Your Tree-Huggin' Friends

No, not the feral droods in your guild. Not the OOMkins either. Not even the tree-shaped healybots. I'm talking about the scattered groups of night elves and taurens scattered around the Outlands that give you rep.

I'm talking about the Cenarion Expedition.

My first character to level through the expansion was my priest. I did the quests as I found them. I turned in repeatable quest items when I had a stack. I robbed myself of perfectly solo-able reputation and instead shifted that reputation grind to my end game. In fact, I switched it to the end game virtually requiring a five-man group to get the rep.

The sad thing is I didn't even learn from my bad mistake after the first character. In fact, it wasn't until I was doing these quests for the fourth time that I learned from my mistakes. Some might say I am a slow learner. They would be right.

The last time I worried about reputation I did it in what I consider the "right" way. Here is my basic plan.

1. Ignore all the quests that might give Cenarion reputation except the single quest for turning in the unidentified plant parts. Yes. All of them. Even that tempting little conclave in Hellfire Peninsula a little south of the Temple of Telhamat. Instead grind plant parts. Have your alts grind plant parts. Buy plant parts from the Auction House. Agree to perform future unspecified favors for guild mates in exchange for plant parts. Turn these in at their place in Zangarmarsh until the chick finally says "Bremm, if you bring me another plant part I will kick you in the teeth." (Although, if she calls you Bremm, you need to give me my account back!)

1a. Alternatively, you can be killing nagas for the plant parts. Apparently each one you kill will give you some free Cenarion Rep. However, I avoided this as I wanted to maximize the potential to get an uncatalogued species. See step 2. I believe you can also run Slave Pens & Underbog over and over if that's your thing. But, since I wanted to do this mostly solo, I ignored that route as well.

2. Then and only then, nay you look at what she's returned to you for all those plant parts. Look specifically for an Uncatalogued Species. You may turn these in if you are lucky enough to get any. Unfortunately, these are soulbound and you can't grind them. It's just luck if the draw if you get one in your mad plant-part turn-in frenzy.

3. Do Cenarion Expedition quests with abandon.Make sure you go back to Hellfire and pick up those. Do all the ones in Zangarmarsh. Make sure you hit the place to the west, near Sporregar. Do all the ones in Terrokar Forest (near the Cenarion Outpost).

4. When you get to Blade's Edge Mountain, do all the quests in Sylvannar & Evergrove. Many of these also give CE Rep. Yes. Even do that crappy quest that involves listening the the whispers of the Raven God. It's rep. And that's what you're after.

5. Ascertain your rep standings. On my hunter, the only dude who did this right, I needed about 700 reputation to revered. And he's not human (obviously). A human who follows this should already be revered and not have set foot in Steamvault.

6. Run Steamvault until you're revered. It shouldn't take more than one run, even if you missed a few quests.

7. Look at the rewards available at Exalted. You may have enough reputation for everything you want. They have a nice caster ring, a healer off-hand, the best non-raid (or maybe even period) druid tanking weapons in the game. And they have alchemy, jewelcrafting, blacksmithing and leatherworking patterns at Exalted.

Learn from my mistakes and rectify them for yourselves (if there's still time).

Also, this strategy does not only work for Cenarion. There are repeatable quests for most of the major factions that involve grinding and collecting. Arakkoa Feathers for Lower City. Ivory Tusks and Oshu'gun Crystals for Consortium. Even turning in your Scryer or Aldor items will give some Sha'tar reputation. Use the sites at your disposal and plan out your reputation gains.

It'll only save you time later from doing the eleventeenth Shadow Lab run.