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Insane In The Membrane
Achievement:
Insane In The Membrane
Achievement rewards:
Title: The Insane
Note: This guide was written by
Camthalion - Blackhand - US
and is being used here with his permission.
Guide to the Insane by the Insane
I'm writing this guide for a couple reasons. First of all, having done it on my server for when the patch hits I'm being flooded by PMs asking me the best way to go about it.
Second, I looked through a lot of guides and strategies while working on this; every single one of those guides was written by someone working on it but not having completed it, and quite frankly a lot of the info being put out is flat out wrong or a very inefficient way of doing it since they had yet to try it out.
Third, I came up with some great ideas to help with this achievement that I have yet to see anyone else mention. Thank me for it later.
Insane in the Membrane
If you don't know what I am talking about, a new meta achievement is being added to the game in 3.1, called "Insane in the Membrane". It grants the title "the Insane". The requirements are as follows:
Honored with Bloodsail Buccaneers
Exalted with Booty Bay
Exalted with Gadgetzan
Exalted with Everlook
Exalted with Ratchet
Exalted with Darkmoon Faire
Exalted with Ravenholdt
Exalted with Shen'dralar
All of these requirements must be met AT THE SAME TIME, hence the insane part.
It is important to note that there is nothing really hard about any of this. The insane part refers to the amount of time, farming, repetition, and gold you will need to invest in this. You also may need to hire out other players for portions. But if you want to work on this gradually, you will achieve the same title as those of us grinding this out quickly, and most likely at a fraction of the cost.
Also, this guide is written from the perspective of a
lvl 80 Night Elf
. If you are lower than lvl 80, you'll have to adjust the instance strategies to fit your level. Also, humans add 10% to their rep gains.
Read through this guide before you being, or skim it at least, if you plan on using it for your run at this. Some of these reputations you will be working on simultaneously.
What you need access to
1. lvl 50+ Rogue: This does not mean you have to have one on your account. At some point you will need a lvl 50+ rogue to pickpocket mobs for you. This can be your own toon or hiring a rogue to do it.
2. Inscription at lvl 400: Like the above rogue, this does not have to be on your account.
3. Herbalist at lvl 290: This can be as simple as buying the herbs off the AH, but a lvl 290 herbalist will have to have put them there.
4. A lvl 225 Skinner: Needed for
Rugged Leather
5. Lvl 250 Tailor: For
Bolts of Runecloth
6. Bank toon: Most of us have one already.
Optional:
1.
Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
: For access to a vendor to sell items easily.
2.
Direbrew's Remote
: For quick access to a potential darkmoon card.
3. An engineer with
MOLL-E
: For rapid turn ins.
Preparation
Park your bank toon at a capital city with an AH. You'll be using him/her/it a lot.
Decide which toon you want the title on. This sounds like a no-brainer, but if you decide to change toons later, you'll regret it.
Darkmoon Faire
I'm listing this first because it should be the first faction you focus on. This is not going to be a straight grind, but rather you will be working on it the entire time via the AH and other toons. This will also most likely cost you the most to gain rep with.
It is also important to note that almost all of your rep gains are limited to when the Faire is in Elwynn or Mulgore. I'll mention the differences when they come up.
From Neutral to 2500 Friendly:
Everyone starts out at Neutral with the
Darkmoon Faire
. The first portion of this faction grind should consist of item turn ins; save your decks for later. The Faire must be up for this part of the grind.
Turning in the following items will increase your rep 250 at a time:
Small Furry Paw
x5 until 500 Neutral
Torn Bear Pelt
x5 until 1100 Neutral
Soft Bushy Tail
x5 until 1700 Neutral
Vibrant Plumes
x5 until 2500 Neutral
Evil Bat Eyes
x10 until 2500 Friendly
Glowing Scorpid Blood
x10 until 2500 Friendly
If you are a leatherworker, engineer, or blacksmith, you also have another set of options. You must have the profession to be able to turn these items in.
