Gryndall

Please Note: This guide contains information current as of patch 4.2. I have not included any information on this FoS prior to 4.0 changes as there are plenty of guides with that info and it is no longer relevant to obtaining the FoS.

Table of Contents
Introduction
General Information
Choosing the Order
Steamwheedle Cartel
Bloodsail Buccaneers
Ravenholdt
Darkmoon Faire


Introduction

The Insane in the Membrane Feat of Strength (FoS) requires one to raise reputation with 7 factions and rewards the title "the Insane."

Everlook, Ratchet, Booty Bay, Gadgetzan (collectively called the Steamwheedle Cartel), Ravenholdt and the Darkmoon Faire all need to be raised to exalted while Bloodsail Buccaneers needs to be raised to honored.

While this may seem straightforward, these are some of the most grindy reps to obtain and Bloodsail Buccaneer rep and Steamwheedle Cartel rep are in opposition to one another which means that gains with one will reduce the other.

This feat of strength will take months for most people to complete, so it is not for the faint of heart. In some cases there are multiple ways to gain the reputation needed so I will try to present all options and leave it for you to decide how the costs and benefits balance for you personally.

Please note that all reputation gains given in this guide are without any special bonuses, such as the human racial, the guild perk, banners, etc.

General Recommendations
This FoS is reputation based, so any increases to reputation you can take advantage of should be exploited. If you have access to a guild with the Mr. Popularity perk, get your toon into it. Humans get a bonus to rep, so all else equal it is easiest to obtain this FoS on a human (no, I'm not advocating race change).

Additionally there are 3 battle standards that can be used anytime one is on a grind involving the killing of NPCs: the Banner of Cooperation (which requires the guild achievement Working as a Team and gives a 5% rep bonus), the Standard of Unity (which requires Guild Cataclysm Dungeon Hero and gives 10% rep bonus) and the Battle Standard of Coordination (which requires A Daily Routine and gives a 15% rep bonus). You will also need to be friendly with your guild to purchase these. The banners each have a 10 minute cooldown and last 2 minutes; they also have a 2 minute shared cooldown so only one may be placed at a time.

Having a rogue (at least level 60), an herbalist (preferably a druid of at least level 70 that is also a miner) and a scribe will be greatly beneficial though not necessarily mandatory. Being an engineer will also provide some conveniences with Jeeves and Moll-E but again is not necessary.

If you would like to track this FoS in game, copy and paste the following script into the chat window in game:
/script AddTrackedAchievement(2336)

A useful addon for tracking this achievement is Insanity Tracker which is a data broker addon that works with Bazooka, ChocolateBar, Titan Panel or pretty much any other LDB display addon. I did not write this addon so any issues should be directed to the author's page on WoWInterface.


Choosing the Order
For some people the order in which the factions are done will be important due to the nature of Steamwheedle and Bloodsail rep and possibly due to the state of the economy on one's home server. Since Bloodsail and Steamwheedle rep are antagonistic it is worth noting other achievement goals at this point. If you are trying to get as many factions to exalted as possible, Bloodsail should be done before Steamwheedle or you'd have to redo the grind to exalted with Steamwheedle. If you are already revered with Steamwheedle and don't care about exalted reps, then it will be faster to do Steamwheedle first.

Another potentially important consideration is your server's economy and how much gold you are willing to spend getting the FoS completed. Darkmoon Faire rep will require turning in some profession crafted items as well as an abundance of Faire decks. If you do not have a scribe and an herber, you will be unable to make the decks yourself and will have to rely on the auction house to obtain them. On a low population faction/server this may be a challenge as supply will be limited making it difficult or costly to obtain a completed deck. On a high population server there may be high demand which will drive the cost of cards and mats up. Be prepared to spend 10s of thousands of gold on this rep if you do not gather and craft yourself. Additionally, Ravenholdt rep will require around 1400 junkboxes to get exalted, so if you don't have a rogue of about level 60, you'll likely have to buy these. Junkboxes cannot be sold on the auction house so it is a common practice to express one's desire to buy these on the realm forums for your realm.

Following the recommendations in this guide for Darkmoon Faire will most likely increase your wealth if you farm the herbs yourself. If you don't have a lot of gold to start with and want to buy junkboxes for Ravenholdt or cloth for Steamwheedle Cartel, you might want to do Darkmoon Faire first to earn some gold to pay for the junkboxes and cloth.

