Friday, December 26, 2014

Sha'tari Defense Reputation Grinding and Sky Fry


I recently ground out my Sha'tari Defense reputation to Revered and purchased the Sky Fry pet. It was quite a long process but worth it! Although earning rep is straightforward, just kill related mobs - no quests, I figured I'd share my experience since I deviated from the standard path towards the end of my adventure.

The Sha'tari Defense faction is unlocked on the Alliance with a level 2 Trading Post. After building and upgrading, you can immediately start earning reputation by killing level 100 related mobs in Talador.

Initially, I just did the Apexis daily in Shattrath whenever it popped up. Assault on Shattrath Harbor involves non-elite mobs, while the Assault on the Heart of Shattrath involves killing elite mobs. The latter yields more rep but is obviously tougher since the elites hit harder and have more health. Thankfully, my OH was willing to help out which made the daily go by quicker.

Unfortunately, the daily itself doesn't reward reputation upon completion. Why it doesn't, I have no idea. It seems backwards to me that they wouldn't award rep. What am I earning Apexis crystals for if not the reputation items and pets? So Sha'tari Defense rep was slow grinding, since I only went to Shattrath to kill mobs on the days the associated daily was available.

It's totally possible to go out, kill the mobs, and earn reputation when the daily is NOT up, but I didn't felt very motivated. The lesser mobs reward 5 reputation each, and the rest range between that and the bigger mobs which reward 16 reputation. Shattrath is a fairly spread out area as well, which means time spent waiting for things to respawn or moving to another area. It just didn't feel very efficient or inspiring.

Still, I managed to grind my way to Friendly with the Sha'tari Defense just by heading to Shattrath on days the Apexis daily was located there. I was dreading getting to Honored and then to Revered, though. The daily isn't up every single day, and I just couldn't convince myself to travel to Shattrath on my own to kill things.

So I called upon my OH for some ideas. He looked it up and found another spot that awarded reputation per mob kill. North of Fort Wyrn, there's an orc base with normal and elite mobs (The Path of Glory). I vaguely recalled the area from beta, but didn't think it would be any better than Shattrath. How wrong I was!

The mob density is quite nice and the respawn rate is pretty good. There's not a lot of player traffic going through there, so there's almost always something for you to kill.


We started out by killing the normal mobs, following a circular path around the orc compound (as seen above), avoiding the elites because OMG 587K HP tightly packed together in a death ball. Each normal mob was only awarding a smidgen of reputation though, and this was starting to grate on our nerves. At the rate we were killing, it would take a really long time to reach Revered. We managed to get to Honored, though.

But this is when we decided to take a risk and just go for broke. Elite mobs or nothing! We started out killing the group of elites at the entrance of the path. My OH is a prot warrior and I'm a resto druid so he pretty much tanked the damage while I healed him. Eventually we moved on to two packs of elites, always using our garrison ability, Guardian Orb.

After experiencing two packs, we felt adventurous and challenged ourselves to take on even more. Traveling deeper into The Path of Glory, there's an army of elite Grom'kar Siegebreakers along with a few Grom'kar Warbeasts. Uuhhh, why not?!

It took us a few attempts to figure out how much was doable for us. We settled on two to three packs each pull, one pack being a pat in front of the cannon. Pulling more than that almost always resulted in our deaths as the damage was just too much for our current gear levels (650+).


(click to view larger image)

First pull = the pat that walks up to the cannon + the two groups next to the cannon. Second pull = the group directly in front of the warbeast.

The main thing was we had to wait 5 minutes between each pull for the Guardian Orb to come off of CD. This ability was vital to our success since neither of us had the damage to defeat all of the mobs in a timely manner, before our faces got smashed in by 30ish orcs. The downtime wasn't too terrible and it allowed for the groups to respawn in full.

Because these mobs were elite, they awarded 16 reputation each. YAY! In the end, we were earning roughly a bar every pull. Now THAT'S what I call reputation grinding! :D

It still took quite a few hours to finally get to Revered, and any slip-up or mistake was usually fatal. But we did it! We were just a group of two, so I imagine a bigger reputation grinding group could do even better. Either garrison ability would work well here.

It's a long journey if you're going at it alone, but if you can find a rep farming group that's headed to The Path of Glory, it will speed things up immensely. If you can get exalted with another Draenor faction (I recommend Steamwheedle Preservation Society because that's the easiest IMO) and upgrade your Trading Post to level 3 (perK: 20% faster reputation gain in Draenor), that helps too. I did it a bit backwards and upgraded my Trading Post AFTER I reached Revered with Sha'tari Defense. *derp* :P

As a side note, the Sky Fry was only uncommon quality when I added it to my Pet Journal. I wonder if this is a bug. I mean, it was a lot of work so it seems slightly anticlimactic that the pet needs a battlestone.

Is the Bone Wasp for horde the same? If someone who has purchased a Bone Wasp from the Laughing Skull Orcs vendor could let me know, that would be great. :)

Wednesday, December 24, 2014

Happy Holidays From Storm Peaks


Took a little vacation and treated my Snow Cub to a wintry wonderland in Snow Peaks. :)

Wishing everyone a safe, wonderful and pet-filled holiday season! ♥

Friday, December 19, 2014

Blizzard Store Pet Sales and Wowtcgloot Giveaways

Blizzard is having a limited time special sale on Store mounts and pets. 50% off (US AND EU) almost all mounts/pets (Argi and the new reaver mount not included)! Sale ends January 5, 2015, so there's still lots of time to buy a pet (or two...or three :P) either for yourself or as a gift for someone else.

