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: Factions, Guides, Achievements, The Overachiever
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Reader Comments (Page 2 of 4)
Art Jan 22nd 2009 10:57PM
While we can supply most others, engineers can't create the firecrackers.
Amaxe Jan 22nd 2009 11:19PM
I'm thinking I won't be getting this achievement. I lack the patience to do corpse runs to the horde territories. I imagine stealth could do it (my friend on a rogue doused all the Horde city fires for the midsummer festival)
Hakushi Jan 23rd 2009 12:03AM
Even as a holy priest with no invis pot, I snagged the fires from all the capital cities. If you time it right, it should not be too hard. The ones that will be a little harder are the upper level Vanilla instances that are more difficult for a squishy priest to solo.
/lfg anyone?
Evelinda Jan 23rd 2009 8:13AM
Doing them wont be TOO bad... i mean, sure, you'll probably die a couple of times, but especially if you do it at odd times, you'll be ok. I managed to douse all the midsummer fires last year with a hunter and a priest, so i reckon you can do it too :)
Jake Jan 23rd 2009 8:56AM
I may have timed this perfectly, as I just watched the Wrathgate cinematic last night, and I soon will be doing the follow-up quests through Ogrimmar and Undercity. Hopefully the Elders will be there too!
Astemus Jan 23rd 2009 9:24AM
I doubt they will be there since phased areas have no NPCs unless blizzard added them, and since the NPC is in the original area, they would have had to add them twice, and since the area is only for one quest, it's unlikely
Sarah Jan 27th 2009 11:23AM
The elders aren't in the instanced undercity and orgrimmar. I had to fish up old crafty at the weekend before I handed in that quest so I could do the elders. :)
Ice Princess Jan 22nd 2009 11:51PM
Ugh! I want my violet proto drake!!! I need to level up cooking, I think. *sigh*
I live for useless crap... I mean, I play for useless crap. With 8 mages in my guild and me being the 2nd newest addition to the guild. It's hard for me to raid with them. So I end up wasting my time running normal & heroic dungeons, bgs, arena and achievements.... or sometimes dailies and/or questing.
Lady Sith Jan 22nd 2009 11:55PM
Last year, I doused all the fires on my 53 warlock... as in seriously, THE ENTIRE AZEROTH. No Outland though... too scary for her.
She only died maybe 3 times.
Whereas with my level 70 mage, she did the entire thing and died a few times - most especially in Silvermoon. hahah >_<
I can't wait to do it again this year.
oscurotoro Jan 22nd 2009 11:58PM
As a Druid I need this title. Elder Oscurotoro Guardian of Cenarius is my goal.
Andraste Jan 23rd 2009 1:35AM
You can only have one title up :S
Worcester Jan 23rd 2009 12:34AM
Just so you know, if you haven't been in the opposing faction's cities since the Summer Festival, the guards are now 75. Also, the article says you'll need to be 75 to visit the Elders in the dungeons, but isn't one of the Northrend guys on the flying ship? There is a work around (which is how I got my Merrymaker title), but it's not easy to do.
Good luck to all!
Lemons Jan 23rd 2009 1:27AM
I honestly love achievements that force you to revisit the vanilla wow. It gives me an excuse to go back and take in some scenery I haven't seen in a while.
Wyred Jan 23rd 2009 5:22AM
Yeah, some of the old areas look unbelievably cool. Feralas is one of my personal favourites
Riftsrunner Jan 28th 2009 5:44PM
And get bugged by lowbies to help them run through low level instances and begging for a piece of you vast fortune you earn from the new areas. ;-P
vpr Jan 23rd 2009 6:08AM
I ran into Orgrimmar during the Winter Veil event on a PVP server to buy the pattern for Green Winter Clothes. I'm a mage too, so quite squishy. I waited till late at night so there would be less people on, and those people that play late at night I find are more into questing because it's the only time they have to play. I skirted the outskirts of Org for awhile to make sure it was clear, popped Invis and ran to the general location of where the vendors were according to the image I looked up on Wowhead. When I came out of invis I managed to pull 1 guard, but he wasn't doing much damage. In my frantic I think I bought and accidently sold the pattern maybe 4 times. I was trying to learn it but had the vendor window open so it kept selling it.
Most of the people didn't really care, or notice me. I had some people /cheer me... It wasn't until I tired to leave though - I blinked away and a DK death gripped me back (god I hate that!) and there wasn't much I could do - I iceblocked, trying to wait for my blink CD to come back up, but it didn't work and I ended up dieing. I got the pattern though so I didn't care... It was my first try too.
Ornasse Jan 23rd 2009 12:51PM
The location of the Elders in the Horde cities is actually a lot less central than the goblin (I did it on my priest, also in the middle of the night!), so it's really easy to avoid guards. In Org it's just to the right of Thrall's building. Of course, you still have to worry about players though.
poot1 Jan 23rd 2009 9:32AM
As a solo player, I kinda wish they'd kept the instance/pvp requirements to just one or two per seasonal so that all types of players can enjoy them. I had done all the seasonals up to this point, but there's no way I am going to get this one done.
There's plenty of achievements for raiders, and plenty for PvPers. There's relatively few achievements that casual players can work on. Seasonals are the one achievement that most appeals to all types of gamers. I wish Blizzard had made them a little more friendly to solo players.
Netherscourge Jan 23rd 2009 8:50AM
Every year I've done the Lunar Festival, I was able to talk to the Ghosts that I already talked to the year before and get the Reputation and Coins again.
So as long as nothing has changed, you can continue to talk to the elder ghosts again and keep getting Reputation and Coins when the Lunar Festival comes around.
But only once a year.
zaababy Jan 23rd 2009 9:10AM
I have always got the coins each year, but seldom found anyone else who did. I just loved the easy rep with all my Horde factions! Now that everyone and his brother will be going after them it should be a bit easier to get into Stormwind Park. I hate that place.