Category Archives: Guides For Things

How to Win the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza

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Last week, I tried my hand at the fishing contest in Stranglethorn (I’m out on Saturday afternoons so I can’t do the Northrend one). I lost to a Tauren fishing in everybody’s pools. This week, I tried again.

I grabbed myself the fish trinket, as I’m pretty happy with my Kal’uak fishing rod and being a fish is awesome, and shortly after I returned to the coast to try and fish me up a rare fish from the pools. Happily, I looted myself a Queenfish, which didn’t grant me another achievement, but it is the one that rewards you with the +5 fishing line ((which is basically a +fishing enchant for your favourite fishing rod)) when you hand it in at Booty Bay and that is the one I was after. Needless to say I came away pretty happy from Stranglethorn today.

Rewards & Winning

To win the contest, you need to fish 40 Speckled Tastyfish which can only be obtained from tastyfish pools which only spawn on the coast of Stranglethorn Vale for a 2 hour period starting at 2pm server time. When you go to hand in your 40 fish, you are given the choice of the following two rewards:

From the Tastyfish pools, there is also a rare chance to fish up one of the following rare fish. The first 3 listed can be handed in for certain rewards, which I’ve also listed.

These are all pretty rare to find but you can fish in the tastyfish pools for the entire 2 hours and they do respawn, so keep trying if you want any of the rare fish. You can also hand in 5 tastyfish (repeatable) for a couple of gold so if you don’t win or get spares do hand them into the Goblin it’s better than nothing.

Preparation

Now, if you want to win the contest, I do have a few tips for you. First of all, you will want to stock up on Water Walking Elixirs (only if you don’t happen to be a Priest, Shaman, or Death Knight who have their own ways to water walk) because it can be very handy sometimes to be in the water when you’re trying to position your character properly. You might also want, though it’s not essential as you will be fishing in pools which only requires 1 fishing skill these days but it’s become a habit for me now, to make sure you have a couple of lures or your Weather Beaten Fishing Hat if you have one, though as I say, it’s not entirely necessary any more. I would also recommend installing Fishing Buddy (which I also linked in my last post as well) which is a very nice mod as it has options to let you double click cast, automatically put a lure on your rod if there isn’t one active, and it can also tells you the timers for the fishing contests and your progress towards your goal so you don’t have to keep checking your bags, plus other options. It’s not a necessity, but it certainly is a nice addition. Do make sure it’s working a little bit before the contest starts as mine wouldn’t do the double click casting when the tournament began today which led to my very speedily moving fishing onto my ‘\‘ keybinding and hatting up. Even so, the timer was still working as you can see in my screenshot.

Location

You’ll want to be tracking fish (very important) and start at the point shown in the image below. If you’re Horde, you’re safe to start a bit closer to the Hardwrench Hideaway but Alliance will definitely want to avoid the Goblin guards. Totally not speaking from experience here.. *grumble*.

And from there, travel up along this coast in the following direction, obviously fishing as you go.

I noticed that there were hardly any people fishing around here, it’s very possible that a lot of people start in the South because of a bug which has since been fixed (even if it hasn’t, you can still see the pools spawn) which leaves the North coast pretty open. I didn’t see another person fishing until I had about 35 fish, and the lack of competition really helps to give you a good head start. The pools also have a pretty good respawn time so it’s well worth fishing around here. You’ll want to start on a piece of coast that you have to yourself for a little bit, ideally. Also, people will fish in your pools. Be prepared for that. That’s it really. The moment you get 40 fish, hearth back to Booty Bay, talk to the Goblin in the middle, make sure you know which reward you want beforehand because sometimes you might only have a split second to hand it in before somebody else does and voila!

If you want any of the rewards for handing in the rare fish, it’s well worth heading back to the coast to keep fishing once you’ve handed in your 40 fish as you can of course only fish in these pools for 2 hours every week, so if you want them, keep fishing and remember to hand in any remaining tastyfish.

Good luck!

Plants vs. Zombies

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I was going to write my 20 Days of Warcraft (which I’ll try and get back to later if I have time), and I was also going to squee a lot about all of the things that appeared yesterday: The Orgrimmer changes, the sight of the Barrens from the air, the new pets, my new favourite NPC the Psylosopher (which I can neither spell nor say), and so on.. but I started doing a quest yesterday evening. The first couple were easy enough but later on it gets quite difficult. There’s a brilliant comment on WoWhead that really helped me but I think a blog post would be helpful too.

You'll want to have something like this, perhaps a few more spitters and rocks.

Start by putting down 3 Sunflowers. These give you the sunpower you need to put stuff down. When you have 3 of these, you’ll want to start blocking off the approaching zombies. The rocks you see above only cost 15 sunpower and them them busy for a little bit while you gather more sunpower to put down spitters to kill them off.

Next, you will want to work on building your defenses. To do so, you’re going to need a lot of sunflowers, at least 2 rows. Inbetween putting down spitters and a row of freezyas, perhaps with the odd rock thingy thrown in to hold them back. Once you have enough down, you have to build your sunpower to use the pumpkin bombs to defeat the larger mobs or heavy groups of zombies.

If you get overwhelmed, the green trucks to the left of the sunflowers will zoom forward, if mobs get that far, and clear everything in its path – including any sunflowers you might put down before it goes. It is only useable once and if mobs breach that part of the field again, they will enter the house “eating your brains”, so do watch out, it’s best to not have to use those.

It’s a difficult quest, but very fun, and as far as I can work out, you can do it from about level 20ish, after that the money rewards scale with level. I got 30g for the final quest at level 80, and of course:

The Art Of Gold Making: Setting Up Shop

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Okay guys, so you may have read my last gold post and thought, “That’s great and all, Jae, but, where exactly do you expect us to start? What are the most helpful mods? Any quick tips? What are the best professions to use?” Well, don’t worry, I didn’t intend to leave it there. I was in the same position as those of you who are just starting out at some point, not knowing where to start, and I fully intend to help you get to a point where you are able to make enough income to play comfortably, how much you end up making purely depends on how much time and effort you put into it. You can spend an hour here or there and make enough to cover raiding costs, and then some.

