Recently, I got the Loremaster of Outland achievement by leveling 1-59 in Burning Crusade and then freezing XP at 59 so I could complete as much of it as I could using Chromie Time. This post is to share details of how that went for anyone interested in doing the same. Or perhaps this’ll help you decide not to. Either way, it’ll have been helpful and overall I enjoyed doing this immensely and want to share!
Why I Did This
- Catching up on the story - I played through Dragonflight and felt I did not entirely understand some lore moments. I figured I’d appreciate having more context of current content after playing through World of Warcraft from scratch, oldest expansions to new (which is why I’m starting Burning Crusade and not Cataclysm-revamped Azeroth).
- More of a challenge - Running through Chromie Time made this feel more “real” and less trivial. I had to be careful what I was doing, particularly with BC mob density & the difficulty level of some of the later quests. The forever options to run old content dungeons with others via dungeon finder was also super engaging and the queue as DOS never took too long.
- Profiting off old content - I was curious to see if running Mining/Herbalism would make this experience a lucrative one, along with any rare transmogs picked up along the way. Curiously looking at every item that dropped with the TSM add-on (to ascertain value in the AH) was also pretty cool & helped keep me interested throughout.
- Building Faction Reps - I figured this would be helpful to my future self if I decided to do any rep grinds in the future, as running Loremaster tends to get you at least to Honored with the average expansion faction.
Chosen Class
Death Knight. Alliance Kul Tiran. Never played DK and knew the self-regen skills would help me if I got bored at any point and wanted to challenge myself with bigger pulls to speed things up. Ran Frost for this particular expansion & may change that in the future. I also spent much of my WoW life as Horde (been playing off and on since Vanilla), so choosing Alliance helped this feel fresh.
How Long Did This Take?
/played by the end of this was 2 days, 1 hour, and 24 minutes. I tried to be diligent in always logging off if I had to go away from my keyboard. But worth noting is that I was not trying to speedrun, read all the quest text, and did not pay much attention to what was needed for Loremaster in each zone unless I started to feel I was doing something wrong (examples include more time than was necessary doing quests in Skettis and Ogri’la, neither of which were required for Loremaster). The end quests of Netherstorm & Shadowmoon were also a time waster given how many dungeons & traveling across the map was required. I was not expecting those and so probably did not travel optimally. I did have to leave Chromie Time at the very end to complete every Group (4) or Group (5) quest I had acquired in Outland. Anything Group (3) or under I was able to solo within Chromie Time.
Route Taken
Hellfire → Zangarmarsh → Terrokar → Nagrand → Blade’s Edge → Netherstorm → Shadowmoon. I hit lvl 59 by the end of Terrokar and then froze xp.
Thoughts on each Zone
Hellfire Peninsula - Visually and lorewise not terribly appealing, but felt fun to do circles around the map completing quests en masse. Greedily sucked up a lot of Fel Iron here too.
Zangarmarsh - My favorite of this run. I adored the vibes of Telredor & the Sporeggar. Made me wish for player housing in WoW so I could get more soft pink & purple architecture in my life.
Terrokar Forest - Loved the music and vibes here as well. Haunting. Was time consuming running quests between Shattrath & around here though.
Nagrand - Still a gorgeous area. Was relaxing to listen to podcasts while grinding through the Nesingwary & elemental kill quests. I feel like this zone went by the fastest.
Blade’s Edge Mountains - While awe-inspiring at a distance, up close the textures of this area were really ugly. Endless ogre killing quests also made this area tedious.
Netherstorm - Loved running quests with the Consortium. The juxtaposition of eco-zones & apocalyptic storm was fantastic. Guilty of many end quests requiring a group (or, in my case, temporarily exiting Chromie Time) to complete.
Shadowmoon Valley - Felt like quite an intense finale zone. I initially liked how you quest & expand across the zone relatively fast… but then get stuck doing LONG questlines demanding a lot of backtracking across Outland. Lorewise they were impactful though.
Conclusion - Attaining Loremaster of Outland could often be fun & challenging on a gameplay basis. On a lore basis, I found myself really getting into it once I switched mindset away from expecting character-driven stories and more to it being about the world that you explore. For example, I loved the recurrent theme of driving enemies against one another to give allies breathing space. Expeditions to supply Telredor with food & the means to survive. The goblins sneakily trying to steal tech & money from the Consortium without detection & risking their wrath.
Money & Materials Acquired
I gave myself just enough money at the start to buy big bags and then otherwise started from scratch. I had ~18k gold by the end of the run. That is purely quest rewards, picking up loot, and vendoring - no Auction House. Materials acquired by the end (notable amounts included only):
2468 Netherweave
588 Fel Iron Ore
128 Motes of Fire
239 Dreaming Glory
499 Felweed
169 Golden Sansam Leaf
148 Dreamfoil Blade
55 Runecloth
108 Eternium Ore
151 Motes of Life
607 Motes of Earth
28 Motes of Shadow
15 Fel Lotus
111 Ragveil
636 Adamantite Ore
33 Blindweed
27 Ghost Mushroom Cap
53 Ancient Lichen
71 Terocone
34 Motes of Water
11 Motes of Air
31 Khorium Ore
84 Nightmare Vine
110 Netherbloom
38 Motes of Mana
47 Liferoot Stem
Worth noting is that I went out of my way to go after resource nodes whenever they popped up on the minimap unless they were surrounded by 4+ mobs unrelated to any quest I was running (in which case I often couldn’t be bothered). As for transmogs, I wasn’t interested in holding onto anything unless TSM said it was worth over a thousand gold and would trade in a reasonable amount of time. Nothing fit both of those parameters. Most weapons/armors would theoretically have sold on the AH for a couple dozen to a few hundred gold, but possibly not for weeks, and that didn’t feel worth my time. So I ended up vendoring everything after adding them to my own growing transmog library.
Conclusion - I have yet to go to the trouble of putting all of this on the Auction House but, based on TSM’s projections of value for each material, I think that this will have helped make the Loremaster run several thousand gold more profitable than it would have been otherwise. That being said, it’s worth noting that simply running current content world quests would be a better use of one’s time if gold-per-hour is the goal.
Final Thoughts
All in all, I really enjoyed doing Loremaster in Chromie Time. I was able to take it at my own speed, not feel like I had to race through things to be at the cutting edge of content, and I had to be careful to some extent as I explored Outland. It also felt almost like playing the expansion fresh for the first time given other people always running around (though later zones were sparser). And being able to run dungeons with others again was a blast and I could do that any time I wanted as a break! Though the gold making side of things wasn’t quite as impressive as I’d hoped, it was still fun to scrutinize the items I got and amass materials to sell later on when I get the time.
Given that Burning Crusade is reputedly the toughest Loremaster, I’m psyched to keep going and enjoy WotlK and expansions to come. The increased quality of quests & writing will be an added bonus too. If anyone has any questions about this experience, please let me know and I’m happy to answer. Otherwise this can just be a reference point for the Loremasters of the future who may not want to do it with just trivial content. Cheers!