The Queue: I hate Birchus

I used to be fairly indifferent to Birchus, even though he stomped around my garrison, often deciding to park himself on top of my garrison cache. He added some color to the place, even if he did sometimes get in the way of other things.

But now after reading all of yesterday’s Queue comments, I’ve had enough. Down with Birchus and with discussion of Birchus. All trees and tree-related subjects are banned from today’s Queue. We will speak no more of it.

Sigh.

Okay, one more question about Birchus.

But only because this one is important.

I find most trees are best taken down with fire. If you know any Fire Mages, they’re sure to be of use in this task — though a Destruction Warlock can do just as well. If all else fails, you have one fallback: Basic Campfire. Do not underestimate the power of Basic Campfire. Never underestimate Basic Campfire.

Argh!

Okay.

Fine.

You have asked, and I will answer.

A single Korfax at ordinary size is already an unstoppable killing machine, so I would have to prefer fighting a hundred Korfax-sized Birchuses. Even at a hundred to one, I’d have better odds.

Because it can be done by grinding, Saberstalkers can potentially be the fastest of the three Tanaan reps needed for Draenor Pathfinder, simply because you don’t have to wait for daily quests to come around. However, there are two quests you can do if grinding isn’t your thing: a daily quest (Tooth and Claw for 1500 reputation) and a weekly quest (Rumble in the Jungle for 3500 reputation)…. but just like grinding, both require you to kill elites in Fang’rila.

But if you want to rush to revered faster than quests will take you, I’d recommend the premade group finder: chances are you’ll always find a group of people doing the same reputation grind, and having a group will speed you along your path to revered.

Honestly, Nessingwary’s lack of presence in Draenor — you can find him in Nagrand, drinking and lamenting the lack of new challenges to hunt — to be a bit confusing. You have a whole new land of (mostly) unspoiled wilderness to discover and leave strewn with the corpses of your foes. Sure, sitting on the edge of a lake and drinking may be a nice retirement plan, but there’s big game to hunt! Get out there!

No matter how frustrating the shipyard can get — and it can get really frustrating when you lose your epic ships — you’ll probably want to keep at it for some of these rewards which are, yes, entirely RNG. Remember the S.E.L.F.I.E. camera when it came out? Some people got it within a day, but I spent a couple of weeks running as many missions as possible in hopes it would turn up. I guess I wasn’t making the appropriate sacrifices to the RNG god at the time, because the result was a lot of mission grind.

These heirlooms are the same: keep at your shipyard grind and they’ll eventually show up… though there’s no telling whether they’ll show up today, tomorrow, or next month.

Could you do this? Sure. You can do anything you want in game, really. We’ve seen people level to 100 entirely by picking flowers… but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily something you’d want to do. There are a limited number of garrison quests and a limited number of treasures (though there are a lot of treasures). If you’re looking to make your way through the zones quickly or efficiently, you’ll want to supplement your treasure hunting with at least some questing. It will offer experience and also help fill any gear gaps that you can’t find treasures for.

But if it sounds like fun… why not? Give it a try. You can really level any way you like, so you should tackle the game in the way you find the most fun… even if it’s not necessarily the fastest or most efficient way to do content.

That’s it for the Queue (and Birchus) today. Tomorrow Matthew Rossi will be your host (and probably cursing me for spending another day talking about trees). Please leave your totally not Birchus-related questions in the comments!