Broken Arrow

My children have been away for the weekend and my wife was working nights, so over the weekend I gorged myself on World of Warcraft. I have played on characters that  I have not played on in months, and even did the daily Timeless Quest on seven different characters in one day.

My wife caught me sneaking off to complete a quest when I should have been somewhere else, doing housework. She said, "Get downstairs now!", I replied that I was just killing a mob and would down in a minute. At this point she came into the computer room and stared at the screen. "That is not one mob!" I said it is OK I am a Death Knight, "You are killing five, level 90 Elites at the same time, this game is so broken."

There you go, that is the verdict of my wife who has been away from the game for 3 years. She quit when Blizzard decided that all instances should be rock hard, and that healers should heal with triage. That was one bad move Blizzard, it killed my entire network of friends, when 5 people communicating over Skype could not co-ordinate themselves sufficiently, then the skill level was quite frankly way out of kilter.

Death Knights have always held a special place in the class structure. They are the only class deemed to be hero class, although the only benefit that bestows would appear to be ability of starting at level 55. Death Knights starting zone is about learning skills and gathering a complete Blue set. This made them extremely over powered and despite radical changes to the class the Blood Death Knight remains incredibly difficult to kill, providing it is managed correctly. This unique ability once the preserve of the Paladin class with the multiple survivability techniques, allows Death Knights to solo content that they have no right to be able to defeat.

I have stopped worrying so much when doing the Timeless Isle. The Elder Turtles buffering me along the beach is not a major issue, they do only small amounts of damage. Other classes can be absolutely mauled by the spin ability, three hits and you are dead. Death Knights soak up this damage without really breaking stride. An iLevel of 500 really seems to be the tipping point and the three Timeless buffs  Dew of Eternal Morning, Book of Ages and Singing Crystal. The buffs take a few days to assemble a few of each, but once you do then the Daily quest becomes a matter of routine. I took a Monk and a Druid to the Isle and had a torrid time until I was able to work out a technique and choose my battles with up most care and attention. A little tip to make the best use of the buffs when they are in short supply is to log out on the Isle. Hearthstoning back to Pandria will destroy any Timeless buffs.

The issue of buffs is a strange one, a proc that heals you for 60,000, 8,000 of a useful stat, or 100,000 additional damage. These are huge boosts and all three can be used at the same time. It takes a few days to get started for a new character on the Isle. Would it not have been easier or simpler to not have the buff and to nerf the power of the mobs.

At a time when Blizzard is working hard on scaling issues Flex, Proving Grounds and Challenge mode dungeons, they could have set the island to a specific iLevel. The Isle never gets easier or harder, just a constant level of challenge. At launch I found the Isle difficult on all characters with the possible exception of my Hunter. Gear and buffs means that I can rattle through on 5 characters, and struggle like hell on the other 6. If the Isle never gets easier the challenge will always be there even when the next expansion comes along. The gear rewards are purely to assist in getting into LFR and Flex.

The regular Raiders who arrived in the Timeless Isle at launch must have thought the zone was a joke and would have assumed the huffing and panting from the casuals was because they were rubbish. How are Blizzard supposed to balance open world content when some people have iLevel 450 and others have iLevel 540.

Level the playing field and it will be so much easier to aim the content at people. In general if the rewards are below your current iLevel then the content is not really designed for you.

I am starting to suspect that the majority of players prefer easy to difficult, and Blizzard are making 90% of the content to accommodate. The 10% will have to make do with Heroic Raids, Challenge Modes and Arenas. Only this week I heard the Turpster talking about pining for the short and sweet AoE fest dungeons of the Wrath expansion. The aging WoW population would seem to agree.

Paranoid Android

The Timeless Isle, Isle of Loot or whatever you choose to call it, is still very much on my mind. I expected to bring my army of alts from around the 470-480 iLevel to around 500, what I wasn't expecting was for my main to gain 20 iLevel as well.

Mists of Pandaria re-introduced the concept of world bosses, something not seen since vanilla days and way too advanced for when I was a young dwarf just running around Loch Modan killing Troggs.  The list so far is:

• Salyis's Warband (Galleon)
• Sha of Anger
• Nalak 
• Oondasta

On a list of things to do each and every week these bosses came low on my list of priorities due to the requirement to group and wait. I am afraid my tolerance for waiting is not very good these days and solo play requires no waiting or dependence on other people.