I think it’s best if I start from the beginning. If you’re looking for professions, the best ones will be any that you can use to craft things. That would be: Tailoring, Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Jewelcrafting, Alchemy, Enchanting, Inscription, Engineering. Gathering professions are a nice bonus if you want them. Personally, I like having them, but they aren’t the best way to make gold strictly speaking. However, I really believe it’s down to personal preference. Every profession has its’ own way to make a bit of gold so choose whichever you prefer and I’ll cover how to use them effectively in a later post.

Bank Alts

The first thing I do, regardless of my level, on any server, is to create a bank alt. I give it a name that I might give a character (rather than Jaedialt, or Wgrtdf) or perhaps recycle an alt I don’t play anymore, run it to the nearest city (or maybe I’ll create a Blood Elf and make my way to Undercity or Orgrimmar. I personally think that Undercity is the best for Horde bank alting, and Ironforge for Alliance), and leave it near the auction house. I make sure it has some gold, buy all of the bank slots, and fill them and every bag slot with either 20 slot or 16 slot bags, depending on how much gold I have and then log out.

This character is there to enable you to mail any useful items you might want to keep or sell to stop your bags from clogging up too much while you’re questing or grinding. You can always return the mail later on if need be. If you have a lot of auctions, you might even consider putting a guild together purely so you can have access to the guild bank to store anything you don’t have space for, you can let your friends join to use the guild tag, or keep it purely for guild bank purposes. My personal guild bank currently has 4 tabs, and I’m considering buying a 5th. The extra space is just too awesome.

Auction Mods

After your space is set up and ready to use, you may want to look into getting a few mods. They aren’t a necessity, of course, but they do make auctioning a lot simpler, and make it a bit easier to contend with the people who seem to sit there doing their auctions all day, and all night.

Personally, I like to use Postal, Auctioneer, QuickAuctions, Market Watcher, Auction Profit, and Skillet on my crafting characters. I only use these mods (except for Postal, which is useful anyway) on my bank alt as it saves memory on the characters that don’t need them.

Very often, I will have a few hundred mails in my mailbox. You’re only able to open 50 every minute, and Postal really helps with that. With its’ ‘Open All’ function, you can leave it to open those 50 mails while you alt tab or read a book for the minute. It has a countdown as well on the mail symbol so if you choose to watch the mailbox, you’re able to see when it’s ready to be refreshed. Emptying the mailbox is possibly the most tedious part of doing your auctions, thanks to Postal, it’s just a tiny bit less tedious.

Auctioneer has many useful features. One of its’ main uses is of course scanning the auction house, if you scan regularly enough ((every 12 hours is ideal, but whenever you get chance works, you can do a quick scan with the double arrow but if your PC can’t quite take it, the longer scan does the same job, just might need 10 minutes of AFK time)) you will be given an average market price for each item. These average prices are particularly useful when working out how much an item should go for if it’s perhaps too low, or too high, or if there isn’t any of that item up at the time. BeanCounter can be used to search for an item to see your sale history. It can tell you your past sales and buyouts, which you might find useful. This guide will help you to use Auctioneer to check for items selling below the vendor price, and also for items that may be worth buying to resell.

I like to use QuickAuctions3 as well as Auctioneer. Once you’ve set it up, adding different groups and price settings for each of your regular auctions, you can basically use the ‘post’ and ‘cancel’ buttons, and the most work you end up doing is waiting for the mailbox to refresh. The ‘cancel’ button cancels any of the items you’ve added to QA3′s groups which have been undercut, so that you can put them back up as the lowest priced auction. This is particularly great if you’re in the glyph market, but don’t knock it for any others you might dip your toes into. Follow this guide to help you set it up.

AuctionPrice tells you how much gold your current auctions are in total. Of course, if everytime I put up auctions they sold I’d be very very rich ingame, but it’s nice to see roughly how much gold is sitting there, this is purely there for my own curiosity and isn’t really important.

Market Watcher as well is nice to scan for particular items and watch the market trends. I tend to watch for raw materials, mostly uncut gems, cloth, herbs, Frozen Orbs. Anything you might buy a lot of is useful to keep an eye on.

Skillet is basically a change to the default crafting UI. I’m not a huge fan of the way Skillet itself looks, but it’s very useful if you’re crafting a few things. I only really use it on my Inscriptor and my Jewelcrafter, as it allows me to queue up whatever I want to craft, and then make it, which is nice when I’m checking which gems I’m low on, or which glyphs are selling well at that point in time.

Aphroditi’s guide to the auction house, and more auction tips are very decent posts which have been very helpful to me in setting up Auctioneer and Market Watcher, I recommend you take a look.

Starter Cash

We all need to start somewhere, and there are many different ways you can get yourself a bit of starter cash. It all depends on how you’d rather spend your time doing so. If you want to, you can start off by using the vendor and resale options of Auctioneer, but if not, here are a few more options.

Vendor Items

One of the often overlooked methods of gaining a bit of gold, though it’s something people have been doing for years, is to buy vendor items, and resell them on the auction house. A lot of people don’t want to go trekking around looking for everything they need or want, and will pay a little extra to buy them from the auction house instead, saving them a bit of time. My favourite post detailing which vendor items to grab, along with maps for where to find them all, is this one. It is well detailed and easy to follow. People are willing to pay as much as 60g for certain patterns. Take the cooking recipes from the wandering caravan in Desolace, it’s a pain to find, and when you do the recipes are all ‘rare spawn’, only costing a few silver to buy. Don’t forget vendor pets – if you are able to grab pets from the other faction to sell on your faction’s auction house that’s brilliant, if not, don’t worry, same faction pets will sell as well ((Stormspire Netherstorm, Shimmering Flats Thousand Needles, Org, Eversong Woods, UC, TB, Darn, SW, Elwynn Forest, Exodar, Dun Morogh, Tournament)).

