Report Card: Phase 4 daily quests
by Daniel Whitcomb 
Apr 20th 2008 at 11:00AM
Phase 4 is now well underway, with about 50 servers having it unlocked according to us.gorgonnash.info at the time of this writing. There's still a few more things to unlock, but for the most part, the Sunwell Isle is complete, and what you see is what you get as far as resources and places to fight. So, once again, it is time to ask the question: How do these quests fit into your busy up-to-25-daily-quests-to-do lifestyle? They fit pretty well, actually!
Actually, even before we get to the quests, my favorite part of this phase may very well be that the Isle of Quel'danas is now more or less full service. Not only do you finally have a place to repair in the form of the unlocked badge vendor, but the newly opened Inn also has a mailbox. It seems like often find my bags overloaded with Motes of Mana, Sunfury Signets, stacks of Netherweave Cloth, and sundry greens by the time I'm done with the island, so being able to send that stuff over to my mule right away is a godsend. At that point, the quests are just icing on the cake, really.
Admittedly, it's some pretty tasty icing.
Your Continued Support
The simplest quest to come out of the whole deal is Your Continued Support. Give 10 gold, get 150 Shattered Sun Offensive reputation, once a day. On the test server, the 10 gold was supposed to go toward the building of a monument, but on live servers, the monument ends up appearing as soon as phase 4 starts, and she just takes your donations anyway. My guess is that this is a bug, but I suppose it's a bit late to fix it now. The monument is pretty good looking, at least.
The nice thing about this quest is that it's a quick way to get 150 reputation for us alt-o-holics. If you do nothing else with a given level 70 character in a day, you can head over to the Sunwell Isle and grab this quest and The Battle Must Go On. Go kill a few demons and turn in The Battle Must Go On, then go pay your 10 gold. Altogether, you'll have 400 Shattered Sun Offensive Reputation, an extra 10 silver, and whatever dropped off the demons, all in the space of about 10 minutes,.
So it ends up being a pretty decent way for those of us with way too many characters to grab a little bit of reputation for each character every day. I have to thank Blizzard for the idea.
Disrupt the Greengill Coast
I like this quest because it really rounds out the Greengill coast quite well. You're already headed over there to read a ley line and maybe grab some Darkspine Ore, but now you'll be able to do something with the sirens over there too. This is very nice, because before it was always a pain when I was riding down the coast, only to find myself slowed by a Frostbolt. It always felt like a pain to dismount and smack down the Darkspine Siren in question, but now I can kill them for this quest.
I very much appreciate that the Orb of Murloc Control appears to be a 100% drop this time around, especially with my previous frustration over the key drops for the Making Ready quest. It did take me 4 orbs to free enough Murlocs to complete the quest the first time that I did it, but I think I might be able to cut that down with a little more practice. Still, I also think they could stand to pack the Murlocs a little tighter, or give the orbs a larger radius.
Another thing I noticed on this quest is that the Darkspine Myrmidons seem to be dropping keys a lot more often. I killed about 5 of them in the time it took me to find the sirens for the orbs I needed, and got 3 keys. I don't know if I was lucky, or if they did actually bump the drop rate on the keys at some point, enough that I'm almost willing to retract my complaints on the matter from my previous review. Whatever it was, Greengill Coast was very lucrative for me.
I think the thing that really seals it for me, and makes me think that this quest will definitely be part of my daily rotation from now, is watching the freed Murlocs rush off to attack the nearest Naga they can find. It's sort of heartwarming to see them take up arms and fight for their freedom - only to be slaughtered mercilessly because the Naga are 10 levels higher than they are, but hey. This quest has made me feel a twinge of sympathy toward Murlocs, which is a miracle in and of itself.
If there's one complaint I could make, it's that the quest giver is initially sort of out of the way, off on a boat in the harbor. If you don't know she's there, you might miss her.
Discovering your Roots
Here's one more quest to round out the great Outland daily circle, sending you to a little area that sort of sits between Terrokar Forest and Hellfire Peninsula. Of course, probably the biggest reason to do this quest is that it unlocks the ability to buy epic gems with badges, but it's a good quest with great rewards even on its own.
