I’ve not managed to find out if there’s anything new happening this year with Winter Veil, but I know that the achievements for the meta have stayed much the same and so, if you’re doing it on an alt, or didn’t make it last year, I figure my

2008 guide to winter veil

achievements, quests and some of the shinies that you can get will be of some use!   If anyone knows of anything new happening this year, or if I discover something myself, I’ll add it to the guide asap!

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I may be slightly mad, a bit tired and my fingers are sore from pressing healing buttonz hard… but I has my puppy from Looking for Multitudes (and a hug from the dev team!) /happy /sleep

The model is really nice, the texturing and animations are sweet – like the corehound. Though, as you can see, he has some unsavoury habits…

On a separate, but related,  note: I love the new LFG tool!

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Seeing all the awesome-cute chibis Baenhoof’s been drawing recently made me want to do my own, and an evening of trying to kill mobs highly resistant to frost spells transmuted into this little doodle:

I have to admit, though, once I got past those my lackluster mage ’suddenly’ seemed to be a killing machine, slicing through enemies with bolts of deathly cold.  Hehe.  Pvp was a lot more fun, too, as I was nearing the end of the bracket… then I stupidly tripped over thirty and became Squishy Mcsquishface the Squishful.  This mage might actually get somewhere, though, she’s now over double the level of my last  one!

In other news…

For the Horde Eastern Kingdoms is, by far, the easier of the two old-world Loremaster achievements – but having done this one, it’s given me the determination to get my teeth into Loremaster of Kalimdor – just over 100 quests to go there.  I suspect, though, that the new patch will distract me away from it for a few days at least, hehe.

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I’m not raiding…

Ok, maybe it’s not that simple but that’s a good start.  Raiding brought me some of the best times in game – it brought me encounters and teamwork and an ‘omg we finally beat it’ but it’s also brought me some of the worst – elitist attitudes, feeling like I have to stick to one main character all the time, having to get x or y buff for the raid, having to do stuff when I’m not in the mood and, of course, the stress over herding 25 cats around a raid instance.  I also dislike the tiny, incremental progress you get once you’re at the higher tiers of raiding – I can understand why they wouldn’t want you to upgrade by a tonne between tiers but I always loved the feeling of gear up, striving towards a goal of x mp5 or SP, etc. rather than worrying about 1% haste vs. 1% crit.  I’ve never been a hardcore raider at heart – I’ve always loved the encounters and the loot, too, if we’re being honest; but when you’ve seen an encounter 30 times it just gets boring.

I miss playing at that level, to be sure – I miss MH, BT and Sunwell where I actually felt, sometimes, like my shaman was literally gasping with effort at outputting as much healing as possible.  Even Ulduar, I miss, with it’s kooky fights and beautiful surroundings.  But, in the end, I don’t really miss raiding…

I’m levelling…

In fact, I’m levelling three or four characters as well as their professions.  It feels great.  What do I fancy playing today?  Druid? Cool, lets go blow through some rhinos in a storm of swiping; Paladork?  He needs to level his enchanting, off to get some mats! and so forth.  I think being in a raiding guild, with all the wonderfulness that it brought, made it too easy on me alts wise – there was always a guild bank full of random blues or levelling mats or the like, always someone to ask about specs, rotations etc. and always the goal of ‘get to 80 already’.

I’m dilly-dallying through the game again, enjoying quests I’ve not visited in a while (yay horde quests) and generally taking things slowly.  It’s a shame Spore is such a quiet server now, so instancing is not so easy, but I’m having fun levelling in a way I’ve not had for a long time.

I’m playing with RL™ friends…

Most of my real-life friends who play are way more casual – playing less or levelling slowly, and they give me a perspective that I often forget.  They’re brave in ways I never used to be – one of them, in particular, uses his own specs – never, as far as I know, looking up what’s ‘best’ whilst levelling – he picks what he uses for levelling carefully and with thought and enjoys the process of it.  It’s something I’ve always been ‘afraid’ to do, even whilst levelling.

We’re also able to do silly stuff like 3-manning instances and almost managed to three-man the Ring of Blood at level 66 – only beaten by the last boss after his self-resurrection!  It’s more fun when you do it with friends; you know each others thoughts better and we can chat about it before our weekly DnD game as well as organising fun stuff around tight schedules.  It’s also doubly fun for me as neither of them have been to Northrend yet – I’ll be able to tag along and see their reactions to the cool new stuff which often invigorates how I feel about things which seem, in some ways, ‘old’ to me.

I’m Horde…

To me the Horde has always been home – much as I love Dwarves and Space Squid, I cannot help hankering after the rugged, tribalistic Orc, Troll and Tauren architecture, the glimmering but sad spires of the blood elves and the dark, messy hovels of the forsaken.  There’s something about the ‘Barrens’ music which tugs at me, something about Orgrimmar at night which makes it feel like ‘home’.  Maybe it’s the crickets…

Also, as Pike said:

When I think of her, I don’t think of her as a character in WoW. I think of her as this living, breathing individual. She is of course, not real, but it sure feels that way sometimes.

