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The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: Been waiting an excrutiatingly long time for this
by Anne Stickney 
Mar 8th 2012 at 8:00AM
This week, I wandered into Karazhan and fought my way through the trash, marveling at the sheer number of green items that dropped -- even a Ritssyn's Lost Pendant for my troubles. I started to get my hopes up, thinking that this could totally be the run that I'd see the silly pony drop. Unfortunately, I messed up -- I killed Midnight before Attumen could hop on his back and start phase 2. I vanished, hoping that would reset things, but I was left with a dead horse and no loot. However, I still wasn't saved to the boss, so I ducked out of the instance, did a quick reset, and dove back in again with fully respawned trash. This time, I waited for Attumen to hop up on Midnight, but I was kicking myself because I was certain that if I hadn't messed up the green-filled run, I'd be riding around on a horse. That was totally the winning run that I screwed up.
Except, apparently, it wasn't. All it took was a reset, and approximately four years after I started randomly farming this stupid pony, he dropped. Now he's mount #143 in my collection. At first, I was filled with a huge sense of relief, and then it was replaced by a sort of empty feeling. After all, the solo trip to Karazhan was a weekly routine that I could count on. I got used to doing it. So ... what now? I have absolutely no idea.
What's the longest you've spent farming a single item? Is there one elusive pet, mount, or other goodie in WoW that still escapes your grasp? What do you do when that long sought-after goal is finally attained? And while we're at it ... what the heck should I farm now?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics
Reader Comments (Page 2 of 5)
Imoo Mar 8th 2012 8:09AM
Grats!!!! Anne i have heard you talking about it for a while not on AllThingAzeroth
Tohsterssbro Mar 8th 2012 8:13AM
Go for the Blue Proto-Drake
Eli Mar 8th 2012 8:17AM
This mount was the worst one for me to get. on my second time in kara ever, 2 weeks after dinging 70 during BC, it dropped. tied at 90 with a shaman, then rerolled an 88 against his 17.
absolutely hellish
benny.bosmans Mar 8th 2012 4:15PM
You know I farmed that one for 2 weeks and the horse dropped on me.
I know I was hated by the other guild members for they had been farming it for years... Lol
Most farming I did was for the Raven Lord, around 46 times.
I must be really lucky as I also had the Kel delar drop and the Shadowfang Keep.
Kezren Mar 8th 2012 8:20AM
I farmed Anzu for two and a half years daily to get the Raven. The Druid that I started farming him with got the mount a week in while I was visiting family for Christmas. I was livid. He's still apologetic. Finally it dropped for me after I no longer needed a Druid to go, everyone I know got a screen shot of my mount.
lanseb Mar 8th 2012 8:20AM
I know exactly what you mean by that feeling of emptiness! After farming an item for so long the process becomes part of one's gaming routine! I've so far obtained the Blue-Proto Drake, Raven Lord, White Hawkstrider, etc. Just like you I've been going to Karazhan every week for a long time now! Tuesday's run was a no-go but I will definitely be back next week :P
Batleth Mar 8th 2012 8:20AM
Dear Anne,
Congratulations on getting Midnight! If you want to find a new endeavor for your spare time on Tuesday nights, please come help me catch Mr. Pinchy.
BECAUSE I'VE YET TO SEE THE STUPID LOBSTER THINGY AND I'M TIRED OF PEOPLE TELLING ME THAT ALL ELEVENTY BILLION OF THEIR ALTS HAS A LEAST A DOZEN OF THEM.....
Spelio Mar 8th 2012 9:58AM
By far one of the most frustrating RNG related achievements. It took me almost 2.5 years to get that one done. Catching him was easy...getting him to cough up the pet was something else entirely. You have my sympathies.
Luotian Mar 8th 2012 8:23AM
Grats to you, Anne! Now, share some of that good Juju, will ya? I want my effing turtle mount for my turtle collecting nelf! All her armor is turtle themed, all her pets are turtled, she has both turtle non-combat pets...and I've been farming that stupid mount for at least a half hour a day since I saw one not too long after Lich King's release.
A guy in my guild got one the other day and I could have killed him.
Someone just give me that mount!
Chetti Mar 8th 2012 11:04AM
I've been working on that one on and off myself. My guild is a splinter off from another guild, so we had to start at the beginning with achievements and such (which has been SO much fun and so worth all the work of being involved since day 1 even though I wasn't part of their previous guild at all. With the excepting of being a voice in vent talking to a friend of mine while she and a few of the other guildies tried - and in less than a week succeeded - in getting me to server transfer). We held "fishing parties" on the weekends to get the fishing from pools achievement for the seafood feast recipe, as well as mats for said feast. I think we had 3 fishing days where the point was to fish in pools. I leveled fishing to 525 through exclusively (for the most part, stupid catfish!) fishing in pools. I saw 3 guildies get the turtle. I got no turtle. I spend some time helping with feast mats, most of the time in uldum getting catfish which don't have pools, but making sure to fish out EVERY pool I see along the way. Or in the highlands getting guppies or sagefishes (which NOW are in pools) for my stat food. No turtle. Lots of fish tho, no turtle.
greenbeans Mar 8th 2012 11:58AM
Had a friend who got the turtle *and* Mr. Pinchy on the same day. He was just power leveling through fishing and got them both. Grrr, not fair.
Bobby Earl Mar 8th 2012 12:58PM
Took me just under 21K eligible casts to get the turtle mount. I had finally given up on it but happened to catch it while I was idly casting into Valgarde nodes while waiting for some guildies to zone in for a UK run. Maybe that's the key. It will pop for you when you finally stop looking for it.
Marbles Mar 8th 2012 8:26AM
The Fiery Warhorse too is top of my list, but has been taunting me recently. Had it on my Hunter (who is main alt) and my Mage (a random alt) twice in 3 weeks, but my main is still going.
