A guide to Loremaster

By Toroy Updated: 2020/09/30

This Is A User-Submitted Guide!

Wowhead only updates official guides, so information might not be up-to-date.

About this guideSo what’s changed?Eastern Plagulands QuestsWhat does this actually mean for me?Where to beginLoremaster of LegionLoremaster of Draenor Kul TouristZandalar Forever!Sidenote: These aren't required for The Loremaster but you can hardly call yourself a Loremaster if you don't get them!this guideLoremaster of Eastern kingdomsLoremaster of KalimdorWhat do I need to begin this journey?

Patience

Time

A character you’re willing to level to 120

Optional things for your adventures

The largest bags you can get your hands on - There will be a lot to sell

An addon which automatically sells junk (this feature is built in to many other addons/UI compilations so you may already have this

A guild tabard (if you're not already exalted)

The addon Storyline which aims to enhance the readability and immersion of questing

Additional outcomes once you've finished

A fair bit of gold in the bank

The desire to never do another quest, ever again.

Lots of new rep with factions and your guild

A shiny new tabard

An absolute boatload of achievements. Honestly there are so many I can't even begin to list them

Some tipscannotLootwowhead quest page with applied filterDon't know where you were up to in a zone?Quest Completion TrackerQuest CompletistThings to remember

Please, take breaks. Your brain will go numb after 8 hours of low-level questing. It's not good for your eyes either.

Stay hydrated!

Chat to people in guild chat, discord, communities - They will help to keep you sane.

Take breaks, do something else, some world quests or a couple of dungeons.

Empty your bags pretty often. They will fill up with junk faster than you think!

A final wordfinalwill

Comments

Comment by 518484

Cool guide. How long did you spend by making loremaster? and did you enjoyed it or you enjoyed only receiving achievements?

Comment by 759155

Nice Guide!

Shame i'll probably never use it because I hate questing, but its a nice guide! ;>

Comment by 833385

It took me several months to get Loremaster, not weeks, but I didn't start at level 85. I levelled to 60 through Kalimdor and started then. I got the achievement at about 3800 quests, doing roughly 10-15 quests an hour when you include peripheral stuff like levelling fishing, etc. This is over the mandatory number of quests because each region has extras and I like to finish most of them.

But if as the guide says you do 100 quests a week, and you've done 1000 before you start, you are still looking at 6 months. I reckon I did more each week than that, but you can check the stats page to see what you've been doing up until now and do the maths relevant to you. If you don't enjoy questing I reckon you'd be mad to do it.

I'll add some points to an excellent guide if I might.

1/ Go with the flow. Each continent breaks down into regions and the regions follow logical flows. If you do them in order, life will be much easier. Azeroth and Cataclysm are very good about this flow and Northrend fairly good. Only Outland makes the ordering difficult.

For example, in Eastern Kingdoms dwarves and gnomes start in Dun Morogh (1-10) then are "expected" to go to Loch Modan (10-20), Wetlands (20-25), Arathi Highlands (25-30) and the Hinterlands (30-35). For humans it's Elwynn Forest (1-10) Westfall (10-15) Redridge (15-20), Duskwood (20-25), Northern Stranglethorn (25-30) and Cape of Stranglethorn (30-35). If you follow an expected track you will usually find breadcrumb quests that lead you to the next region instead of the Hero's Call (or Warchief's Command) quests that you will probably be too high a level to get - so the breadcrumb for Westfall is in Elwynn Forest. These quests count, so by flowing you have one quest less to do when you get there.

There's also flow within most regions. It's not hard and fast, but especially in Azeroth you tend to have quest hubs, and when you've finished a hub, there'll be a quest that leads you to the next hub. If you find the expected flow, you'll also find all the quests you need without breaking sweat.

If you find a quest in an area you haven't been led to, perhaps while gathering herbs or mining, jot it down or check it out rather than just taking it. Some breadcrumb quests become unavailable if the quests that they lead to are taken. That brings me to...

2/ Start a document for quest notes on your computer. Never abandon a quest without writing it down! Open up a text document and jot down any quests you abandon, and if you move away from a hub without taking all quests at the hub, write that down too. Sometimes hubs fork questlines and you are expected to come back to the hub to get the next set of quests. Fine if you've picked up the starter quests in your log (which is ideal), but otherwise a quick note will save headaches. There are addons that will take the place of this if you prefer.

3/ Check quests to dungeons on wowhead. Quests which end in a instance don't usually count for Loremaster, but you will often be sent to see someone standing outside the instance portal, and these quests typically do count, especially if it's in the same region.