(you can see how long it takes me to write posts by seeing what I link to /sigh!)

I can’t see my characters as generic, I enjoy playing them and I’ve gained a bond with them.  Though this means I miss my alliance ones, my horde ones have always been there wanting some love, too.  Mharai was my first max level character and, as such, has always held a certain something for me.  I might do a post to ‘introduce’  my hordies, so you’ll know who I’m talking to (especially since at least one of them shares a name with an alliance toon… for now).

I’m on an RP realm…(?)

Sporeggar is barely an RP realm any more (/sadface) but it’s enough of one that if you emote and talk in-character you don’t get too many odd stares.  You can also report people if they bug you about it.  The ‘idea’ of an RP realm appeals to me and RPPVP just makes sense in terms of an ‘always on’ war.  I don’t go around killing people, I’m a carebear, but I believe in the right to do so out-with ’safe’ areas.

Achievements…

Others may not think much of achievements -  they’re points for the sake of points… but it’s not the number of points I care about.  Loremaster is an achievement I always meant to get around to doing but never did.  A lack of love for dps/grinding on my shaman put me off – I can run around as a cat or bear for hours (how I got Ava to 80 I’ll never know…) Also, raiding took up a lot of my online time, and when not raiding, the peripherals of raiding (dailies, or fishing etc.) and so doing more quests just seemed like a chore, not fun.

Some which I’m not doing yet, but will do, such as Guardian of Cenarius, just didn’t seem right for my shaman – and since I was keeping most of my achievements to one character that meant a definite lack of willpower.  Mharai, on the other hand, will be going for that title as her next goal after Loremaster as it suits her and when it feels right, it’s more fun (for me, anyway).

Anyway…

This is a sort of ‘where I’m at’ post.  I know most of you will skip over it, and that’s fine – I use this blog partially as a journal so I don’t forget these thoughts and I can store good memories for when I need ‘em.  For those who have gone through it, you’ll know where my perspective is coming from in future posts!  Also, perhaps, it can help a little with those others who’re sitting and feeling in a bit of a rut at the moment - sometimes you need to step back and re-evaluate why you’re playing the game and what you actually enjoy.

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Replayability has always been something which interested me, which drove me to look more critically at, particularly, the Holiday events.  It seemed, when I first started looking at them, that there was no reason to re-do them after the first time.  I did some of them multiple times because I enjoyed them but there was no drive to re-do them after the first couple of times unless they gave rep or XP and that meant sometimes you were the only, lonely person trying to save a Reindeer or suchlike.

Then along came achievements.  Huzzah! More people are doing the events, the whole server is aware that something is going on and the usual humdrum rhythms have been interrupted by ‘LFG HH!’ etc.  “But wait!” you cry, “it doesn’t count, they’re only doing it for shiny achievement points and epic lewts!”.  So what?  If it gets people out into the world, sampling the content made for them and trying something they otherwise might not then I’m for it.  Of course, it brings the usual drama when phat lewts are involved but, on the whole, more people are taking part in holiday events.  Wonderful.  There’s nothing more fun than doing silly things with friends (again).

Reruns?

So, right, more people are doing it, but where does replayability come into that?  Well, a good number of people have now ‘finished’ the ‘Long Strange Trip’ achievement and… aren’t bothering any more – unless they have an alt who wants epics, or a shot at a rare mount / pet.  Despite the fact that buckets were added to Northrend there was no achievement added for collecting them.  I was a little sad at this (if, partly, because it meant I had to check places which didn’t have buckets!) but also because I wonder if that’s going to be ‘it’ for the current holiday achievements.  Now, I’ve heard they have said they won’t add any more towards the Proto-Drake, which is all fine and sensible to me… but is there any reason to not add more frivolous achievements to the Holidays, just to keep people interested that bit longer?  Something for those to do who’ve ‘done it all before’ or to point people in the direction of the newly added content which is otherwise not necessarily noticeable (like the buckets)?  Now that we’re looking at an expansion being out by this time next year, there’s no reason for them to add any of the things they put into Northrend into the achievement system.  It’d be old already.

Is that ‘it‘ for holiday achievements?  Shall people begin to ignore any that they’ve done already?  I hope not.  Certainly a fair number of alts are seeing the content – but when achievements are account wide will that still happen? Now, I’m not totally blind, I don’t think there’s only doom and gloom and noone is doing achievements – there are still a fair number doing them this year but I’m wondering about next year.  Blizzard has put in place a nicely updatable system – they only need to upscale the level of the holiday boss and add the basic badge vendor rings / trinkets / cloaks etc. and whoop, updated event – that’s cool, that’s sensible – but I’d like to see one or two new holiday achievements per year – maybe an updated Long Strange Trip with some sort of silly title or somesuch.

Like the continued adding of pet achievements – something more to work on for those of us who love holidays as much as achievements!

