The OverAchiever: Completing the Lunar Festival Achievements [Updated x2]
Every week The Overachiever gives advice, walkthroughs and guides on completing your latest Achievement obsession.
Saturday marks the beginning of this year's Lunar Festival, an in-game event celebrating the real life celebration of the Lunar New Year. With plenty of quests, party favors and, of course, shiny clothes, you'll have many chances to complete the meta-Achievement To Honor One's Elders. Not only will this result in the title "Elder", but you'll be another step closer to a Violet Proto-Drake,
Having experienced this event twice, the big question is what's new this year? Though all of the Achievements are new, they cover older quests. The only difference is the brand new Elders of Northrend Achievement and the additional elders added to the Elders of Dungeons Achievement.
After the jump, an overview of how to complete To Honor One's Elders
UPDATE: Looks like the minimum level needed to complete the meta-Achievement is 80 as one of the Elders can only be found in the Heroic version of the Wrath instance Gundrak. According to this comment on WoWHead, you must kill Moorabi to open the secret tunnel to the Heroic-only boss Eck. Standing in the same room as Eck is Elder Ohanzee. Also, Omen has been verified as a level 80 raid mob this year.
UPDATE v2: Updated a few directions and added link to player list of other Achievements to grab while pursuing coins.
City Activities
In each major city in Azeroth, revelers will appear in glowing lights surrounded by fireworks. Find an NPC there with a quest exclamation over their head. They will start you on the quest that will give you your teleport to Moonglade. At the same time you can do these two Achievements.
Frenzied Firecracker Achievement
Purchase 10 Festival Firecrackers from the Lunar Festival Vendors (or buy them from an Engineer), drag those firecrackers to your spell bar and spam fire 10 of them in 30 seconds. You have to be quick to do it all in time considering the cooldown on the firecrackers. Don't worry, they're cheap to buy.
The Rocket's Red Glare
Similar to the Firecracker Achievement, buy Red Rocket Clusters off the vendors and shoot off 10 in 25 seconds. The difference here is you need a cluster launcher which can be found next to the vendors. Don't buy the little ones on the vendor, they won't work for this Achievement.
Turn in the quest, get your scroll, stand in the moonlight and teleport to Moonglade.
Moonglade Madness
Once there, take the road north around the east side of lake in to the small village. There are docks overlooking the lake where you will find the NPC Valadar Starsong. He gives quests that lead to the following Achievements:
Lunar Festival Finery
Purchase any one of 6 festival outfits from Valadar himself for 5 Coins of Ancestry. Coins covered more below.
Elune's Blessing
Valadar will give you a quest to take down Omen, the level 80 two-headed dog that can be summoned in the lake at Moonglade. You can help take him down if there is a raid in progress even if you are not in the raid. When he goes down, just step into the red circle that appears around him to complete the quest. Watch out for his AE Starfall ability during the fight. If you're looking for a detailed strat, try WoWWiki's guide to Omen (and don't forget your candle.)
This Achievement may or may not be retroactive, so if you have your Lantern reward from previous years, you may still have to participate in the raid again this year for credit. I had my Lantern, didn't have the Achievement retroactively and had to destroy my Lantern to be able to complete the quest and get the Achievement.
Coins Across Azeroth
The Coins of Ancestry are the currency in this event and you can get one Coin from each of the 75 Elders in the game simply by talking to them. You will also work you way through the following chain of Achievements:
There used to be exactly 50 Elders to find making this fairly hard to compete given that some Elders are nestled deep in the other factions cities and at the bottom of difficult dungeons, but with the addition of Northrend there are now 75, making it easier to complete this part.
Though you only need 50 Coins to complete this Achievement, you are going to need all 75 to finish the following Elder Achievements to complete the meta-Achievement:
So where to find these ghosts of battles past?
WoWWiki has an excellent walkthrough of the pre-Wrath 50 Coins for both Alliance and Horde.(ProTip: mouse over the coordinates listed to see pop up map of location]
Wow-Pro has a detailed walkthrough for the Horde including maps showing Elder location in hard to find areas.
Exact locations of the new 25 Northrend Elders can be found in this forum thread, but has not been verified.
Because the Elders of Dungeons Achievement includes Heroic Gundrak, your character will have to be at least 80 to attain the meta-Achievement. But it may be worth it for lower level characters to find what Elders they can as each comes with their own reputation reward. And, of course, heading into the opposing faction's capitals is going to be tough (except for stealthing classes). Why not form a raid and also knock out one of these Achievements while you're at it:
Also, the /hug player blog has an excellent list of other Achievements you can complete while after all the Coins including many older dungeon Achievements.
AddOns R Us
The TourGuide AddOn now has a Lunar Festival mod (Curse/WoW Interface) that will direct you to the pre-Wrath Elders based on the WoW Wiki coordinates. Not all the information is there, but enough to get you through some rough spots.
That should be enough to get you the Elder title and a few more Achievements under your belt. If you come across any more resources I can add to this list, leave the link in the comments below. Don't forget that you can also spend your Coins on items during the Festival like fireworks and Festival Dumplings (tip: try eating one of those and drinking at the same time for super mana regen while sitting.)
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