Brewfest! Be Drunk and Be Merry! by Skryer Councilor - November 12, 2008
It’s almost October! And guess what, its time for another Brewfest! If you have participated with the Brewfest activities last year, you will notice that some are familiar this time of the year and some got changed. If this is your first time participating on Brewfest, read on and don't get left behind on the festivities!
Welcome to Brewfest!
Brewfest is celebrated from September 20 to October 4 this year. Scattered across every major town are Commoner NPCs which celebrate Brewfest. One of them has a quest to speak to the Brewfest Organizer to receive a free brew. You can get the quest from the Commoners, or just go straight to the organizer NPC to receive your free booze. The Brewfest Organizer is found just by the entrance to the Brewfest grounds outside each faction's capital city. For the Horde, its Tapper Swindlekeg, and for the Alliance its Ipfelkofer Ironkeg. Once you complete the quest, you will be able to choose one from the 3 brews they offer. It doesn't matter which one you choose, but as you get your brew, drink away and enjoy the Brewfest!
The Brewfest Quests
This year's Brewfest has had some changes from last year. Instead of Brewfest Prize Tickets from last year, its Brewfest Prize Tokens this year, and it now lasts for 21 days to avoid stacking up tokens for the next year's Brewfest. Several quests like the Pink Elekks on Parade have been disabled this year, and the Dark Iron attacks have been brought back this year. For the mounts, a kodo mount has been added they are now only accessible as drops from the new Brewfest boss in Blackrock Depths. If you already have access to the rams from last year, you can still buy them from Driz Tumblequick (Horde) or Pol Amberstill (Alliance), however the kodo mount can only be obtained through drop from the Brewfest boss. There are several new items offered by the Token Redeemer NPC this year, including the "Brew of the Month" Club Membership.
This quest is one of the new Brewfest quests this year. The quest is very easy to do, you just need to drink a Complimentary Brewfest Sampler and throw the empty mug to S.T.O.U.T. located in a small fenced area behind the quest giver NPC. Also located just behind the quest giver NPC are several Complimentary Brewfest Sampler mugs on the table. Clicking on them will make you grab a Sampler and put it in your inventory. When you 'use' the Sampler, you will drink it and afterwards you will automatically throw the empty mug in front of you. To hit S.T.O.U.T. with the empty mug, just face him when you drink the sampler and your mug throw will 'home in' on S.T.O.U.T., hitting him. To complete the quest, you will need to hit S.T.O.U.T. 5 times, so you will need to grab 5 Complimentary Brewfest Samplers and drink them all. Of course, by doing this you will get drunk, but that's what Brewfest is all about!
Now This is Ram Racing... Almost.
From: Ram Master Ray (Horde), Neill Ramstein (Alliance)
This quest is similar to the one last year, where you are introduced to ram riding. Upon accepting the quest, you will be lent a racing ram which appears as a buff for 4 minutes. You will also receive a Ram Racing Reins item in your inventory which you can use to alter the speed of your ram. While you are on the rental ram, you will be constantly moving forward and you don't need to press forward to move. Also, pressing backwards will not make you move backwards, or stop you from moving. To change the movement speed of your ram, you will need to use the Ram Racing Reins you received in your inventory.
There are 5 levels of speed for your ram:
Neutral / Walking - 50% run speed, decreases ram fatigue by 4 every 2 seconds. This is the ram's starting speed.
Trot - 125% run speed, decreases ram fatigue by 2 every 2 seconds.
Canter - 200% run speed, increases ram fatigue by 1 every second.
Gallop - 285% run speed, increases ram fatigue by 5 every second.
Exhausted - 15% run speed, lasts for 15 seconds. Decreases ram fatigue by 15 after it expires.
