A Week in an MMO Life: Loremaster of Northrend

Avatar of Freya zapping out flowers to kill the Scourge while Kintri looks on

The Loremaster achievements in World of Warcraft are an obvious one for a casual player who likes to quest.  Finish (almost) all the quests in a zone and get an achievement, complete it for all the zones in an expansion or continent and get a meta-achievement and finish them all for all expansions and continents and get a meta-meta-achievement.

This probably would have been doable for me except they didn't start until the Wrath of the Lich King pre-patch came out so you didn't get credit for most things you did before then.  It is one thing to do the quests as they come out and another to go back and re-do quests to get an achievement.  In any case, I find it convenient because it tells me what quests I haven't seen completely, so I can go back and see it with my alts as I bring them up.

As I mentioned a few times already, the last zone I needed in Wrath was 'Sholazar Basin.'  I'm not at sure why I hadn't done this zone up until now.  I had done a lot of it with Kanter, my hunter, since I wanted to get the toys you can get with Oracle reputation there.  Once Kintri, my Death Knight, hit level 75 and was able to level her Inscription profession, her next goal was to finish Sholazar Basin to get the Into the Basin achievement which would yield me the Loremaster of Northrend achievement.  That is what I did over the last two weeks.

There are three major threads in Sholazar Basin:
1. Nesingwary's Safari, which was also in the original game and Burning Crusade,
2. The conflict between the Oracles and the Frenzyheart Tribe and
3. The guardians left by the Titans fighting back the scourge with Freya above being the most obvious manifestation.

The starter quest from Dalaran sends you to Nesingwary's Safari and so it's the first set of quests you do though they all get interspersed.  As in the other two continents, these are primarily a kill a bunch of animals to get some quest to kill some special animals.  These do get a little repetitive, but there is enough humor thrown in to keep it interesting.  The final quest was the best, even if I didn't complete it as I was supposed to.  Wrath was the expansion where they introduced the ability to ride special vehicles for quests and in this one you get to ride an mammoth with Nesingwary aboard and use it to help kill a dragon.  The whole theme of capturing a mother dragon's babies in order to be able to kill the dragon makes me uncomfortable, but it was kind of fun to run around on the mammoth trying to lead the dragon onto traps.  I actually didn't realize Hemet Nesingwary was dropping traps until too late, so the mammoth died and I had to fight the elite the rest of the way without her help.  Fortunately, I was a little over-level by this point and Death Knights are strong even though I don't know what I'm doing with her, so I was able to finish her off pretty easily.  This also netted me the Hemet Nesingwary:  The Collected Quests meta achievement for finishing all three sets of quests.

The Oracles and the Frenzyheart Tribe are both pretty adorable and amusing so their quests are fun.  I do remember it getting a little repetitive doing the Oracle quests with Kanter so I could get the toys, but when you are just going through the opening sets of quests, it is fun to play both sides.  The Oracles are the 'better' side since they want peace and are trying to get along, but the Frenzyheart are a lot of fun with their proud attitude.  At the end of the quest line in order to kill a boss you have to either kill the Oracle or Frenzyheart with him.  The one that remains makes you honored with that faction and hated by the other.  Since I was already revered with the Oracles on Kanter, I chose Frenyheart for Kintri, but it doesn't really matter unless I eventually decide I want to get the exalted reputation achievement.

Once I finished those quests I was only a few quests away from having the Into the Basin achievement and finished that with some quests helping Freya with the Scourge.  Those quests also got me to level 80 as well, so it was actually a pretty nice way to get the last four levels in Northrend to be ready for the Cataclysm zones.  Freya eventually sends you to Un'goro crater in Kalimdor and if you weren't already aware of the similarity of the two zones, they make sure you get it.  I actually didn't have to do that quest to get the achievement and I'm pretty sure I already did it on Kanter, but I'll do it again to see the ending.

Now the question is what to do next.  My guildmate is pretty confident the pre-expansion patch will drop in the next two weeks and that makes sense, so I don't want to do anything that takes too long.  I could work on getting the Silver Healing Proving Grounds achievement, but it's going to change significantly with Warlords, so it seems like a waste of time.  I could try to take Kintri through Cataclysm so I'll have a max level in every profession, but I don't think I can bring myself to do those quests again after having taken Kantrina and Kantro through them recently.  Also, it'll take a long time to get my other five toons to use their professions in Warlords, so who knows when I'll get to the last one.  I could try to get some more mounts.  I'm close to 100 at this point.  I could finish off the Draenor starting quests with my shaman, since it seems a shame I haven't seen them all.  The fact that Wilhelm named it the worst zone in World of Warcraft isn't exactly encouraging but it should be pretty easy to get done it two weeks.  What to do.  I could just take two weeks off and only do my farm when I feel like it.  There will be plenty to do soon.