If you're looking to round out your collection with a new store pet, now is probably the best time. Half off is a pretty damn good deal, and it's a rare occasion where almost ALL pets go on sale. Happy holidays to us? XD

Wowtcgloot.com Giveaways
Another special going on is from Wowtcgloot.com. They're holding a raffle that includes some rare/common TCG pet giveaways and a limited time sale that also includes TCG pet giveaways.

More information and details: Holiday Raffle (contest ends January 1, 2015) and Christmas Special (available while supplies last).

There are some neat TCG pets up for grabs.
Ethereal Soul-Trader
Bananas
Purple Puffer
Gusting Grimoire
Eye of the Legion
Spectral Tiger Cub
Purple Puffer
Murkablo (BlizzCon 2011 pet)
These pets aren't quite as rare as they once were, with all of the "dupes" and stuff going on. Still, if you can afford it and are interested, don't pass up a chance at winning one (or more?!) of these pets. :)


Edit: Wowhead Giveaways!
Wowhead just announced a giveaway as well. Prizes include the following pets:
Deathy (BlizzCon 2010 pet)
Gregarious Grell
Blossoming Ancient
Good luck to everyone entering!


Another edit: MMO-Champion Giveaways!
MMO-Champion announced their own giveaway that includes pets! This one has a fairly short deadline (ends December 25th), so enter quickly! More TCG pets!
Sand Scarab
Purple Puffer
Eye of the Legion
Landro's Lil' XT
Landro's Lichling

Thursday, December 18, 2014

Deathwatch Hatchling - A Generous Offer

Warstar from WarcraftPets recently posted that their guild is offering free invites to collectors for the Challenge Mode pet, Deathwatch Hatchling. The alliance guild is called Check Please and can be found on the US server Durotan-Ysera. For invites, contact Warstar (battletag can be found in the forum thread).

This is a really generous of Check Please, and I'm sure many collectors will be grateful for this offer! As a small reminder, you need to earn Revered with the guild and the pet costs 300 gold from the guild vendor. Also, if you do happen to join just for the pet, keep in mind that you're a guest in their guild. :)

I'm not sure if I'll be taking up Warstar on this kind offer; my guild will probably go for Guild Gold Challenge Modes eventually, so maybe I'll just wait for that. Then again, it's hard to resist collecting a pet that's just in reach!

Tuesday, December 9, 2014

Wood Wasp Colors

There aren't that many wild pets that come in multiple skins in WoD. So far, only the Thicket Skitterer and Icespine Hatchling have been confirmed to come in two different colors. But thanks to a heads up from Valianya, we can add another wild pet from Draenor to that list.

   

The Wood Wasp can come in two different colors, a light green and a dark green, as seen above. This came as quite a surprise to me since I've never seen the darker version in all of my pet battling adventures in Gorgrond. And I used that zone to farm a large portion of the (pre-nerf) 500 Draenor pet battles achievement! So as soon as I read the post on the WarcraftPets forum, I just had to see and collect one for myself.

The Wood Wasps flying around Ruins of the First Bastion area in Gorgrond all have the light green skin. It's hard to say whether or not they can spawn in as the primary pet with the dark green color (I've never encountered one), but it's definitely easier to find one of these if you find a Wood Wasp as a secondary in battle.

If you find a pet battle with a Wood Wasp as a secondary, just forfeit repeatedly until it shows up as the desired color. It took me many, MANY forfeits before I got the dark green wasp to join the battle.

Since pets lose a percentage of their health after each forfeit, the risky part was to make sure my pets had enough health to win the battle even after so many chain-forfeits. Thankfully, the Menagerie level 2 perk reduces the cooldown of Revive Pets to only 4 minutes while in Draenor. Plus I had some bandages on me, with a ton to spare on an alt.

This is certainly a wonderful surprise and I really like the dark green Wood Wasp. If I had to choose, I'd pick that one over the light green one. I'm not sure why. :P

Tuesday, December 2, 2014

Nerf to Draenic Pet Battler Achievement

Blizzard announced a surprising decision today through their official developer Twitter account.
"Blueprint-unlocking Achievement "Draenic Pet Battler" now requires 150 battles instead of 500. Tooltip updated to match next patch."
For those that have yet to grind out the Draenor pet battles for a level 3 Menagerie, congrats! It should be quicker than ever now. :) And if you were in the process of grinding out the previously required 500, you might now meet the requirements for the blueprints. Hooray!

It's likely that some will be upset over this "nerf" to the achievement, having spent the time and energy to complete the 500 pet battles. And it's only natural to feel upset. No one wants to feel like they wasted their time on something. How you express that frustration is what matters.


The original achievement from WoD beta

Me? I'm ok with it, although I'm pretty shocked that the devs would lower the requirement yet again. Originally, 1000 Draenor pet battles was necessary to unlock the Menagerie 3 blueprints on the beta. After some discussion and pleas from the community, that number was halved to 500, just as WoD was released. This new value felt more on par with other level 3 garrison building blueprints, and I felt it was a solid compromise between 1000 and a free upgrade heh.

I can't help but wonder, why drop it down to 150 of all numbers? Why not halve it to 250? Or lower it only slightly to 400? What was the decision making process behind this change that eventually led to settling on one third of 500 pet battles? I'm curious to know because it feels like an arbitrary number. It may also affect how we, the players, view future pet battle achievements and grinds (but that's yet to be seen).

In the end, I'm happy for those that will have a much more manageable Menagerie experience now. I'm still somewhat in a state of disbelief so I can't say much more than that.

I think Lio summed it up best, "[...] I'm all ????? tho bc I didn't think 500 was too bananas & most of the angst I've seen is over Unlock quest."

Yup. Dat unlock quest lol.
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Perks N Peeves by Quintessence is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.