Questing

Personally, I like to complete quests. You can gain a fair amount of gold from completing your Northrend quests ((Grizzly Hills, Zul’Drak, Scholazar Basin, Storm Peaks, Icecrown)), and if you have more than one character at max level and a lot of patience, that’s a few thousand gold you can get, guaranteed. While you do those, you can work on opening up a few daily quests, Sons of Hodir and the Argent Tournament ones especially. If you enjoy, or at least can tolerate, questing for money, 25 daily quests per day will get you a few hundred gold per character, it all depends on how much time and patience you have to spare. Don’t forget the weekly raid and Wintergrasp quests, not only do these give a fair bit of gold, but the emblems and honour they give are useful for gold makers (see below).

Gathering Professions

If you use gathering professions, be sure to pick up any materials you see while you’re flying around, even if you don’t have any crafting professions yet, selling these raw can get you a bit of starter gold, or perhaps you’d prefer to save them to use to level your professions or craft into things that will make a little more gold than the raw materials themselves. If you happen to be a miner, Titansteel bars are still profitable as well.

Random Dungeons and PvP

Another reasonable way to get some starter gold is to do a few random dungeons. The first one you do each day at level 80 will give you 2 Emblem of Frost and 26g, after that they grant 2 Emblem of Triumph and 13g. Remember to check the average price of Dream Shards on your server in order to know which blues are worth disenchanting, and which are worth greeding. A lot of the things you’ll pick up while doing the dungeons can sell, and if you don’t need the gear, you can turn 20 Emblem of Triumph into 20 Emblem of Heroism and then into Cardinal Rubies/Majestic Zircons/King’s Ambers. These you can either sell raw for around 100-130g each, or cut them and sell them for a little more. 10,000 honour can be traded in for gems as well. If you have any spare Stone Keeper’s Shards that you don’t need, make sure you turn them into honour (30 shards = 2,000 honour, and the tokens you get are BoA so you can send any from your alts to your main and vice versa), and of course you can do random battlegrounds too, you’re able to queue from anywhere in Azeroth, so perhaps grind a little while you queue (this also counts for random dungeons).

Grinding

If you really want to, there are plenty of good grinding spots, you just have to find the best ones. I find the Fire and Air Elementals on the Elemental Plateau in Nagrand are brilliant, on my server I could sell Motes of Fire for about 6g each, and Primal Air is still going for about 60g each, it’s useful for a few enchants, Cat’s Swiftness is still the best raiding enchant for a lot of physical classes without Engineering. Check other economy blogs for posts giving tips on the best places to farm.

Selling Professions

Finally, while you’re idling in cities chatting to people, reading blog posts, or whatever you do while you idle, remember to offer your professions in trade. Usually a crafting fee will be about 10g per craft, I stick to this for epic gem cuts, however, certain crafts might get you a bit more, so for some professions you might find it a little better to ask for tips, because some people might tip for a little more than you might be expecting. You will get people tipping 5g, but it seems to be quite rare, and therefore worth trusting in people’s generosity. For example, I have the Blood Draining recipe and I tend to get tips of anywhere between 50-250g for it because it’s fairly rare, or at least difficult to find people who actually respond. I still sometimes get 100g tips for crafting the Death Chill Cloak, for which I’d probably ask for about 15g if I put a fee on it. Just make sure you’re polite, people are less likely to tip if you refuse to pop to Orgrimmar/Ironforge (you can politely say that you’re waiting for somebody in Dalaran), if you’re rude and demanding, chances are they won’t be so generous. If they try to trade you without tipping, gently remind them, sometimes they forget, sometimes they’re just testing their luck, most often they will apologise and give you a little gold for your help.

Stay tuned for whenever I get off my arse to write another one!

Thorium Brotherhood

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The Thorium Brotherhood are a guild of elite craftsmen and women who originally resided in Ironforge, but during the War of the Three Hammers sided with the Dark Iron Dwarves. When the Dark Iron Dwarves were enslaved by Ragnaros, the Thorium Brotherhood broke free. Afterwards, they resided in Searing Gorge close to the materials they needed for their branch of crafting, and able to overlook the enslaved Dark Iron Dwarves of the quarry.

These days, it seems that the Thorium Brotherhood is one of the most pointless factions to be exalted with, giving no achievement, although, it’s also probably one of the easiest, and therefore you may find it useful to gain reputation with if you’re aiming for the Exalted.

If you’re looking for the rewards you can receive from Thorium Brotherhood reputation, Lokhtos Darkbargainer, an NPC within Blackrock Depths, sells a few recipes and patterns which are available at various reputation points. Of course, I believe, the main “useful” item you can receive from this reputation is the Blacksmithing plans for the Sulfuron Hammer, which is required to make Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros. You can receive them by completing this quest, which gives 1000 reputation with the Thorium Brotherhood.

Today, I decided that I’d finally throw all of the cores I’ve been collecting during our weekly Molten Core rep clears at some Dwarves and see what happened. In short, I’ve been aiming for 40 exalteds for a while, I’ve just been slacking a little bit. This one gets me upto 39, so that I can get my 40 achievement when I get that last 1000ish rep with the Ashen Verdict! It also satisfies the completionist in me, because yes, I could also have finished off my Consortium rep for the same result.

To finish this one off from 0/3000 neutral, I started by completing every quest at Thorium point. After that was done, I handed in Restoring Fiery Flux Supplies via Iron 30 times to get to friendly. I chose Iron Bars because they were the cheapest on my auction house and I didn’t fancy farming 120 Iron Bars/Kingsblood, do check the prices of Iron Bars/Ore, Kingsblood, and Heavy Leather on your server before making your decision.

From friendly, I needed to hand in 960 Dark Iron Residue. This can be pretty cheap on the auction house so you may want to check there first, if not you can farm that much in a couple of BRD runs, easily. I did 9 Gaining Even More Acceptance hand ins, and Gaining Acceptance hand ins until I hit honoured.

Then the fun begins. Well, it depends on how easily you can get your hands on Fiery Cores and/or Lava Cores. These drop from trash and bosses in Molten Core. Personally, I’ve been collecting them for a fair few weeks but if you haven’t been you could start farming the trash, or check the auction house, I believe on most servers they will sell for around 40g each, more or less, it depends on how much you’re willing to spend and how much time you can put in. From honoured to exalted, you will need 30 cores.

