Indonesian Impressions and WoW

I had my sister on the phone yesterday and I found out why there are so few photo's uploaded yet. The ones she's quick-sharing she's taking with her cell. She's taking a lot of other pictures, but using a normal digital camera. So eventually, there will a lot of impressions of my homeland Indonesia to share with you all. Shame though, I was really looking forward to sharing Indonesia as it happens, so to speak. Beautiful country is beautiful!

WoW, Darkmoon Faire.

The Darkmoon Faire isn't alternating between factions anymore. Now it is on the first week of every month, with criers in the capitals teleporting you to the Faire grounds. The Faire is also a sanctuary now, so no more merry ganking shenanigans at the Faire anymore! This moved the Darkmoon Faire from being a travelling roadshow to being a monthly recurring world-event!

The Faire has monthly and daily quests. The monthly quests tie in to your professions, awarding a good amount of tickets and profession-score boosts. The daily quests are all about participating in the Faire itself, giving you one or more tickets per activity you complete. The monthly quests also reward Faire Coins for your trouble and you need those to play the games that make out the daily quests. Each game you play costs one Faire Coin. You can also get Faire Coins from a vendor, 20 coins for less than seven silver.

When you enter the Faire Grounds, the first game you come upon is the "Whack a Gnoll". You're given a mallet and you run around in an arena in which there are several barrels placed. These barrels are like Jack-in-the-boxes and when one of them activates, you move your toon over quickly and whack the barrel. There are different Gnols too. The normal Gnolls give you 1 point, the boss-gnoll give you 2. There's a catch too. When you're too mallet-happy and hit a barrel with a baby-gnoll, you are dazed for a short amount of time! When you have successfully hit 30 Gnolls within a minute, you get a Darkmoon Ticket. I haven't been successful in hitting 30 Gnolls in a minute yet (my record is 21), but your total Gnolls hit carry over to the next game you play until such time you're hit 30 Gnolls.

The next game is the Humanoid Cannonball, which is the game all WoWies wil surely know. You get launched from a huge cannon and have to hit a target in a body of water a distance away. It's easier than the original game was, because hitting the target in Crystal Lake was piss hard... here I manage to land in the middle of the target each time, but for some reason I'm missing the Bull's Eye each time! I have no clue what I'm doing wrong and I'm hitting the target. So yeah, try to get a high landingscore so your amount of launches remain fun... for landing in the middle of the target you get 3 points and you need five points to get your ticket. I haven't been awarded a Bull's Eye yet but I reckon a Bull's Eye is worth 5 points. On the shore in the vincinity of the target there's a helpful Gnome who'll teleport you back to the cannon in return for a silver coin.

Then there's the shooting gallery. This game is actually a bit hard, as your shot has a cool-down. In the gallery, there are 3 shields lined up and you need to hit them to score a point. The catch is that in order to score a point, the shield you're aiming at must be active. This a bit like the fire-festival's brazier-toss... the shield is highlighted with a green arrow above it, marking it as active. You need to face your toon to the shield and fire off a shot before the next shield is active. With timing, you can hit an active shield twice. I always need 2 games to get my 25 successful hits. My record for shields hit in under a minute is 15... But I'm getting better at it!

The fourth game is "Tonk Battle". The Tonks are little remote controlled tanks you must steer around a miniature city where targets spawn left and right. You must hit 30 targets within the time allowed, but as with all games, if you don't succeed, your score is taken along to the next game. Your tank is also hunted by other tanks and even a little zeppelin. It's a fun and fast paced little game and an easy earned Darkmoon Ticket!

The fifth and last game is a ring toss, in which you try to throw a ring over a rod that's mounted on a turtle. There's not much aiming involved as the you need to capture the turtle in an AOE-disc. As long as you're lucky and the turtle doesn't move while you throw the ring, you'll be successful. You only need three successful throws to be awarded a ticket.

Each Darkmoon Faire game also awards you 250 Darkmoon Faire rep. If you're going for Darkmoon Faire Exalted, then playing the dailies is a must, considering the Faire is only active in the first week of each month!

I have calculated that I need 480 tickets to get the Heirlooms that Haki needs: Bow, sword, shoulders and chest-armor. I have 35 tickets now, so I guess I'll have 50 tickets by coming sunday. That also means that I need 8 months to get the Heirlooms I want! o.0 Seeing as the Heirlooms bind to your account, it might be smart to start 10 toons, and get them as far as being able to do Archeology and having combed over some digspots so they all make full use the monthly quests and the dailies, so you can milk the system and get most of the Heirlooms within 2 months. But yeah, who wants to do that? Not me, because...

Haki is almost done in Darkshore. I need only to discover two more spots for the Darkshore Explorer, and 29 more quests for Darkshore Lore. Then I'll move on to Ashenvale, where I will also make a start with Archeology. I found the new quests in Darkshore interesting. I have been using tigers as taxi's and have done airborne missions while flying a Thessera the Dragon. And I got to destroy a troll-vilage while piloting an Ancient! It's a shame Darkshore is almost over, because I found it fun and engaging. Darkshore was a cool experience!