To lead a raid

What is today? Today is the start of yet another holiday event, and meta-achievement, namely the Lunar Festival. One of the things that you need to do in order to complete the meta is Elune's Blessing, which requires you to kill a raid boss that you can summon in Moonglade.

If you plan to do this one, my advice is to get on it pronto. That was the first thing I did when I logged in today on my Hunter. The reason is that the boss requires a raid to kill and there will be lots of people trying to complete it at the beginning of the holiday, with less people towards the end.

Now the cool thing about this achievement is that you don't even need to actually kill the boss. You merely need to pick up a buff that the boss leaves after he's dead. So by hanging around a group that kills him, you can just stand in the light that bathes his body and you will get the buff. Still, it's a matter of finding people who will kill him or who already have. That's why I suggest you do this ASAP.

Finding myself in Moonglade, I started looking for a group for this guy but most people were under the impression that a 5-man group was enough. I took it into my own hands and formed a group that I promptly converted to a raid. Eventually, we downed the boss with almost 25 people.

One word here about the summoning. It was a bit confusing but it seems that you have to use Rocket Clusters (that you buy beforehand) on the 2 launchers that are at the summoning location. You have to use rockets on both launchers or else it won't work. Some wolves will start appearing and you need to kill them. Eventually the big boss will show up. As I said, it was a bit confusing and several people were using rockets on those things so in the end I didn't quite get the exact procedure. At any rate, buy sufficient rocket clusters before you start.

So there you have it, for the first time in my WoW career I have formed and led a raid, although a short-lived one at that. Not only that but I had a certain satisfaction to find myself at the #1 position on the damage chart. That was doubtlessly aided by the fact that I switched to Shatter Rounds for the occasion, but I was pulling an average of 4.5K DPS, with all the raid buffs.

Tough Love, tough shit

Listen up fools! As of now, I'm better than y'all! And ya know why? Because I have just completed Tough Love, unlike the rest of you pansy-ass slackers.

Truth be told, I had almost given up on this achievement because yesterday was my first daily attempt and I couldn't find a good group for the death of me. I tried 3 different groups. The first one wiped 3 times (I only died once thanks to Feign Death) before we called it quits. The second and third groups couldn't even hold their members together after dicking around for almost an hour in each.

So today I found an awesome group on the first attempt and I actually used yesterday's daily because yesterday I hadn't used my attempt yet. That was smart of me, in retrospect. Even more mind-boggling, we did all our 5 attempts without wiping, except for one guy who was laggy and kept stepping in the wrong type of puddle.

But it's all good. It was an amazing run with a good group who knew what they were doing. I knew some basic strategies but here's a quick outline of how our group handled it. "Our" strategy worked very well and I recommend you try it, especially if yours fails.

0. Hunters and other pet classes, forget about using your pets. Put them on passive, as they'll die anyway.
1. Everyone should start out by wearing the PURPLE perfume.
2. First boss to go down is the PURPLE guy, i.e. the one you hand in the quest to.
2.5. Tank should hold all these guys with their backs to the group.
3. While fighting the PURPLE guy, it is perfectly fine to stand in PURPLE goo. It won't hurt you. Move like hell from the GREEN stuff though.
4. Once PURPLE guy is dead, switch to GREEN guy.
5. Also switch perfumes to GREEN.
6. Standing in GREEN stuff is now ok, but avoid PURPLE.
7. After GREEN guy is dead, focus on the last guy, who's the one without a shield, running around like crazy and throwing bottles at everyone.
8. That's it.

One more thing: the 3rd guy, the one running around like his ass is on fire, doesn't have a threat table, meaning that everyone should unleash all they've got on his ass. He will occasionally switch "aggro" to a random member.

I was pretty lucky to win a couple of very nice rolls.

One: I got to replace my outdated Titanium Impact Choker with a Sweet Perfume Broach. This was a big upgrade, increasing stats across the board: DPS, AP, crit, ArPen, Sta.

Two: I won a vanity item, which is cloth but looks damn wicked: Vile Fumigator's Mask. You be the judge.

Vanity Pet #93 - Peddlefeet

Today I got enough Love Tokens after the second day of Love is in the Air to get my Silver Shafted Arrow which summons your own personal Peddlefeet. That makes it #93 in my collection.

