Daily Quest Guide v2


Since their introduction in the Netherwing quest line in The Burning Crusade, daily quests have become an integral part of World of Warcraft’s design. Chances are you’re familiar with the concept of dailies themselves and probably did your fair share of them during Wrath of the Lich King, but it’s a whole new world out there. In this article, we’ll go over the new daily quests in Cataclysm, their rewards, and how to get the most out of them.

To make sure we’re all on the same page, let’s go over the basics of daily quests. In addition to or instead of normal, one-time-only quests, certain NPCs throughout the world will offer “daily” quests. These quests are repeatable and bear a blue exclamation point rather than a yellow one to indicate their status. In the quest log, they’ll be marked (Daily) and once you complete one, there’ll be a counter at the top of your quest log showing how many daily quests you have completed that day.

When dailies were originally introduced, it was only possible to complete 10 per day, which meant you had to pick and choose which ones you’d complete. The limit has since been raised to 25, meaning you can spend a far greater amount of time on daily quests and also reap greater rewards. To break up the monotony somewhat, many daily quest givers will change their quests each day, picking from a set table of quests they offer. Generally speaking, the number of dailies offered by a particular quest hub will remain the same from day to day, though the specific quests may rotate.


Why do dailies?

The first reason to do dailies are the large gold rewards for completing quests at max level. Players can easily use this as their primary method of attaining gold if they have no interest in playing the auction house.

The other rewards for daily quests, however, should not be discounted. Almost all daily quests provide reputation with an associated faction, and many provide additional rewards such as skill-ups for profession dailies, commendations for Tol Barad dailies, and achievements for certain Therazane and Uldum dailies. Perhaps most importantly, however, daily quests are currently the only way that level 85 characters can perpetually contribute on a solo basis to guild XP. We’ll discuss this aspect of dailies later; for now, let’s take a look at the specific quests available.


Stormwind and Orgrimmar: Cooking and fishing dailies

If you’ve been eagerly anticipating Cataclysm, these are probably the first new daily quests you encountered in the shattered world. To ease the leveling process for secondary professions cooking and fishing, Blizzard has added daily quests that provide skill-ups in their respective professions as well as gold and rewards.

Unlike the other dailies discussed in this article, the cooking and fishing dailies are available to low-level as well as max-level characters. Cooking dailies have the added bonus of aStormwind Cooking Award / Orgrimmar Cooking Award upon completion. These awards are the only way to purchase Cataclysm cooking recipes, so you’ll need them if you want to level cooking to 525 and finish The Cataclysmic Gourmet. However, low-level characters will not be able to stockpile Cooking Awards for level 85; there is currently a maximum limit of 10 awards stored in your currency panel. Lowbies can spend their awards on the Crate of Tasty Meat, which costs 2 Cooking Awards and contains Cataclysm-level cooking materials that can be sold or saved to level cooking later.


The cooking dailies

The NPCs Robby Flay (Alliance) and Marogg (Horde) each offer one cooking quest per day, randomly selected from five options. Completing all five of these quests awards the achievement Let’s Do Lunch (Alliance/ Horde). Completing each quest awards one skill point in cooking, one Cooking Award, 7g 40s, and Alliance or Horde reputation.

The different quests will send you to various areas of the city to collect items, and unlike the Dalaran daily cooking quests, none of them require you to actually cook. Interestingly, one of the Alliance quest options, A Fisherman’s Feast, actually allows you to use fishing skill to complete it; in addition to stealing the items, you can simply fish them out of the canals near the fishermen. It’s also notable that troll characters receive an alternate version of the questStealing From Our Own requiring them to steal from the goblins rather than from trolls, as all other Horde races do. Cooking awards can be used to purchase goods from Bario Matalli(Alliance) or Shazdar (Horde).


The fishing dailies

The fishing quests are given by Catherine Leland (Alliance) and Razgar. Each offers one fishing quest per day, randomly selected from five options. Completing all five of these quests awards the achievement Fish or Cut Bait (Alliance / Horde). Completing each quest awards one skill point in fishing, 7g 40s, and a Bag of Shiny Things. If you have yet to pick up the Weather-Beaten Fishing Hat or Strand Crawler pet, this bag has a chance to drop them for you. Unlike the cooking dailies, most of the quests do actually require you to fish.

These profession dailies are a great place to start off, not only because they’re conveniently located in capital cities but because of the skill-up rewards they provide. Of course, once you reach maximum skill in cooking and fishing, these quests become a bit less valuable; the cooking quest continues to provide Cooking Awards, of course, but if you’ve already gotten the rewards you want from the fishing bag, you may find yourself skipping the fishing daily in favor of other options.


