Saturday 27 February 2010

Guarding Cenarians

This is a little guide towards helping you do that all impressive druid title 'Guardian of Cenarius'

I don't think there is much more reason to it than this:

I'm a druid, I want a druidy title... As a tank mainly now, something protector-ish would be great! *Look at achievments* Guardian of Cenarius. Looks great, just the kind of druid title I was looking for. Only problem is, you need to be exalted with two factions. Not just that, the factions are old school factions.

As a druid who started seriously leveling after the Lich King made his frozen butt a threat, I've not done any reputation grinds that someone who had seen level 60 or 70 caps will have done. All I've done was friendly with both the Circle and Expedition.

So, where to get started.

At the time I started the grind, I was still getting together my bear gear. So I didn't have much health, this meant I started with the Sillithus grind.

So, what to do.

When leveling, I spent a large amount of time here anyway, so I had done most of the quests. I'm not going to go into much detail here, because there's alot of quests, and the best way to get them done is to start tracking low level quests and get going. While doing these quests, you do one for gathering Twilight texts. (Sorry for all you Vampire fans, it's all about elementals here!)

You collect these in bunches of 10, then hand them into someone who truely appreciates your work. This then rewards you with a bunch of rep. Next to this person, is someone who accepts three abysall crests, for again, a bit of rep. These are repeatable, and going to be your main source of reputation. If you have a bank character, you could do the missions given by someone else, doing the Logistic's assignments, where you just buy a whole load of Gem's, leathers e.t.c. and hand them in. I didn't have the gold at the time (nor really do now), but this isn't a very quick way to grind it.

At level 80, when you find a cultist camp, you will find a bunch of, you guessed it, cultists! Next step is to kill them all. Run around, single shot mangling them in cat form, or whatever you do (for moonkins and some trees, it's possible to double wrath them, or single shot them with starfire) then loot them. collect only the coins, texts and clothing (head gear, shoulders, and robe) keep going untill you have killed the entire place. They'll start to respawn soonish, but you should have gathered atleast one set of cultist robes. Now look for the Lesser stones dotted around the camp. Go to it, talk to it wearing all three pieces (if you don't, you get zapped for a large amount, I was hit for around 3k, does anyone know if it is a percentage hit?).



Talk to the stone, and an abyssal lord will appear. kill his sorry butt, and then loot the crest. do this for all the sets of cultist clothes you have (depending on the elemental that appears, some of the clothing is destroyed). Then, if you've been slow, there will be alot of respawns for you to kill, this means you don't have to move to the other camp. If not, simply go to the other cultist camp, and repeat. (There is a camp within spitting distance of the cenarion flight path, and again one north west of that). When you get bored (or set yourself a timer for this if you get bored easily, I went for half hours at a time), rock on back to the refuge, hand in all of your crests and texts, vendor anything you have picked up (there will probably be alot of it unless you selectively looted texts, crests and clothes)

Eventually, and trust me on this, it'll take a while, you'll get to exalted! hooray, half way there!

Here's a few tips for breaking up the grinding:

  • Take breaks, you'll go insane otherwise! every three or four trips, take a break, do something not involving WoW, eat something, have a drink, just shut your eyes for alittle.
  • Queue up in the LFG tool as a DPS. Queueing as a healer or tank is a very short wait, so doesn't let you do much grinding. This is bad, as you don't do what you need to!
  • Listen to some music, preferably fast, or something you can sing to, again, this helps to break up the grind, and make it less of a grind. I even have my own grind music for just these occasions!
Now for the higher level bits, You have two options really for this.

You could grind this in Borean Tundra with our little PETA friends. The mobs around Kaw, the mammoth killer respawn very quickly, and they drop Nessingwary Lackey's Ears, which you can turn in to a very sadistic druid for some Expedition rep. I don't know what he does with these ears, but I'm pretty glad he doesn't tell you.

The other option, is to go to Outlands. Go and do the quests there, and hand in Unidentified Plants, and you'll get to honored pretty sharpish. From here, the only way to raise your rep, is to do more quests, or hand in Coilfang Armaments. The heroic Coilfang Resivoir instances will still give you rep, and so will normal Steamvaults. I grinded out normal Steamvaults, because the naga will drop coilfang armaments, and you still get rep for killing them, the bog lords, and the bosses. When you first go into the instance, kill them until you get 'Orders from Lady Vashj' This starts a quest, accept it, and go back out the instance, to the outpost leader in Zangramarsh.

After this, go into Steamvaults (preferably normal, as it is quicker to solo) and kill all the naga you can find! Tips for this place really, are:
  • Don't over pull, it's easily done, and very easy to get over confident. Remember that some of the mobs stun, heal e.t.c. when you are stunned, you can't dodge! so you only have the base 5% avoidance chance.
  • Remember to activate the control panels behind the Mechagnome boss and the Hydromancer lady! beyond those doors, are about 25 more naga, and the final boss! that's a lot more Armaments, and the chunk of rep you get for the boss and his friends!
  • Again, don't get too bored, however, if you go into the LFG tool, you'll be teleported to the nearest GY when you get back from the instance.
  • Remember to run out and RESET the instance once you are done with each run. You can't just run back in, it doesn't work, and you'll just be running around an empty instance, wondering why there are no mobs until you realise what you forgot to do!

Eventually, after a large number of runs (I took about 20-30 I think) You'll get exalted with the Exped! Now all you have to do, is go to your character pane, and click on that title of druidy epicness, and feel pro in your random instances!

:) Enjoy your grind, it's worth it at the end!

Vralk