I could finally smell epic shield when I hit about 3k reputation in the Revered rank, which required 21k to top off to hit Exalted. Nothing to motivate you like a good tanking shield that might take quite a while to drop while raiding, right? I mean, it’s a sure thing as long as I kept up doing my dailies to the tune of 1-2k rep per day.

I ran one Magister’s Terrace all the way through and a highly unsuccessful second run a week later that only saw us through the first 2 bosses. I even got all the way through Karazhan with my greens and blues as I equipped purples as we went last weekend (still writing that amazing post – check back Monday).

So, I bought my tabbard and decided to finish up the other quests in my log and see where they lead. I think it’s time to start doing heroics now that I have an epic mace, epic shield, and 470 defense with 2 open gem slots. 492, here I come!

If you want to become exalted with the Night Elves and get your own kitty mount it is going to take a lot of time and sometimes a lot of gold.

There are four repeatable quests to gain reputation with Darnassus.

1. Pristine Yeti Hide from Pratt McGrubben (30, 42) in Feathermoon Stronghold for 250+ Rep. 1 each Pristine Yeti Hide. The drop rate for it is very low. I did not have one to turn in at 64.
2. Morrowgrain to Darnassus from Mathrengyl Bearwalker (32,8) in Darnassus for 50+ rep. 10 Each Morrowgrain. At 64 I was getting 82 rep.
3. Morrowgrain to Feathermoon Stronghold from Quintis Jonespyre (32, 43) in Feathermoon Stronghold for 25+ rep. 5 Each Morrowgrain. At 64 I was getting 28 rep.
4. Additional Runecloth from Raedon Duskstriker (63, 23) in Darnassus for 75+ rep. 20 Each Runecloth. At 64 I was getting 83 rep.

All of those will take considerable time and effort to gain the necessary reputation to become exalted, and reputation gains will vary depending on race, current reputation, and level.

So I recommend that you do what I did.  I did this with a level 64 Human Warlock and still received full reputation gains.

What you do is go to the Starting area for the Night Elves, Shadowglen, and do all the quests like you were a level one toon.

The quest givers won’t show up on your map, but just talk to the Night Elves around there and in all the low level areas if you are not familiar with that area. So basically just follow the path of progression the game gives you and you will gain a tremendous amount of rep.  You will still need to do the repeatable quests, but it won’t seem as daunting as before.                  

Follow my advice and in no time you will have your very own kitty mount.

Alliance Quests

The Blackfathom Deeps is a level 20-30 instance located in the northwestern corner of Ashenvale (14, 14). For the Alliance there are 5 quests you should get before heading to the instance.

1. Knowledge in the Deeps from Gerrig Bonegrip at the Forlorn Cavern in Ironforge (50, 5)
2. Researching the Corruption from Gershala Nightwhisper in Auberdine in Darkshore (38, 43)
3. In Search of Thaelrid from Dawnwatcher Shaedlass at the Craftsmen’s Terrace in Darnassus (55, 23)
4. Twilight Falls from Argent Guard Manados at the Craftsmen’s Terrace in Darnassus (55, 23)
5. Blackfathom Villainy from Argent Guard Thaelrid in the Blackfathom Deeps

Now that you have the quests it would be a good time to stock up on food, water, and any potions/elixirs that you can afford. I would recommend that once you put yourself in the Looking for Group channel for this instance you try to get a Warlock. They have the spell Underwater Breathing, which is very useful in this instance. If your group does not have a Warlock you will need to pick up an Elixir of Water Breathing from the auction House.

Now make your way to Ashenvale or get summoned there if there are people already at the summoning stone. Once you and your party are ready make your way down the stairs to the pool below. Swim under the wall and up to the other side and you will now make your way through the cave to the instance.

The mobs on the way to the instance are Levels 17-21. Once inside the instance the mobs are levels 22-28 Elite. Your tank should be at least level 24, if not 26, especially if there are higher level dps classes in the group. A tank will be hard-pressed to keep aggro off someone, say an uber warlock, if the warlock has 3-4 levels of spell/gear advantage over them. Trust us on this.

Now that you are inside the instance just go straight ahead, once you reach the first cavern you will need to swim straight ahead to make it to the above water area. You will have to do some jumping to get to the other side. Now follow the path a little ways and you will come to the second cavern and your first boss, Ghamoo-ra, a level 23 Elite. He will be on the island in the middle of the cavern; he will be surrounded by level 22-24 Elites, but they remain yellow and do not need to be engaged, so don’t attack them with any AOE or sweeping attacks. The fight is mainly a tank and spank, but he does have a blockable AOE spell called Trample. Another point of interest is that hunters of the same level can tame him. Cool, huh?