Deepholm dailies

The daily quests in Deepholm are associated with the Therazane faction. In terms of rewards, Therazane is the new Sons of Hodir; they’re the non-scribe’s source for Cataclysm shoulder enchants and thus should be high on any raider’s priority list in terms of gaining exalted reputation.

However, unlike the Sons of Hodir, Therazane does have a tabard that you can wear in dungeons in order to gain reputation. Therefore, it is entirely possible to get to exalted without doing a single daily quest. Why do the dailies, then? Aside from the general reasons to do dailies that we discussed last time, doing the Therazane dailies will give you an alternate source of reputation, allowing you to use a different tabard in dungeon runs and thereby work on more factions at the same time. There are also a number of achievements associated with the Therazane dailies, one of which awards an adorable pet.


Unlocking the Therazane hub

In order to unlock Therazane dailies, you must complete the entire quest chain in Deepholm. There is no way around this. Just start at the beginning of the zone, follow the quests as they appear, and the bread crumbs will eventually lead you to the Therazane faction.

Although you start out at hated, the non-daily quests will shoot you all the way up to honored reputation. This means that you don’t have to worry at all about the friendly reputation required for the tabard; by the time you are able to see the Therazane quartermaster, you will have more than enough rep to purchase it.


The quests

Once you’ve unlocked the Therazane quest hub, various NPCs at Therazane’s Throne will offer a total of five daily quests per day through honored and six after revered. Some of the quest offerings seem to be fixed, while others rotate; there are a total of 10 daily quests associated with the faction. Note that one of the quests, Underground Economy, is actually picked up inside the Crumbling Depths rather than at the Therazane’s Throne quest hub. If you can’t find all five (honored) or six (revered) dailies, chances are you have to go to the Crumbling Depths to pick this one up.


The possible quests are as follows.

Crumbling Depths quests Three of these five quests will be available each day. The first two are fixed, while the last three rotate; only one of them will be offered on any given day.

  • Fear of Boring Kill 10 Gyreworms (in or around the Crumbling Depths); fixed daily quest.
  • Motes Collect 10 Painite Motes from the Crumbling Depths; fixed daily quest.
  • Beneath the Surface Recover a Ruby Crystal Cluster from the Crumbling Depths. The crystals are at the back of the dead end tunnels. They spawn a mob when clicked that will drop the quest item. Rotates with Underground Economy and Lost in the Deeps.
  • Underground Economy Use Ricket’s Ticket to blow up four specific rock types and collect three of each type. Note: The rocks you’re blowing up are not the spiky ones on the ground, but the large crystals. There is one type of crystal in each main room of the caverns. Rotates with Beneath the Surface and Lost in the Deeps.
  • Lost in the Deeps Escort Pebble out of the Crumbling Depths to safety. The achievementRock Lover is earned upon completing this quest 10 times, awarding the companionPebble. Rotates with Beneath the Surface and Underground Economy.

Crimson Expanse quests These three quests are fixed and available daily.

  • Soft Rock Kill 8 Fungal Behemoths in the Crimson Expanse.
  • Through Persistence Obtain a Bag of Verlok Miracle-Gro from Verlok in the Crimson Expanse. Any type of Verlok can drop this item.
  • Fungal Fury Destroy 10 Freshly Sprouted Mushrooms in the Crimson Expanse. There are four types of mushrooms, visually different but with the same name: Sprouting Crimson Mushroom. Three of them give 2-minute buffs upon destruction, while the fourth will knock you back and deal damage. There is an achievement for possessing the three buffs at once and then blowing yourself up.

Rotating quest at revered Once you hit revered reputation, the Therazane hub will offer one additional quest, which will be either of the following.

  • Glop, Son of Glop Slay Fungalmancer Glop. This is the daily version of Wrath of the Fungalmancer. If you complete the daily version without taking damage from Glop’s Boomshrooms, you will receive the achievement Fungalophobia. If you complete the daily 10 times, you get The Glop Family Line.
  • The Restless Brood Strike the Pale Resonating Crystal and defeat Aeosera. This is the daily version of Resonating Blow. If you complete the daily version within 90 seconds, you get an achievement. Note: This quest can be very irritating when many people are trying to complete it. If you strike the crystal and don’t get thrown onto the rocks, keep hitting it until it’s your turn. Then jump up the series of rocks to kill the Broodmother at the top.