It also gives the Perma-Peddle achievement.

Vanity Pet #89 - Giant Sewer Rat

Well folks, it finally happened, and just when I was least expecting it. The Giant Sewer Rat dropped while I was fishing for the Dalaran daily, Jewel of the Sewers. I never attempted to fish specifically for this pet, although I hear the drop rate is pretty high. Instead, I just did my Dalaran dailies whenever they occurred, hoping that eventually it would drop. And it did.

Of course, fishing this rare pet awards you the I Smell A Giant Rat achievement.

Though in real life I don't like rats, this one has a very cartoony feel about it and it looks pretty funny. It reminds me of Ratatouille.

Vanity Pet #88 - Perky Pug

Well dear readers, the Perky Pug is in the house! In case you still don't know how to come by this pet, let me fill you in. You get this as a reward for completing the Looking For Multitudes achievement, which requires you to group with a total of 100 random people in heroic instances using the new LFG tool.

I completed this achievement today while on an Utgarde Pinnacle run. As soon as I got to the first mailbox I found the Perky Pug. This wasn't a hard pet to acquire, it was only a matter of time, considering that I ran the random heroic daily and sometimes I did 2 or 3 heroics a day using the tool. Roughly speaking, 100 random people means 25 heroic runs. A determined person can easily run, say, 4 of these dungeons in a day or even more and get the achievement in less than a week.

The pet itself is very cute and, as far as I'm aware, it is the only dog model currently in the game. It has a hilarious animation where it drags its butt along the ground.

Winter Veil tips

A couple of days back I finished all the Winter Veil achievements required for the Merrymaker meta-achievement which also awards the title of the same name, on my Hunter.

This was the first year in which I actively participated in all the events with the purpose of completing the meta. For this reason, I had to do all the work and it took me a couple of days. I helped myself to Wow.com's nice guide for this event. For that reason, I'm not gonna tell you in detail how you have to complete each achievement, but I will try to give some tips that might help you finish them faster. For the most part you will be ok by just following the linked guide.

1. For the cooking quests, you can find all the ingredients in capital cities. No need to buy them from the AH like some people.
   
   
2. In a similar vein, Small Eggs are drops from low level birds. No need to pay exorbitant prices for them on the AH. Just follow Wowhead's link and see what mob drops them. For Alliance you will have excellent results in Westfall by killing a few of the birds there. You can find similar birds in Loch Modan. If you have extra eggs, DO sell them on the AH for exorbitant prices.
   
   
3. The Winter Veil Disguise Kit will arrive in your mail 24 hours after you complete Simply Abominable. Don't panic if it seems like it won't arrive. It will, eventually.
   
   
4. For Simply Abominable you should try to group with other people in the area. It takes a while for the Greench to respawn so this will ensure you don't all wait for ages until it does. Try to make a macro (or just spawn) "/target The Abominable Greench". Hunters can use their tracking set to Humanoid as he's the only humanoid in the area.
   
   
5. Fa-la-la-la Ogri'la is a bit of a pain if you haven't had any dealings with Ogri'la back in Burning Crusade. You will need to complete a few of their quests in order to get access to Bomb Them Again! The bombing part itself is trivial.
   
   
6. With a Little Helper from My Friends is another of those holiday achievements that seem to have been put there by Blizzard just to get people to PvP. For someone like me who doesn't PvP it was a bit of a pain in the ass. Here's how I did it. Outside each main city there's a machine which transforms you into a Santa gnome. As Alliance I found the one outside Ironforge very convenient. I then queued up for Alterac Valley since that one always seems to be a frag-fest. Once inside, I tried to get as many kills as I could. Unfortunately that doesn't always work and you do need 50 kills. Once you die, the costume disappears and you have to leave the battle (or wait for it to end) and use the machine again. Like a noob, I didn't know how to leave the battleground so I had to stick it out for 2 complete battles. There simply isn't any button which you can press to "leave the damn battleground". But then I decided to search online and I found the simple way how it is done. Simply type "/afk" in chat and you are out baby! Of course, if you do this, you will be marked Deserter and won't be able to join another battle for 15 minutes. But that's ok.

