Posts with tag rare-spawn

I was taking my main through the new set of Northern Barrens quests recently when I found myself running across rare spawn mobs a lot. This in itself isn't all that surprising; you'll run across rare spawns pretty commonly whenever zones aren't occupied by eager levelers. I saw Elder Mystic Razorsnout, Swiftmane, and for the first time ever, Humar the Pridelord. Humar is well known as a popular hunter pet, and until Wrath, he was the only black lion in the game.

And that got me to thinking: What is the game's most famous rare spawn? If I had to settle on one, my vote would be the Time-Lost Proto Drake, which has driven legions of players to the nuthouse in an endless struggle to find it, let alone kill it. Close behind would probably be Loque'nahak, another famous hunter pet. Curiously, it feels like most of the game's really well-known rare mobs are actually fairly recent additions to the game, although people who played during classic WoW might disagree.

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This week we continue our series on World of Warcraft's most entertaining achievements. This is the full series to date, if you're just catching up with us:

• OverAchiever: Pure Win
• The 25 most entertaining achievements, #25-21
• The 25 most entertaining achievements, #20-16
• The 25 most entertaining achievements, #15-11 (today's post)

Last week we discussed a set of achievements likely to drive the average player to the poorhouse. This week, in the spirit of consoling people who may not necessarily have a Traveler's Tundra Mammoth in their immediate future, I'd like to present a series of 5 achievements where at least one of the following is true:

• They're an unusual means of making gold in a way people wouldn't necessarily expect, or:
• It would be almost impossible not to make a pile of gold while doing them.

Now, a disclaimer; the most obvious picks here would be achievements like Got My Mind On My Money or The Bread Winner, but they're more a record of your previous looting and questing rather than being something you really have to go for consciously. I'm on the lookout for slightly more interesting ways to grow rich from achievements that are not so directly concerned with moneymaking:

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's edition of The Queue is a pretty short one, but it's an important one. I'm making a change to the format of this column, which will be explained in our very first question of the day. Why is it so short? When you read the answer to the question, you'll understand. I just ran out of steam after pulling that off.

elstor asked...

"What's with the music lately? Why did you have to start this?!"

It's something we did for giggles once, people liked it, we kept doing it just for kicks. I'm pretty bored of it though! We should pick a new Whatever of the Day instead of songs. Extreme Stunt of the Day?

Read this edition of The Queue while doing a kickflip out of a burning building and through the moving blades of a helicopter, then land in the middle of the ocean where you will wrestle a shark. While covered in bees.

One of the more time consuming set of achievements to get is the rare spawn killing achievement, if only because you need to compile information on every spawn, then head over to their spawn point and wait, then hope you grab the monster before someone passing through sees the Silver Dragon and gets the loot gleam in their eye.

We can't really help you with the last two, that's up to you. What we can do is help you with the first. For the Northrend achievement, Frostbitten, that we have a map submitted by tipster Mike, player of Paksenarrion on Bonechewer. It's a hand color coded map of Northrend that shows where each require rare spawns. It's pretty basic, and Mike admits he took most of spawn information from sites like Wowhead and Thottbot and has only managed to find about half of them himself, but it's a nice start.

Myself, I doubt I'll ever seriously pursue Frostbitten unless It's the absolute last achievement I have to work for or some such. Still, for those of you who seek the bragging rights that come with a massive luck-based time sink, maybe this map will help. And if nothing else, Northern Exposure only requires you kill one of the rare spawns, so knowing thier spawn points can at least help you keep an eye out while you quest and pick up that quick achievement.

I don't know if we've mentioned this before, but even if we have, it's interesting enough to put out there again, I think. There is a dragon in the expansion that can be soloed, and drops a epic flying mount at 100% drop rate -- all you've got to do is find him. A few people have already nabbed the mount, and lots more are on the hunt right now. The mob in question is the Time-Lost Proto Drake: it's a rare elite spawn (but as I said, it's possible to solo it, especially at level 80) that shows up every six hours or so flying around the Storm Peaks. Unfortunately, none of the usual suspects have maps of where he's been seen yet, but we're hearing it's around the southern part of the zone. When he goes down, he'll drop the mount, a good chunk of gold, some Frostweave, and a random enchantment Talisman.

An interesting tactic on Blizzard's part -- on the one hand, this is definitely a big change from the huge questlines and rep grind from the netherdrakes: just kill this one dragon and you're guaranteed the mount. On the other hand, the rare spawn rate, and the fact that it is a 100% drop rate means there'll be a lot of competition, at first anyway, for the kill. But the good news is that the odds will only get better -- if you're willing to do some dragon hunting for a few hours and have some keen eyes for what's in the air, you could pick up one of the coolest flying mounts yet.