lord-ahune
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Instance servers busted, Lord Ahune to blame
In between the weather knocking out my power here in Milwaukee, WI, I managed to sit in the dungeon queues long enough to discover that ... they're broken! Thanks to Lord Ahune, instance servers are overall stressed beyond capacity despite Blizzard's constant upgrades over the years. Vrakthris It looks like overall it is due to the influx of everyone running the Fire Festival encounter, plus arenas, and normal dungeons. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/2712201373 Our Realm Technicians are looking into it and making what adjustments they can to improve connectivity and performance. If more information becomes available we'll be certain to pass it along. source We have no ETA on when the situation will be resolved, but the most recent post in the above-linked thread was a mere 5 minutes ago as of this writing, so it continues to be an ongoing issue.
WoW.com's guide to Ahune
Lord Ahune, the Frost Lord, hates fire. We, however, love fire! We're celebrating fire for two weeks, and this party pooper needs to go. The great Kinaesthesia, who created the excellent Marrowgar hard mode and Lich King tutorial videos for WoW.com, has made an excellent video guiding players through the Ahune fight. The Ahune fight isn't terribly complicated, but for newer players, players experiencing the Midsummer Fire Festival for the first time, or just people who love Kinesthesia's boss tutorials, the video is definitely worth a watch. Check it out!
Breakfast Topic: What are your plans for the Fire Festival?
The 2010 Midsummer Fire Festival began earlier this morning, and this year some of the holiday's mechanics have been changed to reflect the dungeon finder's impact on the game. With the Crown Chemical Company apothecaries introduced to Love Is In the Air, we saw the last gasp of extensive holiday boss-farming for special drops. These days, you'll only get one crack a day per character at the mounts, pets, or unique drops off a boss (although you can continue to farm for the boss' normal drops). Truthfully, I'm happy about the change; spending ages waiting for alt after alt to make its way to an instance for another shot at a boss drop wasn't really anyone's idea of a good time. Apart from that, what are your plans for the holiday? Does your toon still need the Flame Keeper/Flame Warden meta? Are you looking forward to Lord Ahune's updated loot table, or are you just hoping for a Scorchling pet?
Midsummer Fire Festival loot updated
It seems pretty likely that fairly soon we'll be looking at a updated Midsummer Fire Festival. Why am I so sure, you ask? Well, as many tipsters have stopped to inform us, there's a plethora of new gear in the armory that looks likely to be iLevel 232 updates of Lord Ahune's loot table. We have the Frostscythe, of course, which people have noted before. But now we also have updated versions of his infamous cloak drops, in tanking, physical DPS, and two forms of spell cloak. The first cloak has spirit, meaning that classes like mages as well as healers that use spirit might like it, while the second has crit, haste and spell power but no spirit, meaning it's better for shamans and paladins than the spirit one. I don't know about you, but I'm looking forward to farming my favorite frost lord all over again.
Patch 3.3.3 PTR: Zarhym clarifies new holiday boss mechanics
So one of the new changes coming in Patch 3.3.3 is that one will be able queue up using the dungeon finder in order to fight world event bosses such as the Crown Chemical Trio or the Headless Horseman. However, the actual extent of the changes is a bit more involved, as Zarhym clarified in a recent forums post. Here's the rundown:
Breakfast Topic: Your Midsummer Fire Festival goals
The Midsummer Fire Festival went live yesterday in Azeroth (but with a few glitches that will hopefully be cleared up soon.) With so much to do during this festival, we here at WoW.com we're wondering what your main goal was for this event.Are you focused on finishing the associated achievements on your way to a proto-drake? Are you using the quests as a way to level an alt or low level character? Farming Ahune for a Scorchling pet? Or perhaps you're enjoying the role-playing aspect of the event or even the thrill of raiding the home cities of the opposition. There's plenty for the casual player, too.Let us know in the poll below and if you don't see the answer you like, leave it in the comments! Also, if you like to learn how to make the Midsummer magnet in the photo above, check out our World of WarCrafts article with detailed instructions.%Poll-31199% %Gallery-25803%
The Midsummer Fire Festival has begun
The Midsummer Fire Festival should now be live on almost all North American realms. If it isn't, it will be shortly! Not much has changed since last year, beyond the addition of the achievements.Speaking of achievements, while we have our guide to the Achievements of Midsummer, you might not be able to make a significant dent in them today if you made rounds with the flames last year. None of the quests seem to have reset from last year, so getting your hands on the holiday currency to buy the items you need is going to be difficult, to say the least. By difficult, I may or may not mean borderline impossible.I don't expect this to be a permanent issue, we'll probably see a hotfix sometime in the near future since the problem is already being checked out. Of course, that's assuming the issue is something that can be hotfixed. If not, I don't doubt we'll see a fix of another flavor down the road. I don't foresee Blizzard keeping What a Long, Strange Trip It's Been out of players' hands because of something like this. In the meantime, at least you can still take a crack at Lord Ahune.%Gallery-25803%
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.
