So, death knight. You're through with Outland. You just dinged 68 in Nagrand and want to move on to whiter, snow covered pastures. Maybe those pastures are in Northrend. Maybe those pastures are in Alterac Valley. Either way, let's discuss getting through those final levels and pushing you through to the end game.

It's the third anniversary of Phat Loot Phriday and in celebration we bring you an item that we can all enjoy. So raise a pint and enjoy the feast before you!

Name: Black Jelly (Wowhead, Thottbot, Real life)
Type: Common FoodDamage/Speed: N/A
Attributes:

• Why are we featuring a food on Phat Loot Phriday? Because it's only the best food in the game right now -- this baby restores 45,000 health and 38,400 mana in one sitting. For both of those, this is the biggest gain you can get.

Via Blizzplanet, we have news of yet another Warcraft graphic novel coming to us from Tokyopop in December 2009. This time, the story will focus on Thassarian, a Human Death Knight NPC in World of Warcraft.

If you've played a Death Knight or an Alliance character in Northrend, chances are you know of Thassarian. He first shows up in game as a thrall of the Lich King, but even as he assists in the slaughter of the Scarlet Crusade, he shows a noble spirit that even the Lich King's control can't completely suppress.

Our inbox has been absolutely flooded with reports of this mysterious twink, Aigni of Ner'zhul, that appeared on the official forums in the last 24 hours. If you look closely at his Armory, you'll notice some pretty big oddities. For one, the character is wielding a weapon he really shouldn't be able to have. Two, the character has some other items equipped that are normally far out of the reach of a level 10, such as the Violet Badge. Three, he has the achievement for downing Gruul the Dragonslayer.

A lot of people have called 'hax' on it, but how it went down was probably more innocent than that. Not completely, entirely innocent, but more innocent than hacking Blizzard's Gibson. Our first instinct when looking at the items is that he must have simply completed a few bugged quests that had no minimum level requirement. Looking at his achievements killed that theory pretty quickly, though. The sword he's wielding, the Combatant Greatsword, is from a quest in the Borean Tundra. According to his achievements, he's never been to the Borean Tundra.

When Jackhammer of EU Frostwhisper first sent us this Alliance Northrend flight point gallery, I kind of shrugged it off. Flight points are the most traveled places in the game, by definition. Why would we be interested in something we see all the time. You take pictures on vacation, not at home. But after looking through it, I was struck by just how well-crafted these places are. From the Fizzcrank Airstrip to the heights of Icecrown, there's a lot of beauty to be found in these places as well, and not just on the back of a griffon.

It's a nice gallery, and it gives you a nice hint of just how varied Northrend is -- there are fires burning and flightmasters giving rides all over the continent, and by browsing through the pictures, you get a good look at what kinds of crevices the Alliance have inserted themselves into in Northrend. And if nothing else, it's some nice art to look through on a Saturday afternoon.

My Shaman and I have been becoming best friends lately. I've been doing about a level every other day with her, and as I said in the WRUP last Friday, my goal was to get her into Northrend to have some fun. To do that I needed to bring her to 68 and head over to my preferred starting zone, the Howling Fjord.

But when I got there I was in for a bit of a shock.

Everything wasn't dying as fast as it was in Outlands. At 67 my Shaman was plowing through mobs left and right, outfitted in mainly greens and a few quest reward blues. With Shamanistic Rage, and my two ghost wolves I could pop out at a regular interval, I had nearly no downtime.

Enter Northrend, and enter the difference.

Promethus asked...

Does anyone actually know that Arthas merged with Ner'zhul? Any NPCs that is. Because there was no one besides those of the Legion like the Dreadlords and Kil'jadean who knew that the original Lich King was armor on a pedestal, everyone else like Thrall, Jaina, Rhonin, Bolvar, Wrynn, just know that Arthas was the one who marched to Icecrown and came back only to spread the plague and kill his father. No one but the player actually saw him walk up Icecrown Citadel and shatter Ner'zhul's prison.

On top of free transfers for both North American and European servers, a brand new realm has opened up for the US! The vital stats:

• Name: Borean Tundra
• Type: PvE
• Time Zone: Central
• Battlegroup: Emberstorm
• As a non-transfer realm, you can't transfer characters to it (duh) or create Death Knights on it (unless you have another level 55+ character on that realm) for the next 3 months.
  
• AQ gates are closed.

Reroll locusts, get ready to swarm. When I was on a few hours ago, the highest level was 13 (a hunter); it seems like the realm opened around when Bornakk did his post (9:30 PST/12:30 EST).

There is also, apparently, a new RP transfer realm planned to open at some point; we'll let you know as soon as we find out anything more.

P.S. Hi to Justin, Nerdan, and Healinator.

Every week The Overachiever gives advice, walkthroughs and guides on completing your latest Achievement obsession.

Last week, I kicked off this new column covering the "I've Toured the Fjord" Quest Achievement for the Wrath starting zone Howling Fjord. Today, as promised, I'm going to cover the Quest Achievement for the other starting zone in Northrend, Borean Tundra with "Nothing Boring about Borean" (A/H)

But first, I want to highlight some excellent resources brought to my attention in the comments of last week's column. I stated that there was no way to track which quests you have completed and which you haven't. Turns out you can with an AddOn called Everyquest. It can only track quests you've done after it's been installed, but you can manually mark off quests you've done previously. An alternative is QuestGuru.

