Too Much to Do

'm beginning to feel like there really is too much to do in just a single day. Blizzard has wisely limited us to completing only twenty-five daily quests in a day. But how does this break itself down? I can only answer for myself but here's the quests I can't seem to get completed in a single evening of play:

1. Daily Cooking Quest - I will admit I've not been as religious about doing this one as I once was. The problem I have with it is the time of day I'm forced to do it. Since I need a "real" job to support my WoW, I don't get online until about 5 PM. At this time of day there are dozens, nay dozens of dozens, of people doing this quest. And Blizzard in perhaps the biggest boneheaded move of the expansion made almost every one of these quest rely on ground spawns in and around Dalaran. There is enough vitriol in me to make this a fully-fledged post on its own. Look for it in the near future.
2. Daily Jewelcrafting Quest - I believe the jewelcrafters are the only poor souls to have one of their (limited) daily quest slots taken up by their craft. And I've written before about how much all of these quests suck.
3. Argent Crusade Quests (5) in Zul'Drak - These become abailable after you finish Pa'Troll the first time. The objectives for Pa'Troll are to finish four other quests. There is even an additional reward for completing them all in under twenty minutes. My hunter is really needing the epic chest piece reward from being exalted, so this is definitely on the list.
4. Wyrmrest Accord - Protecting the temple. Honestly it is hard enough to get this bugger done at all with all the competition in the area for the mobs. All I generally see are the tapped mobs and I have to search for things I can get credit for. I wouldn't even try it in under 2 minutes 30 seconds. Although, Schaden did it. Gratz to him.
5. Kalu'ak Quests (3) in Howling Fjord, Dragonblight and Borean Tundra - All of these are pretty simple and don't take much time individually. The travel time between the three areas is not short by any means though. And once I have the fishing pole and the Pengu, I'll probably not visit them again.
6. Sons of Hodir (2-5) in Storm Peaks - These quests open up as you complete other quests for the Sons of Hodir and as your reputation increases. For many of the quests, you'll do a "starter" quest to establish an item in the phased Sons of Hodir headquarters (an anvil, a horn, a spear, etc.) From that point on, each of these objects will have a daily quest. This is a very important faction to build up as quickly as possible. They have the only new shoulder enchants in the game. The honored level enchants are equivalent (roughly) to the exalted Aldor/Scryer enchants. While it may be acceptable to use the Aldor/Scryer versions until the Sons rep grows, after reaching at least honored, these are better as they don't take the arcane runes/holy dust (8 of the appropriate one for the exalted enchant) but instead only cost cash. Regrettably, this faction cannot be increased by wearing a tabard because there isn't one.
7. Knights of the Ebon Blade in Icecrown - I don't have an exact number of these, but I'm guessing its at least four. Valuable if your KotEB rep needs a shot in the arm, but for me they are lower priority since the exalted rewards aren't as worth it for a mail-wearing non-casting DPSer.
8. Frenzyheart/Oracles (3) in Sholazar Basin - I don't know why I even mention the puppy-men since it seems everyone is doing the Oracles quests in the hope for a green protodrake mount from the mysterious egg. These, at least, have achievements associated -- One for doing all 8 possible Big-tongue Quests, one for doing all 8 possible Puppy-men Quests, and one for being exalted with both factions (Obviously can't be done at the same time since they have inverse faction gains).
9. PVP Dailies in Grizzly Hills - I don't know precisely how many there are or even what faction they grant. This far down on the list and I'm rapidly losing my patience. I'm fairly certain there are four quests that are available though.
10. Valiance Expedition - I can't speak for the Horde half of these quests. I'm certain there are analogs to the Alliance Version. But I know of one in Howling Fjord (bombing pirates) and a decent number in Icecrown. Hell, half the Icecrown quests seem to turn into dailies. The other half, of course, are used for phasing in the final version of the map.
11. Daily Battleground - Yeah. Right.
12. Daily Dungeon & Daily Heroic Dungeon - Even with the shorter (and easier) WOTLK dungeons, The odds of doing this AND the other dailies is out of the question. The rewards are nice however, the daily grants tokens for 250 rep with Argent Crusade, Knights of the Ebon Blade, Kirin Tor or Wyrmrest Accord. The heroic grants badges (Yes, I still call them badges).