The initial speed of your ram is the Neutral / Walking speed. Its a slow speed, and this will remain until you use your Ram Racing Reins to speed up. Using the reins repeatedly will increase / decrease / retain the speed of your ram depending on the interval of using the reins. This means that if you use the reins fast, you will switch to the next speed level, and if you use the reins less the speed will go down. Maintaining a decent use interval will make you stay on your current speed until you decide to speed up and use faster, or slow down and stop using the reins for a while. The next level of ram speed is Trot, then Canter, and finally Gallop. Take note that when you are in Canter or Gallop speed, you will gain a Ram Fatigue buff that will stack up to 100. Once this fatigue buff reaches 100, your ram will be exhausted and its speed will drop down to 15% for 15 seconds. You cannot speed up while your ram is Exhausted, so be careful not to reach 100 fatigue and tire your ram out. After the Exhausted buff wears off, the ram will then return to Neutral / Walking speed. Note that you still have some fatigue on your ram so be careful about speeding up again. To help clear the Ram Fatigue buff, you can run to a fruit basket and let your ram 'eat' from it. Doing this will reset your fatigue buff to 0, but retains your current speed.
For the quest, you will need to stay on 3 particular speeds for 8 seconds each. There is no particular sequence on which speed to do first, you just need to maintain a speed level for 8 seconds. To easily do this, you can go for maintaining Trot speed, then Canter, then finally Gallop. As soon as you receive your Rental Ram and the reins, go up to Trot speed and use your reins every around 2 seconds. Maintain this speed for 8 seconds, then use your reins repeatedly fast to go up to Canter speed. Once on this speed, maintain it for 8 seconds by hitting the reins every 2 seconds like on the Trot speed. After 8 seconds of Canter speed is done, you can now safely mash on your reins button to Gallop. This time, make sure to run to a fruit basket to clear your ram fatigue just to be safe, or you might tire out your ram while Galloping. Once maintainance of all 3 speeds have been completed, you can proceed to complete the quest by returning to the quest giver and talking to him. Take note that you are still on your ram and moving, so you might as well click off the Rental Ram buff to dismount and talk to the NPC properly.
Once this quest is done, several quests will start to be available, including the daily quests involving ram racing.
Say, There Wouldn't Happen to be a Souvenir This Year, Would There?
From: Driz Tumblequick (Horde), Pol Amberstill (Alliance)
This quest is just basically to reward you with a unique Brewfest Stein for this year's Brewfest celebration. Last year, it was a Yellow Brewfest Stein and this year it will be a Blue Brewfest Stein. These steins can be equipped as weapons. The Yellow Brewfest Stein from last year can be equipped on the main hand, while this year's Blue Brewfest Stein can be equipped on either hand. If you got both steins from last year and this year's Brewfest, you can basically dual wield Brewfest Steins for massive drinking! Anyway, to claim your Blue Brewfest Stein, talk to Driz Tumblequick / Pol Amberstill after completing the ram racing introduction quest (Now This is Ram Racing... Almost.) to get your voucher, and bring it to the Token Redeemer NPCs Blix Fixwidget (Horde) / Belbi Quikswitch (Alliance) which are located at the Brewfest grounds. Remember to keep the stein as it will be a Feat of Strength come Wrath of the Lich King expansion!
There and Back Again
From: Ram Master Ray (Horde), Neill Ramstein (Alliance)
Reward: 10 Brewfest Prize Tokens
This is the initial quest for opening up the 12hr-repeatable quest of ram racing. It basically involves going to a particular NPC and fetching a Brewfest Keg and then delivering it back to Driz Tumblequick / Pol Amberstill. For this quest, you must do this delivery quest 3 times before your ram goes away. Since the work ram only lasts for 4 minutes, the quest is basically timed for that duration. For the Horde, Bok Dropcertain located south along the road going to Razor Hill will give you the Brewfest Kegs, and Flynn Firebrew located at Kharanos will give you the Brewfest Kegs if you are Alliance. Between the two delivery points are several fruit baskets to help you clear your Ram Fatigue so that you can make your deliveries while in Canter or even Gallop speed. After you have completed delivering 3 kegs back, complete the quest by talking to the quest giver NPC again.
Save Brewfest!
