I touched briefly on the Timeless Isle in a previous post. But I think I have enough of an idea of how to make the Timeless Isle work for the casual player, who is looking to solo the place and is on their own time schedule. In short, you really don’t feel like grouping up except for things such as the Celestial World Bosses (which you really don’t have to). This guide really is for the person who feels left out after Blizzard decided to cater to the 1% again and want a modicum of casual revenge by demonstrating that we can outsmart all these people.
The Timeless Isle is ruthless; it essentially is the epitome of social Darwinism at work. If you’re not quick, you’ll be dead (or least missing out on stuff). So you have to treat it equally as a spot where you need to be cut throat because people are out for themselves. Thus, you have to scumbag the Timeless Isle and make it yours. But how do you do it?
First, you need to figure out what your priorities are. Are you here for Gear? Achievements? Pets? Materials? Reputation? Quests? These are things that you can achieve while on the Timeless Isle. I think many people will be after a little of everything and over time it’ll devolve into achievement, reputation and pet chases. People fresh to 90 will more than likely employ the Timeless Isle as a gear catch up mechanism. So let me take you my thoughts on each, especially if you’re a casual player.
The gear for the most part is garbage, except for the stuff that drop off the Celestials and Ordos. Even the ilvl 535 gear is mostly garbage as the stats, while somewhat relevant, are pretty poor for the most part. While the ilvl 496 gear is good as a quick catch up mechanism for Throne of Thunder on a fresh 90, it should not become your primary gear. In fact, from my experience in Throne of Thunder, those using the ilvl 496 gear have shown very poor results. I think the instance lets you get in with a minimum ilvl and the poor itemization (along most likely with the lack of reforging) causes these people to perform extremely poorly (more on that later). The poor itemization that I’ve seen tend to be cases where an item only has a single stat (e.g. pure mastery). I prefer two stats since it gives you more opportunities for reforging (especially if you have to deal with things like expertise and hit capping).
What you should do though is take the opportunity to go back to the Isle of Thunder, get a key to the treasure room and make an attempt to grab Elder Charms. After getting enough Elder Charms, do Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring. The idea is to get better weapons and maybe some tier gear, making up missing slots along the way. Low DPS in instances tend to be a result of bad weapons and no reforging. But get a few better items to perform better in the other LFRs. Now, you can scumbag it like many players are and try to hide with the faked higher ilvl. However, don’t be surprised if you get called out, especially during wipes. Either way, I would try to get at least an ilvl 483 weapon because there’s no guarantee for a better weapon to drop from Throne of Thunder.
Something you can do as an enchanter with the crafted ilvl 496 items is disenchant them. for Sha Crystals. So if you have an enchanter (or two), one scumbag thing you can do (while it’s allowed) is to send all your relevant crafted items to that toon, craft the item and disenchant them. While Sha Crystals are more easily obtained these days, this practically should make receiving enchants requiring tons of Sha Crystals like weapons enchants or bracers far easier. A smart enchanter could probably make a good amount of profit by collecting these Sha Crystals and crafting the weapon enchants and selling them for a premium right now since Siege of Orgrimmar just was released and people will be needing these enchants. On a quick similar note, you also can obtain the guild related achievement for Epic Crafting by crafting tons of these items. So don’t waste them and just throw them away nor sell them outright.
If you get a Burden of Eternity, you should use them for stuff like boots, belts, cloaks, neck, bracers and rings. Since the itemization for craftable gear on the Timeless Isle is pretty bad on average, those slots end up end up being better spots for crafting. I recommend this assuming that you might eventually tackle LFR, the Celestials or Flex at some point. So you should save your tier slots up.
What about achievements? This is something that really is up to you. I’m not an achievement whore so I feel less inclined towards these. I’m the same way with reputation. These two aspects are grinds. Reputation probably is better off if you can get into a group. But if you plan to solo the Timeless Isle then the reputation aspect really doesn’t feel like a good time sink.
How about pets? For me, pets are like achievements and reputation. But I do think they are a little easier to get in some ways than doing achievement and reputation grinds. Of course, it’s all RNG based and you have to be fast but if you’re doing rares, then this is something you can obtain along the way.
Next there’s materials. Yes, one cool thing about the Isle is that you can grab quite a bit of materials like ore, herbs and leather while running around. The nice thing is that you also gain coins so doing these things in conjunction with each other work hand in hand. I don’t go out of my way to get herbs nor ore but if they’re around, I’ll pick them up.