Leatherworker:
Embossed Leather Boots
x3 until 500 Neutral
Toughened Leather Armor
x3 until 1100 Neutral
Barbaric Harness
x3 until 1700 Neutral
Turtle Scale Leggings
x1 until 2500 Neutral
Rugged Armor Kit
x8 until 2500
Blacksmithing:
Coarse Weightstone
x10 until 500 Neutral
Heavy Grinding Stone
x7 until 1100 Neutral
Green Iron Bracers
x3 until 1700 Neutral
Big Black Mace
x1 until 2500 Neutral
Dense Grinding Stone
x8 until 2500 Friendly
Engineer:
Copper Modulator
x5 until 500 Neutral
Whirring Bronze Gizmo
x7 until 1100 Neutral
Green Firework
x36 until 1700 Neutral
Mechanical Repair Kit
x6 until 2500 Neutral
Thorium Widget
x6 until 2500 Friendly
From 2500 Friendly to Exalted:
Once you have hit 2500 Friendly, your only source of rep is from turning in completed decks, Yes, there is a small quest you have a chance to get from the fortuneteller, but it is not worth the time for such a small rep gain.
There are a total of 16 decks worth 350 rep a turn in. These can only be turned in when the Faire is up.
Beasts
,
Warlords
,
Portals
, and
Elementals
from Classic WoW.
Furies
,
Storms
,
Lunacy
, and
Blessings
from Burning Crusade.
Chaos
,
Prisms
,
Undeath
, and
Nobles
from Inscription in WotLK.
There are a total of 4 decks worth 25 rep a turn in. These can be turned in at any time.
Rogues
,
Swords
,
Mages
, and
Demons
from Inscription.
Your bank toon will do almost all of the work for you on this faction. The Auction House should be searched for decks and cards in the morning, afternoon, evening, and at night. I understand most of us have work or school or whatever that prevents us from doing these searches, I am simply pointing out that the bulk of AH items are added at those four times.
Greater decks:
At this point, you must decide just how much 350 rep is worth to you. The prices on decks will vary greatly from server to server plus time of the month. Decks and cards will be the most expensive during the week of the Faire. Prices will be their lowest at the midpoint, two weeks after one Faire and two weeks before the next.
For this section I am going to use the price of 320 gold per deck for my examples, only because it is an easy number to work with.
Like many crafted items, the sum of the parts are less than that of a whole if you are patient and watchful. You may pay 320 gold for a deck, but if you do it one card at a time you may end up paying only 100 gold total.
Take your deck price you decided on and divide by eight to get your price per card. At my 320 gold price, that equals 40 gold per card.
Have your bank toon do a search of the AH for these cards using "of beasts", "of portals", etc. Buy as many cards as you can afford that are at or below your price. At this point you are not worried about getting a complete deck at one shot, you are working on putting together as many cheap decks in the long run as you can.
Without a doubt, your first few trips to the auction house will get you many different cards from many different decks. This is fine. If you stick to this strategy you'll start putting together decks quite rapidly after only a few days. At the peak, I was completing 10 decks a day.
Turning in these decks require the Faire to be up. For Classic and Burning Crusade decks, the trinket you get as a reward is unique, so you can only have one in your bags or equipped at a time. There may be times when you are turning in three of the same deck, so be sure to sell off the trinket for that deck first.
Nobles Deck
The only exception to this strategy is the Nobles deck. As the trinket from the reward is so useful, these decks sell for thousands of gold. If you manage to complete one of these decks, sell it for funds. If you plan on using the trinket yourself, then by all means turn in the deck. Otherwise it is too valuable to turn in for 350 rep.
Aces
Each of the Greater decks requires an Ace from that deck in combination with the other cards. These Aces are obtained from two different ways depending on the deck, either from bosses or from Inscription.
Classic Aces are from specific bosses.
Ace of Warlords
will drop from
King Gordok
in Dire Maul North (look to the Steamwheedle Cartel section for details on this).
Ace of Portals
will drop from
Darkmaster Gandling
in Scholomance (look to the
Shen'dralar
section for details on this).
Ace of Beasts
will drop from
The Beast
in Upper Blackrock Spire; the time involved compared to the drop rate makes this undesirable to farm.
That leaves only the
Ace of Elementals
, which drops from
Lord Incendius
at about a 7% drop rate. If any of your toons have
Direbrew's Remote
, this is an easy boss to farm. Using the remote will send you straight to the bar. At the bar, either talk to the
waitress
(if you completed
her quest
previously) or fight
Phalanx
to open the door. Once the door is open, walk down the steps and jump over the ledge to land within feet of
Incendius
. From the time you use the remote to the time you kill
Incendius
is less than 2 minutes.
