04-12-2006, 05:47 PM
(This post was last modified: 04-12-2006, 05:55 PM by MongoJerry.)
Magicbag said it well. I'll now say the same things poorly.
WoW is designed to allow anyone to get to level 60 quickly. Once you hit the level cap, the game changes from being one where getting experience is the most important thing to one where getting items and abilities is the most important thing. One of the ways to get those items is to build your reputation up with various factions. It is intentional that unless you are a masochist and play 24/7 that it will be impossible to faction up with all of the factions in the world to Exalted. One is expected to choose one's factions. Some people take the approach to get a little reputation built up with every faction and others choose to concentrate on select couple of factions. The rewards vary with what factions you rep up with, and sometimes recipes get added to various factions later in the game.
Right. The first rule of reputation grinding, at least in the early stages, is to do it in a group. I'm now friendly with the Timbermaw furbolgs, and when I started grinding solo, the pace was mindnumbing. But, when I got in a group with two mages and another priest, we could aoe down entire camps with barely a stop and the reputation points came fast and thick. You get 5 reputation points for killing a furbolg whether you are solo or in a group, you see, so the bigger the group the better.
And as you mentioned, if you plan to go all the way to exalted with the timbermaw, you will eventually stop getting reputation for killing furbolgs and have to depend on turning in feathers. So, along the way, it's best if you don't turn in your feathers until you reach that point. Now, I haven't ground Timbermaw faction since they added the feather turn-in quest, so I don't know if those feathers are bind on pickup or not. If they are like Twilight Texts and aren't bind on pickup, that means that you can buy feathers from your fellow players. So, what people who are fanatical about grinding reputation do is sell all the loot they get from grinding furbolgs and then use that gold to buy their feathers/texts from other players on the AH or in trade chat. This in effect increases your drop rate of your feathers, because in effect any loot you find on a corpse ends up counting toward your feather total. On the other hand, if the feathers are bind-on-pickup, then, yeah, the grind stinks.
Hey, now! I resemble that remark! Yarrr!
If you kill in a group, it only takes a few evenings to get to friendly with the timbermaw, and the recipes are quite nice. As an enchanter, the +15 agility to 1H weapons and +25 agility to 2H weapons are useful enchants to have for my guild, and I occationally make a little money off them on the side. Is it worth it to go further? It depends on if you want to be able to summon a Timbermaw shaman to fight at your side. So far, it hasn't been worth the grind to me, but other people really want that trinket -- mostly for the ability to show it off to others. Some people are strange that way.
The best way to get reputation with the Argent Dawn is to run Stratholme and Scholomane. You get reputation from killing the normal mobs there up until revered and along the way, you can collect scourgestones that you can turn in for extra reputation but are again best to turn in only after you've hit revered. After revered and turning in all your saved up scourgestones, then you can still get some reputation from killing bosses in instances, or you can repeatedly do all those cauldron quests you mentioned.
The reward for Argent Dawn reputation, besides a few minor recipes (although the alechemy recipes are excellent), is the ability to enchant your shoulders with +resistances. That used to be the only way to enchant your shoulders until ZG came along, and since the ZG enchants are so expensive anyway, those AD shoulder enchants are still quite useful.
In addition, with Naxxramas being released in the next patch, many people suspect that AD reputation will become even more important, the way that Cenarian Circle faction has become important with the release of AQ.
Cenarian Circle is the easiest reputation to get, because there are so many sources of reputation. You can grind mobs for a little kill reputation, do some general quests, do some Field Duty quests (the Tactical quests are particularly fast and easy), collect and/or buy Twilight Texts to turn in, summon twilight elemental bosses (the first level of bosses are soloable) for rep and quest turn-in items, and of course run AQ20 and AQ40 for even more reputation. The rewards meanwhile are very nice. There are some terrific recipes as well as some quest reward items you can get when your reputation increases. I myself am looking forward to getting a Gavel of Infinite Wisdom when I finally hit Exalted with Cenarian Circle, and I haven't really ground obsessively to get there. Of course, I raid AQ20 as often as I can, but the reputation gain from running it isn't as fast as if you spent the time grinding for twilight texts.
That series mostly involves running Molten Core. There are a few small prequel quests, but for the most part the Hydrazian Waterlords reputation and quests are mostly there to let you get the Aqual Quintessences which are used to douse the runes inside Molten Core that let you summon Major Domo and Ragnaros.
