WoW Journal - 10-August-2005

My level 14 shaman Waldin took up mining and engineering as professions, because engineering is one of the funnier things in World of Warcraft. To gain engineering skill, he made a lot of copper modulators, which aren't much good for anything, except as components in more engineering stuff. But I did remember that copper modulators were on the list of items you could hand in at the Darkmoon Faire to gain tickets. So Waldin packed his copper modulators, and started the long voyage from Orgrimmar to Elwynn Forest.

At level 14 that isn't a trivial undertaking, but doing long trips through dangerous territory is something I enjoy since running from Freeport to Qeynos with a level 10 character in Everquest. Knowing the way helps a lot. Waldin took the zeppelin from Durotar to Grom'Gol in Stranglethorn Vale. There he jumped into the ocean and swam north, until he reached Westfall. And from Westfall is was easy to get to the Darkmoon Faire south of Goldshire, I just had to carefully avoid the guards.

I would like to report that this trip netted Waldin lots of cool treasures, but that wasn't exactly what happened. First of all I only could hand in copper modulators 5 times, gaining me 5 tickets. The more stuff you hand in, the higher your reputation with the faire gets, and you need to hand in better stuff for getting tickets. The other problem was that I was only level 14, and the prizes you can get for the tickets are limited by level. I would have needed to be level 15 to get the first random treasure prize for 5 tickets. As it was, for 5 tickets I only could have bought a useless flower, so I kept my tickets. I did visit the fortune teller, and by answering his questions in the cruelest possible way managed to get a 2-hour buff that added 10% to my damage. With my alliance warlock I had tried answering the questions more compassionate, which got me stuck with a useless spirit buff. Well, I think I'll wait until the faire comes to Mulgore next month before I visit it again.

There is considerable outrage at the moment about the Darkmoon Faire having been "nerfed". What happened was that Blizzard observed that the 1200 ticket reward was so good, that lots of people farmed stuff on the test servers to get it. So when they moved from the test server to release, they put in less good rewards for 1200 tickets. I wouldn't call changing things when going from test server to release a "nerf". That's what test servers are for, testing if something is overpowered or not working. But some people had already started early with the farming, hoarded lots of stuff to hand in for tickets, and now found that their 1200 tickets only got them a blue item instead of a purple one. A typical case of people trying to be clever, and ending up shooting themselves in the foot.

My advice: Don't farm 1200 tickets, it's not worth it. All the other prizes cost only between 5 and 50 tickets, and people report having found nice things in the random treasures, for example level 50 items or 16-slot backpacks in the 40-ticket random treasure you can get at level 45. 50 tickets buys you a 14-slot bag, which you can get at any level. And even if you don't like the ticket prizes at all, you can still get a free 2-hour buff from the fortune teller. So checking out the faire is good idea.

I'm not so happy about the trinkets you can get for handing in suits of cards, because that is just another high-level grind. And I wished that alchemy and tailoring were covered in the professions that can hand in crafted items for tickets. But otherwise the faire is nice enough.
- posted by Tobold @ 3:24 PM Permanent Link