Quick Auctions Poster (@Curse)
Insane in the Membrane. It certainly took me a while to get this over with. I can't give you an exact time span since I took a 6 month break in between and often didn't work on it, but I started somewhere around October '09 and finished at the second of August '10, that would be about 3-4 months in which I worked on it. I got interested in trying this after "accidentally" hitting exalted with the Darkmoon Faire because of all the decks I created for profit. I started slowly by stacking up cheap materials required in quests (such as librams, diamonds and junkboxes) before I would start the real grinds (which are the goblins in particular). A run down of the materials I bought prior to really starting the grinds:1 [The Greatest Race of Hunters] (50g) You can turn in one of these for 500 rep.
83 [Pristine Black Diamond]s (10.000g)
~20 [Libram of Protection]s (3.000g) Even though these are unique you can store them in a guild bank or mailbox.
~30 [Libram of Rapidity]s (3.900g)
~30 [Libram of Focus]es (3.750g)
~220 [Large Brilliant Shard]s (1.100g)
1400 [Heavy Junkbox]es (21.000g) Only a Rogue can farm these.
A lot of Runecloth, Rugged Leather and Rune Threads for [The Gordok Ogre Suit] (?g)
Many Darkmoon Faire deck turn-ins (a single epic deck turn-in can cost you 300g on my realm).
Total: about 50.000g excluding the Darkmoon Faire.
Expect to pay a lot more for Pristine Black Diamonds right now though (600g+ each on my realm) as many players will try to get insane at the end of the expansion. This would increase the cost by another 40.000g. I basically could have earned that if I sold the diamonds I already had so the real cost was more like 90.000g (plus another ~40k if I included the Darkmoon Faire). For more details about the gold / time cost check out this awesome chart at Saate.net!
Meanwhile I had quickly farmed Ravenholdt to 11999 / 12000 Honored by killing Syndicates, made myself a realm forum topic and read up a lot on all possible strategies at the links posted at Wowhead. When I looked at my overall Steamwheedle Cartel reputation being so close to Revered I decided to take the risk by doing it the "unconfirmed" way by not getting all reputations up simultaneously. I was willing to take the risk because if it worked I would be saving myself a lot of time.
I did a few test runs through Dire Maul and the pre-quests required to be able to do the turn-ins for Shen'dralar. I learned it was quite boring to do Dire Maul so froze my process with the Insane while doing other things such as maximizing my raiding performance, raiding itself, mount farming and playing the auction house. Eventually I took a break from the entire game for 6 months and upon coming back I was obviously demoted to a social in my guild. This gave me a lot of time to work on The Insane and so I did.
First I started killing pirates above Ratchet and Gadgetzhan but I found this to be extremely boring and after balancing out all 4 goblins cities again I went to do Dire Maul runs. This was a lot better.
Run in, kill Guard Mol'dar, feign death (or kill the dogs), loot the guard, rocket boots up the stairs avoiding all packs, switch to another set of boots to reset rocket boots timer (they don't share cooldown), loot chest, kill Guard Fengus and his backup and look for the book at the ground, open the door, rocket boots through this hallway while switching to another set again, run against the wall to avoid the spiders, kill the guard and his backup and then comes a conditional follow up. Do you have a [Gordok Shackle Key] right now and did any of the mobs you killed previous drop another (unique) key? Free knot, loot his cache, go up the stairs and loot the tannin basket and then go back to loot the other key and reset the instance. Do you have just one key? Free knot, loot his cache and continue to get a key for the next run. Do you have no key left? Go up the stairs, loot the tannin basket and clear the room where the new ogre spawns (as you will probably double pull most packs anyway). If these ogres still didn't drop a key then go up again, kill the guards at the door, open this inner door, kill the pack right in the middle of the path (unless you can feign death then you can skip them by walking around it) and then kill Captain Kromcrush and his backups. In case you still don't have a key run further into the large open area and pull the pack of ogres at the right, the left and the second right pack and run back to where you just killed the guard and pull the pack over there as well if they are still alive. Then start AoEing them all and loot the corpses. Still no new key? Start moving out and kill all ogres in your way. If you have already freed Knot this run then you can also skip this and hope for more luck the next run, otherwise I would advice you to kill every single ogre you see as you will probably eventually only have to wait for the instance cap to reset anyway. Some rare occasions you may get a run without a single key even after killing every Ogre but don't let that get to you, reset all instances and try your luck again. Ohh and don't forget to check the arena whenever resetting instances! The rares that spawn there can drop the [Orb of Deception] which can sell for a good 1.500g.I suggest stacking up [Ogre Tannin]s and delivering them around the end of the grind, they don't take a lot of inventory space and are a nice source of reputation. All in all this will take many hours until exalted but once you're used to it, it's not as bad as it seems. Just set yourself a goal by the end of the day and make sure to get it. If you did do Bloodsail Buccaneers first then this will take about 48 hours of pure play time (insane, right? :)).
