For Celestia!
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For Celestia!
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Great Scott! It’s that time of the year again. When we all put on our ‘responsible adult’ hats and try to down young children forced to follow us in lakes of fire or shove teenagers through the Caverns of Time. That didn’t come off sounding nearly as un-creepy as I wanted. Anyway, Children’s Week – that event that brings joy to pet collectors and hair ripping fright and tedium to achievement collectors – has returned! But I am sorry achievement folk, this post is not for you. Go talk to Cynwise.
This post is for the pet collectors out there. Every year Children’s Week offers up a variety of little pets of which you can only choose 1 per orphan. How unfair! Way more unfair than having your parents die in a war so you only get one week a year to be out of a cramped little hovel in Orgrimmar or Stormwind. But ah HA! There’s a trick now you see, because unlike those poor orphans, we know the future!
One of the big features to the next expansion, Mists of Pandaria, will be the introduction of pet battles. Regardless of how you feel about them, they also bring the pet collector with alt-itits’ dream: Account wide pets! Oh yes, think of your entire collection across all characters being merged into one giant library. No more paying huge prices for both Alliance and Horde pets from the Argent Tournament, only having to get the whelps once and only once, and more relevantly only having to do Children’s Week ONE year instead of FOUR to get all the pets. Provided you’ve got at least 4 characters at or over level 70, and 2 at 80 or higher.
All you’ll need to do is run each alt through the Children’s Week quests and pick a different pet. Then when the great pet collection merge of 2012 occurs, you’ll have all your Children’s Week pets together in one big happy family.
THAT, dear Marty’s of the world, is heavy.
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1977: “Omigod! Did you know that to construct a model of the death star, they used parts from model ships? THAT IS SO AWESOME AND RESOURCEFUL!”
1999: “WTF? The scanner thing Qui-gon is using is just a gillette razor with a bunch of random hi tech crap slapped on it. WAY TO BE F-ING LAZY GEORGE LUCAS!”
/sigh. Fanboys.
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You know this guy gets teased constantly back at the ninja academy.
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The following is an actual NPC Conversation triggered wandering around Anchorhead on Tatooine.
Customer: Hey! This droid you sold me is a piece of junk! I want my money back!
Jawa: No refunds! You keep!
Customer: But it’s busted! Stupid thing’s vocabulator broke down as soon as I got home. Won’t say a word now!
Jawa: Vocabulator not broken! Is feature!
Customer: A feature? Don’t give me that! What good’s a protocol droid if it can’t even talk?
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Me: Draw this for me. You are an artist and thus are subject to my whims.
Guildie: Wait… what? Why do I have to do it?
Me: You want a reason?
Guildie: Yes.
Me: Because Batman can breathe in space.
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Doc: Uh… It looks like you got something in your eye.
Vry: Rawrrawrsnarlrawr!
Doc: I’m going to take that as “No, I don’t need help Doc. Go wait on the ship.” -
ANNOUNCEMENT: As this post has been getting tons of hits as of late, I felt the need to put this note right up top and in big bold red letters: This guide is for the April 2012 Rakghoul one off event on Tatooine. It is NOT a guide for the Rakghoul Resurgence reoccurring event. For a guide to that, I highly recommend Dulfy’s guide found HERE.
Because there’s nothing to unite the player base quite like a hideous disgusting plague that will turn the infected into strange monsters, Bioware has graced us with a strange and wonderful world event on the quiet little world of Tatooine (aka The Planet Where Everything Goes Wrong… ALWAYS). The story behind this event is that a ship infected with the Rakghoul plague has crash landed in the Dune Sea, spilling disease all over the area and infecting the wildlife and locals. It is up to you to figure out what happened and to act quickly to try to contain the disease before all of Tatooine falls to the Rakghoul menace.
During the event you’ll also be collecting Rakghoul DNA Samples to trade in for various rewards. You can get these by doing the daily missions. You can also get them by ‘exploding’ from the plague. During the missions, or from other players exploding, you can contract the rakghoul virus. This can be treated with a vaccine that you receive from the daily missions or purchased from the rewards vendor. However, if you let the virus run it’s course (estimated to be about 20 minutes), you too will explode and infect everyone around you. This will reward you with 5 additional DNA Samples and can be done as many times as you want during the day. There’s even a side mission to infect 10 enemy players with the virus, but it only rewards 5 vaccinations.
Another thing to note is that the DNA Samples are NOT bound. Meaning you can trade them or mail them, including across Legacy. Do keep in mind that while the event is on Tatooine, most of the related mobs are level 50.
The Dailies
UPDATE: It appears that the mobs that are spawned that drop the mission items will scale to your level. Anyone above level 27-28 (normal Tatooine level range) should be able to complete the dailies!
