Midsummer!

The Midsummer Fire Festival is here and Wowhead have a nice guide up. It looks mostly the same as last year and as I did it all on Kam for the meta-meta achievement, I shall not be bothering this year.

But wait, what is this? Lord Ahune has been updated with some new item level 232 loot. The The Frost Lord's War Cloak has some very nice stats (ie no armor pen) and is an upgrade over Shawl of the Shattered Giant from Ulduar 10 or Accursed Crawling Cape from Forge Of Souls normal.

It is no ICC 10 cloak nor will it match a Recovered Scarlet Onslaught Cape for 50 frost. However, if you are not raiding, or are doing 10 mans and haven't got lucky on Marrowgar, or have better things to spend Frost on (like 4 piece Tier 10 say), or just running a physical DPS melee alt, The Frost Lord's War Cloak is definitely worth checking out. I certainly will be doing for my scabby alt.

Secondly, when queueing for the Lord Ahune encounter using the Dungeon Finder, you will now also get 2 Emblems of Frost for the first kill of the day, on top of the 2 you can get by running the Daily Dungeon (to be confirmed). Thus it seems we can all get 4 frost per day for a few weeks while the festival is on, or at least get the usual 2 by killing Ahune rather than running yet another boring Heroic.

Lunar Festival Is In The Air

Although the Love thing is still going, this week I shall be mostly grinding the Lunar Festival, which is now on at the same time! Crazy Lunar calendars...

I already posted a guide to the Lunar Festival and luckily it has not changed. The one addition I'm making this year is to slavishly follow the Lunar Festival Tour Guide mod.

I managed to grind out the Love stuff last week, leaving me clear to visit a billion Elders for the next 3 weeks on me Druid, and maybe collect some Triumph along the way in those Heroics.

Love Is In The Air

The Love Is In The Air festival started last Sunday, and as a nod to the over-commercialized nature of these things, this year the Crown Chemical Co have taken over the festival in Azeroth.

It's all different but strangely familiar
The festival has also utterly changed from last year, before you had to get gift boxes from guards and NPCs and get random drops in them, now you do the dailies on offer and get Love Tokens which act as currency for the items you actually need to complete the various achievements. You can even buy the very rare Peddlefeet pet with tokens, thus making it very not-rare any more.

New bossen
But, there is more! This year as well as ensuring Arugal Must Die (again), you can visit Shadowfang Keep for a crack at the new seasonal boss. This is a somewhat underwhelming opportunity, as to actually kill said boss you're probably best being in Tier 9, but they drop the magnificent loot of Tier 8 level necklaces. Great! I got a necklace for off-spec. However, there is always a silver lining to any cloud, and this is in the shape of some very suggestive sounding loot and a unique mount and pet. Unfortunately the drop rates for the mount and pet are very bad and only the seriously committed would farm for them, I certainly won't be bothering. Good luck if you do.

Anything for completer-finishers?
So what if you did all the achievements last year? Kam did, and the only new achievement now available is Tough Love which requires you to kill the new boss. Luckily I have a Druid alt I'll be doing the lot on again.

Alting it up
A few things are evident which make alting the festival quite nice. Firstly the bad drop rates are a thing of the past, merely killing mobs with the Kit in your inventory is sufficient. Running a few heroics seems to be the way to go, since Blizzard fixed the cunning vehicle missions not to give Charms any more.

Secondly, the candies, chocolates, and Charm Bracelets are not soul bound. Therefore you can go and gather Charm Bracelets on your main, then trade them across to your alt using a trusted third party. Unfortunately you can't post conjured items.

Any spare chocolates or candies can also be traded, or put into a guild bank for your alts to use.

Guides
Rather than write a guide, I shall just link to a few I found:
ShamWoW
WoW.com
Fluid Druid

Tis the season!

Winter's Veil is upon us and there are achievements to be had. Most of which I already did last year during my intense grind for the Violet Protodrake, but still. I posted a guide a few years back about this, but there have been a few changes made by Blizzard to help us out:

• With the introduction of the Tome of Cold Weather Flight, Bros is a lot easier for Horde. Now you just need to be level 68, have the Tome and you can fly over to the airship to mistletoe Brother Keltan.
  