So the punchline is to consider your ultimate goals for reputation before starting Bloodsail or Steamwheedle and to weigh the costs in obtaining junkboxes and Faire decks to decide if you will mostly farm or buy from the auction house what is needed. You will get credit for each reputation as it is completed so you don't have to worry which is done first or having all the reputations completed at the same time.


Steamwheedle Cartel
The Steamwheedle Cartel is the collective name for the 4 goblin factions found in Booty Bay, Everlook, Ratchet and Gadgetzan. Reputation with these factions will be obtained through a combination of questing, grinding mobs and potentially cloth turn-ins. Each quest or kill will grant full rep with the primary faction and half rep with the other 3 factions until a maximum threshold is reached. For example, for a Booty Bay quest, one would get full rep with Booty Bay and half rep with Everlook, Ratchet and Gadgetzan. Killing a pirate in the Barrens will give full rep with Ratchet and half rep with Booty Bay, Everlook and Gadgetzan. The threshold for cloth turn-ins is neutral, for killing pirates it is revered and quests have no threshold. Beyond the threshold, pirate NPCs will grant rep only with the 3 non-primary factions.

If you did Bloodsail Buccaneers rep prior to starting Steamwheedle, you can begin with cloth turn-ins to return to neutral.

The quests are as follows:
Everlook: Making Amends
Ratchet: Mending Old Wounds
Booty Bay: Traitor to the Bloodsail
Gadgetzan: War at Sea

Each turn-in will grant 500 rep with the home faction and 250 with the other 3 reputations. Depending upon the price of cloth on your server or the ease with which you can farm it, you may find you need to adjust the order in which you turn in the cloth. You'll want to turn in the cheapest/easiest cloth until you are neutral with the primary faction, then move on to the next easiest/cheapest. If you plan to farm cloth, the pirates in each of the areas just happen to drop the appropriate cloth, i.e., Ratchet pirates drop linen, Booty Bay pirates drop silk and Gadgetzan pirates drop mageweave.

Once you are back to neutral, you can do quests for rep if desired or just start the pirate grind. For a listing of quests which grant Steamwheedle rep click here. Doing the quests may turn out to be slower in terms of rep/hour but can keep the grinding to a minimum; the choice to do them is largely a personal preference on whether questing is more enjoyable or if you're going for Loremaster achievements.

At some point the only way to obtain rep will be to kill pirates. There are numerous places where the pirate grind can be done and one will likely have to utilize at least 2 due to the fact that rep gains stop with the primary faction at 11999/12000 revered. There are numerous named npcs in Stranglethorn Vale which grant 25 rep with Booty Bay and have a high respawn rate so farming the ships off the southern tip of the Vale can be an efficient way to go.

A place worth noting is the pirates in Grizzly Hills at Venture Bay. There is a boat docked there with npcs called Venture Co. Evacuee. These npcs spawn rapidly and give rep as if they are in Stranglethorn Vale (full Booty Bay rep until revered, half rep with other 3 until exalted) except they do not decrease Bloodsail rep. They also drop a fair amount of high value items such as frostweave cloth and greens for some nice enchanting mats.

Special Note: If you haven't done the post 4.0 Stranglethorn Vale quests it is possible to phase Booty Bay to make Steamwheedle (and Bloodsail) rep a lot easier. While on the Return to Revilgaz quest (after completing Doublerum), Booty Bay will become phased and allow you to grind npcs very easily for both Steamwheedle and Bloodsail rep. You can go to the boat in the center of the bay and kill Bloodsail Corsairs to your heart's content (rep stops at revered for Booty Bay) to get rep with Steamwheedle. The corsairs spawn very rapidly and can be an efficient way to obtain rep.

If you've done this quest already, it is possible to gain rep from these npcs if someone else in your group kills them and you are in the area, so if you have a nice guildie/friend or a 2nd account you can still utilize Doublerum phasing to make life easier.

For Bloodsail rep, using Doublerum quest phasing is arguably the easiest and fastest way to gain rep. The Booty Bay guards will not grant rep but they are now level 35 and hit like marshmallows allowing you to kill the other npcs with impunity.

To start the chain that leads to Doublerum you must do one of 3 chains:

The Captain's Chest to Mok'rash the Cleaver

Message in a Bottle to Mukla's Demise

Scaring Shaky to Kill-Collect

Which will allow you to get The Bloodsail Buccaneers from First Mate Crazz which is the chain with Doublerum. The quest chain will send you out to the Bloodsail ships and you'll complete quests for them for several steps. The chain will stop a few times and require you to pick up a new chain from another npc on the ships.

