February 24th, 2009 at 09:16am
Under Achievements Guide
I know not all of you are Achievement addicts, but you have to admit, it’s kind of fun when you get that little golden plate show up on your screen. Some of them just happen, while some of them have to be worked on. As much as I hate to admit it, we have had to postpone getting Twilight Zone for another week. We were close, but for some reason we just couldn’t get over the hump. Even though I’m certain we’ll get it soon, it’s gotten frustrating at some point.
Before I got Master of Arathi Basin last week, I almost tore my hair out in dismay trying to complete Arathi Basin Veteran when I ran into a very long, excruciating string of very long, excruciating games that just ended up in losses. I’m convinced that there are just Achievements from hell. I’m not looking forward to grinding Alterac Valley Veteran, even though it’s the only one I need for the meta. For the Achievement addicts out there, which is your white whale? For those who couldn’t care less about Achievements, which one wouldn’t you even dream of trying?
By admin
February 14th, 2009 at 03:27am
Under Achievements Guide
It’s the Arathi Basin Call to Arms holiday once again, and The OverAchiever is here to help guide you through the Master of Arathi Basin Achievement, which is required for the Battlemaster meta-Achievement. You should be playing quite a bit of Arathi Basin this weekend considering it’s one of the most fun and balanced Battlegrounds, so why not grab some Achievements while you’re at it? Speaking of Achievements, one of the requirements for I Pitied the Fool is to hop into Arathi Basin and visit the Blacksmith, so head over to a Battlemaster and queue up!
Arathi Basin Veteran
Win 100 games. Like all the Veteran Achievements, this is just a matter of time. The hardest part is slogging through all the losing games.
Difficulty: Moderate
Arathi Basin Perfection
Win 2000 to 0. In the one hundred games you’re supposed to win with the previous Achievement, you’re quite certain to have one of these. However, if you want a little strategy thrown in, the best tactic would be to send teams of five to the Lumber Mill, Blacksmith, and Mine, with one to tag the node nearest your spawn point and any team that finds no resistance to head straight to the Farm or Stables. Essentially, the idea is to prevent any flag from being captured, as all it takes is ten seconds for it to tick for 10. Because it takes ten seconds to tag a flag, that’s ten seconds too late.
Difficulty: Moderate
Me and the Cappin’ Makin’ it Happen
Take 50 flags. This is easy, and again just a matter of time. It’s quite possible to have a lot of flag tags in one game — you’re not required to capture the flag you’ve tagged for it to count for the Achievement. In a worst case scenario, simply be the first to take the nearest node (Farm or Stables) in fifty games.
Difficulty: Easy
Disgracin’ the Basin
Take 3 flags in one game. Doing this Achievement should help you with the previous one. It’s a great incentive for players to pay attention to the flag instead of mindlessly fighting off it. Then again, tagging it doesn’t guarantee you’ll stick around for it to get captured. Easily doable with a bit of effort, specially if teams are evenly matched.
Difficulty: Easy
Overly Defensive
Defend 3 flags in one game. Now this one isn’t quite as easy as the last Achievement. First of all, when the opposing team tags the flag, it usually means that they have the superior force and that you are quite likely dead or about to die. Maybe not even anywhere near the flag at all. You will have one minute to get that back — technically you have fifty seconds. You will be using some of that time to travel, resurrect, fight and kill enemies who would stop the tag or worse, a combination of all three. It’s certainly doable, but it takes a lot of circumstances being in your favor for you to do so. Just be mindful of the flag timer. AddOns like Deadly Boss Mods for Battlegrounds are good for this.
Difficulty: Hard
To the Rescue!
Defend 50 flags. This is one of the more worthy Achievements because it takes a considerable amount of effort to do. As hard as Overly Defensive is, getting back a flag fifty times takes some dedication. In fact, you should treat losing games as an opportunity to complete this Achievement. One flag defended in a losing match makes it worth it.
Difficulty: Hard
Resilient Victory
Overcome a 500 resource advantage and win. Another difficult Achievement, even with a pre-made. If you let the opposing team get ahead by 500 points, it usually takes a 4- or 5-cap to overtake it. Deadly Boss Mods will help you track how many flags you’ll need to win the game, but if it’s really early, establishing and maintaining 4-cap should do it. If it’s late in the game, you have no choice but to take all five flags. That’s a tall order considering you’re against a team that has held three or more flags long enough to jump ahead 500 points.
Difficulty: Hard
Territorial Dominance
Win 10 times while holding 5 bases. This is another Achievement you don’t necessarily have to focus on. It will just happen. 5-caps happen quite often on both sides, even with PUGs. If you want to expedite the process instead of wishing for good groups, organize a premade. Otherwise, just grind your way to those 100 wins, and it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’ll get enough 5-caps along the way.
