Achievement Addendum: Lance a Lot

By now you have settled into patch 3.1 and have discovered the Argent Tournament. If you haven't then there is a guy at the Dalaran flight path that will give you a free one-time flight to the Tournament in Northeast Icecrown.

Once you are there you will start getting daily quests to both open up the arena area (this will take a long time and is much like the Isle of Quel'Danas event) as well as daily quests to improve your ranking in the Argent Tournament.

It takes 3 days of the rank improving dailies to become a Valiant for your race. At this point you can do the Lance a Lot achievement.

How To:

Once you are able to start supporting your home city faction you will get a quest called The Grand Melee. The key to completing this achievement in one shot is to NOT turn in this quest when you complete it.

Once you have this quest you can go and challenge all of the Valiants in the arena. Now the quest says to go to the ones for your faction but you can also challenge the ones from the other faction as well. If you turn in the quest you cease to be able to challenge the Valiants and have to wait until the next day.

You do not need to worry about the amount of Marks you get. They are unique (3) so you will not get anymore after the first three wins, but you will still be able to challenge the other races regardless if you have them in your bags or not.

Hints:

Some people have a hard time with the battles. I have found a pretty decent rotation is:

Melee until the Valiant runs away. Spam your charge until i goes off and once it down immediately hit your melee button.. as you turn around to come back to the Valiant hit your ranged shield attack. You should be able to get all of these off without the Valiant breaking your shield. If they do manage to get a shield down then just refresh it as you are in melee range.

It may take some practice runs before you get a rotation that works for you down but once you get it then all of the races become easy to kill. Go joust to your achievement hearts desire!

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Achievement Addendum: Consumption Junction

This achievement is found in Heroic Drak'Tharon Keep. It requires you to defeat Trollgore before he gets 10 stacks of consume.

When you first attempt him he's at the top of the stairs beating on some guys and it makes sense to just stand there and beat him down. However, to get this achievement you need to bring him pretty far away from where he is.

Understanding the Consume buff:

Simply put, when he uses consume it counts everyone within line of sight of him and adds that many to his buff. This includes players and NPC's. Ideally you want him to only get one stack of consume every time he does it (from the tank).

How to Do it:

There are two pillars in the back of the room that you enter that you can use to your advantage. What you do is drag him so that he is behind those pillars and out of line of site of the mobs that come down the stairs. Then everyone but the tank makes sure they are out of LoS of him until he does his first consume. You can check this by trying to cast something on him. If it won't let you then you are ok.

Have your tank use this macro (thanks to magekill):

/sw 10
/script Stopwatch_Play();
/rw === Cast consume, safe for 10 secs! ===
/in 10 /rw === Back out now! ===

Make sure that one of your dps is on the stairs and solely taking care of the adds. They are pretty weak, so one dps shouldn't have any issue.

It may take a few tries to get the positioning down but once you do it's a really easy achievement. Good Luck!

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Achievement Addendum: Blade's Edge Bomberman

This sounds like a simple achievement but in practice this can actually be a challenge. Bombing all those Fel Cannonballs while getting shot at within 2 minutes and 15 seconds including travel time to and from the quest giver. Ahh but good ole Kree found some little cheats to help out with this that makes this achievement a piece of cake.

First, you have to make sure you have an epic flyer. Not having one makes your attempts on this pointless. You do not need any special speed increases like a Pally aura or a Death Knight. You also need to be able to get the quest from Ogri'la.

Second, grab the quest then put the bombs on a hotkey and then drop the quest. This makes this much easier to do (and you can do it with the UI off so you don't misclick things).

Third, go to the achievement and click on track. It's found under Quests/Burning Crusade. This way you can tell whether or not you will make it in time and don't have to guess. The achievement is per attempt so if you drop it and pick up the quest again the timer will reset.

Ok here is the trick(s):

In Forge Camp Wrath there are two spots where you can hit two of the bomb stacks with one bomb. This is really tricky and to tell you the truth I only ever got it successful once. The spots are at 37,40 (Furthest Northeast) and 32,40 (Furthest Southwest).

The second and much easier trick is that you can sort of double pump the bomb so that you can get two shots off at once. What you do is get in range of two bomb stacks and throw your first bomb. As the first bomb is casting quickly throw a second bomb at the second stack. It takes a few tries to get but once you get it you can shave a significant amount of time off of the bombing run.

With these two tricks, if you can master them, the question is not if you can do the achievement in time but rather how fast can you actually do it.

You have 2:15 to do the whole quest from start to finish. This includes the travel time to and from the bombing area's which is approximately 25 seconds. You spend 1:15 waiting on your cooldowns assuming you get a bomb off every time the cooldown is up. Without the tricks I mentioned you can make zero mistakes if you want this achievement.

