Frostsaber Grind Revisited

In an earlier post I discussed a little about the potential time it would take to grind out Exalted reputation with the Frostsaber Trainers. Well I'm here to revisit my estimates as I have some new information.

Half way through Neutral reputation (1500 points) with the Frostsaber Trainers, Rivern Frostwind offers up a new quest called Winterfall Intrusion. Here you are asked to slay furbolgs, five Winterfall Shaman and five Winterfall Ursa located in Winterfall Village which is due east of Everlook. The rewards for this repeatable quest is 250 points of reputation, same as the first one.

This opens up two more possibilities. Do only the Frostsaber Provisions quest, do only the Winterfall Instrusion quest, or do both at the same time. I went ahead and investigated these scenarios because I want to maximize efficiency and minimize the grinding time.

If you'll recall, I estimated an average roundtrip of 17.5 minutes for each Frostsaber Provisions quest. If I could do both the Frostsaber Provisions and the Winterfall Intrusion quests in less than 35 minutes, then it would be more efficient for me to do these two quests than just grinding out the first quest.

These two quests could actually be combined in the same roundtrip. Since Winterfall Village is east of Everlook, I would go directly there first for the Winterfall Intrusion quest, then on the way back, kill Shardtooths and Chillwinds for the Frostsaber Provisions quest. So like before, I did five of these roundtrips and averaged the roundtrip time. What I expected was that doing these two quests together would improve my grinding time since the Winterfall Intrusion quest should not take as long as the Frostsaber Provisions because the quest objective is a kill quest and not a gathering quest dependant on the drop rate.

What I discovered is that doing both of these quests together, I had about a 5 minute improvement (22 minute roundtrip) over doing two of just the Frostsaber Provisions quests alone. That's a 37% improvement, resulting in a decrease in grinding time from 47.5 hours as reported earlier to 29.9 hours (assuming 163 quest turn ins).

I also completed five quests of doing just the Winterfall Intrusion and what I found out was that doing this alone could significantly reduce the grinding time, but there's a caveat (more on that later). The average roundtrip time to do this quest is about 10 minutes. The respawn time for the mobs within the Winterfall Village is between 6-8 minutes, so it is possible to do this quest back to back without having to wait for the mobs to respawn. So with an average roundtrip of 10 minutes, that's an improvement of 42.8%, or a decrease in grinding time from the original 47.5 hours to 27.2 hours. Nice right?

So it sounds like the way to go is just to do the Winterfall Instrusions quest? Well, that's where the caveat is. Allow me to explain. The mobs within the village are randomized respawns so sometimes you'll get a favorable mob composition and will complete the quest in a matter of minutes. Typically you are able to complete half of the quest and have to wait until they respawn to complete the rest. The respawn is between 6-8 minutes. Even with the respawn it's still better to grind out just this quest, but there's one more thing that could actually slow down your grinding time significantly and may mean that it would be more efficient to just grind out the Frostsaber Provisions quest.

The caveat is that mobs within the Winterfall Village are the objective of two quests that people leveling are trying to complete, Winterfall Activity and High Chief Winterfall. So you may have some competition for the mobs within the village. If there are others killing the mobs you need, you are then at the mercy of getting to the mobs first, and the 6-8 minute respawn time. So you could see how this could significantly slow you down. Another thing is that quests in the village are both Horde and Alliance, so you may run into a few from the other faction. If you are on a PvP server this could of course slow you down as well. I found that the best time to do this quest is when no one is around in the village (e.g. late at night).

So what this means is that there are a couple options open that will help minimize the grind time for the Frostsaber mount. It's situational on which quests will be most efficient, but at least with these two quests there is a huge potential to reduce the grinding time.

[Postscript]

While I was doing this little experiment I ran into a very kind level 65 enhancement shaman, Avelea, who was also grinding reputation with the Frostsaber Trainers. She had just begun and was working on the Frostsaber Provisions quest. As we talked it sounded like it was taking her a littler longer to get all the meat for that quest, but not significantly longer. Though I am probably killing the mobs faster than she was, the real limiting factor is the drop rate, and killing faster doesn't help there. So it's expected that the times would be similar. When I last spoke with her she had just gotten enough reputation for the Winterfall Intrusions quest. I gave her the quick scoop on this quest and the time it could potentially take. I'd love to hear her experience on this reputation grind. So Avelea, if you happen to see this post and are willing to comment or write something up for posting, I'd welcome it.