How-and-ever…

The changes made to the holiday’s in wow within the last two-three years have been phenomenal, but some others could still use some work.  Whilst I’d love to see some holidays made bigger – speak like a pirate day or day of the dead celebrations – I can understand why you also would not want to pack too much in: sometimes when you’re raiding etc. holidays can feel like a bit of a burden (especially if they come with a boatload of achievements and you’re a completionist).  However, there are some big gaps in the holiday year where it’d be nice to have small events or added extras.

What else?

I know this will seem silly to most but it’d be nice if the ‘events’ dropped some form of neutral currency.  This past week I’ve seen a horrendous number of rings laying on the ground; the trinkets at Brewfest less so but once you’re on your 5th caster/ healer trinket in a group with three plate dps… It would be nice if, for instance, they dropped a BoA reputation commendation or a ‘current dailies’ badge i.e. Champion’s Seals – even if only one per day given when you hand in the quest.  This not only gives people an extra reason to go if their mains have ‘done it all last year’ or outgear the rewards, it also gives incentive to rerun it if you’ve already got ‘epic mount / pet’ and means that if the rewards aren’t diverse enough such as in the case of 5 of the same item, that people still get something for heading along there.

I know, I know ‘have my cake and eat it too’ but there you are.

Grouping

Also, for goodness sake Blizzard, make it easier to group for these things – trade spam goes up 100% at the start of these events as there is no ’seasonal’ setting for the LFG tool – I can only hope something in the new LFG tool will fix this, otherwise it’s an irritating side-effect of the current system.   I don’t mind running to Slave Pens, Blackrock or Scarlet Monastery, but trying to organise a group when everyone is looking in different places (general city, general tirisfal, trade and sometimes even in the LFG channel for this event).

Oh, and I’ve not even seen the Horseman’s mount drop once so far. Hmph.

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Well, wid ye look at that!  It’s almost Brewfest time again – Brilliant! Time tae get my mug and git ready fer some heavy boozin’ an’ eatin’!

My thoughts on last years update of Brewfest can be found here. Just a run-down of the achievements, as I can’t say much for certain about the other parts of the event yet!

Achievements

• Meta: Brewmaster(A), Brewmaster (H)

• Strange Brew (A), Strange Brew (H)
• Brew of the Month
• Direbrewfest
• Disturbing the Peace
• Does your Wolpertinger Linger?
• The Brewfest Diet
• Drunken Stupor
• Down With the Dark Iron
• Have Keg, Will Travel

• Brew of the Year

Quick-Reference Tips

Strange Brew / The Brewfest Diet – There are three sets of vendors in each Brewfest camp, each of whom will procure for you their own brands of liquor!  Make sure to visit them all, and have a jolly good time getting sloshed.  Similarly, various vendors in the encampment sell the foods needed for the Brewfest Diet – make sure you have plenty of bag-room when you head there!

Brew of the Month – The token to join this comes from the token redeemer – just grab one and then use the item and enjoy a year-round selection of drunken fun from your mailbox.

Direbrewfest – Apparently Coren Direbrew is being updated to level 80 with appropriate rewards.  I haven’t been able to find any more information on this, I’m afraid.  When you enter BRD, look to your right hand side – there should be some dwarves who you should kill and then use the tunnelling machine.  Last year people didn’t have to complete the small quest chain that’s available as a breadcrumb to him before going to BRD but it’s worth double checking.

Disturbing the Peace – This involves getting three pieces of Brewfest Regalia and doing a simple /dance in Dalaran.

Does your Wolpertinger Linger – These darling, odd little pets can be bought from Brewfest NPCs.  Wowhead lists them as being sold by Ray’ma(H), and Larkin Thunderbrew(A) in the Valley of Spirits near the portal and in Ironforge in the Inn near the entrance respectively.  Oddly, I was sure I bought mine from a vendor in the Brewfest camp last year so it might be worth checking those before making the trip into the cities!

Drunken Stupor -This is as simple as getting drunk and doing what you did to get Going Down.  For those who’ve never done that achievement or have a bad memory – using levitation effects (levitate, slowfall, parachute) or landing in water will not work, but damage reduction abilities (ice block, divine shield, passive rogue / kitty) will.

Down With the Dark Iron – Around every half-hour a whole pile of dark iron dwarves spawn in the brewfest camp – you can grab a brew from one of the tables (the type you’d normally drink), and throw it at a Dark Iron Dwarf to incapacitate them.  When you throw your mug, one of the npcs around the edge of the camp will throw another to you to use – so you can bring it to a key and spam away merrily.  You want to do this, as if they are defeated they will leave a cogwheel behind them which will give you the quest required for this achievement.

Brew of the year is not requires for the Brewmaster meta achievement – so no worries if you didn’t pick this up last year.  A big congratulations to all those who’ll be completing What a Long, Strange Trip it’s Been – my break means I missed the Fire Festival so no shiny for me, but I expect to see a whole lot of people on bright, new pink proto-drakes!

