My First Day on the Timeless Isle

   I'd say I regret not getting out to the Timeless Isle when it was released a week ago, but that would be a lie. My parents go away only twice a year for a week at a time, and since I can't be a carer for my mum if she isn't at home, I take the opportunity to spend some quality time with my boyfriend. In the mean time, I avoided MMO-Champion and other WoW blogs so that I could continue to be ignorant towards the patch. Sure, I saw this, that and the other while browsing the web, but I wasn't too bothered by it. I also did get onto WoW every now and then to keep up with my auctions, but that was all I really did.

   But today, I finally set out towards the mysterious island. And I have to say: wow.
   I usually never get very far with patches, not since Wrath to be honest, and that's usually because I find it hard to gear up due to my home priorities. In fact, I was living elsewhere while Wrath was out, so I actually got to experience that quite a lot more than any other expansion.
   MMO-Champion kept showing the gear, and kept talking about chests and rares. I was convinced that these chests would either be impossible to find, and if they weren't, I wouldn't be able to work out the 'puzzles' to get to them (I was expecting mini-games for some reason). So I wasn't very hopeful in terms of successful gearing, or even really collecting many coins, but today's experience has completely changed that.

   In my first day, while clicking anything that was clickable (the first thing I looted was a couple of coins from a pile of dirt), I cleared all chests, killed many rares, got a few achievements, and almost completely geared my hunter. I was shocked by the progress I made. I was really on the ball this time, too, and got numerous screenshots of achievements to post, so yay me! I don't really care if no one is interested :P
   I love Blizzard, and I actually support a lot of the decisions they make, but despite that, I am still capable of realising when there are things they do that I hate, and I have two complaints for this patch:
1. I feel Blizz got a little lazy with gear this expansion. As lovely as it all looks overall, there aren't many new sets unless you head into raids. The Timeless Isle stuff is just recolours of the armoud you got from the basic factions, and as nice as a few sets look, I don't think they suit much beyond Pandarens. Yes, there's transmog, which does make a big difference, but it means they're not adding much in the way of new things to transmog into in the future. And I don't necessarily want to be constantly transmogged, either.
2. I really do not like the Shaohao faction's rep gain. I'm not a particularly skilled player, but even with almost complete Timeless Isle gear already, it takes me a solid minute to take down an elite Yaungol, my pet is almost dead at the end, so I can't pull a group, and even the elites only give 16 or 17 rep with a Level 25 guild. Plus, my server is very imbalanced - it's almost impossible to find another Horde player willing to farm, and it's just as difficult to find any mobs that aren't already being fought. It's a bit too difficult. I just think that, if there are two dailies anyway - one of which from Shaohao himself - surely there should be room to add a little bit - even just 500 - of rep for that daily. It would give a greater feeling of progress without ridding the method of farming they seem to want us to do.

   BUT, on with the post!

   I was so very excited when I first got to the island. Why? Because Alundra was there. She is one of my favourite Heroes from the WoW Trading Card Game (rest in peace), and I made my own Timewalker deck with her as my Hero (it wasn't very good and resulted in me buying lots of single cards online), and she is in fact the very reason that I made a female Blood Elf Paladin! So, naturally, I had to get a shot of Atherya beside her. She's only level 85 so I had to run her right across the Jade Forest, then run across the sea towards the Timeless Isle on a Water Strider since she couldn't get the quest to get there, and swimming in fatigue waters would probably take too long, resulting in her death. But I got there easily enough.

Look at the sheer excitement on both of their faces!

   I then got back to Daeaye and sent her out into the island. I bookmarked a guide to chests that had been posted on MMO-Champion, and used that to navigate my way around, picking up loads of chests. The first three chests I opened each had tokens in them - a cloak, legs and boots - and I eventually managed to pick up all the pieces of armour, a trinket, and a ring. I was a bit wary of the blazing chest because I had managed to get up there via albatross and I had wrongfully assumed that I had to go through the main square of Ordos to get to the semicircle to the west. I was teleported out, because I've only completed the first two quests of the legendary questline (meeting Wrathion, and getting honoured with him), so I quite obviously didn't have the cloak (I had read time and time again that you needed the cloak to get to him and I had no idea why, seeing as I was already so close to him), so I had to make my way back up and around after reading it up on the ever helpful WoWhead.
   The Mist Covered Chest was another story. My PC isn't great at all, so there's a slow reaction time between my commands and the computer's response, so I was shocked to manage to get the chest on my second attempt. I saw the crane statue, clicked it, was thrown in the air. What I did initially was wait until I was above a chest platform and then remove the flight buff. I then fell (slowly, thankfully) and all of the platforms disappeared. The second time around, I realised I had to use the slowfall buff carefully, and after aiming for several different chests and realising each time I wasn't about to make it, I changed targets. I tell you, I only just landed on the platform. Only my big Troll toes were keeping me on it. Yikes. Great fun, though.

Pardon the funny looking achievement box, I took it off of an alternative screenshot. As you can see, I am a master of Photoshop.

   The rares on the Timeless Isle are so great. Some of them are a pain, yes, and while reading MMO-Champion before the patch launch, I had seen Vazuvius and knew I'd never manage to take it down even with a group. I'd get there too late, I'd die immediately and so on. I've destroyed it about 4 times today :P It's well worth dropping what you're doing to get (unless some pet-dropping rares are about). Garnia was a pain. I tried to take her down on my own - needless to say, it didn't work. I did eventually, with a group, but there was no pet. Koruth was the one that told me about the pets - for some reason, I thought the only pets were the ones from the pat battle tournament. He also took over while I did some house cleaning and started opening crane nests and got me the Azure Crane Pet. Woo! I also opened some of Kukuru's chests, about three of them, but found no pet. I naturally went for the biggest chest first and it only gave me about 100 coins. Koruth suggested going for the smaller, less exciting ones. The really boring ones. They yeilded 300-600 coins and I've not opened a big chest since :P

   I collected up a good 10k coins just today. I'm shocked by how easy it was, and decided that I would collect the coins for the mount exclusively before buying anything else. My server tends to get excited around the launch of patches, and then it all dies within a couple of weeks to the point that the areas are almost deserted. I knew that if I spent the coins on other things, I'd never get the mount. Of course, now I'm wondering if I ever will anyway due to the nature of rep farming. I'm not entirely convinced that the mount is pretty enough to encourage such farming anyway, but I'll try.

   All in all, I'm loving it so far. In my first day I got Where There's Pirates, There's Booty, Rolo's Riddle, Timeless Nutriment, Eyes on the Ground, and Extreme Treasure Hunter. I realise that none of these are particularly difficult, but still. I'm pleased with myself! I'm excited to continue on ^^