Ahune
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My holiday discontent
I don't like WoW's in game holiday events. I never really did. In general, I'm not a big pet/mount/special cruft kind of collector, although I'll admit I've always wanted the Great Brewfest Kodo on my Alliance characters, just because I miss kodo. They're one of my favorite mounts. But be it Love is in the Air, Hallow's Eve, the Harvest Festival, or the Lunar Festival I just don't like the in-game holidays. What ends up happening is this: a lot of people do a lot of stuff, then there's a dungeon I can run once a day for special rewards I either don't care about or won't get, and then it's over. Now, you could point out a few things here. First off, that it's okay if I don't like the content as long as I'm not forced to do it and I'll agree with you. The content is eminently avoidable. I do like that. I like not having to do any of this stuff. I don't have to rescue reindeer or go fight the Greench, but for some reason I find the holiday events annoying and I won't even pretend I know why I find them annoying. I just admitted I can avoid them. Why, then, do they bother me so much? And here's another weird but true fact: they annoyed me a lot less when you could chain-farm them. Ever since they put holiday bosses like Coren Direbrew, The Headless Horseman and Ahune on the dungeon finder and made them drop one special bag a day (for your first run) I've found them far, far more terrible and annoying even though it means I can run them less. I actually find myself looking back fondly on the day that I ran the Headless Horseman twenty-seven times, as everyone in our group of five switched to every max level alt they had to get another shot at the fellow. I don't even understand that one myself. I just said I don't like the holidays, and that I like being able to utterly avoid them, and now I'm saying that I don't like that I can run them less now?
The Queue: Memorize
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Remember Me released back on June 3. The game turned out to not be quite what I was hoping, but the soundtrack is excellent. Do recommend. It's on Spotify! HerrKlolbok asked: With the coming of flex raids and the emergence of Virtual Realms, what do you think about cross-faction grouping and/or raiding? Do you think chances are good we might even see cross-faction guilds in the next x-pac (if it indeed is a legion-based x-pac)?
Midsummer Fire Festival: Frostscythe of Ahune stats to remain uncool
Things are heating up all over Azeroth for the Midsummer Fire Festival. Well, everything except the Frostscythe of Lore Ahune, that is. Blizzard updated the holiday Ahune cloaks to ilevel 353 for players to grab, but Ahune's trademark staff just got the "scale" upgrade -- it's not really ideal for the classes it is intended for. In fact, it's fairly worthless for intellect-reliant classes. Bashiok responded on the official forums that to make Ahune's Frostscythe an ideal weapon stat-wise would be to dissuade players from getting their weapon upgrade in ZA or ZG. Many players were concerned with the Frostscythe's stats because of its inflated +700 stamina instead of plus intellect, which casters obviously prefer, since stamina has been normalized across gear. To be fair, I think it is completely fine to have this holiday fluff item be a non-ideal, cosmetic item that players can wear for it's on-use effect and prestige-luck. Not every item that drops has to be the ideal, especially during a holiday that is coinciding (potentially) with patch 4.2 dropping. That staff you want to be ideal so badly isn't going to be exactly ideal in week if the patch hits June 28. For now, it was an easier alternative to just scale the item opposed to tinkering around and making something perfect. I'd say just leave it as a fun, unique item.
The Queue: Oh man did someone say talent
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Anne Stickney is in ur base your Queue, killin ur doods answering your questions. Hello again! It's me, here to answer all your direly important burning questions. I have hijacked this column from Adam today, so let's get started, shall we? techvoodooguy asks: Question: What's your favorite talent? You see that video up there? That. Rezai asks: Question: What did Sacco do to Anne; that she no longer comes on the podcast?
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: Holiday boss in the dungeon finder is the best thing ever
Ah, summer in Azeroth. The sun is shining, the birds are singing, and blood elf rogues are camping the poor Alliance at the Orgrimmar Midsummer bonfire. Truly, the greatest holiday. However, something is amiss! Mean old Lord Ahune is out to stop summer forever! Whatever shall we do?! (Actually, I live in New York. Please, take the humidity, Ahune.) With 2010's Midsummer Fire Festival, Blizzard has introduced a new avenue to enjoy the holiday bosses that creep up for most special events. This year, for the first time, Frost Lord Ahune is queue-able in the random dungeon finder. Have you tried it yet? Because it is amazing. Spectacular. Mind-blowingly awesome. Hands down, the addition of the holiday bosses to the random dungeon finder is the single best thing to happen to WoW since the dungeon finder itself. All of the petty crap that came along with finding people to summon the holiday boss, people demanding item reservations and a million other hurdles are gone. Years have been added on to my life because I never have to put together that perfect group again for maximum summons of the holiday boss. What do you think about the inclusion of the holiday bosses to the random dungeon finder? Do you miss the old days of the rolling boss summons, or do you cherish the new days of one-chance-bag-per-day? You know how I feel, so let's hear from you!
Scorchling not available in this year's Midsummer Fire Festival
Looks like mini-pet collectors are going to be unable to get the Scorchling this year. Aredek posted in the official forums that the Scorched Stone is no longer on the Ice Chest's drop table from Ahune. Aredek I'm afraid that the Scorchling does not appear to be available this year, folks. I cannot say for certain whether or not it will be made available in the future; however, we encourage you to share your thoughts on the Suggestions forum if you would like to see the Scorched Stone be obtainable in some other way. source It's unclear why they elected to leave it out this year, however it almost looks like it might have been a simple error rather than a design decision. Either way, the historical drop rates for this were so low that most players won't be able to tell the difference. Also, despite this, the Lil' Game Hunter achievement is much more easily obtainable now than it was this time last year, with the introduction of many new sources for non-combat pets. Still, that's a very cute fireball.