Have an achievement you want me to post about? E-mail me at Kreeoni(at)gmail(dot)com. Mundane or hard, I don't mind.

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The Achievement Addendum

Why didn't I think of this in the first place?

So you saw my whole squirrels post last week and aside from one nay-sayer it got a great reaction.

I recently started a competition with a guildy of mine who was around the same achievement level (around 5k). We decided to see who could get to 5500 first and the first person to do so won a Dark Whelpling. We started it about two weeks ago and last night I did my final turn in to win. This competition was actually pretty intense in the hours and dedication we put in to try to win it.

Along the run of this I ran across a multitude of achievements across a wide array of topics. Towards the end I worked primarily on reputations but I did everything from Squirrels to PvP to Dungeons to get it done. I thought it would be a great idea to share all the hints I found out along the way. Incidentally, we've decided to rematch with the first to 6k (reward undecided atm).

So I'm going to dedicate a section to my blog posts to what will be called the Achievement Addendum. I will make posts that give little helps on all the achievements I've been working on. My first post for it will be on Tuesday so you have something to look forward to. If you have any idea's or questions or want me to talk about a specific achievement (or group of them) feel free to send me an e-mail at Kreeoni at gmail dot com.

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Using the Achievements System to Your Advantage

Since I've gotten on the topic of achievements the last week or so lets tie it into guild leadership. How can you make the achievement system work for your advantage as a guild leader?

The one thing I have talked about the least when it comes to guild leadership is recruitment. That is because previously our recruitment standards were pretty low and loosely based and I really wasn't very good at recruitment because of it. However we have revamped our whole system (I'll post on that later) and we now use more tools for recruiting. The best thing that the achievement system has given us is the fact that we can look up everyones achievements on their armory profile, which has great uses for recruiting.

For instance, when I am looking at a new recruits application I pull up their armory profile and check on their achievements. Here is a list of the things I personally find important to look at for our guilds needs:

- When did they hit 80? Are they new to the level or have they been at it for a while?
- How many achievement points do they have? If they have a low amount for the level it means they are probably a reroll character or even a newer 80. Having a lot of achievement points doesn't necessarily disprove this but it does show how much the person cares about their specific character (any character under 1k would definitely be a warning flag).
- Has the person earned the Superior Achievement? Epic? Or are they wanting to join so you can gear them up without them putting any time into their own character before raiding?
- What rank of Emblems of Heroism has the person got to? The more the better. It means they actually took the time to run heroics and 10 mans to at least go for what they thought they needed for their character. Someone with a low amount of this rank probably doesn't have the right intentions.
- Do they have any Emblems of Valor? How many? This shows they at least pugged VoA a few times and have been in a 25 man situation. This leads to the more important things for my recruiting.
- What 5 man heroic, 10 man, and 25 man achievements have they completed? Have they completed all of Naxxramas in at least 10 man mode? Safety Dance? etc? No Vacancy is at the point now that we aren't going to teach people how to raid these fights. Knowing even the basics of these fights is a good sign. But why the 5 mans? It goes with some of the above. How much a person has put into their character.

These are, of course, the way I look at things and only part of what I use for recruitment. A PvP guild has their own sections to look at as does any other type of guild. Previously our only way to look at a recruit was via their reputations and their gear. The achievement system lets us see a little more information about a person and how they feel about their character. It gives you that extra tool to recruit someone who is going to fit with your guild a little better.

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Why we play.

While a majority of the responses to my squirrels post last week were positive one person had this to say:

"achievement hunters" are so annoying. Who cares about your stupid achievements? Noone will ever look at you and say "that's impresive, he completed every achievement". At most they'll say that it's sad that you've lost that much time on those pointless little things.

Why else do people play this game? We do it for the achievements and we do it to have fun. Sure not all achievements are recorded within the game, although most are. We play it to either level up, raid, PvP, etc..

For those of us that play this game a lot there comes a point where we have finished most things but we wish to continue playing. The achievement system gives us more playability for our characters without having to focus on other characters.

Everything in life can be considered pointless to any one person. I personally think sitting at a desk 9 hours a day just to make money is pointless but others see it as a necessity and overzealous workers see it as an enjoyment. They want to achieve such a high level of respect from a few people just so they feel good about themselves. There is no difference from the WoW achievement system, sports numbers (IE - ERA in baseball), or the awards you get in an office.