So, at a conservative estimate that's 31 quests. No wonder I can't complete them all in a day. Seriously though, if I do even the daily dungeon & heroic dungeon I've no time for others. If I only do one dungeon (and who would do heroic Occulus after the first time?) I may have time for the Sons, Kalu'ak and Jewelcrafting. If I do neither dungeon, I'm apt to do Argent Crusade and the Sholazar as well. At any rate, I'm on daily quest overload!

The Daily Grind - Jewelcrafting

There are several methods that Blizzard has adopted for crafter-types to learn the higher level recipes. For some you just buy them, for some you trade items associated with the trade (leather or shards) for the recipes, and for some you do daily quests.

Daily profession quests were introduced way back in Burning Crusade (cooking first and then fishing) so it is not a new concept. But what I'm going to talk a little about today is the daily quests associated with Jewelcrafting.

Before I go into the specifics, I'm going to take a small moment and whine. I hate these quests. I'm almost never planning to go to the sorts of places that the required items will drop and I'm forced to go out of my way to finish a daily quest. It's also not the sort of thing I can think about on the bus ride home, like "Hey. Maybe I'll do Skettis & Ogri'la today instead of the Island." Instead, I can go pick up the quest and the quest giver can tell ME where to go. I usually try to minimize travel times from Dalaran (Sholazar is over 6 minutes by air) so that I can get back to what I want to do.

At least, in general, the drop rates on the daily quest items isn't too bad. The thing I really object to is that recipes run from 2 tokens to 6 tokens in price. Assuming you only miss one day a week ever, you're only going to be learning between 1 and 3 recipes a week. And they are almost always yellow recipes at best. Sometimes they're even green or grey!

So here are the quests:

Blood Jade Amulet: This requires a Dark Jade and a Bloodstone from your stash and a drop from Vrykul all over Northrend. Since my jewelcrafter is level 80, I tend to head out to Storm Peaks for the Sons of Hodir rep anyway and you can't swing a dead cat around on a string without running into some Vrykul out there. Howling Fjord is also rife with Vrykul as well as southwest Grizzly Hills. Icecrown also has several Vrykul towns. My good friend over at You Wake It, has told me that there are no less than 4 static JC pattern drops in Storm Peaks so that might be the place to hit for this.

Bright Armor Relic: This requires a Bloodstone and a Huge Citrine from your stash and a drop from Elementals all over Northrend. There are elementals (both ice/earth and fire) in the vicinity of Dun Niffelem in the Storm Peaks that will drop this piece. My other favorite place is the volcano in Sholazar Basin (since the Saronite is plentiful in that zone.) There are also a whole slew of lower level elementals in Borean Tundra on the border with Sholazar if you're in that zone for some reason.

Glowing Ivory Figurine: This one needs a Shadow Crystal and a Chalcedony from your stash as well as a drop from a Shoveltusk from Northrend. The shoveltusk are pretty much restricted to Howling Fjord or the eastern side of Grizzly Hills. It seems like this one is just going to force you to a much too low zone to complete.

Intricate Bone Figurine: This one requires a Chalcedony, a Dark Jade and a proto-dragon bone. The bone comes from Proto-Dragons all over Northrend. There is a burning glade in both Howling Fjord and Sholazar Basin. In addition to these, you'll find these buggers in Storm Peaks, but at a much higher level.

Shifting Sun Curio: Yet another two gems required from you (this time a Sun Crystal and a Shadow Crystal) and a drop from Scourge. Now, if I have to tell you where to find Scourge then you've not actually played the expansion. They're everywhere. There are crash landed ziggurats in Zul'Drak and Borean Tundra. There are whole camps of them in Howling Fjord. They're attacking various dragon shrines in Dragonblight, not to mention menacing a town just below Naxxramas. They've invaded a mine in Grizzly Hills. They are snowboarding down an avalanche into Sholazar. And Ice Crown is just chock full of them. Finding Scourge shouldn't be a problem.

Wicked Sun Brooch: The last of the six quests requires a Huge Citrine, a Sun Crystal and a drop from Iron Dwarfs. These will come from Howling Fjord, Grizzly Hills or Storm Peaks. I like the gully in Grizzly Hills, especially now that I can strafe them on flying mount.

And that's it for the daily quest. The final one I have to mention comes from a pretty rare drop from about any mob level 77 or higher. The item, a damaged necklace, isn't soulbound and may be traded or sold. It requires you turn that in, with a Chalcedony for a free JC Token.

Easy Gold Making Tips (Daily Quests)

Since Burning Crusade, it's become easier than ever to make gold in World of Warcraft. I'm sure Blizzard has done this on purpose. It's a good way to help combat the urge players get to buy gold, it keeps interest in the game up, and it gives people who only have an hour to play something to do.

