Hallow's End Costumes are Here!

With Hallow's End finally here, I've compiled a guide on how to obtain all the different costumes you'll soon be seeing on display, as well as some of the cool effects they have.

Trick or Treat at an Inn
Trick or treating prompts the innkeepers to either give you a treat bag, turn you into something for 30 seconds, or give you a costume with a 60 minute duration. You can only trick or treat once every hour.

Tricks

• 30 Second Debuffs: mini-Diablo, skeleton, ghost, bat, frog, kitten, snake
• 60 minute Costumes: leper gnome, pirate, ninja, bat, pirate, skeleton, wisp

Treats

• Flimsy Masks that let you dress up as a different race or faction
• Hallowed wands that you can cast on a member of your party to give them one of the 60 minute costumes
• Candy

Hallow's End Pumpkin Treats
These candies cause you to take on one of four random forms, each of which has a special effect. You can right-click to dispell the form, or the form can be dispelled (might be handy to have a few of these for PvP). You get them from innkeepers or from completing Hallow's End quests. The four pumpkin treat costumes are:

• Pirate: increased swim speed
• Ghost: levitate (slow fall + water walking)
• Armored Skeleton: underwater breathing
• "You are big and orange": chance to proc a curse that slows enemies' movement and attack speed
  

If you're looking to get more candy (and who isn't?), you'll definitely want to do the orphan quest: Hallow's End Treats for Jesper! on Alliance, or Hallow's End Treats for Spoops! for Horde. You can pick the quest up at the Ogrimmar or Stormwind orphanages, and it will send you to innkeepers in each of your faction's major Azerothian cities. Once you complete the orphan quest, you'll receive 30 Hallow's End Pumpkin Treats, and will be able to purchase more from a special holiday vendor. Horde can buy them from Rachelle Gothena by the AH in Orgrimmar, and Alliance from Katrina Shimmerstar, who's located right outside the Ironforge bank.

How to Call the Headless Horseman

A former knight of the Silver Hand, the Headless Horseman is a cursed paladin who lurks within the Scarlet Monastery graveyard during Hallow's End (October 18th-November 1st). He's a fun fight with a small loot table of Heroic-level purples, plus fun things like temporary BOE broom mounts and a noncombat pumpkin pet. Sure, you may still be hungover from Brewfest or punch-drunk off the PTRs, but Halloween is on the way! Here's the Girl Meets WoW guide to summoning and defeating WoW's first five-man holiday boss.

First, find a group of level 70 players and take a field trip to the Scarlet Monastery. The graveyard is the first instance portal on the left, and you'll need to lazily clear through two hallways and a room to get to the horseman. On the right side of the SM GY grounds is a Pumpkin Shrine, which gives the daily quest [70] Call the Headless Horseman. Someone in your party must accept this quest, and then click on the Loosely Turned Soil behind the shrine to place a Dreary Candle.

The Horseman will then aggro on whoever placed the candle, starting the fight. Here's how the fight works:

Phase One
Allow your tank to pick up aggro on the Horseman, and dps him down (watch out for cleaves). At 1% he will toss his head in the air and then wander around disoriented (and immune to your attacks), and the Head of the Horseman will become active. It has ~27k health, and you'll need to take a third of that off to start the next phase.

Phase Two
The Head and the Horseman will recombine at the start of Phase Two. During this phase, the Horseman can Conflagrate, so ranged and healers need to keep their distance. As before, dps him to 1%, he'll separate, and then you need take off another third of the head's health. Note that after he separates, the Horseman will also whirlwind this time, so spread out and drop the head as fast as you can.

Phase Three
Head and Horseman will recombine again, and will toss out four Pulsing Pumpkins, which grow into adds which can crit for about 1k on cloth. They have about 10k health apiece, so while you could AOE them, you might just want to have your tank pick them up and keep dpsing - they'll go away when he dies. Drop the Horseman back down to 1%, and he'll toss his head again - kill it, and you win.

How Many Times a Day Can You Summon the Horseman?
In theory, you could farm him indefinitely within the constraints of the four instances per hour limit, but keep in mind that he's summoned by a daily quest, so once everyone in your party has summoned him, you'll have to either bring someone new in, or wait 24 hours to be able to get the Call the Headless Horseman quest again.

What Does the Horseman Drop?
The Horseman's Helm - A dps plate helm.
The Horseman's Signet Ring - A dps caster ring.
Ring of Ghoulish Delight - A melee dps ring.
Witching Band - A healing ring.
Hallowed Helm - This has no stats; it's a pumpkin you can wear on your head.
Magic Broom - A temporary level 40 ground mount. The most likely to drop.
Swift Magic Broom - A temporary epic ground mount.
Flying Broom - A temporary regular flying mount.
Swift Flying Broom - A temporary epic flying mount. The rarest broom.
Sinister Squashling (BOP noncombat pet) - An evil-looking walking pumpkin pet. When idle, he folds up into himself and "sits down" as a jack-o-lantern.
Tricky Treat - Candy that increases your movement speed for 30 seconds.

Sound complicated? It's really not that bad, but if my walkthrough has you curious or if you just can't wait until the 18th, you can always go watch a video of the fight (warning: very odd music selection).

Fan Art Makes Me Feel Inadequate

The Blizzard fan art page really is an enormous cache of well-illustrated works of fandom, isn't it? Just browsing through there gets me all excited about this year's pumpkin carving contest. I'm tempted to submit a pumpkin myself, but I think the competition is a bit out of my league. Still, perhaps I should take up knife and gourd in the pursuit of fame, fortune, and shiny Logitech surround sound speakers. What do you think?

In Search of the Headless Horseman

New readers: Looking for a guide to defeating the Headless Horseman? Click here.

Along with Brewfest, the other holiday event dropping in the 2.2 patch today involves the Headless Horseman, who has been spotting attacking low level towns like Brill and Goldshire. Apparently he's also camping the Scarlet Monastery graveyard taunting players with a small table of level 70 epic loot plus new temporary broom mounts (single use for lowbies, 14-day timer for Outlands with the appropriate flying skill). First off, I'm really excited to finally see some high end events sending us back to old instances; I've been wanting Blizzard to take better advantage of Azeroth for a while. Second, broom mounts! I'll be on the servers LFM SM as soon as they come up.

Wowhead links to the brooms:
Magic Broom
Swift Magic Broom
Flying Broom
Swift Flying Broom

Additional Update (Tues. afternoon): Blue post clarifies that the Horseman won't show up until the 18th.