Loremaster

v3.2

Ding!  Nine months on I finally escorted some goblins through Desolace for the final quest in this saga.  The Loremaster achievement is one of the most interesting and at time frustrating things i’ve done in game to date.  This post is my usual rambling comments on what happened.

About the time Wrath came out (about 12 months ago?) I got interested in the Loremaster achievement.  The idea of being Loremaster Turkelife was pretty exciting and I thought sounded pretty awesome.  For some reason I tend to go for this long and involved achievements that require hours of patient work to acquire.

Loremaster of Northrend

This was the first and easiest of the sub-achievements that I worked on.  Questing in Northrend is generally fairly easy and as I was leveling 70-80 there anyway spending a little extra time for zone achievements was no burden.  The mobs are the hardest to kill (compared to Outlands/Old World), but the quests are all very streamlined and easy to find and complete.  Quests are generally grouped and the quest text makes it very obvious where to go and what to kill.

After I dinged 80 I only had part of Storm Peaks and all of Ice Crown to complete (I think).  Ice Crown was moderately challenging to a discipline speced priest and has quite a few group quests.  Some patience and a little help from guildies assisted with these.

Loremaster of Outlands

Outlands was … interesting.  Actually I mostly enjoyed it.  Outlands has quite a number of long quest lines, such as the one for Thrall’s grandmother, which run you all over the place.  Outlands has been dumbed down a little such that I think all the quests can be completed solo now for reasonably geared DPS or tanks.

Shadowmoon valley and Blade’s Edge Mountains were the hardest with some difficulty finding enough quests to finish these areas.  In hindsight these two areas where little league compared to what was to follow.  Shadowmoon Valley was a little challenging mainly because the Cipher of Damnation quest line was too hard to solo as a healer.  There were also three quests involving the offspring of Gruul, which I couldn’t solo as a healer.

Loremaster of the Eastern Kingdoms

Having read that Kalimdor was the hardest of the areas to finish so I opted to ease into it somewhat and start in the Eastern Kingdoms. Turkelife is a bloodelf and i’m not sure if this influenced my experience at all but I found it quite easy to get enough quests for this achievement.  I initially completed each zone completely ignoring any quests which required me to go into instances.

I was methodical and used WoWhead to check the comments on each zone for quest givers I may have missed.  At 80, even as a healer, you can solo all the quests in the old world.  I finished up this continent with half a dozen quests in my quest log yet to do.  I later discovered at least another 15 quests which would have contributed to the achievement, although many started in Kalimdor.

Although easy there is still 550 (as Horde) to do and I think I had about half of these outstanding when I came back to do the Loremaster title.  The Eastern Kingdoms is quite large and it does take quite some time to complete even the 250 quests or so I needed for this continent.  I did a large chunk of these in the hour or so waiting for raids to start.

One upside is that killing everything is pretty trivial now.

Loremaster of Kalimdor

The biggie!  I have no idea if this holds for Alliance Loremasters but Kalimdor was about twice as hard as the Eastern Kingdoms for Horde.  You need 685 quests for this achievement.  I had about 270 when I started and so needed about 400 more.

This time, having come from Eastern Kindgoms I started with the quests which started on that continent.  Once these were completed I slowly but surely completed every quest in every region.  I started in Tanaris and just worked my way north once zone at a time.  Initially I just held on to the instance quests, or made note of them, but after about half the zones I started doing the instances too, especially the low level ones.  I also made note of, but didn’t complete, the complicated ones like the Cenarion Circle ones involving the Twilight Cultists and their funky rituals.

There is a lot of flight time.  The old world has a lot of quests which involve flying from one end of the continent to the other and back again.

There is not a lot of slack.  Where as Old Kingdom was finished at a trot I was crawling, begging for quests at the end of Kalimdor.  I ended up finishing all of the afore mentioned Cenarion Circle/Twighlight Cultist quests, which were actually quite enjoyable.  Cenarion Circle reputation is pretty easy to get these days.  Most of this was spent casting Vampiric Touch on cultists and looting, with some research on how the summon stones work in between.  There turned out to be a few extra quests here as there were little “Return to Bor” quests in between the big ones sometimes.

The questing here was made a bit faster by finally dual specing back to Shadow.  I’d forgotten how much easier questing as DPS is.

I spent a couple of days grinding Stratholme for tier 1 dungeon set drops (Devout Bracers) for the Earnest Proposition quest line, which provided seven more quests to the total.  Classic Stratholme was quite a well thought out instance and I managed to get to exalted with Argent Dawn in the process.

I completed all the quests in Dire Maul, another old world instance, which I know disturbingly well now.

I completed Maradon, one of the longest and weirdest instances i’ve been in anytime recently.  Took me an hour to figure out how to get up to the Princess at the end!

I killed every single named mob I ran into including hunting down 3 of the 4 named mobs in the Barrens.  The Silithid Havester will live to fight another day.

You get the idea.  You have to do every single quest in Kalimdor pretty much.  There was one chain of five quests that I am aware off when I finished, which I didn’t complete.  This would have required spending a couple of hours changing centaur factions in Desolace.  Bodyguard for Hire was the last one for the title.  Other than that I would have had to do the quests in Eastern Kingdoms and hope some of those led back to Kalimdor (and counted for the title).

My advice?

Don’t do it! 🙂

No I mean you have to be methodical if you want to save time.  Start at one zone and slowly work your way through.

Use Wowhead.  The comments tabs on this website has a lot of ideas about how to make things easier.  Everything from obscure quests to easier way of doing some of the long-winded quests.

Don’t rush.  If you try and do this in a hurry you will go insane.  Do a bit here and there.  Focusing on this for weeks on end would drive you batty.

Enjoy the experience.  You will see pretty much everything the old world has to offer.  There are strange little quests and NPCs tucked away in all sorts of corners of the game and most of it you will miss on the rush to the level cap.

Good luck!