_{(ps – no your eyes aren’t deceiving you, this is a /hug post.  I’m tentatively playing WoW very casually again and may be just as tentatively updating the blog again!  For more frequent updates, follow me on twitter @aurik)}

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Children’s week follows hotly on the heels of Noblegarden this year – a double-whammy of eventful goodness.  Children’s week has fewer achievements than most holidays, but it has trickier ones and a whole pile of quests to do and some nice rewards for pet collectors.

Achievements

For The Children

• Home Alone
• Daily Chores
• School of Hard Knocks
• Bad Example
• Aw, Isn’t It Cute?
• Hail to the King, Baby

Not needed for the meta, but an available achievement:

• Veteran Nanny

As of last night, Home Alone was bugged and resetting all the time – I would expect that we’ll see a patch or fix for this soon if it’s not already been done since I went to sleep!

Bad Example requires several cooking-only items alongside a pile of vendor-bought treats so I whipped up a quick list of where each comes from.

Stormwind / Orgrimmar

Usually this ice cream is buyable from Shimmering Flats, but for the duration of the holiday there are vendors in Stormwind and Orgrimmar where you can purchase some ice cream!  You’ll also need this ice cream for giving to your old-world orphan so don’t throw any spare away! (it sells in stacks of five, like most of this food does)

• [Tigule and Foror's Strawberry Ice Cream]

Dalaran Vendor

Aimee, the high elf vendor near the northern bank in Dalaran sells these treats – the lovely cake slice comes from the Lovely Cake she sells – you get 5 pieces per cake you buy so you could share with a friend of take them all and send them to alts.

• [Lovely Cake Slice]
• [Red Velvelt Cupcake]
• [Dalaran Donut]
• [Dalaran Brownie]

Crafted

You’ll either need to craft these, get a guildie to make them, or buy them off of the auction house.  Personally I recommend not going to the auction house as, unless you’re lucky, delicious chocolate cakes will cost a fortune.  Happily for me, someone was selling the cupcakes for 1g / cake.  Extortionate, really, except for the fact others were selling northern eggs – which are required to make them -  for about 15g / 1.  A great place to farm small eggs for the chocolate cake recipe is just outside of Auberdine – i’m not sure if there’s a closer place for the horde (see below) but the moonkins here have a 90+% drop rate and are packed relatively close.

• [Delicious Chocolate Cake]
• [Tasty Cupcake]

Indigo:  Second, a little hint about the small egg farming: belf starter zone is full of dragonhawks with a 100% droprate, and about 50% chance that they actually drop 2.

Quests

Remember: All of the achievements require you to have an orphan out, do not complete the ‘Back to the Orphanage’ or ‘Warden of the <Faction>’ quests until you’re done with achievements as you will then not be able to take out your orphan any more!

Sephrenia:  You can give your orphans back to get your pet rewards. If you talk to one of the matrons again she will give you a new orphan to care for during the rest of the week. I tested it in SW, so is not just a rumour :D

Stormwind / Orgrimmar Quests

Stormwind Orphan // Orgrimmar Orphan

• A Warden of the Alliance // A Warden of the Horde
• Spooky Lighthouse // Gateway to the Frontier
• The Stonewrought Dam // Down at the Docks
• The Bough of the Eternals // Lordaeron Throne Room

Each of these is a visit to somewhere reasonably close to each faction’s main cities – having extra hearth cooldowns here is handy and the new 30-min cooldown will probably help a lot but if you don’t have this luxury then I reccomend:

Alliance: Start in Ironforge – > Fly to Thelsamar – Ride to Stonewrought Dam -> Fly to Westfall – Ride out to the Lighthouse -> Fly to Stormwind – Boat to Thelsamar -> Fly to Darnassus.  Don’t forget to pick up some ice cream for your orphan whilst you’re in Stormwind!

Horde: Start in Orgrimmar -> Fly to Ratchet- Ride down to the Docks -> Fly to Crossroads or Orgrimmar – Ride to the Mor’shan Rampart -> Ride back to Orgrimmar – take the Zeppelin to Undercity – Ride into the throne room. Don’t forget to pick up some ice cream for your orphan whilst you’re in Orgrimmar!

I suggest you save your hearthstone for once these are done, as you’ll get more quests which require zipping about the world:

• You Scream, I Scream… // You Scream, I Scream…
• Jaina’s Autograph // Cairne’s Hoofprint
• A Warden of the Alliance // A Warden of the Horde

If you got your ice cream on the way past Orgrimmar and Stormwind, the first should be easy.  For Jaina’s Autograph you can portal to Ironforge -> fly to Menethil and take the boat or, if you want to be lazy, portal to Gadgetzan (Caverns of Time) and fly there.  The final part requires you to return your orphan back to the capital city you got them in.

