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Weekly Wrapup – Deathrokk Steps Up
The Grind is Real.
Patch 6.2 – Okay, I don’t mind it so much. I haven’t done a damn thing with the shipyard, so screw that noise. Let’s get to it.
Counting Coins
I said I wasn’t sure how the garrison nerfs were going to affect the passive gold making routine I had going. I’d heard bad things, and I wasn’t sure if last week’s numbers were an indication of said nerf. I had a few more days off during the week, so I made sure to log in at least three times a day. This gave me more shots at rewards, from scrapyard bags to crates to straight up gold. Turns out that it was a good move on my part, since my seven day total was 29,288g!
Objectives
Busy week. I started off working on the Tanaan Jungle rep on my monk, but ended up switching over to Deathrokk who wrecked shop on everything. Between Blood Death Knight awesomeness and Custom premade groups, Deathrokk has done quite well for himself. He’s Honored with the Headhunters, and Friendly with the Awakened and the Saberstalkers (due mostly to grinding groups.
How did that reflect on last week’s list?
- Continue with the rep grind. (Still at it. I even started using Zygor’s Daily Guides to help this move along quicker. It had definitely been a great assist in getting this done in short order.)
- Harrison Jones damn your eyes. (All Horde characters on Earthen Ring now have Harrison in their garrison. I’m working on this on an Alliance Warrior on another server, and he’s only one mission away.)
- Get more characters into Tanaan Jungle. (Has not happened yet. Just haven’t had the time or desire. Not until flying is unlocked.)
- Using PVP gear for upgrades. (Turns out that most of my characters don’t have any honor points to buy gear, and I just haven’t been overly motivated to get into PVP. I’ve had enough of that during regular questing – see below.)
- Using Apexis crystal gear for upgrades. (Oh this I’ve done to death. See below.)
Lessons Learned
This has been a very educational week both for good and for bad.
- Tanaan Jungle is a great way to gear up characters. Baleful tokens drop quite frequently, and Apexis crystals are plentiful. I offer as proof, the Warrior that I mentioned in a previous post. In only a few days, his iLevel went from an average of 583 to…
Damn.
- Premade custom groups are a blessing and a curse. They’re great for knocking out quests and grinding rep. But I’ve had two occasions where I’ve beamed over to a PVP realm without realizing it. Next thing I knew, I had an Alliance raid running a train on my corpse. That has a tendency to end an evening early.
- The garrison gold is still there for the taking, and I plan on taking as much as I can.
- Flying. It feels more like an excuse for me to have something to do. It’ll lose some luster once Apexis crystals aren’t that helpful, or once I’m done with the rep and have to go back for the other goodies.
We’ll see how the garrison holds up, not to mention my patience with the rep work. I’ve already switched the character focus once. However, Death Knights are beasts so I think I’ll be sticking with Deathrokk for the duration of the grind.
Weekly Update – Patch 6.2
Ironically this wasn’t supposed to be a selfie.
Patch 6.2 – what does it mean, and what the Hell am I supposed to do with it? Flying, grinding, gold, ugh.
Counting Coins
So how’s garrison gold life in the WoD 6.2 world? I’ve been looking at some of the feedback over at /r/woweconomy on Reddit. Near as I can tell, the jury is still out as far as reaction to the garrison gold nerfs. Some folks are noticing a significant loss in the amount of gold they earn per day, while others still feel like they are still putting up solid numbers. I’ll have a more accurate assessment next week, but over the past few days I pulled in 23,840g. These might have been skewed due to front-loading the big salvage crates at the beginning of the week before the patch. But we’ll see what happens after a solid week of Garrison Gold Nerfing.
Objectives
Great gargling gooey gumdrops, so much to do. I didn’t have much playtime to tackle most of the patch stuff. Even with running the Curse updates, it took a day just to get a follower mission addon that worked. And I needed that addon, because to Hell with trying to navigate the follower mission UI. #GarrisonGoldProblems
Reflecting on last week’s list:
- Finish up some quests and exploration, start on Apexis mission. (Worked on some, but didn’t get too much further along as far as the flying achievement goes. Apexis missions may be put on hold, as well as finishing off old quests. Sole focus to be on, well, the next thing.)
- Start the Tanaan Jungle reps. (Started, yes. I’m missing one. Haven’t made my way out to the cat area, which apparently only has one quest for rep anyway. Regardless, I’ll do them as I can. It might take a bit longer to get flying, but I’ll get there eventually.)
- Harrison Jones missions. (Limited success on this front. Got the one Treasure mission that had eluded me for weeks. Completed it on every character, which finished up Harrison for one of them. The other five need only one left to complete, and four of them need the same one. Confident this will get hammered out this upcoming week.)