On all my characters I have probably notched up 10 kills of the Sha and 10 of Nalak. Galleon and Oondasta only just register on the richter scale. These bosses provide a steady stream of relatively easy to obtain gear (Oondasta had his moment in the sun).

From the comment section of WoW Head I found this:


World BossesThere will be 5 world bosses on the Isle:

• Chi-Ji (Screenshot)
• Niuzao (Screenshot)
• Xuen (Screenshot)
• Yu'lon (Screenshot)

These four Celestial world bosses are the 5.4 version of Sha of Anger/Nalak and are relatively easily beaten.. They all share the same loot table, and while you can fight all four, you will only receive a chance at loot for the first one you defeat. They drop iLevel 522 PvP gear and iLevel 553 PvE gear.
 
I will not be discussing the 5th boss due to not having a Legendary cloak. The advantage of these 4 bosses is that you do not need to be in a group, as long as your faction have got the boss tagged. This is a huge leap forward in terms of thinking from Blizzard. I just wish there was more chances to join in and not just at the beginning and the end of week. If I can work it so that all my characters have a go each week. The downside is that I need to start using a form to monitor my alts progress.

I mentioned briefly on Monday about the 522 PvP gear, but with my luck I was not expecting to win a Tier piece in the shape of The Gloves of Blinking Vigil, which is I believe is normal Tier level. I have also obtained 3 Burden of Eternity on this character and all this before I have even stepped into LFR or Flex versions of Siege of Orgrimmar.

Sometimes you can spend most of an expansion scrabbling around for gear and then all of sudden, you can't keep up with the stats, gems and enchantments. As usually happens in WoW the answer appears as if by magic, and today that source was WoW Insider. I have never been a regular raider and min-maxing was always for everybody else, I worked on the principle that as long as I am Hit capped, then Haste, Crit, and Mastery would put me with a few percentages points of optimum.

Of course I have heard of Mr Robot but it was never a priority to check out how best to configure my gear, and besides you never know how long you keep a given item.

Tonight though I am prepared to go the extra mile and pay good money to maximise my character. The biggest shock for me so far is that Mr Robot favours Haste above Crit and Mastery for Beast Mastery. I guess I got used to Crit always being King, from the days of Dragon Soul when every other shot was guaranteed to crit.

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The Timeless Isle is not a safe location for the unwary or the undergeared. In my opinion the weekly and Dailies become significantly easier at the iLevel 500 mark. My favoured mob for the Path of the Mistwalker (Kill 20 Elites) daily is the Great Turtle that can be found on the beach between the Alliance and Horde flight points.

The Great Turtles have a predictable special attack:

• Shell Spin — Spins arounds for 10 sec, inflicting 185,000 to 215,000 Physical damage every 1 sec. to enemies within 8 yards and knocking them back.
• Snapping Bite Melee range — Deals 500% weapon damage as Physical. 1.5 sec cast.

The shell spin is the ability that catches most people out, but once mastered it is no longer a big issue.

On my Hunter the Turtle will die before the Shell Spin, on my Frost Mage, I can time a frost trap to disrupt the cycle, and on an Elemental Shaman I try to blast it away or run at the right time depending on the situation and current cooldowns.

I also make use of the Timeless Buffs, that help considerably, Dew of the Eternal Morning, Book of Ages and Singing Crystal which are all rewards for Path of the Mistwalker daily quest. All three can be used at the same time.

Melee of course have the biggest problem with the Shell Spin attack, but the Plate wearers can probably take a bit of buffeting.

Most of my characters are starting to approach the iLevel 500 mark so it will be interesting  to see how the various classes handle the Great Turtles.

Timeless Melody

Timeless Isle, are we still visiting it on a daily or weekly basis? WoW Insider asked the question as a breakfast topic over the weekend and the figures are shown below at the time of writing.

Are you still participating on the Timeless Isle?
I'm still farming it every day. Must. Have. Coins.	1092 (20.9%)
Not as much as I used to, but I'll still camp some rares.	1675 (32.1%)
I just do the weekly quest for the valor points.	1081 (20.7%)
I'm done with the Timeless Isle.	1371 (26.3%)

To be quite honest the choice of answers was not very well thought through for instance, "Not as much as I used to, but I'll still camp some rares." - 32%  answered yes which in my opinion is just madness to visit for Rare bashing.

