Instant Headache

Just add Brewfest!

Or, Jusht add Brewfest! … hic!

Horde is getting hosed.

Seriously.

Right now, on my server, there are 3 bugs that I’m aware of with Brewfest that I have heard from a reliable source are not being experienced on the Alliance side of the same server.

1. The S.T.O.U.T. quest is bugged. In order to hit the damn guy you have to either disable all your adds (I did not try to verify this option) or stand on the guy and drink/throw. This is best accomplished by picking a side where he pauses and starting to chug when he gets close to you. There is a rumor that this is being caused by a specific add on but Blizzard didn’t know which one last I heard.
2. The Dark Iron Dwarf attack is suddenly bugged. I was able to complete it earlier on Sunday but by Sunday night, we were having the same issue throwing the mugs as in the S.T.O.U.T. quest. Follow the same advice to try and remedy that. Trouble is trying to get 50 other people to pay attention and make the same changes. And even then, it’s probably not going to happen.
3. The troll vendor is bugged. Two options to get your troll brews: either stand behind the vendor to talk to him or find the troll vendors at any of the minor beer gardens.

A guild mate got the remote control, which is very cool, and we tried to use it on Monday. Apparently additional instances could not be launched as we spent 3 minutes staring at a loading screen for BRD while listening to the Brewfest festivities around us. Eventually the screen cleared and we were still standing in front of the gates of Org. But this is why mages are cool. Port to Stonard and flew over. Oh, and the cooldown was used on the fail mole machine.

Turns out that the summoning stone works even though the highest level thing in that area is a level 60 raid. Which was a good thing as somehow our priest didn’t have the flight points in that area.

Coren is cake.

We used a hunter to tank him on Sunday. With a slime. I didn’t even know you could tame slimes. Ewwwww.

Tangent: The top Alliance guild on my server recently made the switch to Horde. One of my guildmates has characters in that guild and raids with them regularly. He got me into a Coren group on Sunday with them, but he had already killed him so didn’t join us. So I’m standing in the Grimm Guzzler looking at guild tags and realize that I’m in an instance with the top rated Alliance guild on my server, and I’m in no danger of being destroyed by them. It was a very WTF? moment for me.

Tips and tricks for Coren:

• When trying to get into a group, advertise your role, that you have a summons available, and if you have a mole machine. “DPS looking for Coren Direbrew, have summons” will get you answers a lot faster than “DPS looking for Coren Direbrew.” Tanks and healers may be able to get away with not having a summons, especially later in the day when people start getting desperate, just be honest about it. Although if you get enough plate in the group you can get away with no tank or no healer, just be creative.
• If you don’t have a mole machine, get inside the BRD instance via normal means. Look to the right and there will be a handful of dwarves guarding some control boxes. Take them out and each party member summons their own mole machine to get to the Grim Guzzler.
• The quest giver is just around the corner in the bar from where you will show up at.
• Have everyone in the group pick up the quest (this is mostly for pug groups) and check in your quest log to verify that everyone picked up the quest. You can hover over the number to see the names if you’re coming up short. Boot asshats.
• Have one person call who gets to talk to Coren. If multiple people talk to him at the same time you will lose an attempt and that sucks donkey dick.
• There are 3 adds at the beginning of the fight and more may come in during the fight via mole machines. When the mole machines come up, you can see the ground rumbling beneath you, just like spikes on Anub back in Azjul’Nerub. Move or get thrown across the room. The adds can usually be ignored with a strong AoE tank. If they peel off, just blast them down to protect healers, they drop fast. We usually ignore them entirely. There were a couple brew maiden type adds sometimes. We just ignored them.
• For being tuned for level 80, he goes down fast. When he does, all the adds will despawn.
• Pick up purplez. Several of the trinkets seemed to be on par with the same ilevel trinkets you can get with badges. In my guild run, two people got useful items. I have seen a mount drop! And then lost the roll. /cry There is at least 1 BoE item that has a 2k price tag on my server. Also, the first time you kill him he will drop a quest item that you can take back to the Brewfest grounds for a bunch of coins.
• Wait for respawn and repeat.