• The Ogrila Bomb Them Again quest no longer requires you to complete the long pre-req chain requiring 5 people. Now just go to Ogrila, start with The Crystals and do the Our Boy Wants To Be A Skyguard Ranger chain to get Bomb Them Again!
  
• Crashin' and Thrashin' is no longer part of the meta. Hopefully this means we will get a new gift!
  
• BB King is a new achievement for points and fun!
  

I've already started doing these on my druid alt because I think I have achievement-itis!

Guide to Pilgrim's Bounty achievements

Given this one was not even on the PTR, I thought it would be good to post a guide up as I discover how to do the various achievements. Image courtesy of Hey Paul.

Taking place from 22nd November to 28th November, Pilgrim's Bounty will feature feasting tables just outside the capital cities where you can eat and share food with others. Each table gets a number of seats, one per food (Sweet Potatoes, Pie, Stuffing, Chutney & Turkey), which act like vehicles (single occupancy only). The controls allow you to eat the food of that seat, or pass the food to others seated. When others pass some food to you, the icon for that food is lit on your action bar and you can clicky to eat the food.

There are 5 daily quests from the feasting areas outside the capital cities, these are to bring 20 of a certain food to the quest giver. The rewards are a choice of pieces of Pilgrim clothing, or a Turkey Shooter which can be used to turn people into turkeys.

Completing the meta achievement rewards the title "Pilgrim" and a Plump Turkey pet. It is not part of the Long Strange meta meta achievement, but I wouldn't be surprised if at some point it gets added.

Achievements
FOOD FIGHT!
Sit at a table, select a player and hit the share option (number 1 usually). This should bounce the food off them rather than pass it.

Pilgrim's Paunch (Alliance)
You need to get the Spirit of Sharing buff from all the cities. This is a buff you get when you gain the Stuffed buff for Cranberries, Pie, Stuffing, Sweet Potatoes and Turkey. Sit at each seat on a table and feed yourself the food for that seat 5 times, then swap seats, repeat until you have all the food buffs. Or wait for some kind soul to pass you the other foods, at which point you will be able to eat them.

You can right click to cancel this buff, so go ahead and visit all the city tables in turn to do this one.

Pilgrim's Progress
Complete each of the dailies from the city areas. Most of the food required can be cooked up apart from "Can't Get Enough Turkey" which requires Wild Turkey, you will need to kill the Wild Turkeys which roam Tirisfal and Elwynn forest and loot them. However if you're doing Turkinator you will end up with a lot of turkey anyway.

With the exception of the turkey daily, the rest cunningly require ingredients which are not purchased from the vendor in the quest giver's city. For example, She Says Potato in Stormwind requires 20 Candied Sweet Potatoes, which need Teldrassil Sweet Potato... which are bought in Darnassus. So my tip is to buy 40 of the city-specific ingredients when you pass through every city, because you will need to do the dailies at least twice.

Also, there is a quest chain which needs 5 more of each food, so grab another 5, but do not cook them up as the quests require that you cook the food while you have the quest in your log.

Terokkar Turkey Time
Complete 2 dailies and get the Pilgrim's Hat and either a Pilgrim's Dress, Robe, or Attire. Then kill the Talon King. I'll probably drag a group through Sethekk Halls for this, but I may be able to solo it anyway.

Turkey Lurkey
Shoot rogues with the Turkey Shooter. This is gotten from completing a daily, one per daily, so you will need to do 8 dailies to get all the rogues. If you shoot one which is already a turkey I hear you don't get credit, so be careful out there. Also there is quite a long 2 sec cast time on the Shooter, so watch out for mobile rogues!

Personally I plan on camping Dalaran for this one. If all else fails, keep a look out for specifically-created level 1 rogues in the starter zones while you are touring friendly & enemy cities!

Now We're Cookin'
The vendor sells a big recipe book which contains all 5 recipes needed for this. You need cooking 280 to do this to cook up Slow Roasted Turkey, the ingredients for which are bought from vendors and the Wild Turkeys. The ingredients for the other recipes are sold on vendors outside the various capitals.

It also seems that these 5 recipes will let you level cooking to 280 by purely purchasing the ingredients, so any alts without cooking will benefit from this holiday, see Kaliope's for a good guide.

