A few of the Feats of Strength are for doing something first. The first to clear a dungeon on hard mode, or the first to hit max level. With the next WoW expansion due to come out any month now it's time to think about the impending Realm First Feats of Strength. I didn't get one of these last expansion (starting at level 55 with no trade skills meant a lot were out of reach) but really want to get at least one this time around. The first two WoW expansions I was starting over with a new main; this one I'll be sticking with my current character so I have a big gear advantage for the first couple levels.
Sky made a post recently about how he intends to turn a massive amount of gold into realm firsts for his two crafting professions. I have a less massive amount of gold but still a pretty substantial amount and could try to do the same... Only problem there is we're both Jewelcrafters. There's no Realm First Loser achievement, so getting second place is right out. Sky has more than four times my gold, but I think the amount needed to get to max is less than what I have. I definitely think I could get it over him, but I also think if I try for it that he could get it anyway. There are many different achievements I could go for, so I figured I should take a look at all of them and see if there isn't a better way to spend my time and money than going for the same thing as my friend.
Now, for historical data I could look at worldwide or just at Vek'Nilash. Vek is pretty widely regarded as a terrible server with not a lot of players so getting these things 'should' be easier here than on an average server I would think. Unfortunately there's no easy way to get worldwide data but I can easily get "Americas" server data, so we'll go with that.
Level 85.
- Took 1 day Americas, 2 days Vek.
- Involves just playing a lot for a couple days and focusing on questing and maybe running each dungeon once to do the quests.
- Can be 'cheesed' by having an out of group healer or body-puller to just drag mobs to you. I believe a guy from France did this last expansion and got it done in less than a day.
- Or by having someone else play for you when you sleep.
- Should probably stock up on flasks and food beforehand.
- Low downside to trying and failing. Even without achievements I'd be playing a lot on expansion release.
- Assuming comparable leveling speeds may come down to who has the better sleep schedule timing.
Level 85 Death Knight
- Took 2 days Americas, 4 days Vek, took me 10 days. (I was actually closer than it looks, but once it was clear I wasn't going to win I got other stuff done and went back to work.)
- Nothing special compared to the above. Is a potential consolation prize if I lose out on 85 in general.
Level 85 Night Elf
- 1 day Americas, 3 days Vek.
- Same as above. Note that all three of these achievements can be 'tracked' in real time. I can get updates on what level everyone is and can push harder or abort as needed.
Max Level Herbalism, Skinning, Mining
- All done same day both Americas and Vek.
- I don't have any of these tradeskills right now and don't want them longterm. (They give worse raiding bonuses than jewelcrafting/blacksmithing.)
- Could be used in conjunction with another trade skill to alleviate the gold cost of powerleveling it.
- Americas the guy who got first miner also got first blacksmith. The same is true on Vek. (Different guys.)
- Has the big upside that if people are paying through the nose to get these achievements (hi Sky!) then by being a gatherer you can make a mint. I'm not sure what I'd do with a mint, though...
Max Level Fishing
- All done the same day. Presumably by people who went to a midnight release, went to a trainer, bought the skill, hearthed to Ironforge, and fished until they hit max.
- I do still need to catch Old Ironjaw, so fishing for a few hours in Ironforge isn't the end of the world for me. It does make it extra unlikely to get the level 85 ones if I spend 6 hours not leveling.
- I do like fishing, and I'm pretty sure I was the world first DK to get the Salty title for fishing. The internet isn't being a lot of help here but it took me barely a month to get it. Certainly one of the first, anyway, and it would be nice to have a realm first related to fishing.
- If I spend the first 6 hours of the expansion fishing in Ironforge and don't get Old Ironjaw or the realm first it will really, really suck.
- Or I could find a nice expansion fishing hole and get new fish to cook with while striving for the achievement...
Max Level Cooking
- 1 day Americas, 6 days Vek.
- No one cared enough about cooking to power level it last expansion on Vek.
- Not even sure how you'd try. Kill lots of beasts? Focus on fishing pools? Get everyone in your guild to mail you meat? If they did the same mechanic with the spices then you probably would want to get people in your guild to loan/sell you spices to start.
- Being a cook really has no benefit.