Talk to a commoner in a city to be sent to the  Brewfest grounds in the first place. Someone also gives you a voucher for a stein, this year it’s green. I wish I could dual wield, then I could have last year’s blue one equipped as well.

Back at the Brewfest grounds there are several one time quests and then the dailies. I ran around kind of nutty on the first day so this is what I remember.

Learning how to ride your ram and doing the first barrel run for 3 barrels are both 1-shots.

After that, you can run the barrels and get 2 coins per barrel returned as a daily. Note that you will not see a blue exclamation point over that goblin’s head. last year this was a little buggy and you could run barrels every 12-18 hours. I have not been able to verify if the same is true this year. Anyone know? There are more apples this year so it’s much easier. If you have any lag issues, you may have trouble with the ram recognizing the apples. Watch for the red swirly light effect to make sure you got your apples. You should be at full red gallop for this.

Pick a vendor to bark for. Run your ram through the gates, by the bank, through the Drag, cut to the right to hit the Valley of Honor, turn back and head over to the area in front of Thrall’s chambers, and then over to the portal area. I do most of the run at a yellow canter without a problem. You only have to bark at the locations on the ram, you do not also have to get back to the quest giver on the ram, but it is easily possible.

Do the S.T.O.U.T. quest. I think you have to have this one completed to be eligible to reap the rewards of a successful repelling of the dark iron dwarf attacks – which happen every 30 minutes. Put the mug on something spammy because you’ll be using it a lot.

If you are successful in driving off the dwarves, look for the cogs on the ground to pick up that daily and turn it in to the goblin under the banner. There is a rumor that this is also on a 12 to 18 hour timer, not a true daily. I’ll see what I can do to test this.

All the food and booze you need for the Brewfest Diet and Strange Brew achievements can be purchased right there at the vendors, but some of it has level limits so your alts might not be able to complete it right away. I didn’t see any timers on the food or alcohol so you may be able to stock pile and send to alts as they level later in the year.

This year there are also quests to collect the wild wolpertingers around the Brewfest grounds and another to destroy pink elekks at the smaller beer gardens in Thunder Bluff, Silvermoon, and Undercity. (Alliance does the same for there non-Iron Forge cities.) Remember, you have to be drunk to see both types of critters.

This year they are also offering goggles that simulate drunkeness. I think that’s lame. get smashed and earn your headache with the rest of us. Yes, there’s an option to turn off the screen blur but that is also lame. Suck it up!

The Brewfest meta achievement does NOT require that you have completed the Brew of the Month Club, only that you have joined it. There is a separate achievement to drink all those brews.

Super secret tip for Disturbing the Peace! Get enough tokens to buy the Brewfest regalia, you’ll need 350 for all three pieces (chest, feet, hat). Make sure your hearth is to Dalaran and ready to go. Snag a stack of booze. Buy all three pieces of regalia and get to Dal. Chug booze. /dance Get achievement. Return to Org and return the gear for a refund on tokens. Use tokens to buy Brewfest of the Month Club membership and a pink elekk if you are so inclined.

Drunken Stupor can be gotten at the same place you got the Going Down achivement. You have to fall 65 yards without dying upon impact. 65 yards is pretty much exactly what you can survive without any help. Slow Fall and parachute cloaks negate the jump as does landing in water. However, you can Ice Block before you hit, pallies can bubble, I think the priest bubble works as well. I happened to be in Thunderbluff and was drunk while looking for pink elekks. One elevator trip up, one more drink to be smashed and one Ice Block later I had the achievement.

Have Keg Will Travel can be gotten by either looting the Brewfest Ram or Kodo from Coren Direbrew (the cool way) or by transforming your mount using hops, available from the vendor you buy the other gear from (the ghetto way).

Important note: None of the quests seem to give experience, just Brewfest tokens. So there went my plan of leveling up some alts like I did with the Midsummer event. Damn you, Blizzard!

There’s probably more, but I’m not remembering much about anything else. My shcreen musht have been too blurry. …hic!

Bottoms up!