I have an order associated with how I do my daily quests. This works well for me, you may need to tweak it for your circumstances.

1. I'm always hearthed in Shattrath city, so the first thing I do is fly out to Slimyr Lake and check if I have the fishing skill needed to complete the daily fishing quest. Currently, the fishing on my hunter is only around 260 skill, so with lures he can do either the Shrimp quest or the Crocolisks in the City quest. If it's Shrimp, I take a short jaunt out to Zangarmarsh and do that one. (Either 25 or 24 quests left)
   
2. Back to Shattrath and check the cooking quest. I usually don't pick it up now because I'm shortly headed to the Sunwell Isle and none of them are completed out there.
3. Pick up the Nether Residue quest (there are mines on the island).
4. Take the portal to Sunwell.
5. Pick up the Ley Line scrying quest, the boat bombing and demon bombing quests, the demon killing/banner placing quest, the robot draining quest, the mana remnants quest and killing 15 different Blood Elf quest.
6. Head off to kill robots & collect mana remnants. Turn those two in. (Either 23 or 22 quests left)
7. Head over to the docks and do the two bombing quests. Head down to read the crystal and kill the 6 summoners, 3 marksmen and 6 blood knights.
8. Go over to the demon portal, scry the portal and kill 6 demons. Find the corpse of the harbinger and stake it. Turn in four quests that are complete. (Either 19 or 18 quests left)
9. Pick up the Darkspine Ore Quest and the Greengill coast quest. Head over there, kill the myrmidons for keys (until you have 3) and casters for orbs. Free 10 murlocs and collect 3 ore. Head over to the shrine and scry that.
10. Head back to town and turn in 3 quests. (Either 16 or 15 left).
11. Pick up the Rootthorn quest and the Atamal Artifacts quest. Use the quest reward from killing demons to teleport back to Shattrath.
12. Fly over to Shadowmoon and get the Atamal artifacts. Fly to Honor Hold and up to the throne and do the quest to destroy the portal and kill the channelers. Turn those in. (Either 14 or 13 quests left)
13. Fly back to Shattrath, then head up and collect your roots.
14. Back to Shattrath, pick up Sunfury Attack plans, mana batteries and readings in Nagrand quest. If the cooking quest is Manaberries or Spiritual Soup, pick those up now.
15. Fly to Cosmowrench. Fly over and kill guys around Manaforge Duro until the plans drop. If the cooking quest is manaberries, head off to one of the domes and collect them. Then head off to Blade's Edge, up to Bashir landing. Kill guys until the disruptor drops, use it and collect the 10 mana batteries.
16. Fly to Telaar. Don your goggles and collect the 6 fireballs. If cooking is spiritual soup, kill the clefthoofs for meat (if you don't have any) head over to the Ancestral grounds and use the cookpot.
17. Go back to Shattrath. Turn in the 3 quests completed (4 if cooking was done.) You may have also collected all your nether residue. (Somewhere between 8 and 11 quests left)
18. Take the portal to Sunwell island, turn in the artifacts & roots. (6 to 9 quests left).
19. Hearthstone to Shattrath.
20. You've done well. You now have options. There are 2 Skettis quests to do (3 if the cooking is the kaliri wings). There are 4 Ogri'la quests to do (5 if the cooking daily is Super Hot). Finish what you want there. Fly back to Shattrath and turn in. At the maximum you have only 3 daily quests left to do.
21. Your options now to finish up (if you aren't already) is to do Netherwing quests (if you can), check out the daily dungeon, daily heroic dungeon or battleground quests. If none of those appeals to you, there are daily PVP quests in Hellfire, Nagrand and Terrokar.

At an average of 10 gold per quest (some more, some less) you should be up 250 or so gold, not counting random drops you've collected, the contents of your Shattered Sun bags, cloth, motes (mana, fire, earth) and harvestables. Put some stuff on the AH or disenchant it. You've done well.

Take a break, because there are still another batch of 25 quests to finish tomorrow.

Since there are too many dailies to do them all, you should prioritize them according to your goals. If you're trying to get your drake, it makes more sense to do Netherwing Dailies first. If you want Shattered Sun Rep, this guide should serve you well.

Daily Quests - Skettis, Ogri'la, Sunwell Isle

It's not news, but with 2.4 each character can do up to 25 daily quests each day. This is a lot of quests to do. I personally did about 80% of them last night on one guy and it took 2-ish hours. I thought it might be enlightening for me to share my three favorite and three least favorite daily quests and talk about them a few moments.