Anytime you are about to hearth, if you have the remote and 2 mins to spare, take a quick sidetrip to BRD to try for an Ace. If the toon with the remote is not the one you are trying for the title with, simply log him out after killing Incendius. After 45 mins of being logged out, the instance will reset itself and the toon sent back to the bar. Log him back in for another quick kill. If you don't use the remote to get there, logging out for 45 mins will still reset the instance but the toon will be sent back to the main entrance.
Burning Crusade Aces are from lvl 70 bosses. These bosses are found in
Shattered Halls
,
Steamvault
,
Shadow Labyrinth
,
Botanica
,
Mechanar
, and
Arcatraz
. The heroic version of any Burning Crusade instance also contains these bosses. I found the drop rate for these aces to be low enough that I skipped farming on these.
As these two sets of Aces are from bosses, you may have to pay a slightly higher price to get them from the AH. That price is up to you, but there are other ways to get these aces that I will mention shortly.
The Aces from WotLK are all from inscription. It should be noted that there is an equal chance for an ace to be created compared to any other card in the deck. So if you see the two through eight of a WotLK deck priced at 30g a card, the Ace should be around 30g as well. Don't fall for the trap that the Ace is more rare from these decks when it is not.
Lesser Decks
The lesser decks are all created with inscription for 25 rep each. These decks can be turned in anywhere at any time.
As the rep value of these decks is one sixteenth the value of the Greater, divide your asking price by sixteen as well. Using our 320 gold example, dividing by sixteen results in 20 gold per lesser deck.
You can further divide this number by the amount of cards you need per deck to get a per card value. 5 cards are needed to complete the
Demons
and
Mages
, 4 for the
Swords
, and 3 for the
Rogues
.
Like the Aces from the other inscription decks, the aces from the lesser decks are no more rare than the others in the set.
Your bank toon should search for "of demons", "of mages" etc. while looking for the greater decks and cards as well. You will piece these decks together just like the greater decks, one card at a time over a period of time.
Herbs and Inks
If you are interested in saving even more gold, you can start searching for the herbs and inks that are required to make the various cards. Any card can be made using inscription provided you have the right mats and the right Inscription skill, though it will be random.
Familiarize yourself with the herbs and inks needed to make the various cards. I found that herbs/inks required to make the lesser decks and the Classic decks were viable options. Beyond that, the mats became worth more than the card they would make so it wasn't worth it. Like the cards and decks, the price of these mats will vary from server to server, so you may be able to cheaply make any and all cards.
There is also the chance you can create a Nobles card if you are trying for one of the other three WotLK cards. The cards sell for hundreds of gold each so you may find that this ends up being profitable in the long run.
Trading
You are going to find yourself with "extra" cards at various times. If you find that you have an abundance of, say, a
Two of Chaos
, you can try selling it to fund your rep grind, or you can trade it. It will become evident pretty quickly who is going for this title. If you keep in touch with who needs what for decks, you can find yourself able to complete decks at a faster rate. Likewise, there will be many more people trying to complete decks to sell or get the trinket that aren't going for this title; trades can be completed quickly with them as well.
If you follow my strategies, you will most likely end up with extra Aces from the
Warlords deck
and the
Elementals deck
. These are perfect for acquiring the other non farmable Aces.
CODs
After searching for a few days, you'll notice some of the same names cropping up for the same items. For example, "Smith" may list a stack of
Mageroyal
for 5 gold a few times a day. Take a minute and send them an in game mail asking them to send you the stacks directly, COD at the same price they have been listing.
This helps both the buyer and the seller. You won't have to worry about not finding the item on the AH, plus if it is cheaper than your established maximum price, you can save gold. For the seller, they not only avoid the AH fees, but they also have a guaranteed sale.
Paid turn ins
The trinkets are now BoE. If it makes it through to patch, this will help immensely. If you spend 320 gold on the deck, you can now get the trinket to resell, rather than vendor. The majority of people are just looking for the trinket, they are not concerned with the rep involved. This way you can pretty much break even on your purchases.
Also, you can hang around the faire and offer to turn in decks for people. You get the rep, plus the person still gets their trinket plus a nice fee. Even if you spend 100 gold to earn someone's trust to get their deck for turn in, this is still cheaper than buying a deck that costs three times that.
Finishing Up
If after finishing the other factions for the title you still need this one, then you can focus solely on finishing this one out. Otherwise, you should be able to get most if not all of the rep you need by the time you are done with the rest.
