Alright, so you’re looking to work on your Sons of Hodir reputation. Last week we talked about unlocking their reputation, this week let’s talk about the dailies and repeatable quests. Our first repeatable quest is Hodir’s Tribute, available once you hit Neutral with the Sons of Hodir. Lillehoff will accept 10 Relics of Ulduar and grant you 250 reputation. Relics of Ulduar drop from almost anything in the Storm Peaks, Halls of Lightning, and Halls of Stone. For a long time, they were fairly useless items and many people simply vendored them. Now you can use them to soften your Sons of Hodir grind. Chances are you already have ten from unlocking them. I suggest you turn them in earlier rather than later, due to the progression of daily quests. The higher your reputation, the more dailies you can do per day, and those dailies often grant more reputation. You can also stockpile them for use on an alt, though remember that Sons of Hodir Exalted shoulder enchants are becoming Bind on Account in patch 3.3. Still, if you have a tailor hoping for the 22 slot bag pattern or an alt hoping for a cheap mammoth, it’s not a bad idea.
(Editor’s Note — the reputation gains for Sons of Hodir have gone up greatly since this article was written, some items or reputations will give almost twice the reputation now than they did when the article was written. Everything else is accurate.)
Also at neutral is the daily Hot and Cold (+250 reputation). This quest becomes accessible once you have brought the Anvil to Dun Nifflem while helping Thorim. It will require you to kill Brittle Revenants just east of Dun Nifflem to get Essence of Ice. Then proceed into the phased Fjorn’s Anvil area and look for smoldering scraps of metal. Use the Essence of Ice and an icicle will shoot at a random smoldering scrap and change it into a lootable item for your quest. Very rarely it will fail to hit any of them, so you may end up having to go back for more on occasion.
The final daily quest available at neutral is Blowing Hodir’s Horn, which is unlockable after completing In Memoriam and A Monument to the Fallen. These two quests are simple — head east and slightly north of Dun Nifflem to the fields of frozen giants and dwarves, steal pieces of the horn, and return them to be reforged. This will spawn a giant horn with the Blowing Hodir’s Horn daily quest. While the one-time quests should help bring you to neutral, these two quests will grant you a total of 500 reputation/day on their own.
Once you hit friendly, the second repeatable quest opens up, Everfrost. While Relics of Ulduar are common, Everfrost is incredibly rare. In the areas where you do the Sons of Hodir quests you may notice a small spire of ice sticking out of the ground, teal in colour. These are Everfrost, and may be looted. They do not sparkle like herbs or quest items, so keep your eyes open as you do your dailies. The first one you get starts a quest, and the subsequent ones are repeatable turn-ins. Each Everfrost Chip you get grants you 350 reputation.
Polishing the Helm is also unlockable at friendly. As with the anvil and the horn, you first need to do the quest Forging a Head and Mounting Hodir’s Helm to unlock the daily. In the same area you collect Essence of Ice for Hot and Cold you will find destroyed giants from the questline to unlock Dun Nifflem. Using the mining pick provided on their corpses either grants you eyes or spawns dwarves. While it’s tempting to flight form/feign death away from the dwarves, you will often find that at least one of them drops an eye. It’s worth your awhile to stick around and kill them. Once the helm is up and you can get Polishing the Helm, you’ll want to head west of Dun Nifflem and look for a cave to your right — this is the same cave where you previously saved the Polar Bear Matriarch for the Brunnhildar vikings. The oozes spawn throughout the cave, and Viscous Oil is a guaranteed drop from them. This quest grants you 250 reputation. Combined with the neutral quests, you are now getting 750 a day without Relics or Everfrost.
Things pick up further at honored, when the puppies down below offer Spy Hunter (350 reputation). Next to the Polishing the Helm cave you’ll find a large, dead worg carcass. Using the Ethereal Worg’s Fang provided, you summon a ghost worg who will run around wildly for what feels like an eternity before spawning a Stormforged Infiltrator. When you first get this quest, it can be frustrating that it takes so long. It seems that after being summoned, the ghost worg requires a certain amount of time (which he spends running around wildly) before finding the infiltrator. At revered you’ll get another quest that you can do at the same time off of the creeps in the area, making it less painful. Thankfully, you only need three.