Pilgrim's Peril (Alliance)
Sneak or run to the table in the Alliance/Horde city and sit down, then probably die. You of course need to be wearing a piece of the Pilgrim clothes, anything except the hat is allowed. Best done in the wee small hours of the morning.

Sharing is Caring
Pass the dishes at a feasting table, by sitting in each chair and pressing the pass button (usually 1), so long as someone else is sat at the table.

The Turkinator
Kill enough Wild Turkeys in Tirisfal or Elwynn to get the buff... 40 kills are needed and you get 30 seconds after killing a turkey to kill another one. This will be tough if everyone else is hunting them, so try in quiet hours. I read a tip that Venomweb Vale in Tirisfal is good, it turned out to be quite a good spot, with no one else there.

With this one I found that if I ran up to a turkey, then spotted the next one to kill, THEN killed the turkey, I could always be on my way to another turkey. You get 30 seconds after a kill to travel to another one then find the next victim, so I got 10-20 seconds standing around to look for a turkey before I had to kill the one I was stood next to. Basically try to always have another turkey in your sights. They respawn too slow to stay in the same area so you need to move around a lot and do a route which doesn't cover old ground.

BBB also points out you can grab some Tracker Snacks and track those little beasts on the minimap. Or cook a load and sell them on the AH, you know whatever you feel like doing :)

This is the pita achievement for this holiday season for sure!

Other stuff
The Fully stuffed buff is good for rep grinding, and I have read claims that the cooking recipes will get you from 1 to 280 cooking just with gold to buy the ingredients, Kaliope has a good guide.

After this season I'll have done all the achievement holidays, so Kam will go cold turkey on them. Ho ho ho.

Is Love Is In the Air 2010 two weeks?

The latest build on the PTR has some interesting entries in the in-game calendar. Currently on live Love Is In The Air for 2010 is 11th - 16th February, an intense 6 days to grind loads of achievements.

On the 3.3 PTR Love Is In The Air for 2010 is 7th - 20th February, a much more reasonable 14 days. If this is intentional, then Blizzard have made a frequently requested change to lengthen the holiday, making it far easier to grind all the various achievements needed. But wait, there's more!

On live the Lunar Festival is 12th February - 3rd March, a frankly boring 20 days, but on the PTR it is 14th - 27th February, 14 days. Are the holidays being normalised to 14 days? These two were always a serious grindfest, no sooner was the Love Is In The Air grind over than we had to hit a hundred Elders in and out of instances. Now we get 1 week to do Love Is In The Air alone, 1 week overlapped with Lunar Festival to finish up and start on Elders, then 1 week for the Lunar Festival alone.

This is a really awesome change! Unfortunately, Children's Week is still a week :( Screen shot of the PTR calendar below!

I could say that this mount was rare...

But yesterday everyone at Krasus' landing seemed to have one! Still, I am glad the crazy seasonal achievements grind is finally over. Apart from the Pilgrim's Bounty. And any alts I might decide to try the meta-meta for.

For interest, here is the mail I got the beast in. Apparently Alexstrasza can't spell!

Good luck out there achievement hunters!

Pilgrim event starts November 8th, not part of meta

As part of my fiddling around in 3.2, I noticed that the new festival, Pilgrim's Bounty, had been added to the achievements list. Lo, in the in-game calendar it starts on Sunday the 8th of November and ends 1 week later in the evening of Saturday 14th.



The event looks like fun, however whats most important is, that for now, it is not part of the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta achievement.



The only other noteworthy thing is the Day of the Dead event appears to be on November 1st lasting until the end of the 2nd, and has a little achievement associated with it.

They don't want us to be in their Battleground and neither do we

The School of Hard Knocks achievement has sent PvE players flooding into battlegrounds in, one suspects, record numbers. However, I don't think any PvPers are happy about this. All over the battle-sphere, players are exhibiting odd behaviour, some of which is utterly counter to how you should play a battleground.

Alterac Valleys start with mass rushes to the enemy bunkers and towers, graveyards which are normally captured are ignored. Once a tower is captured many players simply leave the fight, those left behind must try to secure victory. Bunkers change hands as if players are letting the enemy capture them, then recapturing them, then repeating in a loop until a serious player puts a stop to it.

