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Thursday, June 25, 2009

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.

12 comments:

livvie said...

picked mine up today! (i'm a vanity pet nut too.) had a fun run into dolanaar with a fellow belf when we realized the flame we needed for the achievement was actually a bit farther in than rut'theran village. almost as nice was the lovely (and sizable) stack of gold i gathered.

now i'm back to doing my netherwing dailies. cobalt drake, soon you will be mine! or was it onyx? i can never decide.

keep up the good work!

Anonymous said...

I dislike the levels 75 and 76, since they're that annoying lull between Grizzly Hills (love it) and Storm Peaks / flying mount at 77, so I decided to speed the process up and simultaneously give active leveling a break by taking my 75 mage to do the fire quests.

Did all of Eastern Kingdoms (extinguishing and honoring) and half of Kalimdor before I'd filled up the 7 or so bars to 76, and once I'd finished Kalimdor and Outland, I was about 6 bars into 76 - it was pretty nice.

That also included all 4 cities and two days of dailies, since once I worked out how to do them they turned out to be really easy... Netted about 250g (nice at level 75/6) and a whopping total of 587 blossoms, which I think will be going towards a pet.

I've also just potentially spoilt my next blog post :D

Joar said...

One thing that's worth noting is that, while they don't count toward the achievement, there are also flames outside of all the major cities / camps in Northrend that also provide xp, gold and blossoms. And similar to the "old world", goblin towns like K3 have one of each, right there.

TB said...

I picked up my Spirit of Summer this morning. Kind of neat to have a little red wisp following you around. In getting enough burning blossoms, I was able to complete the acheivements for honoring and extinguishing all of the flames.

Another comment on the festival - I was able to get the Torch Juggler acheivement with only 10 torches in my inventory. Five were quest rewards and I purchased another 5. I turned on the acheivement tracker so I could see the time (which starts when you catch the first torch you throw). I bound the torches to my 'W' key and started spamming and clicking like crazy. It took a few tries but I got it and saved some blossoms in the process.

Lastly, I discovered today that at level 80 the "Earthen Ring Elder" has two low-level quests, the one that sends you to coilfang for Ahune and the one that has you go to the Dark Portal and fight (rewards 10 blossoms).

I'm still hoping I can come up with enough blossoms for the full midsummer set after buying the pet. I've read Ahune is soloable by druids - so maybe I will give him a shot over the weekend.

This is mostly probably old news to folks that have done it in previous years but I thought I'd throw it out there anyway. I'll update if I can find enough blossoms to finish out the acheivements (which would be my first complete holiday :)

Darth Solo said...

@David, didn't know that, thanks for sharing.

@TB I don't know if I'll try the juggling. I probably will only if I manage to buy the complete Midsummer set and have Blossoms left.

TB said...

Well, I've managed to get all of the Midsummer achievements except the one for defeating Ahune. I gave him 2 shots over the weekend (apparently you can only summon him once per day). He got the best of me both times. The first time was more of a test run but I got too close to him before he submerged which resulted in me taking a ton of damage and then one of the ice spikes caught me and finished the job. The second time I accidentally blew Frenzied Regen at the beginning of the fight so I didn't have it when I needed it. I still think I could probably solo him but I might just wait until I can get a guildie to go finish it. I hate to fly all the way out there for one attempt and feel like I've wasted time if I fail. It wasn't a total loss though, after the first failure I went ahead and finished the dungeon and picked up the Slave Pens achievement.

Now about the blossoms. I finished honoring / desecrating all of the fires including Northrend and still needed a bunch of blossoms. I was able to honor the flame in Durotar a second time for 5 blossoms (I must have honored it the day Blizzard reset them all, but that was the only one I got). Then I did the 2 torch dailies and the striking back daily twice each which gave me enough to finish the set.

Darth Solo said...

@TB so what do you think... could a BM hunter or a Prot Pally solo Ahune?

TB said...

Having not yet finished it myself on my druid but being fairly certain I could, I'm going to tentatively say that both could probably solo it at 80. The challenge with the hunter would be avoiding the periodic ice spikes (assuming they spawn under pets as well - I'm not sure how that sort of mechanic usually works in dungeons). They cause a fair amount of damage, but as long as you could avoid those, a hunter would probably be able to DPS down the core a lot faster than a tank-specced druid. The adds (including the elite) don't do much damage at 80. A pally tank shouldn't have any more trouble with it than I'm having with my druid.

There's my completely un-tested two cents :)

TB said...

Check out the comments on wowhead, lots of good stuff there...

http://www.wowhead.com/?npc=25740#comments:0

Darth Solo said...

OK, I've read those comments and the conclusion is that it's not worth solo-int ATM. Maybe later when I'm 100...

TB said...

Last post on this subject I promise. I gave Ahune a third valiant solo effort yesterday and once again he spanked me. This time I had him down to around 75K after 3 cycles. I am not going to attempt it again. I asked last night if there were any guildies who wanted to go and three of us 80s went and summoned him twice. The first time we killed him the 2nd time he submerged. The second time we killed him during the first submerge. It was cake with a group of three. Unfortunately the pet didn't drop either time.

My advice - if you want this achievement, find a couple of 80s to go with you. Everyone wants the pet and it only takes 5-10 minutes to kill him. You can have him down and be back to whatever you were doing in 15 minutes.

Darth Solo said...

Oh jeez... 75K... You are obviously right. I was hoping that since it's a BC dungeon, he would be soloable. Apparently not. Unfortunately I have to leave for a few days on vacation and when I get back the event will be over.