Breakfast topic: Best and worst rep grinds
by Elizabeth Wachowski 
May 26th 2007 at 8:00AM
I was farming in Netherstorm the other day when I heard an ongoing complaint-fest in general chat about the Consortium grind. It was "too long", "annoying" and "boring." Since the patch, I've heard the same thing about the Sha'tari Skyguard quests ("it's like Timbermaw all over again!")
Personally, I don't mind rep grinds -- they give you something to do solo, after all. But some are better than others. The easiest rep grind I've done is Sporeggar, by far. Since no one ever does it, they just put their Fertile Spores and plant fronds on the Auction house, where I can pick them up cheap. The whole thing was basically an afterthought, and that Primal Earth to Water transmute has been one of my most consistent moneymakers as an alchemist. The Shrouding Potion has the potential to be interesting, too.
Worst? Well, I never did Timbermaw all the way, and as Horde, I haven't had the opportunity to do the Wintersaber Trainers, a rep grind apparently so painful that it has its own support group. But I'll have to say Cenarion Circle. I only did that up to revered, and I will still say that I never want to see another fricking silithid or cultist as long as I live. I still have the piece for the AQ20 dagger in my bank, left unfinished just because of my pure hatred for this faction. Stupid hippie night elves and tauren ...
What's your favorite and least favorite rep grind? Which factions do you think could use better rewards? Should faction rewards be competitive with items from raids and dungeons?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Factions
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Argent May 26th 2007 8:23AM
i've done quite a few of them. i just roll my eyes and laugh at people who think timbermaw is hard. it really, really, really isn't. even after they nerfed the rep you get form killing the mobs in winterspring and felwood, it's still a pretty sedate grind that you can do by farming the beads or whatnot at a pretty brisk clip.
i did it in under 2 weeks oon a holy paladin..
consortium? hardly. the zaxxas badges drop a plenty and if you grind the nagrand town reps and just keep the ogre beads, you'll get there pretty fast. i hit exalted with the kuernei in about 10 days and consortium 2 days later. again, mostly solo'ing on a non-dps class spec'd for raid healing.
i finished wintersaber the weekend before 2.1 and yeah, it's right up there as worst goes. it's solitary, dull and monotonous. 3 minutes of whacking bears folowed by 4 minutes of riding (5 if you're not a paladin). repeat this 513 times (more for non-humans.)
before BC, grinding steamweedle cartel faction to exalted was about the nuttiest thing i did -- took nearly 5 weeks of 2-4 hours a day grinding out ithe middle of nowhere (tanaris.) it's a bit easier now because you can free knott in DM north fairly readily now and that's pretty good faction.
speaking of DM -- shen'drelar. if you didn't have exalted before BC, you're pretty damned boned now.
hydraxian waterlords was a horrific grind, imo -- took nearly forever for no real good rewards.
cen circle was one of my least favorite grinds, even though i did it fairly quick (finding out the timing and spawn points of the prophet = mega-rep.) ther'es a ton of stuff in silithus to give you rep -- and almost all of it seriously un-fun after about the first time.
by and large, i've had no complaints about all of the 2.0/2.1 factions -- pretty easy grinds for the most part. skywing imo can either be pretty gind-ish or pretty casual -- just do the daily quest if you want the latter. that said, i actually thought the rewards for killing terokk did in the end justify the time invested (read: epic dropped, we got paid.)
ErsatzPotato May 26th 2007 9:24AM
Kurenai has got to be the easiest rep in the game. Get points all the way to exalted killing ogres. Ogres which drop Consortium rep items which themselves are good to exalted.
Four in one: the cash for epic flying mount, two exalted, and XP to reach level 70 in an easy grind. Can do it barely looking at the screen. Though probably won't get both exalted before 70 + epic cash. Then again, most don't need exalted in both.
Spore is easy but the end is dull as dirt. Good thing very few class/professions need the few exalted items.
Timbermaw is miserable. It is Spore where the entire last third is worth 1 rep a mob. (Assuming you didn't save all the quests, of course.) Not difficult but *long*. Cenarion Circle and Hydraxian, agreed, both suck.
Seem to be two types of rep grinders: those who want the grind on instance runs and those who want it out in the world. I'm the second type, so I can do it while reading a short story or watching TV, only half there. If I screw up no one but me gets a repair bill. Instance means I've got to pay attention and *that* makes a grind extra grindy for me.