4/ Don't just miss out quests you think are dailies or repeaters - check it. Daily quests don't count, but there are quests with a similar name that are identical and done first which do count. So Bombing Run counts, but Bomb Them Again doesn't. As another example there are four separate quests called Membership Benefits which are each identical and repeatable, just done at different reputation levels. These can count four for the region total (Nagrand).

5/ Outland regions are tough to complete if you try to do them at the nominal level or thereabouts. You certainly have to do some of the group quests and can't solo them until much higher level. ETA: And the Outland regions are more dependent on each other than elsewhere, so if you can't find all the quests in some regions, (such as Nagrand or Blade's Edge), don't panic. It might just be you need to do parts of another region first.

6/ Buy the fastest mount and travel speed you can. If you start at 85 you'll probably already have Azeroth flying, but if you start at a lower level, spend the money to upgrade speed as soon as you have it. As the guide says, you'll end up with money to spare and this can save you a lot of time. If you follow the human flow first, it brings exalted of Stormwind and makes your flight purchases much cheaper. I'm guessing an orc track will do the same for Og.

7/ Buy a guild tabard before you start on the Cata quests if you have a decent guild. A good guild gets you cheaper goods and repairs, and wearing a guild tabard while questing will get you to exalted and the nice goodies in the shop. It'll also get you a few gz's and approving noises the day you get Fading into Twilight, Loremaster of Cataclysm, The Loremaster and that huge grin all over your face!

Comment by 958353

nice guide, just one thing though...i think you should change the wowwiki link to
wowpedia.org ( not sure if allowed to post sites, if not plz delete )
because wiki has lots of viruses / trojans on it now + wowpedia is better set out.

thanks =D

Comment by 920140

I'd like to add my 2p here:

- Breakdown by region. Yes, you probably will pick up the breadcrumb quests halfway on a region to another, but don't leave the region you are in it until all other quests are exhausted. It helps to keep control.

- Level-bound quests: Let me explain myself here: Specially in Northrend, there are few (very few or just one) quests that require you to ride a giant on the shoulder (like a vehicle), and defeat another giant (I will check its name later). Well, you don't need to complete this quest, you can complete all others and still get the sub-loremaster achievement for the zone you are in. Why to avoid similar to these? No matter your level, power, stamina, you must survive based on the level of the "vehicle", so it can get pretty hard to do. The same applies to a quest in Outland, where a Wizard or Mage trade places with you (your body) so you must fight with HIS Health-Points and skills. So some quests can get you with your epic pants down.

Comment by glav0r3zzz4

Just a small tip: you can use addons like Magnet Continued to auto-attract quest items (it saves a good 30 mins / day(for me at least)) :)

Comment by Sooba

I have the title. My strategy:
I started at cata zones (pandaria wasn't out yet), after that I did northrend, then outland, then azeroth. While it can be hard to find quests in particular zones, I found the high-level zones worse because you couldn't one-shot the mobs (the difference between one-shot and two-shot is annoyingly big if you want to get over with it!) and generally the high level zones require a lot of quests.
When I was done with cata/wotlk/bc zones, I sorted my zones by amount of levels. I again started at the worst zones - the ones with the most quests.

I mainly watched television while doing loremaster, which was quite nice. I didn't read quest texts (sorry guide!) because you'll lose more time by reading it, than you will win by knowing what to do on every quest, so to say. Most quests are faceroll and clear.

The worst zone, by far, was nagrand. Be prepared. I got stuck in a few more zones but google and wowhead usually helped me out quite fast. In Nagrand however I've been stuck three quests short for at least a few days. I think I've spent hours to get to the answer. My suggestion is to do every quest you get in Nagrand - Some quests lead you out of Northrend but they'll lead you back eventually. Also, make sure you have enough rep with the mag'har to get every possible quest and it's easier if your consortium rep is NOT too high. This will restrict you from doing a few quests at the consortium quest hub in Nagrand (I was already exalted so I made it myself harder. There's no way to lower your rep with the consortium, unfortunately. However, it is possible to get the nagrand achievement without those quests - I'm the proof - it just gets even more annoying).

Comment by Storn

The tricky bit of this is outland. the rest of the zones will flow smoothly and if you have ever leveled a toon by questing you will have no problem knocking them out in order given enough time. I would recomend focusing on mop first for rep/any rewards you might actually use. Then go and do azeroth then kalimdor then northrend then cata. or mix cata in with the old world content as appropriate.