As I had all of the cores (and then some), all I had to do was finish the quests, which also netted me the remaining Incendasaur Scales, and farm 460 Dark Iron Residue, as the auction house didn’t quite have enough, and overall it only took a few hours.

The Art Of Gold Making: Where To Start

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A lot of people have asked me how I go about making gold. They aren’t sure where to start, or where to look for these tips and ideas. This is the method of gold making that I have found works well for me, but of course, there are many different ways you can make gold. Everybody needs to start somewhere so, hopefully this is a nice starting point for you if you need it, or perhaps a couple of ideas you hadn’t come across before. Either way I hope this is helpful.

Getting Started

In the beginning, it’s important to know a few things. Quests will give you money and rewards, often, the rewards won’t be worth using, but you can hover over each reward to check which will vendor for the most. If you’re an enchanter, you can also disenchant any green or blue rewards that you don’t need. Greys vendor for more than white items, and are completely useless. Hold onto them to vendor, and make a habit of keeping on top of your bag space whenever you’re near a vendor. White items can be useful, it may be worth checking the auction house or wowhead to see how useful certain white items are. For example, the Giant Eggs that can drop from level 40-60 ish mobs are used for a cooking quest at 250 cooking skill, these can sell for a little bit on the auction house.

Questing

You might like to start by finishing off a few quest areas if you’re high level. The amount of gold you can gather from clearing Icecrown/Storm Peaks, etc. is fairly high, especially when you include quest rewards, drops, and any gatherables if you have a gathering profession.

Daily quests, as well, are a decent way to make gold. You can do 25 daily quests a day, each one will give roughly 13g each, if you completed 25 every day, that gives 325 gold roughly, give or take. Some will give more, some will give less, it’s probably best to try a few and see which ones you can complete fastest for the most profit.

This guide over at Ten Ton Hammer, whilst a little out of date (quests 8 and 9 are no longer available), is a decent guideline. It’s worth noting that the Argent Tournament is a nice little quest hub, especially once you’re able to do the champion and Crusader dailies. Also, random dungeons for the first one you complete at level 80 give 26g, the next few for the rest of the day will give 13g, these are another good way to earn gold.

The Auction House

There are auction houses in every race’s capital city. There isn’t one in Shattrath, and there isn’t one in Dalaran unless you’re a high level Engineer. There are also neutral auction houses in Gadgetzan (Tanaris), Everlook (Winterspring), and Booty Bay (Stranglethorn Vale), all of these are Goblin towns. Neutral auction houses allow you to trade between Horde and Alliance, which you cannot do with the regular auction house. You can use this to trade between your characters, or perhaps pick up a good deal once in a while.

You can sell just about anything on the auction house, and you can watch your server’s markets for what is going to sell the best. Interesting looking items of clothing, for example, will sell much better on RP servers than on non-RP servers. When you’re getting started, you’ll want to focus on just a few items. Use your professions, choose something that will sell, like Belt Buckles, Netherweave Bags, flasks, things that are in high demand, and only undercut by 1 copper, there is no need to undercut by more, after a few hundred auctions it will add up.

Banking

It’s worthwhile having a bank alt, a character purely used to store items, and auction, though not necessary, however, most auctioneers use a bank alt. Usually a discarded alt, or a specifically created character. I’d recommend giving it a name that you might give to a character, or [name]bank, rather than a keyboard mashing name. Though I don’t have any proof that it makes much difference, I’m sure one or two people might avoid buying from somebody whose bank alt looks very likely to be a gold seller. If you can afford to, fill your bag slots and bank slots with 20 slot bags, if not, use whatever you can get your hands on at first and build up.

Another useful venture, once you start storing more items than your bags and bank can hold, is a guild bank. You can buy a charter, get 10 signatures (even if you pay people 5g, give or take, for a signature), and purchase a guild bank tab to use for storing your items. As space becomes more tight, you can buy more tabs as you feel is necessary.

Addons

Finally, you might find it a bit easier to use a few mods. Personally, I use Auctioneer, Market Watch, Postal, and Auction Profit. I only use these on my bank alt, as they’re a lot of memory to keep activated on my other characters as well. Addon Control Panel is great if you use a character that you play as well as your bank alt. This enable you to activate/deactivate mods by simply reloading, saving you from logging out, which I’ve found very useful when joining pugs. When setting up my mods I followed this guide to install the mods, and this guide on how to make good use from them.

I hope I’ve been of some help, go ahead and find some economy blogs for further tips, the Just My 2 Copper forums can be quite good to browse. Find out what works best for you on your server, test different methods, because everybody has slightly different ways of making gold.

Midsummer

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As always, I forgot that Midsummer started the other night. I was logging around different bank alts, doing some auctions to pass the time and noticed a bunch of Blood Elf Commoners – oh! Midsummer! Well, as I’ve decided to make a little collection of festival guides which I plan to update if anything changes when they next roll around, here is my Midsummer guide.

Achievements

  • Ice the Frost Lord – Slay Ahune in the Slave Pens. You don’t need to find a group starting from this festival (2010), you can now find a random pug the same way you can in random dungeon finder, just go to the drop down menu and select ‘The Frost Lord Ahune’ or speak to one of the Earthen Ring Scout Dungeonmasters found around cities. You can still find a group the old way, but you won’t receive your Satchel without using the Dungeon Finder.
  • Torch Juggler – You should only need 10 torches for this. You will gain 5 from one of the quests (see below), and you can buy them for 5 blossoms for a stack of 5 from the Midsummer vendors in cities. To complete the achievement, make sure you’re in Dalaran, keybind the torch, then spam click on the area your character is standing. If you throw them to a place your character isn’t standing then you will lose the torches.
  • Burning Hot Pole Dance – You need the complete Midsummer set (which this year you cannot sell back to the vendor) – shoes, chest, shoulders (see below for prices – the hat is not needed). To complete the achievement, equip the set, click on the pole, of which you can find near the NPC you bought the clothes from/handed in your quest to, and spin.
  • King of the Fire Festival – Complete the quest ‘A Thief’s Reward‘/’A Thief’s Reward‘, obtained from the Festival Tailspinner(Horde) or Festival Loremaster(Alliance). They will require you to steal your enemy’s flames from each capital city. This quest will grant you with the Crown of the Fire Festival.
  • The Fires of Azeroth/The Fires of Azeroth – Honour the flames of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands as listed below.
  • Desecration of the Alliance/Desecration of the Horde – Desecrate the flames of Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands as listed below.