UPDATE: It appears that these missions are added progressively as you do them and do not all unlock at once. You must do the day 1 daily to get access to the day 2 tomorrow, and the day 2 to get access to the day 3 the next day. As such, THURSDAY (4/19) is the last day to begin the dailies to get all the pieces of the social gear.
One of the first things you can do during the world event is the dailies. In the North-East corner of Tatooine’s Dune Sea, you’ll find a downed star ship. Immediately, you’ll be given a multipart area daily mission that has you gather up some stuff from around the crash site and then take down the captain of the ship who has become a rakghoul. It’s pretty simple and doesn’t take that much time once you know what you’re doing. Mostly it’s kill this, gather that.
During that mission, you should also come across a blood sample drop that will give you a second daily that will take you to eastern Jundland to perform some tests on the sample. This leads into the second daily where you get a light side/dark side choice to use the sample to make a cure for the local sand people who got infected, or to turn them into living biological weapons. UPDATE: It appears that additional missions are appearing go along with this one that reward different pieces of containment officer gear. You can complete all of these dailies every day, Blood Samples is still available along with Passenger List.
Dailies Added to Event:
- Day 1: Blood Samples. Acquired from drop in Crash Area. Rewards: 2 Samples, choice of 1 extra sample or social boots.
- Day 2: Passenger List: Acquired from clicking wreckage with mission indicator at the Crash Site. Rewards: 2 Samples, choice of 1 extra sample or social gloves.
- Day 3: Hybrid Strain: Acquired from drop in Sand People area. Rewards: 2 Samples, choice of 1 extra sample or social pants.
- Day 4: Pure Virus Sample: Acquired from clicking datapad with mission indicator in crash area. Rewards 2 Samples, choice of 1 extra sample or social helm.
- Day 5: Recently Infected: Acquired from item with mission indicator in Sand People area near the Murals from Outbreak. Rewards 2 Samples, choice of 1 extra sample or social chest or social belt.
While you’re completing the second daily, you will automatically receive the third and final daily. Another multipart chain across the Sand People’s territory. The big trick to this is the first part – get infected wrappings. You need to kill the level 27-28 non-hostile infected sand people to spawn 2-3 level 50 sand people that drop the wrappings. Beyond that it’s mostly just fetch quests that end with killing another elite.
Completing these dailies will reward you with a total of 10 DNA Samples, and the choice of 1 additional DNA Sample or a piece of social gear that looks like the Containment Troops armor that you see around the cities.
There is a final daily that I mentioned above but as Psynister pointed out in the comments, deserves repeating as it is a daily. Simply spread the plague by getting 10 uninfected players infected. The reward is 5 vaccinations.
Tracing the Source
There is one more mission to do during the world event, and that is the tracking the source of the outbreak. This is actually more of a hidden thing, because it requires some know how to activate the mission. There are three items you must find in your factions main city on Tatooine (Mos Illa for Empire, Anchorhead for Republic). There is a crashed escape pod, a crate of medical supplies and the large monitor just outside the spaceport. You have 10 minutes after clicking the first one to find all three or else you’ll lose on of the buffs and have to go back and find the object again. After you have found and interacted with all three, you can find a new mission available by the speeder taxi of the city.
This mission is to find 12 pieces of the crashed ship that got scattered all over Tatooine. They aren’t marked at all, so it’s a huge scavenger hunt that will have you skirting around cliff edges and leaping down to small ledges. There are a total of 9 in Jundland and 3 in the Dune Sea. If you want a slightly more detailed guide, I would recommend checking out the one at SWTOR-Spy. After you find all twelve pieces, you’ll be directed to find a crate in the sand people territory of eastern Jundland.
After completing this quest, you’ll receive a companion pet: The Crimson Rakghoul!
The World Bosses
During this event, there are three world bosses that spawn across the planet:
- Infected Trapjaw: Level 30 champion found by clicking the skull in the Dune Sea.
- Urtagh: Level 50 champion that is found the open world PVP area of Outlaw’s Den. Be warned that you will be flagged for PVP by entering the area, and the opposing faction may want to kill the boss themselves.
- Zama Brak: Another level 50 champion that is found just north-west of the crash site in the Dune Sea. He has the ability to send the tank soaring into the sky and dropping large toxic fields that do high damage.
Defeating all three of the bosses will earn you their respective codex entries and award the ‘Containment Officer’ title.
Rewards
So, you’ve been collecting these DNA Samples, but what do you do with them? Well, just north of the crash site in the Dune Sea, there’s a little jawa with a dewback named Jeelvic. He’ll gladly take those samples off your hands in exchange for some neat items. They include:
Black-Green Color Crystals: 75 samples for the level 31 versions or 83 samples for the level 50 versions. Depending on which stats you want. These crystals are Bind on Equip, so you can sell them or trade them.
