Apparently, 375 Engineering isn’t as rare on my server as I thought.

Within minutes of logging in, I had my [Hula Girl Doll] from Griftah (and the Zul’Aman quest he gives), and had made my [Flying Machine Control] and then [Turbo-Charged Flying Machine].

And so, it seemed, had everyone else.

but there was lots of Engineering loving going on last night!

After making the mount, I tooled up, grabbed the dailies for Heroics and Food, and headed for Ramparts to run my first Heroic there.

As I passed through Shattrath, I spied not one, not two, but three other [Turbo-Charged Flying Machine] scuttling around… likewise, when I arrived at the Hellfire Citadel Meeting Stone, there were two others there as well. This trend continued throughout the evening… at least in the Outlands. For a class that has received a ton of hate in WoW’s official forums, there sure are a lot of us at 375.

Also, the constant questions about where to find Star Wood and [Recipe: Elemental Seaforium Charge] made me wince.

By the end of the evening, my good friend Daak had successfully made his Engineering Epic Mount as well. It seems that, for the moment at least, Engineering is the flavor of the week.

The other Engineering addition that excited me in 2.3 was the new [Schematic: Repair Bot 110G] that drops from Gun’arg Analyzers. The recipe lets you make a 5 time use repair bot for the cost of 8 Adamantite Bars, 8 Fel Iron Bolts, and 1 Khorium Power Core. Since you can repair, buy arrows and bullets, reagents for party buffs, and limited quantities of Super Healing and Super Mana pots from them, it’s a pretty good deal.

The bad news…. armed with my shiny new mount, I flew straight on up to Blades Edge, determined to be among the first to get the recipe.

Ummm….. yeah. Talk about a heavily farmed area. O.o

Here’s the breakdown for ya. There are, exactly, 4 ‘Simon Says’ Apexis Crystal locations where the Gan’arg Analysers spawn. There are 6 Analyzers per Crystal location, 1 per node and 2 in the center. They are on a SLOW respawn rate, because they need to give you enough time to kill one, and then complete the Apexis Crystal daily quest.

So, that’s right… a total of 24 Gan’arg Analyzers possible in the game at one time. On a slow repsawn rate. Pain incoming!

Now, think about that for a moment… 24 mobs. On a slow respawn.

I quickly found that each of the four spawn locations last night were permanently camped. People had given up flying around hoping to catch a spawn, and just sat waiting for the respawns to pop. I spent a half hour on one myself, and killed 12 Gan’arg Analyzers before being called away to other things. No drop.

Now, the rest of the evening I spent in either Zul’Aman, or offline, so I don’t know how the farming there went. I do know that I came back at around 11 PM and it was still just as heavily farmed.

I had me a plan, though.

In the course of my job, I work 10 hour days… from 5 AM to 3 PM server time. So I gets me up at 4, Monday through Thursday.

So I logged out of game in Blades Edge… and logged into game at 4 AM this morning to find all four locations free and clear and full of beautiful lambs for the slaughter… and no competition for respawns at all.

Now, the recipe is a random drop. And we all know what that means…. it could drop on the first kill, or the thousand and first, no matter what the ‘official’ drop rate Blizzard set might be.

What I CAN tell you, is that I killed all Analyzers at each spot, moving from one camp to the next as fast as possible. As soon as Apexis Crystal Camp 4 was dead, I returned to Camp 1, to find those JUST respawning. I ended up with zero down time waiting for respawns.

It took me exactly 123 kills to get the recipe to drop. That’s counting what I killed the night before, plus 4 complete “All 4 Camp - 6 Analyzer per camp” clears. But I DID get the recipe!

I hearthed, banked, and made 2 sets of the Repair Bots. Considering how long it took me to farm the old world materials for the level 60 Repair Bot, the new one is fast, cheap and easy to make. The only drain is Khorium Power Cores, needing 3 Khorium Bars and 1 Primal Fire. Fortunately, these are all mining drops, if fairly rare. It’s a hell of a lot better than having to go to Burning Steppes to farm the Spider Silk.

Later today, when time permits, I will regale you with stories of how I successfully tanked and spanked the first boss in Zul’Aman and saw [Fury] drop, and the horrors of the pulls after that.

I may also let you know of my experiences dropping 900g on making a guild bank for my circle of friends’ alt guild.

In the meantime, let me know… how did YOUR first night in 2.3 go?

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