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WoD Brawler’s Guild
Sometimes there are advantages to getting punched in the face.
Most people are familiar with the Brawler’s Guild (YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT, oh nevermind – Editor). It’s solo PVE where you throw down against one or more boss-style opponents in an arena setting. Think Fight Club meets WWE, without the sexy divas and spandex and more Brock Lesnar doing whatever he wanted to you. All the fun of getting dropped on your head with the additional bonus of lack of short-term memory.
Blow your CD’s on the way to Suplex City
Believe it or not, there are actual reasons a person might want to subject themselves to the Brawler’s Guild. There’s a battle pet, a mount, a title, and even a follower. But for me, there’s two reasons that I’m currently inventing new and interesting ways to weave an f-sharp into my lexicon while violently choking my mouse (no, that is not an excerpt from my yet to be written gamer erotica “Fifty Shades of Nerd”)
The first reason is that, rather than sitting in a queue for a iLevel 640 intro legendary ring, I’d rather throw 1700g at a ring that doubles as a teleporter. Hawt, yes? Of course it is. The ring teleports the wearer to their faction’s version of the Brawler’s Guild. A sweet port to Org or Stormwind, as well as a nice iLevel bump.
The second thing, the more important thing, is an heirloom – a fist weapon heirloom.
Fist weapons, or the lack thereof, have pissed me off since about forever o’clock. It’s one of the very, very few classes of weapon that can’t be crafted at a high level. Once upon a time the Jewelcrafting profession could make them, but that ship has since sailed into a very large iceberg and sank to the bottom of the ocean. And despite numerous requests, Blizzard still will not allow fist weapons to be transmogged into anything other than fist weapons. So for Monks, or Shaman, or any other fist weapon capable classes, they just had to make do with other weapons until they got into a raid and were blessed by RNGesus.
But with the changes to heirlooms in 6.1, a character could level from 1-100 with fist weapons that would be just as good, if not better, than what they could get through level-appropriate content. Going through life being able to use fist weapons. Sounds pretty sweet to me.
Of course, it makes wiping your butt a little more difficult.
I’ve been throwing myself at the Brawler’s guild, hoping not to lose my mind before I get to the end and unlock those sweet, sweet heirloom fists. Hopefully I rank up before I succumb to a rage stroke. HeelvsBabyface has helped with their guide for getting through the ranks without serious harm to myself to my peripherals. He’s how I’ve been getting through rank one.
New Recruit-A-Friend Mount: Obsidian Nightwing
MMO Champion was kind enough to discuss my new mount – the Obsidian Nightwing, available July 17 2012. It will be available through the Recruit-A-Friend program, replacing the X-53 Touring Rocket.
Here’s why this is awesome:
- Much like the Sandstone Drake, it allows you to turn into a flying mount.
- Also like the Drake, you can carry a passenger on your back.
- Also also like the Drake, the Obsidian Nightwing will be Account Wide (but unlike the Drake, it’s assumed this will happen in July rather than waiting for Mists of Pandaria.)
I’m sure people will bitch and moan about this mount – it looks ugly, it’s a reskinned something or other. But I looked high and low, and could not find a single reason to give a shit what people think of it.
- It’s a perk from Recruit-A-Friend, which means leveling up toons at an accelerated pace (not to mention the other many RAF perks).
- Skin and Achievement aside, you don’t need the 30-50k gold to get the Sandstone Drake once you have this.
- It’s a two-person flying mount. How is that NOT cool/practical/beneficial?
So yes, it would appear I will be dipping my toes back into the RAF pond once again. And once again, I will get a handy mount. And once again, I will abandon the account with a bunch of level twenty characters on it.
The Spectral Wolf
Perhaps you are one of the lucky one million players who have tried out the beta for the upcoming WoW expansion, Mists of Pandaria. Or perhaps you have mastered the art of looking at words and comprehending their meaning well enough to know what the Hell is being said. In any case, you might have clued in that Blizzard wants you to see all the new content at ground level, and flying on the new continent will not be allowed until level 90.
Calm down. Take a deep breath. We’re all in this together. I know you’ve been farming flying mounts because they’re a) roughly three times faster than the fastest land mount, and b) you can fly everywhere else in the damn game. That means that, for five long levels, you will be cruising around Pandaville on a land mount. So you’d better make damn sure you can stand looking at the mount for five levels.
Enter the Spectral Wolf.
I have actually heard people try to compare the Spectral Wolf to the Celestial Steed for some reason, and the words stomped part of my brain to death. Sure the sparkle pony was the hotness for all of ten minutes, and it could also double as a land mount in a pinch when it wasn’t busy flying around looking pretentious. But I’m talking about a Spectral Wolf, not the bastard child of a Twilight vampire and a My Little Pony reject. Spectral Wolves drag sparkle ponies out to the alley behind Pizza Hut and pimp them out for five bucks and pocket lint.
So much wrong with this picture.