So that's about it for Winter Veil. Overall it wasn't a hard meta to accomplish and I'm glad I have another one under my belt in the pursuit of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

Pilgrim's Bounty Tips

Well folks, in the second day of Pilgrim's Bounty I finished all the achievements, got the Pilgrim title and the Turkey pet as reward. It all happened much sooner than I had anticipated.

I won't go into every detail about how I accomplished all the achievements because Wow.com and MMO Champion have some good guides but I will give some pointers for the trickier achievements.

Starting off with the table achievements, those are really easy. Just follow the two guides above and you should be fine. You just have to repeat them at each of the 4 major cities of your faction. Also complete FOOD FIGHT which simply requires you to throw food at another player at the table. At the end of this you should have Pilgrim's Paunch and Sharing is Caring completed.

If you really want to complete all the achievements you need to have Cooking at around 330 or so. Luckily you can just buy a recipe book from one of the vendors at the holiday grounds and the book will contain about 5 recipes that will easily help you to get to the required skill. So you can view this as a cheap way to power level cooking.

Now We're Cookin' requires you to cook one of every holiday dish. You will obtain this by default, of course, by doing the dailies. Then there's Pilgrim's Progress which is slightly more involving because it requires you to complete each of the available dailies but you should do that anyway if you visit all the major capitals.

From the dailies you should first choose a hat and a chest piece as reward. You will need those later. Once you get these two items, keep picking the Turkey Shooter because you'll need that to shoot rogues. You'll need 8 of these, provided you don't waste any shots. You can easily obtain all the required items (10 in all) in 2 days, if you do all the dailies in all 4 capital cities. Each city gives you 2 dailies so that's a potential of 16 items in 2 days.

Now here come the annoying achievements...

You should do The Turkinator as soon as possible, when you are, say, in Elwynn. That's because you need lots of Wild Turkey for the daily quests. This quest is shitty because it asks you to kill 40 turkeys in a row, without the 30 second buff expiring. Basically after each kill a 30 second timer will reset and that's how long you have to kill the next turkey. While turkeys respawn pretty fast, there are plenty of other people trying to do the same. In Elwynn I would suggest you try the south eastern part. It seems to be less populated. Or, by all means, do this late at night or at weird hours. It took me 3 tries. Thing is, as a Hunter it's easy because in addition to your /target Wild Turkey macro you can throw a Hunter's Mark on the damn turkey and instantly see it on the map. I can't imagine the pain of doing this with another class.

Pilgrim's Peril is a pain in the butt because it implies getting close to the four enemy capitals and sitting at one of their tables. Make sure to wear the holiday chest piece of your choice (that you got as reward from the cooking dailies). The problem here is that while for certain cities you won't get flagged (on a PvE server), for the others you will. Since I'm Alliance, I visited Undercity, Orgrimmar, Thunderbluff and Silvermoon City.

Undercity was the worst. You will get flagged there because you have to step right inside the walls of the city, through the main entrance. Unfortunately for me I was killed about half a dozen times trying to get to a table. The problem was that those damn Hordes were out to play and they killed every single Alliance that stepped close to that place. Hunters' pets were set to aggressive with snares that caught you in place the moment you re-spawned. All I could do was position myself right next to a chair and wait for a moment when they weren't paying attention to jump in the chair. Eventually I did it, even though I died the very next moment. I recovered my body the next morning, early when there weren't people around.

Orgrimmar doesn't flag you but Thunderbluff does. I was an idiot in regards to Thunderbluff because I didn't know where the tables were and I was running around like crazy, while flagged. Eventually I spotted the tables right under the great lift and I sat down at a chair. There weren't many Horde around but then I fumbled and a rogue ganked me. At least this time I managed to fight back but since I'm not much of a PvP player, nor am I geared for it, I died quickly.

After another corpse run I headed to Silvermoon City. That one doesn't flag you either but in any case was totally deserted so I got the achievement easily.

