Ridiculous Number Crunching

I just crunched some numbers regarding leveling your faction in World of Warcraft. The result: There has to be a better way.

In World of Warcraft, there are various factions you can belong to. Initially you are neutral with them, but through a series of quests, some repeatable, and by killing certain oppositional aligned non-player characters; you can work your way up the faction ladder.

How this works: You will gain faction points by completing quests for the particular faction. Sometimes it is as low as 25 points, I've seen as much as 350 points awarded. When you hit a certain number of faction points, you go up to the next rank showing that you have earned their goodwill. The ranks are Neutral, Friendly, Honored, Revered and Exalted.

Why do you want to go up these ranks? Most often it is because they offer gear or other incentives (like recipes for a trade skill) that you can use. The faction will not allow you to buy certain items unless you meet a specific faction rank; the best items are unlocked with the highest rank.

Two days ago, my Hunter reached the "Honored" faction rank with a particular group. I looked and noticed that he now needs 12,000 faction points to reach the next rank. Here is where number crunching comes in handy.

There is a repeatable quest that he can do that gives him 250 faction points each time. The quest is simple, you just need to gather 10 beads from ogres you kill and turn them in for the faction. Thanks to a mod that I have, I have determined that a bead is looted from the ogres at about a one to three ratio, I have to kill three ogres to get one bead.

So, in order to get 1,000 faction points, I have to collect 40 beads. In order to get 40 beads, I have to kill three times that number of ogres, 120. In order to get 12,000 faction points, I have to kill 120 ogres twelve times. In other words, 1,440 ogres.

For future refrence, never number crunch faction points. Ignorance is bliss.