Wednesday, September 21, 2011

World of Warcraft Brewfest

Alliance Brewfest Camp at Ironforge

It's that time of year again. Personally, my favorite WoW holiday, Brewfest is here. The festival runs from September 20 until October 5 which mostly coincides with Oktoberfest (9/17-10/3) this year. As with the real celebration, beers and games abound. I mostly play Alliance therefore most of my tips will be directed to that faction. You can check out the full guide to everything Brewfest over at Wowhead.

Horde Brewfest Camp at Orgrimmar

There are prizes that you can buy with Brewfest Prize Tokens. The first day you can earn over 100 Brewfest Tokens easily by doing all available quests.  Each day after that you should be able to earn at least 30 Tokens by doing the Brewfest Dailies.  A few of items you'll want to make sure to buy over others, so that you will be able to complete the Brewmaster Achievement, if your into that sort of thing. Just keep in mind that Brewfest is required for the What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been Achievement that awards the dragon mount granted by the Reins of the Violet Proto-Drake.


The component Achievements required for Brewmaster
  • Direbrewfest - This is a quest to kill the boss of Brewfest, Coren Direbrew (Lvl 85 Elite).  He is in Blackrock Depths but after flying there and spending a while in the actual instance I couldn't find him.  You can simply join the battle in the Dungeon Finder however. He was very easy in my opinion and awards one of 8 ilevel 365 items, mostly trinkets.  I fought him about 6 times in a random party.  Luckily, I won both his Bitterer Balebrew Charm and the Brawler's Trophy for my Pally. There was a guy there that said he fought 40 times before he finally won the Coren's Chilled Chromium Coaster.  I saw it drop twice.  The first time you kill him each day, Coren also drops a Keg-Shaped Treasure Chest which may contain rarer drops like the Swift Brewfest Ram and the Great Brewfest Kodo.

The Dailies
I like to think of these quests as ram racing. Just remember to run close to the apple barrels, located to the left of the path heading towards Kharanos and also directly behind the quest giver and the barrel thrower, so that your mount fatigue stays low.

You get to pick one per day; it really doesn't matter which. You basically run in a circuit through your given faction's city advertising the brewers' beer.  All you have to do is run the circuit on the ram mount and return in the allotted 4 minutes.  I like to do Thunderbrew simply because I can jump down from the road pretty much straight onto their tent on the return trip.

This is the "main" battle of Brewfest. It is the Dark Iron invasion of the Brewfest camp which occurs every 30 minutes during the festival. Pretty easy really; you just pick up beer mugs from the nearby table and chunk them at the baddie. You don't actually need to participate in the battle. Afterwards, a big gear will remain on the ground in the center of the Brewfest tents. Just click it and enjoy a painless quest reward at others' expense.