Terrokar Turkey Time can't be solo-ed unless you're 80 and reasonably geared. You need to get inside Sethekk Halls and kill Ikiss (what a dumb name) while wearing a hat and chest piece that you got from the dailies. Sethekk Halls is in Terrokar Forest in Outland. Auchindoun is that round amphitheater-like structure in the middle of the map. When you go inside the entrance just walk into the instance that's straight ahead. Unfortunately you'll have to clear at least half the trash to get to the boss. They are not incredibly hard but I found them pretty challenging even at level 80. Some of those damn bird-men have a nasty habit of throwing a Charm totem which makes you lose control of your character. For me it was bad because my character became hostile towards my pet. Oh well... Just be careful inside, especially as a caster, and don't pull too many mobs or else you're a goner. The boss itself wasn't hard. He has about 80K HP and does some moderate AOE damage but once he starts channeling that, just move behind a column and you should be fine.

Turkey Lurkey is one that I suggest you start doing as soon as you get your first Turkey Shooter. The objective here is to use the shooter on rogues of each race, including the opposite faction. That's 8 in all. While it isn't that hard to find rogues from your own faction (hint: use /who rogue or /who rogue dalaran for example), you won't be able to use the same command for the opposite faction. So you'll have to rely on your good ol' peepers to spot them. Hanging around Dalaran did the trick for me but I also got lucky with an Orc rogue outside of Orgrimmar. In the end I got really lucky because I got 3 of the toughest combinations in a row while spotting for them in Dalaran.

A final tip with this last achievement would be that each time you use the shooter, the item is used up so you will need at the very least 8 of them. Make sure you don't shoot the same race twice or you'll lose a shot. Also, if the person is already a turkey, you will lose the item but not get credit (or so it is said, I haven't experienced that myself).

So there you have it, easy meta-achievement in 2 days. I'm really glad I finished this because now I don't have to worry about doing those dailies anymore and I can concentrate on other things. Good luck to you and if you run into any problems drop me a line in the comments!

G.N.E.R.D. Rage Done

Just after I finished my guide to Hallow's End, last night, I decided to give G.N.E.R.D. Rage a try. My strategy was simple: go inside Alterac Valley since I remembered it as giving the most honor out of all battlegrounds. Of course, I've never tried Wintergrasp so I don't know if things have changed since Burning Crusade.

Going in, I had 45 G.N.E.R.D.S. I hoped they would be enough. Long story short, I only used about 3 of them before I got the achievement done. The beauty of Alterac Valley is that it's a free-for-all from my point of view. Since the only reason I ever tried battlegrounds was to get honor and badges, regardless whether Alliance won or lost, I didn't give a crap if I died or when I died. This time however, I needed to make sure I didn't die 45 times, before I could get 50 HKs, because the buff expires after death.

Well, I only managed to get 3 HKs for my first G.N.E.R.D. The second one was much better and I got a couple of dozen. The third one got me the achievement. It was a piece of cake. There were so many people doing AV just for this achievement that it almost felt like a joke. How could I tell? Because I saw dozens of achievements from the other players pop up in the chat panel.

Once I completed G.N.E.R.D. Rage, I also attained Hallowed Be Thy Name and thus the "The Hallowed" title. Nice, this holiday was much easier to complete than I had anticipated. One tip that I would like to share with you is this: try to complete G.N.E.R.D. Rage as soon as possible. A lot of people will try to do it during the first days of the holiday and it might be slightly harder to get such an enthusiastic crowd at the end. But what am I talking about... AV is usually always packed and there are plenty of opportunities for getting kills, even if you're totally anti-PvP.

As a bonus, I also got a ton of other PvP-related achievements during the battle. It's always nice to get these unexpected achievements, what can I say.

Guide to Hallow's End

Well, from being totally against these WoW holidays slash world events, I've now moved to embracing them all. In fact I've started explaining a bit of my new philosophy in my previous post about how I obtained the Sinister Squashling. The gist of it is that I really want a 310% speed mount on my Hunter main and the only way for me to get it (since I don't raid or PvP) is to complete all the achievements leading to the meta-achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. I've already completed Noble Gardener and Brewmaster so I'm doing rather well, in spite of being a later adopter.

Here's an account of the achievements that I've already completed for the current holiday's meta-achievement, Hallowed Be Thy Name. Today is barely the second day in which I've participated in this holiday but I've already got all achievements done, save one.

