wow 99.46% of EVERYTHING: Transmogs, Achievements, Mounts, Pets, Toys and more - the Haru Interview

[Starym 3,779]

 

We’ve recently talked a lot about DesMephisto and his collection quests, but we seem to have missed another collector, as Haru is quite a bit further along in the "EVERYTHING EVER" category, as he's gathering basically anything you can get on Paladin: mounts, pets, toys, followers, achievements, essences, quests, flight paths, as well as all the transmogs! 99.46% (updated since the above image) is a truly insane number when you consider the sheer volume of things gathered, as he's basically 2-5 items away in each category, and he's already done with a few categories like wrists, gloves, leggings, boots, legion artifact appearances, and transmog enchantments (all for Paladin only)!

We talk about many things in the interview, including the looming pre-patch and how stressful it is for a collector, what he plans to do when it and Shadowlands arrive, what made him start this crazy journey, his 299 Garrison followers, what his current focus is, what rare collector items he has, some of the hardest items he's collected and a whole lot more!

You can check out his full collection here as well, to see the insanity first hand, as well as the list of tasks he goes through each week!
 

DesMephisto has been in focus lately for his collecting, but you’re quite a bit farther along than him! So first of all apologies for not talking to you sooner, and second - just how far along are you, and in which categories?

I will be happy to dive into my collection a bit. So unlike DesMephisto, who has more of a strategy on concentrating on one particular category such as plate gear or one handers, I am more concerned with the collection of everything possible on my paladin.  So I would say the category I am concentrating on is for anything a paladin can get and use whether it be a toy, pet, mount, or appearance.

(The total % has been updated to 99.46% since this image was taken)

One of the things I am most proud of in my collection is something most people ignore,  your Warlords of Draenor garrison followers.  Of which I have all 299 on the horde side and can no longer pick any new ones via my Frostwolf inn.  A feat that took over 5 years to do as you can only pick one follower per weekly reset:

And if you ever wanted to know what the screen for picking a garrison follower looked like when you are done, there it is.  And yes, I did level them all up to epic level with maximum ilvl.
 

Which one are you currently going for full speed/which one do you think you might complete first?

I have already completed some categories. Plate Wrists, Gloves, Leggings, boots, legion artifact appearances, and transmog enchantments.  And for everything else I am generally only 2-5 appearances away.

To collect as much as I have, I have to go for everything at pretty much the same time.  As most stuff is locked behind weekly lockouts and I have to go through my list of weekly tasks to ensure I can get everything. Mostly running current expansion raids on a variety of difficulties.

If I were to put a finger on something though, I am really interested in finishing my cloak collection, as there are only 3 available cloaks in game left for me to get before I am completely finished.

Despite there being 9 cloaks shown here, only 3 of them are obtainable as the others are green items removed in Cataclysm or BFA items that never made it to live. This situation is one of the more annoying things DesMephisto and I have to deal with as there are many items that show as collectable, but you cannot obtain them within World of Warcraft at this time. Hence why we utilize the add-on “all the things” to show what we have and don’t have.
 

How much pressure is there on your endeavor now that the pre-patch is looming ahead and will extend your goals by quite a lot?

For the collectables that are being removed, there is a lot of pressure. My biggest concern being the ability to get “Conflict and Strife” rank 4 on my Heart of Azeroth neck. That would unlock the Azeroth’s Champion title (from the Phenomenal Cosmic Power achievement), a feat of strength that will disappear with the pre-patch. But sadly this requires a 2400 arena rating and I am at best a 2100 ranked arena player. I am doing my best to get better at WoW arena, but less than 1 month to go up 300 ranking against the world’s best players is an almost impossible task.

Beyond that I have a lot of normal tasks such as farming Mythic N’zoth with my guild for the mount (which I still need).  But stuff like the void dragon in heroic, the title in visions, and the +15 in time for each dungeon are all long done.
 

Which do you think you’ll manage to get done before the pre-patch?

I should be able to get my mythic N’zoth mount (hopefully), but sadly the 2400 rating is probably out of my reach and will just be one of many unobtainables in the future.
 

Once you do achieve 100% in a particular category and a new expansion releases, is your focus then on reclaiming that 100% or do you move on to the next category?

When a new expansion starts, a lot of a collector’s goals match with the rest of the community.  Level your character, get geared, and progress through raiding and other content.

It will be a couple months before things will calm down and I will start to figure out what holes have appeared in my collection.  Is there some dungeon gear I didn’t collect when preparing for a raid, did I miss a quest with a unique appearance while leveling, or maybe there is some stuff for me to craft?  I will generally figure these things out one by one as my time frees up after I have gotten my character raid ready.
 

What made you begin this massive collection and when did you start? 

I often wonder about that myself at times, as I have been playing the game for over 10 years now and often forget when I first thought of collecting. But I believe my act of collecting first began back in Cataclysm when I first started playing the game and I ran weekly pugs in Wrath of the Lich king as old content to collect the legendaries from both Ulduar and Icecrown Citadel. This slowly started the process and made its way into achievements, pets, mounts, heirlooms, transmog, and anything else you can tick a box in over the years.
 

Just how many of you are there out there racing/going for the collections?

