Its that time o’ year again – big beasties comin’ oot o the lake, night elfs gettin’ all dewy eyed and fireworks lightin’ up the skies for nights.  No tae mention plenty o’ drinkin’ and dancin’.

My third post on this blog was to do with my much-beloved yearly events and their replayability.  It was about the upcoming

Lunar Festival – one of the holidays which had not really been changed much compared to its flashier cousins such as Winterveil, the Midsummer Fire Festival and Brewfest.

The Lunar Festival, though, already has a pretty solid story base as well as a large run around the world which nets you some interesting recipes, ‘rp’ outfits or other shinies alongside a reasonable amount of rep.

The one thing which is definately different this time around is the addition of achievements concerning the holiday - To Honor One’s Elders. This achievement includes visiting a tonne of your ancestors (and other peoples ancestors unless my family line hides some interesting love affairs!):

• Elders of the Horde
• Elders of the Alliance
• Elders of Eastern Kingdoms
• Elders of Kalimdor
• Elders of Northrend
• Elders of the Dungeons

Make a sandwich, grab some juice and get a comfy chair – this will take a while.   In fact, the best idea is probably to spread it over several sessions as it really does take quite some time to do the running around for these quests, even if you are just hopping flight-point to flight-point for some of them.

A good walkthrough for visiting the ancestors here on wowwiki.  It has coordinates, maps, descriptins and even a blow-by-blow description of a fast route to visit the lot.

Expect a flurry of groups early on, too, for instance runs to get to the Northrend elders and take advantage of this glut – it might be harder to get a group together once everyone is ‘bored’ of running them again.  The old-world ones should be easily accessable at 80.

As well as some other holiday-based achievements:

• 50 Coins of Ancestry
• Lunar Festival Finery
• The Rocket’s Red Glare
• Frenzied Firecracker
• Elune’s Blessing

The first two are easily snagged as part of getting the first, ancestor achievements – doing just two-thirds of the available ancestors should net you the 50 you need and the Lunar Festival gear costs very little – only 5 tokens.  Do not that the Lunar Festival Fiery achievements requires the outfits bought from the vendor and do not count the red ones which are craftable by tailors.  It’s so easy to get the bought lunar festival outfits that my level three bank alt has one.

Other Achievements

One other, slightly unrelated, achievement which you can work towards is:

Ambassador of the Alliance // Ambassador of the Horde

Last year, each coin of ancestry turn in was worth 75 reputation for all of your major city factions which meant over 3k rep for me last year – a big boost towards my kitty mount on Aurik.

You might also want to grab a few of the old world instance achievements whilst you’re grabbing the elder in them.

• Maraudon
• Blackrock Depths
• Lower Blackrock Spire
• Zul’Farrak
• Sunken Temple
• Stratholme

As well as, of course, the applicable Northrend ones or, of course, the heroic versions thereof:

• The Nexus
• Utgarde Keep
• Azjol-Nerub
• Gundrak
• Utgarde Pinnacle
• Drak’Tharon Keep
• Halls of  Stone

You could also, if you’ve really been holding off on those achievements, round it all of by finishing some sub-zones towards World Explorer.

Anything Except Achievements?

Ok, so there are a tonne of achievements, you get it, you’re bored already.  No shiny new epic gear, a mount or vanity pet so you’re not interested? Ok, if you’re a gear oriented player this holiday may not be for you – it involves merrymaking and dancing and happy fun times! *ahem*

Although there are no new big, huge events for this festival it is full of things to do and anyone attempting the Lunar Festival Achievement will find it takes them a good while to do all of the sub-achievements.  Adding more to this might make it a little onerous for those who don’t have a huge deal of playtime and, in this first year of achievements for events, I’m not surprised they did not add anything new.

The Moonstone Portal Service

Wish your level 1 night elf priest bank alt was in a busier city?  This is the perfect time of year to move her! Or, alternatively, any low level alts which could do with some flight paths on other continents can be transported via the magical moonstone portal service – once you’ve completed the quest, until the end of the festival, you can teleport to moonglade from any ‘greater moonlight’ spot.  From here, you can teleport to any capital city.  Beware, though, your Lunar Festival invitation  has an hour 10 minute cooldown so it’s not a fast method to do this but something you can log in, portal, log out, wait, log in, portal with whilst your main grabs all those shiny coins!

Profession Items

For those looking to further fill out their professions with rare-ish recipes, the festival has a few you can buy for coins via the quests Festive Recipes, Firework Launcher, Large Cluster Rockets, Large Rockets, Cluster Launcher, Cluster Rockets and  Small Rockets – the first being recipes for Red Festival Outfits and the rest engineering recipes for fireworks and their requisite launchers.

Other Shinies

Festive Lunar Dresses and Festive Lunar Pant Suits are the quests for the festive wear of the season if you’re not following the achievements in general.  Each requires 5 coins of Ancestry.

Have fun and enjoy the Festival!