The OverAchiever: Completing the Lunar Festival Achievements [Updated x2]

Saturday marks the beginning of this year's Lunar Festival, an in-game event celebrating the real life celebration of the Lunar New Year. With plenty of quests, party favors and, of course, shiny clothes, you'll have many chances to complete the meta-Achievement To Honor One's Elders. Not only will this result in the title "Elder", but you'll be another step closer to a Violet Proto-Drake,
Having experienced this event twice, the big question is what's new this year? Though all of the Achievements are new, they cover older quests. The only difference is the brand new Elders of Northrend Achievement and the additional elders added to the Elders of Dungeons Achievement.
After the jump, an overview of how to complete To Honor One's Elders
UPDATE: Looks like the minimum level needed to complete the meta-Achievement is 80 as one of the Elders can only be found in the Heroic version of the Wrath instance Gundrak. According to this comment on WoWHead, you must kill Moorabi to open the secret tunnel to the Heroic-only boss Eck. Standing in the same room as Eck is Elder Ohanzee. Also, Omen has been verified as a level 80 raid mob this year.
UPDATE v2: Updated a few directions and added link to player list of other Achievements to grab while pursuing coins.
City Activities
In each major city in Azeroth, revelers will appear in glowing lights surrounded by fireworks. Find an NPC there with a quest exclamation over their head. They will start you on the quest that will give you your teleport to Moonglade. At the same time you can do these two Achievements.
Frenzied Firecracker Achievement
Purchase 10 Festival Firecrackers from the Lunar Festival Vendors (or buy them from an Engineer), drag those firecrackers to your spell bar and spam fire 10 of them in 30 seconds. You have to be quick to do it all in time considering the cooldown on the firecrackers. Don't worry, they're cheap to buy.
The Rocket's Red Glare
Similar to the Firecracker Achievement, buy Red Rocket Clusters off the vendors and shoot off 10 in 25 seconds. The difference here is you need a cluster launcher which can be found next to the vendors. Don't buy the little ones on the vendor, they won't work for this Achievement.
Turn in the quest, get your scroll, stand in the moonlight and teleport to Moonglade.
Moonglade Madness
Once there, take the road north around the east side of lake in to the small village. There are docks overlooking the lake where you will find the NPC Valadar Starsong. He gives quests that lead to the following Achievements:
Lunar Festival Finery
Purchase any one of 6 festival outfits from Valadar himself for 5 Coins of Ancestry. Coins covered more below.
Elune's Blessing
Valadar will give you a quest to take down Omen, the level 80 two-headed dog that can be summoned in the lake at Moonglade. You can help take him down if there is a raid in progress even if you are not in the raid. When he goes down, just step into the red circle that appears around him to complete the quest. Watch out for his AE Starfall ability during the fight. If you're looking for a detailed strat, try WoWWiki's guide to Omen (and don't forget your candle.)
This Achievement may or may not be retroactive, so if you have your Lantern reward from previous years, you may still have to participate in the raid again this year for credit. I had my Lantern, didn't have the Achievement retroactively and had to destroy my Lantern to be able to complete the quest and get the Achievement.
Coins Across Azeroth
The Coins of Ancestry are the currency in this event and you can get one Coin from each of the 75 Elders in the game simply by talking to them. You will also work you way through the following chain of Achievements:
- A Coin of Ancestry
- 5 Coins of Ancestry
- 10 Coins of Ancestry
- 25 Coins of Ancestry
- 50 Coins of Ancestry
Though you only need 50 Coins to complete this Achievement, you are going to need all 75 to finish the following Elder Achievements to complete the meta-Achievement:
- Elders of Eastern Kingdoms
- Elders of Kalimdor
- Elders of the Alliance
- Elders of the Horde
- Elders of Dungeons
- Elders of Northrend
- WoWWiki has an excellent walkthrough of the pre-Wrath 50 Coins for both Alliance and Horde.(ProTip: mouse over the coordinates listed to see pop up map of location]
- Wow-Pro has a detailed walkthrough for the Horde including maps showing Elder location in hard to find areas.
- Exact locations of the new 25 Northrend Elders can be found in this forum thread, but has not been verified.
Also, the /hug player blog has an excellent list of other Achievements you can complete while after all the Coins including many older dungeon Achievements.
AddOns R Us
The TourGuide AddOn now has a Lunar Festival mod (Curse/WoW Interface) that will direct you to the pre-Wrath Elders based on the WoW Wiki coordinates. Not all the information is there, but enough to get you through some rough spots.