I'm not sure if I was just lucky, but there were 2 or 3 flayers just waiting for me when I landed, and the first one dropped a gland. A Razorthorn Ravager aggro'd on me, but the gland quickly pacified it, and it became my pet, sending away poor Bonnie, my Hunter's pet pig.
From there, it was pretty easy to discover my roots. They were scattered around as little dirt mounds, generally guarded by another ravager. Most of the ravagers were actually bugged not to attack (which could get annoying - if all the ravagers get bugged, you won't be able to find one to dig for roots), so it was just a matter of standing next to a mound and using the command on the pet bar to cause your ravager to dig it up. It was altogether pretty easy and painless. Considering the reward includes a pack of Shattered Sun Supplies, this will be one that I will definitely be adding to my normal rotation.
Ata'mal Armaments
This last quest isn't technically a Phase 4 quest, but rather a quest that appears once you unlock Smith Hauthaa's badge gear in Phase 3. Still, it's worth doing. Not only do you get a good 18 gold or so, but the weapon oil you get is really nice for completing your Isle of Quel'danas dailies or heading into Magister's Terrace or the Sunwell Plateau. Since each bottle has 5 charges, you shouldn't have to worry about running out either. It's also a good excuse to head to Shadowmoon Valley and do a couple Netherwing dailies. I think they could probably stand to up the drop rates on the armaments a bit, and it gets very annoying dodging the Shadowsworn Drakonids, but once you get the swing of it, it's probably worth it for 18 gold and the oil.
This is probably more of a superstition thing I my part, but I find if you start at the top of the area instead of the bottom, the armaments seem to drop faster, so I generally just head into the building by the Ata'mal Crystal at the top of the Orc area, kill the four mobs in there, and work my way down the stairs, killing Orcs along the way.
Final Thoughts
So with Phase 4, we now have a giant smorgasbord of daily quests to do, all with their own individual perks and quirks. In the final analysis, I'd say this aspect of 2.4 has been a roaring success. There's a couple places where spawn rates or drop rates could be tweaked upward a little, but overall, the Sunwell dailies are a nice way to keep busy until WoTLK finally shows up.
Looking for more Sunwell Daily Quests? WoW Insider has you covered with walkthroughs of all the Sunwell Daily Quests (including PvP!) Or check out our overview of all the Sunwell Patch 2.4 goodness. Not enough? The WoW Insider Directory has the best of our guides and columns.
Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Quests, Making money
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Ugkul Apr 20th 2008 11:24AM
All this gold is going to lead to Zimbabwe like inflation...
Rob Wynne Apr 20th 2008 12:16PM
That's definitely my fear as well. i can easily make 250g in about 3 hours now, which is honestly absurd.
70s won't have trouble buying anything, and those of us willing to sugar daddy our alts will be fine, but I feel sorry for the *real* newbies leveling up for the first time without access to those resources.
Pzychotix Apr 20th 2008 12:52PM
Except... You're missing the fact that EVERYONE has access to the same resources. Newbies can do the same daily quests as you or me now, unlike the Ogri'la quests which had prerequisites.
You also have to realize, anyone could easily make more than 250g in 3 hours just by farming motes and selling them on AH. My average pace when I was farming was around 150g per hour, which is only slightly under what I'm doing with my optimal dailies path. The only reason why there's more gold coming in now is that the idea of dailies is more enticing to people than farming.
Dave Apr 20th 2008 3:08PM
but what are people spending their money on?
that's the real question. Since an epic flyer costs 5k, you'll see a lot of people just farming up for that. Once they hit exalted with SSO, the vast vast majority of people won't be doing these dailies any more. At least not every single one of them all the time. It may be easy to do them, but it isn't the fastest gold out there, nor the most profitable all things considered. I started out doing them on 3 alts as often as possible but once my mage hit exalted I've gone down to 2, and when my warrior hits exalted I'm probably going to slack on him too.
I'd personally rather run a heroic in 1.5hrs of my time than do dailies once there isn't anything significantly interesting to buy. And once you have epic flying, unless you need tradeskill materials, having a large amount of gold is basically a bit useless.
