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Phat Loot Phriday: "Brew of the Month" Club Membership Form
Ashenvale creaked as impossibly large trees swayed in the afternoon breeze. The Worgen druid glanced appreciatively at the forest as he rejoined Throgg and Lolegolas. "The innkeep was surprisingly pudgy for a Night Elf," the druid said. "But he did say a pair of Tauren passed through here recently. He didn't talk to them much, but he did have something interesting to say." Throgg had started packing his kodo as soon as the druid had started talking. "Useful? Someplace to go?" "Not exactly," the druid said. He held out a small piece of paper to Lolegolas. The Blood Elf took the paper and grunted. "I see," the Elf said. "A Brewfest voucher. They were turned away from the Orc's party and are on their way to Ironforge to participate." "The Tauren claimed they wanted to join the Beer of the Month Club," the druid explained. "Thing is, the Dwarves won't be any more interested in the Grimtotem than the Orcs. No Dwarf is going to mail a Grimtotem an interesting beer each month. It'd be sacrilege, worse than worshipping the Old Gods." Throgg leaped into his saddle. "Lying. The Grimtotem were using it as a cover story for why they're chasing the girl through Elf lands. We have a trail we can follow. It's time to ride like the win, fellows." %Gallery-96786%
Brewfest extended by two days
Hot off the forums comes word from Bornaak that Brewfest, that celebration of things like drinking, throwing mugs at invaders, and killing an unwashed Dark Iron Dwarf in hopes that he drops a kodo has been extended two days to October 5th. If, like me, you've been farming him for days only to pass the Kodo to your wife because, well, you love her and want her to be happy (and also you know you're doomed if you don't) then you'll celebrate additional chances to whack him in hopes of Kodo. Or deadly beer stein. Or maybe you just like doing Ram Riding, or got a late start on your tickets. Whatever the reason we can all celebrate the extension of this, our yearly excuse to go back to BRD and kill a dwarf to steal his lucky cha... er, I mean trinkets. Now get cracking, make every second of those two extra days count. Complete your Achievements, get your loots, whatever you need you have more time.
Breakfast Topic: It's Brewfest Time
Good Morning, and welcome to Brewfest, everyone! All aspiring Brewmasters, brush off your Ram riding skills and prepare for some fun. If you need a refresher on how to race those Rams, check out our Ram racing tips from last year. This will be one of your main sources of tokens, so you'll want to make sure you're good at it. For a quick rundown of how to get each achievement, you can read up on our Overachiever's guide to the 2009 Brewfest.
August's Brew of the Month: Draenic Pale Ale
It's a new month, which means it's time for a new brew. August's Brew of the Month is Draenic Pale Ale, the final brew in the series of 12 brews. We've seen every last one of them now, starting with Binary Brew, through Izzard's Ever Flavor and Blackrock Lager, and now we end with the Draenic Pale Ale.When you drink this brew, you'll start seeing pink elephants. It doesn't happen every time, but pretty close to it. More rarely, you'll get to ride a pink elephant as you see in the video above. It lasts about thirty seconds, which is a bit longer than the Parading Elephants that just follow you around. I don't know about you guys, but if a giant neon pink elephant appeared under me after drinking a beer, I'm pretty sure I would swear off alcohol for life. Seriously. Talk about psychological trauma.
July's Brew of the Month: Stranglethorn Brew
It's July 1st, which means you can head out to Nagrand and pick up your free gems the nearest mailbox and pick up this month's brew, assuming you have a Brew of the Month membership! This month we have the Stranglethorn Brew, which is certainly more interesting than the various "teehee you farted/burped/barfed/burped again" brews. Upon drinking the Stranglethorn Brew, you get a buff called Jungle Madness! Exclamation point included. It causes your character to hallucinate for awhile, and be attacked by spectral Jungle Gnomes. If you don't have a Brew of the Month membership, you can watch a video from Wowhead poster VBub that shows the brew in action at the end of this post. Just click the 'read more' link at the bottom. Assuming they don't change the brews for next year, our beertastic journey will be coming to an end pretty soon. There's only one brew left that we haven't seen, which is the Draenic Pale Ale. After that, we're back to the Binary Brew unless they decide to put out a whole new batch of 12 brews, and I somehow doubt that will happen. Is anybody else hoping the Draenic Pale Ale is truly epic, considering it marks the entire year we've been drinking these crazy things?