The answers should have been more like this

1. Farming every day for Rep
2. Occasional visit whilst waiting for LFR or Raid to start
3. Doing Daily/Weekly quests for Valor
4. I have bled the island of loot and coins and dislike the disorganised chaos, and will never return.

I have run all my max level characters through the starter quests and I have 3 characters running the dailies for valor and coins, and I get a small amount of rep at the same time.

The daily quests are kill 20 Elites and answer a stupid lore question (no rush we will wait until you can answer one). The weekly is kill 5 Rares and obtain 50 Epoch Stones.

If you go every day and kill 20 Elites, you will automatically complete the weeklies in 4 or 5 visits.
What is the point of obtaining the 50 Epoch stones on a Tuesday or Wednesday and having nothing to do for the rest of the week.

I have noticed that after 3 weeks the Celestials are rotting away. They might as well appear on reset day and then take the rest of the week off. The Grumpy Elf pointed out that people are complaining about getting upgrades because they are essentially PvP pieces. WoW's complexity means that it is difficult to keep ahead of all the changes, and not everyone uses news sites or fan blogs, but it easy enough to compare gear and see if it is an upgrade or not.

I am still playing the Burden of Eternity lottery and winning, with an average of 30,000 coins converting to 1 Burden, which is better than the suggested 1 in every 100 keys.

100 keys X 500 coins = 1 Burden of Eternity (several armour drops and 15-20,000 coins) or 50,000 (guaranteed Burden of Eternity).

The sample figures are low but I think it is still worth the risk, and besides it give me an extra chance to get iLevel 496 trinkets of which I am still about 5 missing.

Going through the comments from WoW Insider I noticed this one:

"The biggest flaw with the Timeless Isle (are you listening, Blizzard?) is that you can see all the sights and sounds on your first trip to the island. Given the nature of the island, from a lore perspective, it should really reconfigure itself from day to day or week to week, constantly offering different sets of challenges and content."

Oddly enough this echoes the post from the Godmother who has been faffing around the subject for a few days now:

This is not sarcasm or abuse directed at Blizzard. Your Island of Free Things is lovely, but I for one would like to return to having some structure and direction in my life. I'm sorry I said that Dailies were boring and repetitive, and this proves the point that you don't know what you have until it's gone.

Could we go back to 5.2 now, please?

It would appear that some people like a bit of order in their lives and not the freedom of creating your own adventures. It is pretty telling that I have stuck to the small number of Dailies and Weeklies on the Isle to maintain my own interest.

I have always stated that Blizzard like to swing wildly between opposing views.

"Everybody hates dailies" Blizzards response ok we will give you new content with no dailies and some weeklies.

The complaints going through this expansion are not so clear cut, or are they in black and white, in summary it looks more like this.

5.0, 5 new levels, one new class and one new race. End game is Rep based, with small amounts of valour awarded for doing dailies.

1. I have to do dailies to earn Valor and Rep, Valor is useless without Rep and vice versa.
2. The gear is stuck behind Rep vendors so I have to do all the rep dailies and there is no shortcut to the exercise.
3. Two of the reps are stuck behind another rep grind
4. Can you stop giving us dailies.

5.1 offered more dailies but they had a good story running through with normal Scenarios and solo scenarios.

1. This is a good mix of storytelling and dailies, but I am still a little jaded from all the dailies from 5.0

5.2 Blizzard offer more dailies along with closed content and solo scenarios plus and Island full of Dinosaurs.

1. Blizzard we like this zone but we are now on our 3 patch with more dailies, can we take a break

5.3 Only content provided is a little story telling and a weekly.

1. Blizzard you taking the piss, we said no dailies, so you give us weeklies is this a joke?

5.4 Blizzard give the world a free form Island with some dailies, some weeklies and some exploration. In addition because we have been so mean so far to alts and dual specs, you can have an Island full of loot.

1. Overload, I don't know what I am doing anymore, Blizzard please can you give me structure back

What everyone failed to realise at Blizzard is that 5.1 and 5.2 are the correct ways to provide dailies. The problem was the amount of pain endured for the first 3-4 months with 5.0. This is the burnout zone, and we need to have various ways to gain rep not just from dailies, and don't like the idea that all the gear and recipes are hidden behind rep, we don't want to feel that content is mandatory. Rep should not be per character or it should be easy alternatively it can long and grindy but it is account bound.  Guess what, we can even have a mixture of different types of rep grinds.

