Blog (Mostly Toy Box Post) Status

After starting to work on putting together a fully compiled list of toys and how to retrieve them in-game, I made a realization part way through that particular post's development.. It's going to be HUGE.

So I'm chopping it into parts, alphabetized parts, to help with the post size. Once all of the parts are finished separately, I will compile them back together into a single post again so that they'll be easier to navigate on a larger scale.

I figure it'd be better for me to push them out as I finish them off by section instead of waiting for a huge post to be finished off instead. Luckily for you, it won't be much longer before that entire post is finished, but I was getting fed up with the time it was taking.

Also, Love is in the Air starts next week, so that UPDATED guide will be pushed on day one so that you can get around to get all of your fancy new toys, trinkets, and maybe a pink rocket with zebra plush. Who knows?

Third Time's A Charm

With Warlords of Draenor a month away from being released, and with some new features coming right along with it, I've decided to take it upon myself to try this whole blogging thing again.

We have statements from Blues confirming that the holidays are going to be getting some love this time around, and from the datamined information that's been brought to the surface, it looks to be almost all of them are getting something new or something reworked. This is exciting news for players that enjoy taking part in the Holiday events, whether just for the achievements or for the celebration itself.

This also means that everything guide that I've written over the course of the past.. Four years? Is going to be void with all of the new things coming out. And that's FANTASTIC! That gives me a blank slate to work with on every single Holiday!

I'm also going to be branching out and making guides for other things as well, not limited to.. The new Toy Box feature, getting all of your Tabards in a row, maybe some Brawler's Guild tips & tricks, some mount guides, etc, etc. As well as a re-imagining of Kutira's Journal. I also might start posting the character biographies that I've thought up for some/most of my toons over time.

Stick around folks. I'm back in the saddle again. This time with a little bit of determination.

GAH

I've been lax in my updates lately and I apologize for that. I've already skipped two holidays and have put little to no work into the guide for the next two holidays (Pilgrim's Bounty and Feast of Winter Veil), but I'm hoping to put in enough time on my day's off to actually get the previous two guides done as well as get the new two guides up as well. I doubt I'll have either of them done at the beginning of either holiday, but I'm pushing to have them done before the holidays are over.

I've got a few bits left of the Brewfest guide to complete and then I can put that guide up, as well as the post guide to my completions. I need to do the Hallow's End one still as well, but that one won't be too difficult to pull together. The Day of the Dead guide should go up shortly after that, even though it's had a little bit of changes made to it (that pet is finally permanent!), but nothing that should take more than a few minutes to throw together.

I also have two more posts in the works that are little different from my normal kinds of posts. One is about the information released at Blizzcon about Warlords of Draenor, while the other is something completely different altogether that kinda ties into my other guides a little. I might put that one on hold though until I've done a little more in-game work with what it's related to, we'll have to wait and see on that one.

I'm also starting work on a League of Legends blog. I'll be sure to edit this post to include a link to it once I'm ready to show it off. It's not ready yet and I don't want to start sending people over there until I have something to show off. It's a pretty special kind of blog and I'm hoping that the ideas I spew in words over there are interesting and fun for people to think about it. It's going to be pretty cool. Stay tuned!

Pirate's Day '13

Pirate's Day was originally introduced into the game back in 2008, to commemorate International Talk Like  A Pirate Day, or ITLAPD. This holiday always lands on September 19th, as that's the real date of the out-of-game holiday.

The holiday itself is short and sweet. It only lasts a day, it only has one achievement, and you really only have to do a single thing. Since there is so little to do for this holiday, I'm going to attempt to fill this blog post with other trivial information so that it lasts longer than a couple paragraphs.

First off, no. I'm not going to type this up in Pirate-ese. That's not happening. I don't celebrate this parodic holiday, so I'm not going to participate, even with the written word. Now that that's done..

Your one and only destination for this holiday is quite obvious.. We're going to Booty Bay!

When you enter Booty Bay, point yourself toward the building housing the bank and land on the roof. During Pirate's Day, the roof will be covered in Dread Crew who will be launching fireworks, but they aren't your target. You'll looking for Dread Captain DeMeza, the Scourge of the South Seas.

