Omigod, a post somewhat related to Druiding!

Achievements.

I’ll never pretend to care all that much about them myself, unless I think they’re cute. Like the ones that give you neat pets like my beloved Skunk, or extra mounts, or fun titles.

That having been said, I DO heartily approve of anything that provides you a reward you actually value. And I don’t mean 10 “Achievement Points”.

The Achievement for obtaining 100 mounts is certainly one of those that has a reward folks value, yes?

Time to get down to brass tacks.

I’ve known for a while that some of my guildies were interested in pursuing the mount collection thingie.

So last weekend, we organized a retro raid to go into AQ40.

As I’m sure most of you are well aware, there are 4 mounts that drop off of the trash in AQ40 (and only in AQ40), three of them have a high drop rate (the red has a much lower drop rate than the others), and they all look pretty cool. They can only be used while IN AQ40 or AQ20, but they do count towards the Achievement.

That being said, since they only require time and the ability to kill AQ40 trash, they are the cheapest mounts I know of in the game.

As I said, we went into AQ40 last weekend.

We cleared everything in our path for quite a ways, no problems at all… but on the Twin Emperors, we wiped the first two shots while we figured out what they actually DO (and what they look like while they’re doing it), and then they bugged. They vanished while we rezzed, and never returned. And the door to continue didn’t open either.

Phooey.

Ah well, shucks golly gosh darn, we had a lot of fun.

But that’s not the point.

The point is, there is a single patrol of one critter, a 4 pull bound together, two more single pull patrols and another 4 pull right before the first boss.

Killing that trash alone netted our run three mounts last weekend.

Now THAT is a drop rate that has to make your ears perk up, amiright?

I wasn’t in the mood to do another full AQ40 tonight, but I was curious to see how smoothly you could down the trash with a small force. After all, it’s the trash that gives the goodies.

As our wise guildie Ruune mentioned in our forums, it’s the trash you want, and you can farm that all week long. Reset, schmeset. 

I went to AQ40, and I asked for anyone interested in beating it up with me to come along. Just the entrance trash. No biggie. 15 minutes, tops.

Caladorn’s level 64 Warlock, and Essahn an 80 Enhancement Shaman decided to come along for the ride.

I fully buffed up first, Elixirs, food, Scroll.

We went in, I pulled the 4 pull first… and we grabbed the patrol too, lol.

At the end of the five of them, with me tanking ‘em all, Essahn healing and going OOM a lot, and Cal’s Warlock Meerenie blasting away, we took them down with no problems.

The 4 pulls are interesting, in that every time one of them dies, it adds a buff to the ones that are left. So the remaining trash actually gets a bit tougher as you go.

Not that it helped them any.

Now, I know serious mount farmers will pull the solo patrol first, clear it, and then pull the 4 bound mobs back to the instance entrance, kill three, loot them, and then run out of the instance entrance. When you leave, the 4 pull resets, the three dead trash respawn instantly, and you can go right back in and pull/kill 3, loot, run out, reset ad infinitum.

I wasn’t into that either. It wasn’t a simple smash and grab, a scouting raid to probe defenses.

I just wanted to see how we could do on the trash, and confirm what the drop rate looked like.

We pulled all the trash prior to the boss, cleared it all, and ended up with… well, I’ll let you see for yourself.

Not too tacky, eh?

So, down to the facts.

From how we did on the pulls, I firmly believe that a single level 80 tank, ad a single 80 dedicated healer could clear the trash by themselves, and do it smoothly.

I think two Druids, one Boomkin and one Bear, could probably smoke it wit no issues at all. The Boomkin can throw down some heals and still do solid DPS, with a self Innervate that will be available often as the fights are fairly long. The trash is weak to an 80 tank, but has a ton of health. It’s a long beatdown.

Of course, a Death Knight tank and a Shaman healer would be fun, too. :)

If you take your hits, use your Survival Instincts and Frenzied Regen early, and let the healer conserve their mana for dealing damage, then you should have your SI available later on in the same big fight. It beats having a healer OOM early on.

I’m thinking that a feral Druid might be able to solo the trash… but I haven’t tested the theory. They have a LOT of health.

I might just do that, though.

Good luck on farming some mounts. If a red one drops for you, let me know!

Okay, an update.

I got a guildie to join group with me so I could form a raid, and then went in to solo the trash.

I pulled the wandering solo pat first; no Elixirs, btw, and no problem at all.

I then pulled the 4 Sentinals, and fought them near the instance entrance.

They did not cause me any issues, except for one thing; one of the possible buffs one of them can have is a self heal. You need to watch for that guy, and NOT kill him. You’ll have a hard time burning him down, especially with three others that are NOT healing themselves to choose from.

I started on the self heal idiot, realized what was going on, switched to another one, and proceeded to burn the other three on the pull down. I looted, ran out, came back in and they were rest.

So my fellow druid tanks… go farm some mounts!

Okay, and after having farmed solo for a bit, and getting MY mounts, some guildies decided to come in and join me for a bit. I admit, it’s neat to run around on these mounts.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 12th, 2009 at 8:39 pm and is filed under Druiding. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.