Quests

Dailies:

Flames

The maps on Wowhead say it better than I can, but here’s a list of all of the flames and their co-ords. Horde and Alliance. Also, remember that Northrend will not count towards the achievement but you will still receive Blossoms for those bonfires.

I don’t know how many of you use or have heard of the TourGuide addon, but I’ve been informed that there is a Midsummer Fire Festival addition to it which makes finding the flames much easier if that interests you at all. If not, here are the co-ords for each bonfire.

Horde Cities:

  • Orgrimmar – (Durotar), Valley of Wisdom – 47,38.
  • Thunder Bluff – (Mulgore), Spirit Rise – 21,26.
  • Undercity – (Tirisfal Glades), Ruins of Lordaeron – 68,9.
  • Silvermoon City –  (Eversong Woods), Court of the Sun – 70,43.

Alliance Cities:

  • Stormwind – (Elwynn Forest), The Canals – 49,72.
  • Ironforge – (Dun Morogh), Hall of Explorers – 64,25.
  • Darnassus – (Teldrassil), Rut’theran Village – 55,91.
  • The Exodar – (Azuremyst Isle), The Crystal Hall – 41,26.

Kalimdor Horde:

  • Winterspring, Everlook – 59,35.
  • Ashenvale, Splintertree Post – 70,69.
  • Durotar, Razor Hill – 52,47.
  • The Barrens, The Crossroads – 52,28.
  • Dustwallow Marsh, Brackenwell Village – 33,30.
  • Thousand Needles, Freewind Post – 41,52.
  • Tanaris, Gadgetzan – 49,27.
  • Silithus, Cenarion Hold – 46,44.
  • Feralas, Camp Mojache – 72,47.
  • Mulgore, Bloodhoof Village – 51,60.
  • Desolace, Shadowprey Village – 26,76.
  • Stonetalon Mountains, Sun Rock Retreat – 50,60.

Kalimdor Alliance:

  • Bloodmyst Isle, Blood Watch – 55,69.
  • Azuremyst Isle, Azure Watch – 44,53.
  • Teldrassil, Dolanaar – 55,60.
  • Darkshore, Auberdine – 37,46.
  • Winterspring, Everlook – 62,35.
  • Ashenvale, Astranaar – 38, 54.
  • Desolace, Nijel’s Point – 65,17.
  • Feralas, Feathermoon Stronghold – 28,44.
  • Silithus, Cenarion Hold – 57,34.
  • Tanaris, Gadgetzan – 52,29.
  • Dustwallow Marsh, Theramore Isle – 62,40.

Eastern Kingdoms Horde:

  • Eversong Woods, North Sanctum – 46,50.
  • Ghostlands, Tranquillien – 46,26.
  • Tirisfal Glades, Brill – 57,52.
  • Silverpine Forest, The Sepulcher – 49,38.
  • Hillsbrad Foothills, Tarren Mill – 58,25.
  • The Hinterlands, Revantusk Village – 76,74.
  • Arathi Highlands, Hammerfall – 74,41.
  • Badlands, Kargath – 4,49.
  • Burning Steppes, Flame Crest – 62,29.
  • Swamp of Sorrows, Stonard – 47,47.
  • Stranglethorn Vale, East of Booty Bay – 32,75.

Eastern Kingdoms Alliance:

  • Western Plaguelands, Chillwind Camp – 43,82.
  • The Hinterlands, Aerie Peak – 14,50.
  • Hillsbrad Foothills, Southshore – 50,46.
  • Arathi Highlands, Refuge Point – 50,44.
  • Wetlands, Menethil Harbor – 13,47.
  • Dun Morogh, Kharanos – 46,46.
  • Loch Modan, Thelsamar – 32,40.
  • Burning Steppes, Morgan’s Vigil – 80,62.
  • Redridge Mountains, Lakeshire – 24,59.
  • Blasted Lands, Nethergarde Keep – 58,17.
  • Duskwood, Darkshire – 74,51.
  • Westfall, Sentinel Hill – 56,54.
  • Elwynn Forest, Goldshire – 43,65.
  • Stranglethorn Vale, East of Booty Bay – 33,73.

Outland Horde:

  • Terrokar Forest, Stonebreaker Hold – 52,43.
  • Nagrand, Garadar – 51,34.
  • Zangarmarsh, Zabra’Jin – 36,52.
  • Blade’s Edge Mountains, Thunderlord Stronghold – 50,59.
  • Netherstorm, Area 52 – 32,68.
  • Hellfire Peninsula, Thrallmar – 55,40.
  • Shadowmoon Valley, Shadowmoon Village – 33,30.

Outland Alliance:

  • Terrokar Forest, Allerian Stronghold – 55,55.
  • Nagrand, Telaar – 50,70.
  • Zangarmarsh, Telredor – 69,52.
  • Blade’s Edge Mountains, Sylvanaar – 42,66.
  • Netherstorm, Area 52 – 31,63.
  • Hellfire Peninsula, Honor Hold – 62,58.
  • Shadowmoon Valley, Wildhammer Stronghold – 40,55.

Northrend Horde:

  • Borean Tundra, Bor’gorok Outpost – 51,12.
  • Scholazar Basin, River’s Heart – 47,62.
  • Dragonblight, Agmar’s Hammer – 39,48.
  • Crystalsong Forest, Sunreaver’s Command – 80,53.
  • The Storm Peaks, K3 – 40,86.
  • Zul’Drak, The Argent Stand – 43,71.
  • Grizzly Hills, Conquest Hold – 19,61.
  • Howling Fjord, Camp Winterhoof – 48,13.