From: Slurpo Fizzykeg (Horde), Darna Honeybock (Alliance)
This quest opens up the daily quest to kill Coren Direbrew, the mastermind of the Dark Iron invasions on Brewfest. To get this quest, you need to complete the Welcome to Brewfest quest first where you get a free beer sample from the Brewfest Organizer. Once you have gotten your free brew, proceed to the NPC just beside the keg throwing NPC for the keg delivery quest. Slurpo Fizzykeg (Horde) / Darna Honeybock (Alliance) will then give you this quest which requires you to travel to the Blackrock Depths instance and find the Brewfest Spy in the Grim Guzzler. Once you have talked to the Brewfest Spy to complete the quest, he will start to give the daily quest for activating and killing Coren Direbrew.
Direbrew's Dire Brew
From: Direbrew's Dire Brew (quest item)
Reward: 40 Brewfest Prize Tokens
Once you have killed Coren Direbrew for the first time, he will drop an item called Direbrew's Dire Brew which starts a quest for you to turn in to the Brewfest organizer.
Located at the Brewfest grounds are several rivaling breweries which offer their own kind of brews. Two of the breweries will offer this quest daily for you to bark for their own brewery and spread the word to the people in the city how great their brew is. Now, for doing the quest it does not matter which brewery you choose to bark for, and when you decide to bark for one and complete it, the quest is done for the day and you will not be able to bark for the other brewery.
When you have decided on which brewery to bark for, talk to the particular NPC and you will get on a rental ram which lasts for 4 minutes. Your goal for this quest is to pass through 4 points in the capital city within 4 minutes where you will bark about how great the brews of your chosen brewery is. You will know that you are on the bark point when you have passed in between the Brewfest flagposts on the key locations stated on the quest, and you see yourself say a short dialogue promoting the brewery you chose. Sounds easy, but the challenge here is that you will have to pass through all 4 points in the city without any help from fruit baskets because there is none located inside the city. This quest will basically test you and your ram riding skills to accomplish the task within 4 minutes without any help from fruit baskets. To do this, you can maintain Canter speed while passing through the quest points in the city and keeping eye on your ram fatigue buff. If your ram fatigue buff is high enough, drop down to Trot speed to decrease your fatigue, and resume Canter when you have your fatigue buff low enough. If you are Horde, the optimal path for barking is going counter-clockwise, with passing through the front of the Auction House first, then going into the Drag and moving to the Valley of Honor first, then going back and proceeding to the Valley of Wisdom, then finally going to the Valley of Spirits flags for a bit to complete the quest points and then running back to the quest giver. For Alliance, you can go on whichever direction, just remember to pass through the front of the bank too.
This One Time, When I Was Drunk... (Daily)
From: Dark Iron Mole Machine Wreckage
Reward: 10 Brewfest Prize Tokens
Remember the Dark Iron invasion last year? Its back this year, but it has been changed now to not reward tokens for every dwarf you hit. This time, when you have successfully driven out the Dark Iron dwarves, there will be a wreckage that is left behind which you can get the daily quest from, then turn in to either Bizzle Quicklift for Horde, or Boxey Boltspinner for Alliance for 10 Brewfest Prize Tokens.
So how does the Dark Iron invasion work? Every half hour, the Dark Iron dwarves will invade the Brewfest grounds by drilling through the ground with their mole machines. Dark Iron dwarves will then appear from these mole machines and proceed to move to the large brew kegs of each brewery and destroy the kegs. If they managed to destroy all 3 kegs, the invasion succeeds and the object for the daily quest will not appear. To drive out the Dark Iron dwarves, you will need your mug throwing skills again and this time, throw those mugs to the invading dwarves. Also, you don't need to keep on picking up the Complimentary Brewfest Samplers on the tables, you just need to continually chugging and chucking those mugs since the nearby NPCs will automatically throw another sampler at you after you have thrown your previous one. Its very challenging since you will need all the help you can get from the other players to drive out all Dark Iron dwarves invading Brewfest, you can't handle them all alone. To make things simpler, the brewery advertiser NPCs will sometimes shout to "try out the SUPER brew". When they do this, they will throw a huge mug on the ground and when you move to the mug, you will get the Drunken Master buff for 9 seconds, making you spin around and do a whirlwind animation while continually throwing out mugs on any direction while the buff is active. With this buff, you can basically decimate multiple Dark Iron dwarves easily just by knocking them down with the thrown mugs, or hitting them with your 'whirlwind attack'. Also, this way you won't get drunk from continually drinking the Brewfest Samplers. The invasion lasts for around 5 minutes, when you and other players have successfully knocked out enough Dark Iron dwarves or the dwarves succeed on destroying the 3 kegs. If the invasion fails, the mole machine wreckage object will appear in the center of the Brewfest Grounds which you can click to get the daily quest. If the invasion succeeds, don't get disheartened since they will come back on the next half hour and you can try again.
