Monday, June 22, 2009

Fire Festival - maybe?

Well I was all set to jump into the fray when the fire festival hit last sunday and one of my chars was looking forward to getting a nice chunk of fireblooms for that illustrious fire pet they have on offer for 350 odd blossoms.

So I go out into the wild only to find out that I was unable to complete any of it due to having done it last year. *mutters*

Apparantly you're only allowed to celebrate summer once in a character's lifetime so while most of my characters are stuck in springtime or even winter I resigned to having to do one of my other characters first. Hopefully after 2.5 billion angry GM tickets blizzard will figure out that not all is right with the world.

Eventually I noted they did indeed post a message on the startup screen indicating they are aware of the issue so I look forward to seeing a day's worth of work go down the crapper because blizzard had to 'revert' to fix the issue (I know I know, I'm jaded).

In the end I did manage to get my mage all the achievements except slaying ahune on my magus which I had to pass up because it was getting late and I have a distinct lack of guildies I can force to help me with him.

Having run through most of the achievements behold a list of random tips for the poor lone hordie:

1. When doing some desecration in kalimdor and you have to hit azuremyst, blood isle and teldrassil as a horde note that you can take the ferry from auberdine (darkshore). You need to run straight through the town into a building before you can hit the docks so best thing to do is to wait in the water till you see the ship coming and then make a mad dash for it. (from the top of my head->) The left boat takes you to stormwind, the boat straight through goes to azuremyst and the boat to the right goes to Teldrassil. Note that azuremyst and teldrassil have multiple fires to be desecrated... don't forget one or you'll kick yourself repeatedly.

2. Most alliance are not interested in you whether you desecrate fires or not. The ones you have to watch for are usually level 80 with a really really bored look on their face (death knights mostly).

3. When stealing flames from enemy capitols note your chat text. You will just get the lootable dropped in your pack after clicking on the fire. If you find yourself clicking on the damn fire a dozen times without receiving an item check your pack: odds are you have it already (don't forget to right click it to activate the quest).

4. Save your blossoms for the fire festival outfit! you need the outfit to do one of the achievements and the darned thing is soulbound eating up some 400 blossoms at that. (reader comment: you can get a refund for the shoulders [and shoulders only] and get your blossoms back if you return them in time).

5. Once you have the blossoms for 40 torches you can do the torch tossing in dalaran achievement by yourself (although you really only need 10-20ish torches for the achievement). Simply bind the torches to a key and then click on yourself so you catch your own torches. The cooldown on the torches is almost nil so 40 torches in 15 secs should be cake. (reader comment: you can recycle torches between alts [although I just tossed mine to a guildie]).

6. You can steal torches from other players when they juggle (with storebought torches) by standing right on top of them (usually slightly in front). They won't like you for it, but if you're desperate for torches...

7. If you can't seem to get the torch catching right because you can't see the torch when you throw it use the following macro which allows you to zoom out further: /console CameraDistanceMaxFactor 5 or SetCVar("maxCameraDistance", 60)
If it doesn't work twiddle with the numbers... (reader comment: You can also watch the shadow of the torch you are throwing, if you stay 1 or 2 steps ahead of it you should be able to catch it that way too. OP comment: Note that undercity isn't a good spot to do this due to ground obscurities, ORG works quite well in this regard if it's not too busy).

8. Always walk sideways when in crab disguise... otherwise you're pretty obviously not getting into the whole crab thing properly.

9. Do your exploration achievements at the same time as putting out / honoring fires, you're there anyway.

10. You only need to do the fires in azeroth and outland for the achievements... anything more is just extra xp / blossoms

11. If you do torch tossing and torch catching on all your characters every day it'll net you a solid chunk of xp for literally no effort (both quests take maybe 5 mins per char).


And there we have it, the fire festival in a nutshell. Despite the rather annoying bug that doesn't allow my warlock to participate I'd say one of the more fun events in wow.

Happy juggling, let me know if you need some more info and I'll see what I can conjure up.

10 comments:

LarĂ­sa said...

Actually I don't think you need 40 torched for the achievment. You need like 10 or so. You recycle them catching them so you'll be fine with much fewer.

I bought 40 though... nice to be able to give away and have a few in store for playing with in wintertime...

Captain The First said...

Aye is true. At some speed I didn't need any more than 20... of course standing in dalaran is just asking for people to come and try snagging your torches away so you might as well spend the extra blooms on some spare torches.
But you are very much correct... my primary point was that you can juggle with yourself which didn't seem obvious considering how a lot of things eat globals.

Dorgol said...

#8 is, quite honestly, pure awesome.

Silip said...

1. LEFT goes to SW, Middle goes to Azuremist, RIGHT goes to Teldrassil
There's a road post in the middle intersection for you to double check.

4. You can refund the shoulders and get 100 blossoms back

5. you only need 10 or 15. The torches are BOE so you can get them on an alt and send it to your main.

Captain The First said...

Hah, thanks for your continueing insights. I've updated the post for the most part.

Happy juggling.

Anonymous said...

When doing the daily torch juggling quest, rather than zooming out really far, I've found that watching the shadow of the torch instead is a lot easier. Make sure to stay a step or two ahead of the shadow to account for lag, and you should be able to catch it every time, provided you don't get mixed up with somebody else tossing at the same time.

Captain The First said...

@anonymous: Good point.

I ought to add that when you catch a torch you can pretty much do a 180 before you throw the torch again because it's bound to fly away from where you were facing before.

In any event I updated the post so thanks for your addition.

Silip said...

> (reader comment: you can get a refund for the dress stuff and get your blossoms back if you return them in time).

This is not correct - for some reason only known to Blizzard - ONLY the shoulders are refundable for their cost - 100 blossoms. The shoes and dress isn't.

Captain The First said...

@silip:

fixed, that's what I get for assuming :)

Thanks for the follow up

KT said...

But it was so fun jumping up and down as a crab! I wish I had video of when I did it and there were like 6 crabs all leaping around the camp. Those Twilight Cultists are pretty stupid if they didn't notice that something was up.