Sunday, September 27, 2009

How to do Brewfest Daily Quests

I've actually come across a few folks who have no idea what Brewfest is, or what the dailies are. And yet...it's our guild's annual holiday!

So, I am here posting some explanations of how the Brewfest dailies work for everyone, so that you can learn how to earn as many Brewfest tokens between now and Saturday. The text (somewhat modified) comes from this link: http://www.wowwiki.com/Brewfest

Continuing to help out Brewfest:

After completing the quest "There and Back Again" by your respective faction, talk to your faction's . There is an option to help out by delivering more ale from the village to the . This is not a quest that will show up in your quest log, and it won't count against your daily total. It resets every 18 hours, so you can repeat it more often than daily quests.

The non-quest mechanic gives you a Rental Racing Ram for four minutes, which has an 18-hour cooldown. If the Rental Racing Ram buff is dispelled or canceled, and you cannot restore it; you simply have to wait for the reset. If you are shapeshifted, you will be unable to mount the ram, but you will have consumed your attempt, and again you have to wait to get another one. When the mechanic is started, you will be given Ram Racing Reins, however, you can also request them from the neighboring NPC to get a head start.

The non-quest mechanic works the same as the There and Back Again quest, except that for each successful delivery, you are awarded an extra 30 seconds on your Rental Racing Ram buff and 2 Brewfest Tokens.

Mastering the Ram Racing...

The maximum number of tokens that can be obtained is debatable. However you can use the following formula to predict how many coins you could win, given your run speed. Remember that each run gives 2 tokens, so for example if you have 6 successful runs you will receive 12 tokens. Ignore any remainder on the number of runs - partial runs do not count.

Number of runs = 210 seconds / (run time in seconds - 30 seconds)
In theory, if every run (including the first one where you have to speed up from a stand still) could be completed in 30 seconds or less, you would not actually have 210 runs, but an infinite number of runs. However, to even obtain a 35 second run requires a very skilled and consistent rider who was lucky enough to experience zero lag. In this scenario, it would seem the hypothetical "perfect run" would yield 84 tokens from 42 successful runs. As a point of reference, multiple contributors have reported several runs of 23 rounds, which is just over 39 seconds on average (remembering the first round is slower).

Helpful tip...


A tip for quick, easy course changes: Once you get your ram pointed on a clear straight path to an apple barrel or keg pick-up or drop-off point, rotate your camera to face the direction you'll want to travel after getting there. That way, when you reach your destination, you can press the right mouse button to change your heading instantly and accurately. The rams are always running, but the game still keeps track of whether your character is in run or stand mode. If you are in run mode many peoples' camera swings to face forward. You can just press your key bound to turn off movement. Your ram will still be running, but your camera will stay in place as if you were standing still.

You can also hold down your left mouse button after rotating the view to remain facing where you've turned the camera. While doing this, pressing the right mouse button will instantly change the direction as above.


Dark Iron Attacks

Every half-hour, a party of Dark Iron Dwarves will crash the party at the main Brewfest camps outside Ironforge and Orgrimmar. Hitting these dwarves with a beer mug will stop them from stealing the free brew. Here's how you can participate in saving the free brew for the invited guests:

Pick up a complementary sample brew from any one of the square tables. The mugs last 15 minutes, logged in or not. They are handed out from the Brewery Barkers whenever players loot a free sampler from the tables.

Using this item will cause you to quickly drink it and throw the empty mug. Staying in range (roughly 40 yards) of the NPCs that represent each brewery around the area while using a complementary brew sampler will cause them to toss you another sample. If you need to, you can always manually loot another one from the table. Drinking the mugs will get you drunk, especially if you are doing it several times in rapid succession.

If there are Dark Irons around, the mug you throw may hit one of them and knock them out. It is a random chance, and does not appear to depend on character level. This is a somewhat unique battle in WoW where a low level character can contribute as much as a high level character. The mug works even with no Dark Irons around; it will either hit your target or if you have no target it just lands on the ground. Each time you throw the mug, you lose it, but another one will quickly be thrown to you by a barker provided you are somewhere nearby. It is useful to bind the mug to a hot key in order to drink and throw rapidly.

It is not useful to chase the Dark Iron Dwarves. The empty mugs travel quite far, and moving interrupts throwing. In addition, the Dark Iron Dwarves have a brawling move that throws player characters away from them and interrupts throwing mugs, so keeping your distance allows you to attack more often.

On occasion, large silver mugs will be placed on the ground. Walking through one of these mugs will give the player a whirlwind attack buff for several seconds. When one such mug is placed on the ground, a barker will yell out "try some of this super brew".

During the 2007 Brewfest event, a stacking mark buff was awarded based on knocking out Dark Iron Dwarves, which could then be turned into tickets. For 2008 this is replaced by a daily quest offered by a remaining large cog of the Dark Iron Diggers if you're able to fight off the attackers and keep at least one of the kegs intact. The large cog has a blue quest exclamation point; loot the quest before the cog disappears. Turning the quest in to the practice mugs NPC awards 10 [Brewfest Prize Tokens]. You can assist the defense as often as you want to, but you can only get the quest once per day. If you are part of any additional successful defenses within a day, you will not be able to click on the cog for a quest.

Beating the waves of Dark Iron Dwarves is a group effort, there are too many and the drink and toss rate is too low for any one character to do this by themselves. Your assistance is always welcome by other defenders, but if you are setting aside time to do this for the quest tokens, do it at a time when the server is busy so that you will be part of a heavily defended Brewfest celebration.

You do not have to take part in the defense in order to collect this quest. The cog is available for anyone to loot if the defenders are successful. You do not have to complete the Chug and Chuck! quest first.

The Barking Run!

This quest is an advertisement for the Brewfest, and it yields 15 tokens when completed.

For the barking runs, there are no apple barrels along the route, and you will have to pace yourself. Gallop becomes counterproductive; you will build up fatigue too rapidly and be forced to go too slow. Mixing canter for speed and trot for fatigue recovery while still moving will allow you to complete the task.

When you complete the quest and are returning to the NPC, both the Alliance and Horde versions will afford you the opportunity to take a downhill shortcut. Take it if you can. Leaving Iron Forge, go down the mountainside toward the Brewfest. If you pick your way, you can have damage under 1%, but expect over 1%. If you jump straight down expect over 50% damage. In Orgrimmar, leaving the Valley of Spirits, fortuitous use of jumping down to rooftops will allow you to take a straighter route out of the city.

The quest objectives are to bark at four locations in the city, but returning to the quest NPC is not a quest objective. This means you only have to return to the NPC to turn in the already completed quest. You can switch to your normal mount, as long as you barked at all four locations while mounted on the ram (you still need the reins in your inventory and must return to a quest giver before the timer expires).

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