Danger! Danger!

That was the word that kept tumbling, loudly and violently, around my head like a boot in a dryer. The word was a warning that came far too late for those brain cells killed by the margaritas, the beers, and the tequila consumed during my visit to Las Vegas. I didn’t really have an excuse for the mass consumption other than the notion that sometimes brain cells need to be put down.

It all came back to the Insane in the Membrane Feat of Strength. I repeatedly watched the Youtube video strategy that I posted last week, and made the mistake of reading the comments beneath it. Never a good thing. People bickered back and forth about rep levels. Some claimed you had to maintain Bloodsail Buccaneers at Honored while raising Steamwheel Cartel levels. Others swore you just had to get the Bloodsail Buccaneer rep to Honored, then you could burn it down with cloth hand-ins to repair the Steamwheel Cartel rep.

GotJokesGaming had also posted an excellent strategy video for getting The Insane title. The rep change was noted in the video. Things became a little more complicated.

Luckily, GJG also created a video to help maximize the rep gain bonuses. Phew!

Conflicting information befuddled me. What was true? What was not? What could I believe?

In the end Blue poster Zorbrix thankfully came through with The Truth:

Hey everybody, just wanted to clear this up since there was some confusion regarding the comment posted in the Hotfix Blog Post.

I’ll start with a bit of history. Prior to this hotfix, some players were encountering an issue where they wouldn’t get the Insane in the Membrane Feat of Strength awarded to them if they didn’t concurrently have the the required factions (namely the Goblin Cartels and Bloodsail Buccaneers) at the required rep level. This was a bug, as it’s no longer a requirement that you have all those reps at the required level at the same time.

In order to fix this, we had to slightly re-build how our achievement system tracks your character’s progress towards this Feat of Strength via Hotfix. This is likely why methods of “tracking” the Feat of Strength aren’t showing progress as they did before.

Now that the hotfix is applied, going forward you will now retain credit for any of these reputations even if you do something that makes you lose reputation with them. Additionally, we were able to grant retroactive credit towards the Bloodsail Buccaneers portion, as long as you had completed the Avast Ye, Admiral quest. Unfortunately no retroactive credit was provided to players who had reached exalted with any of the Goblin Cartel reputations. If you didn’t get the Feat of Strength after the hotfix was applied on April 14th, and you don’t currently have the four Goblin Cartel reputations at exalted, you’ll need to re-obtain those reputations again.

I’m not entirely sure what this means for me as far as attempting the Feat of Strength. But I do know I need Asprin. And water.

… and quite possibly the Insane title.