From 2500 Friendly to exalted will take you 105 Greater Decks or 1460 Lesser Decks. Most likely you will be using a combination of both.
Shen'dralar
Like the Darkmoon Faire, you will be working on this faction continuously while grinding the others. The turn in point for
this faction
is the library in Dire Maul. You will need to have the
Crescent Key
from Dire Maul East to gain access to it.
The difficult portion of this grind is the fact that each libram is unique so you can only carry one of each type in your inventory at a time. You can have multiple copies in the mail which is how you will be handling this. It is also wise to carry extra mats with you while running Dire Maul, that way you will not waste a libram of more than one should drop.
There are four ways to gain rep with this faction, all of them coming from items that drop in
Dire Maul
.
Class Books
The first is your class book. There is one class book for every class except for death knights. You can only turn in this book one time for 500 reputation.
There is one exception to this. When the achievement system went into place with a patch last October, a handful of quests were reset. The class book turn in was one of those. If you turned in a class book prior to this, you can turn it in again for another 500 rep.
Odds are you will come across multiple copies of your class book while working on goblin faction, so don't waste gold buying this off the AH.
Libram of Rapidity
For whatever reason, every guide I read for this says to avoid geting
this libram
. I found this to be just as easy to complete as the other two librams so don't ignore them.
To turn in this libram, you will need to turn in the following:
Libram of Rapidity
x1
Pristine Black Diamond
x1
Large Brilliant Shard
x2
Blood of Heroes
x2
I'll discuss the diamonds and shards in a minute, but the item you are most concerned with is the
Blood of Heroes
. These are random spawns across
Western
and
Eastern Plaguelands
. Simply riding around while heading to
Scholomance
or
Stratholme
for other items will net you several of these.
Libram of Protection
To turn in
this libram
, you will need the following:
Libram of Protection
x1
Pristine Black Diamond
x1
Large Brilliant Shard
x2
Frayed Abomination Stitching
x1
The
abomination stitchings
drop from the
abominations
located in the undead side of
Stratholme
, just outside the Baron's room. To gain access to the undead side, the easiest way is to use the
Key to the City
to get in the back way.
You must kill all three of the sub bosses before being allowed to enter the final area. Upon entering the undead side and opening the two gates, you will trigger the
Baron's timer
of 45 mins. You can ignore this as far as your objective goes, but you will gain extra rep with
Argent Dawn
for killing the
Baron
within this timer. An 80 can complete the run in 10 to 15 minutes.
Once through the second gate, head due west to the boss
Nerub'enkan
, the large nerubian on top of the steps. You can avoid all the mobs simply by not running straight through them. Kill the boss then enter the ziggurat and kill the cultists to destroy the crystal.
Head back to the entrance, then turn north to find the
Baroness
. Kill her and the cultists to take out the second crystal.
Finally, follow the streets north to
Maleki
and down him and the cultists inside. Taking out this final group will result in the message in chat text "The Slaughterhouse is now Vulnerable!"
You can now proceed north to the square containing the
abominations
. Each
abomination
has a chance to drop a
stitching
. Killing all 16 usually gets you one to three
stitchings
. However, once you eliminate all the
abominations
,
Ramstein
makes an appearance and he has a 100% drop rate for a stitching.
At this point, you should conitinue to kill the
Baron
, while giving a chance at the mount, he drops about 15 gold worth of vendorable items.
You should loot all your kills in the instance. Vendoring the loot that drops will get you about 40 gold per run.
Libram of Focus
The turn in requirements for this are:
Libram of Focus
x1
Pristine Black Diamond
x1
Large Brilliant Shard
x4
Skin of Shadow
x2
The
Skin of Shadow
can only be found in
Scholomance
. It drops off of the
Risen Construct
around
Rattlegore
, the
Risen Bonewarder
around
Lady Barov
,
Lady Barov
herself,
Instructor Malicia
,
Lorekeeper Polkelt
, and the
Ravenian
.
When you enter Scholo, drop off the walkway to your left, then head up the stairs and turn north to where the
whelps
are. If you drop down the holes in the floor to the left, you will land in the room with the
constructs
. Kill all of them as as well as
Rattlegore
to grab the
key
, then run back up the stairs, through the
whelps
, then down the stairs to your right, unlocking the door in the next room.