To get your hands on these ghostfaced killers, you need two things. First, you need to be Exalted with Hellscream’s Reach. If you run the twelve Tol Barad and Baradin Hold dailies every day, it should take you roughly three weeks to hit Exalted reputation. That’s twenty-one days of straight-up killing things – people, gators, demons, ghosts, and giants.
Spectral Wolf calls that “a nice start.”
By the time you hit Exalted, you’ll have easily met the second requirement to getting your Wolf – 165 Tol Barad Commendations. You can use those extra tokens to buy yourself a Tabard (which has a clickable teleport to Tol Barad) or as a headstart in case you want to get the Tol Barad flying mount – Drake of the West Wind.
For now, don’t worry about other purchases. If you have the rep and the tokens, get one of the best looking land mounts in the game and show that bad boy off.
Beats the Hell out of riding the Swift Springstrider.
Noblegarden Swift Springstrider
Being so close to completing the Meta Achievement “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been“, completing the World of Warcraft Noblegarden World Event went without saying. I was kinda surprised at how quick I finished it. I started Sunday afternoon, and by Monday evening I was done. I would have been done on Sunday but I had to slap some bunny ears on elusive members of the Alliance.
It was now time for me to relax and get back to focusing on other business. I was working on Hellscream rep and tokens to get my spectral wolf mount, as well as leveling up a DK on another server. As far as Noblegarden was concerned, we were done with each other for another year.
That is, until I saw it.
What… what the Hell was that? Why was there an albino flamingo, an abomination of Nature itself, running past me?
And why the Hell was it carrying someone on its back?
The Swift Springstrider, a bird so ugly I didn’t know how someone could hold the reins and cover their eyes at the same time. Did it come with beer goggles? It looked like the kind of bird you took home from the bar on a drunken bet. One that you lost.
No. Hell no. There was no way I wanted that bird. I would rather ride a mound of kodo feces between my legs than that thing.
But, y’know, just out of curiosity I checked to see how I could get one.
Turns out there were two ways: As a rare drop from inside a Brightly Colored Egg, or by spending FIVE HUNDRED Noblegarden Chocolates at a holiday vendor.
Hmmmm.
Now I’m not going to tell you that I got the Swift Springstrider for myself. But if I did, here’s some tips that I (would have) used to help farm up the five hundred chocolates.
Macro: to get from Point A to Point B quicker, I (would have) used this macro:
/use Egg Basket
/use Brightly Colored Egg
This (would have) helped keep the haste buff up while opening the eggs and stacking the chocolates, or whatever was inside the egg.
Location: When I was farming eggs for the Noblegarden achievements, I visited three locations: Razor Hill, Bloodhoof Village, and Falconwing Square. I managed to find a spot at each location that maximized the spawn points in a small area. Note: this is on a high pop server.
Tarou made this video which points things out much better than I could.
So there. If you’re are one of those who are so inclined to get one of these hideous birds and refuse to seek help for your obvious illness, good luck to you.
Son of a bitch.
It’s All About The Purples
I guess I picked this Judgement armor because it looked like a super hero costume. Like Spider-Man with knives on his shoulders. But whatever, it’s Outland Heroic dungeons which means lockout, which means it takes some time to assemble the gear.
Head – Mask of Penance (BoP from Mekgineer Steamrigger in Normal and Heroic Steamvault, at a 22% drop rate)
Shoulders – Justice Bearer’s Pauldrons (BoP from Omor the Unscarred in Heroic Ramparts at a 16% drop rate)
Chest – Breastplate of Many Graces (BoP from Grandmaster Vorpil in Normal and Heroic Shadow Labyrinth, at a 17% drop rate)
Wrists – Virtue Bearer’s Vambraces (BoP from Broggok in Heroic Blood Furnace, at a 20% drop rate)
Gloves – Life Bearer’s Gauntlets (BoP from the Reinforced Fel Iron Chest in Heroic Ramparts, after defeating Nazan and Vazruden, at a 20% drop rate)
Waist – Girdle of Many Blessings (BoP from Rokmar the Crackler in Heroic Slave Pens, at a 16% drop rate)
Legs – Cassock of the Loyal (BoP from Hungarfen in Heroic Underbog, at a 15% drop rate)
Feet – Boots of the Watchful Heart (BoP from Captain Skarloc in Heroic Old Hillsbrad Foothills, at a 16% drop rate)
I have most of the visible stuff (if I get the legs/dress it will cover the feet, and the gauntlets cover the bracers) which has me pretty stoked. Even though I admired the look in only his half-Judgement gear, it wasn’t until I transmogged his new swords that I notice how he’s rocking the color purple more than Oprah did –
Which works great for me since I like the color purple. But then I swapped out the scorpion mount –
… and made a slight adjustment with his flying mount –
and what you end up with is what all the cool orcs are going to be wearing this year.
Edit: Saturday, January 7 2012 I knocked another piece off the list:
Legs – Cassock of the Loyal (BoP from Hungarfen in Heroic Underbog, at a 15% drop rate)
Herc makes this look good.
Rokk Talk 