- Ride out the Patch 6.2 gong show, let the bugs fall where they may. (Done. Still working on Addon updates.)
- Set the Hearthstone for a couple of characters, putting them in the Laughing Skull village in north Gorgrond (excellent for Lumber Mill). (Didn’t get the chance. Was going to but thought I’d keep the hearthstone set in Pandaria and continue to fly out to the lumber paradise. Nice to be able to jump to Pandaria with a Potion of Luck and grind out gold for twenty minutes.)
Next week missions includes:
- Continue with the rep grind.
- Harrison Jones damn your eyes.
- Get more characters into Tanaan Jungle.
- Using PVP gear for upgrades.
- Using Apexis crystal gear for upgrades.
Lessons Learned
What did I learn this week?
- The Garrison Follower Mission UI blows donkey dick, and I’d rather use a shitty addon than what Blizzard gave me to use.
- Harrison Jones is playing hard to get, and I’m not liking it. Not one bit.
- Passive garrison gold making is still there.
- It’s going to take quite a bit of time for me to unlock flying. I’m still ok with that.
Crazy About The Insane
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.
Ten Ways to Boost Productivity in World of Warcraft
A Death Knight’s work is never done.
While I was trolling for blog fodder casually browsing the Internet, I came across an article ironically entitled Ten Ways to Boost Daily Productivity. Despite the time I spend in front of the computer staring at Youtube or playing vidja games, I do like to be productive. But as I read the article, two things became obvious right away. The first was that none of the information I was reading was any kind of great revelation to me. The second thing was that I kept referring everything I read back to World of Warcraft in some way, which sadly said a little too much about my state of mental well-being, or lack thereof.
So, being the sucker for punishment helpful soul that I am, I listed the Ten Ways to Boost Daily Productivity below to help you with your productivity in day to day life. If that wasn’t enough, I then unleashed the Big Reveal – how these very same techniques can help you make the most of your World of Warcraft experience!
You’re welcome, Internet. You’re welcome.
1) Listing. It all beings with listing. If you don’t have a list, create one. If you have a rough list from the night before, the first thing to do when you sit at your desk is to sharpen the list, adding any last minute items.
- How it fits in WoW – For the people who say there is nothing to do in World of Warcraft, I swear by my pretty floral bonnet I will throat punch you. Allow me to crawl into your headplace and rewire a thought or two. It’s not that there isn’t anything to do in WoW. It’s that there is too damn much to do, and you are either in quantity overload or they are things that just don’t interest you. All I can say about that is either give something new a try, or go back to raiding/PVP/knitting your one night a week and stop bitching. But for the other few millions of players who tap this game daily, take heart as I cyber-pat you on the head and give you a sympathetic “there there, grasshopper.” It is easy to get overwhelmed by the heaping pile of stuff to do, especially if you want to have any kind of life outside the game (which I hope you do) and are online for only a limited time period (which you should be). There’s so much to do, so much you can do, that a list will help make the most of your game time.
2) Worst First. We often have one item on the list that is hanging over our head and just doesn’t seem like it will get taken care of. Step up to the plate and knock this out. The rest of the day is downhill from there.
- How it fits in WoW – Okay, take a breath because I’m going to say one word. Dailies. Calm down. Breathe in through your nose, out through the mouth. Better? Rep grinds. Now now, breathe again. Feel better? Good. I know people have developed eye twitches and neck spasms at the mere mention of those words, but dammit these are things that have to get done. Necessary evils, no matter how much you bitch about them. Get those collective pains in the ass done first, so you can chill out and enjoy the rest of your game time without that blue exclamation point hanging over your own head.
3) Just Do It. Just do those small items to help you feel more productive. They are quick and often very easy. Complete and get the big marker out to cross them off the list.
- How it fits in WoW – There are a few quick things you can do in WoW. They take a couple of minutes, and can turn out to be very beneficial for you. Hit your farm and harvest your crops for either the rep quests, motes of Harmony, or any other goodies you planted. Also, most professions have daily cooldowns, and it’s usually just a matter of getting the mats and pushing a button. Quick, easy, and sometimes a good money maker. I will take the high road and not make a “like your mom” joke here. Wait, I guess I kinda just did. Damn.
4) Make Things Enjoyable. Reward yourself with occasional breaks, music you enjoy, or even a snack. Life is short. Enjoy your work.
- How it fits in WoW – I think most of us crank the tunes or podcasts when we’re doing dailies, or whatever online chores we have set up for ourselves. When dealing with the more mindless ones, even watching a movie on another screen can help pass the time, as well as getting some “must see” viewing done. Just don’t let your
pornomovie distract you from finishing your WoW chores.
