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.
Patch 1.0.5 commentary
12 years ago
7 comments:
Sinister Calling is the only one that can put an end to your efforts for a 310% mount. Being purely "luck" based, you really have to sit and wait... and hope...
My main is one lucky drop away from being done with the holiday. I was finally able to win the Sinister Squashling yesterday, so all I'm missing now is the helm. Ironically my druid has gotten the Sinister Calling achievement from trick-or-treating alone. >.< If only I could transfer them between toons...
One quick suggestion for you on the GNERD Rage achievement - one of the easiests ways that I found to get it was to do Wintergrasp. You generally rack up a fairly large volume of Honorable Kills in a single battle just because of the overall level of activity. As a hunter, particularly on an offensive battle, you can also be pretty helpful knocking out the tower cannons from range. Or, just wait till someone pulls a siege out and ride along with them as a gunner blasting anything that moves. In any case, as long as you refresh the GNERDs if you die, it should be more than possible to get it in a single battle - two at the most.
Yeah its pretty annoying that luck alone is needed to ultimately get the overall achievement. Last year I skipped the HH daily so I never had the opportunity for the helm or squashling to drop (or the mount). This year my chances have increased with drops from the hourly trick or treat and dousing the fire quest and I can solo HH in SM which further increases my chances. But it still comes down to luck and so few days... I'm glad they removed the masks from the achievement though. Getting all of them would be a nightmare.
With regards to G.N.E.R.D rage: I'm certainly not a serious PvPer, so take this advice with a grain of salt. Regardless, I strongly suggest that you try to do it in Strand. The reason is, that even though on offense, good strategy & tactics dictate you may die a bit (depending on gear, luck, and how good you, your side, and the other side all are), on defense, the main thing is to make sure the guns are manned, and if the gate you are at falls, to fall back. As long as the other gate at your level hasn't fallen so they can circle around behind you, you should be relatively unlikely to die, but you should be able to rack up plenty of HKs.
On the other hand, I actually got most of mine in Warsong, and just played very conservatively/defensively as tree. :P As a hunter, if you can get a healer to join up w/ you to defend the base, you can hold off a fairly impressive assault and help your team win by defending the flag.
With regards to David's advice, it's probably solid, but since there's a relatively small window of time for both queuing and participating in Wintergrasp, I'd rather go ahead and knock out the achievement in a constantly running BG, but that's me.
Yeah WG is the way to go. If you are defending, hop on a wall gun and just blast away. There is another acheivement for killing so many people using that gun too. If you don't get it after 1 battle, it shouldn't take too much more to get it in a 2nd battle.
If you don't PvP then I would probably stay away from the regular BGs. I tried them out on my lower level mage for the first time the other day and they are definately not kind to the newbie. I'd stick with WG personally.
Guys, keep an eye out for my next post on the GNERDS achievement and how I did it very easily.
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