Author Archives: Donny Rokk
Noblegarden Swift Springstrider
Being so close to completing the Meta Achievement “What A Long, Strange Trip It’s Been“, completing the World of Warcraft Noblegarden World Event went without saying. I was kinda surprised at how quick I finished it. I started Sunday afternoon, and by Monday evening I was done. I would have been done on Sunday but I had to slap some bunny ears on elusive members of the Alliance.
It was now time for me to relax and get back to focusing on other business. I was working on Hellscream rep and tokens to get my spectral wolf mount, as well as leveling up a DK on another server. As far as Noblegarden was concerned, we were done with each other for another year.
That is, until I saw it.
What… what the Hell was that? Why was there an albino flamingo, an abomination of Nature itself, running past me?
And why the Hell was it carrying someone on its back?
The Swift Springstrider, a bird so ugly I didn’t know how someone could hold the reins and cover their eyes at the same time. Did it come with beer goggles? It looked like the kind of bird you took home from the bar on a drunken bet. One that you lost.
No. Hell no. There was no way I wanted that bird. I would rather ride a mound of kodo feces between my legs than that thing.
But, y’know, just out of curiosity I checked to see how I could get one.
Turns out there were two ways: As a rare drop from inside a Brightly Colored Egg, or by spending FIVE HUNDRED Noblegarden Chocolates at a holiday vendor.
Hmmmm.
Now I’m not going to tell you that I got the Swift Springstrider for myself. But if I did, here’s some tips that I (would have) used to help farm up the five hundred chocolates.
Macro: to get from Point A to Point B quicker, I (would have) used this macro:
/use Egg Basket
/use Brightly Colored Egg
This (would have) helped keep the haste buff up while opening the eggs and stacking the chocolates, or whatever was inside the egg.
Location: When I was farming eggs for the Noblegarden achievements, I visited three locations: Razor Hill, Bloodhoof Village, and Falconwing Square. I managed to find a spot at each location that maximized the spawn points in a small area. Note: this is on a high pop server.
Tarou made this video which points things out much better than I could.
So there. If you’re are one of those who are so inclined to get one of these hideous birds and refuse to seek help for your obvious illness, good luck to you.
Son of a bitch.
Back In The Saddle
- The Story. I knew right off the bat I’d be playing a Jedi/Sith Warrior. There was so much to like about the class. I’ve always been a fan of standing in the pocket, going toe to toe with the mouth breather in front of me and hoping I’d kill him before he killed me. After I started playing a Sith Warrior, I really dug on the class. I had the black lightsaber due to my pre-order (the same kind I had in SW:The Force Unleashed) and loved using it. The story was boss, and the interactions were pretty slick. It kept me wanting to move forward.
- The Class Specialization. At level ten, you get to switch between the two branches of the primary class. In my case, it was either Sith Juggernaut (tank/dps) or Sith Marauder (dual wield dps). While they do a passable job describing the subclasses, they have to be played to get a good grip in them. Sure you can dps as a Juggernaut, but how does that compare to dropping fools as a Marauder? You really can’t tell until you try. The problem is, once you try you have to buy. You pick a subclass and that’s it. No going back. If you find that after a level or two of trying the class out in the World that it isn’t clicking with you, you’re screwed. You have to start over from level one. What kind of bullshit is that! The subclass has no bearing on how you progress in the main storyline, so why lock you into it? It felt, like most things I didn’t like about the game, as if it was designed just to slow down the leveling process and extend the game life.
- The Story: Don’t get me wrong, I like the class story. The first time through. The second time it’s not as shiny as it was the first go round, but maybe you make different selections during your interactions that can change things up. The third time through, you’re hitting the space bar to skip the chatter. And I found myself going through storylines multiple times (switching subclasses, starting on a new server).
- The Quest/Mission layout is stupid. This is where WoW spoiled me. In World of Warcraft, you would arrive at a quest hub, pick up 1-4 quests, travel for maybe a minute to find the quest objectives, and then go back for the hand-in. There was an efficient time to quest ratio that SWTOR just didn’t have. Not only were they the same style of quests that WoW had (kill X, loot Y) but they were kinda all over the place. There’d be one or two quests in an outpost, sending you either west or south, clear off your current map. We’re talking multiple minutes of walking in various directions just to reach the objective. Finish that up, trek all the way back to the questgiver, and they want to send you back out across the map again. Plus, they don’t identify Heroic missions until you accept it and it pops up as HEROIC +WHATEVER in your mission menue.
Rokk Talk 