Outland on the other hand is trickyer. To get some zones (blades edge, shadowmoon, netherstorm) you will need to grind rep, get item drop quests and do dungeon quests to progress. If you check the individual achievments you will get a guide of what the commonly missed quests are.

It will take some time, the end of cata was a great time to do this, but if you have finished grinding dailys and got your loot from the current tier give it a go. I would recomend reading the quests texts and soaking up the lore as you go. If you don't like lore there are far easier achievment points to get.

And to paraphrase Nat Pagle old questing is a great excuse for drinking!

Comment by 1083741

Awesome guide I'm using it now. :)

Comment by TribbleTamer

If you're wondering what it's like to grind for Loremaster, here's what it's really like from a guy who's currently halfway through it:

- Honestly, it's not that bad. The only real difference between this and questing when you're leveling is that you can tear through mobs super fast and you can fly around to places quickly. Otherwise you're just running around getting a job done. If you want to just chill out and casually play the game, Loremaster is actually rather enjoyable.

- Start at level 90. Anything else wastes time.

- There's an addon called Quest Completionist. Also, Tomtom. If you don't have these two then you will be screwing yourself.

- The absolute worst part about it is the quests that remove the fact that you're at a much higher level than the zone. "Hello, level 90! Use this tank that does 200 damage a shot to kill that boss with 4000 HP which you could defeat with a fart!" Ugh....

- Loot everything. Some mobs drop items which start a quest. Even beyond that, it helps to sell things on the AH as you go, or even get a nice cache going on your bank alt. A stack of linen cloth may go for only 1G on the AH, but if you sell twenty of them, they will eventually add up.

- Speaking of, get a bank alt with its' own guild bank if you don't already have one. By the time you're done you'll have extra stuff to start off two or three alts later on.

- And do get the biggest bags you can get your hands on for the toon doing this. Saves a lot of time.

- Watch TV, talk to guildies / random people, take breaks. It'll keep you sane.

- If you see someone of a lower level questing, be courteous! One time I messaged a player "I notice we're on the same quests. L90, doing Loremaster. Wanna join up so we both get cred?", and ended up spending the evening questing with her. Makes it more enjoyable.

- Expert flying. Not a necessity, but you will be flying around a lot.

- Going for exalted rep on as many factions as possible? This won't get you all the way, but it will help tremendously.

- Keep a browser with Wowhead loaded in the background. Being able to alt-tab and type in a quest name to figure something out is just super handy.

- This is a HUGE task. Break it up into pieces. Going for Loremaster, okay, I'll do Northrend. What do I need? Nothing done in the Borean Tundra? Let's go! After a day or two off and on you get that done. And then another. And soon that adds up into continents done. Just break it up into smaller pieces which will eventually add up to the final result and focus on that. It's easy to get overwhelmed with all the stuff you have yet to do.

- Take breaks or you'll burn out. I mean, go farm something somewhere. Go score a new mount or achievement. Better yet, take a day or two off from the game. In the end this is a game. Don't make it a chore.

This bears repeating. YOU ARE PLAYING A GAME. Yeah, it's awesome to have goals to achieve in such a massive game, but don't make it a chore! If you want to take time away, do so! Just break it up into smaller pieces and go through it at a natural pace. Make your fifteen a month as enjoyable as possible.

Anyways, that's all I got to add. Seriously, just enjoy questing without having to worry about a boss popping up out of nowhere and splattering you. Break it up into smaller chunks. Take breaks. And most importantly, have fun!

Comment by 1432966

There are several quests where you need to weaken a mob without killing it. If you are attempting this achievement at level 100, this is extremely difficult if not impossible to do alone. Furthermore, removing your gear doesn't help much. I felt guilty "bumming a ride" from a lower level player, so I finally figured out that removing your gear and killing yourself (fly up high in the air and dismount) and taking resurrection sickness (talk to the angel after you die) usually did the trick. I was able to do level 19-20 quests with this tactic. It brought my attack down to the 50s range.

Comment by Constantime

Ok Honey I'm finally done with Loremaster. Honey? Honey?