So yes you may not look at any one of us who got an achievement and say wow that's impressive you; did a large chunk of quests in the game, got a million reps, killed the hardest content in full, PvPed to the top; but a large portion of people will have respect for the others that do care. In fact, I don't know one person that can't say a specific achievement is more important to others. I dare anyone who plays this game to find something in the game that is important to them that is NOT covered by an achievement.

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The Final Tickbird

I stopped off yesterday with me going through the Dark Portal. Today we'll finish up the trek through these achievements.

- After you've made it through the Dark Portal you find yourself in Hellfire Penninsula. Breathe in the air that you haven't had a wiff of in 5 months and proceed to kill an Adder and a Scorpion.
- Head over to Zangarmarsh for Snake and Frog
- Then to Terokkar Forest for Skunk
- Finally Shattrah City for Ewe (he's in Lower City).
- You're done once again with visiting Outlands, back to Azeroth and Ironforge where you will find 6 Books (All in the Hall of Explorers). This is where you will get your Well Read achievement finished.
- Now fly over to Loch Moda for the Ram.
- Then to Searing Gorge for Lava Crab and Fire Beetle. This is where you complete Pest Control.
- Back to our favorite city, Stormwind so you can take the boat to Borean Tundra.
- Remember those ponds with Gurlocs in them to the East in Borean? Yeah that's where you find the Steam Frog and Borean Frog.
- Venture into the Rhino herds for Borean Marmot.
- Go into the Nexus for Crystal Spider.
- Near the Murlocs for Crab and Tundra Penguin. This is where you finish up the first Squirrel's Achievement.
- Finally, head on up to Nessingwary's Camp in Sholazar Basin for the Sholazar Tickbird and your final achievement. Fitting place to end the /love quests eh?


The last section was indeed short but the first part took so much time that I just wasn't able to make it in time. Hope that you enjoyed this foray into achievements, as unrelated as it may be.

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Trucking Through Those Achievements.

Yesterday I showed you my crazy achievement map for my trek through 4 fairly easy achievements. Today I'll give you my step by step track through those achievements which I followed to get them done as fast as possible. If you enjoyed this please pass this around to your achievement minded friends or just point them my way! Remember, I did this on my Ally toon, so sorry for those Horde that wanted a trek. You could adapt mine to fit horde though. I don't think I will do it because I don't care to get achievements on my horde guy. One toon is enough.

I plan on at least color coding this post but may not get to it in time for todays post so check back if you want to see it that way instead. As a note, I did NOT include all specific locations of the books for Well Read. I have used this message under the WoWHead entry for reference as I went along.


- Start in Dalaran (This is where my hearth is set and is of course a really great central starting place. You essentially need to be high enough to start here anyways as one Pest Control critter is here and another Pest is only in a 78+ dungeon[and a critter for TATSWSML is in a fly only area]). Of course if you have a high level warlock then this is no problem for you but lets assume you are an human warrior flying solo.

- Port to Caverns of Time, go to Gadgetzan Inn for 1 book.
- To Un'goro Crater for Parrot.
- Hearth
- Dalaran Sewers for Underbelly Rat
- Mount up on your flying mount in the tube and fly North into Ice Crown for Glacier Penguin.
- Head East to Ulduar for Gold Beetle (In Halls of Stone or Halls of Lightning)
- South to Zul'drak for Zul'drak Rat
- To Dragonblight for Arctic Hare (Also a few spawns in Zul'drak as well as other various Northrend zones [I had previously got mine while heading to a Naxxramas Raid])
- Grizzly Hills for Mountain Skunk and Grizzly Squirrel
- Howling Fjord for Roach, Fjord Rat, Devouring Maggot (in the catacombs in the area with the mass of undead), Spider (around the lake to the northeast of Utgarde Keep), Fjord Turkey, Scalawag Frog, Fjord Penguin.
- Take the boat to Wetlands.
- Fly to Chillwind Camp, Western Plaguelands then head on up to Scarlet Monestary for 2 Books.
- Head back to Western Plaguelands and go to Scholomance for 3 Books.
- Fly off to Zul Aman in the Ghostlands for Larva and Maggot.
 - Back to Wetlands and take the boat to Theramore.
- Barrens for Gazelle, Prairie Dog and 2 Books in the Ratchet Inn.
- Durotar for Hare and Swine.
- Either run back to Ratchet and take the boat over or try to sneak on a blimp outside of Ogrimmar to Stranglethorn Valley.
- Head up to Westfall for 1 Book, Mouse, Snake, and Chicken.
- Elwynn Forest for Cow, Cat, Deer, Fawn, Rabbit, Sheep, and 1 Book.
- Off to Stormwind for 12 Books!
- Take the Boat to Darkshore (it's on the far left of the harbor) and then the Boat to Darnassus.
- Darnassus for Squirrel, Toad, and 4 Books.
- Back to Stormwind.
- Fly to Duskwood for 3 Books.
- Off to Swamp of Sorrows for Huge Toad and Moccasin.
- Through the Dark Portal.