In the fields of Warsong Gulch, players defend their flag rooms viciously, awaiting any enemy foolish enough to enter. However, they do not attack until the enemy siezes their flag - then they bring their wrath down upon said enemy with furious anger. Normally ranged classes flock around the stricken opponent like frenzied piranhas, desperately trying to click the fallen flag. Attempts to capture the enemy flag seem to have been forgotten.

Players swarm in the center of the Eye of the Storm, ignoring all sage wisdom to ignore the flag and hold the towers. When the flag is placed, no one is attacking the enemy who also gather - they are all channeling a capture spell. When one lone runner breaks off, the rest of his team spit and curse his name, then wait for the next flag to appear.

Finally in Arathi Basin, positions which could once be entrusted to a defender or two are changing hands with alarming regularity, almost as if the defender is hiding, letting their enemies capture the flag before swooping in and recapturing it. The beginning of AB sees the players possessed with a supernatural desire to capture the Farm, or the Stables, or the Blacksmith.

You can observe one commonality between the proponents of such strange behaviour - they are all persued by a small orphan boy or girl, goading them on with promises of Violet Proto-drakes.

I can only imagine what serious PvPers think of all this - I reckon they would like all the holiday PvEers to get out of the battlegrounds or play properly. Unfortunately I think us PvEers would prefer not to be in the battlegrounds either, but a force more powerful than PvPers or PvEers is at work here - the overmaster of achievements.

Kam's not-guide to Children's Week

Having got the Noblegarden achievements over and done with, I now turn my attention to that most dreaded of festivals, the Children's Week. This one looks quite simple apart from the dread PvP achievement, so instead of a big guide, here is my To Do list:

Practise the PvP objectives. Hah I've been too busy gathering Noblegarden eggs.
Be able to do a UP run during the week. I probably have a group to do this from the guild.
Farm mats for the cooking dailies for 5 days - 30 chilled meat and 30 rhino meat. Done.
Gather northern eggs, small eggs, mageroyal and cakes, tasty cupcakes. Got 1 of each food Kam needs to eat for Bad Example.

How is your personal achievement progress going? Or are you not bovvered? :)

Noblegardening

Noblegarden starts today and so Kam hit Mulgore at the bright-and-early time of 7:30am to seek out some eggs. Thankfully Bloodhoof Village was fairly quiet so it didn't take long to gather some eggs. In fact due to a distracted wife, I had managed to gather the 180 chocolates I think I need by midday. Unfortunately I was wrong and actually you need to eat 100 chocolates for the meta!

I have already posted a guide to PTR Noblegarden which seems to be valid for the Live one. Some things I will add is don't hand in the starter quest which asks for 10 chocolates for a basket - the temporary basket works fine. Also the tuxedo clothes are not soulbound, so you can buy them or get them from guildies if you just want to complete the meta-achievement.

My top tip for egg gathering is to camp the above spot in Silvermoon, where the rabbit is. The eggs spawn inside the cart, next to the two posts and two spawn in front of the cart. All can be looted by sitting where the rabbit is.

I haven't actually spent the chocolates yet, due to getting Real Life ganked, but I just have another 100 or so to grind. Then just grinding for females of various races, planting flowers, etc is left.

Kam's guide to the Noblegarden

I have been messing around testing Noblegarden on the 3.1 Public Test Realms, so here is what I've discovered thus far. This is also valid for 3.3.3 as I have run through the achievements again on an alt.

This post also contains massive spoilers for the Noblegarden event, so if you want to discover it yourself, don't keep reading!

The plot
Magical eggs are appearing all over the starter towns, bearing chocolates! A feeder quest is available from at least Silvermoon city, sending you to any of Falconwing Square, Brill, Razor Hill or Bloodhoof Village. Alliance will obviously be sent to your very own starter towns. There you will find a Noblegarden merchant who will offer you a quest to get your very own Noblegarden basket for 10 chocolates, and a mage who offers a daily to collect 20 egg shells, one shell per egg. The merchant also sells a variety of goods, in exchange for Noblegarden chocolates.