The Bloodsail Buccaneers will lead to Ol' Blasty, Our Mortal Enemies, The Bane of Many A Pirate, and Cannonball Swim and eventually The Damsel's Luck. Completing The Damsel's Luck will open The Brashtide Crew which is the final chain needed to get the phasing in Booty Bay. Revilgaz will give a quest ot retrieve the Doublerum, which will be turned in at the barrel then grants the quest Return to Revilgaz. Return to Revilgaz causes the phasing that will make your life easy so do not turn in the doublerum to Revilgaz and begin the grind.


Bloodsail Buccaneers
Bloodsail rep only needs to be taken to honored for this feat of strength. The only way to obtain Bloodsail Buccaneer rep is to kill Booty Bay npcs. This has become quite a challenge post 4.0 as the Booty Bay guards are now level 85 and hit like trucks. The guards now have 464k health, melee for approx 30k, have a ranged knockback that hits for about 1500 and they will also net you in place. Soloing will be nearly impossible for most people and at best would be slow. A group consisting of some sort of tank, heals and dps will have better luck getting guards down of course.

If you are doing this fos solo, the Booty Bay guards are not recommended, but don't worry, there are other options.
1. Faldir's Cove in Arathi Highlands provides a very easy way to get rep though the respawn times are high so the rate is low. There are only a few mobs to kill here and none of high value.

2. Booty Bay non-guards can be killed if you are quite careful and stick to a few select mobs. Guards will aggro on you but will only use their ranged atack which will knock you away from them and into safety that much faster. This may prove difficult for melee classes however but the strategies discussed below will work great for ranged, especially if you have some instant cast spells to utilize.

Baron Revilgaz (level 60, 25 rep) and Fleet Master Seahorn (level 60, 5 rep) can be killed if you land on the end of the mast (black star), kill them in one shot and then jump into the water below. Guards will aggro but will not be able to melee you as long as you aren't netted on the mast. They may net you in place so it is important to jump into the water as soon as you kill the npcs to avoid being netted on the mast and molested by a guard. These 2 respawn very rapidly; by the time you drop out of combat and fly back they will be back.

You can also kill Grizzlowe (level 45, 25 rep) and Wharfmaster Lozgil (level 35, 15 rep) at the end of the dock where the Booty Bay/Ratchet boat comes. Wharfmaster respawns quickly but Grizzlowe does not. You'll want to kill these from the water on the interior area (where the dragon is in the screenshot) or the guards can trap you against the cliff wall and shoot you to death.

3. Utilize the Doublerum phasing to kill mobs. An efficient way to grind rep with Bloodsail while phased is to kill the 3 npcs in the bank (ignore the auctioneer, no rep) then head up and into the inn, killing all the NPCs on the way (Fleetmaster Seahorn, Jutak) and go to the top of the inn where Baron Revilgaz is and kill him, finally over to where the horde flightmaster is and kill Kebok. Next drop back down to the bank where the bankers have respawned and repeat the loop. The two bankers and Baron are worth 25 rep each and all the others are worth 5 rep each. The Booty Bay guards will not grant rep but they are now level 35 and hit like marshmallows allowing you to kill the other npcs with impunity.

Doublerum phasing is only available if you haven't done the post 4.0 Stranglethorn Vale quests. While on the Return to Revilgaz quest (after completing Doublerum), Booty Bay will become phased and allow you to grind npcs very easily for both Steamwheedle and Bloodsail.

To start the chain that leads to Doublerum you must do one of 3 chains:

The Captain's Chest to Mok'rash the Cleaver

Message in a Bottle to Mukla's Demise

Scaring Shaky to Kill-Collect

Which will allow you to get The Bloodsail Buccaneers from First Mate Crazz which is the chain with Doublerum. The quest chain will send you out to the Bloodsail ships and you'll complete quests for them for several steps. The chain will stop a few times and require you to pick up a new chain from another npc on the ships.

The Bloodsail Buccaneers will lead to Ol' Blasty, Our Mortal Enemies, The Bane of Many A Pirate, and Cannonball Swim and eventually The Damsel's Luck. Completing The Damsel's Luck will open The Brashtide Crew which is the final chain needed to get the phasing in Booty Bay. Revilgaz will give a quest ot retrieve the Doublerum, which will be turned in at the barrel then grants the quest Return to Revilgaz. Return to Revilgaz causes the phasing that will make your life easy so do not turn in the doublerum to Revilgaz and begin the grind.

