Project Lore

Protip is short video series with various tips and guides. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne or subscribe in iTunes for notifications of new videos!

 

Today on Protip, I get the Minesweeper achievement. Its short and sweet! What do you want to see in future Protips? Tweet me @Heartbourne.

They called us crazy, you and I! Those of us who paid a cool $40 just for the privilege to watch BlizzCon 2009 unfold live in front of our eyes, even as the leeches caught re-streamed feeds (of questionable quality) on other sites that shall not be named! Well, unable to attend the event myself, having such unbridled access to the proceedings from the comfort of my desk chair helped me bring the rest of you fine, up-to-the-minute coverage of all the news, but the promise of an exclusive in-game pet certainly didn't hurt. I initially lamented the regrettably long wait time (if I recall correctly, 6-8 weeks) between the event and the arrival of Grunty the Murloc Marine in my Inbox, but it ended up going by like a Summer breeze. It even arrived a little early, as it's actually only been a month since BlizzCon wrapped up. So if you purchased the live stream, either over the television through DIRECTV Pay-Per-View, or online through RayV, check your e-mail, as your activation code should be there by now. All you have to do is take that code and head on over to http://www.blizzcon.com/pet, click on the button, and type or copy and paste it into the dialog box. Keep in mind that a Battle.net ID is required to complete the transaction, so if you haven't linked your World of Warcraft account yet, you're going to have to do that first before you claim your prize. After that, log into the game and you should have an in-game mail from Master Handler Sylvester (an NPC who sends out all of the limited edition pets) which includes a Heavy Murloc Egg. Using the egg will add Grunty the Murloc Marine to your list of pets and will provide you with the Feat of Strength [The Marine Marine], as well! Grunty will leap from side to side with his gun at the ready, ever vigilant of impending Zerg invasions, and occasionally fire his rifle. Find a friend with a Zergling pet for even more fun!

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Word on the street is that Blizzard was running an in-house pool to bet on whether or not anyone would complete the Heroic version of Trial of the Crusader released today. Well... it looks like at least one employee owes everyone else some money! Why? Because Premonition, what can now be considered the premiere U.S.-based raiding guild, has brought down the house. Not only did they clear the challenge on 10-man within a few hours of its release, but they also did it in less than five attempts. That earns them the A Tribute To Mad Skill achievement, which is rewarded to players who defeat all of the bosses, up through Anub'Arak, with 45 tries left on their counter. Just check Delia's Armory profile to see it for yourself! If you aren't familiar with the mechanic, Heroic runs through Trial of the Crusader allow you to obtain extra rewards depending on how many attempts you have left by the end. The total starts at 50 and dwindles, with each wipe, from there. I can tell you from first-hand experience that it's quite a feat. Is it harder than Yogg + 0? Perhaps not. But even after my guild one-shot Anub'Arak on Normal (not as surprising as you might think), we wiped for a good hour-and-a-half on Heroic Northrend Beasts. By the end of our scheduled raid time tonight, we were down to 35 attempts for the week. So for those of you who feared that ToC would be a cakewalk, worry no longer. This is the way it should've been all along (we'll bring you impressions in a forthcoming post)! But as far as we know right now, the World First for Heroic 25-man Trial of the Crusader is still fair game. So what do you guys think about this Premonition's achievement? I know speed kills like this can be discouraging to some people out there, but remember that this was done by one of the top guilds in the world. And hey, remember, they still wiped to Hogger at BlizzCon!