Northrend Alliance:

  • Borean Tundra, Fizzcrank Airstrip – 55,20.
  • Scholazar Basin, River’s Heart – 47,66.
  • Dragonblight, Wintergarde Keep – 75,44.
  • Crystalsong Forest, Windrunner’s Outlook – 78,75.
  • The Storm Peaks, K3 – 42,87.
  • Zul’Drak, The Argent Stand – 41,61.
  • Grizzly Hills, Amberpine Lodge – 34,61.
  • Howling Fjord, Fort Wildervar – 58,16.

Ahune the Frost Lord

Ahune is one of the elemental lords in Neptulon’s service, summoned by the Twilight’s Hammer.

He resides within the Slave Pens, though you now only need to use the Dungeon Finder to find a group and get there. This will also net you a Satchel of Chilled Goods which will contain 2 Emblem of Frost, and a chance for either the Frigid Frostling or Frostscythe of Lord Ahune, which will no longer drop from the boss. When defeated there will be a chest which will contain an item to start a quest which rewards one of two tabards (Summer Skies or Summer Flames) and 20 Burning Blossom.

To activate him, a member of your party must click on the ice stone, which will melt, and then he is summoned. During the first phase you will do reduced damage on him. It is possible for ranged to dps him down a little, this will affect the Frozen Core’s health, though it won’t be much. There are spawned adds which need to be taken care of, and frost spikes which are best to avoid as they throw you into the air and you will take damage. Once this phase is over he is reduced to his weakened state, the Frozen Core, which can be dpsed down in one go, though it’s not necessary. If he isn’t killed in this phase, then it will go back to phase 1.

The items you can loot from the chest are the following:

Midsummer Vendor

The currency for the Midsummer festival is Burning Blossom. You receive these from dailies, tabard quest, other quests, honouring and desecrating flames.

I personally recommend you buy the outfit and 5 juggling torches first in order to complete your achievements.

Children’s Week

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Late last night, I noticed a few achievements pop up in guild when I logged in to fish, I’d completely forgotten it was Children’s Week! I logged out for a little bit and decided to do the achievements today, though it must be said that this has always been one of my favourite festivals because of the pets. This is my guide towards completing the various achievements and quests for Children’s Week, I hope it helps!

Achievements – Meta

List of achievements for the meta.

  • Home Alone – Simply have your orphan out (see under ‘quests’ for where to pick up your orphan, works with any orphan) and use your hearthstone.
  • Bad Example – Eat the following listed sweets while you have your orphan out:
  1. Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream sold by these vendors – I usually get mine from the innkeepers in Nagrand.
  2. Tasty Cupcake is made using cooking – the ingredients are 2 Simple Flour and 1 Northern Egg.
  3. Delicious Chocolate Cake is a rare drop recipe from doing Outland and Northrend cooking dailies and requires these ingredients – you should be able to buy them from the auction house though prices will be high this week.
  4. Lovely Cake Slice, Dalaran Brownie, Dalaran Doughnut, and Red Velvet Cupcake can all be bought from Aimee outside of the North bank in Dalaran.
  • Daily Chores – Complete 5 daily quests while you have your orphan out. I tend to do the Tournament dailies for this, with the orphan out while I hand them in, but any you feel like doing are fine.
  • Aw, Isn’t It Cute? – Receive one of the Children’s Week pets after completing a series of quests (also see ‘quests’).
  • School of Hard Knocks – This achievement can seem a little difficult for non-PvPers. You have to capture a flag in Eye of the Storm, assault a tower in Alterac Valley, assault a flag in Arathi Basin, and return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch. Cynwise has compiled an excellent guide to completing this achievement, if you’re struggling I recommend you take a look, and always have your orphan by your side.
  • Hail To The King, Baby – Kill King Ymirin in Utgarde Pinnacle, normal mode or heroic mode, while you have your orphan by your side. You should get it out at the beginning of the instance to avoid forgetting at the end.

Not for the meta, this is the only other achievement.

  • Veteran Nanny – This is one of those achievements that takes time to do, 3 years to be exact. To get this one, you need to own all 3 of the pets from the Shattrath orphan quest chain: Peanut, Willy, and Egbert.

Quests

There are several quests which reward you with a choice of a pet in Children’s Week. You speak to the matron in each city (Dalaran, Shattrath, Orgrimmar/Stormwind) who will give you an orphan whistle, you must take this orphan around to where they ask to complete the quests, they give you 3 quests to begin with, followed by one or two others, then sending you back to the orphanage where you receive your pet reward.

Dalaran first – it appears to be bugged at the moment if you did the quest last year, you should be able to pick the quest up to get the second pet, however at the moment you can’t. She stands near the South bank, if you’re able to pick the quest up, you’ll first need to choose which pet you want, the Oracle or the Wolvar.

The Oracle:

  • Meeting a Great One – First go to the giant portal that takes you to Ungoro in Scholazar Basin at co-ords: 39, 81. Once you’ve gone through the portal, go right up the steps and take your orphan to the Etymidian.
  • The Dragon Queen – Dragonblight, the Wyrmrest Temple, top floor, at co-ords: 59, 55.

The Wolvar:

Shattrath next – Head to the Lower City and find Orphan Matron Mercy and pick up a whistle from her. If you are Horde, you will be given a Blood Elf orphan, if you are Alliance, you will be given a Draenei orphan. The end quest will give you a choice of the following.

The Blood Elf:

  • Now, When I Grow Up… – Silvermoon City, Walk of Elders at co-ords: 76, 81.
  • Time to Visit the Caverns – If you can’t take the portal from Shattrath or Dalaran, head to the entrance to Caverns of Time in Tanaris at co-ords: 65, 49. Take Salandria to Zaladormu at co-ords: 60, 54 in the middle. Then buy a Toy Dragon from the Quartermaster at: 63, 57 and give it to her.

The Draenei:

  • The Seat of the Naaru – Exodar, Seat of the Naaru at co-ords: 57, 41.
  • Time to Visit the Caverns – If you can’t take the portal from Shattrath or Dalaran, head to the entrance to Caverns of Time in Tanaris at co-ords: 65, 49. Take Dornaa to Zaladormu at co-ords: 60, 54 in the middle. Then buy a Toy Dragon from the Quartermaster at: 63, 57 and give it to her.

