan which means I have the marks for hats and gloves and that's it. Do as I say, not as I do and stuff.
Should lower levels get Daily Quests?
Player Cursethyfoe of Cenarius can't get enough cash together on his pre-60 toon. He suggests turning some simple low level kill and collect quests into Daily Quests. He even points out some already existing quests that would be ideal in certain level ranges.But CM Bornakk shoots down his suggestion, saying that Blizzard hasn't seen any cash flow issues with lower level and mid-level players.I have to agree with Bornakk. Low levels shouldn't be farming the same content continuously. There is more than enough content for them to explore and make cash doing it. High level Daily Quests are fine when you are already level 70 and are willing to grind the same old quest.What do you think?
Monstrous Kaliri, how I hate thee
Some days this quest is easy, and some days I am wearing six giant birds before I get to the first patch of eggs. Much wisdom flows from my wife, she who tames transparent wolves and gets multiple instance runs the second I log off to use the bathroom. (In my defense, I really had to go.) I myself have also noticed that on some days, especially when the cooking quest calls for Giant Kaliri Wings, the run to complete Fires over Skettis is quite tolerable. On other days, I am convinced that my character must have bathed in barbeque sauce before coming out to drop bombs, because he's intensely popular with gigantic, screeching birds that live and breathe for just the chance to dismount him. Have I mentioned how often they actually manage to knock me off my mount so that I fall with six health left right in front of a wandering Talonsworn Forest-Rager? Because I love that. That sound? That's not weeping. I don't know why you would say that. My keyboard's plenty dry.
Your guide to dailies: Cooking
Congratulations! You've hit level 70 and you're peering around Outland with hungry eyes. A multitude of new things have opened up for you, from soaring to new heights, to searching the world over for keys and epics. One of the most common activities that you'll want to begin are the daily quests, available mainly to level 70s, and often requiring certain prerequisite quests or even a certain riding skill. While the cooking quests do not award as much money as other dailies (only 7g 59s), and therefore may not be high on your list of priorities, there are several non-monetary benefits to completing them. First of all, they are fun. Currently, there are four separate quests, and they rotate, so you are not completing the same monotonous tasks day after day. Secondly, they award your choice of fish or meat, which not only helps if you're an avid cook, but also gives you a daily crate of food for your pet, if you are a hunter. In addition, you can acquire random recipes, some of which are quite nice, including the hunter pet food buff [Recipe: Kibler's Bits]. Many of the reward meats and fish can be cooked up and/or sold for a tidy profit as well. All quests are given by, and handed in to, The Rokk in Lower City. While several of the quests will require the use of a flying mount, this can easily be avoided by doing the quests in a party with a warlock willing to summon you. In addition, although the dailies often require a very high cooking skill level, this can be circumvented by purchasing the cooked meats on the Auction House, or by having your companion cook your meats for you. You will, however, require 275 cooking skill to gain access to the quests. Should you be in need of leveling your cooking skill, Lisa Poisso's got the inside scoop on the most effective ways to grind it up.
Officers' Quarters: 2.3 postmortem
Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.It's been nearly two weeks since patch 2.3 went live, so I thought it might be helpful to talk about the impact it has had on my guild and get some feedback from other officers about their experiences. What has been the best thing in 2.3 for you? What's just plain awful? Here's my take on it.Thumbs Up: Zul'AmanZul'Aman has been a blast for my guild. Most of us enjoy the 10-player raids better than any other group size, so we were really looking forward to this one. Even though it's a bit of a Zul'Gurub rehash lorewise, Zul'Aman has a different feel to it than any other raid. The bosses aren't just standing there blithely unaware of your incursion. The dynamic trash and countdown timer make clearing the whole raid interesting instead of mindlessly slogging through static pulls to get to the bosses. The difficulty seems spot-on, if a little on the challenging side for Tier 4 guilds (but that's the intention, right?). Done right it should be a relatively quick run with some nice loot and badges for everyone. This raid will be a pleasure to run week after week. I hope future raids are more like this one!Having said that, it's been a challenge scheduling all our raids.
Are Daily Quests bad for Battlegrounds?
When the Call to Arms weekends first started for Battlegrounds, there were a lot of complaints about the honor junkies causing losses and generally noobing it up. The regulars were right to a point, playing Battlegrounds on non-honor bonus weekends usually means you are playing with people who know what they are doing. But, in my opinion, because both sides had honor farmers during the Call to Arms weekends, it pretty much evened out.Since Patch 2.3, we have the Battleground Daily Quests. They are great for cash, honor (if it works) and even experience if you aren't max level. They are also easy to get, since you just have to be the qualifying level of the BG in order to do the quest. You don't have to do pre-quests or collect anything -- nothing except win a BG to complete the quest.So now, on weekdays and when other BGs have honor bonuses, questers are infiltrating the games that used to be reserved for the well-practiced BG regulars. The difference between the Daily Quests and the honor bonus weekends is that it is different by realm. During the Call to Arms weekends, everyone has the same Battleground for bonus honor. If your Daily Quest is for Warsong Gulch on your realm, the other realms in your Battlegroup have different BGs for their quests. The noobs may all be on one side, with the other filled with veteran twinks.