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Anub'arak is not pleased

In what may or may not be a grand coincidence, there are going to be major PvE and PvP occurrences after this weeks server resets on Tuesday. The final boss of Trial of the Crusader (ToC), Anub'arak, will be available to fight, allowing players to unlock the Heroic difficulty setting for the raid. In addition, the seventh season of the Arena will be starting, handing out Frost Wyrms and titles to the most skilled combatants and bringing in a new tier of PvP gear. The events were likely made to coincide to avoid what happened with previous seasons, where it was easier to gear up in raids than it was to in PvP and players played in PvE gear. For those unaware, Trial of the Crusader comes in 10 man and 25 man versions. Each week since patch 3.2 launched, a new encounter has been added, and Anub'arak will be the fifth. If at least one player in the raid has completed either the 10 or 25 player versions, their raid can enter the Trial of the Grand Crusader by setting the raid difficulty to heroic. It is unknown if the bosses are any different at this point in this mode, but I imagine that they must be much harder than their regular versions. The raid will have 50 attempts to clear the instance, that is, if the raid wipes more than 50 times, they are locked out of the instance. If the raid can complete the instance without wiping too many times, they will get a chest with loot that is better the less that they wiped. Its a new take on the Undying style of achievement. In addition, because Season 7 is starting, Koralon the Flame Watcher will be spawned in the Vault of Archavon to drop some Season 7 loot. The loot table is not yet confirmed. In addition, the achievement Earth, Wind, and Fire will now be obtainable. I've been thinking about different strategies for this, and I'm still not sure on how it could be possible, especially on 10 man. We will have more details on this on Tuesday. We may see a minor patch on Tuesday in case some of these things were not implemented in the very early patch 3.2, and we may even see patch 3.2.2 live on Tuesday.

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Achievements really changed the face of the game. Many players see no point in a seemingly arbitrary measure of progress (gear and progression seem as arbitrary to me), but many players, such as myself, make it a goal to be an "overachiever".  I'm sitting on a respectable 5630 points, which puts me in the top 300 on my server. Its nothing compared to Zoltan of Aegwynn (EU), who recently topped 10,000 achievement points after earning Champion of Ulduar. He is only missing a few achievements, which may be some commentary on the rarer achievements in the game as of right now:

• The Brewfest Bunch
• 100,000 HKs
• Gladiator (though he does have Merciless Gladiator and a Brutal Nether Drake)
• A Sea Turtle
• Perma-Peddle
• A Mask for All Occasions
• He Feeds on Your Tears (10 and 25 man)
• A few other difficult Ulduar 25 achievements

I should be able to break 6k points before 3.2, but could Zoltan achieve a "full clear" of WoW? Its unlikely that he can pick up the Brewfest ones before 3.2 hits, and patch 3.2 will introduce lots of new achievements for the Argent Coliseum raids and the Thanksgiving holiday. He might be able to do it eventually, but its not happening anytime soon. Blizzard may not have any plans to come out with rewards for achievement points, but its one of the most objective ways to compare progress between players with different priorities, like arena gurus and hardcore raiders. I think it might be cool to offer some rewards for passing major landmarks, such as heirloom items or a progressively cooler pet the more achievement points you have. With Starcraft II likely to be the next game to use achievements, perhaps united under a Battle.net account, achievements have an exciting future How many achievement points do you have? Do you have the so called Doctor Dorkins beat at 2,745, me (Heartbourne) beat at 5,630, or even Juggy at 7,845? What achievements do you think are the hardest?

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Being someone who likes to keep tabs on what the major raiding guilds are doing, I must say the last several weeks have been among the most interesting I have seen in a long time. If you are not familiar with the recent news I am talking about the whole ordeal surrounding the "Heroic: Alone In The Darkness" achievement, which is the hardest of the Yogg-Saron hard modes. Killing Yogg with the help of zero keepers means giving up a lot of help. There is no one to save you should you nearly die, the tentacles are much nastier than usual, there are no sanity wells, and most importantly you cannot kill the immortal guardians in phase three. Winning this encounter is considered the peak of the current raiding content; it is more difficult than taking down Algalon himself. What is interesting to me is when people first started trying this encounter not only did they think it was hard, many thought it was impossible. That's right many theorycrafters at sites like Elitist Jerks thought it was literally and mathematically impossible. This belief was so commonly held that many top guilds, including guilds like Ensidia, seemed to give up on it, waiting for a nerf before they continued working on this encounter. It is this belief that made so many people cry foul when Exodus first got the achievement by exploiting the encounter. The point I am getting to is just how utterly impressed I am that despite all this; a few guilds, most notably Stars, continued to grind away at this night after night until they came up with a strategy that was able to beat what they are calling the most difficult encounter in the history of WoW. Being the raid leader of a guild who has spent nights wiping on much tamer hard modes, I can imagine the type of dedication and endurance that doing something like this would take. Since Stars' world first we have seen two other guilds, one EU the other US, win this fight. It is impressive all around, but I think special recognition needs to go to those that strived to do something that was deemed unobtainable. I have to hand it to Blizzard for not caving in and nerfing this before guilds like Stars could prove everyone wrong. For the rest of us, maybe it proves that nothing is impossible after all.