The rewards

Each of the Crumbling Depths and Crimson Expanse quests awards 250 reputation with Therazane, as well as 10 gold at level 85. The revered-level quest awards 350 reputation and 17 gold. As your reputation increases, you will gain access to items sold by D’lom the Collector, the Therazane quartermaster. He’s located at the throne. He sells four blue shoulder enchants at honored, four blue rings at revered, and four purple shoulder enchants at exalted.


Tol Barad Basics: The zone, the quests, the battle

Much like Wintergrasp in Wrath of the Lich King, Tol Barad is a PvP area that can be held by either the Alliance or the Horde. Control of the area is contested at roughly two-hour intervals; the next battle begins exactly two hours after the previous battle ended. The winning faction is eligible to fight a raid boss, just like Vault of Archavon in Wintergrasp, but that’s where the similarities end.


The Tol Barad zone is reachable through a portal in either Stormwind or Orgrimmar and contains portals back to those capital cities for members of their respective factions. The area is broken up into two zones: Tol Barad and Tol Barad Peninsula. The latter, Tol Barad Peninsula, is an uncontested zone with camps for each faction. The NPCs here give daily quests regardless of who wins the battleground, and the quests are exactly the same for both factions. Note that Tol Barad Peninsula is not a forced PvP zone the way Wintergrasp was; if you play on a normal (non-PvP) server, you will not be automatically flagged when entering the zone.

Tol Barad proper is where the battles for control take place. When your faction has control of Tol Barad, you gain the opportunity to complete extra dailies above and beyond those available on the Peninsula. This gives the controlling faction an advantage in terms of reputation and Tol Barad Commendations that they can earn each day. The mechanics of the battleground itself are beyond the scope of this article, but suffice it to say that if you are interested in Tol Barad reputation and commendations (which you should be), you will want your faction to control it at least once per day so that you are able to complete all the quests.


Tol Barad Peninsula: Permanently available dailies

The two factions vying for control in Tol Barad, Baradin’s Wardens (Alliance) and Hellscream’s Reach (Horde), have their own camps in Tol Barad Peninsula that are accessible regardless of which faction controls the PvP battleground area. These camps are easy to access via portals from Stormwind and Orgrimmar, respectively, and feature portals back to the capitals. This is the only way to reach Tol Barad. NPCs at the caps will offer a random selection of six daily quests out of a possible 22 quests, and these quests will send you all over the peninsula. For the sake of brevity, the links below are for the Alliance version of each quest. The Horde version is exactly the same, but given by a Horde NPC.


The Darkwood

  • A Sticky Task Collect 4 Sticky Silk Glands from Darkwood Broodmothers. Watch out for the Darkwood Lurkers; it’s easy to get overwhelmed when the Broodmother moves around during combat.
  • Thinning the Brood Kill 12 Darkwood Lurkers. It’s easiest to pull these to the edges of the area, on the path, so you don’t get the Broodmothers as well.

Largo’s Overlook

  • Cannonball! Collect 4 Stacks of Cannonballs. These are items on the ground at the top of the hill. Sometimes, but not always, you will loot two Stacks of Cannonballs from one item.
  • Ghostbuster Kill 14 Largo’s Overlook ghosts. The ghost horses do not count, but like any neutral mob, they will aggro if you accidentally AoE near them.
  • Taking the Overlook Back Kill Commander Largo. He can be found at the top of the left-hand tower when you come up the hill into the Overlook area.

Rustberg Village

  • Not the Friendliest Town Kill 14 Rustberg Village residents. Any of the residents count. Watch out for the stealthed Rustberg Bandits.
  • Teach a Man to Fish… Or Steal Obtain 22 Rustberg Seabass. These can be looted from the fish racks on the docks in the rear of the village, or from the Rustberg Fishermen when they die.

Cape of Lost Hope

  • Boosting Morale Loot 6 Barrels of Southsea Rum. These are underwater in and around the wrecked ships.
  • Captain P. Harris Kill Captain P. Harris, a named undead.
  • Rattling Their Cages Kill 8 Shipwrecked Sailors on the beach.
  • Shark Tank Kill Tank, a level 85 elite shark. Some classes can solo this, but most will prefer a group. Can easily be duoed at 85.

Farson Hold


Wellson Shipyard

  • Bomb’s Away! Destroy 10 Wellson Supply Boats using the cannons on the dock. The distance and speed of the boat will affect where you should aim to hit them. Mobs will sometimes attack while you’re shooting; just kill them and get back in a cannon to finish.
  • WANTED: Foreman Wellson Kill Foreman Wellson.
  • Watch Out For Splinters! Collect 15 pieces of Shipyard Lumber, either from the ground or from killing the ghosts in the area.

