Achievement Whoring

Last week/weekend was a pretty nice week for me and my obsessive compulsive achievement gathering. It started on Thurdsay with our 10 man Gold Team run. We cleared ToC in 45 minutes, then quickly cleared VoA and Ony. After that, we had plenty of time to take up our new venture: Ulduar hard modes.

We skipped Flame Leviathan hard mode and went straight to Ignis. After quickly getting through his hard mode (with about 5 seconds to spare - we could have done it quicker, but I tried helping out by frost nova'ing the adds for the off tank when I should have just focused on Ignis), we went on to XT. We were thinking about doing the hard mode, but for some reason, we just didn't have the DPS to get the heart in the first try so we skipped it for the night and went straight to the Iron Council. We wanted to get a data disc so we could work our way towards Algalon.

After a couple of wipes learning the fight, we managed to get Steelbreaker down and retrieve his data disc. Unfortunately, I completely forgot to use my Iron Boot Flask, so I missed out on But I'm on Your Side (which I have in 25 player mode oddly enough).

After that, we called it for the night and gave our Raid ID up to another run in our guild so they could work on Mim hard mode on Sunday night. Fast-foward to our 25 man run on Friday night which involved yet another quick clear of ToC (Hemnetcher was nice enough to pass the trophy on Anub to me, so I now sport 4 piece Tier 9), and then of course Ony and VoA before we headed back into Ulduar with our raid ID from the previous week. We had skipped Ignis, Razorscale, and the Iron Council as we attempted Thorim the week before, so this week, we went back to clear them out.

We started on Ignis, and even though I didn't think we had the raw DPS to do Stokin' the Furnace, we managed to pull it off in one shot. Go team! We then went on to the Iron Council looking to get a 25 man data disc for our intrepid raid leader, Aravic and after a couple of wipes on Steelbreaker, we decided to switch it up and kill Runemaster Molgeim last. He was a piece of cake and Aravic received his data disc. And with that, we called it a night.

The fun continued on Sunday as I was invited to a Black Temple run. I had previously run Black Temple a couple of times in the past with PUGs, but this was a group I had run Sunwell, Molten Core, and other early instances with, so I was fairly certain we would clear the place out. And despite quite a few deaths on my end (because I like to DPS and pull aggro on large pulls), we quickly cleared BT, I got 7,500 Ashtongue Deathsworn rep, and I finally completed Outland Raider:

Back to our 25 man group, as I stated earlier, I got another trophy, so I bought my second piece of tier 9.25. This goes with my two pieces of tier 9.0, so I now rock the 4 piece bonus: Mage Tier 9. It's pretty amazing to get an extra 5% crit and I can't wait to see how it works out in our next raid this week. Additionally, I have paired it with the new helm I received from our 10 man raid on Onyxia, the Netherwind Hood, and if I do say so myself, I'm looking pretty damn good these days!

10 Hard Modes

Last night I had the pleasure of filling in for another mage for a 10 man Ulduar hard mode run. As they had started earlier in the week, our focus was to be on Thorim and Hodir. I knew we could do Thorim, as back when the Gold Team was running Ulduar, we would occasionally start the hard mode without meaning to. So we went in, and after 3 attempts, we got Thorim down. And, wouldn't you know, a nice neck upgrade dropped for me - Pendant of the Shallow Grave

We then continued on to Hodir, and though we had gotten close one time on accident when running Gold Team raids, I didn't know how we would do to beat the three minute timer. So I put up my stopwatch and went for it. On our first attempt, we had some fails at the Flash Freeze, so we wiped it and tried again, and without any issue, we took him down. We got some fortuitous placements of light beams and fires, so that helped immensely, and when I could get the Storm Power, I did some amazing damage. So down went Hodir...

Speaking of achievements, back on Thursday, we went for a couple during our Gold Team run in 10 man coliseum. I had missed the week prior when most got Salt and Pepper so we did that again without an issue, but the new one we went for prior to that was on Jaraxxus. We attempted to get Three Sixty Pain Spike. And for us with our DPS, it wasn't really a problem. We almost had to slow down at the end of the kill to wait for another maiden to spawn to get the achievement. But we didn't slow down and we easily pulled off the achievement without a problem.

Isle of Conquest Sneakiness

I was bored yesterday and decided to hit up the Isle of Conquest to see if I could get my Isle of Conquest Victory. Of course, we didn't, but since it was my first "real" time in there (I tried once right when it came out and didn't last long), I decided to run around and do my own thing. First I helped capture the air base and I took a ride around on the airship once we took it.

After riding the airship, I didn't really know what to do. It seemed there were some people on defense, some over at the harbor, but generally, our team was clueless. So, I went sneaking around to all different parts of the map. I found an AFK siege vehicle, killed it, and then killed it's occupant, and then went and capped the oil refinery. While over at the refinery, I decided to see if there were any achievements I could do. And lo and behold, I just had to defend a base to get Isle of Conquest All Star. So since I was already at the refinery, I went up some steps and hid out in the control room, hoping that some other sneaky person would come and cap it, think there was no alliance around, and leave. And it worked like a charm.