When you speak with DeMeza, you have the option to have a drink with her. Once selected, you'll receive the Dread Corsair buff and be transformed into a pirate. This buff persists through death, mounting up, and while logged out, but it does not persist through shapeshifting.. Sorry druids. There are some other strange instances where the buff will randomly remove itself, but since the holiday is only a day long, I don't have the time to test them all out and get back to you before it's all over. If you lose the buff at any time, you can just talk to the commoners in capital cities for a 1 hour replacement. No need to head back to Booty Bay.

There are three other named NPCs nearby. Let's talk about them before I throw the only achievement for this holiday up here and bring this blog post to a close..

First Mate Hapana is DeMeza's first mate, as his name suggests, with his assault parrot, Nyuni. He can be interacted with, but he only shoos you away to talk to DeMeza, so he's not very social. He offers no other dialogue options or buffs. An interesting thing to note is that he apparently has a tattoo on one arm with the word "MAGATHA" in a heart. Hapana Grimtotem? A past love of Magatha Grimtotem? The world will never know..

Cap'n Slappy is the in-game representation of one of the men behind the ITLAPD, Mark Summers. The date for ITLAPD was picked so that Summers could easily remember the date, which was his ex-wife's birthday. He informs you of how he and Chumbucket created the holiday, but DeMeza took off with it.

Ol' Chumbucket is the in-game representation of the other man behind ITALPD, John Baur. Baur has appeared on the television show Wife Swap, as well as an episode of Jeopardy!. He tells that today belongs to DeMeza and her crew and looking like a pirate is only half the celebration, talking like one is the other.

As of now, there is currently no plans to implement anything new to this holiday, so here's your one and only achievement!

The Captain's Booty: Head to Booty Bay and share a drink with Dread Captain DeMeza during the Pirate's Day celebration.

Harvest Festival '13

Here's another holiday that I've never actually written about in the many years that I've (barely) been running this blog. The Harvest Festival! This holiday was originally the anniversary of the US stress test in 2004. It was not implemented for 2005, but it returned in 2006 as the in-game representation of Canada's Thanksgiving, the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, or the Korean Chuseok. The 2013 Harvest Festival falls between September 12th through the 20th.

Unique to the Harvest Festival is the exclusion of any achievements. There is no other in-game holiday event that has no achievements. Even the holidays that are a day, or two days, long have achievements associated with them.

The Harvest Festival only has a single quest to do, for either faction.

1. Honoring A Hero: Speak to Wagner Hammerstrike outside of the gates of Ironforge. The point of this quest is to head north to the Western Plaguelands and place Uther's Tribute (different for each race) at Uther's Tomb, west of Chillwind Camp. The immediate quest reward is For the Light!. This item is not soulbound, so it can be traded amongst your alts, to the Horde side, or even traded on the Auction House.
• Humans leave flowers.
• Dwarves leave a stein.
• Gnomes leave a gizmo.
• Night Elves leave a candle.
• Draenei leave a relic.
• Worgens currently leave the same as Night Elves.
• Pandaren will be updated as soon as this information becomes available.

1. Honoring A Hero: Speak to Javnir Nashak outside of the gates of Orgrimmar. The point of this quest is to head north into Ashenvale and place Grom's Tribute (different for each race) at the Monument to Grom Hellscream, inside Demonfall Canyon. The immediate quest reward is The Horde's Hellscream. This item is not soulbound, so it can be traded amongst your alts, to the Alliance side, or even traded on the Auction House.
• Orcs leave a bottle.
• Trolls leave a candle.
• Tauren leave a totem.
• Forsaken leave a black candle.
• Blood Elves leave a vase.
• Goblin tribute is currently unknown and will be updated.
• Pandaren tribute will be added as soon as this information becomes available.

• Bounty of the Harvest: This reward will come in the mail a few days following your completion of the quest. This item conjures up 4 Harvest Bread on a 12 hour cooldown. I have yet to find an exact time frame for its delivery, but I will continue to look and update with that information.

With that simple quest out of the way, the only other things to keep your interest in this holiday comes from the multiple banquet tables laid out in front of both Ironforge and Orgrimmar. These tables have four different items on them that the player has the opportunity to react with to gain consumables; Harvest Boar, Harvest Fish, Harvest Fruit, and Harvest Nectar.