This is where it becomes vague and weird. Most people I know concentrate on a single thing. And that one thing is usually mounts. But I generally concentrate on everything as a whole. If all the other people in the world are first place in a single category respectively, then I would be second in every category. Never really first, but in competition with everyone at the same time.

But to answer the question a little more directly, I usually use the achievements discord to rank myself with others, as they have ranks for each type of collection in the game.
 

Do you have any rare aka currently unavailable items collected?

Of course I do. I got the Tyrael charger mount that came with a copy free Diablo 3 when I committed to 12 months of World of Warcraft back in the day. I have gotten 14 of 17 TCG mounts.  And I couldn’t even count the numbers of transmogs, pets, and mounts from temporary events over the years. Some of the more noticeable stuff is probably the transmog shirts I bought from the auction house that were the green shirts from original character creations in vanilla. Over 20 shirts that are no longer in the game, but I have that transmog. Not to mention the long boy (Brutosaur) mount leaving with this prepatch.
 

What were some of the most frustrating/difficult to get items you’ve collected so far/still haven’t gotten?

There are two in particular that come to my mind that I have collected and one that is still out there. One of the bad ones had to be the Spineclaw Crab.

A pet that spawns from the Timeless Isle rare crab, which only spawns in place of other crabs if you kill them. Now normally pets are not too bad to collect as you can just buy them off the auction house. But this pet was tied to an achievement “Going To Need A Bigger Bag ”.  And you had to loot the pet from the rare mob to get credit, you can’t just buy it from the auction house. I think I spent almost a full year during patch 5.4 just camping this one pet alone to complete this achievement. Luckily this one was just hard though, the one below is arguably bugged.

Voidtalon of the Dark Star would be the next one on my list, as this was added to Warlords of Draenor in the middle of the expansion to occupy players' time. Not only did the mount have a time lost level of spawn time (3-5 days), but rather than have a single spawning location it could spawn in a variety of locations over every zone in Draenor. Even worse than that, the spawn wasn’t a rare mob but a portal; so the add-on most people used to call it out (NPCScan) did not work and you had to actively watch the spawn locations to get the mount rather than alt-tabbing and waiting for the add-on to yell at you.

Now I was one of the unlucky ones and did not get it in that expansion. Now why you may ask is that unlucky? Well that is because the mount was bugged and could only be seen by level 100 characters most of the time (only in even rarer situations could a max level character see it). Meaning in Legion I had to create trial characters just to be able to see the portal spawn as all my own characters were well past level 100 at that point. But I was able to get the mount after years of work and going around this odd bug. And for those who camp it now when trial characters are starting at level 110, good luck seeing this mount as it is probably more rare today then it was then. >_<

And finally there is the mount I have yet to get and worry that I will never get. This mount feels like it was added into the game by developers just to make sure people like me cannot collect everything in the game.

The Silent Glider that drops from the rare mob Soundless in Nazjatar. Not only does this mob have a long spawn of 8 hours, but it spawns in a random location over the entire zone. On top of that, the drop rate is estimated (by WoWhead) to only be around .6%, meaning that it will take roughly 166.67 kills on average to see one of these mounts drop. And being locked behind a daily loot cooldown, you would have to spend almost half a year on one character just to hit this average. A rather frustrating mount to collect and I personally believe the WoWhead estimate is wrong and the drop rate is much worse.
 

What do you think of the collections system in general, since you’ve had so much experience with it?

Well needless to say I love to collect items. Originally these systems were just a means to bring quality of life sorting to the World of Warcraft. But like achievements they have become a guideline for people to play this game and to figure out what they want to do.
 

How would you improve it?

I just wish Blizzard would spend a couple days to parse their own databases to ensure unobtainable items were not being shown as obtainable. As some people do use this to guide their actions and there is nothing more frustrating than finding out the item you were camping doesn’t exist.

For example, look at my one handed mace collection:

It shows I need 21 maces left in this game, but only 5 of them are actually obtainable.

And maybe clarify where “world drops” are referring to.  Not just use it as a place-holder text for items that have no specific category.
 

What’s your favorite expansion/period of WoW?

Hands down it was Mists of Pandaria. This is the time when I started my own guild and had trouble killing the first boss on normal difficulty. And over the course of the entire expansion my guild got to the point where we were able to kill Blackfuse on heroic difficulty (Mythic by today’s standards). 254 wipes taught me how much I like to raid and I have been pushing content ever since. Though my guild is no longer there, my love for the game still is and now I am a cutting edge mythic raider.

Since we have you here, what are you most looking forward to in Shadowlands?

Angel wings as a cloak transmog. As a paladin I love the aesthetic and I am desperate to use this in my current transmog.
 

Any shoutouts?

I would love to shout out to my current guild Demogorgon-Tichondrious and their two guild/raid leaders who tolerate my horrible tanking. ^_^ Also my friend DemonStella who is constantly running old content which helps in my collection of transmog gear. To Lilya for drawing some amazing art of my character and being a good friend.

And finally to every person in the WoW community who loves this game.  I hope to continue playing this game for the many years to come even as I hit 100%. ^_^

 

If you want to follow Haru's collection adventure, check him out on twitter.

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• 46 Max Level Warriors, Guinness World Record, Autism Charity and More: the DesMephisto Interview

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• A Farewell Interview with Mione, the Solo Artist

• Hurricane, Awesome WoW Trailer Creator Interview

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