The mechanics
Brightly painted eggs will spawn all over the starter towns, mostly underneath carts, next to buildings and inside bushes. You just run up to them, right click one, and loot the Noblegarden Chocolate from inside. Now on an empty PTR, I have managed to loot around 50 eggs in 30 minutes. On a live realm, with 1/8 of the realm population in each, this rate will take a nosedive, and the festival seems very much designed around a Bun-Fight (or Smash-and-Grab if you prefer!).

Occasionally I have found the Spring Robes (1/40 chance) and Spring Flowers (1/40 chance) in an egg. Also, sometimes you will be turned into a Noblegarden rabbit, which renders you unable to cast spells, take a taxi or mount. This buff can be removed by right clicking, and happened once every 30 eggs or so. I have also looted the pet rabbit from an egg.

Once you complete the starter quest, you get your own Noblegarden basket which increases run speed by 60% for 10 seconds, with a 10 second cooldown. In other words, spammable. On the PTR, this stacked with the ghost wolf form speed increase. I suspect you will need this basket to get to eggs quickly. However you can also try camping the eggs on a busy day.

I tried wandering outside the starter zone towns to see if I could spot more eggs, but I could not. Tellingly the Noblegarden basket will not work outside the starter towns, it displays an error message saying it only works where Noblegarden eggs are found. They are only found in the starter towns.

The loots
The Noblegarden merchant sells a variety of items for Noblegarden chocolates, which are obtained by looting eggs. A noteworthy item is the Spring Rabbit's Foot for 100 chocs, which is a non combat rabbit pet.

The achievements
It's no secret that Noblegarden is now part of the meta achievement, so let's take a look at what is involved. * means not part of the meta.



I Found One!
Loot an egg. Easy. Part of the meta.

Chocolate Lover.
Eat 100 chocolates, looted from eggs. Part of the meta.

Sunday's Finest.*
Loot a tuxedo shirt or pants from an egg. The garb can be gotten from eggs, which is handy because the tuxedo shirt and pants from Noblegarden are not the same as the tailored ones. Not part of the meta.

Dressed for the Occasion.*
Loot a Elegant dress from an egg. The chance of this is lower than the other clothes from what I've seen. Not part of the meta.

Hard Boiled.
Lay an egg in Golakka Springs during Noblegarden. Eh? So when you are turned into a rabbit, if you stand stationary, you will sometimes lay a little brightly coloured egg. It's not lootable but its funny, especially as it rolls down inclines. The Blossoming Branch will put a rabbit costume on a party member, which means you can get to Ungoro, be turned into a rabbit, and lay your egg. Once you have been turned into a rabbit from looting an egg, you cannot cast, mount or take a taxi. So your only way to get to Ungoro is running, taking a zep or an orb of translocation (or maybe a summon). You do get 60 minutes on the rabbit buff so it is doable, and you can still melee attack mobs. Part of the meta.

Spring Fling.
Find your pet rabbit another one to love in each of the starter towns, where the eggs are spawning. This then requires you to collect 100 chocolates, or get lucky with an egg which according to warcraftpets.com, can contain a rabbit. Then I think you just need to have the rabbit out and find someone else with one, which shouldn't be too hard. Part of the meta.

Noble Garden.
Hide an egg in Silvermoon city. You can buy a hideable egg from the vendor for 5 chocolates. Part of the meta.

Shake Your Bunny-Maker.
Is this holiday themed around Playboy? Use your Spring Flowers to place rabbit ears on females of all races and factions. Once you have some Spring Flowers from either an egg, or for 50 chocolates, you target the victim and use the flowers. There is a 5 minute cooldown on this and the female in question must be at least level 18... so no creating level 1s on test accounts! You can use the Spring Flowers to put ears onto yourself, should your toon be female. Or you want rabbit ears. Overachiever has added this to its trackable tooltips. Part of the meta.

Desert Rose.
Use the Spring Robes you get in an egg, or purchase for 50 chocolates, when equipped and they will plant a flower in the ground. You need to plant a flower in the deserts of The Badlands, Silithus, Thousand Needles, Desolace and Tanaris. There is a mere 1 minute cooldown on the robes, so just a bit of travelling is needed for this one. Part of the meta.