The Timeless Isle is a counter balance to all that went wrong leading up to this point in the expansion. It is not a future indication of how expansions will be done in the future, it is just making sure that we have no excuse for not taking down Garrosh Hellscream.

Viva Las Vegas

Hidden away in a cave on the Timeless Isle is Master Kukuru. A Hozen who sits in a cave surrounded by treasure chests. His job in life is to sell keys to adventurers who have spare Timeless coins on their hands.

Scott Johnson described it as, "The most addictive feature ever introduced by Blizzard", and the Godmother coined the phrase, "The island where you exchange coins for treasure. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG."

I had previously avoided the cave in an attempt to save up my coins for a big purchase, but soon discovered that the accumulation of coins is slower than you might think. The object of my affection is the Burden of Eternity and to obtain one of these through hard work will set you back a whopping 50,000 Timeless coins. In 2 weeks I have amassed a total of 30,000 coins so I am guessing that I can knock one of these out every three weeks or so.

The shortcut is to play roulette with Master Kokuru, but is it a risk worth taking? My character with the next highest number of Timeless coins was my Shaman with a stash of 7,500 coins. I decided that it is possible to obtain 50,000 coins on one character but to try it each week on multiple characters is burnout material.

7,500 coins will buy you a grand total of 15 keys and this is what happened when I gambled the family silver.

15 keys gave 3 items of armour and enough money to buy 9 keys
9 keys was converted to 7 keys so by round 3, I was at less than half of my original stake
7 keys yielded 1 armour token
5 keys was dwindled down to 4 keys
4 keys was halved to 2 keys
2 keys bought 2 further keys
2 keys bought 2 further keys
2 keys yet again bought 2 keys
2 keys finally converted into 1 armour token and a Burden of Eternity

In summary, 7,500 coins produced 5 armour tokens and a Burden of Eternity against the stonewall certainty of 50,000 coins converting to 1 Burden of Eternity. Am I hooked? you bet I am.

The next highest character could only muster 5,000 Timeless coins buying 10 keys.

10 keys became 6
6 keys became 4
4 keys remained 4
4 keys became 3
3 keys remained 3
3 keys remained stuck at 3
3 keys finally yielded 1 armour token
1 key remained 1
1 key opened to reveal a busted flush.

The first attempt allowed for 48 keys for the sum of 7,500 Timeless coins and the second 32 keys for 5,000 Timeless coins.

Using a rough calculation I divided 7500/48 = 156.25 and then 5000/32 = 156,25 on such a small sample it is rather disturbing to see the exact same figure for both experiments.

The first experiment shows what I assume is a very lucky streak and the second is a very poor reward for the amount of coins.

It was widely reported that Blizzard were being very generous when the patch dropped and it is less certain the risk factor that they finally settled on.

My character is sat on a nest egg of 30,000 coins or 60 keys, is it worth the risk or should I settle for the guaranteed upgrade?

Google revealed a series of experiments on Reddit with real mathematical chance percentages. The gist is are you feeling lucky punk?

In case you need to go into rehab after a night spent with Kukuru, there is at least a place to go for those poor unfortunate souls with no Timeless coins left to rub together.

Suicide Is Painless

Having plundered the Timeless Isle for iLevel 496 gear, I have now set my sights on Burden of Eternity. The Godmother showed the world (well me) where I could acquire a guaranteed drop of Burden of Eternity for the Burning Chest.

The Godmother suggested that the route one is over the broken bridge:

"I can personally confirm shoving a non-cloak wearer in your Chopper sidecar and bringing them over will work, so that should mean a cloak-wearer with a Mammoth or any 2 person mount which works as ground transport should also be safe."

This is a great and much easier route but it does require somebody to help who A) has the Legendary cloak and B) has a 2 seater mount. I tend to play as Bill No Mates, and so onto the solo route:

"If you don't have a friend with a cloak, don't panic: finding an Albatross and hitching a ride can get you there, as will using a flying mount."

