Ghost Moose

Every now then (read: routinely) I get sidetracked. I start off with a perfectly reasonable plan for an evening such as "after running a few pet battles, make and disenchant a couple thousand bracers in between epic battlegrounds" and then wind up spending several hours running around the Broken Isles with a pickaxe in hand.

Why? Ghost Moose. I found out about this spectral flying mount, properly called "Spirit of Eche'ro" from guild mates a week ago and had. to. have. it. It is awarded by completing a Legion Archaeology quest that's only available for a couple of weeks twice a year. Basically, you run around Highmountain getting bonus "moose bones" from dig sites and witness a ritual when turning them in. So why doesn't everyone have ghost moose?

First, in true MMO capacity, it takes 600 bones to turn in the quest and you only get 0-2 per successful dig. You have a random chance of spawning an angered spirit than may drop an extra dozen, but those are infrequent at best. Second, very few people actually enjoy Archaeology. I myself am not a huge fan. I don't find the hunt and seek particularly interesting nor rewarding and so haven't poked around with it in many years. Finally, it's old content in a previous expansion. Put it all together and you have very few people going back to check out the Legion archaeology weekly quests that require hours of painful grinding. You'd have to be some weird, obsessive nut to do something like that. *cough*

The next question is, of course: how long did it take you? Surprisingly, only about an hour forty five total of absolutely non-stop running sites. Having access to flying, short range teleportation, and the ability to kill all wildlife in a 10 yard radius with a single keystroke cut down on the grinding time immensely. Every now and then I ran across another hunter and we'd yell out our current "to go" counts and give each other words of encouragement. Wound up chatting with a similarly single-minded priestess who refused to go to bed no matter how long it took her. (She ran out of time on the quest a couple of years ago and didn't trust the 13 day timer she saw on her UI) She also has an early day job, so I hope she got some sleep-- she had earned maybe 50 bones to my 200. I 'll send her a mail tonight to see how that went.

So, how does the mount itself look? Beautiful. I have a toy that makes me appear ghostlike as well. If I can ever put together a Mountie-type mog, I'll look like the ghost of Canadian pride itself.

For now though…

GHOOOOOOOOOOST MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOSE...

Figure 1: Low-res Archival Stock Footage courtesy of the BBC