Shattrath Quests

Alliance Orphan // Horde Orphan

• A Trip to the Dark Portal // A Trip to the Dark Portal
• Auchindon and the Ring of Observation // Visit the Throne of the Elements
• Time to Visit the Caverns // Time to Visit the Caverns
• Jheel is at Aeris Landing! // Hch’uu and the Mushroom People
• Time to Visit the Caverns // Time to Visit the Caverns

These are all in Outlands – if you have an epic flyer, use that, if not, flightpaths are your friends.  It’ll take a little while as Outlands is pretty big but all of them are relatively easy.  For the Alliance, visiting the Ring of Observation, you need to take your orphan right up to the meeting stone to get credit.

• The Seat of the Naaru // Now, When I grow Up…
• Call on the Farseer

I’m not sure what they’ve done with the horde side quest since they took Mu’ru away – I know it used to have a follow up to the ‘visiting Silvermoon’ section, too, but I can’t find any information on that and I haven’t been on my horde character for a while now.  Any info from someone whose done it would be appreciated!  Once this is all done…

• Back to the Orphanage // Back to the Orphanage

Most of these are easy enough to fly around and, hopefully, by the time you get to ‘Time to Visit the Caverns’ your hearth will be off cooldown.  Remember you can portal directly to the Caverns of Time from Dalaran or you can go from Shattrath if you’ve got revered reputation with the Keepers of Time.

PvP

Child Soldiers…

Once again there’s some pvp in the event’s achievements.  I didn’t mind the other ones too much but the ones for children’s week are particularly obnoxious. I can only offer what I was trying for those who cannot get premades:

• AB: Either be lucky and get to the farm / stables first or wait until a flag is capped and you see all the horde run off.  If you’re lucky you might get a hordie / alli to ‘trade’ captures with you.
• WSG: This was the most painful for me – I was eventually ’saved’ from my plight of fighting 6 people for the return by a friendly tauren (Achuk?) who ran into our flag room, took the flag and dutifully waited to be killed.  I tried to return the favour but some people seemed intent on winning or something silly like that…  If you want to help the other faction you can run into their room, spam a /wait macro, grab the flag and then click the buff to remove it and drop the flag.  If they aren’t silly you can do this a few times for everyone to get their achievements.
• EOTS: Stand in the middle and ignore the pained cries from your teammates who’re not doing the achievements.  Thunderstorm is lovely here by the way.  Spell reflect is not! Hehe.
• AV: Either run down the bottom and hope you’re fast enough and get to a tower before someone else or stay up the top end and re-cap horde towers once they take them.  Otherwise, hope you get a friendly hordie who is kind enough to take the flag not one, but four or five times to let you all have a shot at taking the flag.  Roben, I salute you!

I think that Blizzard picked the wrong kind of things  for this achievement – they encourage bad play and I get the feeling that it will only frustrate pvpers to have a bunch of pve nubs come in and ruin their games just to get achievements done.  I know there are some pvpers who pve and vice versa but I would guess by what I seen last night that the pve-ers who care about achievements outnumber those who care about winning games…

On the up-side, as you may be able to see from my blog’s sidebar I  earned a few pvp-based achievements last night from these:

• Not In My House
• Storm Capper

Rewards

Title

For all of the achievements complete you get the title Matron or Patron.  It’s not a title I’ll be using but I guess it’s kind of cute and will probably be nice for some people on RP servers or for those who are guild Mums.

Reputation

Doing all of the holiday quests nets a tidy little packet of reputation for your faction’s cities.  If you’re not already exalted or can’t be bothered doing the argent dailies for rep, then make sure to do these quests and boost your rep!

Pets

The yearly pet reward for Children’s Week will be a welcome boost to many people’s collections – especially those like me who’re sitting so very close to 75 pets (i’ve had no luck with baby dragons and crocs nor do I have the MgT pet on Ava – chainging mains sucks sometimes, hehe).

From the Stormwind // Orgrimmar orphans:

• [Piglet's Collar]
• [Turtle Box]
• [Rat Cage]

From the Shattrath orphans:

• [Egbert's Egg]
  
• [Elekk Training Collar]
• [Sleepy Willy]

You could always take the [Curmudgeon's Payoff], of course, but 5 gold really is hardly worth it these days unless you’re really anti-pets.

As a small aside, if you have a warcraftpets account, remember to update it! (though the poor site is a little sickly at the moment).

Orphans

I still can’t get past hoping that they’ll add orphans for each faction.  It’d be nice for my druid to take a night elf child around and teach them about Darnassus and its alliance with the other nations, or a Tauren child for my horde druid, to show them why we must ally with questionable types!  I guess I just feel it’s a little odd than only four factions seem to have any children running about.

Replayability

This is something I like to look at with all events – is it worthwhile to do again, has it been updated?  Children’s week was updated last year and I had hoped they would add another set of quests this year for Dalaran (or the Oracles / Frenzyhearts).  With Noblegarden so close, though, and such a big content patch, too, I can’t blame them but I do rather hope they add something new next year.

Children’s week is rather odd in the fact that year-to-year the same rewards are available but you’re limited to two of six – or more realistically, you’re limited to two sets of one out of three.  This means that to get the full compliment of ‘items’ you have to re-do it each year.  I do like this to some extent – though, as a character who has changed mains twice now, it can be a little frustrating.  It does keep the interest in the holiday alive, though, and Children’s Week was one of the few events I always seen people participating in pre-achievements and pre-epic rewards.

