Wannabe Salty Chef

Sorry about the previous post, but I had to get it out of my system. Those two pups are sorely missed.

So, like any good addict, lets avoid facing pain by indulging in our addiction of choice, in this case, WoW and Achievements.

After fiddling with the recent holiday event and the achievements system, I got to thinking.

Do I really want to be Merrymaker all year long?

Probably not. What options do I have?

Jenkins is a fun name to wear.

Champion of the Naaru is more or less laughed at on my new server. If you're not a Hand, you're nuttin. So no go here.

So I scan through the Achievements interface and see some nifty tidbits on the Professions menu item.

Discrimination against Male Nurses

Let me start off by saying...there's three secondary professions. There's a cooking achievement to become Chef. There's a fishing achievement to become Salty. There's no First Aid title.

I want to be Nurse Amava, or Amava EMT, or even Dr. Amava, but that'd only be to compete with Dr. Denis Leary.

I think the absence of a First Aid title is cuz Blizzard is hating on Male Nurses and Female Doctors and so chose to avoid the concept all together.

/shakes-fist

Chef

Chef Amava. Has a nice ring to it. Perhaps it'll be worth going after this one.

As per usual on this site, what follows isn't really a guide on how to accomplish it, but rather, my thoughts as I am in progress to achieving it.

Before I even start, from what I understand, the title Chef is currently unattainable. Until patch 3.0.8, it is physically impossible to obtain the required 45 Northrend recipes due to bugs or perhaps the recipes not even existing at all. WoW Head leads me to believe that this is being fixed in 3.0.8. So my plan is to get everything that is actually do-able do-ed before the patch hits, whenever that is.

A) - If you weren't playing and cooking during TBC, this one will probably be annoying.

B) - If you aren't interested in doing the Dalaran Daily Cooking quest frequently, this one will probably be annoying.

C) - If you do not qualify for either (A) or (B), then this might be pretty cool for you.

Some of the more challenging sub-achievements that I've come across. Ok, challenging is the wrong word. Tedious?

1) - Cook a wide variety of Outlands foods. I already had all the recipes. Just a matter of a couple hours flying around to get a random piece of meat or fish here or there. Went very nicely with the Fishing Achievements of fishing from a variety of pools.

2) - Cook a wide variety of Northrend foods. This one tricked me. They list 46 recipes. But the text says "cook 15 of these". So I cooked 15. And dinged the achievement. Only to see a new achievement with an identical name, only this time requiring 30. Likewise when I cooked all 30 and now its 45. I know its small and nitpicky, but Blizz, give them three different names. I like incremental "rewards" as I progress a goal. But thinking I'm done, only to have the finish line moved on me, that's yucky. I think I'm at 37 as of this writing.

3) - Complete all the Shattrath daily cooking quests. And all the Dalaran ones. This is annoying in that you need to check the quest giver each day until you get the one you need. In Dalaran, do the quest anyways, because cooking awards and northern spices are things you'll need to be Chef. In Shat, just leave (or go visit the fishing guy while you're there, since you'll need all his quests eventually to be Salty).

4) - Serve a Great Feast in each BG. This one is kinda neat, I like the spirit. Serve food to "friends". Quickly farmed mats for some feasts and then plodded through BG.

WSG. I zone in and see that somebody already served a feast. So, I could drop one and get the achievement. But I didn't like the spirit of that, doing it just for the sake of doing it. So I eat his and then we play. Awful awful awful band of coconuts grinding it out in midfield. 25 minutes later, I've died 10 times with the damn flag in my hands due to nobody joining me in the retrieval. So I rez one last time and spitefully drop my feast and desert the battle.

5) - Now I'm into the home stretch. I've got 5 remaining recipes for the quest that I need to purchase via Dalaran Cooking Awards. I currently have zero DCA in my currency tab. Takes three DCA to buy one recipe.

If my calculations are correct, it'll take 15 days to finish off all the attainable recipes. Sometimes you get a bonus DCA when you do the daily, so might go a day or two quicker, but I'm thinking Jan 20th is when I'll be as close to Chef Amava as is possible in the current version of the game. Will 3.0.8 hit before then? /cross-fingers

Salty

Let the QQ begin.....


This one is (A) gonna suck (B) not gonna happen.

Start with a lighter side...coming into yesterday, I only needed the Baby Crocolisk and the Helfire fishing quests to be done with Old Fart Barlow. Of course, these are the two least frequent quests in my experience.

So I've been checking, nearly every day for the last two.

Sunday, got the Helfire one. Caught the quest fish on the first cast.

Sweet.

Monday morning. Quick check with the old fart. Wouldn't you know it. Baby Crocolisk.

I'm pretty damn close to being done with Outlands entirely. Just need to farm up a tad bit (read: 10,000 stacks) of Fel Iron and Adamantite to level alt JC, ENG, and BS through the Outlands levels.

Back to the QQ....

1) - Fishing up all the coins from Dalaran fountain? Meh. Until I'm maxed at 450, I'll consider this a fruitful pursuit. Once maxed, I'm going to have a very hard time finding the motivation to whip out the rod in the city.

2) - Do something in Zul'Grub? Never been there. Maybe this won't be that bad, will need to read up on it and maybe join a random ZG pug late some saturday night.

3) - Lurker in SSC. If 3 ppl throw a line into the mix and Lurker pops up, do we all get the achievement? Or does exactly one player get credit? Might be possible to find some random SSC pug here or there, but to have to try and try and try to fish him out will suck balls.

4) - Fish up some rare guy in Ironforge. B..o..r..i..n..g! And same as Dalaran coins, once maxed out skill, will be even less interesting.

5) - Fish up one fish in Orgrimar. Ok, this is amusing. Maybe join a world PvP raid and while in the city, fish up a fish. Cute, I like this one.

6) - Fish up some rare guy in Orgrimar. That sux. If this one doesn't completely convince me to remain Un-Salty, then .....

7) - The icing on the cake...Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Contest. Yeah. I've never tried this, but I'm assuming its pretty damn hard. Plus, is it only one winner per week? Meaning you could at most have only one Salty dinger on the server each week? F.U. Blizz.

Will I ever be a Salty Chef?

Chef is actually impossible (for now).

Salty is practically impossible.

Time will tell.