A friend asked me for a guide to the quests involved in the Love Is In The Air festival, which has just started and runs until February 15th.
However, I don’t need to provide one! MK of A Dwarf Priest has written an excellent guide, which you can find here. Thumbs up, go read it.
(Oh, in case you’re interested, the Love Is In The Air quests in each city do not give any reputation. I checked them all.)
Today’s daily fishing quest on the PTR:
The One That Got Away
“Figluster’s mudfish is a surprisingly quick bottom feeder found in the waters of Nagrand. They grow their entire lives and are well known as fighters.
Years ago, I caught what I’m certain was the world’s biggest mudfish… until it snapped my line and escaped.
A fisherman of your caliber doesn’t need to be told what to do– your destiny awaits in the lakes of Nagrand.”
The quest asks you to catch “the World’s Biggest Mudfish” and bring it to Old Man Barlo. No details yet on what that actually involves, as the PTR went down for maintenance before I could give it a whirl. I’ll update this post when I know more.
The reward is a Bag of Fishing Treasures.
Edit: Okay, this one’s relatively simple. Just go to Nagrand and fish until you get the quest drop. It took me 25 casts in various lakes; according to /1 chat, Sunspring Lake gives the best results. I caught it first try as soon as I got to Sunspring Lake.
Some widescreen desktop wallpapers, so you can enjoy the beautiful Sunwelly goodness even when you’re not playing:
Click the link to view the fullsize wallpaper, or right-click and save. All four are 1680×1050.
I forgot to look into the selection of dailies for world PvP. Here’s what I’ve found so far: (note: all are Alliance quests; I assume there are Horde equivalents)
Terokkar Forest
Exorcist Sullivan in Allerian Stronghold (on the edge near the Bone Wastes) gives a quest to help take a tower in the Bone Wastes. Reward is 12g and 209 honor.
Nagrand
Lakoor in Telaar (in the SE of town, look for the blue !) gives a quest to defeat 10 enemy players in Halaa. Reward is 12g and 209 honor.
Two more Sunwell dailies! See my complete guide to the Sunwell dailies here.
First up, you have to complete the Missing Magistrix quest, where you search fruitlessly around Quel’Danas until you finally find the teleporter you need in a hidden corner. Use the scroll at the teleporter and you’ll be teleported to the Throne of Kil’Jaeden in Hellfire Peninsula, where you complete Missing Magistrix and she gives you two more dailies to do. (Oh, and there’s no portal back to Quel’Danas from there, so plan your questing carefully.)
The two new dailies are both completed at the Throne of Kil’Jaeden; be careful not to agro Kazzak if he’s up.
Blood for Blood
Kill 4 Wrath Heralds for their blood, which seems to be a 100% droprate, and this blood empowers the quest item you were given, the Fel Siphon. You use the Siphon on elite Felblood Initiates to turn them into Emaciated Felbloods, who you then kill. 4 Emaciated Felblood kills, and you’re done. This quest gives 5 Marks of Sargeras or Sunfury Signets, plus 12g, plus 250 SSO rep. The big problem is that the Felblood Initiates are few and far between (unless Blizzard tweaks the spawn rate) so you will be waiting a long time for your four kills unless people on your server are smart about grouping up.
Blast the Gateway
You’re given a Sizzling Ember quest item, which you use to summon a Living Flare minion that follows you around. Kill Incandescent Fel Sparks (fel fire elementals, basically) to empower your Living Flare; once your flare becomes an Unstable Living Flare (about 6 Spark kills, i think), run it back to the teleporter to blow it up. This quest gives 10g, a Shattered Sun Supplies package, and 250 SSO rep. The trick to this quest is: your flare can be empowered by being near any Incandescent Fel Spark when it dies, regardless of whether it’s tagged by you or someone else. I suspect that grouping would make this quest trivial; otherwise, try and stay near other people when you’re all killing your own Sparks, even if you’re not grouped, and you’ll still get the shared benefit.
So, let’s kick off some of the shiny new content in 2.4 with a quick guide to the new daily quests. See my complete guide to the Sunwell dailies here.