Do you still need some help moving kegs from the crash site... ? (12hour repeatable)
From: Ram Master Ray (Horde), Neill Ramstein (Alliance)
Reward: 2 Brewfest Prize Tokens for each keg returned
Similar to the There and Back Again quest you just did, but this time you can go and bring back as much kegs as you can within the 4 minute time limit (Ram duration). This 'quest' doesn't appear with a ! on the NPC's head. Instead, its a dialogue that you can choose when you talk to the ram NPC. Once you have done the There and Back Again quest, you can talk to the NPC again and you will see a dialogue selection. Click on the dialogues, and when you 'agreed' to help on the deliveries, you will be lent his work ram for 4 minutes. During this time, you will need to rush and get as many kegs back as possible within the time limit. The initial time is 4 minutes, but every time you successfully deliver a keg back, you will be given additional 30 seconds on your ram duration. This is basically a ram race where you would probably need to gallop all the way to bring back those kegs swiftly and use the fruit baskets lying around to clear the ram fatigue you have so you can have constant Gallop speed. When the ram duration runs out, you will lose the work ram and the 'quest' ends. When you talk to the NPC again, there won't be any more dialogue selection available until the next 12 hours. Other players may notice when they return within 12 hours that the quest is not available yet. If that happens, try returning after 6 more hours. This is a known bug where the 'quest' resets after 18 hours instead of the intended 12 hour reset.
Insult Coren Direbrew (Daily)
From: Brewfest Spy
After completing Save Brewfest! quest, the Brewfest Spy inside Blackrock Depths' Grim Guzzler will give this quest as a daily quest to activate Coren Direbrew for you to kill him.
How to Get to the Brewfest Spy
The Brewfest Spy is located inside the Blackrock Depths instance, particularly at the Grim Guzzler (bar) part of the instance. Blackrock Depths is located inside Blackrock Mountains in between Searing Gorge and Burning Steppes. Once you get inside the instance, there are level 70 Dark Iron dwarf mobs immediately to your right guarding a set of consoles. Kill these non-elite mobs easily and then click on any of the consoles there to bring up a dialogue window. Choose the only option here and a mole machine will appear in front of you. This will bring you to the Grim Guzzler instantly without having to manually travel there through all the mobs in the instance. Once you 'land' on Coren Direbrew's room, move out of the room and you will find the Brewfest Spy right around the corner to your left. He is just beside Ribbly Screwspigot and his croneys.
Starting the Event
Once you have gotten the daily quest from the Brewfest Spy to Insult Coren Direbrew, you can proceed to talk to him when your group is ready. Once you talk to him and complete the quest, he will proceed to aggro along with his Dark Iron Antagonist companions.
