Tis the Season: To Honor One’s Elders and the Lunar Festival

In two weeks, The Lunar Festival will be here, a holiday hosted by the Druids of Azeroth to celebrate the new year (or the Earth Chinese New Year).  It’s a fun holiday with a lot of cool trinkets and activities, but that’s not why I’m talking about it.  YES, IT’S ACHIEVEMENT TIME!

The holiday lasts a hell of a long time – from January 24th to February 12th.  There are quite a few achievements you’re going to have to take care of to accomplish this holiday’s meta-achievement “To Honor One’s Elders.”  Finishing this off awards you the title “Elder [insert name here]” and one step closer to getting that sweet Proto-drake flying mount.  Well what are you waiting for? Let’s get started!

As per usual, I’ll be listing off the easier achievements to accomplish, followed by the more difficult ones to finish off.

EASY ACHIEVEMENTS

The Rocket’s Red Glare

Here you have to shoot off 10 Red rocket clusters in less than 25 seconds.  First of all, all red rocket clusters are sold by Lunar Festival Vendors, which can be found in all the major cities AND Moonglade. Engineers can also make them.  Just throw the clusters you buy onto an action bar and spam it!  I can’t remember if you have to right click on the cluster launchers or what, but in any case, it shouldn’t be overly difficult.

Frenzied Firecracker

Similar to the aforementioned achievement, here you have to shoot of 10 festival firecrackers 30 seconds or less.  Same tip as before, action bar/spam!  Frenzied firecrackers are purchased from Lunar Festival vendors.  Be careful where you launch them, if you hit people of the opposing faction you’ll get hit by guards, or it can aggro mobs.

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MEDIUM ACHIEVEMENTS

(from easiest to hardest)

Elders of the Eastern Kingdoms
Elders of Kalimdor
Elders of the Alliance
Elders of the Horde
Elders of Northrend
Elders of the Dungeons

Now here’s where it gets tricky.  Most of the achievements are directly related to you finding Elders all over Azeroth.  Now Elders are various NPCs standing in glowing circles of light that, when spoken to, award you with “Coins of Ancestory.”  WoWWiki has an EXCELLENT guide to hitting up all the Elders in the main world, along with a main list cataloging every elder.

Unfortunately, the guide is not updated for 2009, which include the Northrend dungeons and Elders.  That’s okay though!  The guide does list where you can find them.

Now, here are some things to keep in mind.  Three of the Elders (the Elders of the Alliance/Horde achievement) are located in main cities, so being a high level will definitely help here.  They seem to be located pretty close to safe entrances, so make sure you have a fast moving mount.

The dungeon Elders are where you’re going to run into some trouble.  For old world dungeons, the only trouble I could see running into is Strathholme, since you need a key to enter the dungeon.  Might want to start doing the questline that gives you the key ahead of time.  You’re also going to be entering the Halls of Stone and Utgarde Pinnicle, all of which need to be at least level 75.  Get ta questin’.

Now what’s nice about getting the Elders is reputation.  Every time you meet an Elder, he rewards you with +75 to each Alliance/Horde faction, so you’ll get a fair amount of reputation if you follow the guide to the letter.  You also receive a coin for each one, which leads me to this:

50 Coins of Ancestory

This shouldn’t be too hard if you’re trying to find all the Elders, since you get a coin for each one.  You’ll get this automatically without even trying, if you follow the guide that is.

Lunar Festival Finery

You need to purchase one kind of Lunar Festival Dress or Lunar Festival Pantsuit to get this achievement.  They cost 5 coins of ancestory.

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HARD ACHIEVEMENTS

Elune’s Blessing

This is the last achievement in order to get the title and it’s not TOO difficult.  I mean, you need a group to accomplish this.  You must defeat OMEN, the two headed Raid encounter in Moonglade.  A fairly geared group should be able to handle this fine, you just have to watch out for his Cleave and AOE attack that’ll hit pretty hard.  I’ve never attempted to kill him before, but there are great tips here.  If you’re in Moonglade and you see a group attempting it, join up!  Power in numbers folks.

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Not a ton of achievements, unlike Winter Veil, and most of these achievements are successful by yourself, except for the higher level dungeons in Northrend.  You’ll need to group up for that.  But if you happen to get a group going to collect all the Elders, you’ll get through it in no time. Good luck to you, hopeful Elders.

Next time: Love is in the Air!