Thrusting Hodir’s Spear also shows up at honored, granting an amazing 500 reputation. This daily quest gets a bit of a reputation due to the fact that it can be difficult to understand at first. Also, sometimes it bugs out and you fall to your death in a horrible, nasty way. Druids and Engineers: have your parachute cloaks/flight form ready to go in case things go horribly wrong. Now, as frustrating as it is to fall to your death, that’s not a common occurrence. And at 500 reputation and 16.5 gold, a death every dozen or so quests isn’t a bad price to pay. You want to exist Dun Nifflem to the west and find one of the Wild Wyrms flying overhead. In traditional Ogre-Battle-style you could cry out “A Wild Wyrm? Here?! H-how cute!”, but regardless of your witty video game comments be sure to use the Spear of Hodir on them. While the range of the spear is pretty significant, I find it easier to get in front of their path and use it, just in case. The wyrm will fly down and grasp you in its claws. At this point, you’ll notice that you have a few options. “Grab On” will tighten your grip. Your grip decays very slowly at first, then faster as time goes by. This will increase the counter. I like to keep 50-70 Grip to be safe. Using abilities also decreases the grip counter. “Dodge Claws” allows you to dodge his attack. You will get a nice raid warning saying “The Wild Wyrm prepares to attack!” or something similar. The claws hit exceptionally hard, and for phase two you need all the health you can get. You do not want to be hit by the claws, and they’re almost completely avoidable. “Thrust Spear” will stab the wyrm, dealing a small amount of damage. I tend to alternate “Grab On” and “Thrust Spear” back and forth, thrusting a little more than gripping if the grip gets too high. Your final ability, “Mighty Spear Thrust” deals a large amount of damage on a long cooldown. Using it, however, puts “Dodge Claws” on its full cooldown. So the time to use “Mighty Thrust Spear” is right after you use “Dodge Claws.” Therefore, the pattern becomes: alternate “Grab On” and “Thrust Spear” until the raid warning, click “Dodge Claws” and you’ll see a message “Dodged!” pop up. Use Mighty Spear Thrust. Lather, rinse, repeat until about 30% health, then he will reach around and catch you in his jaws. At this point, the game simplifies down to trying to stab him without being eaten. “Pry Jaws Open” grants a stacking debuff that gives you +5% chance per stack to hit with Fatal Strike. “Fatal Strike” has a 0% chance to hit, but instantly kills the wyrm. I usually use “Pry Jaws Open” to 10 stacks, then “Fatal Strike.” If it fails, I keep prying until the strike is off cooldown, and repeat. If you kept your health from phase 1, it is very unlikely that you’ll die during phase 2. One more reason this quest receives such a bad reputation is because you and the wyrm crash into the ground, but your health stays low. This means that if you were flying over the Brittle Remnants for Hot and Cold, which is very likely, you may land on top of one with no health. Oops. These two quests add 850 more reputation per day to the menu, bringing it up to 1,600 reputation per day.
Finally, revered offers the daily Feeding Arngrim. The frozen giant on the throne will now offer you a quest to go collect worms. The Jormungar worms are located at the same place where you play Spy Hunter and outside the cave where you Polish the Helm. Note that while the cave itself has some jormungar worms, it’s the ones outside you want. I usually do this at the same time as Spy Hunter, tagging a worm and letting the ethereal worg help me kill it. You need to use Arngrim’s Tooth on it to make it a Disembondied Jormungar, then when it drops to about 30% health Arngrim’s ghost will appear to eat it. Make sure you let the health drop to 30% or less, don’t build five combo points then Ferocious Bite it at 31% and watch it explode — this will not grant you credit. You should easily get five worms by the time Spy Hunter finishes getting 3 infiltrators. With minimal extra time (if any), you get an extra 350 reputation per day, bringing the total to 1,950.
There is one final method of getting Sons of Hodir rep, added at a much later date. Until 3.3 hits and “Timear Forsees” quests go away, doing the daily dungeon quest will grant you a Sons of Hodir Commendation Badge for 500 Sons of Hodir reputation. There is no Sons of Hodir rep requirement to do this, so feel free to stock up. All of the other daily dungeon commendations are for reputations which have dailies and a dungeon tabard, so Sons of Hodir is quite tempting. Just remember, kittens, in 3.3 the Timear Forsees line of quests are going away and the achievements Timear Forsees is becoming a Feat of Strength. Timear is located in Dalaran outside of the Violet Hold. If you see the Proof of Demise questgiver, go back the other way.
