Lissanna of Restokin posted a blog post, about earning reputation for the Crusader title in order to fully utilise the new rewards available from the Argent Tournament in the upcoming 3.2 patch. I thoroughly encourage you to read her post, as it does have a lot of useful information about gaining reputation to become exalted champions with each faction.

I’m looking at it from a slightly different perspective, one that focuses more on the money involved with grinding a reputation. I posted this as a comment on Lissanna’s blog, but I wanted to flesh it out a bit more here.

The two main ways that you can pay in order to earn rep are:

• Cloth Turn-ins (to the cloth quartermaster in every major city)
• Champion’s Writs (as a reward from the Champions dailies in the Argent Tournament)

While you are not exactly “paying” for the Champion’s Writs, you are giving up the 10 gold which would otherwise be the reward. Thus, due to the opportunity cost involved, the Writs have a value of 10g each.

Note: This guide assumes that you are already a champion with each of your 5 faction-specific cities.

Runecloth:

The cloth quartermasters in each major city in will provide you with the quests for this, and they become available at level 50. Intially, you will have to hand in 3 stacks (60) runecloth, and will gain 350 reputation of the city you complete the quest in (i.e. if you hand in the quest in Orgrimmar, you will gain 350 reputation with Orgrimmar – this quest must be completed in all major cities to unlock the repeatable quest for each one). After this, you will then have a repeatable quest, which requires you to hand in one stack (20) runecloth, and will gain 75 reputation of the city you completed the quest in.

Now comes the valuation of runecloth, which will be measured in silver-per-rep (spr). Essentially, this is the value of one point of reputation. 1spr would mean that 1 point of reputation costs 1 silver, 0.5spr would mean that 1 point of repuation costs 50 copper, 200spr would mean that 1 point of repuation costs 2 gold, and so forth.

The spr of the runecloth quests will vary, depending on the prices of a stack of runecloth on your specific server. Using unknown values, where x is the cost (in silver) of one stack of runecloth:

• The spr of the initial runecloth quest (non-repeatable) is: 3x/350 = y spr.
• The spr of the repeatable runecloth quest is: x/75 = z spr.

Using the hypothetical of 2g for one stack of runecloth:

• The spr of the intitial runecloth quest (non-repeatable) is: 600/350 = 1.71 spr
• The spr of the repeatable runecloth quest is: 200/75 = 2.67 spr

Champion’s Writs:

These are obtained by completing the champions dailies in the Argent Tournament. The main difference between these and the runecloth quests is that using a champion’s writ to buy a “Commendation Badge of ___” (for the faction you want to gain rep with), will not only give rep to that faction, but also 1/4 of the rep will be granted to the other 4 factions as spillover rep. This means that you can gain up to 500 rep for each writ, assuming you are not exalted with any faction. However, the downside to the writs is that their spr increases for the more ‘home city’ factions you are exalted with, and you can only gain 4 a day. (Thus, if you are in a hurry, it may be best to use a combination of both the Champion’s Writs and runecloth turn-in quests.)

The spr of Champion’s Writs varies depending on the number of ‘home city’ factions you are exalted with. The spr values are:

• Exalted with 0 factions – 2 spr
• Exalted with 1 faction – 2.28 spr
• Exalted with 2 factions – 2.67 spr
• Exalted with 3 factions – 3.2 spr
• Exalted with 4 factions – 4 spr

Comparisons:

The lower the spr, the less money you are paying to earn reputation, thus the cheaper it would be to get to exalted. When comparing the values, always go for the method with the lowest spr.

Comparing this the values of the Champion’s Writs to our hypothetical values from above for runecloth, we can see that it would be most economical to to the initial, non-repeatable runecloth quest for each faction, and then use Champion’s Writs, if you are exalted with one or no ‘home city’ factions. If you are exalted 2 ‘home city’ factions, you can choose either method, although the runecloth would be most desirable as you can do it more than 4 times a day. If you are exalted with 3 or more ‘home city’ factions, the most cost-effective way to gain reputation would be by handing in runecloth. (This is only for the hypothetical values posted above, you’ll need to work out the spr of runecloth on your own server to get data which applies to you.)

Hopefully this will help you to become exalted with all the 5 home city factions and get your Crusader and Ambassador titles in the most cost-effective manner.

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