A mage came over, capped the refinery, and 10 seconds later, I emerged from my hiding spot, defended the refinery, and got my achievement! I then went back into hiding hoping to lure the mage back. And again, it worked. He came back, I popped all my trinkets and though he almost killed me, I just barely got the last shot in on him. I then went looking to plant some bombs at the gates of the horde base, but before I could find the bombs, the horde had one, but I had my achievement.

It took me back to my days of being a rogue where you could just hide out anywhere you wanted without people seeing you. This time I had to use a control room to conceal my movements, but it was fun running all over the map without anyone impeding my progress. So while the All Star achievement wasn't really picked up in the most daring and dangerous way, it was accomplished and I might make some more forays back into the Isle. And maybe some day I'll figure out what's going on.

The Greatest Kitty

Tonight was our normal gold team run and after we annihilated the Trial of Champions along with Icehowl and Jaraxxus on heroic, we ran into a wall again on the Faction Champions. We did make progress, but didn't get them down. We of course got Ony down again, and after the Alliance took back Wintergrasp, we cleared the Vault of Archavon.

And...on Archavon...the mount dropped! And I rolled a 45. And Vetarra rolled a 95! And even though I whispered the raid leader and told him not to let her pass it to me, she did, and he forced the mount on me. So now I am the proud owner of the Reins of the Grand Black War Mammoth.

It was also a great day today as Breanni sent me a nice new penguin in the mail! Mr. Chilly is my 122nd pet. And he goes quite nicely with my 104th mount.

Additionally, on our way through the Trial of the Crusader, we picked up Three Sixty Pain Spike (10 player) and Salt and Pepper (10 player). Hooray for achievements.

Achievement Summary

So, as I reach 7,600 achievement points, there are very few achievements left for me to do solo outside of PvP. So here's a quick overview of the ones I'm missing:

General: 53/54

God My Mind on my Money (25,000g) - I got my 10,000 gold achievement quite a while ago, so it's been a long grind to 25,000. I'm currently sitting at just over 20,000g collected, so 25,000 isn't too far away. I just need to do more questing and more grinding to get it.

Quests: 49/49 - Done!

Exploration: 68/70

I just have the last two exploration quests to kill the rare spawns in Outland and Northrend.

Bloody Rare - the Outland achievement where I currently have 2/20 done. I just have to go fly around Outland a few more times and hopefully I can find a few more. They're just tough to find and spawn so infrequently, it just takes time and patience.

Frostbitten - I currently have 4/23 done here. So I have a ways to go - and it just will involve a lot of time and effort to fly all over. Luckily, my new 310% speed flying mount will help.

Professions: 73/75

I don't really want to talk about the two fishing achievements I have left...

Old Ironjaw - I've fished countless times in Ironforge and never seen him. One day he will be mine though. Again, just takes time.

Turtles All the Way Down - Granted, I haven't spent that much time fishing in pools, but every once in a while I'll go around to the different zones fishing up parts needed for Fish Feasts. It's better for me to go to the zones and fish in pools rather than getting all the fish in Wintergrasp sice I can get the turtle from the pools. I just can't wait to get him...I've fished a bunch, but not enough to complain about not getting him yet.

Reputation: 36/44

Unfortunately, the reputations I need require a lot of support and I rarely see raids forming for the old instances. Currently, I need the following reputations:

Hydraxian Waterlords - Honored (6,644/12,000)
Brood of Nozdormu - Hated (26,951/36,000) - Working on this in my spare time on my own (need AQ40!)
Lower City - Revered (14,622/21,000)
Ashtongue Deathsworn - Friendly (994/6,000) - Need Black Temple urgently!
The Scale of the Sands - Revered (1,745/21,000)

And finally, I need the following two reputation-related achievements:

Skyshattered - I had planned on doing this once I had my 310% mount, however, when you go over to the ledge, you are transformed and use a nether drake which is back at 280%. I think to do this without a riding crop any more, I need a paladin in my party with crusader aura. Or I just need to get lucky after running it hundreds of times.

Grand Ice Mammoth - Anyone have 8,000g? ;)

World Events: 126/139

Just one "solo" achievement to go: Dead Man's Party - Coming up at the end of October I think.

Then there's the "larger" holiday achievements.

Pilgrim's Bounty will net me 10 of the 13 achievements left to go as I work towards Pilgrim.

And of course there's A Mask for All Occasions - it's pure luck to get this one, but during the last Hallow's End, I received 11 of the 20. So just 9 to go this year.

The last one I need is BB King - the new Winter's Veil achievement added this year.