Breakfast Topic: How are you spending the last few days of the Midsummer Fire Festival?
The Midsummer Fire Festival officially ends on July 5th, just a few scant days away. That means no more Lord Ahune, no more chances to get the Deathfrost enchant, no more desecration, no more turning into a crab, no more Torch Tossing... Yeah, I'm a little bummed too. Still, we have a couple days left to make the best of it. Of course, the question is -- what exactly do we do with it? Myself, I'm torn. My enchanter still needs the Deathfrost enchant, so I may want to get a group together and go slay Ahune a few more times. Then again, I still haven't gotten some of the Midsummer loot on a couple of my 70s, so maybe I want to make a push to get the last few blossoms for those. But I'm also thinking that it would be nice to get my shaman to level 30 before Patch 2.4.3, and thus I'm tempted to just go out and slog through the last few levels with her, bolstered by the all the various Fire Festival buffs and the Ribbon Dance buff. I'll have to think about it some more, but in the meantime, do you have a plan for these last few days of the Midsummer Fire Festival? %Gallery-25803% The Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us! Check out WoW Insider's complete quest guide to collect those Burning Blossoms as well as our guide on how to spend them. Also, don't forget to eyeball our screenshot gallery of Midsummer events. Finally, find out how to kill Lord Ahune, and check out our break down of his loot table.
Tip: Run Midsummer as a lowbie
Here's a great tip from Darthkurai on LJ: doing the Midsummer Fire quests as a lowbie will net you a ton of nice XP. He grabbed almost two levels' worth of XP at level 40, just for running around to all the different bonfires throughout Azeroth. Bewarned that some of the quests have various level requirements on them (Undercity and all of the capital flames, as he finds out, are level 50 and above only, and of course Lord Ahune is only for level 70s), but doing all of the quests at low levels will net you a good 6-7k XP, which around level 40 will give you at least a ding or two.Pretty good for just running around the world once or twice. Everyone's excited about Ahune and what you can get from him, but don't forget your old alts, either -- logging them on during the festival and showing them the world (while killing on the way with those buffs) can grab you a nice chunk of free XP for them as well. The Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us! Check out WoW Insider's complete quest guide to collect those Burning Blossoms as well as our guide on how to spend them. Also, don't forget to eyeball our screenshot gallery of Midsummer events. Finally, find out how to kill Lord Ahune, and check out our break down of his loot table.
Midsummer Festival Quest - Shards of Ahune
We love to give here at WoW Insider. We're just givers. We provided a guide to the Midsummer Fire Festival, including a level guide, instructions on how to steal the opposite faction's fire, a walkthrough and a loot table for conquering Lord Ahune, and a guide to most of the other festival quests. Now we present a quick guide to getting your very own Tabard of Summer by completing the Shards of Ahune quest.After you've taken down Lord Ahune in the Slave Pens, loot the Ice Chest he drops. If you get an item called Shards of Alune, you can right-click it to start the quest. Um, then the rest is ever so tough. You just trot yourself over to Luma Skymother, a female Tauren in the Slave Pens and complete the quest with her. She'll give you 20 Burning Blossoms and your choice of tabards -- either with Flames or Skies. Note that you need to be at least Level 66 to obtain and complete this quest.That's all there is to it! Well, except for making it through the Slave Pens alive and defeating Lord Ahune and some junk. But hey, who knows, maybe when you get yours, it will show this elusive mystery tooltip when you inspect it. A prize inside, just like Cracker Jacks!
Lord Ahune strategy and walkthrough
The Lord Ahune encounter is very easily one of the most enjoyable 5-man encounters we've seen in a very long time. The Burning Crusade added some elements we had never seen in the pre-expansion days, and I feel that this boss takes it much further than that.Ahune is found within the Slave Pens, and while he's fairly close to the beginning of the instance, you'll need to do a little bit of clearing before you fight him. Since Slave Pens is one of the easier dungeons in The Burning Crusade (both Normal and Heroic versions), you shouldn't have much trouble with this step. Once you've reached the area where you summon Lord Ahune (and you will know when you get there), buff up, drink up, and make sure your party is ready. While not the most difficult encounter in the world, this alternating two phase boss fight can drag on a really long time if you're not ready.
