Yesterday was my last day panic farming for the title ‘Field Medic’.

I first wondered what the hell the title was when I saw someone running through Dalaran with the title on and thought that it would look good for my priest. I had a quick scour over Wowhead and discovered that it was First Aid related and with the news that First Aid was going as a secondary profession and all the achievements with it, I started having palpitations that I was going to miss out on it.

I had completed the first 7 (or so) for the previous achievement ‘Is there a medic in the zone?’ and I remember these quest things dropping for me the last time I was levelling in the Broken Isles. My First Aid was up to 795 anyway on my hunter so I knew that if I was going to actually max it out as I had done for all other expacs, I needed to find one more for sure.

So, I read up on where to get it to drop and set off on a killing spree. The first stop was the Murlocs by the water near the Court of Farondis area. I commenced mass genocide and pilfered their corpses to see if they had picked up one of the letters of help that these random exploreres etc had sent off.
I was doing that shit for and hour and nothing. The baby Murlocs were screaming at me as I butchered their parents, the big dude on the hill was getting angry with me as I ran past him without a care in the world, spraying arrows out in front of me.  There had to be somewhere better.

That turned out to be on the Watchers Isle place. There was a whole bunch of Murlocs there that were bigger and badder. They were throwing their spears at me, hitting me in the face with their shields and shooting water bolts at me. As they were taller than their cousins out by the Court I figured that they would have deeper pockets to enable them to stuff a note or two in there. They didn’t disappoint but not before after I had pulled a pack of five and then had another pack run into the back of me. Grr (my bear) couldn’t keep up, Hati spent her time staring at corpses like some sort of sniffer dog that had found something. That something usually was a bit of cloth and some silver. I’ve never used my self heal more frequently. The reckless abandon that I had used with the little Murlocs was once again my method of choice here, and despite the best efforts of my character telling me that being pelted with spears was starting to sting a bit, I carried on.

It finally dropped after my third lap of murder. One that I didn’t already have and the second to last one I needed in this zone. Going off to complete it I came back. Killing more of them as I circled around their home time and time again. Nothing.
A guild mate came and helped out, still nothing. We changed areas, back to the smaller Murlocs. The last sodding note I needed dropped for him, then another two dropped, still nothing! I was starting to get desperate and sent a ticket off the the GM’s asking if it was correct that not everyone in a party could loot it (yes it is).

Two hours down, only one collected. I had 8 done and not long left to find the others.

The following day, I went over to the island in Val’shara where there are a lot of Murlocs and also the lobster dudes. There was a Boomkin there starfalling the fuck out of everything. I snuck around and killed a section near a Murloc housing estate and hoped for the best. Shit all. I’d now spent another hour doing this… I moved over to the imps that were attacking the bears. They were too spread out for my liking and kept jumping around. I had Raidwiper out at this point and both he and Hati developed a fixation with dead imps and were no help to me half the time.

I had a look through the groups and found a large assortment of ones set up for ‘Field Medic – <insert zone here>’ most were full. Eventually one appeared for the zone and location I was at.
Players in these came and went, to the point where suddenly I was leader and having to deal with the popups asking if I wanted to accept so-and-so and change it to a raid. Mostly the players were silent but some were lamenting the fact they had a zillion drops of the ones that they didn’t need.

In Val’shara there was a Mage that had been doing the achievement for three days and felt a bit dizzy.

In Highmountain there was a Warrior who complained that they had been grinding the same mobs for hours and still hadn’t had the drop they needed. And then they got it.

In Stormheim there was a DK who was waiting for one solitary drop so he could complete the achievement, caps lock was used to announce the drop to the party when it happened.

I had the benefit of two Monk tanks in groups I was in, until they got what they needed and fucked off, leaving the rest of us wandering around not sure how we were going to pull everything.
We had one out by the Kobolds behind Skyreach in Highmountain. Pulling all the grave robbing bastards towards us so we could cleave them down. On the odd occasion they went to do a quest we used a ranged like the ox statue, getting them to pull everything towards us so the Warrior of the group could spin-to-win. It was good training for when he abandoned us for real.
My next one I encountered was in Stormheim. The first group I was in had situated themselves in the hole where all the rock-carving dudes were. There was a Pally Tank who was trying to pull everything centrally but a Ret Pally was charging around killing everything where it spawned resulting in a clusterfuck of bodies everywhere. After dealing with this for just over an hour (and slowly dying inside due to the abysmal drop rate from these dudes) people eventually left and new ones joined. We lost the Pally Tank and then a DK…. Once the Ret Pally fucked off to do a quest we were able to start gathering up the mobs to make it easier to loot and kill. It was working wonderfully, then they came back and completely fucked up the system… I quit the group as my head was about to explode and I wasn’t sure if I could restrain myself from saying anything about their wanker ways lack of being a team player. There was a good twenty minute wait, where I was watching to see the number in the group drop to four so I could get in there. One showed up with two people in there, bingo. It was a Monk Tank. Yeeeeeeeeeeeessssss!

It was with the Monk in Stormheim that I managed to get the last bit I needed. I had spent 9-10 hours solid grinding mobs. I made 22k in just looting them for their coin and vendor loot. I got an 840 ring for level 101 which went straight up on the AH. I also developed hysteria that I would never finish it before it got taken away and also managed to convince myself when waiting for that last drop that I would never get that one and I’d miss the achievement due to it.

The sheer amount of Field Medic groups on custom group finder is still astronomical. The panic to get this done has well and truly set in. Thankfully, I’m done and now my Priest is a fully qualified Field Medic.