After I hit exalted with the Goblins (earning "the Exalted" in the process) I started farming [Blood of Heroes] for [Libram of Rapidity] in Western Plaguelands and Eastern Plaguelands. To make this easier I installed GatherMate, GatherMate Data and Routes, imported the Blood of Heroes for both WPL and EPL, made a routes with Routes and then optimized it. If you follow the line you should be able to get plenty of bloods in no time. Remember if you did a full run through WPL or EPL and you couldn't find a single blood then try the other zone, chances are the other zone will be full with it. Once I had enough Blood of Heroes to use all my [Libram of Rapidity]s I farmed Stratholme and Scholomance for the [Frayed Abomination Stitching] and [Skin of Shadows] I also needed. Startholme is a very straight forward tactic. See this YouTube video how to do Scholomance quickly (tip: you can jump down to the right immediately after entering the instance, turn left twice and you're already in the right room).
Once I had obtained all the required items I went into Dire Maul North again, went to Lorekeeper Lydros to finish the quests (click NPC name for the route), popped my [MOLL-E] (you really need one, get a friend or hire somebody to pop it if you aren't an Engineer yourself) and started delivering every single libram I had in my mail. I made a quick macro to speed things up:/click GossipTitleButton4
/click QuestFrameCompleteButton
/click QuestFrameCompleteQuestButton
/click GossipTitleButton1
/click QuestFrameAcceptButton
And another macro to destroy the Arcanums as I was already exalted with Zandalar Tribe:
/run for bag = 0,4,1 do for slot = 1, 32, 1 do local name = GetContainerItemLink(bag,slot); if name and string.find(name,"Arcanum") then PickupContainerItem(bag,slot); DeleteCursorItem(); end; end; end
A day after also hitting exalted with the Shen'dralar (it took a few runs to the NPC as the duration of a mailbox is really short), I sent all [Heavy Junkbox]es I already had from an alt to my main and went to Fahrad to pop a new [MOLL-E] (get a friend or hire someone if you aren't an Engineer) and start delivering all these. I used the same macro to accept / complete the quests as for the librams but instead of destroying the quest reward, I sold it instead to the NPC on my Traveler's Tundra Mammoth. If you don't have this nor a [Jeeves] available then you can just adjust the macro above to delete the quest reward instead (change the text "Arcanum" into "Dusksteel Throwing Knife"). Tip: fill your bags with Junkboxes prior to going to the NPC and deliver these before popping a mailbox to save some time on the duration of the mailbox.After doing all this there was only 1 faction left to grind: the Bloodsail Buccaneers. Since I had done a lot of research to whether or not it was possible to do the achievement without having all reputations up simultaneously I figured that in order to maximize my chances it would be best to do this in one go, without relogging and most certainly without a server reboot. I asked a friend whether or not he was interested in helping (he'd come in a few minutes) and already started killing the puny Goblins. It didn't take long before I realized it was a pain in the ass to do as a Hunter so I logged my Paladin which is one a different account (thus allowing dualboxing) and grouped up with that. My friend later joined with his legendary Balance Druid and together we managed to get enough reputation to hit Honored within 4 hours. I got it with Goblins at hated. Yay!
Last word: the best guide I came across is this: Saate's Insane Guide. I recommend going through that.
Or all next to eachother;
Click to enlarge.
Insane in the Membrane - 02/08/'10
Since these (easy) achievements apparently contribute to the meta for the drake I'll post a link to the original screenshots:
Full House (25) - 01/06/'10
I've Gone and Made a Mess (10) - 12/30/'09
I've Gone and Made a Mess (25) - 12/30/'09
Boned (25) - 12/30/'09 (notice my opinion about our melee tactic to the left :<)
Glory of the Hero on my Paladin (with my main's mount humping her) - 12/22/'09
Something totally unrelated, but it shows what I have been busy with lately...
Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 Domination - 11/25/'09
A Tribute to Skill (25 Player) - 11/01/'09
A Tribute to Dedicated Insanity - 10/14/'09
I should have gone MM for 10% attack power :>
Swift Spectral Tiger - 9/25/'09
A Tribute to Insanity (10 player) - 9/16/'09
Twin Val'kur Heroic Mode (25 player) - 9/14/'09
Glory of the Ulduar Raider (25 player) - 8/27/'09