Project Lore

Protip is a weekly short video segment. Check back every Monday for a new guide or tip. Leave a comment to let me know what you want to see in future segments. Follow @Heartbourne for notifications of new videos!

This week, we dive headfirst into the Thanksgiving holiday, Pilgrim's Bounty.

In this first episode, we pick up the achievements "FOOD FIGHT!" and Sharing is Caring. Come by tomorrow for part 2!

As Juggynaut informed us all last week, with Patch 3.2 up on the PTR we're learning a lot more about what kind of new achievements and other goodies will be coming our way soon. A couple of the ones that caught my eye, since I love holidays, are Pirates' Day, Day of the Dead and Pilgrim's Bounty. It looks like those first two will be pretty small in scale, with the Pirate Day's achievement coming from drinking with the Dread Captain DeMeza (not Roberts!?) and joining her crew, and the Day of the Dead achievement from dancing with Catrina to become a skeleton. It's the Pilgrim's Bounty event that probably will draw in the most people because it seems to have the makings of a full-on world event that I guess would scan at least a week, like most others of this scope. From what MMO-Champion has uncovered, it looks like the Pilgrim's Bounty event will have something for everyone. Of course you have the random, just-for-fun achievements for the event: "Food Fight!" in which you bounce cranberries, stuffing, turkey, pie and sweet potatoes off a fellow feaster's head at a Bountiful Table; The Turkinator, which will have you heating up turkeys; Sharing is Caring, for which you'll pass candied yam, slow-roasted turkey, cranberry chutney, pumpkin pie and  spice bread stuffing at the table; Cook up each of these same dishes, and you'll earn Now We're Cooking (better get up that cooking skill!); And if you sit down to feast in each major city, you'll get Pilgrim's Paunch. On the PvP side, you'll have to wear your pilgrim attire and sit down to a bountiful table in each enemy capital city to earn the Pilgrim's Peril achievement. Anyone who enjoys daily quests will get a kick out of the Pilgrim's Progress achievement, for which you'll need to complete five Pilgrim's Bounty daily quests. You raiders out there will hopefully enjoy a draw back into Burning Crusade content to defeat the feathered and, might I say, turkey look-alike Talon King Ikiss in Sethekk Halls while wearing Pilgrim attire. This earns you the Terokkar Turkey Time achievement. And perhaps the oddest of all these (but sure to create some in-game fun) is the Turkey Lurkey achievement, for which you have to "blast those dirty, sneaking Rogues (of all 8 playable races) with your Turkey Shooter." I know I'll certainly be lurking around with my rogue just for the fun of that one. Now once all of this is completed, you'll get the Pilgrim title. Keep in mind that as we all know, information gleaned on the PTR is never official until it goes live on all servers. So things could change until then. But it looks like Blizzard has a pretty good idea of how they want this event to play out. Should make for a good time! Do you guys agree - is this an event you can get behind? Or are you dreading this as a possible addition needed to earn your Violet Proto Drake? What aspects of it are you most looking forward to? As for myself, all this talk of Thanksgiving feasts is making me hungry!

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Patch 3.2 is finally available on the PTR, which means that players will be able to find out all sorts of fun information about what changes lay ahead for us. Most of the changes are covered in the patch notes, but MMO-Champion found a bunch of new achievements to go along with the new patch. I, as an achievement whore, am very excited about these new (pointless) goals. Browsing through the list of achievements, they come out in a few different categories, covering the 10- and 25-player versions of the Crusader's Colloseum along with their heroic modes, Isle of Conquest (the brand new battleground), Koralon (the new Vault boss), and Pilgrim's Bounty and Pirate Day/Day of the dead. Wait, Pilgrim's Bounty? Pirate Day? Day of the Dead? New world events! Since Pirate Day and Day of the Dead only have one achievement listed for each of them, I'd assume they'll occur for only one day and have minimal impact on the world for their duration. But Pilgrim's Bounty raises my excitement level! There are a number of fun looking achievements to go along with the new holiday that I'll assume will take place over Thanksgiving week. For those of you unaware, Thanksgiving takes place on the fourth Thursday of every November in the United States. Of course, Blizzard could always adopt the Canadian version, which takes place on the second Monday of October each year. The only question I have is whether or not we'll have to participate in this new world event to get our Violet Proto Drakes from the Long Strange Trip achievement. If it's anything like the new and improved Noblegarden, then we will. I'm OK with that, but I'm sure some of the other players hoping to get that 310% mount might get upset. In addition to those new holiday achievements, there are a few new Feats of Strength, which hint at some more free pets for logging in. A Jade Tiger sounds like fun! What are your thoughts on these new achievements? Anything in particular draw your interest? What about the new world event? Can't wait or sick of holidays?