Finally, there’s the quest aspect aspect. For myself, I’ve found some of the quests to be prohibitive without grinding an incredible amount or camping certain things (like shrines). That said, I tend to do up to a certain point. The VP quest is nice but feels painful considering the 50 stones you need to gather. I would prefer to work over this for a few weeks (unless you only focus on a single toon).
Okay, I’ve only really covered one small subject on scumbagging, which is the crafting aspect. But what do I mean by being ruthless and scumbagging on the Isle? Well, the real two things that I see the Timeless Isle for are getting coins, bonus lesser charms and possible gear. While you can get coins from chests, they end up becoming limited. So you really are left to killing mobs when grabbing coins.
Unfortunately, mobs on the Timeless Isle can be quite difficult, especially for undergeared players. Even decently geared players can get nuked by certain elites. How can you get anything if you’re constantly plagued by instant death mechanics? The thing is that you don’t. Instead, you focus only on rares.
The trick to the Timeless Isle is that you need to let others handle the work for you. All you really need to do is hit a mob once to be able to loot it. As long as others kill it, you can loot the mob. Certain mobs that have nasty AoE or instant death abilities should be avoided for the most part. For instance, let’s say you’re facing the Pirate Ship. This is one of the best rares around because you can receive a large amount of coins and other possible items compared to other rares. However, it’s a real pain in the ass to handle, especially if you’re a melee. So you just want to hit it once and concentrate on surviving the rest of the fight. That can entail a number of things. On my rogue, for instance, I focus on keeping my defensive cooldowns up, using combo points for recuperate and strafing to avoid the burning oil. If you face Cinderfall on the bridge, you pretty much should run in and hit it before it can cover the area in fire then run out. For Evermaw, you want to use the Angler’s mount, keep up with whatever speed boosts you can, hit it once, remove aggro then follow it until it’s low on health. If you start to fatigue, you run to the shore to remove the fatigue status, mount back up and continue following until its low on health.
In all cases, just make sure you hit them once and try to stay alive at all times. Again: never do the work. Let others handle it for you. Believe me, they will. So you’ll have your best chances during high population times as these mobs will go down fast. That does mean you’ll compromise a bit since the rares will be taken down quicker. But you just have to get to them fast enough. Never ever do things on your own. If you are the first to a rare, announce it to general so others will quickly get over to that spot to help kill it.
Another nasty scumbag technique that I’ve learned is never be the first to aggro mobs. Let’s say you’re attempting to cross the bridge on the mountain (not the one accessing the sanctuary). Quite often you’ll see an elite hanging around, guarding it. When possible, wait for others to cross it for you so that they aggro the mob, perhaps get dismounted and are forced to handle it. Then you can just avoid their attacks while staying mounted and continuing tho the other side.
For skinners, this Isle is tailor made for you. I tend to run around the Turtle, Tiger, Snake and Yaks looking for dead corpses to gather leather. There’s tons of bodies lying around so it’s pretty much a free-for-all as long as the person who killed the mob looted it. Don’t be afraid to loot someone’s mob as well; sometimes I’ll see someone who might kill a ton of mobs, AoE loot but skin them afterwards. In those cases, just rush to the mobs and skin as quickly as you can. Doesn’t matter which faction they belong to, just remember that this Isle is all about social Darwinism so you just have to be quick about everything.
For the Celestials, you’re really best off on reset day before you tackle these. I’ve noticed that on my server you’ll see a high degree of competition for these. The only way to really win is to wait in the safety zone until your faction has the tag. Then go in, hit the Celestial once and try to survive the rest of the time. You can get into a group as well but do this to receive healing and buffs. If you’re trying to scumbag, then being part of a group is futile since they’ll eventually detect that you’re scumbagging. You really want to hide the fact that you’re useless by doing the minimal and allowing these other idiots to do all the hard work for you. You just have to concentrate on surviving and looting.
Also, never use AoE. I think all servers have their share of hardcore PVPers who want to gank you. If you’re on a PVE server like me, then accidentally AoEing a PVP flagged player will flip your flag on and make you vulnerable. This is a definite no-no since you’re trying to survive and scumbag. If you do intend to PVP on the Isle, make sure you only gank people at low health while your faction surrounds them. Otherwise, be prepared for aggro removing abilities so that you can run asap. I would recommend getting a large group for PVP farming if you go this direction. That way you can easily gang up on smaller groups and honor farm.
Overall, just remember that there is an art to scumbagging. It’s just a matter of sinking to the lowest bowel movements where you swim amongst the quagmire of fecal and urine matter. To me in a game like this designed to cater towards the lowest forms of life, there isn’t a depth that you can’t sink to in order to achieve what you want in the game.
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