Now go back to where you first came into the cavern and take and immediate right. Swim under water in the little alcove and that is where you will find Lorgalis’s Manuscript for the Knowledge of the Deeps quest. From here swim right again and go to the next alcove, swim under water and come up on the other side of the wall. In this cave is where you will find the next boss; Lady Sarevess a level 23 Elite. She will be surrounded by level 20-23 Elites.

Leave there and continue swimming right, skip the next alcove you see and swim under the second. In that cave you will find Argent Guard Thaelrid, he will give you the quest Blackfathom Villainy. He is a gray-ish, wounded night elf lying face down on the ground. On a side note you can do these quests anytime as I did, they offer a great deal of Argent Dawn Rep. Now leave there and swim… wait for it… right, the next alcove is where you will continue on in the instance.

Follow the path until it comes to an intersection, straight ahead is the next boss, Gelihast. He is a level 24 Elite and is surrounded by levels 20-24 Elites. He is a dual-sword wielder, so make sure your tank has a shield and relatively high block/parry/dodge rating because of his devastating Attack Speed. Next to Gelihast is a table with a orb on it, click on it and you will receive a buff called Blessing of Blackfathom. From there take a left and in either the first or second cave on your left will be the next boss; Lorgus Jett. He is a level 24 Elite and will have level 22-24 Elites around him. He’s an easy caster that has shaman spells, but falls rather easily compared to a heavy-hitting melee mini-boss. (Note that he may appear in other parts of the instance, his spawn is random.)

Now continue on down the path until you come to the next cavern. The first left down the path offers a locked chest at the end. Now from here I recommend you clear the area of all the mobs, when you are done with that go back to the circle pillar in the middle of the room. From there look at the entrance to the Temple door and jump into the water heading in that direction, go under the water and swim into the underwater cave. In there you will find Old Serra’kis, a level 24 Elite. Finding him is definitely harder than fighting him. You might want to kite him out into the cave and fight him on dry land.

Now get back up to the path and head for the Temple. In there you will find Twilight Lord Kelris, a level 24 Elite. Be sure to clear the entire room before attacking him. If you don’t, whatever mobs are left will attack you as soon as you attack him. Around the Shrine wear he was kneeling you will notice four unlit fire bowls, called The Fire of Aku’mai. To get the doors open you will need to light these. WARNING: Only light one at a time. Once one is lit you will be swarmed by a lot of mobs, so only light one then kill all the mobs and then light the next until all four have been lit.

The doors will open and you can proceed on. Follow the path until you come to Aku’Mai. He/she is a level 24 Elite that is able to wipe out a tank who is not properly protected with gear and buffs and an unattentive healer. Poison effects whittle away at the tank’s health even more, but it should also be noted that fear and traps can be effectively used to buy time to heal.

Now that Aku’Mai is dead go to the end of the cave and receive another blessing, at that time a Dwarf named Morridune will appear and offer a port to Darnassus. If all of your quest objectives are complete, take the port and go turn in all of your quests.

Blackfathom Deeps is an instance that can be ran through very quickly if you have the right group and there is some pretty nice loot for all classes. For High level Enchanters it also can be a very nice place to stock up on a lot of blue items to disenchant.

On Silvermoon, the same epics I had on Velen cost a minimum of 250g, and upward of 650g. Insanity! I’m not paying that much for 5 levels of use. Oh, sure, sometimes you come across an epic or even a rare piece that lasts 10 levels due to its extra-special stats that make it worth passing up tons of other pieces of higher levels.

So, let’s set the stage:

You have level 70s who are doing dailies for easy gold, but you are busy leveling your lowbie, so your balance usually hangs around 40-100g. How much is too much to spend on an epic?

It was a great time for me MTing the instance with such powerful dps in the ranks (Hunter, Mage, and dps Shammy) to rip aggro away from me. The most that happened most of the time, was an occassional turn to the shammy that I taunted right back, followed by a Revenge and a couple of sunders. Being a Fury/Prot spec definitely met me with some challenges, but most of them were my own dealing with how I had my spells on my toolbars. I need to re-arrange things tonight or tomorrow before the raid.

The thrills started when Pandara ripped aggro one time and the Rift Lord shot right for him and killed him. Today I found out that one time he rocked my world by accident… that time, he did it on purpose to see what I’d do. It was not until today that I became aware that Pandara is Bp’s alt. The significance there is that Bp is our MT for Kara Team 1 and Team 2… at least until I get geared for Team 2. After that, I have no idea what Runnik’s plan is, but Bp said I have no worries about Friday, even as an OT build, and that he’d be making me do a couple of pulls to get used to taking the reigns.