Trick or Treat!
This is the easiest possible thing. Just use the special pumpkin-head bucket with an exclamation point over it. This is a pre-requisite for a bunch of other achievements so it's impossible to miss.

Bring Me The Head of... Oh Wait
Beside having one of the most hilarious titles in the game, this achievement requires you to kill the Headless Horseman. For this, you need to go to the Scarlet Monastery, graveyard section. With a group. Killing him the first time will award the achievement. Don't forget to loot his head. As a bonus, after killing him your first time ever, you can summon him again that day. Afterward, you can only summon him once a day until the end of the holiday. The fight itself is a simple tank-and-spank but the trick is that once you get the Horseman's health down to almost zero, his head pops off and starts floating around at which point you have to dps the head until it's almost "dead" after which it pops back on the Horseman's body and you switch dps to him because now he's at full health. Do this about 3 times and it's over. He will also summon a bunch of squashlings (3-4) which are non-elite and more of an annoyance than anything.

That Sparkling Smile
Once in a while, after trick-or-treating an innkeeper (you can do this once every hour) you will get a bunch of toothpicks in your loot bag. Simply use one of those picks and you've completed this achievement. Kind of a dumb one if you ask me.

G.N.E.R.D. Rage
This is the one achievement that I haven't completed yet because it requires me to go inside a battleground and do some PvP and I'm steeling myself to do it. The idea is that you need to be under the influence of the G.N.E.R.D.S. buff (a type of sweet that you get by using those buckets in inns) and kill 50 players. Apparently you don't have to actually deliver the killing blow yourself, you just need to get the Honor Kill for it.

The Masquerade
This is a bit tricky because it requires you to get transformed by various wands that are randomly obtained from trick-or-treating innkeepers. Currently people are charging 5-10 gold for each transformation and I sold a bunch of transformations myself. I didn't care about this one because I had completed it last year. Bear in mind that you need to be in a party with the person who transforms you and you need to be dismounted. If you use your mount, you will lose the transformation.

Tricks and Treats of Azeroth
Probably one of the lengthier meta-achievements, it requires you to visit all the inns in the list on 3 continents: Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor and Outland and use the trick-and-treat buckets inside the inn. The good part is that if you are 80 you will receive a little over 6 gold for each bucket and if you're lower you will get XP instead.

Out With It
This requires you to eat a few Tricky Treats until you get a debuff. The treats drop from the Headless Horseman in large quantities but you only need about a couple of them for the achievement. They have a short duration as well (1 day) so make sure to use them as soon as you get them.

The Savior of Hallow's End
For this one you need to head to one of the smaller villages such as Goldshire or Kharanos (sorry Horde, I don't know which ones are on your side but it can't be hard to figure out) and complete a quest given by an NPC there. For example, I completed the one where I had to put out the fires started by the Headless Horseman. After each dousing of the fire you need to run back and refill your bucket. If there are many players around, you will get credit once all the fires are put out. Otherwise it might be hard to complete this quest.

Rotten Hollow
This requires some traveling. For Alliance it's Southshore. An NPC there will give you 2 quests: The Power of Pine and Crashing the Wickerman Festival. The first one requires you to hang around Southshore until you see a Forsaken NPC who drops a bunch of stink bombs on the ground. You'll recognize them by the brown cloud that forms around them and they look like small totems. Use the item that you got from the questgiver on the bomb. It has a casting bar of a few seconds and if other people have managed to use it ahead of you, the stink bomb will disappear and you will have to find another one. For the second quest you need to head to the west side of Undercity (as Alliance) and simply get close to the giant wicker statue there. Even though there were a bunch of PvP elite NPCs guarding the statue, I didn't aggro them as a level 80 and I didn't get flagged. You don't even need to be very close to it. Once you get credit, go back to Southshore and hand in the quest. That's it, achievement complete.

