Sunday, December 2, 2012

Tips for Hunting Glorious Rares




Ever since my time in Pandaria kicked off I have been absolutely addicted to hunting Rares. It started with rare pets for my hunter whilst I was levelling through Northrend and Cataclysm. Every day before I start anything, I would check known locations of any pets I wanted. Now in Pandaria they have added Champions of Pandaria – rare spawns (if they can even be called that) that have shorter spawn timers than we’re used to, that drop a random piece of blue gear and have a chance to drop a rare item. For some rares its a 85-87 epic item (BoE epic pants for Krasarang Wild Rares and BoP Epic weapons for Jade Forest). For others it’s a Bag of specific Materials (i.e. Lon the Bull’s Bag of Herbs will contain all types of Pandaria Herbs, all Townlong Steppes rares drop a type of Bag). For the remainders its a vanity item of some sort.

Well, now that I have been 90 for a couple of weeks now, I have finally completed the Achievement associated with these rares (Glorious!) – I have killed all the rares found in Pandaria. Granted, this cannot be compared to Frostbitten! Or any of the previous Rares achievements – those required some dedication. But then my mission wasn’t just to kill these rares, I wanted the rare items that they dropped as well. Now suddenly this task looks a little bit harder and requires quite a bit more dedication. Anyone can go and kill 30 odd rares on a known spawn timer. It takes a little more to persuade them to do it over and over again until their special drops are collected.

So far I’ve collected about half of the items on offer. As per usual some items are more sought after than others, and I certainly have my own favourites. But first a few tips for those that are interested in getting this achievement or these rares.

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Return through the Mists



Return to a new World of Warcraft

After a 1 year hiatus from World of Warcraft, I have returned but not with Serebihm. I spent 1 year trying to find a game that is better than World of Warcraft. Many games I played were hailed as WoW beaters- SWToR and GW2 in particular – but none lived up to their hype. SWToR had decent raid content, but unfortunately it had crippling bugs, a horridly basic and uninteresting crafting system, and just not enough other things to spend your time with – things I like to call “Fluff” , like collecting Mounts or minipets, etc. GW2 on the other hand had a great crafting system and lots of “Fluff”...and a severely lacking endgame.

After a year of trying to find the better MMO, we had come to the conclusion, this is the best MMO and it will probably remain so until Blizzard’s next effort. I was part of a group of 9 players who tested these new waters, but every time we tried something we would find something we weren’t happy with and WoW comparisons would emerge. So about two weeks ago, as we were again discussing the shortcomings of another failure, I had had enough. It had become clear to me, that for us there was only one game that could cater to our needs.
But I set new stipulations for our return, we would not be allowed to return to our mains, we would approach it as a completely new game, And so we did, well, most of us anyway.