Getting Schooled in Dalaran

This weekend ended up being very much a WoW weekend. I finally got exalted with the Kirin Tor and Oracles, farmed a lot of Hodir rep, ran many heroics, got a badge upgrade for my shadow gear, twiddled with my UI, 8-manned Malygos, and cleared out the quests in Zul’Drak and Borean Tundra. I also started seriously working on Higher Learning.

For those who still haven’t looked yet, Higher Learning is an achievement to collect 8 books from around Dalaran. The books have a one-hour spawn window which occurs three hours from the previous spawn. So, for example, if the last book spawned at 8am, the next spawn window will be 11am-12pm. The  book spawns for three minutes from the moment it is first read, and multiple people can read it. Additionally, often a ‘fake’, or non-achievement, book will spawn, which again sets the timer to three hours. Completing this achievement (and following the instructions after it) takes you to our old friend Archmage Vargoth, who gives you a Kirin Tor Familiar pet.

Stalking the book spawns comes with it’s own lingo:

OTC: “On the clock”, aka the location is on the 1 hour spawn window
LLL: The lower bookshelf (by far right entrance) at the Ledgermain Lounge
ULL: The upper bookshelf (straight in front of you as you go up the stairs) at the Ledgermain Lounge
VG: Beside the right bookshelf in the Violet Gate
VH: Violet Hold, next to the regular daily quest giver
UVC: The upper bookshelf on your left at the Violet Citadel.
LVC: The lower bookshelf on your right at the Violet Citadel.
TOF: The upstairs balcony at Threads of Fate
DVC: The bookshelf on the right in the Dalaran Visitor’s Center.

Fortunately the 3-minute window mechanic means that people benefit from working together to track the spawns. There are a couple of different ways to leverage this:

• Find out if people are using a channel on your server to discuss spawn times. On Uldum Alliance, it’s #bookclub. People report if a spawn is fake, cover multiple locations, share timers, and so on. This is extremely valuable if you’re out farming and want to track what’s going on.
• Install a mod such as Higher Learning. It will sync up with your server book channel and track spawn times. An important note, though: Daylight Savings Time seems to have messed with Higher Learning, so occasionally it will automatically set the respawn time for 4 hours instead of 3. This is remarkably irritating. I often just reset my timers manually using the command “/hl set LLL” (or whatever location you’re tracking), which WILL automatically set the time for three hours.

As a final note, the timers reset when the server does. If you’re lucky enough to be sitting at home on a Tuesday morning, the minute that maintenance is over and see if you can’t find a book or three.

All told over the weekend using these methods I managed to nab one real book (for a total now of four out of eight) and be around to witness 4 or 5 fakes spawn. This is NOT a quick achievement, which makes the pet all the more special. Happy spawn hunting!