WoW mounts; or, how WoW can eat my life
Apr. 15th, 2011 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysobelSo I have for a while had the vague, nonurgent desire to Get All The Mounts on my main character. (This was stymied slightly when I changed which character was my main... ah well.)
I have 70 mounts right now. This includes almost all of the purchasable mounts, flying and otherwise, and all available craftable (since I am for whatever reason a tailor, which gives me three mounts but makes no sense for a shaman, and a skinner, which gives me zero mounts). I also have rep mounts from netherwing,ancient egypt cat-centaur people, and kurenai.
The problem is, the remaining mounts fall into 5 categories: 1) unavailable, 2) based on achievements, 3) based on PvP or large group play, 4) based on having exalted reputation, or 5) hideously expensive. Some mounts fall into more than one of these.
There are two mounts in Dal that I have not bought. One requires 2175 justice points, and I only have 1548 because justice points are /also/ used to purchase equipment, which has a higher priority, and getting JPs requires dealing with random people that generally are idiots and/or rude and so I generally don't run random heroics and therefore don't get JPs all that fast. The other is 16k (which I would have been able to afford except for spending almost 7k on a stupid ring to teleport me to stupid Dalaran for the stupid tournament.)
(Yes, I know there is a tabard that will port you to the tournament. It is only available if you are exalted champion of all five home cities, which I am not. But I got tired of boating to Northrend and then flying across Boring Tundra.)
There are seven PvP mounts that you can get. Nine if you include the Halaa-based ones, which is next to impossible since no one ever freaking goes to Halaa any more anyway. I hate PvP.
Rep mounts: Winterspring Frostsaber, which, ahahahahano, I so do not have the patience for that. Spectral Steed and Drake of the West Wind, which require Tol Barad stuff, which last time I tried was kind of impossible to solo but might be better now that I have gear (I am all of Friendly with BW). Cenarion Hippogryph (Cenarion Expedition, for which I am just shy of Revered), Nether Rays (Sha'tari Skyguard, for which I am halfway through Honored), and a Grand Ice Mammoth (Hodir, exalted but also 10k)
The thing about rep mounts is that you have to get exalted (i.e. they really really like you). In some cases -- kurenai, which I've done, and cenarion/sha'tari, which I haven't -- you can just spend tedious amounts of time running around killing shit for 5 rep points apiece or whatever. (It takes 12k rep to get through honored, and 21k rep on top of that to get through revered. So the "killing shit" method is, while easy, very slow.
But in some cases -- netherwing, which I've done, and freaking Argent Tournament mounts, which I am working on slowly -- the only way to gain rep is to do daily quests. Which you can do once per day.
My current run of dailies will take the entire day if I let it. Seriously. Stormwind cooking and fishing; Therazane dailies, which will be replaced (once I hit exalted) with Wildhammer dailies, except that Therazane is nice and easy to get to and Wildhammer is a bit of a pain; and then get to Northrend and do the cycle of Argent Tournament dailies, which takes me in a loop around Icecrown and then to wherever the fucking weapon daily requires, and maybe I do get sidetracked by archaeology sites but that is /only to stay sane/; and I could squeeze in Tol Barad dailies if I wanted to. There's a limit of 25 per day, but that stuff takes /time/.
And it also means that there's only so much rep grinding I can do at one time. Doesn't matter if I have five hours free to cavort around Northrend or Outlands or whatever; once the dailies are done I have to wait until the next day.
Which /drives me crazy/, because for one thing if I "miss" a day then I've "lost" that chance for rep (I can't make up a missed day by doing the dailies twice), and for another, there's all sorts of stupid travel involved. If it were just "do repeatable quest X until your brain bleeds out your ears", it would take the same amount of time to do all of the Therazane quests to exalted and then move on to another location; but because I can do quest X only once per day, I either have to accomplish nothing else but the quest, or else take the time to travel back and forth. Which isn't bad for Therazane, because it's just a bunch of portals, but, er, Outlands is a freaking pain to get to.
...I was ranting there, wasn't I? Sorry.
Then there are the achievement mounts, which sounds great in principle but in reality boils down to Oh Hell No. The Black War Bear is something you get if you participate in killing the five faction leaders of the opposite faction ... which requires a large-as-fuck group of people with the ability to coordinate and also do pvp and you can guess how many times I've tried it. (Answer: one, on my horde char, without success.) There are various drakes you can get for accomplishing certain things in dungeons or in 10- and 25-person raid settings. (I do not even have Glory of the Hero, probably the easiest to get because it was in context of Lich King 5-person dungeons. And I have never done a 25-person raid ever and probably won't get the chance.