The Patch 2.4 Disclaimer: Until 2.4 goes live, any of this is subject to change while on the PTR. I will provide updates if I know of any changes, but I don’t guarantee I’ll catch it all.
Patch 2.4 is bringing a number of new daily quests, in a few different categories. Also worth noting is the fact that the per-day limit for repeatable daily quests is being raised to 25.
These quests are given by Old Man Barlo (<Master of Fishing>) at Silmyr Lake in Terokkar Forest – just to the east of Shattrath. I don’t know for sure yet, but I suspect he’s likely to provide a different fishing quest each day, like The Rokk does for cooking.
Note that the fishing quest may have a skill level pre-requisite, and the fish you need to catch for it may also have a minimum skill required to fish them up. I have 375 fishing skill, so I can’t tell until my non-fishing mage alt transfers to the PTR successfully.
Today’s quest on the PTR:
Shrimpin’ Ain’t Easy
“There’s a lot of big fish in the Zangarmarsh lakes. Ever wonder what they eat?
Shrimp. Giant freshwater shrimp. The Rokk tells me the dishes you can make with shrimp are nearly endless.
But shrimp are too small to catch with a fishing line. So here’s the trick: cut open the bloated barbed gill trout and you’ll find a shrimp or two if you’re lucky.”
The quest requires 10 Giant Freshwater Shrimp. To get them, fish up Bloated Barbed Gill Trout from the lakes in Zangarmarsh; they’re a soulbound ‘openable’ fish with a 2 hour duration. Once opened, they contain 1-2 Giant Freshwater Shrimp (which do not have a duration) and a bit of grey vendor trash.)
The reward is a Bag of Fishing Treasures. Here’s what was in mine:
Here’s the recipe the bag included:
And the Sharpened Fish Hooks are a new lure with the same effect as Aquadynamic Fish Attractors.
This new daily is called For Great Honor on Horde side and Concerted Efforts on Alliance side, and it’s given by the same NPC who gives the existing daily battleground quest. (For the Alliance, that’s the Alliance Brigadier-Generals around the place.)
Concerted Efforts/For Great Honor
Bring 1 of each battleground’s Mark of Honor (AV, AB, WSG and EotS) to the questgiver. The reward: 12g and 314 honor. Now there’s a PvP daily worth doing.
Edit: I stand corrected! This isn’t a daily, it’s just a repeatable quest. Get 100 of each mark before the patch and you can turn them all in on patch day for 31,400 honor and a lovely case of carpal tunnel.
Now we get down to the real meat-and-drink of the new 2.4 content: the daily quests for the Shattered Sun Offensive. This new faction is working against the Burning Legion to try and keep the Sunwell safe, and is being run by the Aldor and Scryers working together.
I’ll provide a more comprehensive guide to the SSO dailies once I’ve got further with the content, but in the meantime I’ll just discuss the dailies as I encounter new ones.
To begin with, you start at Neutral with the Shattered Sun Offensive. There are three or four daily quests open to you. To kick it all off, though, you’ll want to get the starter quest (“Enter, the Deceiver…”) from the questgiver near A’dal in Shattrath, and head to the Isle of Quel’Danas. You’ll automatically know the flightpath once you hit a flight master in the Eastern Kingdoms; Quel’Danas is connected by flightpath to Zul’Aman (and apparently also to Silvermoon, for the Horde).
The following are the SSO dailies. There are also some standard non-repeatable SSO quests, but this is a guide to the daily quests, not a guide to SSO rep, so. :)
The Sanctum Wards
This quest is given by Theris Dawnhearth at the staging area on Quel’Danas. To complete it, kill Wretched Fiends and Wretched Devourers and gather 4 Mana Remnants from their corpses, then use (right-click) the Mana Remnants on a sanctum ward (the big red floating crystals with Wretched mobs around them).
Reward: 9g and 150 SSO rep.
Erratic Behavior
This quest is given by Vindicator Xayann at the staging area on Quel’Danas. She gives you a stack of modified golem control cores. Find and kill 3 Erratic Sentries; use the modified cores on each sentry’s corpse to reanimate it as a Converted Sentry that follows you round. Then run your three Converted Sentries to the Sun’s Reach Sanctum, and wait there until their new programming takes effect.