1. The boar yields Harvest Boar.
2. The fish-platter yields Harvest Fish.
3. The fruit bowl yields Harvest Fruit.
4. The mug yields Harvest Nectar.

Once you've collected your mass amounts of good and paid your tributes to your faction's hero, there's only one thing left to do. Buy fireworks! Wagner and Javnir are your vendors, and their prices are susceptible to faction discounts.

• Midsummer Ground Flower - 1 Silver
• Blue Firework - 20 Copper
• Green Firework - 20 Copper
• Red Firework - 20 Copper
• Red Streaks Firework - 50 Copper
• Yellow Rose Firework - 40 Copper

Since there are no bosses, mounts, pets, or achievements to be had from the Harvest Festival, that's the end of this guide. Hope you have fun and enjoy your time stuffing your face on all of the bounties of the harvest. Also, there will be no follow-up to this holiday like there normally is, as I have nothing to follow-up on. Do you REALLY want to know whether I went out and collected a book a bunch of times and got a cornucopia on a bunch of toons? Come on now, be serious.

Astounding

It's been almost two months since I've made a blog post and.. Nope, not sorry. Can you blame me? Between the beginning of July and the middle of September, there are no in-game holidays!

Here's a little update though that I'm sure you'll be pleased to hear..

I've got the next few holiday guides already set up and waiting for when their respective holidays roll around. So there won't be any waiting this time. I'm going to release each guide probably a day or two in advance of the holiday, so that'll give you guys time to read up and see if there's anything new added into the game with the available information. Once the holidays go live in-game, I'll be sure to make any necessary updates to each guide as soon as possible so that the information stays current and you aren't left in the dust!

Sadly though, I don't have any game time, so I won't be able to actively participate in any of the coming holidays (unless of course I get time between now and then.)

I did make a trial account on a different e-mail address so I can still mess around in-game, but not being able to get past level 20 makes it almost impossible to get anything done in relation to the holidays.. Or anything else really.

Well, there's your update. I'm not dead. Be astounded.

Post-MFF'13

Since there were little to no changes, again, made to this holiday, I was about to completely skip out on doing any of the event again. Near the end of the holiday though, I knocked out the Pandarian flames on Paragon, Railene, and Laviana. I used Xardion to gather up the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor flames to push him into his next level, and then logged on to the Horde Paladin and cleared out all of the bonfires but Vash'jir, Deepholm, and Pandaria due to level restrictions and blocks, she also gained 3 levels off of it, so it was a pretty solid undertaking with awesome rewards!

Paragon: Flame Warden of '09. Honored and Desecrated Northrend and Cataclysm in '12. Honored and Desecrated Pandaria in '13.

Railene: Flame Warden of '09. Honored and Desecrated Northrend and Cataclysm in '12. Honored and Desecrated Pandaria in '13.

Laviana: Flame Warden of '11. Honored and Desecrated Northrend and Cataclysm in '12. Honored and Desecrated Pandaria in '13.

Sollexi: Flame Warden of '12. Did not Honor or Desecrate Pandaria. 100% possibility of completion in '14.

Xardion: Flame Warden of '11. Did not Honor or Desecrate Pandaria. 100% possibility of completion in '14.

Arcia: Flame Warden of '10. Honored and Desecrated Northrend and Cataclysm in '12. Did not Honor or Desecrate Pandaria. 100% possibility of completion in '14.

Monk: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 90-95% possibility of completion in '14.

Shaman: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 75-80% possibility of completion in '14.

Hunter: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 25-50% possibility of completion in '14.

Warrior: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 85-90% possibility of completion in '14.

Warlock: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 15-25% possibility of completion in '14.

Warrior II: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 15-25% possibility of completion in '14.

Paladin: Unofficial Flame Warden of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 15-25% possibility of completion in '14.

Horde Paladin: Unofficial Flame Keeper of '09. Did not Honor Cataclysm, Honor or Desecrate Pandaria, or ice Ahune due to level restrictions. 95% possibility of completion in '14.

Horde Warrior: Unofficial Flame Keeper of '09. No progress made on any achievements. 75-80% possibility of completion in '14.