Please consider that I primarily do these quests on a character having an epic flying mount. That makes travel under one's own power much more palatable than slowly flap-flap-flapping around the Outland. Additionally, I've not done all of the Netherwing pre-quests so I can't address anything in that quest chain.

Favorite Quests

1. Bombing in Skettis and Ogri'la: With an epic mount, the chance of being dismounted by either the giant Kaliri or the Legion Flak Cannons is almost non-existent. Each of these is a quick five minute jaunt through the air dropping bombs. Both are quite easy and I like them for the return on investment.
2. Mana Batteries in Blade's Edge Mountain: This is a Sunwell Isle quest, but it's really the only of its kind. Find a phasing device and then pick up ground spawn batteries. Fun and different enough that I like doing it.
3. Skettis Prisoner: I love the fact that I can solo this quest. It's fun, simple and now that everyone and his mother is doing the NEW daily quests, he's quite easy to find.

Least Favorite Quests

1. Wrangle Some Aether Rays/Wrangle More Aether Rays in Ogri'la: I hate having anything tag along after me when I'm working on a quest. The giant flapping ray wings obscure my view and make me a sad Bremm.
2. Collecting Nether Residue in Shattrath: The drop rate is so abysmal on this quest that it makes it tough to do. The only saving grace for my hunter is he's a miner and can potentially collect more than one residue from a node. Still, usually a quest I do every other day as I don't collect enough in one outing.
3. Distraction at the Dead Scar in Sunwell Isle: This quest has gotten better since nerfing the mobs, but it's still hard to get it all done every time in one run. It usually takes me two runs as I can complete about 75% on the first run.

So, that's my least and most favored quests. But in the end I like any of them that gives me gold, which all of them do. It's just that some are better than others.

Why Are You Doing This?

To Those Who Stand Atop Quest Givers PVP Flagged:

Why are you doing this? Especially on Sunday Night, when the server was at 99% completion of Phase 2, why would you do this?

Completion of Phase 2 opens the Anvil so you can repair and buy stuffs. Every quest turn in adds an incremental amount to completion of the phase. If you were that close, I can only assume you were even IN Sunwell Isle in ancticipation of the mondo-lag that would herald the arrival of the badge vendor.

So, if you are so cleverly anticipating that, could you do us a favor and get the hell off of the quest turn in guys? You do realize, I hope, that preventing turn-ins is only DELAYING the time until the stupid Anvil is open.

And don't you think that most of us are clever to how to circumvent your shenanigans? If we do not face the quest mob, but instead face AWAY from them and click sort of over our shoulder we'll not go into combat with you. Because even if you are jumping up and down hoping to catch us just as we click and our cursor turns into a sword and we attack, we'll be FACING THE WRONG WAY.

Really you're just being immature and juvenile. You're costing some of us gold in repairs if we've not learnt the facing away thing, but you're hurting the progression of Sunwell and the opening of the anvil.

I know that personally, I don't have enough badges to make the vendor THAT worthwhile. You're only hurting yourself. Please stop. Or I'll report you to the local Mental Health Unit.

Regards,

Brem

Google Searchbot says...

Since I'm totally out of ideas now that I've been out of work a week and leveling a lowbie, I took a look at the Google Web Tools and found that one of the big searches that's getting hits on the blog is for the daily cooking quests introduced in 2.3.

I've done the daily cooking quest on at least one of my characters most days. However, I think I've found exactly three different quest varieties. Here they are in no particular order.

1. The Giant Kaliri Wing one. When this is the daily quest, its a good day to do Skettis Dailies! The sky is literally picked clean of these giant, annoying birds. It takes 1 wing and 3 warp burgers. Cook until bubbly in the provided cook pot and you're done. Pretty easy.
2. The Blade's Edge Mountain one. For this one you need to get some Serpent Flesh and some Mok'thanal Shortribs and combine them in a cooking pot in the corpse of a dead elemental in Blade's Edge. I found that you don't even have to kill it, as long as someone else's kill hasn't despawned you can use that corpse.
3. The Spiritual one. This requires some foodstuffs (I can't actually recall which) to be combined in the cooking pot in the spiritual grounds in Nagrand. Pretty simple.

The rewards are either a crate of meat or a barrel of fish. Both of which can contain a recipe. Although I'm told it doesn't matter, I've gotten only meat recipes from the meat crate and only fish recipes from the fish barrel. So, if you're wanting a particular recipe this may affect your chances.