Of special note is the Violet Proto-Drake that you get for achievements related to the World Events. Which for one thing, I get burned out of doing holiday stuff, but for another? I will never ever be able to get that drake, /because of Children's Week/. Which requires not only doing PvP, but doing Special PvP Shit, like being the person to capture the flag, which ... so much no. /glares at Blizzard/
So, mounts available through primarily solo activities:
Directly farmable:
* Qiraji mounts (4), possibly farmable in early trash for Temple of A'Q?
* Deathcharger's Reins (1), still farmable through Strath after Cata changes?
* Attumen's horse from Kara, probably soloable
* Raven Lord, heroic Sethekk, probably soloable
* Kaelthas' mount, heroic MagT, possibly soloable
* Time-Lost Proto-Drake, ahahahahahasuuuuuure
[Unsoloable: Vault of Archavon bosses, Malygos, heroic Oculus, heroic UP, Onyxia's Lair, Sarth 3D, Ulduar, three Cata dungeons, one Cata raid ahahaharight]
Dailies/rep:
* White polar bear, rare drop from Brunnhildar daily dammit
* Green proto-drake, available through Oracles, which I have rep for but don't seem to have the mount on this char o.O
* Cenarion Hippogryph
* Nether Ray (5)
Buyable:
* Wooly Mammoth (2175 JPs)
* Traveler's Mammoth (20k gold)
* Grand Ice Mammoth (10k gold)
* Argent Tournament mounts (14), which all together need 2500g and 1025 champion's seals (*hysterical sob* I have 133)
And then there are the least obnoxious PvP mounts (six for honor points, one for wintergrasp shards which seems unlikely) which I can get if I ever do battlegrounds (hahano) or tol barad (maaaaaybe?)
Guaranteed mounts -- current + rep-related + buyable -- brings me up to 94. (It will take forfreakingever, but it's possible.) The honor point PvP mounts that don't involve Wintergrasp would bring me up to 100. And then, after the twenty years it will take me to do all that, I can work on farming!
...yeah. I'm insane.
I have 70 mounts right now. This includes almost all of the purchasable mounts, flying and otherwise, and all available craftable (since I am for whatever reason a tailor, which gives me three mounts but makes no sense for a shaman, and a skinner, which gives me zero mounts). I also have rep mounts from netherwing,
The problem is, the remaining mounts fall into 5 categories: 1) unavailable, 2) based on achievements, 3) based on PvP or large group play, 4) based on having exalted reputation, or 5) hideously expensive. Some mounts fall into more than one of these.
There are two mounts in Dal that I have not bought. One requires 2175 justice points, and I only have 1548 because justice points are /also/ used to purchase equipment, which has a higher priority, and getting JPs requires dealing with random people that generally are idiots and/or rude and so I generally don't run random heroics and therefore don't get JPs all that fast. The other is 16k (which I would have been able to afford except for spending almost 7k on a stupid ring to teleport me to stupid Dalaran for the stupid tournament.)
(Yes, I know there is a tabard that will port you to the tournament. It is only available if you are exalted champion of all five home cities, which I am not. But I got tired of boating to Northrend and then flying across Boring Tundra.)
There are seven PvP mounts that you can get. Nine if you include the Halaa-based ones, which is next to impossible since no one ever freaking goes to Halaa any more anyway. I hate PvP.
Rep mounts: Winterspring Frostsaber, which, ahahahahano, I so do not have the patience for that. Spectral Steed and Drake of the West Wind, which require Tol Barad stuff, which last time I tried was kind of impossible to solo but might be better now that I have gear (I am all of Friendly with BW). Cenarion Hippogryph (Cenarion Expedition, for which I am just shy of Revered), Nether Rays (Sha'tari Skyguard, for which I am halfway through Honored), and a Grand Ice Mammoth (Hodir, exalted but also 10k)
The thing about rep mounts is that you have to get exalted (i.e. they really really like you). In some cases -- kurenai, which I've done, and cenarion/sha'tari, which I haven't -- you can just spend tedious amounts of time running around killing shit for 5 rep points apiece or whatever. (It takes 12k rep to get through honored, and 21k rep on top of that to get through revered. So the "killing shit" method is, while easy, very slow.
But in some cases -- netherwing, which I've done, and freaking Argent Tournament mounts, which I am working on slowly -- the only way to gain rep is to do daily quests. Which you can do once per day.