Killing Coren Direbrew
Coren Direbrew is a level 73 elite boss type mob. Although he looks tough, he's just a pushover. The fight is basically tank and spank, with some adds appearing every now and then. The adds aren't that much of a threat and they are pretty weak and can easily be killed. Coren Direbrew only does normal attacks and occasionally, he will start to cast a 4 second 'spell' called Direbrew's Disarm which, after drinking, he will spin in a whirlwind, dealing moderate damage to nearby players plus disarming and stunning them for 4 seconds. This ability hurts if your tank only has subpar gear, so might as well avoid it and run away when he starts to cast. Also during the fight, mole machines will drill out randomly in his room which spawns a Dark Iron Minion. It is a non-elite mob which can charge, but is very easy to kill. You can decide to ignore them, or kill them immediately. At some time during the fight, Coren Direbrew will summon elite adds, namely Ilsa Direbrew and Ursula Direbrew. These barmaid adds deal minor damage and can just be ignored. Be warned, however, of their ability to stun a random player with their Chuck Mug skill. This skill is a two-part skill, where the first part will have them throw a brew at you which gives you a debuff that if you do not drink the brew you will get stunned for 6 seconds by the 2nd part of the skill where they throw another mug at you. The debuff will disappear if you drink the brew they threw at you. At some point when Coren is about to die, they will start throwing barrels on people which disorients them for 8 seconds. They will continue to throw barrels on people (even the same person) which can refresh the Barreled! debuff duration on them. At this point, Coren needs to be killed as soon as possible. Take note that the tank can be Barreled! as well, and if this happens, Coren will change targets so be careful. Once Coren is killed, all adds will despawn and you can then proceed to loot him.
Known Loots (All require level 70): Epic Trinkets Brightbrew Charm (45 stamina, summon on-use) Balebrew Charm (45 stamina, summon on-use) Coren's Lucky Coin (59 block value, 200 block value for 20 sec on-use) Empty Mug of Direbrew (72 attack power, 278 attack power for 20 sec on-use) Direbrew Hops (84 healing / 28 damage spells, 297 healing / 99 damage spells for 20 sec on-use) Dark Iron Smoking Pipe (43 damage / healing spells, 155 damage / healing spells for 20 sec on-use)
Epic Main hand Dagger Direbrew's Shanker (87.5 DPS, 2.00 speed, 19 agility, 18 stamina, 36 attack power)
Miscellaneous Direbrew's Remote (summons a mole machine for you and your party to use to get to the Grim Guzzler)
Epic Mounts Swift Brewfest Kodo Swift Brewfest Ram
Also, if it is your first time killing Coren Direbrew, he will drop Direbrew's Dire Brew which starts a quest for you to turn in to the Brewfest organizer for 40 Brewfest Prize Tokens. Activating Coren Direbrew can be done multiple times in the same instance, as long as there are enough people who has the daily quest. Initially, you can have 5 attempts. Once those 5 are up, you can proceed to switch out for your alts or other players and make more attempts with the same group (this time with your alt or another player). Coren Direbrew respawns after a few seconds so you don't need to go out and reset the instance just to make another attempt. The minimum level to do the quest is level 65, so don't hesitate to bring lowbies in!
Brewfest Items
With enough Brewfest Prize Tokens, you can buy these brewfest items:
Most of the items here are the same from last year's brewfest items. The Brewfest Hops and the "Brew of the Month" Club Membership are the new items this year. The Brewfest Hops function like the Hollys during the Wintersveil celebration, which changes your mount into something festive. The "Brew of the Month" Club Membership starts a quest where you can turn in to the "Brew of the Month" Club NPC located in your capital city which makes you join their club to sample their monthly brews. Every month, the club mails you a brew sample and you can basically enjoy brewfest every month with this.
Since the Wolpertinger quest is not available this year, they have just included the Wolpertinger's Tankard pet to be sold for 50 silver. It's a pretty cheap way to recover / get your Wolpertinger pet!
The Tapping of the Keg
Every 6:15am and 6:15pm server time, Vol'jin for the Horde and High Tinker Mekkatorque for the Alliance appears in the Brewfest grounds to tap the keg for everyone. During this event, everyone present within the Brewfest grounds will receive a Brewfest Enthusiast buff which lasts for 2 hours. This buff increases experience gained from killing enemies by 10%, which is great for lowbies who are still levelling. Take note that this buff does not persist through death, so be careful not to die while the buff is running.
And there you have your information regarding this year's Brewfest celebration. Rack up those tokens and drink to your hearts' content!
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