You are now Hated with Booty Bay.

I’m hoping that some will recall my mid-May post talking about my plans before the release of Mists of Pandaria. It’s amazing how much plans change in short periods of time, so I figured a bit of a review was in order to see how I was coming along with all my plans; you never know, it might inspire a few people. :)

The biggest development is, of course, hinted at in the title. Rather than propping up a couple more reputations, I figured it was time simply going for Insane in the Membrane. It’s nowhere near as painful as it once was (erstwhile considered quicker to just level up engineering on the Shendralar section), but it was still a rather horrid feeling when I killed Shakes O’Breen for the thousandth or so time and saw the title message.

I won’t enjoy grinding up the Steamwheedel Cartel again, I really won’t.

But before moving on to my plans to become Insane, I figured a quick run down of where else I’m up to would be worthwhile – so here’s where I’m sat on my plans.

Has any progress been made?

Yes, actually.

The first section I covered in the previous post was to do with gold and my desire to make about 30k of it. I was at around 6k at the time and I’m now at around… 6k. While that sounds like a damning indictment to laziness, it’s actually because I’m now the proud owner of a Mei Francis approved repairing mammoth and a sweet, noisy mechano-hog. And while such things are expensive (better part of 25k swallowed up), they’re now bought so I don’t have to worry about them too much.

It’s just the uber-expensive Pandarian mounts I have to save for. x_X

Secondly, I wanted to complete the current crop of raid content and I’ve happily managed to do that. Everything is now complete and it’s no exaggeration to say that heroic Deathwing, both encounters, is the most disappointing conclusion to an expansion I’ve yet come across. I hated heroic Ragnaros, but it was still a far more fitting end to a tier that was also preceded by the wonderful Sinestra that rounded out tier 11. It’s a strange feeling to have killed everything months before an expansion end, but a nice one – it let’s me get on with other things.

Thirdly, my achievement points have gone up dramatically and almost passively. We got a good night in Ulduar 25 that netted me a few, and I’ve barely made a dent in the quest zone achievement list. Despite that fact, I’m less than 200 points away from the 12.5k target and, really, I should probably be aiming a bit higher. 13k might be a push due to my new aspirations, but we’ll see how far it goes.

So, considering I expect the expansion in mid to late August, we’re moving along quite nicely.

What’s changed?

As you’ll have noticed from other posts, I’ve been levelling and gearing up a paladin and that’s taken up more time than I’d have liked. Dinging her levels and professions didn’t take all that long predictably, but getting her geared has taken far too much of my time. Getting her generally geared wasn’t rough, but I’ve now killed Archbishop Benedictus over 20 times and still yet to see the tanking shoulders drop. As you can imagine, winning drops in LFR is totally random because everyone clicks need by default but I should still have upgraded those shoulders by now. And, yes, they’ve already seen me kicked from a raid group. A group that I was invited to thanks to the raid leader checking my warrior’s armoury, seeing full green raid bars, and then inviting me. Cue the linking of my blue shoulders and subsequent kick.

Clearly, skill can be judged via the one slot that I can’t do anything about replacing.

The biggest change, however, is the decision to go get the Insane title. I told myself previously that I wasn’t going to do it, largely because it was both painful and would require me destroying my reputation with the goblins, an already horrid grind. But truthfully, I was always something of a reputation hunter so I figured that I may as well do the most challenging reputation hunt available so that I need never do it again.

Truthfully, however, I don’t think it’s going to be all that terrible. A friend is going to help me with the Ravenholdt junk boxes, the Darkmoon Faire is far easier to grind out now and that only leaves the Bloodsail Buccaneers that only require Honoured. To be honest, however, I’ll probably grind up the Bloodsail to Exalted seeing as I’ll be hated with the goblins anyway, and the OCD part of me won’t allow the bar to sit at Honoured when I actively pursued the plan of changing it.

So:

I’ve already got the goblin towns ticked off, so that’s fine. Once I get Bloodsail to Honoured I’ll get the junk boxes farmed up and then hit the Darkmoon Faire for some daily questing. My priest is a scribe, so I might also be able to farm up some reputation during the off weeks for the faire but it’ll depend what else I’m doing. I’m not convinced this’ll be a quick grind, but I’m hoping it’ll be worth it in the end.

So, that’s it – some goals achieved, some not quite achieved, and some changed completely – how are your Pandaran plans coming along?