June's Brew of the Month: Blackrock Lager
It's the beginning of a new month, which means a new brew! This time around it's the Blackrock Lager! This is a hot hot hot beverage to kick off the summer season. Drinking the Lager sometimes procs something that sounds like it should be a Mage talent: Internal Combustion. While you have this buff (which lasts 5 minutes), your face gives off an eerie red glow like you're seeping fire out of every orifice. Except that one. And that one. Okay, you people are gross. Just the ones above the neck. After 5 minutes (or when you click off the buff), you get what you see in the image above. You belch a great load of fire! And that's it. Pretty straightforward. I always try to find little factoids about the various brews these are based on, but a lager is common enough that I don't think it's necessary or interesting to anybody but beer buffs. Instead, I'm going to point out how awesome some of the Blackrock/Dark Iron themed brews are. This one makes you belch fire, but there's also the Dark Iron Ale that you can use to get a pet from the Darkmoon Faire, and the Sulfuron Slammer which creative individuals use to break crowd control effects cast upon them in PvP. The best of the lot is the Dire Brew, which turns you into a Dark Iron Dwarf for an hour. Awesome? Yes, I think so. You can get all of them in Blackrock Depths, so go celebrate in the Grim Guzzler sometime this week!
May's Brew of the Month: Springtime Stout
It's a new month and the new brew is here! May's Brew of the Month is a very simple Springtime Stout with a familiar side effect. When you drink one of your drinks, you have a chance to proc the buff called 'Flower Child.' The buff only lasts ten seconds or so, and as you run around with the buff, flowers pop up underfoot. Herbalists, you've seen something like this before.I try to give little factoids on the real life brews some of these are named after (such as the fact that Pilsners shouldn't exist in Azeroth), but stouts aren't very exotic, overall! A stout is a very dark, very strong sort of ale, and seems just like the sort of thing Dwarves would be mailing out regularly. I don't know about that whole 'flower child' thing, though. Seems more like something Night Elves would do to their ale.
April's Brew of the Month: Metok's Bubble Bock
April's Brew of the Month has struck, and it's actually pretty fun. Sure, more jokes about bodily functions, but they're acceptable if they're entertaining! This month's definitely qualifies as entertaining. Metok's Bubble Bock is described as being light and uh, bubbly. I suppose you could've guessed that from the name.Upon drinking the Bubble Bock, now and then you will get a buff called Bloated. After five minutes (or after you click the buff off) your character will burp righteously, and a named Brew Bubble will spawn and wander around aimlessly for awhile before popping. You can target it, but you can't cast things such as Baby Spice on it, unfortunately. The bubble can also merge with other bubbles, so get some friends together and try to make a great big one!It's actually somewhat interesting that they chose to name this brew a Bock. A brew they describe as light and bubbly would actually be pretty dark, unless I've confused my beers somewhere. Bocks were often used and praised for their nutrient content, because compared to light brews, it could actually keep you fairly sated during fasts and period where high quality food was scarce. A bock was not the best choice for this particular brew! Again, though, I could be totally wrong. I don't even like most beer.
UPDATED: Brew of the Year removed from Brewmaster achievement on PTR
EDIT: Bornakk says that the achievement will be replaced in the meta achievement with one that requires you to simply sign up for the Brew of the Month Club. And for those who doubted my psychic powers: Noblegarden achievements are being added to Long, Strange Trip.Following the pattern of removing achievements that take a while to complete from the holiday meta-achievements, Blizzard yanked Brew of the Year from Brewmaster on the current 3.1 PTR. This means that anyone who was missing it now has yet another fair shake at getting their Violet Proto-Drake for completing all of the other holiday achievements for What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been. I'm pleased that players who missed that one achievement can still have a shot at the big prize, but man, there seems to be an awful lot of meta-achievement caving lately. It just creates the impression that complaining about something will get it changed, and I don't think that's what Blizzard wants players to believe.To be fair, it was physically impossible for Death Knights to get this achievement until sometime in 2010. This is a good change for them and I'm okay with that. And no, I'm not against Blizzard removing unfair achievements from reward-bearing metas. This was also the only achievement which was impossible to complete during the event itself. We'll see if the pattern holds after people miss another impossible-to-miss achievement in the Noblegarden set. Grats to those for whom this achievement change will make a difference, and early props for your purple dragon.
