On My Way to Loremaster

As I’ve mentioned before, I’m one of those crazy people who thinks that the Loremaster achievement is a good idea.

Achievements in general really appeal to me. I’m a completionist at heart, and in WOW it is nearly impossible to achieve “100% complete”. The achievement system gives me manageable goals, and shows me my progress. I’m not trying to impress others with my achievements – it’s simply for personal satisfaction. This is a play style that many people don’t understand, and that’s fine. One of the amazing things about MMORPG’s is that they support so many play styles simultaneously.

Loremaster specifically is one I’ve had at the back of my mind for a long time. Seeing most of the quests in the game and truly experiencing the world that Blizzard created to its fullest sounded fantastic. While leveling I had an extremely hard time abandoning any quests, even if they no longer granted XP. I wanted to do everything, and see everything. This achievement gave me a reason to go back and do this, and provided me with a way of tracking it. If you love the lore of the game, and want to see more of it then this is an achievement for you.

I finished Loremaster of Eastern Kingdoms last summer. As you’ve probably heard before, those last few quests are extremely painful to find. I did weird things like Zul’Aman raid quests,  Argent Dawn turn-ins, and tier 0.5 conversions. The most frustrating part was that some quests didn’t count, while others did (this is particularly noticeable in regards to dungeon quests).

I took a break from the Loremaster grinding scene for a while, and enjoyed leveling alts and life at level 80. Then news of Cataclysm hit, and I realized that it was time to get moving. No one has any real idea about what will happen to this achievement when the expansion arrives. Will it become a feat of Strength? Will it be nerfed? Will they add the higher zones of Azeroth to the meta? Regardless, I want to finish it before the world is blown to pieces by Deathwing erupting from Deepholm. When Blizzard revamps the old world, a lot of the quests will disappear forever.

For the past few weeks I’ve been working on Loremaster of Kalimdor. For the Alliance, this is considered the harder of the two Old World achievements. It was certainly a bit of a pain. Last night, I finally finished it! 700/700 quests completed! Hooray!

The last 10 quests took me roughly 5 hours. This is partly because I had to go into Dire Maul, an instance I hadn’t previously spend much time in.

I still have Outlands and Northrend to go, but I’ve heard they’re much easier. The metas for Loremaster of Outland and Loremaster of Northrend are broken up into separate achievements by zone, making it much easier to track where you need to focus on. I have a few of these completed already. I also plan on tackling the Kara key questline while in Outlands.

So how does one accomplish this feat? I’ll share a few tips that I have for those that are interested.

Low Level Quest Tracker

This might be obvious, but it’s the most important step. Instead of tracking your precious ore or herbs, you have to track low-level quests. Keep an eye on your mini-map for those wonderful happy exclamation marks! There was an annoying bug that caused the tracking turn off every time you logged out, but Blizzard quietly fixed this in 3.3.

Working Your Way Through The Quest Hubs, Zone by Zone

The first thing I did for each continent was to work my way through the quest hubs I knew I hadn’t completed. These are things like other races’ starting areas, and zones which I hadn’t visited while leveling. I did one quest hub at a time, which helped break the achievement up into manageable chunks. I started at one end of a continent and worked my way towards the other end.

Dungeon Quests

Not all dungeon quests count for the achievements, but I still think they are worth doing. Before you head in to an instance remember to check the dungeon’s Wowiki page to ensure you have all of the quests. Many of the quests for low-level dungeons are scattered throughout the major cities. As a bonus, dungeons will also get you further towards that Classic Dungeonmaster achievement.

Blizzard’s Quest Completion Tracker

Blizzard has made life a lot easier for Loremaster seekers – they added a QueryQuestsCompleted() method to their API in patch 3.3. This allows addons to utilize the data and compare it against their own quest database. The two main addons  I know that do this are QuestHelper and EveryQuest. This feature didn’t exist when I finished Eastern Kingdoms, but I was very grateful for it while doing Kalimdor. Questhelper is my preferred addon of choice, as it marks quest givers and quest names on the map. EveryQuest has the advantage of being able to link to LightHeaded to retrieve information on the quest and show whether it was part of a chain. Unfortunately it seemed a little clunky and every time I accepted a quest it made my computer lag for a second or two while it matched it against the database. Another flaw with both addons is that you can’t filter out class-specific, repeatable, or broken quests.

Quests DO Cross Continents

An important thing to note is that many quests do cross the continents. You can pick a quest up on Eastern Kingdoms, head to Kalimdor and have the whole chain count for Eastern Kingdoms. I don’t advise trying to do both continents simultaneously, but do hold on to those quests that send you overseas and try to do several of them at once, using your hearth to maximum advantage. If you drop them and say “oh I’ll just do those when I work on the other continent”, you will probably forget about them and be unable to find them again.

Not All Quests Count

Repeatable, holiday, and daily quests do not count for the achievement. There are also a lot of random quests that don’t count, especially dungeon quests – this is very inconsistent. If you’re worried about it, the comments on Wowhead for each quest usually clue you in.

Random Tips

Don’t worry too much about “This Item Begins a Quest”. If you don’t get the item, continue on. You can always come back later if you’re really desperate, but its better to use your time on guaranteed quests.

An easy win for the Alliance is the Beached Sea Turtles/Creatures along the beach in Darkshore – there are 10 of these and all you have to do is take a stroll along the shoreline.

Don’t forget quest hubs like Moonglade, Swamp of Sorrows, and the Mirage Racetrack in Thousand Needles – you may never have even been to these places before. There are a lot of strange out-of-the-way places where single quest-givers can hide. A lot of times these single quest-givers will give you a longer chain.

If you play a DPS class, don’t forget to queue up for a random heroic while you quest. It’s a great way to break things up and make efficient use of your time.

Don’t give up – sometimes it may seem like there is no possible way to complete those last 75 quests, but it is possible!

So how many other crazy Loremaster wannabees are there out there? Are there any other tips you want to share? Anyone stuck and looking for ideas on where to quest next?