Finally, your faction’s home city. Orgrimmar at 70, 25 in the Valley of Honor for Horde, the matron will give you an Orcish orphan. Stormwind at 56, 54 in Cathedral Square for Alliance, the matron will give you a Human orphan. The end quest will give you a choice of the following.

The Orc:

  • You Scream, I Scream… – There is a link to the vendors above under the ‘Bad Example’ achievement. You simply need some Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream in your bags and hand in the quest.
  • Cairne’s Hoofprint – Thunder Bluff at co-ords: 60, 51.

The Human:

  • You Scream, I Scream… – There is a link to the vendors above under the ‘Bad Example’ achievement. You simply need some Tigule and Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream in your bags and hand in the quest.
  • Jaina’s Autograph – Dustwallow Marsh, Theramore at co-ords: 66, 49. The very top floor of the large building.

Noblegarden

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Egg hunting.

That’s the key to this festival. Some eggs will turn your character into a pink bunny which somehow manages to poop tiny sparkly coloured eggs. Don’t be alarmed, this is normal. You will need roughly.. 315 eggs. You might as well do the daily as it’s a bit of gold you can pick up while you farm eggs. The other quest gives you a basket, I think you only have to pick this up to get a basket, but the quest reward is permanent and you get a little gold. The basket makes you run at 60% speed for 10 seconds so you should get one, equip it, and keybind it to 1 or whatever you prefer, while you’re running around collecting eggs. This only works during Noblegarden.

You can find eggs in all nooks and crannies of every starting zone. It’ll be the places you go around level 5-12, so, Falconwing Square, Razorthorn Hill, Brill and Bloodhoof Village for Horde. Azure Watch, Goldshire, Dolanaar and Kharanos for Alliance. You’ll want to hover your mouse over corners, bushes, under carts, on top of lamp posts, and strafe around the buildings, and be fast because other people won’t be so civil.

Achievements.

You’ll need to eat 100 chocolates, collected from the eggs you find in low level villages, for Chocoholic. The first achievement you see is Chocolate Lover, to eat 25 chocolates, after that you need to eat 75 more. You can get lucky and find everything you need to buy in the eggs, and you have to discover the clothes in eggs to get those achievements. Once you’ve hunted all of your eggs, that’s the easy part.

You’ll have to travel around each low level village to find your Spring Rabbit, which can drop in the eggs or you can buy it, love for Spring Fling, all you have to do is have your Spring Rabbit near somebody else’s Spring Rabbit in each listed village to get achievement credit.

To complete the Hard Boiled achievement in Ungoro Crater, you’ll need somebody with you to turn you into a bunny using a Blossoming Branch (which can drop in the eggs, be bought, or gained from the daily quest) near the hot springs, and then you just have to wait for one of those tiny sparkly pooped eggs to appear under your butt. You might get lucky and find there are people there already, or you may need to go with a friend. I’ve also heard that it may be possible to get bunnied in Dalaran, or in one of the lowbie villages and then hearth back, take the Caverns of Time portal, and run to Ungoro Crater. This is a longer option and you’ll be best not to afk on the way, and Aspect of the Cheetah/Pack should make you run faster too, but if you struggle it may be worth trying. As long as your bunny self can poop eggs in the Ungoro Hot Springs, you’re good to go.

To hide a Noblegarden Egg in the city listed for Noble Garden, Stormwind for Alliance, and Silvermoon for Horde, you have to buy one from a vendor and take it inside the city and hide it along the edges. Simple. The egg costs 5 chocolates and once placed, you can loot it like any other Brightly Coloured Egg.

Shake Your Bunny Maker cannot be completed by having a friend create level 1 alts of each race, because they have to be of 18th level! Yes, it’s a comment on what you think it is. No underage Bunny Making please. To complete this, you’ll need a bouquet of Spring Flowers and to find a female of each race, Horde and Alliance. You might as well complete your faction in your main cities, and it’s always fun watching the piles of people stalking the other faction’s section of Dalaran, waiting for the Female Dwarf or Orc to hearthstone in.

Desert Rose requires you to wear Spring Robes, which you can get from eggs or buy with chocolates. You have to use the robes in Silithus, Thousand Needles, the Badlands, Tanaris, and Desolace.

You will also need to kiss somebody who is wearing an Elegant Dress while you wear a Tuxedo Pants and Shirt, for Blushing Bride.

A list of everything you can buy, and their prices.

  • Noblegarden Egg – 5 Chocolates
  • Blossoming Branch – 10 Chocolates
  • Spring Flowers – 50 Chocolates
  • Spring Robes – 50 Chocolates
  • White Tuxedo Shirt – 25 Chocolates
  • Black Tuxedo Pants – 25 Chocolates
  • Elegant Dress – 50 Chocolates
  • Spring Circlet – 50 Chocolates
  • Spring Rabbit’s Foot – 100 Chocolates
  • Tome of Polymorph: Rabbit – 100 Chocolates [Mage only]

Other Guides

As usual, Wowhead and WoW.com have their festival guides for you to follow if you feel I’ve missed anything.

There is also another egg hunt going on in the blogosphere, as hosted by Angelya. There are 45 eggs placed around listed blogs, see if you can find mine.

Happy Chocolate Egg Day!

Beginners Guide to Professions

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This article is a part of Khi’s idea for a blogging event centred around the Lunar Festival, to learn from your Elders. Feel free to pop over to Blog Azeroth to check out the topic and join in too!

One of the first questions I remember asking when I first started playing WoW is, “Wtf is a Herbalism?” Yes, on my first character, I stumbled upon profession trainers in utter confusion, clicked learn and stumbled off, later changing to something else, and even later changing back again.. eventually settling on Mining and Jewelcrafting, purely because I wanted a character with those professions (Jewelcrafting was new and shiny at this point). These days, you may (or may not) know me to have way too many alts, but each one has different professions which compliment each other and enable me to make a decent earning from them, which is the great thing about professions. However, that is beside the point of this post. The questions I really want to answer are: What are professions? How do I choose which ones are best for me? Where do I start? Should I bother with First Aid/Cooking/Fishing?

