How to get Sha’tar Rep in a day

So I decided I wanted to get my Sha’tar Defense reputation up as fast as I could, because I’m a transmog junkie and I main a draenei, so I wanted to get that sweet Sha’tar Defense Plate set for him. When I found out that the Dwarven Bunker for Alliance only offered various Iron Horde-themed transmog sets (in addition to the Stormwind set) I was incredibly downcast, since I don’t particularly want to look like a member of the Blackrock Clan. But upon discovering that the Trading Post for Alliance offered this set (and only Alliance get to use it, only the Alliance Trading Post offers it, and only Alliance races can equip the pieces/use them for transmog), I immediately realized I had to have it. The problem was, I only realized this on Sunday.

Now here I am writing this post after having successfully ground from neutral to revered in one day. I could have hit exalted with a little more effort, but the set’s available at revered, so that’s when I stopped. How did I do this? Well, there’s only one way to get Sha’tar Defense reputation, and that’s to make kills in two locations in Talador — either Shattrath City or Bladefury Hold, to the north of Talador (just above Fort Wrynn). First, do everything you can to ensure that you have increased reputation gain — get a Battle Standard of Coordination, get one of the holiday buffs or Darkmoon Faire buffs if possible when you’re about to attempt this.  Second, get your Trading Post to level 3 — it gives you a flat 20% buff to reputations in Draenor, and the Sha’tar count.

Next up, for the fastest possible reputation grind, you’re going to want to avoid Shattrath and go instead to Bladefury Hold. I’ve circled on the map exactly where you want to go, but you don’t want to go there alone — you’ll want at least three (a tank, healer and DPS with good AoE at the minimum) and a regular five-person party is best. Go to the end of that walled-in structure I’ve circled, which is absolutely packed with Iron Horde (yes, Iron Horde, and not Sargerei like you’d farm in Shattrath) who you will simply chain pull into a central location near that walled off area and AoE in waves.

The numbers are a bit too much to solo, but a five-person group can easily handle it — in the two groups I ran with, a solid tank and healer made this not a very difficult grind. Mobs stream in about as fast as a group of five with good AoE can burn them down — there’s very little downtime to speak of. If you don’t happen to have four other people interested in this rep grind, don’t worry — it’s easy enough to find groups using the in-game group finder. That’s how I did it — I started off at neutral and hit the group finder (check under custom groups, either to start your own or look for one), found a group doing Bladefury Hold, and got most of the way to honored. A second group after lunch got me deep into revered, and I could have kept going to exalted if I’d wanted.

Besides the transmog armor (which is pretty sweet), there’s a few other goodies on the vendor, like the Armored Irontusk, a heck of a nice mount if you like elekk (which I do). Horde players get access to the Laughing Skull faction from their trading post, which requires you to kill mobs in the Pit in Gorgrond instead — you can still use the Group Finder to assemble a group for this, and in fact I recommend doing so. The Laughing Skull doesn’t offer a full transmog set, but on the other hand, you can wear the various Laughing Skull transmog helms on any armor type.