Merus May 26th 2007 9:36AM
I am uncomfortable with calling a grind 'best'. After getting to neutral - just neutral! - with Timbermaw, if I'm ever stuck with having to grind like that again or else be out of things to do, I'm just going to quit.
Rhys May 26th 2007 9:56AM
Getting Revered with Thorium Brotherhood solo was pretty bad, weeks of stealth mining BRD for Dark Iron ore.
Michael May 26th 2007 11:14AM
Steemweedle Cartel after lvl 60 is awful, if you're not exalted by then, you will never be.
I hope some of these reputations in Azeroth become meaningful again soon. Like making new players grind Argent Dawn rep again in the second ex-pac or adding Steamweedle rep for Area 52 so old players get new quests to "finish" old grinds and new players can recycle some of our discarded content.
jess May 26th 2007 11:27AM
Hydraxian waterlords is easy if you're doing regular MC runs. But there's no real reward for it.
I wish there was non-instance options for some of the rep grinds in BC. With Aldor or Consortium you can find mobs that drop things and farm those in half hour gaps but with Shatar and Lower city you need to run instances to get reputation up.
And I was pretty annoyed that the Cenarion Expedition is a separate entity. I already spent a lot of time ingratiating myself intot he Cenarion Circle, shouldn't that carry over in some way?
Matt Park May 26th 2007 11:45AM
By FAR the worst rep grind is the bloodsail buccaneers. The only way to improve faction with them is killing Booty Bay citizens (the highest of which is 25 rep, which mean you'd need ~600 kills from hostile to friendly) which completely hoses your standing with all goblins in the world, which leads to TONS of crap you can't do.
And your reward for killing ~600 Booty Bay bruisers (lvl 67) and having every goblin in Azeroth put you on their KoS list? A parrot.
acariquara May 26th 2007 12:21PM
Yeah, but it's a RED parrot.
/sarcasm off
Baluki May 26th 2007 12:23PM
The friggin' Cenarion Circle and Argent Dawn. I had the pieces for my CC weapon for a loooong time, but was never able to get it. I got my Brood of Nozdormu rep to Exalted...you'd think the damn druids would've been a bit more grateful that I took out their greatest enemies.
And the Argent Dawn...augh! I didn't get to do much Naxx, but I did do a ton of killing for Bone Shards and Savage Fronds and all that crap. You wind up killing 50 of something just for like 20 rep points. I got to Revered, but I couldn't go on.
HalcyonGT May 26th 2007 12:51PM
All of the new content rep grinds with patch 2.1 are a complete waste of time IMHO.
Skyguard = grind rep for trinkets & a flying fish?! Are you kidding me? Where's the weapons and gear?!
Ogri'la = There is one single solitary page of rep rewards to choose from and they're all crap. As a warrior...the shield that they offer has lower stats than the tanking shield that drops off Ambassador Hellmaw in Shadow Labs. WTF is the point? Where's the GOOD weapons and gear??
Consortium = LOL. Seriously. There is no point to getting rep from these guys at all. No keys...just gems, that at one point the real benefit was getting them in the mail every month. The quality of which depended on your rep. Now thats not even in place any longer. Where's the GOOD weapons and gear???
By far the only one that seems halfway worth it is the Netherdrake faction. I have my own cross to bear with that as not being able to start the "new" chain until you have 300 riding skill is ridiculous.
Not to mention Blizzard's "claim" to add more soloable content...but right off the bat for Ogri'la you need a group of 5 just to get started with 3 consecutive quests.
But whatever, to each his own. I know I'll continue to grind with factions for Heroic Keys and my 1h Sword from Honor Hold. But I can't be bothered with the new content.
wei May 26th 2007 4:20PM
Winterspring rep is probably the hardest one I'm doing right now, mind numbingly slow and painful.
it has gotten a lot easier though.
the worst rep however is probably honor hold. no one wants to take a rogue to shatt halls for some reason.
tizravis May 26th 2007 5:35PM
Reputation grinds are the worst part about this game.
Shini May 26th 2007 5:45PM
I know I'm currently loving the new stuff. Just getting into the Skettis area, past all the annoying intro quests. I haven't been lucky with drops in blade's edge, but the dragons and demons are amusing, as are the memory-game things. Hoping to find a 'depleted badge' out there, since most tank druids worth anything would buy it. ^_^
The best, though, is the new Consortium stuff at the Ethereum grounds. Easily soloed until the 5-man keys are made, but even after that I find myself opening the single-key cells regularly. Plenty of rep per, you can often get 3-6 keys in an hour or two, and sometimes you even get a 'friendly' npc in one that doubles the normal amount of rep for that key's worth.