Comment by 1397253

This is a pretty great guide, but I noticed something. Other than the original poster mentioning that he/she got Loremaster before the days of account-wide achievements no one has mentioned the possibility of getting Loremaster across multiple alts. Everyone says to do this at max level, but people have also brought up the trouble with doing certain quests when you're far above level for the region, or even "burning out" because you're doing so many quests so quickly and it's so menial because it's too easy. When I decided to go for Loremaster, I looked at my achievements and noticed something. The few sub-Loremaster zone achievements I had were marked completed on the character I hadn't done them on. When I clicked on them they said 0 out of however-many or were partially done, but the achievement itself was colored in and near the top of the list like the other completed ones. So I did a little experiment. I finished the zones I was more than halfway done with in Outland, and then did the others when my second character got up to that level. And I got Loremaster of Outland. Across two characters. So now I'm planning on doing all those low-level, near starting quests in zones I've never been to except to fly over on my next few alts. Of course, if I was already 20 or so quests into a zone on a previous character I'll come back and finish on that character. But by going for the achievement across several alts I feel like I'm not wasting as much time. I'm not piddling around in Feralas on my level 90 druid when I could be leveling that paladin I've always wanted, and I also get to experience the content the way it was meant to be seen. For example, there's a questline in Blade's Edge Mountains which culminates in an NPC (Baron Sablemane) making a pretty big reveal (and I won't say anything else in case there's people who don't know yet). If you're too high over level when you do that quest, there's every chance you'll miss the reveal by killing the opponent too quickly. And unlike quests where you have to weaken and not kill a mob, there's no warning or failure to complete the quest. You just get Sablemane saying some rather confusing stuff when you turn the quest in.

I understand the the way I'm doing it isn't for everyone. It's certainly a lot slower than the guys getting Loremaster in just weeks. But I for one like to multitask and sight-see a bit along the way.

TL;DR - You don't need to do all the quests on the same character. Just get the zone-wide achievements. You can do all the Outland quests but Nagrand on your main and then get Nagrand Slam on an alt, and you'll get Loremaster of Outland. So if you have a bunch of high-level alts that all started in different zones, go back and finish questing on the appropriate alt instead of starting from the beginning in some places.

Comment by Aralnda

I recently start d doing loremaster. I got stuck doing a quest which required me to harm but not kill a Murloc who was lol 6. -.- I one spotted everything, even with my fists at lol 100. I had to party with a low level player and they harmed it for me to capture it. Then there was a bug when I lost the Murloc and had to get the persons help again. I was also surprised how many characters below lvl 40 were leveling.

I also met a fellow loremaster. They were on their last zone. It was pretty cool to see the sense of community and how much stuff and beautiful zone their was.

I also watch nobbel87 and other lore videos, to actually do the quests and follow the story was awesome (I did it backwards though >.<)

Comment by 95702

I'm currently doing this achievement and I have a few tips to add.

General Tips

Don't worry about coming back to it later.
If other things get in the way, the quests will still be there. If you can, try and avoid abandoning quests when you're in a chain and something else comes up, so you know where to pick it up again. Sometimes I've been in the middle of a session of questing and then been invited to a raid or something. It's alright to just go off and come back another day. Maybe a week or so passes by and you check your quest log, and you remember those quests need finishing. Just come back to it when the interest is there again

Loremaster of Outland Tips

These quests suck.
These quests were designed to be a little bit better than Vanilla Wow, so they are a brutal change from the more easy-going quests of later expansions. There are significantly less quests in the expansion overall compared to others, but this expansion makes you work hard for those quests. There are worse drop rates than other zones and lots of scattered questing. They are hard and they have very little fun quests. After killing millions of ogres in one zone, you're gonna be doing the same thing later on in a different one.
It's better to follow the zone levels in order.
Hellfire Citadel > Zangarmarsh > Terrokar Forest > Nagrand > Shadowmoon Valley > Blades Edge Mountains> Netherstorm.
This expansion has a lot of back-and-forth questing, and a few factions have hubs in different zones (The Consortium for example) so you want to make the best use of your time rather than back-tracking through zones when asked to go all the way to where you just quested to finish another chain. Sometimes you can't avoid it, and in those cases you will have a better idea of where you need to go since you already cleared the lower level area.
Loot EVERYTHING, go EVERYWHERE.
There are a lot of quests in Outland where you have to have looted an item to open up a new quest chain, it's really easy to miss if you're clearing out zones and leaving everything but the gold behind. There are also lost of hidden escort missions that can be easily missed, so if you see some NPC text saying "can you break me out of this cage" etc. but don't see a quest marker, look around for the source or look up the NPC. It could be a hidden quest. Lastly some quests lead you into dungeons to talk to NPCs that hand out the quests. Sometimes these quests counted towards zone achievements for places where they had moved the NPC inside the dungeon when they were previously outside (such as around Auchindoun)

Loremaster of Northrend Tips

Choose a zone you love when you start.
I started with WotLK and went straight for Icecrown. I missed a few lead-up quests, but jumping straight in was enough to get me started and interested in the quests. If you feel like the epic grind from the bottom to the top is just too much, don't be afraid to just go to a zone that interests you and clear it out.