I have discussed the Albatross and how much I hate the mechanic, so much so that I wrote a post yesterday that will probably never see the light of day (due to its high level of toxicity). I have refined my method for thumbing for a Taxi Albatross and it involves being picked up at the point near to Kairoz. I stand on a rock next to the stairs to the Celestial Arena and it works for all classes (so far):

Timeless Isle - showing the Billy No Mates route

I have modified the map provided by the Godmother and have added point X which is the Taxi rank and point Z which is the Albatross drop off point. Apparently you can still craft things on the flight around the Isle so utilise the time for making bandages, milling herbs or whatever takes your fancy. If you have not already completed the Quest Rolo's Riddle then now is a good time to get to the third instalment of the quest line.

Having killed the Albatross to get off (sorry to hear about feral Druids not being able to attack in Cat/Bear form - welcome to life as a BM Hunter with minimum range and fighting in vehicles) head in an anti-clockwise direction (loot Rolo's Chest, if applicable). Go round as far as possible then drop down (heal yourself) and drop down further. Swim to the bank and find a route out of the water. Loot a Firestorm Egg and a Fire Poppy (it will add to your achievements if nothing else). Mount up and go full speed avoiding as many Fiery mobs as possible, ride straight through the gap in the wall at point C (Not Point B) and head straight towards the chest. Loot chest and die.

I have done this or variations on a theme on 6 Characters now. Hunter died several times in the process, Mage died once using a slower approach, all the other died at the chest except for the Rogue who stealthed all the way there.

Thankfully Blizzard never introduced perma-death so yes I think it is worth doing a suicide mission for iLevel 535 and 2 armour tokens. Reports suggest that this chest is one off item, but I think it is worth checking if it is a weekly respawn. I think it might be worth the repair bill.

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Last night I finally decided to visit the Pet Tamer. I have attempted before whenever I see a Master Pet Tamer around the world. A quick bit of research revealed that I need to start in Stormwind. The intention was only to get the starter training not to butcher all the surrounding wildlife. In the end I had to force myself to stop.

I am starting to see the attraction, but I still have too much stuff to do in other parts of the game. Perhaps Pet Battles should be available on handheld devices similar to Hearthstone. Some people might end up trapped in World of Warcraft for all of our waking life.

Land Of Confusion (II)

The Timeless Isle is it good, bad or indifferent? To be quite honest I am not sure.

I have run the zone 10 times on different characters now and I only feel totally at ease on 2 of the characters, my main Hunter and the utility and hard hitting Elemental Shaman. All the rest felt weak even with their new found wealth of gear.

I was originally feeling good at about the zone when every other chest or chest wielded gear tokens, but after thought provoking posts like this from the Godmother. Oddly though the Godmother is growing into the zone and I am growing wearier.

I decided early on that the best course of action was to do all the starter quests and then stop at the 50 Epoch Stones, which is the point where it starts to get grindy, The recommended Great Turtle Hatchlings for the Epoc Stones seemed to have been nerfed and in the end I proceeded to do mostly skinable creatures, Turtles, Snakes and Cats were the order of the day, and special thanks to Oov for all the waiting whilst I made good use of my skinning knife. I mostly did my solo content as part of a duo, it just seemed less stressful and with 2 eyes peeled on Rares it proved to be nice easy content. Kilnmasters are still a pain in the butt even for 2 people, which explains the rep parties going on around the isle. Now I might be completely wrong but I cannot see the value in the Shaohao Reputation, except for a serpent dragon mount. The sheer number of hours required I think I might pass on this one. If anyone can explain the 5 masks other than as vanity items, then I would be most grateful.

Back to the Godmother and her first impressions, she wrote:

"Part of my brain, the massively cynical portion, wonders if they had a meeting for 5.4 before it was instigated and had a whiteboard where the Devs wrote down all the things they'd done wrong in the game this time around, and right at the top, in capital letters, someone wrote 'GIVE ALTS FREE STUFF TO MAKE MAINS FEEL BETTER.'"

This is a design plan, and it got me thinking why are they doing it? Yes, it is a mid-expansion gear reset, and yes, Alts have it tough this expansion, and yes, Mains are struggling with off specs, but what is it for. My only explanation is just like in Cataclysm, when Heroic 5 Mans were tough, and the Zul's were horrible, ultimately they gave  us a loot fest in the last patch which they called it Looking for Raid and the Dragon Soul. Large number of people had killed Deathwing in the first month.