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I'm not much of a PvPer. Sure, I play on a PvP realm. I hate the Horde (or Alliance, depending on which character I'm playing). I dabbled in battlegrounds. But in MMOs in general, I have never really gotten into the Player vs Player aspects of the game as much as I have the PvE ones. Over the past couple of weeks, I've had the chance to step into the arena for a few games each week and I can confirm that I am not an elite player in those situations. Both in the 2v2 bracket and the 5v5 bracket, my teams have lost more games than we've won. So we need to get some more practice. That is beside the point, however. The past few weeks have given me a lot of useful experience as a healer (my chosen arena spec) as well as a lot of good times. The times we have won, though, have been a lot of fun. Even some of the losses were entertaining. And ultimately that's the point of WoW - to have fun. After participating in a few arena matches, I feel like I've been missing out on a huge opportunity for fun in World of Warcraft just because I was afraid I might be bad. Well, I am bad. At least, I'm not as good as I wish I was. That's OK though, because with each match, I feel like I am getting better. I find problems with my game like focusing too much on what opponents are doing and not being aware of my teammates enough. That's a lot different from DPSing in most boss fights where maximizing DPS and staying out of fire/void zones/clouds is all I need to worry about. Of course, I have spent a lot more time facing bosses than I have in arenas, so it all feels like second nature now. I used to avoid world events. Now I go out of my way to complete them. I used to rarely raid. Now I love fighting those skull level enemies. I was wary of stepping foot into arenas. Now I look forward to the virtual beat downs. Of course, all of those achievement points waiting for me to earn don't hurt. I wonder what other fun activities I've been missing out on in Azeroth. Any tips on where I should look next?

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Patch 3.2 is finally available on the PTR, which means that players will be able to find out all sorts of fun information about what changes lay ahead for us. Most of the changes are covered in the patch notes, but MMO-Champion found a bunch of new achievements to go along with the new patch. I, as an achievement whore, am very excited about these new (pointless) goals. Browsing through the list of achievements, they come out in a few different categories, covering the 10- and 25-player versions of the Crusader's Colloseum along with their heroic modes, Isle of Conquest (the brand new battleground), Koralon (the new Vault boss), and Pilgrim's Bounty and Pirate Day/Day of the dead. Wait, Pilgrim's Bounty? Pirate Day? Day of the Dead? New world events! Since Pirate Day and Day of the Dead only have one achievement listed for each of them, I'd assume they'll occur for only one day and have minimal impact on the world for their duration. But Pilgrim's Bounty raises my excitement level! There are a number of fun looking achievements to go along with the new holiday that I'll assume will take place over Thanksgiving week. For those of you unaware, Thanksgiving takes place on the fourth Thursday of every November in the United States. Of course, Blizzard could always adopt the Canadian version, which takes place on the second Monday of October each year. The only question I have is whether or not we'll have to participate in this new world event to get our Violet Proto Drakes from the Long Strange Trip achievement. If it's anything like the new and improved Noblegarden, then we will. I'm OK with that, but I'm sure some of the other players hoping to get that 310% mount might get upset. In addition to those new holiday achievements, there are a few new Feats of Strength, which hint at some more free pets for logging in. A Jade Tiger sounds like fun! What are your thoughts on these new achievements? Anything in particular draw your interest? What about the new world event? Can't wait or sick of holidays?