Definitely keep your scourgestones and cauldron quest items until you get Revered. My advice is to pick the faction you want to rep up with carefully and then group up as much as possible while grinding out the reputation. It is a MMO, after all, so being social is an integral part of the game, even if there are things available for people to do solo. If you insist on soloing, I would suggest trying to go for Cenarian Circle reputation, because it is the easiest reputation to get, the quests and activities involved are more varied, and the rewards are better than the other factions. You might have to buy some scarabs and stuff off the AH to make your items and maybe be willing to run AQ20 at least a couple of times to make your items, but on the whole, the rewards are good.
Jarulf,Apr 12 2006, 06:06 AM Wrote:As I am reaching level 60, I have recently come in contact with reputation a few times. At first, it was mostly a way to get a deiscount from your own faction and after a while, those Booty Bay and company turned green from yellow. I never really have bothered with geting rides from another race so I never bothered figuring out how hard it would be. However, recently I have bumped into the reputation issue a few times.
WoW is designed to allow anyone to get to level 60 quickly. Once you hit the level cap, the game changes from being one where getting experience is the most important thing to one where getting items and abilities is the most important thing. One of the ways to get those items is to build your reputation up with various factions. It is intentional that unless you are a masochist and play 24/7 that it will be impossible to faction up with all of the factions in the world to Exalted. One is expected to choose one's factions. Some people take the approach to get a little reputation built up with every faction and others choose to concentrate on select couple of factions. The rewards vary with what factions you rep up with, and sometimes recipes get added to various factions later in the game.
Quote:To my shock, when calcualting it more preciely, I needed to kill many hundrads of those monsters since I only get 5 rep point each (a boss gives 15 I think) and I need to gather a whopping 3000 more reputation points. That is 600 monsters, talk about insane grind and stupidy I though. Well, there is those turn in quests someone said, sure enough, I can turn in 5 feathers for 50 reputation but considering I get a feather every 4 kill or so, I would say that cut the number of monsters down to, say 400...
So I try to learn a bit more about reputation, only to find out that you can't reach the higher levels at all just killing monsters, at a certain level you stop getting reputation for monsters and presumably need to resort to the turn in quests only, so the number of monsters needed to kill multiplies even more!!! What is worse, there is really no way to tell PLUS, if you really wan't to do it properly, you need to do it in a cheesy way, you obviously should not make ANY turn ins at all until later when you get no more reputation from the killing. Who at Blizzard had a horrible day at home and figured out a system that punishes people that try to do quests and turn ins as they play only to find out they were cheated out of reputation and hard work? And this all on a system to tstart with that is just an silly time sink to give no real benefits?
Right. The first rule of reputation grinding, at least in the early stages, is to do it in a group. I'm now friendly with the Timbermaw furbolgs, and when I started grinding solo, the pace was mindnumbing. But, when I got in a group with two mages and another priest, we could aoe down entire camps with barely a stop and the reputation points came fast and thick. You get 5 reputation points for killing a furbolg whether you are solo or in a group, you see, so the bigger the group the better.
And as you mentioned, if you plan to go all the way to exalted with the timbermaw, you will eventually stop getting reputation for killing furbolgs and have to depend on turning in feathers. So, along the way, it's best if you don't turn in your feathers until you reach that point. Now, I haven't ground Timbermaw faction since they added the feather turn-in quest, so I don't know if those feathers are bind on pickup or not. If they are like Twilight Texts and aren't bind on pickup, that means that you can buy feathers from your fellow players. So, what people who are fanatical about grinding reputation do is sell all the loot they get from grinding furbolgs and then use that gold to buy their feathers/texts from other players on the AH or in trade chat. This in effect increases your drop rate of your feathers, because in effect any loot you find on a corpse ends up counting toward your feather total. On the other hand, if the feathers are bind-on-pickup, then, yeah, the grind stinks.
Quote:So what is the purpose? To give those few fanatics that will go through the time some reward that could be labeled "I wasted a few weeks of my life killing monsters to get a recipie from the Timbermaw Clan that I will probably never use anyway"?
Hey, now! I resemble that remark! Yarrr!
Quote: Appearantly one can, with increasing reputation get some unqiue rcipies. Are they good? A lot of them? Fantastic? I mean, for all the hard work ammounting to what is TONS of quests normally, one would expect something ordinary? Nope, one or two recipies depenidng on your profession it seems, none of which are that impressive...