Difficulty: Moderate
Let’s Get This Done
Win in 6 minutes. The simplest answer would be to play with a premade, but this is doable even with a PUG with some luck and disproportionate numbers at the beginning of the match. The only way to win within that time considering flags need one minute to get captured and start ticking is to 5-cap. Without having to go through tactics and all, just play hard, work together as a team, and this Achievement should just happen.
Difficulty: Moderate
We Had it All Along *cough*
Win 2000 to 1990. This is an insanely difficult Achievement to get, and somewhat impossible to engineer. Even with a premade, you won’t necessarily get this result — and be on the winning side. These numbers happen when the game seesaws between three and two bases. Otherwise, this is arguably the most difficult Achievement to obtain, and players often get it as a matter of luck. If you want to screw things up for enemies, if the game is close and you’re ticking too slow to win… let them take a flag. I highly encourage screwing Achievements for the enemy faction, and considering this is one of the harder ones to get, there’s no reason opponents should get it at your expense.
Difficulty: Hard
The Defiler / Knight of Arathor
Get Exalted with the Defilers / League of Arathor. Many old school players will already have this in the bag or have a head start, specially those who experienced the old Mark of Honor turn-ins that granted reputation. On normal days, every 200 resources grant 10 reputation and on holidays such as this weekend, the reputation ticks every 150 resources. This grants a total of 100 reputation per win on normal days and 130 during the Call to Arms holiday. You’re certain to get the 100 won games on the way to this if you’re just starting from scratch. I’ll peg this one as hard because if you’r starting from Neutral, it can be quite the grind with no turn-ins. If you got the reputation from this a long time ago, more power to you.
Difficulty: Hard
Arathi Basin All-Star
Assault and defend 2 bases in one game. This takes some effort and luck, but completely doable on anyone’s first game. Again, the hard part is defending a flag. If you manage to do this, you might as well go for the Overly Defensive Achievement because you’re not guaranteed to have easy recaps every game. Still easier than Overly Defensive because 2 flag tags are much easier than defending one.
Difficulty: Moderate
Arathi Basin Assassin
Kill 5 players at each node. This isn’t a hard Achievement as it is annoying… this requires players to constantly move from node to node, which usually means that nodes will be left empty. If all players are pursuing this Achievement, for example, nobody would be left to defend anything as it kills the chances of killing elsewhere. It’s not a difficult Achievement because it’s based off Honorable Kills and not killing blows. As soon as you get five at one node, simply move to another that’s being assaulted. There’ll be a lot of games where you’ll come up short of a few, but generally, this is doable with a bit of effort. Fortunately, it doesn’t require that your team win.
Difficulty: Moderate
Arathi Basin is one of the most fun Battlegrounds, or as Elizabeth Harper puts it, “one of the least completely annoying Battlegrounds”. Have fun during the Call to Arms Holiday, and pack a seasonal target dummy on your trip. Just make sure you’re there to actually win the game and not just pity some fool. Even Mr. T wouldn’t approve of that.
By admin
February 11th, 2009 at 09:59am
Under Achievements Guide
This year’s short-lived Valentine’s event, Love is in the Air, comes with its own meta-achievement, A Fool For Love (A/H). Though this event may not be your idea of a good time since it’s mostly RP related, it’s still necessary if you are trying to complete What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been (A/H) for a Violet proto-drake. You only have five days to complete the meta-achievement starting tomorrow, so let’s get to it.
The Basics
Head to an Innkeeper in any capital city with a heart over his head and purchase Love Tokens as well as a Perfume Bottle if you want to attract male NPCs or a Cologne Bottle if you want to attract female NPCs. Douse yourself with the stink water and talk to the NPCs in the city with hearts over their head. Give them a Love Token and they may give you a Pledge of Adoration or a Gift of Adoration along with the Adored debuff which will prevent you from doing this again for another hour.
The Pledge or Gift can contain any of the following:
Or they may give you the Heartbroken debuff, which stops you from receiving gifts for an hour. If this happens, find someone with a Unbestowed Friendship Bracelet, which can remove the debuff. Be sure to help others in need if you have one, as using a friendship bracelet it is one of the Achievements you need!
If you have the Adored debuff, you can still talk to guards and will receive a Pledge of Friendship or if you talk to a mercahnt you will get a Gift of Friendship. The Pledge only has the Guard’s Card or the city’s Pledge of Loyalty and the Gift just has a city specific trade item. This can be done as often as you like and it does not face the 1 hour cooldown associated with the Adored buff. However, the items you receive will not help you towards the achievement. They are used for the non-achievement activities.
