For those of you who have been living under a bus for the past year, Wrath of the Lich King brings us engineers a lot of disappointment, but a few incredible things that almost redeem Blizzard in our eyes. Behold, the Mechano-hog!

NOTE: Because of the asymmetrical nature of daily quests in Wrath of the Lich King, this guide is targeted at the Horde faction only, as that is where I can gather information firsthand. However, much of this information is probably still useful. If anyone is interested in helping out with an Alliance version, please contact me! 

Complete with sidecar of death!

The Details

This seige vehicle is not quite as practical as a standard mount in a couple of ways, but the ability to carry a passenger and the cool factor make that a non-issue for most of us. What is an issue is that crafting our Hog will be no simple task. Here is what is required to craft one:

1) Exalted reputation with the Horde Expedition faction
2) 450 Engineering Skill  
3) 12,500 gold to buy materials which can be bought exclusively from smelly, greedy goblins
4) Either a lot of money, or a lot of time in order to farm titanium, eternals and cobalt, as well as the time or money for the 20 hour cooldown to transmute titansteel. 

This guide is going to focus on the first of those items, as it is probably the least intuitive of the four.

What is this “Horde Expedition”

Let’s start out by discussing the Horde Expedition reputation itself. This is the overarching reputation for The Hand of Vengeance, the Sunreavers, the Taunka, and the Warsong Expedition. Gaining any amount of reputation in any of these sub-reputations will give half that amount to your Horde Expedition reputation.

The easiest way to gain this reputation is by doing quests. While leveling from 70 to 80 I made a point of doing all of the quests in the starting areas, because nearly every quest will give you reputation you need in one way or another. Without touching Icecrown, I was able to get nearly half way through revered reputation, meaning that I only needed another 10,000 reputation or so! I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to get that far, but until I did a lot of research, I was concerned that that final chunk would prove challenging.

But then, after a couple of days of scouring Wowhead and various forums, I found that there are several daily quests that give Horde Expedition reputation. I have them listed here by zone and level.

The Daily Quests

Grizzly Hills
-Keep ‘em on Their Heels - 125 Horde Expedition
-Making Repairs - 125 Horde Expedition
-Overwhelmed! - 125 Horde Expedition
-Shred the Alliance - 125 Horde Expedition
-Blackriver Brawl - 250 Horde Expedition 

Icecrown
-Blood of the Chosen - 125 Horde Expedition
-Assault by Air - 125 Horde Expedition
-Assault by Ground - 125 Horde Expedition
-King of the Mountain - 125 Horde Expedition

Doing all of these daily quests will result in 1250 Horde Expedition reputation per day, meaning that in a bit over a week one could get finish off that last chunk to get to exalted. Please note that there are prerequisite quest chains for the Icecrown daily quests. You must complete the chain from the Argent Crusade post up to and including the Battle for Crusaders’ Pinnacle event, which when completed will phase in a building in which you can pick up the quest Orgrim’s Hamer, which will lead you to the zepplin of death by the same name.

The great part is that these quests are all quite fun, especially those in icecrown. I expect I’ll continue to do some of these just for the gold and the fun (go try King of the Mountain!).

Instances

If you’re not a fan of daily quests or if you absolutely need that last bit of reputation quickly, you can also gain Horde Expedition reputation by running any level 80 5-man instance or heroic instance without wearing a tabard that explicitly gives you some other reputation. I have yet to try this myself, so I can’t vouch for the rate of reputation gain, but anything helps, right?

Hopefully this helps anyone who was as lost as I was when I started looking into Horde Expedition reputation gain! I’ll be posting follow-ups with suggestions for skilling up engineering, as well as making the small fortune required to make this beauty. Be sure to check back!