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Noblegarden, the most underrated of holidays and the only one I’ve never managed to participate in! I am looking forward to experiencing the newly extended event but the fact I’ve not done it myself (and that few people have via the ptr as its testing phase was short there) will mean that some information may not be as entirely accurate as I’d like it to be.

Achievements

Meta:

• Noble Gardener (A) // Noble Gardener (H)

Sub-achievements:

• I Found One!
• Chocoholic
• Hard Boiled
• Spring Fling (A) // Spring Fling (H)
• Noblegarden (A) // Noblegarden (H)
• Shake your Bunny-Maker
• Desert Rose
• Blushing Bride

Two other achievements directly associated with the event, but not required to get the meta achievement for Noblegarden are:

• Dressed for the Occasion
• Sunday’s Finest

The achievement Chocolate Lover is also associated with this holiday but it is the prequel to Chocoholic and so will be gotten on the way to that achievement should you decide to do it.

Quests

Like most events, there aren’t a whole lot of quests which come with Noblegarden

Spring Collectors (A) // Spring Gatherers (H)

which lead to

The Great Egg Hunt (A) // The Great Egg Hunt (H)

Nothing much, but a small introduction and gives you an idea of how the event is run – like most holiday questlets.

Egg Hunting

Whilst eggs will be in similar areas to previous years (iIn the secondary starting areas such as Goldshire, Razor Hill and the like) they will apparently be more common and, no matter how many are trying to find them,  there will be available eggs (the first comment on this item references a blue post). Of course, even if eggs are constantly spawning as others are used there will still be a mad scrabble for them – I think I will probably make my way to Dolanaar because it’s inconvenient enough to get to compared to the other starting zones that it will hopefully be quieter.

Almost the whole event is based around egg collecting – they are the currency you need to buy items and, if you’re lucky, the items themselves so that you don’t need to buy them in the first place.   The currency itself is also used to do quests and is eaten up by some achievements – 100 chocolates alone for Chocoholic, so expect to be collecting quite a few.

Of course, with 3.1 items are now able to be sold back to the vendor for their purchase price in non-gold ‘currency’ within two hours of buying them.  This means that if you’re not bothered about keeping the items, but need to use them for achievements, you can buy the items, do the achievement and sell them back – so don’t do Chocoholic until after you’ve done all of your other achievements! *ahem*.

RNG

Unlike the other events so far, the RNG is mitigated by a system whereby you can buy the items if you do not find them in eggs – this means that people are not subject to not getting this section of  their “What A Long Strange Trip It’s Been” achievement due to bad luck.

Of course,  it wouldn’t be a blizzard holiday event without some form of RNG based luck so two achievements – Sunday’s Finest and Dressed for the Occasion – require you to find the items in eggs, not buy them.   Luckily, as mentioned, these are not needed for the holiday meta achievement but I would guess that this will still frustrate some avid achievement hunters.

Shinies

• [Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit]
• [Elegant Dress]
• [White Tuxedo Shirt]
• [Black Tuxedo Pants]
• [Spring Circlet]
• [Spring Robes]
• [Spring Flowers]
• [Egg Basket]
• [Blossoming Branch]

The first six come from eggs or from the vendor for chocolates, the last three come from the quests – though the blossoming branches can also be bought for eggs.  Blossoming branches can be used to help in completing achievements so make sure you don’t use them all up randomly until you’re done with ‘Hard Boiled’.

Shiny of the Event

I’m giving one item a spotlight here as I feel that it’s one of those little things which Blizzard has added to  the game which is just a nice touch – one of the things you can imagine started as a ‘wouldn’t it be kinda cool if…’.

[Spring Rabbit's Foot]

Wrath brought a plethora of new things for non-combat pets – it was the expansion which has really seen ncp’s go from being something not many people (except the dedicated few) wasted bag slots on to something which many people are interested in – even if only because of achievements!

Not only do pets have grooming kits, leashes, balls and the like, they can also act out little skits with other ncps – such as that between the Black Tabby and Stinker.  The pet from the Noblegarden event, whilst unassuming in its looks, is another step in that direction:

Noblegarden Rabbit Video

For those unable to view video’s or who just don’t want to – the rabbits, when brought next to others of their own kind, create little lovehearts, and erm.. the best word for it is ‘eject’ eggs into the surrounding area… which hatch into cute baby bunnies.   If that wasn’t enough, if one rabbit is then put away the remaining one’s heart will break – identical to the way the loved and heartbroken buffs looked during ‘Love is in the Air’.

The achievement ’spring fling’ is based around doing this, but I hadn’t quite expected much more than just bringing them near each other and pop, achievement, move onto the next… This is just absolutely awesome in my opinion – it’s a small thing but a nice detail which makes it more than just a fire and forget achievement and pet.