Blushing Bride.
Ok and now onto the weirdest achievement of the whole damn lot. You need to wear the noblegarden-specific tuxedo pants and shirt (the tailored ones are different and will not work) and /kiss someone who is wearing the Elegant Dress. Whatever floats your boat Blizzard... This means you personally need to discover the tuxedo items, or pay a total of 50 chocolates for them, but also someone needs to discover or pay 50 chocolates for the dress. Top pulling tip: equip the dress and hang out in capitals or starter towns for guaranteed "action"! Part of the meta.

Thoughts.
Thus far Noblegarden is shaping up to be a fluffy holiday for the bunny-obsessed among us, as well as hardcore (casual) achievement seekers.

The achievements Spring Fling, Shake Your Bunny-Maker, Desert Rose and Blushing Bride don't specify they have to be done during Noblegarden, the items needed are not time limited, so maybe they can be done later. This will help a great deal. There are 110 achievement points on offer here, including 10 from the meta, so a good chance to bump up your score.

Assuming no luck with the tuxedo and pet from eggs, you will need a total of 255 chocolates. I got very lucky and got the robes, flowers, clothes and pet from eggs, so only 105 eggs were needed. If you don't get the Spring robes and flowers, make that 355 chocolates. That's the same number of eggs to loot. It's hard to estimate just how long it will take to get even 180 chocolates - with the spawn rates on the PTR it could take about 90 minutes, but that's with no competition, and you won't have that luxury on live. H3ll no.

Links for other information
World Of Raids Noblegarden guide
WoW Insider coverage
WotLK wiki achievements
WoWWiki Noblegarden page

A gallery follows:

Achievement points - Get down with the sickness

This post brought to you by Disturbed - Down With The Sickness. Now my Metal Up Your WoW moment is over with...

Recently I find myself wandering the entire of Azeroth and Outlands on the most strange of missions. Not quests, no, nothing so straightforward. It started when I got around 2900 achievement points - they sit there, uselessly displaying their count to me, taunting me with their closeness to the nice, round number of 3000. A sudden compulsion came over me, surely there was a few bits and bobs Kam could knock off to make a hundred or so points?

Heroics are a bit of a non-starter on a raid night in our guild, however I was lucky to get into an OS run and cheese the Besting the Black Dragonflight one. Everyone else in the raid was like "wth you don't have this yet?". Then after persuading the raid leading bear with some Shaman callings (we can persuade more than just the elements to do our bidding!), the Construct Quarter of Naxx was pwned, and we managed to Knock the Widow out, possibly my finest raid achievement yet.

Among such noble achievements are the vague dross of Pest Control, various explorations and It's Happy Hour Somewhere. These are really just topping up that achievement point score, but look now, its at 3000! I could stop here, but the compulsion to do silly things is still strong, and I want to catch some slippery rogue, even though he continues to gain points! At least I'm miles ahead of the raid leading bear (slacker) and our elemental shaman.

Why is this compulsion to collect achievement points with me? Shouldn't I just go grind some Northrend rep instead, or finish up some more quests in Sholazar? Then I could get 5 Exalted Reputations or go Into the Basin and see The Snows of Northrend. Oh dear, there's no escaping those points, I think I really am down with the sickness.

Noblegarden extended to one week

According to the in-game calendar on the PTR, Noblegarden begins Sunday April 12th and ends Saturday April 18th! This is very awesome because it means we don't need to grind all the Noblegarden quests on just one day. There are also a bunch of new achievements for Noblegarden and the Argent Tournament, amusingly one for getting a Dual Talent Specialization. The most expensive 10 achievement points I've got so far.

Noblegarden is still not part of the It's Been a Long Strange Journey meta achievement, but according to this post, it will be added. Let's hope the 3.1 patch is on live before April 12th then.

Some images:

Awesome sauce

After days and days of logging in semi-hourly, finally Kam has his own Perma-Peddle. I'm so happy I can stop trying to log in all hours of the day, now that my obsessive drive for pets has been satisfied. I think in total I must have opened around 20 Pledges of Adoration.

For the Love, for the Horde, the grind is over... until Children's Week!