Reward: 9g and 150 SSO rep.
Sunfury Attack Plans
This quest is given by Lord Torvos in Shattrath in the NE quadrant of the inner ring, nearish the flight point. The quest asks you to go to Netherstorm and get the Sunfury Attack Plans off blood elves there. Any Sunfury blood elf in Netherstorm has a chance to drop these plans; I picked mine up on my third kill near Manaforge B’naar.
The quest gives you 10g, “Shattered Sun Supplies” (which is a package with some random selection of contents; mine had a BoE green plate chestpiece in it) and 250 Shattered Sun rep.
The Multi-Whatever Something-or-Other Survey
This quest is given by Harbinger Haronem in the inner ring in Shattrath. He gives you a pair of Multiphase Spectrographic Goggles and sends you to the Spirit Fields around Oshu’gun in Nagrand. (They’re the area saround Oshu’gun, with the large symbols on the ground.)
The goggles let you detect “red Multiphase Disturbances” passively, and have a Use effect to take a Multiphase disturbance reading. The detection effect only works in Nagrand, so don’t put the goggles on until you’re in Nagrand or you won’t get the detection buff at all (and will get very confused flying around looking for red things you can’t see).
With the goggles on you’ll see the red glowy light patches; just get near one, right-click your goggles (it will dismount you, so don’t be too high up), and repeat six times with new red patches. (A reading will disperse any given Disturbance, but others in your group may also get credit for it.) Then return to Haronem for 250 rep, 10g and a “Shattered Sun Supplies” parcel.
Gaining the Advantage
This is a gathering quest that requires you to have herbalism, mining or skinning. WoWWiki has details here, and says it gives 16g, 250 SSO rep and 2 Major Rejuvenation potions. I can’t confirm, as I’m an Alchemist/Jewelcrafter.
An update for this post:
The Jewelcrafting Quick Reference Table has been updated to include the various new jewelcrafting patterns being implemented in patch 2.4.
This table includes all jewelcrafting gem cuts excluding BoP gems that are JC-only. It is current as of 5 March 08, Patch 2.4 PTR build.
If you prefer it in PDF form, you can download a copy here: jc24b.pdf.
Updated 5 March 08 with epic versions of the new blue gems.
Here’s a habit I’ve got myself into, and I find it saves me a fair amount of time in alt-tabbing-for-wowhead-searches.
I keep a spiral-bound notebook by my computer.
It’s a lot better than having a random stack of scraps of paper, and I find I reuse information more effectively – if one of the pages still has the heal assignments from last week’s boss kill scribbled down, I can reuse those assignments this week instead of trying to work them out again from scratch.
If you’ve got any useful little life hacks that apply to your WoW life, feel free to share them. I’m always interested in being more efficient. :)
As I did with 2.3, I’ll be checking out 2.4 on the PTR and reporting back on the items of interest I usually talk about here – I’ll be adding more to my Guide to Daily Quests, for starters, and looking at the five new gems in 2.4.
If you’re interested in checking out 2.4 content for yourself:
As you’ve probably seen eleswhere, much is being made of Drysc’s little comment that Patch 2.4 would include “BT-quality badge loot”.
I’m… torn.
On the one hand, yay. It’s always nice to have more avenues to gear up – and this makes it easier for endgame-clearing guilds to gear up rerolls and new recruits. Not that I’m in an endgame-clearing guild, but I can see it’d be an issue.
On the other hand, there’s a couple of negatives, and the biggest for me is: Now it’s going to be even harder to ignore Karazhan and Zul’Aman. I am sick to death of Karazhan. I would be quite happy never to set foot in there again. But it’s the single best source of badges; four hours in Karazhan nets over a dozen badges – more if you’re clearing fast, with a well-geared team. There aren’t many other places where you can get more than three badges an hour – Heroic SH (if you have a tankadin handy) is the standout there.
If badge loot is going to be so very alluring, there really needs to be a 25-man route to get badges, because right now there’s a big conflict between the time demands of raiding (to see and beat the content) and the time demands of badge farming (to gear up). Feeling the pressure to cancel, say, Gruul or Void Reaver so we can send two or three Kara teams off to farm badges instead… well, that’s not a step forward.