…but Davien finally got her Loremaster achievement.

I’m not usually overly concerned with achievements.  It’s nice to get the glowy announcement, and a round of huzzahs from whatever guildmates are online (or the /congratulations from random passersby), but the majority of them are simply bonuses for me.  Loremaster, though — as soon as I saw it on the list, I knew Davien had to have the title.

For years now, the members of Noxilite have referred to her as “Loremistress.”  Originally, it was simply my rank in the guild: I organized some of the RP nights, (including the still-running weekly gathering/story night), and the title kind of stuck.  It’s been her Flag RSP title for a long time.  Davien is a collector of stories — human tales gathered when she was a girl, Kal’dorei legends, stories from the orcs that made their way through the Dark Portal — there is an ever-growing library in the little cottage she keeps in Moonglade.

The Northrend requirement was mostly painless.  Most zones were easy enough to solo your way through the required number of quests.  Icecrown was the sticking point, since I found myself thirteen quests shy of the achievement with a log full of group quests.  Getting people together was easy enough; the problem was the phasing.  With four quests to go, I thought we could knock out the Riders of Blood, Unholy and Frost, then go kick their master’s ass.  Except, there were only two of us who were far enough in the chain to see the mobs, and no way in hell was a squishy mage and a newly-80 paladin going to duo them.

The good thing was, I still had one quest chain left that didn’t leave anyone phased out. The day was saved.

After that, it was time to go back to the old content. I’d finished up the Eastern Kingdoms achievement before Wrath was released and had a head start on Kalimdor.

Kalimdor.  Ugh.  Guess who’d never spent much time in the Barrens.  At least Davien had Cavale, her epic deader pony, to carry her to Mankrik’s wife.  I probably went through the better part of 400 quests, breaking them up into manageable chunks so I didn’t burn myself out.

Then there was just Outland to finish up.  It went quickly enough — the only zone I had to do more than ten quests in was Shadowmoon Valley.  In the end, Ruul the Darkener was still too much for a squishy mage and her mirror images, so I enlisted some help.  After Ruul, we summoned ourselves a firelord, and woo-hoo, triple achievements!

Cairne Bloodhoof himself sent a letter to commemorate the occasion, and bundled up with it were the Loremaster’s colors.

Yeeeaaah, about those colors…

I get it; it’s cute — you’ve done a couple thousand quests and have seen a metric fuckton of exclamation points.  But, I dunno.  I guess I would have pictured something a bit more dignified for a loremaster.  It’s a good thing the only tabard Davien ever wears ICly is the Noxilite one, anyway.

Bitching aside, though, it was neat to spend some time in old haunts, and get a whole lot of story along the way — some things I’d forgotten about that I’d glossed over on alts were cool to revisit for this.  The Test of Lore quests out in Ashenvale gives you a bit of story about the dragonflights that ties in nicely with all the dargon-killing we seem to be doing in end-game content these days.

If you’re feeling crazy enough to go for the achievements yourself, a few tips that might be helpful:

Break it into chunks. Either set a goal for a number of quests to get done, or a certain amount of time to spend on questing before you move on to other things.  If you hit your goal, nothing says you have to stop and walk away — sometimes you get into a groove and want to knock out a few more. But backing away and evaluating how you feel is a good idea every now and then.

Have either a questing buddy or be in a channel (either IC or OOC, or both!) where you can chat. I did most of the questing solo, but I could always stop and chat while riding around smiting gnolls.  When it came time for the Icecrown group quests, I got to RP my way through them.  So much fun.

Music makes it go faster. I always had iTunes up.  Sometimes you’re still going to spend longer than you want to think about waiting for a quest drop or a mob to spawn, or maybe running around in Silithus just makes you and baby zombie Jesus cry.  Having good tunes can be the thing that keeps you slogging through the not-so-fun patches.

Flight paths are a good excuse to get up and stretch. During a couple of my questing marathons, the long flight between, say, Thunder Bluff and Gadgetzan was when I’d walk away from the keyboard for a while and get some laundry done.

Do some research. There are “hidden” quests all over the place.  Sometimes questgivers are off the beaten path. Sometimes mobs drop items that start new quests, and if you’re not looking for them, you might find yourself short of the goal.  This thread was a huge help to me as I got close to the end of Kalimdor.

Stop and read the quest text. Sometimes we fall into the habit of just looking for the exclamation points and skipping right to the “bring me ten feathers” part of it.  There are lots of stories contained within those questlines.  Some of them are bigger-picture ones, others are just there for flavor, but glossing over it means you might miss out on some cool bits of lore.

Have fun! There is plenty out there that can be tied into your RP.  Look for fodder for new storylines, or the continuation of old ones.  Ashenvale was hard for Davien to return to; she hadn’t been back there since her brother’s death nearly four years ago.  I wouldn’t quite say she put his ghost to rest, but she came to better terms with what occurred as she traveled through the forest.

So, one long journey done.  Now come the next RP achievements for her: Well Read and The Schools of Arcane Mastery.

Your turn!  What achievements or titles are you after for your characters because they fit with their stories?