Reccomended Reading

Kaliope has a great Noblegarden guide which gives you tips on how to find eggs and get your achievements more easily!

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This week has been pretty mad – between running 10 and 25-man  Ulduar and all of the new quests available.  Lightwalkers has taken down Flame Leviathan with one tower up on both 10 and 25.

…but this didn’t leave us with enough time to kill XT on 25 (yes, I know he’s not the easiest next choice)  with some tactics changes we hope to deconstruct him next raid.  Unfortunately our raids are short so we don’t get a long time to work on bosses.  It was some solid progess, though, and I really am enjoying the challenge again – especially as a healer, things are hellishly hectic! *grin*

Dual Specs

When not doing raids I’ve been taking part in all of the other new things 3.1 brought us – two of my characters have dual specs though I haven’t even utilised Jhai’s second spec as can’t decide whether to go cat-dps, boomkin or resto as my offspec! Probably it’ll end up being whatever people need first.

On Avarix, I’m completely in love with dual-specs – rocking a pvp-elemental which is also nice to grind with for offspec.   It’s so nice not to take an age just to kill some mobs and dailies have just become trivial by comparison to what I had before.  Of course, I’ve already made the mistake of forgetting which spec I’m in – I was thinking Grid was copletely broken as it wouldn’t let me Earth Shield people.  Luckily I realised the actual reason for this before we engaged the boss! Hehe.

Fishing

The RNG seems to have been very much in my favour these last few days with the fishing daily.  On the first day all I got was a price of junk glass but on the second?  A [Jeweled Fishing Pole] and a  [Tiny Titanium Lockbox].  For those not in the know, the lockboxes seem to often contain the new epic gems – stormjewels and, true to form, I picked up a  [Rigid Stormjewel] alongside a few other blue-quality gems.  Talk about score.  I sold the gem for a silly amount (seriously, who pays 400g for a gem?) as I wouldn’t use it.  Sadly, I won’t be able to use the pole in higher fishing areas as I have a fishing line on my [Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole] but I spent plenty of time fishing salmon and musselback sculpin with it for the guild’s quota of fish feasts.  I am amused at my big male draenei using what looks like a Cardcaptor Sakura weapon.

On that note, [Fish Feasts] are not longer BoP, thank goodness! I hadn’t noticed this in the patchnotes so it came as a pleasant surprise when we were pondering what to do with the over-500 fish myself and another guild fisherman had stuffed into the guild bank.

Why so many fish?  Well, we were both wanting a [Sea Turtle], of course! I’ll let the picture say it…

There is a completely unsubstantiated rumour that people are finding a higher drop rate when having the Ghostfish fishing daily and fishing in Borean Tundra [Musselback Sculpin] pools.  I wrote this off as spurious but, oddly enough, guess when I got mine? One of the guild’s other prolific fishers also got his in the exact same circumstances – though we had both been fishing for hours prior to that.

Now off to do another round of dailies…

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Ho ho ho! Ah huv tae admit, ah love the christmas season an’ ah widnae miss the celebrations fer anythin’ – especially no them ragged-arsed scourge buggers.  Food, drink, dancin’ an’ bein’ cosy inside watchin’ the snow ootside. No that different fae normal in Ironforge but it’s whit yer drinkin’ an eatin’ that makes the difference… *ahem*

I’ve been busy, maybe more than some others, an’ it’s taking me a bit longer to get back into the blogging swing and get writing regularly when there’s so much cool stuff going on but I made a special slot in my schedule, logged off, put aside my doodles and pulled up a blank page in Wordpress for this. World events, I love them, and I will wax lyrical at ye mercilessly and pitilessly with my take on them!

So, Winter Veil,  the holiday season vaguely associated with Christmas – Snow, presents, special food, drinks and corporate enterprise!

Achievements

For many, all that they will be concerned about this holiday season ar the associated achievements so lets look at what we have:

Merrymaker – Alliance // Merrymaker – Horde

Not to onerous, in my opinion, and it certainly looks to be less painful than some of the previous ones.

• On Metzen
• Scrooge (A) // Scrooge (H)
• Tis’ the Season
• Simply Abominable
• Bros. Before Ho Ho Ho’s (A) // Bros. Before Ho Ho Ho’s (H)
• He Knows if You’ve Been Naughty
• With a Little Helper From My Friends
  
• Fa-La-La-La Ogri’la
• Crashin’ & Thrashin’
• Let It Snow
• The Winter Veil Gourmet
• A Frosty Shake

Some of these quests might be a pain for low levels, new Death Knights and those who hate PvP.  I was a bit surprised at “Fa-La-La-La Ogri’la” as it requires you to have done a quest chain which people even hard a hard time getting a group for just prior to Wrath never mind post-wrath. I guess there will be groups made and suchlike but it seems a little unfair that some will have to go through a lot more than others just to get their achievement.

The Horde version of Bros. Before Ho Ho Ho’s has a lot fewer NPC’s to visit but at least one of them is in Icecrown and far hader to get to for lower level characters.