- On the plus side, I do have the faster cooking hat!
Max Level Firstaid
- Same day Americas, 1 day Vek.
- I'm sure this goes to someone who buys/borrows all the cloth early on.
- Being a tailor undoubtedly helps for scooping up the bonus cloth.
Max Level Archaeology
- The level 80 version of this achievement hasn't been handed out yet and apparently does exist. So there are two up for grabs here: first to skill 450 and first to skill 525.
- Archaeology looks awesome. You can get epic weapons and armor for level 85, along with pets and mounts. It looks like something that someone into optimizing their routes will be able to level faster than other people. I expect someone with time and skill will beat someone with time. (As opposed to fishing, for example...)
- I want to level it eventually since apparently it will grant a minor raiding bonus. In order to level the skill as I level in game I'd need to go back and power level it anyway. If there were no achievements I'd probably go back and do this right away, or level in dungeons when my guild had a group together and otherwise do excavating.
Max Level Blacksmithing, Jewelcrafting, Engineering
- The tradeskills which require mining mats to level.
- Americas they were all done same day. On Vek it took 2 days for blacksmithing and 4 for the other two.
- Unless the raiding benefits change I'll want to level blacksmithing and jewelcrafting eventually anyway.
- I expect it will be substantially cheaper to do so a couple weeks after launch, but there's no guarantee that will actually hold. It really depends a lot on how much inflation exists in new quest rewards and in how many exploiting farmers we have.
- Getting high level jewelcrafting early means making a fortune prospecting ore and cutting gems.
Max Level Tailoring
- Took 3 days in Americas, 7 days on Vek.
- Would help get first aid.
- There's no way I'd keep it longterm, so I'd be picking it up solely for the achievement.
- I know next to nothing about it. Did it take that long because of cooldown issues? Or would it just be buying massive amounts of cloth?
Max Level Enchanting
- Took 2 days in Americas, 12 days on Vek.
- Wow, Vek was really bad at getting this done last expansion.
- You can turn massive amounts of cash into greens into enchanting mats fairly easily.
- You can enchant scrolls now (though you could last expansion too) so it wouldn't even be a huge waste of money to do so.
- Being in a guild that runs a lot of dungeons and will want to enchant their blues for heroics provides lots of opportunity to get 'free' skill-ups.
- I suspect someone else in my guild will already be going for this, so I'd be in the same boat I'm in for jewelcrafting.
Max Level Leatherworking
- Took 3 days Americas, 12 on Vek.
- Uh... Double wow. Vek was really, really bad at getting this done.
- I don't really want to be a leatherworker.
Max Level Alchemy, Inscription
- Alchemy was same day/4 days. Inscription was 2/10.
- My rogue alt is currently max inscription and I have no intention on leveling it again. Sky wants to do alchemy and if I'm going to challenge him on something it'll be the one I already have, thanks.
- I could try to hit max on my rogue, but I'd really rather have these achievements on my main. If no one gets it in 7 days though maybe I'll double back and scoop it up...
Interestingly, it looks like there's a new one added in not for players, but for guilds...
Realm First! Working As A Team
- First guild on the realm to obtain 525 skill points in all professions and secondary professions.
- I think more than anything else I want this one.
So, what should I do? There's lots I want, which may be the biggest danger. If I go 85% at a bunch of different things will I get any of them? (If it was last xpack and I was going for cooking or inscription the answer is yes, otherwise no.)
I like the idea of picking up mining and angling towards first miner/blacksmith/85 DK. I also like the idea of just doing archaeology. And then I like just fishing and turning those fish into potential cooking. Tailoring into first aid has a certain appeal as well. And part of me still wants to take Sky head on and charge for jewelcrafting. Or if it turns out my guild has everything covered but something specific I could dive into that and aim for the guild achievement...
I might be wrong about this, but I have a feeling that the stumbling block for the guild achievement is Archaeology. Starting from 0 is an issue and probably means that you'll have to go back to low level areas while all other professions can be leveled while leveling your character.
ReplyDeleteI think I might just go this. Get cataclysm and head straight for Archaeology instead of leveling. I can get tailoring and enchanting up by just buying cloth and greens in the mean time, since I have around 260k to spend on them if I really want and I can watch the AH or bark for cloth in leveling areas on a second account while I run Sthenno around the world.