So I should have 139/139 by the end of the year.

So what does that leave me with? Over 100 PvP related achievements. Some day I'll work harder on them. Maybe I'll spend a few hours this weekend PvP'ing and racking up honor points which I can buy some nice gems with. And of course working towards 100,000 honorable kills (I have just over 5,000. :)

Glory of the Hero

Last week, when I wasn't expecting it, I got a text message that we were going to go try to get Zombiefest, so I quickly hopped on and got ready to go get it. After that, it would leave me with just one achievement to go. So we quickly few over to the Nexus and got Split Personality, and there it was, Glory of the Hero! I'm finally done with it and couldn't be happier. The Red Proto-Drake is awesome and brings me to 102 mounts (and over 7,600 achievement points). Huzzah!

Tonight we go back into 25 man Trial of the Crusader as we look for more upgrades in order to help us progress in the Trial of the Grand Crusader. We will also be returning to Ulduar for the first time in over a month to work on getting Mimiron down and again looking for gear to better our team. Unfortunately, due to the Angels game (go Angels!), I missed last night's 10 man Trial run where they got Salt and Pepper. Congrats to the Gold Team and I look forward to getting it next week.

With regards to the next patch, I'm definitely not looking forward to the new achievements. The achievements reward you for using the LFG channel and grouping with different players found through the system. You get an achievement at 10 different players, 50 (comes with a title of "The Patient" as well), and 100. So now I'm going to be forced to use LFG to PUG dungeons when I absolutely hate PUGs and when I can put together a competent team from within my guild at any time. What a joke.

Lastly, I used the Crusader Orbs we have collected in the Trial of the Crusader to get a new pair of bracers - Bejeweled Wizard's Bracers. In exchange for the 36 hit rating I lose from my Felspark BindingS (I was way over the hit cap rating anyways), I get 7 int, 9 sta, 6 armor, 42 crit, 2 spell power and a socket (which equals 23 more spell power). So I can't wait to see how it performs tonight. Go go Gold Team!

700

While browsing my achievements, I saw that Less-Rabi was my 700th achievement. Just 286 more to go before Cataclysm!

Achievements and Harvest Festival?

Last night, I quickly logged in looking to do the Harvest Festival achievements, only to realize that the Harvest Festival has no achievements and the achievements that were classified as "Harvest Festival" have now been properly updated to read "Pilgrim's Bounty." So that was a let down. However, the one Harvest Festival quest, to honor Uther was pretty cool, I just don't know why it's a week-long event and why no achievement or feat of strength is associated with it. Similarly, why no feat of strength for acquiring the Green Brewfest Stein? I have one for my yellow and blue steins...

Last night, after a quick run of Halls of Stone for a couple of Triumph badges (which also got me to 36 emblems which in turn bought me a new ring - Band of the Invoker), we thought, let's give this damn Less-Rabi achievement another try. In the past, we had spent hours trying to get the interrupts down correctly, and after two tries last night, we finally got it. Basically, it just took a lot of DPS and a little luck.

For our team, we had our warrior tank interrupt the first transformation - but not right away! The first cast time of transformation takes about 3.5 seconds, so we had our tank wait until the last possible moment to interrupt him. By this time, he was already under 50% so we didn't have the usual 50% transformation. Also, right after the interrupt went off, he knocked us all down, stunning us for a second or two. Immediatly after the stun, we used our interrupts and we got lucky because at that very moment, he attempted to transform. He was at about 20% by this time, so we quickly burned him before another 3 or 4 seconds passed and he had no time to do another transformation. So just two interrupts got us what is probably the most difficult part of Glory of the Hero these days.

After that, Aenador had just one achievement left for her Red Drake, so we hit up Ahn'kahet really quick hoping to get Volazj's Quick Demise for her. When I originally got it, we had a perfectly reflected Mind Flay which helped us get him under 33% while he was casting his first insanity, so we only had one insanity to deal with and we killed him in about 1.5 minutes. This time, I'm not sure what exactly happened, or how exactly it happened, but we killed him in 21 seconds. We had some sick DPS, a nice heroism, and in the end, he didn't get any insanity casts off. It's always fun to put out 7,000 DPS in a 5-man. Congrats Aenador on the new mount!

So now all I have left is Split Personality and Zombiefest. Both should be relatively easy to complete, but we just need to get a group together. Hopefully this weekend I'll finish them off and finally get my red proto drake.

As a follow up to yesterday's post, our 25 man cleared the Trial of the Crusader, then we quickly went and cleared VOA for some more T9 gear and then we went to Onyxia. To my surprise, we one shot her (after wiping earlier in the week in a 25 man PUG). We had just a couple people left up at the end, but she went down and we all rejoiced! So here's the most recent achievements:

I think next week, we'll try for Upper Back Pain or Three Sixty Pain Spike. Should be fun.