The OverAchiever: Guide to Love is in the Air 2011
Love is in the Air, a completely revamped holiday as of 2010, will be back in 2011 from Feb. 6 through Feb. 20 (you'll need to check your own server for exact start times). After many tweaks to the holiday, it's definitely one of the less annoying and RNG-riddled outings from among the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been meta. Before you ask -- yep, it's required if you're still on the warpath for your Violet Proto-Drake. The finished holiday meta will also reward the title the Love Fool.
I've revamped our 2010 guide past the cut. Our 2010 FAQ on the holiday should still be accurate if you're completely new to the whole deal; otherwise, we'll be dealing with the holiday achievements here.
Be Mine!
The Bag of Heart Candies can be purchased for the low price of two Love Tokens at any Lovely Merchant (located in major cities). If you don't get the specific candies that you need from one bag, just buy another, and keep doing so until you've nabbed them all. While it's theoretically possible to get all eight candies you need from just one bag, the odds of this happening aren't high. Most players wind up buying three or four bags to get everything they need.
Dangerous Love
This is a short but fun quest line that will involve running around Stormwind (for the Alliance) or Orgrimmar (for the Horde) on a goblin NPC's bidding to investigate the recent goings-on of the Crown Chemical Company. If you don't start off in either city, an NPC in any other major city (located around that city's designated "holiday area") will direct you there via Uncommon Scents (Alliance) or Uncommon Scents (Horde). Quest progression after that is as follows:
Something Stinks (Alliance) or Something Stinks (Horde)
Pilfering Perfume (Alliance) or Pilfering Perfume (Horde)
Fireworks at the Gilded Rose (Alliance) or Snivel's Sweetheart (Horde)
Hot On The Trail (Alliance) or Hot On The Trail (Horde)
A Friendly Chat... (Alliance) or A Friendly Chat... (Horde)
After finishing the quest line, the goblin will offer you a daily quest to kill Crown Chemical Company NPCs and disable one of their chemical vats, but where the quest sends you will depend on your character's level. Once you've finished the daily for the first time, you'll get your achievement.
Fistful of Love
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Getting a Handful of Rose Petals is easy enough; they're sold in quantities of five for two Love Tokens at any Lovely Vendor, and you'll need 11 Handfuls to nail all the race/class combinations listed for the achievement (so bank on spending six Love Tokens). The extras won't go to waste; you'll need one for Flirt With Disaster (see below), and you can always use the three extras to annoy your friends.
The real trouble is going to be finding the less common race/class combinations, and on most servers it's the effort to find a troll rogue that'll drive you up a wall. As with all the holiday achievements concerned with tracking down race/class combinations, Fistful of Love is probably going to be more difficult in Cataclysm now that there's no neutral city for both factions to occupy. Your best bet is probably to hang around a popular area for dailies or questing (e.g., the Temple of Earth in Deepholm) -- or, failing that, flying directly to an enemy city and hoping for the best.
Flirt With Disaster (Alliance) or Flirt With Disaster (Horde)
You'll need another Handful of Rose Petals for this one, in addition to some booze and perfume (the different varieties of which are sold by Love Vendors for one Token each).
If you're Alliance, toss on some Perfume, buy enough alcohol to get "completely smashed," and stumble your way over to Sraaz, the gnomish pie vendor who paths around the Great Forge in Ironforge.
If you're Horde, toss on some Perfume, and BEFORE you go to Undercity for this achievement, make sure you stop and buy alcohol elsewhere. Curiously enough, there doesn't seem to be any alcohol available in Undercity; you'll have to bring some with you, fly to Tarren Mill, or -- because the Lunar Festival is still on -- walk upstairs to the Lunar Festival area to purchase some. Jeremiah Payson, the cockroach vendor, is located under the bank steps.
Charming
Once you speak to Kwee Q. Peddlefeet in any major city for the daily quest concerning a Lovely Charm Bracelet gift for various faction leaders, he'll give you a Lovely Charm Collector's Kit. This will enable you to collect Lovely Charms from any non-gray mob you kill (or any non-gray mobs that dies to another player while you're grouped), and you can make one Lovely Charm Bracelet for each 10 Lovely Charms you collect. Consequently, you'll need 120 Lovely Charms total for this achievement, which -- if you don't go out farming for them on their own -- amounts to three days' worth of dailies giving bracelets to faction leaders.
I Pitied the Fool
Bleh. I'm not a fan of the PvP achievements, but oh well. Fortunately, doing this tends to be more travel-intensive than difficult. The Love Fool can be purchased from any Lovely Vendor for 10 Love Tokens, but the catch is that the item's a one-use only deal. As a result, you'll need to shell out 50 Love Tokens in order to get this done, but it's as simple as dropping a Fool, targeting it, and typing /pity in your chat box (or, for convenience's sake, creating a macro to do the same).
If you're doing this achievement at the same time as a few buddies or guildies, multiple players can use the same Fool, so you don't necessarily have to pay for all of them yourself. Have a friend drop a Fool, everyone around can /pity it, then you can move on to the next spot.
The locations are as follows:
Arathi Basin blacksmith Make sure you see the "Blacksmith" zone title flash on your screen before you drop this, but this is easy -- you should be able to drop it just about anywhere on the central island in AB and get credit.
Battle Ring of Gurubashi Arena The Gurubashi Arena is located in Stranglethorn Vale north up the road from Booty Bay. You'll need to enter and drop down from the spectator stands into the ring below in order to get credit for this. Bear in mind that the battle ring is a free-for-all PvP area -- you can be attacked and killed by any player in the game here, even those of your own faction.
Culling of Stratholme You do need to be inside the instance. Whether it's normal or heroic doesn't matter, but you have to be at least level 75 to enter the normal version (and 80, obviously, for heroic).
Naxxramas As with Culling of Stratholme, you need to be inside Naxx to get credit for this (where doesn't matter). If you're not planning on running Naxx, group up with a buddy or two, convert the group to a raid, zone in, drop the Love Fool, /pity it, and be on your merry way.
Wintergrasp Location doesn't seem to matter here; as long as you're in the WIntergrasp zone, you'll get credit.