Bricorx Apr 20th 2008 4:53PM
@Pzychotix I think you're missing a couple of points.
First, farming motes for 150g/hour to sell on the AH and doing dailies for 150g/hour are 2 different things from an economic standpoint. With the former, the money you receive is comming from another player and is being cycled through the economy. With the latter however, the money is being generated out of thin air. So far, Blizzard has done a good job of keeping enough places where money can disappear as well, (such as buying a flying mount or purchasing something from an NPC) but over time, if any imbalance occurs, the surplus of gold in the economy will push prices up.
As for what Rob said about newbies, I believe he meant new players just starting the game that will have to purchase items off an inflated AH (and don't have access to money-making dailies).
I don't think this will affect new players much, but I am concerned that with the new dailies, there hasen't been much added to remove gold from the economy (the "of the Shattered Sun" title and the pay 10g daily quest are all I can think of right now) and that we may see inflation start to rear its ugly head.
I guess all we can do is wait and see what happens, and hope that Blizzard responds to any issues that may arise.
Zepto Apr 20th 2008 11:54AM
"the monument ends up appearing as soon as phase 4 starts"
Not on my server yesterday. It did hit 90% complete in less than 12 hours though
Lori Apr 20th 2008 12:39PM
Kind of off topic but I'm having a problem with too many items, like the Weapon Oil, only being useful in certain areas. They are taking up too many bag and bank slots but I hate to vendor or destroy them.
Is it time for special containers to hold these types of items or am I doing it wrong?
BillDoor Apr 20th 2008 1:54PM
My server is still on phase 2. :(
Tim Apr 20th 2008 2:14PM
Whether dailies or farming produce the same amount of gold, the introduction of all these new dailies means that a lot more people are becoming flush with $$$. Only a small minority of people will endure the dailiy grinding of farming a spot for motes, but everyone and their Auntie Mabel is doing the dailies.
Oneiromancer Apr 20th 2008 3:17PM
My server was around 40th place when the badge vendor unlocked...now we're down around 80th, and still have around 10% to go until Phase 4. Seems like everyone stopped doing dailies once the badge vendor opened up...and I'm sure our server isn't the only one. Kind of sad when you think about it. It's too bad that the quests in Outland that give the Shattered Sun Supplies don't contribute to advancing the phases, people still seem to do those for the chance at a badge.
Anteia Apr 20th 2008 6:27PM
I have to admit, I've quit doing 'advancing' dailies once it hit phase 4 myself. I never bothered to do the naga daily before because of how annoying it was on drop rate, and I won't bother to go back to them, even though the female one is 100%. when I do go to the isle, I do the demon killing, the blood elf killing, ley lines, and the two bombing (ships and dead scar). Of the outland quests, I always keep the residue one in my log 'just in case', sometimes do the readings in nagrand, and if I'm bored and always if the daily cooking is spiritual soup, and occasionally the tower daily if I happen to be in the right spot at the right time. I got SO burnt out on the dailies that for a few days after hitting exalted I refused to do any. I have a level 65 druid I'm working to level up, and a newly 70 hunter hordeside that needs money for her mount, so they're my main priority now. I don't do heroics or anything, so the only badges I get are from the packs, so unlocking the badge vendor or the epic gems? Not important to me at all. The raiders and heroic runners can worry about that. The general populace has what it needs on the isle now, as horrible as it sounds.
StoNe Apr 20th 2008 10:53PM
I think this is interesting only because inflation has not occurred. Primal mana are still for around 16g on my server.
I think this kind of screws up gold farmers also, who would pay real money for gold which can be earnt quickly?
But the main reason I like it....I can buy flyers for my alts, and I respec without complaining of the costs.
No one needs to buy mats anymore anyway, all crafted items are not as good as the badge loot.
Imagine blowing 8 primal mights and a stack of others on a purple 1H sword that does 81 dps :P
But yes inflation would be bad...imagine playing WoW for the first time and buying a greenhills of stranglethorn page for 5g!