Sincerly, who can clim it is even remotedly fiting with the rest of the game and system and that the rewards are in comparison to other game play? ... Or have I missed the goodies and super rewards? Sure, one can claim that if if was easier, everyone would get there, but then, that is not how the rest of the game works. Of ocurse, they could multiply the reputation needed by a million and sure enough some people would spend the time getting there no matter how long it takes, but still, there must be something missing I have not seen.
If you kill in a group, it only takes a few evenings to get to friendly with the timbermaw, and the recipes are quite nice. As an enchanter, the +15 agility to 1H weapons and +25 agility to 2H weapons are useful enchants to have for my guild, and I occationally make a little money off them on the side. Is it worth it to go further? It depends on if you want to be able to summon a Timbermaw shaman to fight at your side. So far, it hasn't been worth the grind to me, but other people really want that trinket -- mostly for the ability to show it off to others. Some people are strange that way.
Quote:I have now also come across a new such "case", the Argent Dawn. Seems they have more quests and slightly easier to get reputation, but I am now doing the Cauldron quests in the Plagulands, and supposedly, the same apply here, I need to do the Cauldron quests till I puke to get a bit better reputation (and I not only need the item they drop, I need to supply runecloth as well, and quite a lot in the end) and presumably again, I get some extra recipies (not checked, I am a tailor and enchanter by the way, had I had gathering skills, I would kill someone at Blizzrd when I figured out recpies is the reward appearantly). Perhaps there are some nice normal item to buy as well, I have not checked.
The best way to get reputation with the Argent Dawn is to run Stratholme and Scholomane. You get reputation from killing the normal mobs there up until revered and along the way, you can collect scourgestones that you can turn in for extra reputation but are again best to turn in only after you've hit revered. After revered and turning in all your saved up scourgestones, then you can still get some reputation from killing bosses in instances, or you can repeatedly do all those cauldron quests you mentioned.
The reward for Argent Dawn reputation, besides a few minor recipes (although the alechemy recipes are excellent), is the ability to enchant your shoulders with +resistances. That used to be the only way to enchant your shoulders until ZG came along, and since the ZG enchants are so expensive anyway, those AD shoulder enchants are still quite useful.
In addition, with Naxxramas being released in the next patch, many people suspect that AD reputation will become even more important, the way that Cenarian Circle faction has become important with the release of AQ.
Quote:The last example I have found recently is that for the herb bag recpies, you seem to be needing to do something similar in Silithus for the Cenarion Circle. Adding it all up, seems one can spend a whole year grinding to good reputation for a few recipies and if you want so, a mount from another race. Agian, what am I missing?
Cenarian Circle is the easiest reputation to get, because there are so many sources of reputation. You can grind mobs for a little kill reputation, do some general quests, do some Field Duty quests (the Tactical quests are particularly fast and easy), collect and/or buy Twilight Texts to turn in, summon twilight elemental bosses (the first level of bosses are soloable) for rep and quest turn-in items, and of course run AQ20 and AQ40 for even more reputation. The rewards meanwhile are very nice. There are some terrific recipes as well as some quest reward items you can get when your reputation increases. I myself am looking forward to getting a Gavel of Infinite Wisdom when I finally hit Exalted with Cenarian Circle, and I haven't really ground obsessively to get there. Of course, I raid AQ20 as often as I can, but the reputation gain from running it isn't as fast as if you spent the time grinding for twilight texts.
Quote:Supposedly geting a bit reputation for a water elemental in Azshara should actually give you a few nice quests to do, but I need to check that up for sure first.
That series mostly involves running Molten Core. There are a few small prequel quests, but for the most part the Hydrazian Waterlords reputation and quests are mostly there to let you get the Aqual Quintessences which are used to douse the runes inside Molten Core that let you summon Major Domo and Ragnaros.
Quote:Now, can anyone with more insight tell me that what I wrote above is rubish and all lies and that it is not that bad? Should I keep my scourge stones by the way or just turn them in right now and as I get them or keep them for a year when I might no longer get rep for killing undead? Any advice?
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Definitely keep your scourgestones and cauldron quest items until you get Revered. My advice is to pick the faction you want to rep up with carefully and then group up as much as possible while grinding out the reputation. It is a MMO, after all, so being social is an integral part of the game, even if there are things available for people to do solo. If you insist on soloing, I would suggest trying to go for Cenarian Circle reputation, because it is the easiest reputation to get, the quests and activities involved are more varied, and the rewards are better than the other factions. You might have to buy some scarabs and stuff off the AH to make your items and maybe be willing to run AQ20 at least a couple of times to make your items, but on the whole, the rewards are good.