MoP is the first expansion to have multiple tiers of LFR, and to be brutally honest the iLevel of the gear in LFR is shocking at 502, so introducing a loot reset at 496, just below the ToT LFR, then people will be able to catch up in ToT and be able to move onto Siege of Orgrimmar as quickly as possible. Blizzard has developed a policy of "Leave No Man Behind", and everyone will get to see the last Raid and the fall of Garrosh before the next expansion. The plan is slow, slow, slow open floodgates. Rohan discussed the issue dual specs to do anything in the MoP expansion:

"Until 5.4, I never realized just how much I resented the way Mists of Pandaria was turning out. I play a healer, and it just seemed like so much of Mists was healer-unfriendly. There was all this neat new content and game modes, and I had to switch to Ret to do most of it."

The Timeless Isle will alleviate some of this pressure and the loot fest is not all about Alts, it is designed to get some of those Healers and Tanks available. This was probably the single biggest failing of the expansion. If it is hard to get gear for one spec, then it is damn near impossible to do it for a second spec. The latter waves of 5 Man Heroics always gave the chance for someone to say, "Can I need for my Off-spec?".

The Godmother questions why crafting was not used, and in my opinion the crafting model is being left to rot, with only raider having access to high end patterns and the inevitable materials which have raw materials more valuable than the crafted item. I used to love crafting but I think Blizzard have long since killed the design for anything other than starting gear at the beginning of an expansion. Why spend huge sums of money on an item that will be replaced so quickly? The odd BoE item available for spare Valor tokens was a better solution for those with either excessive amounts of Valor or with spare Gold to lavish on Alts.

The Timeless Isle is currently crammed with people, but what is it going to be like when they produce the next such island when connected Realms are in place? Is the zone worth going to back to every week when the server resets so that we can do the weekly quests? I am guessing that if Battlefield:Barrens is anything to go by, this island will very soon be deserted, and the only thing left is queuing for LFR again.

The Grumpy Elf is turning towards the meta game of Timeless Isle Achievements, the chances are that you will not have completed too many by accident, but you will be a good chunk of the way to getting the right ticks in all the boxes, like kill one of every type of mob, find every Treasure chest available.

The Godmother has moved on to the real interest in the Timeless Isle and that is the collection of Burden of Eternity, this will move your gear on significantly from the iLevel 496 to 535. If RNG is required then some of us are already screwed, but as the Godmother points out, there is one chest that is guaranteed, unfortunately it is a one shot item and can only be looted once ever.

There seems to be some discrepancy in reports about how often certain chests can be looted, and I am guessing that this will not be resolved until reset day and we can try and loot them all again.

Last week I had a moan about the Albatross as a method for getting around, and it appears I am not the only person. The forums were full of vitriol for the new system and most of it surrounded the killing of an Albatross when fully laden with travelling hero. Blizzard fixed this little problem with one of their daily fixes, but apparently the griefers have not stopped killing Albatrosses to stop other people using them. I personally waited for 5 minutes for an Albatross to fly by and then discovered that I had no spells with which to attract its attention on a Paladin. I am sure this is not the only class lacking in a long range damage spell. Anybody who can help on this matter I can guarantee your advice will be greatly received. I have yet to time the length of the journey but the speed and the route are just plain crazy. Can somebody please get some engineers from Northrend to rig up some ski lifts?

Like A Rolling Stone

I confess, I got it wrong. The Timeless Isle is brilliant for gearing alts and ultimately it will result in a gear reboot, with every character able to get around iLevel 500 without too much of a problem. My initial thoughts was that a main character would be able to kill all the nasties and then send the gear home. Whilst this approach is possible it is not the quickest and smartest route. The best way is to send each of your Alts to the Timeless Isle so that at the minimum they can spend an hour there and do the initial quests.

Day 2 saw the Guild raiding, they sensibly left it a day after the patch, which left me soloing Timeless Isle on my Hunter. This time the pace was so much slower with 90% of the Island uncovered and explored. Having seen some of the achievements I decided to try and fill in some the gaps, by killing mobs I had previously ignored and searching out new types of Treasure Chests.

This resulted in a lot of platform action, of which I do not excel, like balancing on a yardarm on the pirate ship and tightrope walking across 3 different ropes at differing levels. The things we do for treasure.

There are certainly a lot more quests than I was lead to believe. Icy Veins in their overview describe questing as:

Questing. There are a few quest lines that take place on the island, including the last part of the Mists of Pandaria legendary quest line. There are also two daily and two weekly quests, and a cooking quest line that rewards you with the recipe for crafting a raid cauldron that provides +300 food to everyone in the raid.