Set out a goal that you will clear a certain zone before you do any others.
When it came around to clearing Borean Tundra, I really needed to tell myself I was going to finish it. All the different quests everywhere were frustrating and I lost a lot of steam. It was an absolute chore to get it finished, but I really didn't want to leave it for last or have to come back later and suffer again. Sometimes when a zone is just mindlessly boring you have to just stick with it.

Decide an order you want to complete the zones in.
When I did Northrend I decided I wanted to go for all the main-story zones first (Icecrown and Dragonblight), then I went to do the more fun and relaxing zones (Grizzly Hills and Scholazar Basin), then the starter zones (Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra), finishing off with the more tangent storylines of Zul Drak and The Storm Peakes. This way was suited to me because I knew what I wanted to get from each zone and it made it feel like I had more choice. I think if I just followed the levelling path I would have felt more burned out, especially hopping back and forth between Howling Fjord and Borean Tundra.

I'll update this with more tips later when I go through each expansion. Don't give up! It's a long grind!

Comment by SoLoR1

Best class to do this is balance druid, starfall, insta mount (flight/travel form), interacting with objects while in flight form, also get your self loot-a-rang :)

Comment by jimbobaus

Great guide.
Might need some minor updates now that old zones have “chapters” the same as what was introduced in mop and onwards. It’s made it so much easier now. ! For some starting quests show on map so you know where to go. Some quests don’t count. So far I have noticed airfield in Borean didn’t count (for ally) and Arakoa quests in hellfire didn’t count for achievements needed.

Comment by 1849724

There is also another great addon that is a paid service called Zygor Guides. this guide is extremely helpful giving you exact directions to each and every quest along the way while providing best routes through each quest. it also does not have you do any quest irrelevant to the achievement.

Comment by 1354835

Guide needs an update. Zones from Pandaria up are missing. Also I may have missed it but there is no mention about cross-faction restrictions.

Comment by Nephalim

A couple important things missing from the guide:

As far as I can tell zone sub-achievements that make up The Loremaster do not count across factions. I can confirm with certainty that having the Horde variant of "Ashenvale Quests" won't be counted as finished when you are looking at "Loremaster of Kalimdor" on an Alliance toon of yours. So yeah, stick to one side.
It's way more fun if you can't oneshot everything in the zone your questing in, so pick a bunch, like 3-4 classes (and professions) you're interested in and level one toon of each while doing Loremaster, taking "advantage" of the experience eliminator NPCs (Slahtz for Horde, Behsten for Alliance) when necessary.
(I'm on toon No. 2 myself, I plan to complete the remaining zones in Kalimdor, EK, Outland and Pandaria with her, then I'll level two other toons, one through Northrend and one through Draenor under the new Shadowlands leveling regime. Then I'll decide which class I liked the most and level that one to max in Shadowlands to finally get the big Loremaster achievement sometime in 2021-2022.)
Having some way to repair your gear and sell your junk in the field will be a huge help, so get the Traveler's Tundra Mammoth from Mei Francis (16,000 gold before faction discount) or the Grand Expedition Yak from Uncle Bigpocket (120,000 gold, no faction discount applicable) before you set out on your journey.
If you decide to go with my idea of leveling multiple toons in the process make sure you pick Alchemy (for the healing potions and buffs) and Enchanting (for the gear enchants) as your first 2 crafting professions. Also consider leveling cooking on your first toon for the buff foods.
... Also make sure to get heirloom weapons appropriate for your classes (these will automatically increase their stats as you level and you won't have to spend exorbitant amounts of gold for weapons on the AH).

Comment by DarkIron26

a few more notes from my side while i do my loremaster:

- don't focus on the killing quest. usually you will get a couple of quest from a hub which are done in the same area. Since there is nearly no one else around when you do old content there is no shortage of mobs to kill. focus on the quest where you have to kill one certain enemy or have to go into a cave, castle or else. on the way you will most likely be greeted with a lot of the mobs you need to kill/loot for the other quest you have so just do it along the way.

- i used the addon conslegion. this is a very nice tool to shorten all these quest dialogs. it automatically accepts and turns in quest and you can even set it to automatically pick a loot choice from the quest. this really shortens the time you need in the quest hubs. It was designed to guide you through the legion leveling but works on any quest in the whole game.

A guide to Loremaster

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