Unfortunately, this is taking longer than I expected and I won't have time to finish before this post is scheduled to come out so I will have to finish up the rest for tomorrow.

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Squirrels aren't pests?

Last weekend I got bored and decided to go and do some achievements. I'm by no means crazy about getting all the achievements in the game but I enjoy doing them in my spare time. I tend to focus on specific sections at a time and go for them.

I put off some really easy achievements sometimes until i finally see them and get annoyed that I haven't finished something easy yet (and usually because the achievement hunters in the guild ridicule me enough to do them).

I'm getting pretty close to 5,000 achievement points so last weekend I decided that I would finally get "To All The Squirrels I've Loved Before", it's follow-up "To All The Squirrels Who Shared My Life", "Pest Control", and "Well Read".  Instead of doing these seperate I've decided to do them in one fell swoop. So I made up a map and put pin points on it to show me where everything was then I created an "Achievement Trek" to list which order I was going to do things and where I should go. I'm not usually this crazy when it comes to achievements so I decided that I would digitalize it and share it for others to make the most out of it.

I am sure most people already have all four of these achievements and get them all before Lich King came out but if you are any sort of lazy like I am then maybe this will help you out some.

Starting out, here's the link to the high resolution large version of the map I made for this.

Since I haven't actually finished going through my trek from beginning to end I won't post that part until tomorrow (that and it gets you coming back for more :) ). I'll try to post my approximate beginning to end time and any special notes that I may have found to make things easier or troubles I had on certain sections.

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The Fun Run was UBR!

Sorry for the delay in this post. I was waiting for some screenshots to come through but most never did so I decided to put up what I had to not keep you waiting.

First, I want to thank all those who supported this run. We had 16 people on at one time with a final total of 9 who were able to actually raid with us. Being Valentine's weekend and a Friday night this wasn't a great time for a lot of people but we were at least able to get some stuff done.

Seeing that we had a smaller amount of people we decided to start with a smaller raid instance and if more people came on we would work our way up. We chose Upper Black Rock Spire and thought we might try our hand at getting Jenkin's titles.


By the time we got to try for the title we only had 6 of us and only one was level 60 making our AOE (Death and Decay you get at 60) more to be desired. After a few tries we decided we'd come back later when more people had made it to the raid (this didn't happen due to time constraints). But at least we had chicken!


We waltzed through the majority of the remainder of the instance collecting whelp corpses along the way. Finally we hit a bit of a challenge on the trash right before The Beast but focused (up until then we were playing around cause it was so easy) and tore them down.

The Beast was our first real boss challenge but we got him down with only a few deaths. And so we moved on.

By this time more people started filtering in as they finished up their quest line. The next trash though gave us at least two wipes but we finally prevailed.

As we faced General Drakkisath the decision was made that one of us would respec to frost and we got the remainder of our questers in on the fight. The fight went as well as it could. We had a few deaths but in the end we prevailed and got our first raid achievement done. Unfortunately for those who did die on the fight, trash had respawned at the entrance so we didn't get a group kill shot picture (and I forgot to get a group picture in general).


Thanks to all that came out and thanks to Brigwyn and The Hunting Lodge for the use of their Vent server for this event. I had a ton of fun and look forward to doing this again. The next event will be for level 58 - 60 death knights on the same server. It will take place early in March and more than likely on a Saturday at an earlier time. This will be a PvP style event so please make sure to not make your DK higher than 60. Stay tuned to this blog for more information soon.

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Tracking those 10's!

Well the bus finally arrived(as you know) and I had a nice New Year's vacation at my best friends house. The trip back was uneventful but I was pretty tired the whole way so I didn't write any more during that trip.

So I was poking around the internet one day and found this website that I thought people would be interested in. Ever since the inception of the Achievement system people have gotten addicted to getting more and more achievements. Well how do you rank? This site can tell you. Mine shows 119 but my guess is the next update I will be much higher. Not bad considering I started after BC launched.

Now granted it's not updated super often but it gives you a general idea and if you are lucky enough to check your character the day it was refreshed you may see a more correct number(mine shows 3780 but my actual number is 3930). Can you believe the highest world achievement person is well over 7k!!

And there is a search function so you can look up all your friends on all servers and see what they have.

If anything this gives you something to play with while you wait in angst for my next blog post!

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