To recap yesterday, I got over 2k Honor, 4 BG marks, 30 Engineering points to 261, got the shoulders off of Aeonus (Pauldrons of the Crimson Flight), and got completely keyed for Karazhan. Boy did I sleep well.

I was questing out in SMV trying to cross off as many off my log as possible when I got a whisper from a 70 mage asking me to a group to complete a quest and that he had a full group AND could summon me AND would pay me 10g. I said I would and I was summoned to the end of the path of Elites just West of the Blood Elf outpost.

I asked what to do to help them, and they said to tank my guts out. There are going to be 4 waves, and I needed to put my game face on… I think they looked at my gear and got worried. We wiped on the first attempt when the second wave let too many mobs free on the squishies, but I think they were targeting mobs I wasn’t tanking full-time. We made it on the second attempt, and the third, and the fourth. People kept coming in the area and I was like a tanking prostitute. I never did get the gold, but I will be able to rip through this when it’s my turn to go to Black Temple.

Soon after, I got to go on another PuG with Alaron to get the fragment from Steamvaults. That was a dang easy job, and we moved on to get the third fragment. Alaron had the key to get into Arc, so we were all set, or so I thought. Anyone guess my problem last Friday? Tempest Keep? Gitr?

Right! I couldn’t fly yet! I ran to the flight point, flew to Area 52, and then got summoned to the TK meeting stone to pick up that flight point. The next thing I knew, every busted out their flying mounts. It dawned on me at that moment that I had finally reached that instance I’d read about that required a flying mount to even get to. Yeah… suck bucket!

After facing some ridicule in green text that I didn’t appreciate much, I left the group and started killing warp hunters, feeling so miserable about the let down of not finishing the fragments that I logged for the night and went to bed.

Respec

Since the Kara Team 2 for Doom’s Assailants needs an OT, and everyone keeps saying I need to return to my ways of Fury, I respecc’d for the awesome deal of 15g last night. I didn’t really get a chance to try it out yet, because I went directly to an AB match… you can guess how that turned out.

Newly-minted 70s in BGs with a re-visited spec do not fare well with epic’d out warlords. I died 6 times and only got 35 honor kills and one Mark of Honor for our 2000/930 loss. It was pitiful. It took 12 of us to re-take the Stables… I don’t know what it is about Alliance and Horde in AB. I’ve played both, so I’m pretty sure most of them have. It just doesn’t make any sense at all that Alliance can’t get their act together.

Since I’m sure to get a lot of questions and feedback on my new spec, here it is for all to see, comment, and make fun of. I’m not a build shop master by any stretch of the imagination, so we’ll see how this goes when it counts.

I’m going to try to get into TK with a PuG tonight because it’s the second night in Kara for Team 1. Time to get some gear!

• Outlands provides a cornucopia of group quests at the end of long questlines that often reward you with blue, even some socketed, gear that is far superior to the regular AH greens.
• PvP is an option all the way through the levels, with varying degrees of reward value. You could arguably save up all of your BG marks for level 70 and get some working man’s epics right out of the gate.
• Rep rewards offer blues for Honored/Revered status throughout Outlands. The Hellfire Peninsula rewards for Honored will hold you over for several levels, so check out what the later rewards will get you and whether they are worth it to you, since those 5-mans only take 2 hours with a PuG or 30-60 minutes with well-geared guildies.
• Lastly, who can resist socketed blue gear from the 5-man instances that you will need to master in order to do them in Heroic mode anyway? There is some dang fine gear in there that puts the old Tier 0.5 junk to shame.

Personally, I’ve been indulging myself in as many quests as possible and running them all the way to the final Elite group quests. When I have a bucketfull of them, I look for someone in the area or hop on the guild chat or LFG channel to knock a few out for massive XP and shiny rewards. Some faction quests take you to instances for super rewards, starting in Ramparts onward.

On the nights that I have the time and patience, I run the instances for Rep, XP, and loot… all in one. You should be able to get 15-20g, another 20-40g in greens and vendor trashing, and a considerable amount of rep if you haven’t done all of the quests in the zone yet.

My personal favorite when I wasn’t leveling as fast was to play the AH a tad harder than normal and just buy my way into blue and purple gear. I’m making about 150g per day by questing, vendor trashing, herbing, and selling greens on the AH. I haven’t even been playing the AH because I hate Auctioneer Advanced for that, so I’m going back to the regular version to play for my flying mount coming up in 26 bars.

OMG! 132% until 70! /shudder