It's Epic Quest time again!

About a month ago, there was the Quest for the Tiger. The quest that I bring you today is for another tiger, but one that's even more special (if that's possible!) I've posted pictures before of my character Asara on various sorts of mounts. In fact, my profile picture over on the right there is from a screenshot I took of her on her very first one, a lovely spotted cat. There are six different cats you can buy to ride, and two very special ones that you have to do some work for.

One of them comes from Zul'Gurub, which is a dungeon that nobody really runs any more. So the chances I'll get that one are slim, mostly because it's next to impossible to get a group together, and even if it does drop, I'd still have to compete with the other people in the group for it. It would be an awesome achievement, as it's a very distinctive cat (an orange tiger with green armor), but it's something I'll have to wait on for now.

The other one is something altogether different. It's a white cat with blue stripes, and has no armor at all, making it different from all the epic-class cats. This particular cat mount can only be obtained by one method, and that is the reputation grind to end all reputation grinds. I started it once a long time ago at level 60, because I hadn't saved up enough gold to buy an epic cat, and I thought this might be an easy alternative. I was so wrong.

When you start earning this reputation, there is only one quest that you can do. You have to go out and collect 10 pieces of meat, 5 from the local bears, and 5 from the local chimeras. And when you bring that back, you get 50 reputation points. Then you get to do it again. And again. And again. Eventually there are other quests you can get, but I got fed up with this after only 7 meat runs, and I gave up. Getting just to the next reputation rank takes 3000 points, and 50 at a time was just not cutting it. Not to mention that there are three more ranks until you earn the tiger mount. At level 60, these things took a while to kill, too.

Nowadays things are a great deal easier. You still have only the three quests to do, but the reputation reward is much greater. Instead of 50 points per run for meat, you get 250. It's still going to take quite a while, but in terms of how many things need to die, it's an astronomical difference. It also helps that I'm now level 70, and it takes maybe a quarter of the time to kill each bear/chimera/furbolg/whatever.

I've been working on this for a couple of evenings, when raids have fallen through this week. In that time I have gone from 350/3000 Neutral to 1100/6000 Friendly. I'm at the point now where I've got two quests to do at a time, so every time I come back I get 500 reputation. After I get through Friendly, I've got 12,000 more through Honored, and 21,000 more through Revered until I get to Exalted, at which point I have earned my cat. That's 37900 reputation to earn, and all of it done running to one place and killing one sort of thing, running to another place and killing another, and then running back to where I started. Also, once I get to honored, I will be able to do the third quest, adding another 350 reputation. So each time I run back I will get 850.

This is going to take a while. But I'm determined to get it done, and I'm going to be devoting my playtime to running these quests, no matter how long it takes. And then.. then the Reins of the Winterspring Frostsaber will be mine!!!