Other than that, last obtained "rare" was the Timelost Proto-Drake, but that was a random visit. I tried camping, but didn't get me anywhere except bored/frustrated, so contented myself with random flyovers.
Kara is the last of the soloable, non-camping mounts I have left. The others are either campers (Uldum Camel, Vash'jir Seahorse, Deepholm Drake), or unsoloable for me (most the achievements, plus Stonecore, Vortex Pinnacle, Zul'Gurub Panther, Ashes of A'lar, etc).
If going to companions too, the main soloable one I'm missing is the Baradin Fox Kit. Killed loads of them in the early weeks, then got bored and left it alone. Was only recently that I remembered it, and tried again. No joy though.
ziggler Mar 8th 2012 10:46AM
If that mage alt is well geared you can solo both normal stonecore and vortex for the mounts, been doing it since abou ilvl 388. It does take a lot of kitting and/or waiting for invisibility to avoid the trash.
exogenesis. Mar 8th 2012 8:30AM
I'm not the farming type. I try, but often, I just get bored and stop doing it. I got the White Hawkstrider because I dragged to MGT by my friend to continue farming rep. I didn't go there FOR the mount because I knew it'd never drop if it did. I farmed for Rivendare's Deathcharger, and if it hadn't dropped on my third run, I likely would've got bored and started doing something else. I tried to farm for the Ravenlord, and made it to two months' worth of consecutive weekly runs before I just.. stopped.
I'm really not very good at the whole farming thing.
Killik Mar 8th 2012 8:30AM
It's definitely an unsettling transition when something goes from 'the mount I want and am working hard to get' to 'mount #147 on the list'.
I have a very low threshold for farming the game. I don't find the grind fun and the reward is generally such a transient feeling of satisfaction - particularly mounts and pets. I'd rather goof around and have fun with friends.
Tupinikim Mar 8th 2012 8:38AM
Actually, last tuesday, after four and a half years of bad luck farming, i got my hands on a sweet raven lord, dropping from anzu on shetekk halls.
It was already 11pm and i was doing my daily run:
Blessed medallion of karabor > Shetekk halls > Magister's Terrace > Tabard of the Argent > Utgarde Pinnacle
i was even used to just grab the loot from Anzu and go on to kill the next boss for some gold purposes, when i saw the Reins of the Raven Lord and gave it a HUGE scream of hapiness (something like WOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, i guess). My wife looked at me with some huge and scared eyes and i hugged her and told i got Anzu. She then screamed together with me and then we heard my neighbour say "grats man!".
I mean, i got the original bear from ZA, the tiger from ZG. But i NEEDED anzu. Oh, you bastard, you are mine now. MWAHAHAHA!
DarkWalker Mar 8th 2012 8:39AM
I flat out refuse to farm for anything random. Not even raid gear.
I can put up with a multiple month farm to get a rep mount. I can't bear a week long farm to get a rare drop.
So, for all effects, I pretend anything only obtainable through luck don't even exist. The few rare drops I have among my characters were obtained by sheer luck, or else because I was farming the content for other reasons (such as Reins of the Raven Lord dropping when I was farming Sethekk Halls for the rep).
razion Mar 8th 2012 8:47AM
One recipe, one druid, seventeen months of fish barrels. It was the ONLY recipe I needed for the Cook title. Guess which one it was? Stormchops. Every week I went to Shattrath and did the cooking daily. But that wasn't enough to get Stormchops. The Dalaran cooking dailies also had a chance to give most of the recipes, so I started doing those too. For just under a year and a half I did the Rokk's dailies. At the beginning, I got a recipe every day. I was expecting to get Stormchops on that last day, but it never came. And every week after that, it never came. Week after week I did those dailies. I swear I must have collected mana-berries at least a hundred times from those eco-domes in Netherstorm. I probably would have been driven insane if A: I wasn't a druid, B: I didn't have swift flight form, and C: I didn't have the WoW Insider Podcast. But I had all of them, and for a year and a half I managed to open those fish barrels with no recipes, looking for that elusive final recipe to get my title. For several weeks I went against Wowhead and tried doing the meat barrels, despite the chance being lower to get them, thinking that maybe I was selecting the wrong barrel. To no avail. But once I went back to those fish barrels--well, not really right when I went back, a few weeks of dailies later, I got the Stormchops recipe. I was so happy.
I was, however, melancholic. Despite how frustrated I was every time I got that mana berry daily, it had become part of my routine. And then it was over.
I would say I had a similar experience with the Molten Front. Once I finished all the achievements associated with the dailies and got everything I wanted from the reward vendors, there was no reason to keep doing it. This made me incredibly sad because once you actually get *into the Front, and I mean really in there,* they were some of the best dailies I had ever done. I enjoyed a lot of the references to lore the dailies had, and I would find myself mulling over something different every time I went there.
I also felt sort of bad after I got my Cooking Hat from Dalaran. For a long time it was my reason for binding my Hearth there, even when the Org portal wasn't back up there. I didn't really want to be inefficient, but I loved Dalaran so much from all my days in Wrath I didn't really want to love. I particularly liked the Cheese For Glowergold daily, and I thought to myself that that was just one less thing I could do while waiting for a dungeon queue.
Neirin Mar 8th 2012 8:54AM
Raven Lord. It's been months since the last time I did a run to try and get it, but at last count I was a little over 500 Anzu kills. Worked on it from BC when I was one of less than 10 druids on the server that could summon Anzu all the way through till around when firelands dropped. I finally just decided that it was unattainable for me, but that was ok. I had built up the awesomeness of having this mount in my mind for so long that I suspect I'd be disappointed if I actually got it.