Two mods for thwarting The Alchemist's Apprentice
by Alex Ziebart 
Mar 25th 2009 at 5:30PM
Ever since Wrath of the Lich King was in beta, my least favorite daily quest was The Alchemist's Apprentice from Zul'Drak, part of Troll Patrol. I could zoom through all of the other Troll Patrol quests without any stalling or hesitation, but this one would hold me up forever with its stupid Seasoned Cider Sliders and Muddy Mire Maggots. It never kept me long enough for me to fail the Troll Patrol timer, but it kept me long enough to be an extreme annoyance.At this point I've memorized where all of the weird little ingredients are in Finklestein's lab, but now that I've started reading Flame Shock, a Shaman blog, I realize how silly I've been. I don't use a lot of mods, so I never think to look for mods for very small, very specific things like a single quest, but it turns out I really should have, just like when most everyone was using Ogri'Lazy and I was still typing "blue red red red green red yellow" in /say to myself.
The blogger behind Flame Shock lists two different addons that are worth checking out for this quest: EasySerum and a much less elegantly named "Finklestein daily serum quest helper." Flame Shock has pictures of both in action, with EasySerum listing the location of the item you need in your chatbox and the second mod putting a dot on your minimap, showing the item's location visually. Your days of needing to start the quest because you ran to the wrong side? Over!
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Add-Ons, Quests
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
jaz Mar 25th 2009 5:49PM
1st time commenter, long time reader...
where was this post last week. I just got to doing this daily and yelling at my screen...this is such a pain in the ass quest.
thank you for highlighting this addon...installed, sanity restored
nieboh Mar 25th 2009 5:47PM
did you really type out the colors "blue red red " etc? I just lined them up as the corners of a square, numbered them 1 to 4 and typed "13323..." I don't think I would have had time to actually type out the full names. Even abbreviating to first letter was too much of a hassle.
Alex Ziebart Mar 25th 2009 5:48PM
Heh, no, I didn't type out the whole thing. I did type the first letter though. "b r y r r b g" and so on.
Kakistocracy Mar 25th 2009 6:26PM
Hmm, I never thought of typing it out, my strategy was just to remember what the order was each time, and that worked well enough for me, but I can see how keeping track could help.
LostOne Mar 27th 2009 2:58PM
Great timing on this topic, as I just started the crusade dailies on my DK the other day. I too was a b r y y y g r b typer for Ogri'la, but no way did I want to memorize the location of all the stupid alchemist ingredients.
Pat Mar 25th 2009 5:52PM
You know, you can just make a list of which ingredients are only available in one wing and keep it in front of you. That way, you never waste time running to the wrong wing.
Jay in Oregon Mar 25th 2009 6:08PM
That's exactly what I did, with highlights for the "rare" items (that only appear in one spot in the whole building).
Handy tip: the final ingredient in the recipe is almost always a "rare" item. Those items are always on the second from bottom shelf (except for one that is on the bottom shelf on each side, IIRC). So you should only have to check 4 or 5 shelves if you know which side to look for it on.
Coupled with the timer for looting going from 5 seconds to 1 second and you should have plenty of time to do the quest without jeopardizing Troll Patrol. I went from barely squeaking by to finishing it with at least 2 minutes to spare (depending on how the other quests went).
Foo Mar 25th 2009 6:09PM
That's all I did, notepad with unique ingredients listed for each side. The first three are always on both wings anyway, so it's only the last three you have to worry about.
͡҉ ҉̔̕̚̕̚҉ ~ ҉̵̞̟̠̖̗̘̙̜̝̞̟̠͇ Mar 25th 2009 6:14PM
Its easy quest
Balius Mar 25th 2009 6:16PM
Meh, I had trouble the first day, but I'm having no trouble anymore.
Unlike the Ogri'la daily, this doesn't have you take in and purge new information, so I can get by on memory alone. If you can't, I can understand the mods.
j Mar 25th 2009 6:18PM
Really? Is it that difficult to challenge yourself for a mere 4 minutes on a daily that you need to install a freaking add-on? This is lazy gaming at its finest.
Good lord people.
Kakistocracy Mar 25th 2009 6:29PM
lol, maybe they want to memorize other things, like is it the potassium or the sodium that starts on the outside of the membrane than goes down the concentration gradient during the action potential, or which are the four ways that ideas can agree or disagree with other ideas, and what are the forms or stages of making that comparison?
kabshiel Mar 25th 2009 7:49PM
I actually really enjoyed this quest. Yeah, it was difficult the first couple times, but I slowly memorized where everything is. I like that it's not your typical "Kill 10 Kobolds" quest.
Landoz Mar 25th 2009 6:22PM
I like that almost half the teams are DK-Free, guess people are finding efficient ways to kill them
Haarits Mar 25th 2009 6:22PM
Heh, wish I'd known about this. I've already hit Exalted with AC, and generally finished Troll Patrol with 8-10 minutes on the timer (epic flying FTW!) but this was often a sticking point. I think I missed the timer the first time I ran it because of this part.
If that Ogri'Lazy still works, I think I'll make use of it when I get to grinding that rep... when I did the Simon game the first couple quests (to help reach the Blade's Edge quest quota for Loremaster) I relied on memory alone. Never even occurred to me to type the order to myself!
Thanks for the reminder to seek out narrow-focus mods like these, to help get over some of the annoying (if small) hurdles in our daily grind!
negativegirl Mar 25th 2009 6:24PM
Warlock's Demonic Circle is very helpful (well, to warlocks anyway) with this quest when you're down to the last couple seconds. :)
Jay in Oregon Mar 25th 2009 6:34PM
I use Blink a lot. :)
Growlkitty Mar 25th 2009 6:32PM
Its an easy as daily you just need a memory on where the items are. I have done a few /facepalms when u go wtf on a simple item like seasoned cider sliders.
ustilago Mar 25th 2009 7:13PM
It's only hard the first few times.
Once you memorize where the few "unique" ingredients are, you shouldn't need a mod.
Plastic Rat Mar 25th 2009 10:34PM
Seriously people, embrace a challenge for once. We have yet to find the limit on how much the human brain can store.
Learning something like this is good for your memory for one and just.. geez, seriously? A mod? For Finklestein?
Come on folks... you keep on in this direction and ten years from now they'll be making games that play themselves.