Hallow's End and Outlandish Things

It's been a couple of weeks since my last post and quite a lot to catch up with. The big thing was, of course, the Halloween event.

The big things to do include smacking the Headless Horseman around daily, put out a few fires, get zapped by a few costume wands, and go hog wild visiting candy buckets in nearly every inn on Azeroth and the Outlands to trick or treat.

By the end of the third or fourth day, I'd managed to get all of the achievements necessary to get the "Hallowed" title and spent the rest of the event fruitlessly trying to collect 20 unique flimsy masks. I ended with only 14 of them, but not for want of trying. If nothing else it leaves something to try for next year, eh? Still, I managed to get a nifty new mount from the experience, so I've no complaints whatsoever.

It wasn't all trick or treats, though. The "other" tiny thing was to earn the Loremaster of Outlands achievement, which required 568 quests spread out over each Outlands zone. It was hell. I should have realized based on my experiences in Northrend that there would be barely enough quests in each zone to earn that zone's achievement and in some cases I spent hours hunting down isolated NPCs for "just one more" quest.

In many cases I was exceptionally grateful that I was doing these at 80th level. I lost count of the number of quests of "Group size: 5" that were required. Most were handled easily, but every now and then I'd get a quest that smacked my arrogant butt back into place. Of particular note was a guy in a crystal prison down in Shadowmoon that summoned about 4-5 waves of elite critters, ending with some particularly vicious guy who reflected spells. I didn't notice it until I ate a 30k arcane blast. Yeah. Oops.

The second nasty thing was the repair bill. Since the 4.0 patch went into effect, cloth wearers get to pay what plate wearers have been paying all along. I have a newfound respect and sympathy for warriors. A single "meh-- I'll just rez here and suck up the 25% equipment damage" moment cost somewhere in the vicinity of 50g. Le ouch.

A curious side effect of my Outlandish pursuits was earning serious chunks of reputation for factions I'll never pursue. Well, I say never now, but I guess it's only a matter of time before I start thinking "You know what would be great? Getting all of those reputation achievements."