Once you've reached friendly there are 2 quests that can be done for a bit of rep, a title and achievement and a set of nifty pirate clothes. Go see Pretty Boy Duncan north of Booty Bay and get Avast Ye, Scallywag. Then do Avast Ye, Admiral. If you are on Doublerum, you'll find Fleet Master Firallon in the ships near the bay rather than south of the cape where is normally located.


Ravenholdt
Ravenholdt is relatively straightforward and consists of 2 stages. Stage 1 involves killing npcs until revered and stage 2 involves turning in junkboxes 5 at a time until exalted.

Stage 1: Kill any of the syndicate mobs in Arathi Highlands for rep. The best place to do this is at Stromgarde Keep as there are plenty of mobs, fairly densely placed with good respawn rates. There are also syndicate mobs near Northfold Manor, though there are not as many as at the keep. You will gain rep until 11999/12000 honored.

Stage 2: Now the fun begins, you'll need to pickpocket (or otherwise obtain) 1400 heavy junkboxes for the quest Junkboxes Needed. Each quest turn-in will grant 75 rep and award a nifty throwing weapon. This weapon is unique and so must be destroyed, vendored or disenchanted before the next quest turn-in. There is a vendor in the basement if you'd like to sell it. The junkboxes can be unlocked and partially looted, but at least 1 item or the coins must remain in the box or the box will disappear. Engineers will find having Moll - E and Jeeves to be tremendously helpful for turning in the quest and selling the reward.

If you're planning to pickpocket the junkboxes yourself the best place to farm these is the Blackrock Stronghold in Burning Steppes.
There are 4 groups of npcs standing in formation along with quite a few random mobs standing around or pathing around the area. A recommended path is to start with the circled group then follow the arrows, pickpocketing the single npcs as you move from large group to large group. There is a little hill to the right in the image that hides another group of 25, be sure to pickpocket them as well. The npcs are level 51-52 and have a decent drop rate of junkboxes.

Glyph your rogue with Glyph of Pick Pocket to get better range, turn on autolooting and start pickpocketing. With the glyph you can go between the 2nd and 3rd or 3rd and 4th rows and pickpocket all the npcs as you move through the group. By the time you've pickpocketed all the groups and random npcs stading around the 1st group will have had their pockets respawn, so there is no need to kill the groups (if you get back to start and you get the error message stating the target has already been pickpocketed, give it another 30-60 seconds and try again). If you are spotted and pulled out of stealth in a large group, vanish and run out and try again. The mobs take longer to respawn from death than their pockets take to respawn so it is not worthwhile to kill them.

To make things a bit easier (especialy for lower level rogues) I also recommend using Glyph of Pick Lock and Glyph of Sprint and speccing into subtlety for Nightstalker, Elusiveness, Preparation and Cheat Death. Don’t forget to turn off auto-looting or hold your modifier key if you plan to loot the junkboxes. A run speed enchant for boots will also be beneficial.
The lockboxes will be turned into Fahrad who stands out on the second story balcony of the Ravenholdt Manor in the Hillsbrad Foothills and this is where having Jeeves and Moll-E will be useful. Mailing the junkboxes to your toon will allow you to turn in more at a time without having to go find a mailbox (there are no Alliance mailboxes in Hillsbrad now that Southshore is destroyed, horde can use Tarren Mill) and Jeeves can be utilized to vendor the reward. If you are an enchanter, the enchanting mats obtained will usually be worth more than the vendor price however.


Darkmoon Faire
Darkmoon Faire will require a lot of turn-ins in order to reach exalted and will either require a lot of farming or a lot of purchases on the auction house. There are 2 stages for Darmoon Faire rep; stage 1 lasts from 0/3000 neutral to approximately 2000/6000 friendly and stage 2 will require turning in Darkmoon decks until exalted.

Stage 1: The first part of Darkmoon Faire will be getting to about 2000/6000 into friendly. At this point the quests at the Faire will no longer grant rep and you'll have to turn in card decks to get from there to exalted. The first stage will require turning in profession crafted items or drops from mobs. These quests are tiered into 5 levels and depending on your initial rep you may start at any of the tiers for stage 1. Wowpedia.org provides a detailed write-up on which quests can be done for Darkmoon Faire rep in each tier and what the requirements and cutoffs are.