Infected Companion Appearance Lockbox: 20 samples. A lockbox that contains one random companion’s custom ‘infected’ appearance. I haven’t seen it yet, but it sounds pretty awesome! Mr. Robot is reporting that these contain an infected appearance for a humanoid companion, and are bind on legacy.
Pale Rakghoul Companion Pet: 60 samples. A small white rakghoul that will follow you around. Remember, you can get the crimson version by doing the Tracing the Source chain I talked about above.
Hope everyone has some fun with this event! It kinda came out of the blue and there has been no formal announcement that I’ve seen about when it began or when they plan to end it. So let’s enjoy it while we can! 😀
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I don’t normally do posts like this, but…
*Vry happy dances*
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So it’s Noblegarden time again, and tradition dictates that I make some kind of post about a rabbit. Luckily, I’ve got a doozy of a hare-raising tale that keep you hopping. Oh I’ve hinted at it, and I’ve mentioned it, but now it’s time to actually talk about. In the heart of Forsaken territory, beneath the still waters of a small pond, lies an unimaginable terror beyond comprehension:
A GIANT BUNNY SKELETON! No, seriously. Take a look at that thing. Look at the bones! It’s a bunny. With giant pointy teeth and huge dangerous claws. I mean, this thing is probably was the most dangerous critter in the history of Azeroth and I am INCLUDING the Darkmoon Rabbit in that. I mean, Thrall’s balls, that is one big bunny. Where do you think it came from and how the hell did someone kill it?
Well, I wouldn’t be posting if I didn’t have some theories now would I? The first piece of evidence is quite possibly the location of the Devil Rabbit. Tirisfal Glades is home to, well, a number of weird things. From the ongoing fan theory that an Old God dwells beneath the surface contributing to everything from the corruption of Prince Arthas to the slow maddening descent of the current ruler, Lady Windrunner. The Old God’s ability to twist living things to their needs can easily be witnessed in the “Faceless” and the Qiraji. However, I am not one hundred percent on this idea. Simply because it seems unlikely that an Old God would choose something like a rabbit to be its minion to bring destruction amongst the living. Unless the Old God happens to be Sheogorath. Then it makes perfect sense. Because it doesn’t make any sense. Who wants cheese?
I suppose there is some merit to having a giant bunny become a tormented bringer of the end times. For one, just imagine the utter confusion it would cause. No one would come to anyone’s defense. I mean, would you send your military forces to aid a neighboring city or land because they’re claiming a giant devil rabbit is slaughtering everyone? No. You’d think they’d gone mad and stopped returning their owls. Second, is that if the bunny is some horrible nightmarish lovecraftian nightmare, people might hesitate about killing the giant adorable death machine. Even a seconds hesitation is enough to give beelzebunny a chance to devour you and your kin!
Another possibility lies in the fairy ring that lies in the western hills of Tirisfal. Perhaps the fairy ring is a link to the Emerald Dream, where nature rules supreme! Ages ago, a living terror burst forth from this ring into the unsuspecting lands of Azeroth. From deep within the dream, a simple bunny grew massive and powerful and… okay, honestly I have no idea if there’s any backing to this Emerald Dream theory. That fairy ring is weird. A giant bunny is weird. That’s about the extent of the link. But you have to admit, I’ve had further reaching theories in the past.
For all we know, this thing could be ancient. Possibly even pre-dating the titans. Unless we find out in an expansion or two that rabbits were only made of stone and blah blah blah. Unlikely. This thing could be a prehistoric bunny. Possible an ancestor to the weapon carrying death critters that dwell north of Mulgore. Which would mean that this thing would pre-date the Shattering! Or the Sundering. Whichever of those is older. Cause let’s be honest, the Sundering was more of a Shattering and the Shattering more of a Sundering really.
Our Hero! The other thing is how the hell did it die? I mean, did someone kill it? Did they use a spear and magic freaking helmet to do it? Did it drown in some ancient quicksand hole? Did it drown in the tiny pond because giant death bunnies can’t swim?! The possibilities are endless. Though likely it was something along the lines of the quicksand idea because its head and one arm is apparently higher than most of its body. Seems like it was trying to flee from being dragged under. I still really like the spear and magic helmet idea though.
Really, the biggest question is why no one in the Undercity is trying to come up with a way to ressurect it. While they seem to have had only success raising dead humans (even cursed humans like worgen are impossible), it’s not out of the absolute range of possibilities. After all, the Lich King had the frostwyrms. They were raised dragons. So there must be SOME way to bring back a giant bunny o’ killomatic from beyond the grave. Heck, you can do it with archaeology! So someone get the Royal Apothecary Society on the job! And while they’re at it, they can slap a saddle on that thing. I wants me a new mount! Mwa ha ha!
VRYKERION 