March's Brew of the Month: Aromatic Honey Brew
It's brews like the Aromatic Honey Brew that make the whole Brew of the Month membership worth it. Sure, all of the bodily fluid/fume brews are pretty boring, but this month's brew? Beautiful. I can finally fulfill my lifelong dream: Get drunk while on fire and covered in bees. Alternate caption for the image above? I like my ale like I like my women. Covered in bees.I'm sure those of you that haven't tried this month's brew are pretty confused right now. What the hell am I talking about? Well, every Brew of the Month has a proc that goes off now and then when you're chugging down the booze. This month, the proc is a buff called Honey Touched. The sweet, sticky honey in the brew gets all over you, and you attract some friends. Horrible, stingy friends. Friends that put you under a Fear effect for 7 seconds. I think this rivals BigRedPriestess as my favorite Brew of the Month. If I'm gonna get wasted, I might as well do it in style. Mead and bees. Bees are stylish, right?As an extra little note, the fact that there's a new brew out means that it's the beginning of the month. If you're the sort of person that will take all the freebies you can get, you can pick up your free gems from the Consortium in Nagrand. They're Burning Crusade gems, but maybe you'll find some use for them.
February's Brew of the Month: Izzard's Ever Flavor
We're a day late here, but that's alright. February's Brew of the Month, Izzard's Ever Flavor has hit vendors, and you know what that means. More jokes about bodily functions! This time around, burping! The video above displays how it works pretty well, though I can't claim credit for it. Credit for that goes to LostShard on Wowhead (or YouTube, I suppose).This month's brew works a bit like last month's in that it uses a buff, and when the buff expires it triggers another effect. Drinking the brew will sometimes proc Gassy, and when Gassy expires (or you click it off), you belch. When you do that, anybody in front of you will be a little unhappy.Can't say I'm a fan of the brew this time around, at least not as much as last month's Wild Winter Pilsner. It got a chuckle out of me, but I probably won't carry a stack around at all times like I did with the last one. Definitely does not topple BigRedPriestess.
January's Brew of the Month: Wild Winter Pilsner
This month's Brew of the Month is actually pretty cool, which is a nice change from the slight disappointments of the last couple of months. Sure, last month's brew had a great griefability factor, but getting Ice Blocked is pretty boring!Move over, BigRedKitty. For January, BigRedPriestess is the new hotness with Wild Winter Pilsner. When you take a swig of the brew, you will sometimes get a buff: The Beast Within. It doesn't have the crazy powerful effect of the actual Hunter ability, but it does turn you big and red, and the buff lasts 5 minutes. When the buff wears off (or you click it off yourself), you'll Unleash the Beast. You roar, and give everyone's screen a little shake. Yes, everyone nearby, not just your screen.
Brew of the Month: Lord of Frost's Private Label
Ah, just the thing we needed in the middle of winter in Northrend! A drink to cool us down! Wait, what? Crap, that's not we need at all! Oh well, I guess we're out of luck. This month's brew from the Brew of the Month club is actually a drink we've seen before. It's the Lord of Frost's Private Label, previously only acquired from Lord Ahune's stash during the Midsummer festivities.What do this month's brew do? Not a whole lot. Like I said, it cools you down. Really. After drinking it, you can see your character's breath for awhile. Which... you probably won't notice in Northrend at all, because almost the entire continent makes you do that anyway. If you prefer getting your drunk on in Ironforge, this drink is perfect and you can pick some up in the usual places in Orgrimmar and Ironforge. If you're looking for a drink to warm you up on a cold Northrend night, go for a Northrend staple: Mead. It's all over the place up there.Edit: Apparently this drink can also proc an iceblock that you get locked in for a little while, but in my experience it must be pretty rare? I've gone through a stack and a half of the stuff and haven't had it happen to me yet, but many of our readers have mentioned seeing it. I think the booze is playing favorites.
Brew of the Month for October: Autumnal Acorn Ale
Apparently that 200 tokens I spent on the Brew of the Month club was well spent -- I got my second Brew in the mail this week, and it's a good one. Autumnal Acorn Ale is not only tasty, but it'll make you smell like Autumn Acorns, too. Drinking it will get you drunk and call Woodland Squirrels up to show you a little critter love (or hate). I sipped it for the first time last night during a Slave Pens run, and at one point I had three cute little squirrels showing their affection. Apparently they'll also throw acorns at you, though I missed that in the chaos of the instance last night.Plus, it's an unlimited use item after 3.0.2 (14 day duration, though BotM members can buy more in Ironforge), which means you get as much alcohol as you want, and every time you drink one, you get an "empty brew bottle" to throw with a glassbreak bang. Very fun.If you didn't round up enough tokens to become a BotM member, you're unfortunately out of luck -- I originally thought you could buy the brews in Ironforge even if you weren't subscribed, but no dice, and the brews you get sent are soulbound. You'll have to wait until next Brewfest to sign up for your monthly beer. Can't wait to see what shows up next month!
