The Daily Grind

It's been drawn to my attention how important images are when doing posts. So I'm going to try to have a "related image" for every post from now on. Today, I'll be talking about daily routines - but not just any daily routine, my own personal daily rotation in WoW.

As everyone knows, WoW is my primary de-stresser. I play the game most every day for an hour or two after work to relax and calm down, and I generally do exactly the same thing over and over.

My first stop is Tol Barad - the interior if Alliance is in control, the exterior if they aren't. And I'll queue for the battle if it's coming up - no turning down that extra 3 Commendations. I need to grind out 400 of the dang things as quickly as possible so I can get the Drake mount and the Fox Kit pet before the area becomes essentially abandoned with the hit of MoP.

The next place I head to is quite a long way away - Dalaran. From there, I fly to the Argent Tournament grounds. I'm already exalted with every faction, but still grinding the Crusader's Marks so that I can collect all of those mounts. Tomorrow, I'll have enough to get the Argent Hippogryph, and I already have the Silver Covenant version. Then I'll have all the Hippogryphs that are available within the game without TCG mounts and the like. But I still have 5 faction mounts and all the pets to go.

My first stop at the Argent Tournament grounds is the Silver Covenant Pavilion, where I pick up the 3 daily quests there. Then across the grounds to grab the Argent Crusade's and the general Tournament dailies. I have a well worn circuit for completing the entire set within half an hour or so, given that I don't have to wait for anything to respawn before I can take it down.

Once I return to the tournament grounds and turn in all the quests, it's time to move on to the chance-based parts of my day. I fly back to Dalaran, take the Stormwind portal, and go right through the portal to Blasted Lands and into Outland. I hop a Gryphon to Shattrath. While I'm in flight, I set my dungeon difficulty to heroic. And when I land, I take off again for Sethekk Halls, going after the Reins of the Raven Lord mount.

So far I haven't had any luck with Anzu dropping my pretty raptor-esque mount. From there, it's back to Shattrath and through the portal to the Isle of Quel'danas. With my dungeon difficulty still set to heroic, I then run Magister's Terrace - which I was quite lucky with today. After less than ten runs, today I got the achievement above - and made the Swift White Hawkstrider mine. :) I'll still be running it awhile longer - I don't have the phoenix hatchling pet that drops from the same boss. No need to do it on Heroic anymore, though. So that's nice and fast.

From there, I take the portal at the end of the dungeon to get back out, and fly from the Isle south down to Northpass Tower - the closest flight point to the Service Entrance of Stratholme. This dungeon doesn't have a heroic version - I run it four or five times a day, trying to get my coveted undead horsie - Deathcharger's Reins. Call me morbid, but the bone-collector in me LOVES the look of the undead horses, and being Alliance, this is the only one I'll ever get a chance to own. (I own all the default ones on my Troll druid, though. ;) ) This mount has been my holy grail for awhile - a couple of years, I've been after it. In that time I've never seen it drop - with the new Account Wide mounts and pets, I'd be happy to win it on a character that's of level, but it just refuses to drop. My bony unicorn.

When I'm done there, then I decide what I want to do next, but Stratholme is the final stop for my daily grind in WoW. And as proven today with my Swift White Hawkstrider, it pays off in time.

So that's how I know - one day, ONE DAY, the Deathcharger will be mine!