An Achievement A Day 1  

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The First Few Days

Leading up to January 1, in preparation, I started doing the quests in the human lands. As a Night Elf, I had a majority of the Kalimdor low-end quests done, but apparently I stayed in Kalimdor at least until Stranglethorn. So I ran through -- in entirety -- Elwynn Forest, Westfall, Redridge Mountains, Duskwood, and Swamp of Sorrows. I was careful to leave at least one section of each map unexplored; most of these zones had an area that was well-removed from any quest completions. I do still have a number of quests in my log for the Stockades and Deadmines as a result.

Simultaneously, I've been questing in Borean Tundra. I started in Fjord, but moved over after about 30 quests.

However, I've also been saving up all kinds of meats and herbs that I've collected in the lowbie zones, which is why the very first achievement I picked up on January 1 was Journeyman Cook. I took that as a starting point for my future cooking endeavors while questing in Borean. Disaster very nearly struck on the very first day, however. I was working on the quests for DEHTA later in the night, and forgot about the achievement for finishing all of their quests. I saw D.E.H.T.A.'s Little P.I.T.A flash up on the screen and cursed myself until I looked in my achievement window and saw...January 2?

I was originally planning on setting the ground rule of working by biological days rather than strictly by the clock. However, I guess I've now set the precedent that the cut-off for a given day is midnight, not whenever I happen to go to bed. However, as a sidenote, I found out on later days that I'll have to watch this carefully. For some strange reason, achievements completed after 11:00 PM get listed as the day after. (I'm East coast on a West coast server, if that has any bearing.) It's bizarre that only applies to the very last hour, but as soon as I recognized this, I decided I better start screenshotting my achievements, complete with the calendar and game clock in view. (Ironically, if you open up the achievement link rather than just looking at it in the achievements window, it lists the correct date.)

Anyway, back to January 1st-turned-2nd, I had insomnia that night. I came back to playing around 3 AM, and was on a roll through the quests in Borean Tundra when I had to cut myself off for fear of exploring the zone. I finished that the next day, on my first day back to school, since it was a minimal commitment. The rest of the week was very busy at school, so I just fished. 25 Fish, 50 Fish, Journeyman Fisherman, 100 Fish, and then Lunch Lady with the subsequent exp.

The weekend finally rolled around, and I decided to get the Deadmines quests out of my log. I followed up with the Stockades the next day, but decided not to kill Bazil Thredd since I was getting close on Stormwind exalted and figured I could do so much more for the Saturday. I ended up questing in Arathi Highlands instead, where I picked up that. On the days after that, I explored Arathi, Hillsbrad, and Alterac as I completed all the quests in those zones.

I went back to more cooking and fishing through another busy week at school. Next week is midterms, which means I've been busy writing midterms. I should have more time next week.

Achievements completed

Forward Progression

I had to make strides to finish a few achievements that were threatening finishing themselves when I wasn't looking. Tastes Like Chicken was one of these, which helped me carry over into finishing quests in Borean Tundra. Another was 1500 quests completed, which I finished in a panic today so I wouldn't have to worry about it being completed during the Lunar Festival. In the interrim period, I completed a few random achievements that have helped progress my completeness of Eastern Kingdoms, upped my fisherman's status, and actually run an instance. I also discovered that the Isle of Quel'danas only has one area to explore and that you have the whole zone the instant you touch down by the flight masters, which was a bit of a surprise, since I was going there to work on daily quest counts -- I figured sooner or later I'm going to have to work on reputations, and I don't want to do them all at once. However, I don't know if I have the drive to do SSO dailies for 3 weeks running, either.

Anyway, coming back to the Lunar Festival, which starts tomorrow, this marks the first world event for the year. Considering there is a limited window to work on these achievements, I'm essentially obligated to make strides toward them. For better or worse, there's a healthy amount of time to do this, so I might squeeze in some alternate achievements as I go, but I'm going to be mostly just hopping from elder to elder for the next two weeks in a very measured fashion. Unfortunately, without being level 77, there are a few Northrend elders I simply cannot reach. In particular, there's one in Wintergrasp that I don't believe I can even request a warlock friend to summon me to. This may be just as well, though. Even though I have a sort-of three day weekend right now, I'm going to be rather busy for the next week putting the second half of the school year back in order...especially since I did absolutely jack yesterday.

One other note, my character is an herbalist. She was originally an alchemist, but I decided to try inscription when Lich King came out. I hated it. It seemed completely pointless to me. Maybe it's like my main's jewelcrafting where the meaningful stuff doesn't come until much later, but I dunno. I bailed on it and decided to reboot alchemy. With all the low level zones I've been cruising through over the last month, I've picked a lot of basic flowers. My skill plateaued around 150 after running the human lands, but when I did my quests in Loch Modan and Wetlands, I finally pieced together the herbs I needed to advance my skill. I gained over 100 points in one sitting, and now need herbs from 40+ zones, which I am doubtful I'll be hurrying off to visit any time soon. Still, I feel much better about having a skill of 260.

Achievements completed

Lunar Festival

The first world event has arrived, and I've been focusing my efforts on these achievements simply because they won't be an option later. At this exact point in time, I actually feel somewhat inhibited going for the festival achievements, since it's preventing me from moving forward in other regards. Hopefully I'll reach level 74 by the end and have access to Dalaran so I can focus on getting my cooking up via old world content and begin the cooking dailies. I've also come to the opinion that I probably need to start doing some of the PvP achievements in the near future. The question is how near. If I am running Festival achievements for the next two weeks, and shortly after that is Love is in the Air, plus I'm trying to get certain dailyfests in motion, does that mean I'll do PvP-based things in March? Or should I just save the whole lot of it for when my forward momentum elsewhere stalls?

It's very hard to think 365 days ahead and where I'll be on each of them. As it is, I'm just looking at the world events and how I have to accomodate them. The Lunar Festival has a few achievements I'm simply not going to be able to do without power-leveling in a way that I don't have time for. Love is in the Air is the next event, which has a total of 14 achievements and lasts for a whopping 5 days. I'm wondering if there's any of these that could be done after everything else is packed up and done, and I'm probably going to focus during those five days on achievements that specifically say "during the Love is in the Air celebration." After that is Children's Week, which isn't for quite some time, so there won't be any more "interruptions" for a while after that.

I also had my official first day with two achievements. I acquired my 9th coin of ancestry on the 25th and logged out. When I logged in the next day -- in front of the elder in Scholomance -- I grabbed his coin and ran down the road to get to the elder in Hinterlands. I had no idea at the time that the only part of Hinterlands I hadn't visited was that very path, and whammmo. Two achievements in the first five minutes of logging in. Sigh.

Aside from one day off to do some fishing, the succeeding days were to wrap up more work on coin collection and other Lunar Festival odds and ends. I did notice I could delay the firecracker achievement indefinitely, but I did it anyway when I needed a quick achievement. So with the Northrend and dungeon elders incomplete, I finally put a close to this chapter in the hunt for achievements.

Achievements completed

37 days complete, 328 to go!

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This page last modified 2009-02-08 06:52:41.
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