Check Your Head
You will need to throw Weighted Jack-o'-Lanterns at each of the different races, 10 in total. You will get all the required Jacks from the Headless Horseman. Each day he will drop a few that you can loot. I think I got 5 at one point. So if you kill him in 2 different days, you will probably have all Jacks, considering that one of the other quests from the holiday (I forget which) also rewards you with a few of them. In a worst-case scenario you can also buy these from the Auction House since they don't bind. So don't sweat it too hard if by some miracle you don't have enough of them. Oh and if you have too many, put them up for sale on the AH for a hefty price. The good news is that there's no deposit on them.

Sinister Calling
Only the luck of the draw will help you here since both these items, the Sinister Squashling and the Hallowed Helm are random drops. They both drop from trick-or-treating the innkeeper every hour (so log in often!) or from the Headless Horseman.

And that about wraps it. If you have completed all these achievements, you are one step closer to that 310% speed mount. I still have the PvP achievement to finish and I'll write my impressions as soon as I get it done.

Vanity Pet #81 - Sinister Squashling

One of the more interesting pets in the game, the Sinister Squashling can only be obtained during the Hallow's End event which is currently under full swing. Last year I missed this pet because I was only involved in trick-or-treating and skipped the Headless Horseman entirely. Back then I wasn't interested in completing these events. This year, I decided that I might as well try to complete the uber-meta achievement What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been, in order to get the 310% speed Violet Proto-Drake, which is a beautiful specimen if I say so myself. Truth be told, I'm more interested in the 310% speed.

Anywhoo, this year I killed the Headless Horseman and on my very first try I won the roll for the Sinister Squashling. I guess I was lucky. This also allowed me to complete the Sinister Calling achievement since I already had the Hallowed Helm since last year.

Brewmaster!

To my surprise, I finished all the Brewfest achievements and gained the Brewmaster title tonight! At some point I didn't think it was possible to save all the required tokens for the achievements because, like an idiot, I went ahead and spent my first batch of tokens on the Pint-Sized Pink Elekk pet.

I didn't know until a few days ago that all you need in order to complete all the assignments is 350 tokens. The trick here is that the achievement Disturbing the Peace can be done by purchasing the 3 pieces of garb for a total of 350 tokens, going to Dalaran, putting them on, getting drunk, dancing and then returning to the Brewfest vendor and returning the 3 pieces for a full refund.


Then, you can easily buy the Brewfest membership for 200 tokens for the Brew of the Month achievement. If, by this point, you have also completed the other achievements, you should attain Brewmaster.


Easy peasy if you are well informed. If you are less well-informed, like I was, you will be forced to do those boring dailies in order to get enough tokens.

Direbrewfest!

I've been blabbing on and on about Brewfest these past couple of days but today I did the unthinkable: I actually joined a group to kill Coren Direbrew.

I'm usually shy about these sort of things and this is only the second time I've participated in a boss kill during a WoW holiday. When this happens, I have to bluff my way through because I don't want people to know that I'm a raw noob. Luckily I knew a few basics about how the Coren Direbrew thing worked.

The idea is that there's a daily quest to kill this guy during Brewfest only. Ideally, all 5 people in the group should have this quest so that each of the 5 can summon him. That's the most efficient way of doing it.

Coren is inside Blackrock Depths. I won't tell you how to get there because you should know by now. If not, it's easy to search for it online. Once you get inside the instance, immediately to your right is a bunch of boxes that you can click on. There might be some non-elite mobs that you need to kill first. Use one of the boxes and a Mole Machine will burrow out of the ground to take you to the Grim Guzzler bar where Coren is located.

Once at the bar, each player takes turns in handing in the quest and "talking" to Coren. Coren's friendly until you talk to him and he has 3 non-elite buddies with him. He has a little over 300K HP. Once you talk to him, he turns hostile and the fun starts.

The fight is one of the easiest I've come to experience. As DPS, I just went through my routine. At one point Coren might summon a Mole Machine with some non-elite mobs that will attack players at random but by that time the main boss should be very low or almost dead.

I did get a piece of loot, a trinket called Coren's Chromium Coaster which has some very good stats on it but on second thoughts it's not much better than what I already have: Darkmoon Card: Death and Gnomish Lightning Generator. One of the other very nice drops was Tankard O' Terror which is an iLvl 226 1-H BoE mace (which BTW screams Enhancement Shaman to me) and I was hoping that we would get a chance to greed for it but a pally in the group said he needed it so he won it. Meh, whatever, I was just grateful that I got to experience this group. If I'd won that mace, I would have probably sold it for a hefty profit.