Another good tip is to turn on your low level quest tracker if you are going back to older zones to finish off quests. You'll find it by right-clicking on the magnifying glass icon on the edge of your mini-map.

Now, on to the good stuff!

When you log in the day after patch 3.0.8 goes live, odds are that if you've hit 80, you'll be picking up a relatively free achievement. Winds of the North is an achievement that's been more or less impossible to get since Wrath was released -- it requires you to get Exalted with all three of the "starter" reputations for your faction, depending on whether you're Horde or Alliance. But while it's relatively easy to get Exalted with the overall reputaiton for your faction (Horde Expedition or Alliance Vanguard), it's very tough to get Exalted with the reputations within that faction (Explorer's League, Valiance Expedition, Frostborn and the Silver Covenant for the Alliance, and Hand of Vengeance, Taunka, Warsong Offensive and the Sunreavers for the Horde -- whew). There are almost no daily quests for any of those factions, and even just doing all of the quests is designed to get you Exalted with the major faction, not the minor ones.

Patch 3.0.8 will fix this, and only require you to get Exalted with the overall faction. Which you probably already are, since if you don't wear a Champion tabard during the endgame instances, you'll instead earn rep with the starter reputation for your faction. (Not to mention that even before you get there, the mini-factions all add up to the major faction, so if you get Revered with two of the mini-factions, you'll be Exalted with the overall faction.) Got all that? In short, Blizzard built an achievement into the game without realizing how hard it really was to get. And in the next patch, they're going to change it so that even if you haven't been paying attentention, you've probably already gotten it. So enjoy the free points.

Each week, Arcane Brilliance invites Mages everywhere over for brunch. We serve muffins, sweet rolls, croissants, and enough mountain spring water to wash it all down. Then, for dessert, Arcane Brilliance conjures strudel for everyone, because who doesn't like strudel? If you raised your hand, you, sir or madame, are a dirty, dirty liar. Everybody likes strudel.

About a billion years ago, when Warlocks still ruled the world, back in those dark days before Arcane Barrage, spellpower, and elementalist specs--in that bygone era before Death Knights appeared in Azeroth, bringing with them their ridiculous magic resistances and eighty-seven different ways to silence or interrupt--Arcane Brilliance brought you a series of Mage leveling guides. In those days, we didn't have any of this crazy "rock music" you kids listen to now, and when we fought Illidan, we had to chain pot. We walked naked twelve miles to school through nineteen feet of snow while fending off wolves and dinosaurs with our bookbags, and we liked it.

Things are different now. Nowadays, when you hit level 70, your experience bar doesn't vanish, never to return. We have ten new levels and an entire new continent to adventure our way through, new talent points to spend, new gear to pick up, and several fresh and exciting ways to barbecue zombies. It's an exciting time to be a Mage, and Arcane Brilliance is here to open a portal to level 80 for you.

If your Mage is at some other point along the leveling continuum, you can find the previous leveling guides here, here, here, and here. You can find the new one by clicking the words "read more" directly following this period.

It's the day after Christmas. A fair portion of our readership is only now getting Wrath of the Lich King installed on their computer, especially after the gift exchanges of the last few days. Over the weeks since Wrath's release, we've had quite a bit of content to ease you through your first steps into Northrend. With this latest wave of people hitting the frozen shores for the first time, it's a good opportunity to look back on a lot of that.

Even Blood Elves want to come home for Christmas. For today's Movie Watch we present Baron Soosdon's depiction of a Paladin's epic journey through the Borean Tundra to be with his family. This video was created as the producer's entry to the WeGame Christmas machinima contest of 2008.

As always, the images are crisp and visually stunning. Watching the video we get a nice tour of the Borean Tundra. There is very little action in this clip, more or less just one quick fighting scene during the opening credits. Aside from a couple of NPC interactions, the video is mostly a Paladin riding around. Emotes have a limited capacity to capture the true emotions of homecoming. I think Baron Soosdon did as good a job as he could, but I felt a little bit let down. The end should be heartwarming but it's just kind of there.

If you're making your own epic journey this Christmas season, slow down and be safe. It's nasty out there.

We've completed our first set of Wrath Dailies outlining ways to increase your reputation with the Kalu'ak faction. The three quests that you can do are all available to you when you hit Northrend, and are generally pretty easy to swing through if there's not a lot of other people around.

The best way to complete them all is to begin at one of the starting zones and work your way across Northrend. I usually start off in the Howling Fjord with The Way to His Heart since that's the least heavily farmed, then go Dragonblight for Planning for the Future, and finally end up in the Borean Tundra doing Preparing for the Worst.

The Way to His Heart

In this daily quest you have to mate two squishy sea lions. Have fun, and don't forget that soap you made earlier. And what gets two sea lions to mate better than some yummy gooey raw fish?

Quick! Utaik needs your help! Gather eight of the Kaskala Supplies for him or the families of the Kalu'ak town Unu'pe will starve.

This daily quest is simple yet surprisingly annoying. It's one of those that can quickly get under your skin as more and more people do it. Want to run around pickup objects while ten other people on your server do it at the same time? Then this quest is for you!

Quest Giver: Utaik, Kaskala, Borean Tundra
Reputation: Kalu'ak
Reward: 500 rep & 4.86g at level 80
Minimum Level: 68
Required Chain: None!

Read on after the break for our walkthrough of the quest, complete with a few tricks you can do to get it done quickly and easily.