Armaggedon's coming!

The guide is below, but 1st an important discussion, particularly considering the frustration this Achievement can bring.

OK, selfish is too strong a word, for most people anyway. Forgetful, unthinking (not it a bad way I promise) might be better words.

Or, are you a generous, considerate Achievement Hunter.

Levels of Generosity

1. Share with All
2. Share with Guild
3. Share with mates
4. Share with everyone, except “Fred”.
5. Share with none

• I share with all, without thinking about it.  If I see an achievement waiting to be plucked, or shared with the common populace of Alliance Aman’Thul, I yell it up and down the streets.
• Others will just send a message in Guild chat… that’s what Guildies are for right, to share, to help.. and screw the rest.
• Some will share just with their mates, even if their mates are in the guild, they wont make it public.
• Poor Fred, he made the mistake of saying he was going to beat everyone in the Achievement hunting stakes, so when you see an achievement on offer, do you share it around Fred’s back? (Yes Mr. Tree, I am talking about you and Mr.Z!… of course you do it intentionally sloppily)
• Maybe it’s all about you. Share with no one.  Sure you can’t get server 1st, but you can get server 3,452nd and you wont settle for 3,453rd.

It’s up to you, but please share with ALL!

So, we are getting closer to the details of this achievement, but 1st the basic mechanics.

• There are 8 spawn locations for 8 tomes of magic.
• There is a 3 hour cooldown from when a book is touched at any of the spawn locations before another will spawn.
• That respawn will occur any time in the following hour.
• So it can take anywhere from 3 – 4 hours for a tome to spawn.
• Once the book is clicked, it remains for 3 minutes, but can be clicked on by anyone during that 3 minutes for credit.

Painful nah?

But wait, it gets worse!

That spawn may be one of the desired tomes, or it may be a trashy magazine… which ever spawns, the cooldown timer starts again.

So, you could sit in one spot for 4 hours, 8 hours, 12 hours and never see anything but trash (assuming you didn’t choose a 3 minute bio just as the book spawned.)

Study Methods

There are 5 basic methods of trying to achieve this achievement.

1. Camping
2. Calculated Camping
3. Speedreading
4. Random Educational Encounters.
5. Cliff Notes

Camping

Go to the location of the required spawn, bring food, drinks, entertainment and a sleeping bag.

Sit, wait, watch – don’t sleep or leave for a bio!

There was a guy doing this over the weekend.  I struck up a conversation with him.  He had been watching the same bookshelf for 6 hours. He had two crappy books spawn. 3 hours later another crappy book spawned.  An hour later he asked when it was likely the next chance would occur. When I said 2-3 hours his heart broke.

Of course, if you are confined to bed with a notebook, can’t raid, BG, quest, or even move, then this is probably a good use of your time.

Calculated Camping.

Calculated camping is where you estimate the spawn time, you could just note on a piece of paper when the last spawn occurred (assuming you know), then drop back around the 3 hour mark and keep an eye out for the next hour.

Or, you could download Dalaran University to do the respawn timing for you.

Dalaran University is a timer mod. All it does is time the cooldown and estimated respawn periods for a book where the last respawn is known.

It can know when the last respawn for a book was via 3 methods.

1. Clicking on a book in the spawn location.
2. Manually entering a last spawn time.
3. Syncing with other Dalaran University users

Needless to say, the 3rd method is the ideal one, but this relies on other people using the mod and knowing the last time a book spawned. At this point in time I think I am the only user on Aman’Thul that uses it… so I can’t get info from others, and my information is generally wasted as I have no one to share it (automatically) with.

Still, the 1st two options (well, the 2nd one if someone can tell you) are still good. You see, once you know when your desired tomes wont spawn, you can go get a life, or put your life on hold because you know a spawn is imminent.

Do yourself a favor before starting out on this achievement.  Download the addon – trust me, it’s nice to know you can go and do stuff without fear of missing a chance at a book.

Speedreading

Well, maybe not so much as speed reading, maybe more like timed obstacle course.

When a book spawns, it remains present for 3 minutes, so you want a method of getting around Dalaran to all your spawn points quickly enough that you will catch even the book you just missed.

This is worth doing for a bit even if you don’t intend to do it for a long time, even if the books you find are rubbish, just because you will set your Dalaran University timers when you do find a spawn.

I could give you a million screenshots of the locations of these tomes, or you could just watch the youtube video, which will not only show you the locations, but give you an efficient route to keep track of the spawn point.

Random Educational Encounters.

Of course you could just bump into the books.