Killing Coren Direbrew for the first time awards the achievement Direbrewfest. He also drops a barrel that starts a quest asking you to return it to a Brewfest NPC for 40 Brewfest Prize Tokens. In all, it was a very nice experience and the only thing I regret is not doing it in the first day as well. Now I will try to complete it daily until the end of the holiday.

3 Titles and 4 Achievements

Big day today for obtaining titles and completing achievements. Questing at the Argent Tournament finally got me exalted with my last faction: Exodar. That allowed me to complete 4 achievements at once:

Exalted Champion of the Exodar
Ambassador of the Alliance
Exalted Champion of the Alliance
Exalted Argent Champion of the Alliance

Along with these also came 3 titles:

Ambassador
of the Exodar
Crusader

I gotta say I wasn't expecting so many to happen all at once, especially the 3 titles. Not to mention that a couple of minutes earlier I'd completed another achievement, 1000 Daily Quests.

Vanity Pet #77 - Wolpertinger

Brewfest 2009 has just started throughout Azeroth and it's good news for vanity pet collectors because it awards us with another easy-to-obtain pet. If you haven't already gotten it in previous years, the pet is the Wolpertinger.

There's an easy quest that you can pick up at the Brewfest grounds. Unfortunately I can't seem to locate the exact NPC that hands out the quest but you can't miss the big yellow exclamation marks. You will be handed a net that you have to use to trap 5 wild Wolpertingers. The caveat here is that you can only see them if you're very drunk, or alternately, wearing the Synthebrew Goggles that you can get from a nearby NPC (again, I forget which, apologies for that :)

Those pesky Wolpertingers are small, almost like rabbits and they hop around quickly so they may be hard to target, especially with all the people in the area. Here's how to target them easily. Set the net on a hotkey and keep pressing the TAB key until you have targeted a Wolpertinger. Since they act like a neutral mob rather than a critter, TAB-targeting will work. Then press your hotkey.

After turning in the quest you will receive both an achievement and the pet itself. I have to admit, this is one of the more interesting vanity pets in WoW.

Vanity Pet #76 - Little Fawn

Collecting 75 vanity pets will unlock the achievement Lil' Game Hunter. You will receive an additional pet in the mail, as a reward. The pet is Little Fawn. It's just a plain baby deer. Some may find it cute.

Cooking with Style

Yeah, well I went ahead and did it. I bought a Chef's Hat. It might sound stupid because it's just a vanity item but I found myself needing to cook a few hundred recipes and I knew that the hat had received a recent buff that allowed the wearer to cook faster.

So 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards later I was the proud owner of the hat. Let me tell you: I think it's worth it. Cooking is almost instant now, it takes about half a second for each cooked item. Besides, I earned myself an achievement.

Here's my Hunter wearing the hat and his Argent Crusade apron. Who knew Dwarves could be so sexy?

Get Your Spirit of Summer Pet Now!

TB has pointed out in the Comments that the Midsummer's quests to Honor the Flames and Extinguish the opposing side's Flames are not bugged anymore. I don't know how the bug worked but I didn't see the quests before Blizzard hotfixed them. Before that, I had given up all hope that I would get the Spirit of Summer pet this year. I simply couldn't save enough Burning Blossoms from the other quests and the daily quests.

Now, however, everybody can participate in honoring and extinguishing flames. If you are a vanity pet whore like me and haven't got the Spirit of Summer yet, I urge you to visit all these locations. Not only will you get those valuable Burning Blossoms but you will also make some nice gold for each bonfire Honored or Extinguished.

By doing this, you will also complete the following achievements:
(I'm listing the Alliance quests but Horde has similar ones)

Flame Warden of Eastern Kingdoms - gives 14 x 5 = 70 Blossoms and 14 x 6.63 = 92.82 Gold.
Flame Warden of Kalimdor - gives 11 x 5 = 55 Blossoms and 11 x 6.63 = 72.93 Gold.
Flame Warden of Outland - gives 7 x 5 = 25 Blossoms and 7 x 6.63 = 46.41 Gold.
Doing the above 3 will allow you to complete the meta-achievement The Fires of Azeroth.