I suggest doing all the starter quests on each character and then just doing the two dailies and  2 weekly quests on your main. I got stuck on the cooking questline, but thanks to Icy Veins I now need to do The Temple of the Jade Serpent to kill the Sha of Doubt. There are so many Sha's that I lost track of the location of this one. Icy Veins suggests that you should stay in the instance:

"After killing the Sha, do not exit the instance, because you need to turn in the quest to the scroll in the same room as the Sha. Also, try to get the tank to stay with you, because the next quest, Bad Feeling, Worse Result, requires you to kill an elite mob on the balcony at the end of the room where you fought the Sha of Doubt. To defeat this mob, just avoid all things thrown at you."

Another useful piece of advice is killing Great Turtle Hatchlings for the 50 Epoc Stones. I was finding the going quite slow, so this should speed up the process no end.

The one thing that I have really noticed about the Timeless Isle is how easy it is to die, unless you have got your complete game face on. R yesterday mentioned in the comments about the huge Frogs that leave a nasty coating of venom which will continue long after they have died. The frogs themselves are not a difficult fight, but I only noticed a problem when I sent my Cat into attack to find it had expired on the floor. There are other mobs that will charge and remove your health bar to around 25%. The difficulty level is definitely there, and I am starting to think that Blizzard is unsure about solo and group content. Grouped the content is very easy, solo you need to be careful. Which one do you want us to do Blizzard?

 Icy Veins gives suggestions about where it is safe to farm for Rep, and I am starting to think they have got a good point. The Rares seem easy enough so why not let the whole zone have group loot or Rare tapping.

BBB yesterday made a good point about the new minimap Rares appearing, in Pandaria and not just in the Timeless Isle. On a brief sojourn to the Isle of Thunder, I was able to snag a Rare without having to go out of my way to look for it. This will be a huge benefit for anyone still visiting the Island. 

Sugar Sugar

Sugar, ahh,
Honey, honey.
You are my candy girl,
And you got me wanting you

The Archies

This song has been bouncing around my head since the Grumpy Elf described the Timeless Isle as,

"Coins and gear tokens drop like candy.

Sitting at work and waiting for news of the new patch is rather painful and surprisingly few bloggers managed to write up their experiences, I guess they are still working out what to do with all the Candy Loot.

 I was fretting yesterday about how to get to the Timeless Isle, but I should not have worried, with Blizzard using the incoming message as soon as you enter the Vale. A quick teleport and you are stood opposite the new Flight Path attendant.

Blizzard described the experience on the Timeless Isle as, "Open-world adventuring at your own pace.", but does this adequately describe the zone. There are quests to guide you along your first tentative steps, which is like having stabilisers on a child's bicycle, but ultimately you feel compelled just to roam and see what the world contains. Certainly there are lots of things to click on and treasure chests lurk in dark corners. 

The mini map will draw you attention to any new activities in your new vicinity, like rares and treasure chests, so keep an eye on the map and the other eye on the screen, because respawn rates are rather crazy at the moment. The difficulty level of the island was described by Blizzard as:

"Being able to take on large creatures by yourself also means that long after Patch 5.4 comes out, when the number of people visiting the island dwindles, you’ll still be able to bring new characters there and engage with everything it has to offer."

Having read Grumpy and the fact that he died several times, mostly to PvP but the point remained that this Island may contain some hidden nasties and the answer is definitely in the affirmative. If you take iLevel as a reasonable indicator it might shed some light on Blizzard's statement. If Grumpy is 536 and Bob is 504 and a new 90 is 458, then I predict some problems. Almost everything is 90, 91, 92, Elite or Rare, which would mean that unless your new level 90 can simply drop threat at a moments notice then they are going to become well acquainted with the Spirit Healers and Graveyards.

I usually run my Hunter as Beast Master with a Ferocity Pet, but it soon became obvious that it would be hard to keep my pet alive this was. Pet Tanking is the new methodology and possibly a respec is required to generate some additional healing from Spirit Bond. In some respects I am tempted to do the Isle on a Blood Death Knight, all the gear is BoA so what does it matter which character brings home the bacon.