Hail to the Chef

Ok, so after saying that Kam wouldn't get his Chef title, I managed to cook up a load of Snapper Extreme which pushed him to cooking 450. Then after doing a few quests in Nesingwary's Camp, Some Make Lemonade, Some Make Liquor became available, which ended with The Taste Test. One visit to a washed up mage in the Dalaran sewers later and Kam had the recipe for Kungaloosh.

Then all that was needed was to do the Dalaran cooking daily again, and again... and again. Kam had 72 Dalaran Cooking awards in total once he had learnt and cooked all the recipes for The Northrend Gourmet. Overall the Chef achievement was a reasonable one, not relying on the Random Number Generator, but just pure persistence.

What next? Chef de Cuisine and 100 Dalaran Cooking Awards remain in the cooking category. The mod Ackis Recipe List will help show which cooking recipes Kam is missing, and the 100 awards will come in time. I think I might actually go and do some quests in Zul'Drak instead. For Argent Crusade reputation of course ;)

Red red roses, not roses of purest black

It appears that the Bouquet of Ebon Roses showers the target with black roses, so you cannot use it to complete Fistful of Love or Flirt With Disaster. However, you can still grab the 11 petals from doing two Gift Giving and completing Zinge's Assessment/Morgan's Discovery. This news makes the Valentine's meta-achievement that little bit more tricky.

Kam's guide to being a Fool For Love

I pity the fool who tries for this achievement. According to the in-game calendar the Love is in the Air event is from Wednesday February 11th to Monday the 16th (at 6am so probably not Monday). Let's check it out:

Heartmender
20 people need to have their hearts broken and you need to mend them first. Finding such people is not difficult - they will tend to congregate around the inn waiting to be mended. You may get 2-4 bracelets per box, thus will need to grind 5 adoration boxes min.

Flirt With Disaster
The petals are from adoration boxes so you need 1 box minimum. However it is claimed on Wowhead that the bouquet also works. If you have one from last year, good good. Otherwise they are no longer available.

Nearest and Dearest
Just follow the quest starting Dangerous Love. It is worth noting the reward for the quest Zinge's Assessment on the chain is a Box of Chocolates, which will therefore complete Sweet Tooth. The quest also gives 1 rose petal which is very useful.

Nation of Adoration
Buy perfume and a love token, wander round till a citizen has a heart above their head. Hand them the love token, hope for a Gift of Adoration. Get one for each city to do this. So you need to grind 3 adoration boxes for this. It is worth noting these only come from vendors and the like, NOT guards. Don't chat up city guards hoping to do this achievement!

Perma-Peddle
Thank the earthmother this is no longer part of the achievement. Basically you need to grind for adoration boxes each hour and hope this rare drop is in one. One for serious pet collectors only.

Be Mine!
Candy comes from a bag with 10 charges in the Adoration box again. You use it and it has a chance to turn into one of the sweets. So you will need 1 adoration box minimum.

I Pitied The Fool
Use /pity on a Love Fool in 5 locations, all ok apart from maybe AB but a macro will help to do it quickly. Love Fools come from adoration boxes in stacks of 3-5. Grind 1 adoration box minimum. You may only need 2, for the instances, and get lucky with the rest if you can /pity someone elses Fool, which it should work.

Shafted!
You need 10 silver shafted arrows, contained in Gifts and Pledges of Adoration in stacks of 5. So you will need 2 adoration boxes minimum.

Lonely?
Camp Dalaran for someone with a basket out, or maybe hope to get one in a Gift of Adoration from citizens.

The Rocket's Pink Glare
The rockets are contained in Gifts and Pledges of Adoration - in stacks of 5 so you will need 2 minimum.

Fistful of Love
You need 10 rose petals needed, so thats 2 adoration boxes. Or you can use the red bouquet, only if you got it last year.

Sweet Tooth
You need chocolates from box of chocs from adoration. However if you do the seasonal quest, you get a box of chocolates along the way. So do the quest!

My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose
You need a bouquet during the festival, which drops from various bosses. Unfortunately blizzard have said they have removed the old red bouquet which used to drop from old world bosses in Strat, Scholo, DM etc. You actually need to go kill a boss in a Northrend instance, the easiest of which is the Prince in Utguard Keep. He drops the bouquet 100% of the time on normal difficulty. The Elder Brethren achievements task force hitting UK on the opening day and all were able to get their bouquet.