Extinguishing Eastern Kingdoms - gives 11 x 10 = 110 Blossoms and 11 x 13.23 = 145.53 Gold.
Extinguishing Kalimdor - gives 12 x 10 = 120 Blossoms and 12 x 13.23 = 158.76 Gold.
Extinguishing Outland - gives 7 x 10 = 70 Blossoms and 7 x 92.61 Gold.
Doing the above 3 will allow you to complete the meta-achievement Desecration of the Horde.

Doing all of these will get you a total of 450 Burning Blossoms, which is more than enough to buy the pet. You'll even have a lot of leftovers for the Midsummer set pieces if you wish.

You will also make a very hefty 609.06 Gold!

Notice that extinguishing the enemy faction's flames gives a lot more Blossoms than honoring your own, I guess because it's supposed to be more dangerous. In truth, it has been easy as cake to extinguish the Horde's flames so far. Even if you're not a PvP player (like me) and get ganked, just shrug it off and move on.

I won't give you any more tips on how to do these quests in the most efficient manner because if you follow the links, you can read the Wowhead comments which tell you exactly what you have to do. Personally I didn't even bother with those directions. Instead, I added each of the 2 achievements for a continent in my Objectives Tracker and made sure to cover all the zones. If you don't know the zones in detail, you will probably need the tips from Wowhead to be more efficient.

You can also combine these quests with the World Explorer achievement if you haven't done it already, which will make the whole experience more tolerable. Check out my article on how I obtained the Explorer title for tips on how to make these long journeys more tolerable.

Good luck in completing these achievements! There are still plenty of days left from the Midsummer Festival so take your time.

Hail to the Chef!

I've finally got the Hail to the Chef achievement yesterday. It's been a hard achievement to... achieve because I was stuck at getting those rare recipes that drop from the Shattrath cooking dailies. For a long time I was looking for one final piece of the puzzle: the recipe for Kibbler's Bits.


And then yesterday, quite unexpectedly, the recipe dropped after I completed the cooking daily. I was both elated and relieved. Relieved because I don't have to do that stupid daily anymore. I swear: the Shattrath cooking dailies have to be some of the most boring and unrewarding dailies I've come across. Good riddance!

The Fishing PvP Achievement

Here's something nutty-wacky that just happened to me. Today's fishing daily was Dangerously Delicious which entails fishing of 10 Terrorfish in Wintergrasp. Since the battle for Wintergrasp was starting, I decided to take the teleport in the Silver Enclave.

Once I got there, the battle started and I had barely caught my 3rd Terrorfish when I had 2 achievements pop up on the screen! Our Alliance boys had won the match within 3 minutes or so! Damn, I hadn't the foggiest idea that I can get credit for something that I didn't even participate in, much less have interest for (PvP).

Oh well, I'm not complaining!

10,000 Gold From Quest Rewards

Yesterday I hit The Bread Winner achievement on my hunter main. I'm not looking for any bragging rights here (because it's a petty achievement) but I'm posting this as a sequel to my Making 5000 Gold for the Epic Flying Mount series, part I and part II.

As some commenters have pointed out and something that I have failed to emphasize (I can't forgive myself for missing this), the foremost way in which you make gold in WoW is simply by completing all the quests in each zone.

As you can see, I have finally reached 10,000 gold from quest rewards. Since this achievement started counting after Wrath of the Lich King launched (please correct me if I'm wrong, my memory is fuzzy on this one), this means that at least 10,000 gold can be made in Northrend.

In my case, I have done all the quests in all zones except Icecrown and Storm Peaks where I'm about half-way through. The 10K amount also includes a lot of dailies.

Speaking of dailies, they are an additional source of income and should definitely be attempted when it's convenient to do so.

So there you have it: Blizzard made sure a lot of gold comes your way simply through regular questing. You most likely won't have 10K at level 77 when Cold Weather Flying becomes available but at least you'll have a head start. If you also combine this with 1-2 gathering professions, I don't see any reason why at 77 you won't be jumping on that epic flyer straight away.