The Restless Front

  • Finish The Job Kill 5 Restless Infantry. These mobs are locked in combat with comparable but differently named mobs that do not count for the quest. When you kill each Restless Infantry, the mob it was fighting will regain full health and attack you; either kill it or (carefully) run away.
  • Magnets, How Do They Work? Collect 7 Siege Engine Scraps. Use the quest item provided to reveal the scraps, which are predictably around the siege engines. When you complete the quest, the quest item will not disappear; you’ll have to destroy it manually if you want your bag slot back.

Forgotten Hill


Each of these quests awards gold, one Tol Barad Commendation, and 250 reputation with Baradin’s Wardens or Hellscream’s Reach, except Shark Tank, which gives two commendations and 350 rep.


The Battle for Tol Barad: Gaining access to Tol Barad dailies

As we touched on, the dailies in Tol Barad proper are available only to the faction that wins the battle for Tol Barad and only for two hours after the battle is complete. In fact, the NPCs involved in these quests — both the quest givers and the associated mobs — will despawn 15 minutes before the next battle begins, at exactly the time when you can queue for battle. This is a great time to gather herbs or go mining in the zone, but you will no longer be able to complete the quests if you haven’t finished.

The mechanics of the battleground aren’t the subject of this article, but briefly, the object for the attacking team is to control all three bases at once while the defending team tries to keep control of at least one base until time runs out. At the moment, attacking is much more difficult than defending, and on servers with a faction imbalance, it is extremely difficult to actually get into the battle for Tol Barad if you are part of the overpopulated faction.

As soon as the battle is over, NPCs will spawn in the center of the zone and offer daily quests to the winners.


Tol Barad daily quests (the spoils of victory!)

There are a total of 12 daily quests available in Tol Barad for the winning team, but only six are offered during any given win period. Each time your faction is victorious, two quest givers will spawn. One of these quest givers doesn’t change; the other can be one of three individuals. Each quest giver offers three daily quests. Therefore, even if your faction wins Tol Barad once and completes all the quests within the two-hour time slot, there’s an incentive to defend and win again for a shot at three more dailies and once more for a third set of three, bringing the total to 12 daily quests. For the sake of brevity, the Horde versions of the quests are linked below. The Alliance version is exactly the same except for the name of the quest giver.


Fixed dailies (always available when your faction is in control)

  • A Huge Problem (group) Kill Problim, an ettin who patrols the circular path around the zone. He can be soloed by some classes, but most players will prefer to group.
  • Swamp Bait Collect 8 Crocolisk Hides. These are a 100% drop and are lootable by all party members.
  • The Leftovers Kill 12 Alliance or Horde infantry, depending on your faction. These are NPC mobs located in the three control nodes at the north, southwest, and southeast.

In addition to the fixed dailies, one of three quest givers will spawn with a set of three dailies for D-Block, Cursed Depths, and The Hole. The mechanics of the three quests are identical, but their locations and the names of mobs and items are different. In each set, there will be one quest to kill a number of mobs, one quest to loot items from the ground, and one quest to kill a named mob and loot an item. The three locations are underground areas that are locked off if the proper quest giver is not present. In other words, if you accept quests for D-Block but don’t finish them before the Tol Barad battle, and the next set of dailies is for the Cursed Depths, you will be unable to complete the D-Block quests until the next time they spawn. The mobs and items you need simply won’t be available. Due to very fast respawn rates and cramped quarters, it is highly recommended to group for these quests.


Rotating dailies (one set of three available for any given victory period)


Each quest awards gold, one Tol Barad Commendation, and 250 reputation with Baradin’s Wardens or Hellscream’s Reach. If your faction wins Tol Barad at least three times in a given day, it is possible to complete all 12 of these dailies, depending on which quest givers spawn when. By winning once, you are able to complete six quests.


Rewards

What do you get for all that work? Plenty. Baradin’s Wardens and Hellscream’s Reach have some very nice equipment and vanity items available for purchase. Each item requires not only a certain reputation level with the proper faction, but an expenditure of Tol Barad commendations as well. 

Quartermaster Brazie sells items to the Alliance, and Pogg sells to the Horde. Both of these NPCs are in Tol Barad Peninsula at their respective camps, so they can be accessed at any time regardless of who controls Tol Barad. The items are the same for both factions and include a pet and teleporting tabard at honored, a set of blue weapons at revered, and some very attractive epic trinkets and mounts at eExalted. Pretty much everyone will be able to find something they want at these quartermasters, making the Tol Barad dailies among the most lucrative in game right now.