Minimizing Adoration boxes
I think I worked out you need quite a few adoration boxes at a minimum, but if you had the red bouquet from last year, grats, you need 2 less boxes (as you don't need 10 petals in 2 boxes). 1 box may also contain more than one sort of item, so we may get lucky and get say a Petal and Arrow in one box.

But we can get some items from the Horde gift collection quest, handed in next to the faction leaders. The quest reward is a choice of 5 arrows, 5 love rockets or 5 rose petals. I won't repeat the contents of Wowhead so go read that for a good summary of what you need.

The totals are 15 gifts of friendship and 30 pledges of friendship minimum for a collection (assuming no duplicates). This is just gold cost because you can get friendship boxes while adored. If you get heartbroken you need to be friendshipped by someone which should be ok. So there is no time limit to getting these city gifts apart from a lot of gold and travelling. And maybe being heartbroken.

So how many items do we need from the quest? 10 arrows, 10 rockets, 10 petals. Thats then 6 horde gift collections = 90 gifts of friendship min (citizens) and 180 pledges of friendship min (guards).

Costs
10 love tokens cost 10 copper. 10 perfume bottle charges cost 1 silver, with a 2 min cooldown but the buff lasts 60 minutes. The costs involved are basically trivial, not even 1 gold maximum.

Worse case scenario
We are up against the Random Number Generator, so the worst case scenario is you never get any of a certain item and just get all Love Rockets, for instance. The more boxes of adoration you can get the better basically.

Tips
If you have the red rose bouquet from last year, use it to do Fistful of Love.

Doing the Horde Gift giving is advisable to get arrows and love rockets to cut down on the amount of real time needed to wait for adoration boxes. However I would advise you get the Horde Gift Collection, don't hand it in, then save it until you know which items you are short of.

Do the quest Dangerous Love, the reward has a box of chocolates and a rose petal so you can do Sweet Tooth and Flirt With Disaster easily.

The Overachiever mod will add a tooltip for the petals achievement when you hover a player, showing red when you need to petal them. But you may need to enable the tooltip in the options.

The first 3 adoration boxes you get should be from citizens or vendor NPCs of TB, UC and Org, for Nation of Adoration. After that it doesn't matter, although guards are far more numerous than citizens.

Shamans should hearth in Dalaran or Shattrath, then you can Astral Recall every 15 minutes and take a portal to whichever city you need gifts from. Of course Mages have it really easy here...

The faction of an NPC determines which sort of gift you get. You can give a love token to a tauren NPC in Orgrimmar and receive a Thunder Bluff box.

Once they have given a gift, an NPC won't have a floating heart for around 1-2 minutes, then it reappears. This means you can camp a specific NPC and keep on getting gifts from them. This is especially handy for non-guards, who are far less numerous than guards.

Gifts, petals and love rockets are not Bind on Pickup. So you can try to get adoration boxes with all your alts, then trade them with a guildie who can trade them back to your main.

Start early!

Other guides
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Get your loving over with fast

Ah so many other, more sleazy, titles I could have chosen. The Love Is In The Air festival starts Wednesday 11th at 6am according to the in-game calendar, but only lasts until Monday at 6am, ie Sunday night for non-night owls.

From my brief look at what's involved, this one will be a major grindfest and no mistake. I've worked out I need 8 gifts or pledges of adoration minimum, if each box serves up a different gift, which will take 8 hourly flirting attempts. Of course the chances of each box having a different item in it are pretty damn small, so I fully expect 3 or 4 times that many boxes will be needed. The short timescale won't help either. Come Wednesday, The Grind Is Truly In The Air.

Finally, a use for Sentry Totem!

When one is hanging around Dalaran for books for Higher Learning and you only have 2 or 3 books left, the Sentry Totem comes into its own! Dropping it in front of a book spawn location leaves our searching Shaman free to sit next another one, or run between 2 locations instead of 3. Once you find "trash" books at a few locations, the number which need checking rapidly diminish and the good old Sentry Totem will let you AFK next to one spawn point and monitor another one, running between the two every 5 minutes when Sentry expires.

This is the only use I've found for Sentry Totem thus far, and now I wish it lasted more than 5 minutes.