Additionally, I've not seen the berry picking on that Kaliope described from the PTR. But, the past few days, I've not been diligent. It's been all about Bremmie!

Blizzard gets patch day right!

So, whatever children, small furry animals, and unidentified spices were sacrificed the to WoW gods seemed to have appeased their wrath. My UI did not completely bust (there were a few smallish coding fixes and some non-critical add-ons that need updating) and the lag was not game stopping. In short, 2.3 was a rockin' success.

Now, I didn't experience everything that changed--there's no way that could be done in just one night. Instead, I ran around like a lunatic swapping from character to character as I remembered things I needed to do. Here's the short list of things I did manage to accomplish:

1. Log into the bank toon, make sure the UI works. Make a few tweaks and call it a day.
2. Log into the priest, drool over the amount of spell damage he does (678). Go kill a quick monster to show myself how much easier it is. Hearthstone. Log out forgetting to check his mana regen.
3. Log into the warlock engineer. Fly out to Wildhammer and pick up the plans for the engineered flying mount. Hearthstone (cuz flying to Shattrath would take JUST. TOO. LONG.) Gather mats from bank, head to anvil, create flying machine of death.
4. Log into the hunter and look for daily quests. Find both dungeon quests and daily cooking quest. See I need a Kaliri Wing and head up to Skettis. Now, I don't know about you, but the damned giant Kaliri have knocked me off my mount about a bajillion times. In fact, I'm pretty sure some of them have cloaking devices considering how they've swooped at me while I'm all unawares. The place was empty--of birds. There were plenty of folks hovering about up there waiting to kill a bird. I flew about a bit and did the daily egg-bombing quest. Then I started buzzing birds on my epic mount. If I trained them carefully, I could ensure I got the first hit in. It only took two birds and I had my wing. Back to The Rokk.
5. Turn in daily cooking quest. Choose box of meat as my reward. 6 Warped Flesh, 7 Chunk o' Basilisk, a random grey and a new recipe, I can now make [Hot Spicy Talbuk]
6. Head over to Nagrand to lay the smack down on some Talbuk. And discover ZOMG -- the deadzone she is dead. *rejoice*
7. Get back to Shattrath. Log the priest back in. Go get Mad Alchemist recipe at the bird guys in Lower City. Make some. Drink one. Woot. Works. Make some sundry pots for my hunter. Log out without remembering to check his mana regen.
8. Log in the hunter. Find a friendly guild leathercrafter who is revered with Honor Hold. Sweet talk him out of a Nether. Get my new 24 slot ammo pouch! Woot.
9. Get into the Heroic Ramparts daily quest. Finish it after some really nasty bugging. The instance went nearly flawlessly (like 2 wipes) up until the dragon boss-which is who we have to kill for the daily quest. He has the two mobs just in front. Their death usually signifies the dragon landing and the last encounter starting. Well. Not for us. Each time we'd kill one of those dudes, another would re-spawn. Put in a ticket cuz I was getting. my. badge. Found out each kill gave 15 rep. And in a never-ending cycle. So..of course, the dragon aggros and starts the final event when we're not ready. Wipe. We think we figured out that if you kill them very close to one another in time that the dragon comes down. Not at all sure. Finally, finally, finally take down the big ugly. Get my item and hearth. Turn in.
10. Log out. Go to bed.

So. What's next?

1. Potentially get invited to a Zul'Aman tonight *cross fingers*
2. Remember to check the mana regen on my priest?
3. MORE DAILIES!
   

Beginning to Hate the Dailies

Maybe it's just me. But I'm beginning to find my daily quests to be very, very boring. First off, it's up to Skettis to bomb the Kaliri Eggs and then find the damned escort. Fly back, turn in, ka-ching.

Then a quick flight to Ogri'la. Play Simon. Bomb the stacks of fel cannonballs. Banish some demons. Rope a few aether rays. Fly back. Turn in. Ka-ching (x4).

Log out. Log in the next toon. Repeat (twice). Yes, I have three characters that can do daily quests. It's somewhere just shy of 300G if I do them all. And they're easier on the hunter with the epic flying mount, but still boring.

From what I've read the dailies being introduced in 2.3 (c'mon Tuesday) are having some randomness built in. So it won't be exactly the same grind every day. And if I were truly dedicated, I'd finish the Netherwing pre-quests to get up to working on that rep. But right now I'm finding them boring and time-consuming. Maybe it's just me.