Know Your Lore: Hold any form, take any shape -- The elements, part four
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. We're up to water now in our survey of the elemental forces of the Warcraft setting. Having covered fire and earth previously, we now take a look at the forces of water led by Neptulon the Tidehunter. Unlike his rivals, Neptulon is devious enough to manipulate the other elemental lords into combat, crafty enough to gain a foothold on Outland with followers among the Naga and Twilight's Hammer (Neptulon's influence reaches far enough that he managed to have a powerful minion, Frost Lord Ahune, summoned to the Coilfang Slave Pens in an attempt to outflank Ragnaros), and of all elementals, those of water are even willing to work with mortals in an attempt to sabotage their enemies. What is known about Neptulon is that he fought alongside the other elemental lords in the war with the titans, that even as powerful as they were, the lords of the elements eventually fell and were banished. However, despite the defeat of the Old Gods and the imprisoning of the elementals on artificial planes created to house them, Neptulon found ways to affect the mortal world. The ancient troll empire of the Gurubashi eventually felt the wrath of the Tidehunter and his krakken servitors. The Third Troll Legend But the Krakken are old, very old. They remembered when the land was first born from the sea. They remembered when the Old Ones ruled and when the Travelers came and cast them down. They remembered when magic was new. They are old and they hold many secrets. And though Min'loth's spell was strong, it, like the troll, was mortal. And so it failed. source
The Ice Stone has melted!
When The Love is in the Air started up this morning, a really curious bug cropped up that has even some Blizzard employees stumped. Every now and then, a server-wide emote (like the one you see when Eranikus is defeated in Moonglade) announces to the world that, 'The Ice Stone has melted!'Nobody really knows what it is, or why it's announcing that. As I mentioned, even a few Blizzard employees have no idea what it is, though they're looking into it. The only 'ice stone' that crops up when Googling or Wowwiki'ing around to find this thing is the objects from the Midsummer Festival that we interacted with last year. It's possible that the team responsible for world events was working on an update to the Midsummer Fire Festival and crossed some wires somewhere. After all, if any of the holidays need an urgent update, it would be that one.
Know Your Lore: Malygos the Spellweaver
Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week (except for last week, sorry guys!) Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? E-mail us! Or, if you have a question for our sister column Ask a Lore Nerd, e-mail us those, too! Malygos the Spellweaver, Lord of Magic, is the fourth Dragon Aspect that we'll be looking at in Know Your Lore's series on the great dragons. Malygos was empowered by the Titan Norgannon, charged with guarding all magic and arcane knowledge. He calls the Nexus in Northrend, his home.The Aspect of the Blue was one of the more wise of the Dragonflights, and described as the most friendly of them. He was close to his 'siblings' back before the War of the Ancients, especially Neltharion of the Black. You know, before Neltharion went loco.
Breakfast Topic: Farewell, Midsummer
The Midsummer Fire Festival is just about wrapped up, and all of the quests, lore and drops are going with it. It's sad to see it go, but all good things must come to an end. Daniel asked what you were doing with the time left the other day, but now that it's pretty much done for, have you gotten your hands on all you wanted?My one and only goal for the Fire Festival was to get my hands on Ahune's Frostscythe. I've wanted a scythe on my Priest ever since Warlocks got one as a quest reward back in the day. I probably have pretty much the best guild in the world, because they took turns rotating alts to summon Ahune for me throughout the festival. When the thing finally dropped, we had killed the Frostlord roughly eighty times and we got five Scorched Stones for various people. We have decided my loot luck could not possibly be worse.How about all of you? Did you get the brazier? The dress? Did you say 'forget it' and blow all of your Blossoms on Midsummer Sausage? Most importantly, did you stock up one these sweet new fireworks?
World of Warcraft's Midsummer Fire Festival ends soon
There's only a few days left before the fireworks fizzle out as the Midsummer Fire Festival comes to an end on July 4th. Why not go out with a bang, the next time you fire up World of Warcraft be sure to grab one last ribbon do-si-do, juggle a few torches, honor and steal those remaining bonfire flames, or slay Lord Ahune for that friend you promised, you do keep your promises don't you? If you have nothing else to do you could run your lower-level alts around the world to collect all the different bonfire flames for some pretty decent experience gains. If you are struggling on what to spend your burning blossoms on WoW Insider has you covered. A lot of players are saying this is the best event in a long time, thanks to some new festivities. You better celebrate the good times before its too late and back to the dailies routine again!
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!
More signs of cold on official sites
It's Monday morning and new hints of cold have appeared around Blizzard's official web sites. If you visit the Blizzard corporate site, or the front page of the community sites, you got a crystallized image of ... something. It's pretty hard to tell what you're looking at, except that it's icy and maybe cavernous. While this is pretty obviously a teaser graphic of some kind, there is no text or other graphics detailing what Blizzard's hinting at. It's a safe bet that the graphic is related to Wrath of the Lich King. Some speculation posits that we might be about to see the actual release date. Of course, it could be related to Ahune and the Midsummer festivities -- but I don't think so. I also don't think this is a mistake that's going to be reverted -- since it's on the corporate site and the official sites, it seems purposeful. We'll let you know more as it happens.
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.
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.
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.