Professions are basically a way to craft and gather. There are 3 gathering professions: Mining, Herbalism, Skinning. These are probably the easiest to level because all they take is a bit of time and commitment. However, they are best suited when paired with one of the crafting professions: Jewelcrafting, Blacksmithing, Engineering, Alchemy, Inscription, Leatherworking. There are 2 crafting professions which are the exception to the rule and don’t benefit from being paired with a gathering profession: Enchanting, Tailoring. These do suit each other quite well, though Tailoring is definitely best fitted for caster classes.

There are also secondary professions, which you can pick up alongside 2 of the professions listed above. These secondary professions are: First Aid, Cooking, Fishing. You should pick up and level First Aid as you level, you’ll pick up the cloth needed from mobs and instances. Bandages are awesome, especially for classes without healing abilities, or those moments when you’re at low health with zero mana. The higher level your bandages are, the more they heal you, so it is important to keep levelling your First Aid as you level. Cooking and Fishing are great professions to level together, they’re very useful, but not a necessity. Cooking allows you to cook food at a high level which gives you a certain buff, whether it’s extra spell power, attack power, a feast for the entire raid, it is very useful for raiding. This food is BoE so you can buy it from the Auction House if you don’t want to level Cooking. Fishing allows you to fish the reagents needed to make the food. If you’re interesting in achievements, you will want to level both of these as they help you to get a range of achievements, which can give you a title (Salty for Fishing, Chef for Cooking).

The best way to choose which professions to take is to firstly decide how much gold you mind spending. I’ve recently levelled Enchanting and Blacksmithing on my Death Knight and that was quite expensive. If I’d levelled Blacksmithing and Mining, the ores I mined would have made levelling Blacksmithing a little bit cheaper. Secondly, to consider that at end game, each profession gives a certain buff, so you may want to think about taking a profession with a good buff to your class. For example, Jewelcrafting is good for all classes as it gives 3 Jewelcrafting only gems with that stats you choose specific to your class, significantly higher than they would be on a normal gem. On the other hand, Enchanting gives you the ability to enchant your rings, which you otherwise wouldn’t be able to do.

If you’re looking for the easiest and cheapest way to level your professions, using a guide, I suggest you check out WoW Professions. They have some excellent profession guides.

Love is in the Air

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When the festival started up last night, midnight, server time, I ran around wondering what the heck I needed to do. I couldn’t find a guide as everything has been changed, and so I thought I’d throw a basic guide out there to help you get your achievements and whatnot. I’ve listed the max level Horde quests and such, though everything is basically the same, you can check here, or here (also includes a boss strategy), for any differences in level or faction.

Everything you need this year can be bought with Love Tokens from vendors in each major city, which you can get from doing the various daily quests (Crushing the Crown, giving bracelets to all 4 leaders, and spraying 10 people with perfume) or handing in Lovely Charm Bracelets at the vendors, the same way you change one type of Emblem to another. Lovely Charm Bracelets are made with Lovely Charms, which you can get from any enemy which you could gain honour or experience from. You can no longer receive them whilst in a vehicle.

Daily Quests

These will give you 5 tokens each, that’s 30 tokens a day purely from the dailies (I have only included the Horde Gift dailies at the moment, though it is the same for Alliance, 1 bracelet daily for each faction leader).

Achievements

You’re going to need for the meta:

  • Charming – 120 Lovely Charms to make 12 bracelets.
  • Flirt With Disaster – 1 Handful of Rose Petals, a pile of alcohol to get you completely smashed, and some perfume. Alliance.
  • Sweet Tooth – These 4 candies are obtained in Box of Chocolates, which you can buy for 10 tokens. The candies are tradeable too.
  • Shafted! – 10 Arrows will be another 10 tokens. Just shoot people who don’t already have a Peddlefeet following them around.
  • The Rocket’s Pink Glare – 10 Love Rockets is another 10 tokens. The easiest way to do this is to keybind the Rockets to 1 (or anything else if you prefer), find an empty patch of floor, and spam 1 and click the floor until you get the achievement.
  • Nation Of Adoration – You complete these by simply doing the 4 daily quests to give a Charm Bracelet to the 4 faction leaders. Alliance.
  • Fistful Of Love – There are 11 class/race combinations you need to shower with Rose Petals, plus the 1 Handful you need for Flirt With Disaster, so buy 15 Handful of Rose Petals for 6 tokens and hang around in Dalaran.
  • Be Mine! – A Bag of Candies costs 2 tokens, you can get lucky and get them all in one bag, or you might not. These candies are also tradeable.
  • Dangerous Love – For this you need to complete the holiday quest chain which for Horde is from the goblin near the Orgrimmar bank, you should find him on your minimap. For Alliance, it’s in Stormwind.
  • I Pitied The Fool – Buy Love Fools for 10 tokens each, and in each place listed, get it out, target it, and /pity. These are a one time use thing (as I found out in an ICC raid.. oops) so you will need 50 tokens for all 5, and make sure you are inside each area listed.
  • Lonely? – You need a Buttermilk Delight from the Box of Chocolates, in Dalaran, sit at a Picnic Basket with somebody (10 tokens, though you can use somebody else’s) and eat the Buttermilk Delight.
  • My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose – Loot a Bouquet of Ebon or Red roses from any of the following: Maiden of Grief in Halls of Stone, Prince Keleseth in Utgarde Keep, or Prince Taldaram in The Old Kingdom. Personally, I think that Utgarde Keep normal mode will be the easiest, you won’t need a full group for it.

Extras, not for the meta, but if you like achievements:

  • Tough Love – Kill the seasonal boss in Shadowfang Keep. As usual, it is a daily quest which you can summon once a day per character. You pick it up inside Shadowfang Keep, no pre-quest necessary.
  • Lovely Luck Is On Your Side – Gain a Lovely Black Dress from a Lovely Dress Box, which are 20 tokens each.
  • Perma-Peddle – Buy for 40 tokens.

Feat of Strength:

The Boss

Everybody loves a good seasonal boss.. Maybe not, but here is a list of his drops.