With so much iLevel 496 gear dropping on the Isle, it makes me wonder why I was so obsessed with the Battlefield:Barrens, I could simply have taken 6 weeks off WoW, enjoyed the summer and come back to the the game in September refreshed.  The Justice points that I have been carefully collecting are almost useless as well. The best gear available with Justice is the gear formerly with the 5.1 Operation:Shieldwall vendor which oddly enough offers iLevel 496. Why spend the Justice points when you can wait for a drop? At the current rate I should be able to clothe all my characters in less than a month, and maybe as short as 2 weeks if lucky with the right drops. So far on my Hunter I am a magnet for boots of any material and mail Chestpieces. These are great for converting to Epic items and either vendoring or disenchanting, the price of Enchants is set to nosedive.

The area is considerably smaller than I was expecting but then again a quarter of the zone is only open to the Elite Cloak wearing brigade who are fortunate enough to have done those LFR chores week after week. I do not begrudge anybody who was patient enough to complete the Wrathion quest line. What is more of a concern is the stupid idea for getting to the highest parts of the zone in the mouth of an Albatross [*], that takes the longest route known to man and who moves slower than the average gastropod. No wonder the peaks have treasure chests on top, nobody can be bothered to wait that long. In some respects the Pandarians should telling us to slowdown, and should be more British in asking people to queue in an orderly line.

In recent weeks I have been rapidly using up my supply of Exotic Leather, and even started farming it with Raptorleaf seeds at the Sunsong Ranch. The Timeless Isle provides a multitude of corpses, including snakes, bulls, crabs and cats. The number of people with skinning on their mains is probably quite small and this leaves a huge pile for the discerning skinners amongst us. The extra bonus is the Timeless coins that drop from skinned corpses, makes it a double win.

With all this Timeless coinage arriving in my pocket, and everybody on the Isle wanting to sell me something it is like being at a Bazaar. Never wanting to foolishly part with my money, although I did buy some keys, (I couldn't resist) for the cave with treasure chests in it (I felt like Indiana Jones trying to choose the Holy Grail). I have discovered the following list from Battle.net forums:

Mistwalker Ai, Located in the Celestial Court

496 tokens for 7500 coins

476 Weapons for 10000 coins

Burden of Eternity 50000 coins

535 Trinkets 50000 coins

Mogu Rune of Fate - 2500 coins

Time Worn Journal - 500 coins

 

Mistweaver Ku - Shaohao Rep

 

The scroll of challange is used to summon a group of elite mobs that are rather hard to kill. It is used as a part of the Shaohao questline.

Vanity Masks - Friendly - 100 coins each

Scroll of Challenge - Honoured - 500 coins

Time Lost Artifact - Honoured - 7500 coins, 476 trinket that ports to the Isle

Harmonious Porcupette - Revered - 7500 coins, battle pet

Celestial Defenders Medallion - Revered - 2500 coins, transforms you into a "celestial defender"

 

Speaker Gulan

 

This guy sells a "censer of burning agony" for 7500 coins. When you activate this you become pvp flagged to all players. When you kill a player you are rewarded with a "bloody coin" which can be spent here

Black Ash - 1 coin - Reduces targets healing taken by 90% for 10 seconds

Pouch of White Ash - 20 coins - trinket that increases pvp power and resilience by 5641 for 30s

Fire-Watcher's Oath - 50 coins - Transforms you into a Yangol

Reins of the Ashhide Mushan Beast - 500 coins - A mushan beast mount.

 

Blizzard describe the currency rewards as:

"The currency of the Timeless Isle is Timeless Coins, which players can use to purchase Mogu Runes of Fate, additional BoA gear, pets, mounts, and some just-for-fun items. The island also contains a new faction—one that forges a mystic bond with the lost Emperor of Pandaria, Shaohao himself—that will grant you access to even more cosmetic rewards. Gaining faction with Emperor Shaohao isn’t gated, but it does require battling some of the most ancient and powerful creatures the island has to offer."

If the coins are merely for spending then, I believe that a 535 Trinket would be my number one priority at the princely sum of 50000 coins, with a Mushan Mount coming in a close second.

I nearly forgot that there is a new faction, and a fully Exalted reputation bar is always a reasonable motivator for many players. I am not sure whether this zone will have the legs to last for any considerable time and I expect it to be almost deserted in about 6 weeks, but for now, I am happy to collect my daily candy.

[*] Apologies to the person who was enjoying his slow ride to China, before some stupid Hunter attacked the Albatross that was carrying him.