Midsummer quest guides updated
Some of our quest guides have been updated since yesterday with a few bits of missing information. It should be a little more friendly to players completely new to the holiday, as well as those that have only played one of the two factions. Not only are there more details throughout, but the zones are listed beside the cities in our Desecrate the Flames list, which was one of our most requested additions to our guide.Hopefully our guides are helping you all in your Midsummer questing. Make sure you keep an eye on WoW Insider as well, because later today we have a Lord Ahune walkthrough coming your way! The Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us! Check out WoW Insider's complete quest guide to collect those Burning Blossoms as well as our guide on how to spend them. Also, don't forget to eyeball our screenshot gallery of Midsummer events. Finally, find out how to kill Lord Ahune, and check out our break down of his loot table.
Lord Ahune's loot table
Like Halloween's Headless Horseman, the Midsummer Fire Festival's summonable boss Lord Ahune offers a nice selection of epic loot, as well as some really fun vanity/joke loot to keep the mood light. Most of the epic drops from the Frost Lord are duplicates of old Badge of Justice loot to help save you a fair amount of badges, but there are also a few new, completely unique drops.From completely awesome scythes to the Frost Lord's personal booze, we have a full listing of Lord Ahune's known drops. Even if you're geared to the teeth from Sunwell Plateau, Ahune has something for you, though it might come in a form a little sillier than traditional equipment. Take a look behind the cut below to see it all!
Breakfast Topic: The Midsummer Fire Festival so far
So by now, hopefully a lot of you have had time to check out some of the new stuff that's shown up at the Midsummer Fire Festival this year. With the help of our walkthroughs, it's a piece of cake to get right into the thick of things. My impressions so far have been pretty favorable. I very much enjoyed being a crab (and asking everybody for "maybe little pinch"), and while it took me a while to master Torch Catching (It became easier once I turned spell effects up to high so I could see the shadow of the torch on the ground), I've gotten pretty good at that already. If there's one thing I'd complain about a little, it's probably the fact everything seems a bit expensive. With 3 level 70s and a couple level 60+ types who might like Braziers, Robes, and Sandals, it'll be a bit of a pain to get all the stuff for them, and it should take quite a few hours to desecrate or honor enough fires for all that. Still, at least you get good gold for all that desecrating, so it's not a complete waste. How's your experience been so far? Is Torch Catching a challenge? Are you a thief yet? What about Lord Ahune, have you seen him fall yet? Share your experiences in the comments. Keep watching WoW Insider while you're at it. We're hard at work writing more guides that will tell you everything you need to know about Lord Ahune and the rest of the Midsummer Fire Festival, and they should appear on the site today and tomorrow. The Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us! Check out WoW Insider's complete quest guide to collect those Burning Blossoms as well as our guide on how to spend them. Also, don't forget to eyeball our screenshot gallery of Midsummer events. Finally, find out how to kill Lord Ahune, and check out our break down of his loot table.
Rolling restarts at 5am PDT today
Just a heads up to all our American night owls and Oceanic players: There will be rolling restarts for all Realms starting at 5am PDT, about an hour and fifteen minutes from now. Each realm will be down for about 15 minutes, and the entire process will take about an hour. It's likely that this downtime is for working out a few kinks with the Midsummer Fire Festival. Kisirani confirmed earlier that there is a problem with the Striking Back quest for those under level 65, so it's likely that these rolling restarts will institute the hotfix to that problem. In addition, there's been some rumors that Lord Ahune's Normal and Heroic loot tables are not properly separated, so it's possible that this will fix those issues as well. Speaking of Ahune, be sure to keep your eyes glued to WoW Insider today. We're writing a complete loot guide and a strategy walkthrough for the new holiday boss as well speak. You can also check out the Midsummer quest walkthroughs we already have set up -- they're perfect reading material for the downtime. Happy reading, and we'll see you on the other side of the restarts.
Midsummer Fire Festival quest guides
As I am sure you all know by now, whether it be through WoW Insider or logging into the game and seeing it firsthand, the Midsummer Fire Festival went live this morning (June 21st) and will remain so until July 4th. The holiday has received a full revamp since last year, and has quite a few new rewards and quests. Some of those rewards have pretty hefty prices attached to them in the form of Burning Blossoms, and are a little intimidating. I sat down early this morning to figure out how many Blossoms I needed for what I wanted on just my main, and the total came to just slightly over 1,100. Ouch! Surprisingly, it isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. A simple tour of Azeroth can net you hundreds of Blossoms, and the Festival offers many other options, too. If you're looking for a little help or guidance in your quest for holiday treats, WoW Insider is here for you! Click the links below to hop over to our Midsummer Fire Festival quest guides. Where to begin - Just starting your Midsummer adventures? Find out where the quests are to be found! A Thief's Reward - Sneak into enemy territory, be handsomely rewarded. Desecrating the Flames - Sneak near enemy territory, be handsomely rewarded. Includes a list of all of the fires in Azeroth and Outland. Incense for the Summer Scorchlings - Take a moment out of your day to honor the spirits of summer. Torch Tossing - Your first step toward becoming a master fire juggler! Torch Catching - Your second and final step toward becoming a master fire juggler. Unusual Activity - The Twilight's Hammer is up to something, but what? Epic revelations (and loot) await you! Bonfire buffs - Honoring the flames before you go out to level or grind can bring some pretty nice rewards. Ribbon dancing - Not level 70 yet? Find out how engaging in a bit of Midsummer revelry can change that for you. The Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us! Check out WoW Insider's complete quest guide to collect those Burning Blossoms as well as our guide on how to spend them. Also, don't forget to eyeball our screenshot gallery of Midsummer events. Finally, find out how to kill Lord Ahune, and check out our break down of his loot table.