Go straight through this room and follow the stairs down to kill
Ras
, potentially getting an
alchemy recipe
that sells for a good bit. Go back up the stairs and through the other gate to the final two level room. While only the above bosses drop the
skins
, take the extra minute or two to kill the additonal two bosses, thereby downing all 6 bosses in all 6 rooms. You will also need to kill all the mobs in the coven room, the room with the Instructor.
Once all of these bosses and the Coven is cleared,
Gandling
will spawn. He has a 7% drop rate for the
Ace of Portals
, which you need for the
Darkmoon
rep.
Looting and selling your items from your kills will get you about 40 gold per run.
Auction House
As you search for the cards and decks for
Darkmoon
, search for the three librams,
pristine black diamonds
, and
large brilliant shards
. While you may find a diamond or two on your own, they are difficult to farm for specifically, so it is better to buy them.
The shards, however, can be farmed if you have someone (or yourself) to disenchant the blues you get from all your instance runs.
Turning In
As I mentioned before, you can only have one of each libram in your inventory, but an infinite amount in your mail. When you have all the librams you need, mail them to the toon you will be getting the title on. Make sure you have all the diamonds and shards as well as the special items needed for all your turn ins.
Bring an engineer with you that has a
MOLL-E
. When you get to the turn in point, set the
MOLL-E
on the ground. This will create a mailbox for ten minutes, allowing you to make multiple turn ins, and saving you dozens of trips.
Each turn in will give you an
arcanum
that you can use to enchant low lvl items. These
arcanums
are non unique so you can keep any number in your bags. They are also desirable for twinks. While you can't put them on the AH, head to
IF
or
SW
and offer to sell them in the trade channel. You will be able to sell them quite quickly.
You will need one
class book
and 83 libram turn-ins to go from starting neutral to exalted.
Ravenholdt
If you are a rogue, you already have a head start on
this one
. For the rest of us, we will start out at neutral with this faction, though it will be a fast grind.
Neutral to 11999 Honored
Killing any member of the
Syndicate
you find in
Hillsbrad Foothills
or
Alterac Mountains
will give you rep with this faction. The prime location is Durnholde Keep in Hillsbrad. The mobs are one or two shottable depending on if you are a dps class and have an insane spawn rate.
Start out at the western side on the bottom where the burned out buildings are and just kill anything you see as you move to the east side. Once this lower part is cleared, head up the steps and kill everything around the top. By the time you have done this, even if you did not loot anything, the bottom will have respawned. You will be able to gain a few thousand rep an hour, up to 11999 Honored.
11999 Honored to Exalted
This portion of the grind will either be a mere nuisance or a huge hurdle. The only way to gain rep past 11999 Honored is by turning in
Heavy Junkboxes
5 at a time for 75 rep a turn in. These junkboxes can only be obtained through
pick pocketing
, so you will need a rogue at this point.
The
junkboxes
themselves are locked and contain a few minor items. They can be unlocked and looted, and as long as a single item remains inside it, it will still be good for a turn in. They boxes cannot be listed on the AH, but they can be traded or mailed. If you have to buy them, figure out how much each is worth to you then advertise in both the trade channels and on your server forums. A small business has cropped up around this industry so you should find someone quickly.
If you are doing this yourself, I suggest getting a
Glyph of Pick Pocket
to make your life considerably easier. There is also a
talent that improves your speed while stealthed
that helps, however, it is not worth respeccing solely for that.
I found a nice circuit to run in
Tyr's Hand
. Pick pocket the guard's around the front gate, then move to the main keep, pick pocketing every mob along the way. Enter the keep and pick those mobs, then exit and loop around to the blacksmith and the small church before heading up the hill. Grab all the mobs outside the cathedral, then those inside it. Head back down the hill grabbing mobs, then enter the last building for the mobs located there, before returning to the front gate.
This path takes about 15 mins to run and consists of 142 easily reachable mobs. I averaged about 1 box a minute and about 20gold in pickpocketing before my bags filled.
Turning In
The
turn in NPC
is at
Ravenholdt Manor
, just north of Durnholde Keep in the mountains. The nearest mailbox is at
Southshore
/
Tarren Mill
, so if you can get an engineer with
MOLL-E
to come with you like the libram turn ins, life will be easier. Otherwise you will need to fill your bags and run back and forth to Southshore.