Just finished a raid, instance, battleground, whatever… have a quick peek!

Of course, your one chance drop in over any 4 hour period would make you lucky… maybe as lucky as a Gnome.

All the more reason to install Dalaran University, because if you get 1/2 lucky and find a book, just the wrong one, at least you will know when there is a chance of finding the real one.

Cliff Notes

Of course you could just utilize kind, generous Gnomes like myself.

This brings me full circle to my discussion about whether you are a generous or selfish achievement hunter.

When I find a tome, a real tome, the 1st thing I do is:

/1 [Higher Learning] book Introduction at Violet Gate NOW!

/2 [Higher Learning] book Introduction at Violet Gate NOW!

/4 [Higher Learning] book Introduction at Violet Gate NOW!

Yeah, I spam it on 3 of the “global” channels. I let every Alliance in Dalaran, plus the others elsewhere that are monitoring trade and LFG know that the book has spawned.  They then know they have up to 3 minutes to get a move on to pick up the book.

You know what happens then?

There is a stream of bodies flowing to the book.  It amazes me sometimes how quickly they get there, before I have even had a chance to click on the book.

Often this is followed my a stream of public &/ private thanks and updates on how many other people need.

Very rarely (like last night) you get called a “rude c*”

I can’t say I was happy with this.  The book spawned just as my Arena invite came through. I had 3 options.

1. Take the Arena, screw the book.
2. Take the Arena, take the book, screw the public.
3. Take the Arena, take the book, inform the public.

I chose 3 (because I had been hunting for that book for 2 days, so I wasn’t taking option1), which put us at a disadvantage in the Arena, as I didn’t have time to buff.  It was worth it though, the stream of thanks gave me a smile, but the

Where is it?

became an issue. You see I was mid-fight, but between GCD’s I shot off:

Violet Gate

but that wasn’t enough

Where is that?

my response was as long as I could make it under the circumstances.

ask someone else

I wasn’t being rude, I was just mid combat… though I probably shouldn’t have bothered, I was distracted, unbuffed and dying pretty fast.

When I got out of the arena, my blood began to boil, because there was one last whisper from the guy

rude c*

I was pretty angry, even more so after finding he had logged before copping my spray.  He got it in a mail in the end.. the message of the mail was quite simple:

If you don’t know what is required for the achievement, do some research! I told you it was ready, it’s your job to know where to get it.

I mean seriously.  I have spent about 12 hours hunting for these books to the exclusion of anything else, then announcing it so everyone online gets a crack at it, and this guy wants me to give him the whole run down?

Basically if you don’t know where the specific books spawn, you probably wont get to them before they despawn.

Anyway, I don’t recall him tapping me on the shoulder to tell me the books were ready NOW.

Of course Rustee from Slash 2 podcast put me straight on Twitter shortly after.

@Gnomeaggedon Stop trying to be so helpful you jerk!

But where are they you rude c*?

So as a final service to you Higher Learning achievement hunters, here are the spawn locations on a map of Dalaran

If you are just showing off your gearscore, why not be useful as well?

On a final note, if you are just mellowing out in Dalaran, download the Dalaran University Addon, and do laps… it’s a great way to build your navigation skills…

See if you can make the whole route mounted… sometimes you don’t dismount in the buildings!

Meanwhile, you are building up spawn timers for everyone else.

Maybe even get the achievement for yourself

Ohh, wait! What’s this?

[09:59:35] [4] [80:Gnomeaggedon]:  [Higher Learning] Divination ready in Upper Violet Citidel NOW
[10:04:47] [1] [80:Gnomeaggedon]:  Higher Learning book Conjuration in Lower Violet Citadel NOW!
[10:04:56] [80:Gnomeaggedon] has earned the achievement [Higher Learning]!
[10:05:06] Lei thanks you.
[10:05:41] [1] [80:Gnomeaggedon]: and with that, it is done

I called out the 1st one… watched 5 people stream past to grab it.

I called out the 2nd one… watched 10 people stream in to get it.

Then I watched as chat became alive with people calling out a 3rd book spawn!

GJ & GL folks!

But wait, there’s more?

I can hang with the Archmage now?

You have something for me?

Awww, I think I look good in this, don’t you?

PS: Yes, I started this post with 2 tomes to collect and finished it with a completed Achievement… miracles do happen!

Gnomer and Out!

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

http://gnomeaggedon.net/2010/05/11/are-you-a-selfish-achievement-hunter-aka-a-guide-to-the-higher-learning-achievement/