Midsummer Fire Festival starts tomorrow!
There are a few unmistakable signs of summer -- the days get longer and the sun stays up later, the smell of barbeque drifts around the neighborhood, and oh yeah, the Midsummer Fire Festival starts. June 21, tomorrow, marks the start of the Midsummer Fire Festival in game, and this year we've heard that there's going to be some new things going on. In addition to all of the old festivities (firepole dancing and flame honoring, or desecrating), there are lots of new things to do as well -- Ahune the Frost Lord is threatening the Slave Pens (he's a boss similar to the popular Headless Horseman of Hallow's End), and there are new daily quests around, including a "torch tossing" event and a bounty on a Twilight Cult NPC.Stay tuned to WoW Insider -- we'll have coverage on all of the new stuff in game, as well as fill you in on exactly what's going down when during the Festival. It lasts until July 4th, and right around then there are also lots of terrific fireworks shows ingame as well -- those goblins really know how to put on a good time. The Midsummer Fire Festival is upon us! Check out WoW Insider's complete quest guide to collect those Burning Blossoms. Also, don't forget to eyeball our screenshot gallery of Midsummer events and a break down of Lord Ahune's loot table.
The best of WoW Insider: February 19-26, 2008
Quite a week in the World of Warcraft, which Joystiq sister site WoW Insider covers like a Warcraft Adventures-style bedsheet each and every single day. We continued to get lots of great information about patch 2.4 (including big news from the new raid instance,The Sunwell), and Heroics made a nice return to the news, with all the new badge loot. Oh, and we even had a liveblog go down straight from GDC. Here's our best stuff.News GDC08: Live form Rob Pardo's talk about Blizzard's approach to MMOsThe Senior VP of game design lays out what the big plan is for Blizzard's biggest game. PTR Notes: Patch note watch 2/20New buffs and nerfs continue to drop from the Public Test Realm as Blizzard gets the next patch ready to go live. 2.4 PvP sets gold and rep requirementsWhat you'll need to do to get what you want. Meet Lord AhuneBlizzard is also updating the Midsummer Fire Festival, and so here's the new Headless Horseman -- epics for everyone! Thrall gets a new Big Brother: US government wants to search for terrorists on WoWCould Bin Laden be hiding in Elwynn Forest? Features What does the Warlock Lifetap nerf mean?Lifetap got taken down a notch, but why is everyone up in arms about it? Breakfast Topic: Heroic PuGs from hellEveryone's been in a group like this, but being in a Heroic makes it even worse. Know Your Lore: The story of the Burning CrusadeThe expansion's lore is going to get wrapped up in the next patch, so here's what you need to know before we all go see the ending. Dress yourself up completely in Badge LootGot Heroic Badges? Now you can gear yourself all out. Hybrid Theory: What's a hybrid v2.0Our column on hybrid classes returns with a new writer and a new outlook on what it means to step across lines in the RPG class trinity.
Meet Lord Ahune
First off, I'd like to warn everyone that this post contains fairly detailed spoilers for the upcoming holiday, the Midsummer Fire Festival. If you'd like the details of the new boss to remain a surprise, this post probably isn't for you! But I know quite well that most WoW players can't stand not knowing what's what, so I'm sure many of you will continue.As mentioned in Daniel's post a few days ago, this Festival will bring us another Headless Horseman-esque boss, complete with phat lewts. You can check it all out on the PTR right now. Found within the Slave Pens, this boss, named Lord Ahune, is another Ragnaros look-alike. As you can probably guess from his appearance alone, Ahune is another lieutenant of the Elemental Lords, like Prince Thunderaaan. Ahune is serving one of the Lords in particular: Neptulon. Is this another bit of the story of Skar'this? Time will tell!The Lord Ahune encounter is an alternating two phase battle, again similar to the Headless Horseman. Without giving away too many details, be prepared to fight a number of adds in one of the two phases and have some burst damage queued up for the other. Most any group worth their salt should be able to put away Ahune relatively easily.While the battle is fun, the loot is funner. More fun? Funnerer.