My current run of dailies will take the entire day if I let it. Seriously. Stormwind cooking and fishing; Therazane dailies, which will be replaced (once I hit exalted) with Wildhammer dailies, except that Therazane is nice and easy to get to and Wildhammer is a bit of a pain; and then get to Northrend and do the cycle of Argent Tournament dailies, which takes me in a loop around Icecrown and then to wherever the fucking weapon daily requires, and maybe I do get sidetracked by archaeology sites but that is /only to stay sane/; and I could squeeze in Tol Barad dailies if I wanted to. There's a limit of 25 per day, but that stuff takes /time/.
And it also means that there's only so much rep grinding I can do at one time. Doesn't matter if I have five hours free to cavort around Northrend or Outlands or whatever; once the dailies are done I have to wait until the next day.
Which /drives me crazy/, because for one thing if I "miss" a day then I've "lost" that chance for rep (I can't make up a missed day by doing the dailies twice), and for another, there's all sorts of stupid travel involved. If it were just "do repeatable quest X until your brain bleeds out your ears", it would take the same amount of time to do all of the Therazane quests to exalted and then move on to another location; but because I can do quest X only once per day, I either have to accomplish nothing else but the quest, or else take the time to travel back and forth. Which isn't bad for Therazane, because it's just a bunch of portals, but, er, Outlands is a freaking pain to get to.
...I was ranting there, wasn't I? Sorry.
Then there are the achievement mounts, which sounds great in principle but in reality boils down to Oh Hell No. The Black War Bear is something you get if you participate in killing the five faction leaders of the opposite faction ... which requires a large-as-fuck group of people with the ability to coordinate and also do pvp and you can guess how many times I've tried it. (Answer: one, on my horde char, without success.) There are various drakes you can get for accomplishing certain things in dungeons or in 10- and 25-person raid settings. (I do not even have Glory of the Hero, probably the easiest to get because it was in context of Lich King 5-person dungeons. And I have never done a 25-person raid ever and probably won't get the chance.
Of special note is the Violet Proto-Drake that you get for achievements related to the World Events. Which for one thing, I get burned out of doing holiday stuff, but for another? I will never ever be able to get that drake, /because of Children's Week/. Which requires not only doing PvP, but doing Special PvP Shit, like being the person to capture the flag, which ... so much no. /glares at Blizzard/
So, mounts available through primarily solo activities:
Directly farmable:
* Qiraji mounts (4), possibly farmable in early trash for Temple of A'Q?
* Deathcharger's Reins (1), still farmable through Strath after Cata changes?
* Attumen's horse from Kara, probably soloable
* Raven Lord, heroic Sethekk, probably soloable
* Kaelthas' mount, heroic MagT, possibly soloable
* Time-Lost Proto-Drake, ahahahahahasuuuuuure
[Unsoloable: Vault of Archavon bosses, Malygos, heroic Oculus, heroic UP, Onyxia's Lair, Sarth 3D, Ulduar, three Cata dungeons, one Cata raid ahahaharight]
Dailies/rep:
* White polar bear, rare drop from Brunnhildar daily dammit
* Green proto-drake, available through Oracles, which I have rep for but don't seem to have the mount on this char o.O
* Cenarion Hippogryph
* Nether Ray (5)
Buyable:
* Wooly Mammoth (2175 JPs)
* Traveler's Mammoth (20k gold)
* Grand Ice Mammoth (10k gold)
* Argent Tournament mounts (14), which all together need 2500g and 1025 champion's seals (*hysterical sob* I have 133)
And then there are the least obnoxious PvP mounts (six for honor points, one for wintergrasp shards which seems unlikely) which I can get if I ever do battlegrounds (hahano) or tol barad (maaaaaybe?)
Guaranteed mounts -- current + rep-related + buyable -- brings me up to 94. (It will take forfreakingever, but it's possible.) The honor point PvP mounts that don't involve Wintergrasp would bring me up to 100. And then, after the twenty years it will take me to do all that, I can work on farming!
...yeah. I'm insane.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 08:08 am (UTC)(Also: I have a time-lost proto-drake, which I got purely by luck. Was just standing around minding my own business when it flew over my head. I went "!!!!!" a whole lot. For a while, I had that, but didn't have the achievement for killing a Northrend rare, because it was too rare to count as one of the rares or something. It amused me, anyway.)
no subject
Date: 2011-04-16 07:45 pm (UTC)/nod/ I hate the classic battlegrounds because there are so few people. Wintergrasp was tolerable because even though there was a limit, it was a huge limit, and there were lots of people around, and as long as I hung around clumps of people I could get decent amounts of honor points without actually having to be competent at PvP.
(Which sounds horrible but really I am /not/ brained for PvP, and I would avoid it altogether except that there are things you can get with honor points that you can't get any other way.)