If cooking has spices similar to Wrath then in order to get realm first for that you probably actually need support from others.
I think tailoring took a relatively long time because 1) the amount of cloth needed to max out is really mind boggling; and 2) In order to go from 440 to 450 I think you need about 120 days worth of cooldowns. Getting this one first is really a question of economic muscle rather than dedication.
As I understand Archaeology you definitely need to go to low level zones for a while. They've said you won't even be able to see nodes you aren't high enough skill for so you won't see Outland/Northrend/Cata nodes until you run around the low level zones.
ReplyDeleteAssuming you ever want Archaeology and that you aren't desperately trying to level fast then just doing Arch as soon as the expansion launches seems entirely reasonable. That way you can eventually hit the Cata nodes as you level up and it probably won't take more than a day or two to get there.
The more I think about it the more I lean towards doing this. Ignoring achievements I've always been big on doing the new thing (I power leveled jewelcrafting on my druid in TBC and inscription on my rogue pre-Wrath) and I suspect I'll just enjoy leveling to 85 more if I'm not shooting for something I'm not likely to get. Failing to be the first 525 Arch won't be nearly as bad.
Depending on profession distribution in guild I think I might also want to switch to mining. Not to shoot for realm first but so we have someone who's a miner for the guild achievement since I seem to recall only Pendelton and myself were miners during Ulduar.
Well if we are both going straight for Arch then that creates a problem, doesn't it? I was thinking of switching to herbalism myself, just to have some herbs coming in. They've really improved the bonus for it and it might not be that desperately wretched to have it anymore. Of course with glyphs being permanent I think the value of herbs is going to be greatly diminished, so there may be no point in this.
ReplyDeleteI donno about that, a lot of herbs get used in raiding flasks too. If glyphs didn't exist at all I don't think it would have touched the price of lichbloom, though it would have killed both adder's tongue and icethorn.
ReplyDeleteI don't know that permanent glyphs will destroy the market either, just suppress it a fair bit. I actually think permanent glyphs will cause me to consume more glyphs on my death knight in one day than I did in 2 years of one-shot glyphs. I'll pick everything up so that I don't need to go to wowhead to find out what glyphs I could use for pvping, for example.
Also, right now my alts have used probably 18 glyphs total between them all. I'll ship complete sets to them too to save future time. Going forward my characters won't buy a single glyph but there will be a ludicrous spike in my glyph usage.
Us both going for Arch only causes the problem that one of us can get the realm first. The benefit to having it in terms of getting BoA epics, the pve buff, and the enjoyment still exist. I'm still undecided... There's still a month or two to figure it out!
I guess you are probably right that I overestimate the number of one-shot glyphs people actually use. I sometimes remembered to swap Dispel Magic in for Flash Heal on faction champs, but certainly not every time.
ReplyDeleteWhat the new glyph system might very well do is help to cause a huge initial burst in the price of herbs that will drop off steeply. I guess it depends on how many of the glyphs that people really want to use are made from Cataclysm herbs and how many can be made from mageroyal.
Anyway, I'm not that big on getting realm first in the first place. I think concentrating on them would ruin my enjoyment of playing since I'd constantly be nervous that someone else would get it.
If they use a trade in system like they did in Wrath I don't think it will matter. I paid attention to herb prices for months and it was never worth buying anything but Wrath herbs. It was rarely worth buying anything but adder's tongue and icethorn which I probably bought hundreds of thousand of. Sometimes I would buy lower level Wrath herbs as well but the loss of the top level ink combined with needing more clicks per glyph made it a little suboptimal when there were so many adder's tongues to buy.
ReplyDeleteI definitely felt that with leveling my DK. While I was the same level as Tofu I felt compelled to wake up early and do nothing but level. (I did stop and level mining, though.) As soon as he got a little ahead of me I was able to run dungeons with people and screw around and just have more fun in general.
It's an advantage to trying for fishing. If I get it, awesome. If I don't, it sucks, but I really only 'wasted' 6 hours and I'll have fun the rest of the way. Or an advantage to trying for nothing at all, I guess, but that just doesn't seem like me.