Congratulations to Twothirsty on becoming our first grey geared Blood Thirsty Champion (3rd overall) as well as our 34th Iron Champion during Legion. 2Shanks had the added difficulty of following the Iron Challenge gear rules along with the Blood Thirsty Challenge questing rules.

2Shanks started playing WoW in Vanilla. His first time trying out the challenge was back in Cata with some of his fellow raiders to see who could get the furthest. He got to about level 20 before they stopped. It was during Warlords that 2Shanks got bored with the expansion and decided to try the challenges with a more serious attitude. It made the game feel like more of a challenge again which was a lot of fun.

Twothirsty was started under the old rules of only grey or white gear. When the rules were changed to allow green gear, 2Shanks decided to continue on under the old rules. “When I created the character, I had no intention of adding it to the Iron Man list since every Blood Thirsty was also an Iron Man. It wasn’t until around the early 90’s that I decided I would add my character because of the added challenge of doing it in grey or white gear,” said 2Shanks.

Levels 1 through 60 were spent mostly going after rares. He would take a lap around a zone rare hunting and got a pretty good idea of how long the rare spawn timers were. Then 2Shanks would either log out and level a different challenger or would farm some mobs until it was time for another lap around the zone. Rare spawn timers were a lot longer in Outlands zones, so he played mostly with rested XP and killed normal mobs. His time in WoD was spent with the Podlings just east of the garrison in Shadowmoon Valley. For Legion, 2Shanks took a page from Neverdied’s book and went to Valdisdall in Stormheim.

Two near-death experiences happened around level 97 for Twothirsty. The first was a d/c due to his internet going down momentarily. By time 2Shanks was able to get back into the game, his pet was dead and the mob had just started attacking Twothirsty, “I feigned death, hearthed, and logged out for the night to calm down from the scare.” The second one was caused by Freezing Trap hitting a critter instead of the intended mob. 2Shanks said,”I did not notice this until I had lost about 40% of my health, but I was able to Feign Death and get the mob back on my pet. Since then I have been killing all the critters I see. I guess Pacifist isn’t the only challenge that can be wrecked by critters.”

The main advice 2Shanks has for someone trying to list on both the Blood Thirsty and Iron Man challenges would be to play a Hunter. “With 7.3.5, the difficulty killing mobs, later on, is much higher. Other classes may be able to do it, but not with as much ease as Hunter, which I think is important for the number of kills you’ll need for each level. Some advice for Blood Thirsty is to take advantage of rares 1-60, farm mobs that drop pets or give rep, prioritize yellow mobs when you can and level mostly with rested XP after 60. Yellow mobs are especially nice because you don’t have to worry about respawn timers which is even more important when in grey & white gear. Advice for Iron Man, with the current difficulty of the challenge it can be hard to level in later expansions. I believe it’s safer to take a Blood Thirsty approach and kill the same mob over and over again. I was able to do WoD and Legion after 8.0 so at least Iron hunters can do it too. From the bit I’ve done on the PTR, BfA should also be possible, although very slow.”

2Shanks said, “The reason for the last minute push to beat out the BfA release was because I had spent a lot of time on the character and I wanted to be able to say I completed the challenge even if it was only for less then 24 hours.”

Good luck with all of your challengers, 2Shanks, and once again congratulation on becoming our first grey geared Blood Thirsty Champion in Legion!