That should be enough to get you the Elder title and a few more Achievements under your belt. If you come across any more resources I can add to this list, leave the link in the comments below. Don't forget that you can also spend your Coins on items during the Festival like fireworks and Festival Dumplings (tip: try eating one of those and drinking at the same time for super mana regen while sitting.)
Filed under: Achievements, The Overachiever, Factions, Guides






Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Zarfay Jan 22nd 2009 8:36PM
Thanks for the tips
and btw you made a typo "difficutl"
agobelle Jan 22nd 2009 8:38PM
Very nice information. I'm glad there is 3 weeks to do all this!
Cadychan Jan 23rd 2009 1:52PM
We've got three weeks to do all these? Seriously?
Yeeeeeesssss...... XD
Cowy Jan 22nd 2009 8:51PM
I wish the ancestors in dungeons wasn't required for the meta, I doubt I can convince my guild to do some. which means yet-again pugging my way through. Blah.
Its far more rewarding to be able to accomplish these achievments with just yourself and a trusted friend or two.
Merrymaker was perfect. Wish this one could be more like Merrymaker.
Ok ok... yeah I'll just stop with the qq'ing now... :(
Procris Jan 22nd 2009 9:39PM
I was thinking the same. My guild doesn't do heroics anymore, so its going to be tricky getting a group for the northrend dungeons unless they are pugs.
Likewise i hope the Horde/Alliance city Elders aren't so far in that it makes it impossible to get out without being seen.
Lemons Jan 23rd 2009 1:36AM
zomg pugging? whatever will you do? there's nothing worse in the whole of Azeroth than pugging!
Seriously people need to get cured of their pug phobia. I have a guild but they don't always wanna run Heroics, so I do a lot of pugging and honestly it's not that bad. Dungeons are easier and most people know the fights by now. I've rarely failed to down the final boss in the pugs I've put together as of late.
Jojo Jan 23rd 2009 11:46AM
So join a larger guild.
Or join a guild that is more goal-oriented and less social-oriented.
You don't necessarily need to be in a large guild.
My guild has around 60 people in it, yet we farm Naxx 25 and are downing Maly 25 with few problems.
Its not about total members in guild, its total active members in guild.
apoxic Jan 26th 2009 3:35AM
Why are these comments plus'd? Its just a bunch of QQ. Honestly? NO ONE in your super-guilds are going to run for these same achievements? NO one in your guild has alts that might want to run some dungeons?
Stop the damn QQ.
joggoms Jan 27th 2009 2:44PM
I thought the purpose of these achievements was to give the casual or solo player something to work on. This achievement is just about completely soloable...until you have to hop into a level 80 heroic. Not a huge deal, but I expected something more solo friendly.
Seamus Jan 22nd 2009 9:01PM
Do any of the Northrend Elders require the zone to be "phased" in any way? I haven't yet quested in Icecrown and I can no longer see guildmates when they enter the area because they are on a different level of phasing than me.
vexis58 Jan 24th 2009 9:50PM
No, because there are no elders in Icecrown.
Veliaf Jan 25th 2009 8:41AM
@vexis58
I think there are...
dan Jan 22nd 2009 9:10PM
There isn't really a single Lunar New Year—the Lunar Festival always coincides with the Chinese (Lunar) New Year. Us Jews celebrate our hedonistic lunar annuity in early autumn.
Jero Jan 23rd 2009 9:32AM
Rosh ftw!
Ludo Jan 22nd 2009 11:15PM
I collected all the coins in a previous year but spent them so don't have credit for them. However I do have credit for visiting those elders. Does that mean I won't be able to get new coins off them so can't get the 50 coins achievement?
Erika Jan 22nd 2009 11:42PM
I have the same problem except i spent some and destroyed the rest.
Astemus Jan 23rd 2009 9:21AM
You can repeat the quests every year. I've done them all every year, it's great rep for all alliance (back when it was impossible to get rep). It's a shame I have to repeat them to get the 50 coin achievment though...
Dreadskull Jan 22nd 2009 9:31PM
Crap, I need to level up my Warlock faster then >.<
That and go do the achievements on my pally who'll (hopefully) get his Violet Proto Drake sometime during this year's Hallow's End.
Terreck Jan 22nd 2009 10:13PM
Elune's Blessing is retroactive; I did it last year, and it's lit up green on the list. Funny, it didn't remember I did BRD or BFD... very fickle.
I'm sure Omen will scale to a lvl 80 boss this time around.
Feles Jan 25th 2009 8:33PM
That's odd, I had done Elune's Blessing prviously - I still had the Elune's Lantern in my inventory. It didn't recognise the achievement, and I had to destroy my existing lantern to hand in the quest as the item was unique.