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Yesterday I mentioned that most of my Thanksgiving was spent trying to convince people to join me in Azeroth, rather than playing myself. It isn't that I didn't want to play, I did my best to find the time, but living far away from my family forces me to obligate the little time I have with them to them. I blame society and quality parenting (don't ever tell my parents I said that).

While I was busy chastising my brother for his disinterest in Wrath and cursing my cousin's friends for ruining a raiding buddy, Ghostcrawler was busy on the official forums discussing the intricacies of World of Warcraft. Seeing as we have extended maintenance this fine Tuesday, I thought we could dive into his numerous posts and do some light theory discussing today.

The first meaty post I noticed from Mr. Crabbie was a discussion on the upcoming dual spec feature. Healers and tanks have been looking forward to this feature more than anyone, as it will allow them to tank or heal when needed, and revert to a better talent build for solo leveling. Sadly, if the feature doesn't make it into the game soon then most of us will be level 80, and it will lose he majority of its impact. Blizzard realizes this, and even though they won't put an ETA on it, they are trying to get the feature in for patch 3.1.

After reading that over, I noticed another post of interest to PvEers. I have been following the discussion of Wrath's difficulty ever since Ensidia (then TwentyFifthNovember) crushed the end game content. GC mentions that Blizzard is happy with the way PvE is going. Specifically, the developers want players to run the lower level dungeons at the appropriate levels, and make sure they do not “hit the introductory raid content like a brick wall.”

One of the most interesting posts to players of all flavors will be the discussion on itemization. Greg Street gives some background into how Blizzard wants you to feel when you have to decide between items. Back in the day, and after The Burning Crusade's launch, it was pretty obvious that one piece was vastly superior to another. Blizzard is now creating gear that doesn't lend itself to clearcut answers.

Shall I take a bit of haste or a large amount of attack power? These are the kind of questions Blizzard wants you to ask when looking at your gear options. I guess that explains why I have five trinkets that are almost equal. I went with the one with the lowest cooldown and best static stat.

Last but not least, Ghostcrawler spread tanking posts all over the holiday period. The pre-Thanksgiving post is the most interesting (and possess the least QQing by the OP) as it discusses core mechanics behind tanking. The OP asks what the point of the defense mechanism is, to which Street replies to, some 20 posts later. The interesting part is that the tanking mechanics that have been a staple in World of Warcraft since the days of Onyxia, may have just been added to the crustacean's whiteboard. The pincher possessor is not happy with the fact that the mechanic pulls “double duty.” In the future we may see the stat split up into multiple pieces, as the current incarnation “might eventually be a problem.” Topics such as easy tanking and tanking scalability – needing two or three tanks for 10- and 25-man raids – were also brought up.

The decapods dedication to World of Warcraft, the world he has helped to create, is astounding. Being in California one would assume that he celebrated Thanksgiving, yet he managed to post a horde of responses on that day alone. Seems that he took off Wednesday and Friday for travel days thought. The sheer volume of informative posts from Saturday makes me feel inadequate.

Here's to hoping that dual spec is implemented before I turn my focus back on my priest.

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