Saturday 24 January 2009

Kam's guide to Honouring One's Elders

The Lunar Festival starts on Sunday 14th February and ends on the 7th of March. Kam will be there attempting to get the To Honor One's Elders achievement. Let's take a look at what's involved.

Elders of Eastern Kingdoms
Elders of Kalimdor
Elders of Northrend
Easy enough, just ride around talking to Elders. Getting around Northrend will be harder the further away from 80 you are (stating the obvious). WoWWiki has a really good walk through for Azeroth including instances.

Elders of the Dungeons
For the old world dungeons this will just be a few trips inside. There are some Wrath instances which won't be soloable (maybe if you can stealth):
Elder Nurgen in Azjol-Nerub
Elder Jarten in Utgarde Keep
Elder Ohanzee in Gundrak
Elder Chogan'gada in Utgarde Pinnacle
Elder Igasho in The Nexus
Elder Kilias in Drak'Theron
Elder Yurauk in the Halls of Stone

My cunning tactic is to reuse heroic instances which have been cleared. As far as I know the trash doesn't respawn and the instances are saved for the day, so if any of the above instances are done, Kam could in theory get into them to talk to the Elder. I think this requires whoever cleared the instance to be the party leader; when you step into the instance in their party, you get into their cleared instance.

Failing that an in-guild Elder visiting party might need arranging. This is the trickiest part of the achievement because of the time required, if you have to go in PUGs and clear all the instances. Happily the Dungeon Finder will help with this.

Here is a walkthrough I put together on a recent trip.

Elders of the Alliance
For Horde this will be tricky, especially due to the City Defender achievement encouraging players to defend. A quest turn-in macro has been posted in the comments on Wowhead which should help a lot - you need to right click the Elder to open up the dialog, then hit the macro key to run the macro.

Elders of the Horde
Easy for Kam. Same applies as above for Alliance ;-)

50 Coins of Ancestry
There were 50 Elders on Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms so this one will happen when visiting Elders for the other achievements.

The Rocket's Red Glare
Frenzied Firecracker
Easy, the rockets and firecrackers are sold in the capital cities with no supply restrictions.

Elune's Blessing
You have to complete the quest Elune's Blessing, given in Moonglade. This looks ok because there should be enough PUG raids to Omen, plus he shouldn't be too hard. Unless Blizzard buff him! According to comments on Wowhead, you just need to stand in the aura of the dead Omen, so even if another raid or faction have killed him you can get this done. Joining whatever raid is formed in Moonglade is the most sensible approach, so there should only be 1 raid going per faction, or lurking around for the kill if the opposing faction are raiding him.

Lunar Festival Finery
Easy, only need 5 coins to buy a piece of clothing. Kam already has the achievement because we had to spend those coins on something!

Working toward Ambassador
According to WoWWiki, each quest at an Elder gives +75 reputation to all faction cities - there are 100 Elders so that's 7500 reputation toward Ambassador of the Horde or Ambassador of the Alliance, which is very good.

Tour Guide
I followed the Lunar Festival Tour Guide this year and it was very good. It covers all the Elders in classic Azeroth, Northrend and has good instructions on the Elders in the classic instances.

Conclusion
In conclusion the only tricky part of this achievement is the Wrath dungeon visits. The other issue is that, according to the in game calendar, the Love Is In The Air festival starts on the 7th of February, just before the Lunar Festival starts. So late February is going to be busy for achievement seekers.

Image courtesy of Blizzard.

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