Loot Drops When Farming Instances

This weekends’ runs were interesting in terms of loot drops.

I took my 49 warrior in to Wailing Caverns with a 18 or 19 Shaman and while I was cleaning out the path to the instance doorway while they were far away gathering quests, I picked up no less than SIX Bind On Equip green items. Then we went into the instance, went all the way through killing all the Fang bosses and the big dude and then coming back to wake Naralex (or whatever) and at the end of the run I had SIXTEEN BOE greens to sell. The shaman had 10 BOE greens to sell and had also needed on 2-3 blue items that dropped which he immediately used as upgrades on current equipment.

When I farm through WC by myself with my 60-62 hunter, no way that much drops. I haven’t tested it with this under-60 warrior however.

Then, the 60 Hunter took my 32 mage through RFK and again the drops were insane, we came out with 10 or so BOE greens each.

Then, my 62 Hunter took his 32 warlock through RFK later in the day, and the drops were COMPLETELY SPARSE. I came out with 2 BOE greens to sell and my partner didn’t come out with much more than that.

I have noticed, however, that dungeons such as RFC, WC, Deadmines and the likes all have a LOT of BOE greens that drop, and the number of uncommon+ things that drop in higher dungeons isn’t near as much. Is this Blizzard’s attempt to addict us early and then give us diminishing returns with occasional rewards to quell our junkiness??!!

Warrior hits 49, hangs out in Raventusk

A couple of weeks ago when I was still at 46, I believe, I got invited to a Maraudon run with some friends who are now in a raiding guild taking on Karazhan and all the Heroic dungeons but wanted to take a break from wiping all night long and spend some time with their under-60 alts.

Just recently I finally hit 49 and was able to wear the last of the three blue ‘tank’ pieces I picked up from that run. It was nice to put that on, but I need to let those partymates know that I’m finally wearing it and appreciating the fact the equipment was there, waiting for me to use it.

I’ve parked my warrior in Raventusk Village for now, working on all the Hinterlands quests and tackling the Jintha’alor quests whenever there’s a guildmate on who’s around the same level and also needs them. I’ve been there four times on this toon now and have finished 2-3 quests each time, but there seem to be a LOT of quests in there, so I keep going back. Getting that Mallet of Zul'Farrak seems like a breeze these days given enough patience to take down all the trolls in the way.

I haven’t decided where I’m going to move my toon next, but I still have a bunch of yellow ones to finish off in Tanaris and Ferelas so I’ll probably dust those off if they haven’t turned green by the time I finish in Hinterlands.

Razorfen Kraul weekend, excellent new (lowbie) mage recruit

This past weekend had a lot of RFK in it from my perspective.

First on Saturday afternoon, I took my 26 Priest in as the main/only healer in a team with a 26 Warrior, 32 Warrior, 34 Warlock and 28 Mage. We had shared quests around but only the folks 32+ were able to pick up the quests which are pre-requisites to other dungeons, namely Scarlet Monestary (SM) and Razorfen Downs (RFD).

In this first RFK run, we didn’t get all the way through the dungeon, mainly because the only guy who was used to playing his toon on a regular basis was the Mage (because the rest of us are alt-o-holics who play a lot of different classes in a weekend). This mage is a new addition to our guild over the last month and we haven’t team-played with him very often so this was really the first time we could see how he behaves in a party situation.

I must say, while the rest of us did okay in our roles, I was really impressed with this Mage’s ability to NOT pull aggro off of the (rusty) tanks, as well as his ability to use sheep both offensively (as crowd control during a pull) and defensively (when he had pulled aggro). I made sure to say some nice things to him during the run and will definitely put efforts in to plan runs he can be a part of during his limited play time (weekends).

My Priest levelled to 27 in the instance. Woot!

On Sunday evening we tried to go through RFK again, this time with me on my 31 Mage who had the quest “Going, going, guano” which is a pre-requisite to “Hearts of Zeal” which is a quest in Scarlet Monestary, and “An Unholy Alliance” which has a second-stage quest that brings us to Razorfen Downs later on. A guild friend who was playing the 26 warrior in the run on Saturday was able to finish his warrior’s quest during our RFK run so in exchange, he agreed to run my mage through RFK to get the other-dungeon-prereq’s done, bringing his 62 Shadow Priest along. We picked up another guildmate who had a level 26 warlock toon as well and she leveled to 27 during the run, plus picked up some nice equipment upgrades.

Right after getting to the Bat Room and picking up my guano and lustily eyeing the node of Iron Ore in the room (which was orange for me in terms of skill-up), my ISP started having troubles and I went from ‘fine’ to disconnecting over and over and over for 30 minutes, with extreme lag in between. I gave up and went to bed. I couldn’t even tell my guildmates I had done so.

Monday morning when I logged in and turned in my Bat Guano quest, it levelled me to 32. I trained my skills up and then brought my toon back to the door of RFK. Later in the day, my guildmate friend hopped on his Hunter and we went through RFK in its entirety and I finished all of the rest of my RFK quests, including the Blueleaf Tubers quest which is semi-annoying because it’s non-sharable and every party I’m in needs to be reminded over and over to pick up the components before coming to the instance ;)

Later on during Monday, I hopped on MY 62 Hunter and we blew through the first half of RFK for my guild friend’s 32 warlock to be able to finish the Bat Guano quest. We toasted the bats, then toasted the Big Piggy (who proceeded to drop a nice dagger - Swinetusk Shank), and then hearthed out and worked on other things.

We even went through Deadmines with my 17 Rogue hanging back and practicing pickpocketting periodically. Lots of dungeons this weekend, it’s nice to have friends to coordinate that kind of stuff with, because none of my dungeon runs are a pain unless you count the fact that my ISP has troubles keeping me connected at times!