When you turn in the boxes, you will get a set of unique throwing knives. If you have a
Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
, you can mount on the balcony by the NPC and sell them for 1.3 gold each. Otherwise you will have to destroy them in between each turn in.
You will need to get 1405
Heavy Junkboxes
to go from 11999 Honored to Exalted.
Bloodsail Buccaneers
This faction
, while taking the least amount of time to achieve, will cause more grief than any other. Each player will start at various levels of rep, most likely somewhere in the hated level of reputation.
Before grinding
this rep
, set aside a block of time (days/weeks/months) that you can do without interacting with any of the goblin factions. This includes the four main goblin cities, quest givers, trainers, and even certain flight paths; look ahead to see if any holiday achievements requiring goblin interaction are coming up.. Anything affiliated with
Booty Bay
,
Everlook
,
Gadgetzan
, or
Ratchet
will become unusable for a period of time.
The main way to gain rep with this faction is to simply massacre all of
Booty Bay
. For every
Booty Bay Bruiser
you kill you gain 25 rep with Bloodsail, while your
cartel rep
takes a penalty of -125 rep. The various NPCs in the area give varying rep gains as well. However, keep in mind that a lot of mid level players need these NPCs for quests so try to be courteous; there are plenty of bruisers to go around so you can do a constant grind of them without touching quest givers.
This grind can be done in a party or raid, thereby drastically increasing your rep gains per hour. Solo you can get a few thousand rep per hour. With a party you can triple that rate or more.
One thing to remember is that while only a few people will be trying to this achievement, a lot will be going for the
Bloodsail title
. Join the lfg channel and announce you are in
Booty Bay
grinding rep; you will get several replies from people looking for
Bloodsail
rep.
At friendly, provided
Booty Bay rep
is at hated, you can visit the
NPC
on the pirate ship off the east coast to gain the quest
Avast Ye, Admiral!
. Completing this quest grants you the title, some
new duds
, and 500 rep with the
Bloodsail
. It's not required to hit honored, but you might as well gain a Feat of Strength while you are at it.
As your rep with
Bloodsail
increases, the
Cartel
rep will decrease. As it passes into unfriendly you will lose access to the goblin NPCs, but they will not attack. When you enter into hostile, you are now Kill on Sight and any guards affiliated with the
Cartel
will attack you unprovoked. Extra guards will also spawn at your location every several seconds.
Once you hit honored with the
Bloodsail
, you can make your escape to a non
Cartel
controlled area.
Steamwheedle Cartel
First thing you need to do is grab a stack of good
CDs
,
dvds
,
televison shows
,
hot pockets
, etc. because you will be living in
Dire Maul
for the forseeable future. This will be the only pure grind for this title but the bulk of your time will be spent doing.
Your
Bloodsail rep
must remain at Honored, so that eliminates the "easy" method of turning in items outside the goblin cities.
One way to raise your rep is to kill the
pirates
outside of
Ratchet
or along the eastern coast of
Tanaris
. While it is a fast way of raising rep, I DO NOT suggest doing it. You will go through this portion faster, but you will drastically slow down other faction gains, primarily Darkmoon.
That leaves
Dire Maul
.
Gordock Shackle Key
About the midpoint of Dire Maul North, there is a goblin named
Knot
chained to the floor.
Freeing him
grants you 350 rep with the
Cartel
.
To free him, you need to obtain a
Gordok Shackle Key
. The key can drop from any elite in the instance but has a higher drop rate from the bosses. It is faster and more efficient if you focus only on the bosses and the packs you need to get to the king at the end. Even counting runs where you get no keys, it is still faster than clearing out the instance until a key drops.
I kept detailed logs of all my runs and here is the break down on key drops:
Guard Mol'dar
: 10.1%
Guard Fengus
: 10.9%
Guard Slip'kik: 8.8%
Gordok Bushwhacker: 12.2%
Captain Kromcrush: 13.1%
Other Ogres: 13.5%
Runs with no key: 31.4%
Longest streak of runs with no key: 5 runs
There are two things you need to keep in mind regarding the key. First, it is unique. If you have one in your bag and a second drops, make a beeline for
Knot
to free him, then retrace your steps and pick up the second key.
Second, the rep will only go to the person that actually frees him. If you are in a group, only that person will get the 350 rep.
Ogre Tannin
Another key ingredient to this grind is
Ogre Tannin
. There is always one per run, found in a box on the second level. Also, the
cache
Knot leaves behind him has a chance to contain one or two tannin as well. It is very important to grab the tannin each run.