Due to the Adored debuff, you can only get one Pledge or Gift an hour for the 5 days of the event.
The Achievements
Many of these require items that you get from the Pledges/Gifts of Adoration so get to passing out Love Tokens as soon as possible and keep at it as soon as your Adored buff wears off.
Be Mine! - Use the Bag of Candies to create specific messages.
You get 10 charges for every Bag of Candies you receive, so it shouldn’t be too hard to get all 8 combinations listed. But as with many of these achievements, it’s advisable to start early since it’s a short event and you are limited to one new Pledge/Gift an hour.
Heartmender - Use 20 Unbestowed Friendship Bracelets.
There will be plenty of Heartbroken players in the cities looking to get the debuff removed so they can get their next Pledge. Use these freely and with abandon.
Fistful of Love - Use a Handful of Rose petals on a number of different race/class combinations.
I hated being the target of this at Winter’s Veil on my Night Elf Druid. Now it’s your turn to get pelted out of nowhere! For finding the opposing faction targets I recommend Dalaran, especially the banks.
Flirt with Disaster (A) - Get smashed, put on perfume, throw a handful of rose petals at Sraaz and kiss him.
Sraaz is the gnome pie seller who wanders around the Great Forge in the middle of Ironforge.
Flirt with Disaster (H) - Get smashed, put on perfume, throw a handful of rose petals at Jeremiah Payson and kiss him.
Jeremiah Payson is the cockroach vendor in the Undercity. In this case, you might want to get *really* smashed.
I Pitied The Fool - Pity the Love Fool in the locations specified.
This one is going to be the roadblock for many players. What you need to do is drop your Love Fool targetting dummy in each one of the places listed below, target it, then type /pity. Simple right? Check out the locations involved:
- Wintergrasp
- Arathi Basin Blacksmith
- Naxxramas
- Battle Ring of Gurubashi Arena
- The Culling of Stratholme
The tricky ones are Naxxramas and CoT: Strat. Fortunately, you don’t actually have to enter Naxx, just fly up (or get summoned by Warlock) to the summoning stone just outside the instance portal and it should work there. CoT: Strat has a minumum level threshold of 75 to let you in, so no character under 75 will be able to get the meta-Achievement this year.
Lonely? - Join someone in Dalaran at their Romantic Picnic during the Love is in the Air celebration.
Either use the Romantic Picnic you received from Pledges/Gifts and wait for someone to join you or find someone who has already laid their blanket out and right click on their Picnic Basket to get the buff. A little wine and a few kind words never hurts either, gentlemen.
My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose - Obtain a Bouquet of Red or Ebon Roses during the Love is in the Air celebration.
Finally, we get to some fightin’! The Bouqet of Red Roses drops from:
If you are looking for more of a challenge, you can also try of the Bouquet of Ebon Roses from:
You may also consider which boss to go after depending on what dungeon/boss achievement you have yet to complete.
Nearest and Dearest - Complete the Love is in the Air storyline quest beginning with the Dangerous Love quest.
For Alliance, the Dangerous Love quest starts with Artisan Mottar in Stormwind. The Horde version of Dangerous Love starts with Fenstad Argyle in The Undercity. When you are finished with the 6 quest chain, make sure to click on the Cauldron to get your outfit and Achievement credit.
Nation of Adoration (A/H) - Obtain a Gift of Adoration from each of your three capital cities.
I recommend getting this done on Wednesday so you can use the Lunar Festival invitation to teleport between cities easily. You know, if you aren’t a mage.
Shafted! - Shoot 10 players with the Silver Shafted Arrow.
You’ll get these from your Pledges/Gifts boxes. Just target any player character who doesn’t have a non-combat pet out.
Sweet Tooth - Sample four of the candies listed.
All of these will appear in Pledge/Gift boxes at some point. Nom nom nom.
The Rocket’s Pink Glare - Shoot off 10 Love Rockets in 20 seconds or less.
Try to keep the obvious jokes out of Vent. Really. No, really. Sigh.
That’s it for the meta-Achievement. There are two more Achievements associated with the holiday that are stand alone and not require to complete Fool For Love. They are both based on getting a rare reward in your Pledges and/or Gifts:
Lovely Luck is On Your Side - Open a Gift of Adoration and receive a Lovely Black Dress.
For those special nights out on the town.
Perma-Peddle - Obtain a permanent Peddlefeet pet by procuring a Truesilver Shafted Arrow.
Use the arrow to summon Peddlefeet, a rare non-combat pet. Note: Can no longer be farmed on alts.
Next week on The OverAchiever: Non-combat pet collection Achievements!
Dan O’Halloran is the Managing Editor at WoW Insider, a regular contributor to The OverAchiever and also runs The Daily Druid.
By admin