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Up until recently, most of my questing was done in pairs. My rogue teamed up with my husband's warrior for a while as we leveled together. And when he out-leveled me, I started questing with his DK. Either way, I essentially had a tank as we took on quests and easily progressed through the game. But over the past few weeks as I ventured through Dragonblight and now in Zul'Drak, Locomomo has gone solo. So now I've got no tank. Combine to that the fact that many areas within this zone have a high concentration of mobs that like to attack you in twos and threes, and I was in a heap of trouble. But it's been a good learning experience; I've adapted my play style a bit, and that alone has been a fun challenge. Being a rogue, I've been able to escape the multiple mobs with Vanish, and when that's on cooldown, a combination of Sprint and Evasion paired with some strategic weaving through mobs so I don't draw more fire. When I have multiple mobs I can handle, Adrenaline Rush and Blade Fury work nicely together. But there's still the problem of the sheer amount of damage I've been taking. I'm running low on Frostweave needed to make bandages, and also need to restock on foods - both for the buffs they give and for their healing properties. What's been saving me there is the Medallion of Heroism trinket I picked up as a quest reward from the Battle for the Undercity. I love the critical strike bonus, but more importantly at this point is the healing capacity. I've been hitting that trinket as soon as it goes off cooldown. As I said, it's been a fun challenge and really reminds me of some of the awesome rogue abilities that I wasn't using as much when leveling in pairs, simply because I didn't need to. As for the healing issue - I look at this as a good reason to go for that Stocking Up achievement! So have any of you found a reason to alter your play styles recently? Do you prefer soloing or questing in pairs? More importantly, anyone have some Frostweave to spare? :)

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Noblegarden started on Sunday, and if you're like me, you want that Violet Proto Drake, which means you'll have to get your egg hunt on. Being a late addition to the Long, Strange Trip world event meta-achievement, the collection of achievements required to attain "the Noble" title was quite certainly affected by feedback from the player community regarding other similar achievements. If you remember, many players were upset that they had to rely heavily on the Random Number Generator (RNG) for certain parts of the other holiday meta-achievements. Luckily, Blizzard recognized this fact and both retroactively changed the Fool for Love achievement and decided against including random achievements in the Noble Gardener meta-achievement. While there are still Noblegarden achievements that do rely on the RNG - Sunday's Finest and Dressed for the Occasion - they are not part of the Meta. This means it is basically possible - even with the worst of luck - to brute force your way to the title, getting one step closer to that 310% flying mount. Breaking it down, you'll have to open the following number of eggs to complete all of the required achievements: 100 for eating (Required for Chocoholic) 100 for Spring Rabbit's Foot (Required for Spring Fling) 50 for Spring Flowers (Required for Shake Your Bunny-Maker) 50 for Spring Robes (Required for Desert Rose) 5 for Noblegarden Egg (Required for Noble Garden) This totals out to 305 eggs, which will take a bit of a time investment. If you manage to find an egg every 15 seconds, that will come out to over an hour of egg hunting. If you have more trouble finding the eggs, it will take even longer. Remember, this is the maximum number of eggs you'll have to open. Most people I talked to got at least one required item within the first 50 or so eggs they opened, so you'll probably need to open fewer eggs. By the time I had looted 300 eggs, I already found nearly everything I needed from the eggs, so I purchased the last thing I needed - the spring flowers - and picked up the Spring Circlet to complete my collection. All of the other items you'll need for achievements are obtainable through other means. The Tuxedo Shirt, Tuxedo Pants, and Elegant Dress are all tradeable, meaning you can get Blushing Bride for a few coins at the auction house or even free if you find a generous person who will loan or give you a tux. Remember, though, you will not get Sunday's Finest or Dressed for the Occasion unless you specifically loot the items from eggs. The Blossoming Branch is a reward for the daily quest to turn in 20 egg shells and can be used on other players to help them get Hard Boiled. Remember to find someone who has one in their inventory to help you get that one. The Spring Circlet, for 50 chocolates, is not used in any achievements. Mages may want to collect the Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit, which can be purchased for another 100 chocolates. Even though the requirements for the meta-achievement are not completely dictated by the RNG like Be Mine! was, they can still take a significant amount of time to complete. I'd estimate that it took me three to four hours to complete all of them, including collecting eggs, traveling, and finding all of those females for Shake Your Bunny-Maker. So, do you guys prefer having alternative ways of getting items in addition to the RNG, or would you rather just leave out the randomness completely? Or heck, would you prefer all of it to be in fate's hands?

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