The tannin is used to complete the quest offered by Knot,
Gordok Ogre Suit
. You will need:
Ogre Tannin
x1
Bolt of Runecloth
x4
Rugged Leather
x8
Rune Thread
x2
If you loot all of your kills in the instance, you will have more than enough runecloth to make the bolts. Also, if you are a skinner, the
non-elite mastiffs
in the instance all drop
Rugged Leather
. The
Rune Thread
can be acquired from various vendors.
Completing
the quest
grants you 75 rep with the
Cartel
. It can be turned in as many times per run as you have mats for it, though
the suit you get as a reward
is unique so you will have to remove it from your inventory before subsequent turn ins. It is best to keep one suit in your inventory for sale on the AH; they cannot be vendored yet they sell surprisingly well as a novelty item.
It is very important you pick up the
tannin
every run. Assuming you get a
key
every single instance run you do, you will need 240 runs to hit exalted. If you combine that with the
tannin
, you will have to do 198 runs. The difference of 42 amounts to days worth of instance runs you are saving.
The Run
You will need the
Crescent Key
from the East wing to open the door to the North.
Once you enter the North instance, head down the ramp that is in front of you and slightly to the left. The
first boss
is right in front of you so burn him down. At 40% he will shout and call anything near him to attack you. At level 80 this is merely a nuisance, but if you position him away from the other mobs you can avoid the adds. He drops
a key
you will need to open a door later in the instance.
After killing him, head back up the ramp and turn right. You can run by all of the packs and guards as you continue straight and up a slight ramp to the main courtyard. Run up one of the ramps to the upper portion and loot the key from the box you find there..
Fengus
roams around on a set path, but he will always path through the center, so if you can't find him just wait by
the box
. He, too, will shout at 40% pulling adds.
Once he is down, travel down the western ramp to the locked door, opening the door. Move down the pathway until you get to the
Carrion Feeders
. These are non elites that will swarm you. Again, merely a nuisance but you still have to kill them.
Once they are eliminated, you will see
Knot
just ahead of you.
Slip'kik
will patrol this area, also having the 40% shout. Once he is out of the way, follow the room around to the left and go up the large ramp to the second level.
You will see two
warlock ogres
around a bonfire as well as their
minions
. The box of tannin is just behind them. Take out these ogres and loot the tannin, spawning the
Bushwhacker
. He will come running down the next ramp. At the bottom of this ramp is one
ogre warrior
plus another lock and his minion. Wipe out the whole group and move up the ramp to the third level.
At the top of this ramp you will see two ogres right in front of you, guarding another locked door. Kill them and open the door, following the hallway as it curves to the left. At the opposite side will be another three pack of ogres to dispose of.
At the end of this hallway is
Kromcrush
. At 40% he summons two adds that come from the direction you just came in. After killing him, head straight to the upper dais when
the king
and
his advisor
is.
If you kill the King first, the advisor will give you an item as tribute that vendors for about 60 silver. If you kill the advisor first, he will drop items that vendor from 3 golv to 6 gold, so kill him every time before the king.
Even though the king cannot drop a key, he can drop the
Ace of Warlords
which you will need for
Darkmoon
. The drop rate is so high that after completing the goblin grind and the Darkmoon grind, I had 16 extra aces from him.
After the
king goes
down, another ogre will come running up to you. Talking to him and selecting the first line of dialogue will grant you a
king buff
, making all ogres in the instance friendly to you as you run out to reset the instance. On your way out, if you don't have a
Traveler's Tundra Mammoth
to vendor,
Stomper Kreeg
can be found on the first level, behind where the first boss was. You can vendor all of your items to him.
One run takes about 12 mins and nets you 20 to 30 gold after vendoring. The 12 mins is important because it means you can reset the instance without ever having to worry about the 5 resets per hour limit.
Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying
While the bosses can drop this still
highly sought after book
, there are three potential spawn points for dusty tomes. These tomes can contain nothing, gray vendor items, class books, or Foror's. They are bright red and the spawn points should be checked every run.
Spawn 1: In the SW corner of the courtyard
Fengus
patrols, lower level.
Spawn 2: Under the large ramp in
Slip'Kiks
room.
Spawn 3: Right behind
the advisor
next to the king.
If all went as planned, you should be
"the insane"
! Congratulations!