Rahrnok Apr 21st 2008 10:23AM
Those who would buy gold will continue to buy gold regardless of the availability of gold making avenues. There have always been opportunities to make gold, relatively quickly, and there are certainly guides to help you. I'd imagine what's motivating those to buy gold is the same that motivates those to buy characters. Wanting to get to a certain point in the game, without having to put in effort. (See those who only ever played Doom with god mode on). What I appreciate is that it has opened up some easily accessible dailies for me that don't require an attunement. I had never done dailies until the SSO quests popped up, (which is pretty n00by of me, admitted), but these quests have given me the ability to start making some headway towards those epic flyers the rest of my grind-willing guild already has. But I don't think the ease of access to these quests is going to deter gold buyers. If anything, maybe just make it easier for the gold sellers to have more gold in their reserves.
-Rahr Visit me at Lock and Roll
Dave C Apr 21st 2008 3:05AM
StoNe, Primal Mana is probably not a good choice for measuring inflation - the Phase Wyrms people fight in BEM for the smuggled mana cell daily and the robots on the Isle that people fight for the reactivation daily both drop motes of mana, so there is a new influx of Primal Mana into the economy, which balances out the increase in money supply.
Better to look at the prices of Primal Life, Water,Shadow and Air, I don't think there's anything changed in 2.4 to cause an influx of any of those.
myselfo Apr 21st 2008 10:38AM
I'm not sure inflation from this causes problems. If 'most' people get lazy and have too much gold, then 'other' people (ie lower level) could still make a fortune on the auction house, selling to 'most' people. Ie everybody still gets access to money, even if prices rise from this? (it's just that you may now be forced to use AH to get at the money - but if you care about the inflation, they you are already using the AH to buy from..?).
Please explain again if there is a problem in this I'm missing?
(the only potential problem I see, is that npc-prices might be hurt by it, since everybody can then buy things that were supposed to be viewed as 'expensive'?)
Rob Apr 21st 2008 3:04PM
I agree with this. MMO economics are complicated, because the supply of gold and materials are infinite, only the labor is finite. Anyway I have noticed that on my little horde char, my wife and I play on Earthen Ring. Previously we couldn't get much money at all on that server; things such as skins and herbs just would not sell. I started playing again this week, and noticed that now just about everything sells, and sells well. I made 150g in an week at level 40. I don't brag, this isn't alot.
But still, the fact that the economy seems to be greatly stimulated is a huge thing for us. Now we can afford our level 40 mounts, buying new stuff on AH, and generally have more fun. In the past, we were severely limited by having very little available cash.
My theory is that there is a trickle down effect like so: Level 70s with epic mounts have so much money they dont know what to do with it. So they invest in powerleveling new professions and powerleveling alts, using the AH to level up cooking, first aid, and crafting professions. This drains all the stuff that lowbies have been trying to sell, and gives us more money to play around with (and donate to blizz via repairs and mount expenses).
So, yes, there is a huge influx of gold, the root cause of inflation. But there is right now also a large eflux in the shape of newly purchased mounts and powerleveled professions.
My thought is that once Wraith hits, we won't be able to (or wont have desire to) do the dailies any more, thus removing the gold source, and giving many sinks (powerlevel professions). For example I can just imagine that enchant past 375 would cost 10g per point initially. You'd have to buy the mats from AH and those level 70 greens sell for about 10g. So that right there is a huge source. There will probably be another level 80 mount that costs 10,000g or something ridiculous. Anyway, Wraith will fix the inflation issues.
Coherent Apr 21st 2008 1:24PM
They're pretty obviously doing the inflation thing on purpose, to destroy the assets of gold farmers. It's a direct attack on gold farmers; it floods the market with new gold which makes goldfarmer inventory worthless. To which I say, LOL! Kudos to Blizz.
It also makes the epic flying mount extremely accessible.
As for the Ata'mal Armament drop rate, it's pretty clear that loot drops (such as the armaments) depend on how often it has dropped from that mob before. So you want to kill the ones that haven't been hit as often as the others. They have a much better chance of dropping it. It is definitely not simply random.