Remember the general recommendation for a level 70+ druid herber/miner? We are about to find out why... My recommendation for stage 1 is to farm thorium in Winterspring whilst also farming herbs. The thorium veins will net you tons of gems to sell on the auction house as well as thorium ore and dense stone. Thorium can be turned into thorium widgets by an engineer and dense stone turned into dense grinding stones by a blacksmith, both of which are used in tier 5 turn-ins. My recommendation for stage 2 requires a massive amount of herbs from Winterspring so this will save some time and will also give you some extra gold (potentially 10s of thousands over the course of the herb grind) in the bank.

Dense grinding stones can be turned in 8 at a time for 250 rep. Each grinding stone requires 4 dense stone. Starting from 0/3000 neutral will require 20 turn-ins and thus will require 640 dense stone. This may seem like a lot but will pale in comparison to the total amount you will gain while farming for herbs. I recommend selling the thorium and only using the stone as a stack of thorium ore on my server sells for 25-30g while a stack of dense stone will only sell for 1-2g, although the thorium could also be turned into thorium widgets to get past stage 1 faster.

If your herber is not a miner I still recommend doing dense grinding stones as the gems and ore obtained will sell for quite a bit and provide some funds for either stage 2 of Darkmoon Faire or junkboxes for Ravenholdt if you farm the mats or if you don't the stone is relatively cheap to buy on the auction house. Alternatively, you can farm whatever is easiest or buy whatever is cheapest and do turn-ins until you reach 2000/6000 friendly.

Stage 2: After reaching 2000/6000 friendly, you will be able to obtain a small amount of rep from the Darkmoon Faire quest and Sayge's fortune cards (Your Fortune Awaits You) if you are lucky enough to get the right fortunes, but most rep in stage 2 will come from turning in card decks for rep. There are 3 deck types, common (green), rare (blue) and epic (purple). Green and blue decks grant 25 rep per deck and epic grant 350 rep per deck. Epic decks require the Faire to be in town (first full week of the month) while the lesser decks can be turned in any time.

Assuming you are sitting right at 2000 friendly, you will need an additional 37,000 rep to get exalted. This means you will need 106 epic decks or 1480 lesser decks. Epic decks come in 4 varieties, level 60, level 70, level 80 and level 85. The level 60 decks only require rare ink and a parchment while the other 3 require either primal life, eternal life or volatile life in addition to the ink and parchment. Each epic deck consists of 8 cards, rare consist of 4 cards and uncommon consists of 3 cards.

The fastest way to complete stage 2 is to farm icecap and mountain silversage in Winterspring for sapphire pigment which will make ink of the sky. Icecap, mountain silversage and sorrowmoss have a 50% drop rate for sapphire pigment, and golden sansam and dreamfoil have a 25% drop rate. Every 5 ink will make a Darkmoon Card. The decks you'll complete are beasts, warlords, elementals and portals. The cards stack to 20 while the decks do not stack so it is best to leave the decks uncompleted until the Faire is in town.

It may seem that the lesser decks will be faster as they only require 3 cards but this is not likely to be true. The pigments needed for both cards have 25% and 50% drop rates depending on the herbs being milled. Assuming you only use the higher end herbs that give a 50% drop rate, you will need to mill 30 herbs to get 3 verdant pigments for rogues cards and those 3 pigments will make 3 cards (on average, a complete deck) and award 25 rep. The epic decks will require 50 herbs to get 5 pigments which will create 1 card; 8 cards will need 400 herbs and will award 350 rep for a complete deck of 8. It takes 14 times as many rogues decks to equal 1 epic deck, so 14 x 30 herbs = 420 herbs. It then takes 420 herbs to get 350 rep from rogues decks and 400 herbs to get 350 rep from epic decks. From personal experience herbing in Winterspring is faster than farming for stranglekelp or bruiseweed which are the herbs that have a 50% drop rate of verdant pigment so fewer herbs are needed and the rate at which the herbs are obtained is higher. Your mileage may vary.

Special note: 4.3 is bringing changes to the Darkmoon Faire, if you are not already exalted with the Faire it may be worthwhile postponing doing this faction until the changes are announced and the nature of reputation gain changes is fully known.This guide will be updated as quickly as possible with all the relevant changes.

I hope you found this guide to be helpful and informative and I welcome any constructive comments. Enjoy going Insane!