Once again we get a pvp-based quest and, whilst I’m not as much of an anti-pvp-er as some, 50 HK’s might be a bit wearing since the costume doesn’t persist through death.

Let It Snow will also be interesting given that I’ve not yet seen an Orc Death Knight on our server – I’m sure a bit of pvp for the previously mentioned achievement will solve that, though, or running around Dalaran in th early evening.

Quests

Winterveil has always had a few fun quests (most now with associated achievements) and I have to admit I rather like this, in a world event.  Quests allow you to get into the spirit of the event within the ‘format’ of the game and often introduce the story better than a simple collection of dailies and repeatable quests.

• Metzen the Reindeer
• The Reason for the Season (A) // The Reason for the Season (H) (and follow up)
  
• Stolen Winter Veil Treats (starts a chain for seperate Horde and Alliance versions)
• Treats for Gratfather Winter (A) // Treats for Gratfather Winter (H)

It would have been nice to get something new here, other than the quest which simply allows yo to ‘buy’ preserved holly.

Items

Winter Veil comes with lots of gifts and presents and suchlike as well as some seasonally associated items. Some are associated with achievements and some not, but most are fun to have and collect.

Winter Garb

• Red Winter Hat // Green Winter Hat
  
• Red Winter Clothes // Green Winter Clothes
• Winter Boots

To craft 1 set you’ll need:

• Clothes: 4 bolts of runecloth (20 peices of runecloth), 1 bolt of woolen cloth (3 pieces of wool), 2 red or green dye & 1 rune thread.
  
• Boots:  1 copper bar,  1 bolt of woolen cloth (3 pieces of wool), 4 rugged leather & 1 rune thread.

The rune thread can be bought from most tailoring or leatherworking suppliers or a trade goods vendor.  Wool cloth is easily garnered by making a quick run through stockades if it’s too expensive on the auction house and runecloth can be picked up by the dozen in Tyr’s Hand in Eastern Plaguelands or a quick trip to Stratholme.

Rugged leather and copper will need to be bought unless you have the associated gathering skills (though if you do the above ‘Treats for Greatfather Winter’ first you might get the copper you need!).

Alliance tailors with the requisite levels will usually have a pattern sent to them to make the red winter clothes and Horde tailors  get the green winter clothes pattern sent to them.  However, vendors also sell the pattern – red in Ironforge, green in Orgrimmar and since they are goblins and thus neutral, if you fancy getting a hold of the othe faction’s pattern colour you can have a go at corpse-running your way through an opposite-faction city.  It took me three ‘tries’ on my level 65 tailor to get into Orgrimmar, buy the pattern and hearth out and I’ve already made a reasonable profit selling green costumes on the Alliance auction house.  *Grin*

The  Winter Veil Disguise Kit is a quest reward costume that you’ll also need for an achievement.  Proper winter clothing!  It should turn up in your mail box some time after completing the quest line started by Stolen Winter Veil Treats.

Food

• Gingerbread Cookie
• Egg Nog
• Hot Apple Cider

These are all recipes trainable during Winter Veil and are needede for the Winter Veil Gourmet achievement.  The necessary materials are relatively light:

• Cookie:  1 small egg, 1 holiday spices
  
• Egg Nog: 1 small egg, 1 ice cold milk, 1 holiday spirits, 1 holiday spices
• Cider: 1 sparkling apple cider, 1 holiday spirits, 1 holiday spices

Remember you will need extra to make the 5 cookies needed for ‘Treats for Greafather Winter’!  Everything except the small egg is buyable from a vendor – the milk comes from any low level drink vendor (the nearest one usually being the innkeeper) and the rest from the Smokeywood Pastures vendor.

Small eggs, at this time of year, can go for silly prices on the AH given how easy they are to get.  If you can’t be bothered then fair enough, but if you have a spare hearth and don’t want to pay silly AH prices for things then go to Westfall, Azuremyst, Darkshore, Mulgore,  the Barrens or Eversong Woods and kill one of the many low level creatures which drop small eggs.

• Graccu’s Mincemeat Fruitcake

This is required for ‘Tis the Season and is contained in items you get in the mail after completing some of the Winter Veil quests – Treats for Greatfather Winter and Metzen the Reindeer.

Fun Stuff

Also contained in the special gifts sent from Greatfather Winter, can be:

Recipes

• Formula: Enchant Weapon – Winter’s Might
• Plans:  Edge of Winter
• Schematic: Snowmaster 9000
• Recipe:  Elixir of Frost Power
• Pattern: Gloves of the Greatfather
• Pattern: Green Holiday Shirt
  

Other

• Mechanical Greench
• Preserved Holly

Revelers

During the holiday season, you can blow a kiss (/kiss) to a winter reveller and recieve:

• A Handful of  Snowflakes
• Fresh Holly
• Mistletoe

These are all used in some form for the achievements and the mistletoe, if it’s still the same as last year, will give a small spirit buff if you use it on another person.

Enjoy the Event!

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