Best of all, though, is the loot. Greens AND blues drop from the prisoners, and for me it's been about a 50/50 ratio of them. All are level 70, so far. First, this means free enchanting mats and soloable prismatic shard farming, which is grand. But some of the blues are actually rather impressive in their own way... things like a ring with loads of stamina, a single elemental resistance, -and- 19 spell damage. Now, I'm geared in Kara and Gruul gear at the moment, so that seems pretty weak as-is, but hey, I'm not gonna turn down resist gear that doesn't completely gimp me. ^_^ And that's not all, just one of many blues I've seen so far.
You can also farm the keys in Bash'ir Landing, which also yields Apexis drops, motes of mana, tons of cloth, and decent cash/green drops. This is the first time I've enjoyed farming since... well, ever.
Ethereum jailbreaking for the win!
Argent May 26th 2007 6:55PM
if you want free epics, go form an arena team and take some losses each week for a few months.
the consortium gem packets are now in the game with 2.1 -- just fly over to the NPC at aeris' landing and collect it. i got 4 blue gems earlier this week.
hydraxian waterlords got a change to it's faction gains fairly late in molten core's lifecycle and the gains were upped considerably. before that, i had slogged to every MC raid for almost a year and was stillonly about 14k past revered. after that i hit exalted in something like 5 weeks. point being, though -- who still goes to MC now? :)
what makes steamweedle harder now, btw? i doubt the quests out in tanaris give any less rep. freeing knot in DM is more viable optiopn at 70 as well (350 rep, i think.)
skywing is a pretty solo-firendly grind if the place isn't horribly overcamped (almost all mobs give 5 rep; give cloth, quest drops, greens, etc -- terokk drops BoE items, so that's worthwhile.) i usually will just socialize with some friends on vent while rumbling though there for an hour or two and walk away with 1000 rep.
felunost May 26th 2007 9:59PM
tmbiermaw hold - was slow yes - but mobs were not that hard to kill so chuld watch TV - eat etc...
Kurenai pirtty simple - but I don't get that much time just to farm - questing/insting with guildys always seem to stop me farming ;p
As for the others I don't care about aldor or most of the others - might cange when I hit 70 (66 atm)
The rep grind for never drake sounds insane - but daily quests might fit better with the way I play the game ;p
rick gregory May 27th 2007 2:59AM
@10... Consortium isn't new in 2.1. And the dagger is a good OH weapon for a a rogue. If you're raiding Kara or doing Arena not so much, but then rep grinds are a way for solo players do get good rewards.
I'll do the Skettis quests because I can make 20g in less than 10 mins doing the bombing run and one other daily. The rewards suck aside from the mount, but meh... I don't HAVE to do the grind. In fact, if you don't like the rewards folks, don't do the grind...
Oh and Wei... SH with a rogue is a ton of fun... Oddly I'll probably get exalted with HH just because tailors want the pattern from the first boss and casters want the weapon. Best time? 53 mins, one death. Sadly I have all of the drops I want for my rogue from that place. Now I suppose I should do it on Heroic... (shudder)
Jashin May 27th 2007 4:02PM
Wintersaber and Thorium are the worse. Even if you raided mc, you had to be a minor to not blow a ton of cash to level that up to revered or exalted. AQ rep was just as annoying unless you were in a raiding guild that did 40 often. The badages and such grinds were just stupid. even for casuals
most of the other ones are just annoying. I don't understand why they make some easy as hell, and some just had as hell and for crappy rewards.
cluffer May 28th 2007 1:46PM
The Netherwing grind has not been bad at all.
I started on patch day and as of today, just hit revered. I have also earned 700g from turn-ins and about 250g in greens DE'd to dust. I also received the trinket +45 stam and combat pet.
I have done most daily quests but definitely not all every day. Exalted should be about a week away.
ben1778 May 29th 2007 10:53AM
Argent Dawn was pretty rough, but the Talisman of Ascendence was worth it.
Thorium brotherhood was a giant pain.
Juliah May 29th 2007 3:43PM
I loathe reputation grinds. Despise them. I didn't mind Timbermaw as much as I minded Argent Dawn, but that might be the general atmosphere of the areas. The Plaguelands are so depressing (understandably) that I think it felt longer and more tedious than it actually was.