Masochism at its Finest

The title most assuredly describes what it's like to work on the Loremaster achievement. I started working on it for awhile Friday and have been working on it since. What a grind! I've heard through a great many people that, at least for the Alliance, Kalimdor is definitely the harder of the two Old World continents to knock out. Well, I started at 444/700 for Kalimdor on Friday and ended last night at 595/700. 105 more quests to go.

So, that's not that many, right? I mean 105 out of 700? Should be easy, right?

Well, yes, except that all I really have left is one zone I didn't quest in much at all, and the rest are zones I know I've quested through.

I've learned a few things, both through researching the achievement and through actually working on it.

1. It doesn't matter where the quest starts, it will count toward the total number of quests for the zone you COMPLETE it in. So, if you have a quest-giver in Darkshore that asks you to collect 2,000 Thresher Eyes and deliver them to some chubby dwarf in Ironforge- then that particular quest will count toward your Eastern Kingdoms total.

2. Repeatable, class, and profession quests don't count. Right. It would be pretty nice if they did, but alas...dear friends...they don't appear to count so far.

3. "Track Low Level Quests", Cartographer, and Questhelper are your friends! If you don't have the two add-ons...GO. GET. THEM. Best advice I can give. Also, many of these "loremaster achievement addons" don't really seem to do much other than to track the quests you complete, and tell you whether or not the quest you're on will count toward your achievement. That seems like a waste of memory space to me. I've bypassed them so far.

4. Learn to love (and live on) WoWhead. Wowhead has this nifty feature, where, if you look up a zone, you can have it show your faction's quest givers on the map. Totally beneficial! I found two quests in Feralas that I didn't do on my previous run through the zone with this feature. Two quests might not be much NOW, but suppose I find 2-3 quests in each zone that I had missed? Yeah, it'll add up.

I won't deny that I'm pretty excited. I've done 151 quests in the matter of a few days and nearly finished off one entire continent. I might take a break from Kalimdor and start on Eastern Kingdoms though.

Since some of the quests that start in Eastern Kingdoms will ultimately lead me back to Kalimdor to count for that zone anyway, it might be nice to change gears for a little while. One could hope, right?

I'll keep updating as I make the journey through this Loremaster thing. And you know, read the quest texts. That's what Loremaster is all about. The stories are actually really cool, and it gives you something to think about while you're battling the ridiculously low drop rates of the old world quests =)