Keep you eyes on the prize.
5) Peak Times. Identify the time you know are most productive (3pm coffee hour?) and set aside some tasks for that time. When this time rolls around, close your cubicle door so that it is just you and your work.
- How it fits in WoW – It’s not so much “peak time” as it is “available time”. Most folks only have a handful of free time for gaming. Early risers will sneak an hour in before the y leave for work or school. Some have a couple of hours after dinner, or homework, or once the kids are in bed. For the sake of your sanity, not to mention any relationship you are involved in, make sure there’s a balance between game time and real time. And stick to the time cap – if you set aside an hour to WoW it up, don’t stretch it into two. That’s what this productivity thing is for. Also, for the sake of those who don’t wish to constantly be the victim of stereotyping, if time needs to be cut, cut from game time not real time.
6) Pareto (80/20). Use it to your advantage. Find the items/clients/projects which are most significant and are requiring little time. Devote more time to those items.
- How it fits in WoW – Put your hand down, and close that other browser tab. To answer your question, Pareto states that “for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes”. Basically, giving you the most bang for your buck. MoP has been good with stacking dailies and rep grinds, allowing you to get valor/gold/rep all at once. Decide what you want to do that will produce the most results, and make that your focus.
7) Batching. Cluster your emailing sessions and your phone call sessions. Sort for 3-4 batches a day. This will help keep short emails and phone calls from distracting you whilst you work on your pareto items.
- How it fits in WoW – Take the garbage out. Clean the dishes. Make sure your homework is done, or that the kids are not just in bed, but in the right bed. Do these potentially distracting things before your game time so your Husband/Wife/Mom/Prison Guard doesn’t kick down your door while you’re halfway through your dailies and tell you to grab your toothbrush ‘cause Bubba done shat himself in the shower again.
Damn it Bubba.
8) Specialize. Focus on one single task at a time. Distractions and multitasking eat up your time. Consistently completing and crossing off tasks is encouraging and satisfying.
- How it fits in WoW – Don’t be that guy. You know, the guy who flies around looking for mining nodes, sees a pet he could battle, and when he lands and starts battling he remembers he didn’t revive his pets from a battle the other day. So he retreats from the battle, revives his pets, but is attacked by someone from the opposite faction. Because he didn’t repair his gear after the raid the other night, he gets his lunch handed to him through a straw. He then has to go find a repair vendor, and as he’s flying back to town he see the mining node he’d been looking for in the first place. This kind of thing happens all the time. Doesn’t mean it’s a very smart way to play. Just writing that out almost gave me a seizure. I had to stop to wipe the drool from the corner of my mouth. Focus. Bottom Line – Don’t’ be that guy.
9) Optimize and Reflect. As you get to the end of the day, think back on the day, identify your peak times, the most wasteful tasks and seek to keep from repeating those tasks tomorrow. Might you have been able to more efficiently complete a task? Taking the time to make a mental note of what you can do better the next time will put you on the road to continuous improvement.
- How it fits in WoW – What did you get done today? Could you have grouped things differently to get more done? If there are still items on your checklist, why did they not get done? Are you lazy, is that what this is? Did you just not want it bad enough? What the Hell is wrong with you? I thought you were hardcore, dude. I thought you were cool.
10) Re-list. At times you will not complete everything you had on your list. This is okay, add them to tomorrow’s list with a star so that they do not get rolled over a second day. By the days end you will have a rough idea of items you need to do tomorrow. Go ahead and list them. Tomorrow when you start fresh, you will be less likely to have missed any.
- How it fits in WoW – If I have to do one more daily, I’m going to rage-hump my keyboard to death. If that idea is lodged in your brain pan, maybe you might want to skip doing dailies tomorrow and instead knock off some pet battles. If you spend the time gathering mats, maybe tomorrow you should focus on your crafting professions. Write all the changes down, and get ready for another uber-efficient gaming session.
If you’re going to play World of Warcraft, you might as well get the most out of your fifteen bucks when you log in.
So Much To Do
Can’t get enough of the good stuff.
Mists of Pandaria. Woof. Girl, you’ve been kicking my ass like it’s an Olympic sport.
Don’t let that intro confuse you. I’m not complaining. I’ve already gotten my money’s worth out of the expansion, and it’s only been out for just shy of two weeks. Needless to say, this expansion has kept me busier than any expansion has yet. Any time I decide I have time to burn and I log in, regardless of the character or their level, there’s something I could be doing. I’ve already accomplished a manly portion of excellence in my short time in MoP, but it feels like MoP just thumbs its nose at me twice before dropping into a low Kung Fu stance and mocks me for being an underachiever. What have I been doing? Well let me tell you…
Rokk Talk 