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 4 of 4)
Clifton Jan 27th 2009 5:56AM
Thank god I'm a rogue. Now I can just sneak through the dungeons and Alliance cities. This was my first year fighting Omen. He was a lot of fun. Died like 6 times but he was fun. Also one of those times when Alliance and Horde work together. I love moments like that.
SamLowry Jan 26th 2009 3:26PM
Rogues can only get 71 coins by stealthing alone. Three of the dungeons have barriers that drop only once you've cleared the room, and Gundrak, well....
Rylka Jan 27th 2009 8:09AM
My main also had to do the "kill the dog again and destroy her old lantern thing" as she had the lantern but no credit from doing it last year.
I also had a really strange bug. Last year I hit all of the elders in the Eastern Kingdoms and all of Kalimdor. This year, all the elders for the Eastern Kingdoms were green on my achievement list, but all the elders for Kalimdor were grey. I had to do all of Kalimdor elders again.
I did them all last year with my spouse who had full credit for Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor this year, just not me.
On a side note, our tiny friends and family guild (only around 10 active players) is scheduling dungeon nights where we try to cycle as many toons as we can through the elders. That heroic one may be a bit tough, but we are going to give it our best shot.
I REALLY want that elder title. It fits so well with the little bit of RP I do in my head for this toonn
Andy Jan 28th 2009 8:56AM
For Omen, you can just stand by and wait for another group to down him, then run on his corpse and you'll get the quest complete.
Viola Jan 30th 2009 5:48AM
Jeesh. All you think about is what you can get in-game. I for one am enjoying this holiday. Why? Because I am Chinese. It's nice to see Blizz add in this holiday for some of us.
dasime Feb 16th 2009 7:12PM
This world event was no where near as hard as I expected; especially with all the really useful guides to hitting the elders :P
The love event was another matter, it took so long I was scared I wouldn't get the candy in time! - I'm trying to get the drake this year so missing that one 'I LOVE YOU' candy would absolutely _crush_ me hehehe