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).

Brewfest Bugs and Hotfixes

Unfortunately, Brewfest bugs and issues continue to plague the Warcraft servers. Drysc is keeping an open post on Brewfest hotfixes on the WoW forums; it's probably your best source for the most recent info.

I'm most sad about the fact that they disabled the Dark Iron attacks. The screenshot above gives you a picture of what they looked like, as well as a glimpse of the /wave related visual effect with the beer mugs that caused the issue. (The number of people spamming /wave outside Ironforge actually crashed Eastern Kingdoms on our server last night, to give you an idea of how bad it was.) Hopefully they'll come up with a fix; while they lasted, the DI attacks were one of the funniest, most chaotic events I've ever seen in WoW so far.

Other changes and known issues: the "Bark For..." quests are bugged on many realms, but as soon as they get unbugged, they'll be rewarding players with 40 Brewfest tickets instead of 15. Also, the Eyesight Enhancing Romance Goggles will now be permanent instead of temporary! So that's at least one awesome thing amidst all the disappointment.

Update: The BRD quest from the Dark Iron Plans may also be bugged.

Additional Updates (10/5): The "Bark For..." quests should now be working for everyone. If you're still having trouble, check to be sure you don't have a failed version of the quest still sitting in your log. Also, it's been confirmed that "Pink Elekks on Parade" is only available to players with tBC installed. Unfortunately, we still have no ETA on the return of Dark Iron dwarf attacks or whether the ticket rewards will be increased some more to make up the difference.

More On Ram Racing

Now that WoW patch 2.2 is live, I've been getting a lot of traffic to my Brewfest Quest Guide, and fielding a number of questions about how the racing rams work for the quests This Is Ram Racing... Almost and There and Back Again. So for those of you looking for more info on the rams, here are some tips and tricks.

Using the Reins
The thing to remember about the reins is that if you stop using them, your ram will slow down. Click your reins at an even pace (ie, one click every couple seconds) to maintain a constant speed. At the higher speeds, the ram seems to take longer to slow down even if you're not clicking, but nonetheless, if you stop clicking the reins, he will shift into a lower gear. If you want to get him up to a gallop, just click at a faster pace.

Apple Barrels
Apples make rams forget about how tired they are. If you see an apple barrel, move your ram towards it to clear all your exhaustion debuffs. You have to be within about five yards of the barrel for your debuffs to clear (in the picture above, my wolpertinger is close enough to clear the debuffs, but any farther away would be too far). Finally, keep in mind that if your ram reaches 100 debuffs and slows to a crawl, the apple barrel will not cure his exhaustion, just the stacking debuffs, , so if your ram is getting close to 100 and you're still a ways away, slow down if you can.

Daily Keg Delivery Quest
Once you do There and Back Again, you can immediately do the daily quest after it, but there's no yellow exclamation point to tell you the quest exists. For Alliance, talk to Neill Ramstein to start it; he should have a prompt that says something like "Do you still need any help with the kegs?"

"Ram racing is easier than it seems, but it takes skill to master. Just use the reins, eat apples if you can, and avoid exhausting your ram."
- Pol Amberstill, Ram Riding Apprentice

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.

Holiday Guide: Brewfest

New readers: Think your Brewfest quests may be bugged? This guide was made before Brewfest went live, but I've put up a new post with the latest updates on Brewfest bugs and hotfixes.

Brewfest is a new holiday event in World of Warcraft that will run October 2-16th. Based on the German Oktoberfest tradition, Brewfest quests can be completed for tickets, which may be exchanged for Bavarian-style costumes, collectible steins, and even a ram mount, which will be highly desirable to Horde players. This guide provides a quick breakdown of the Brewfest quests and repeatable dailies to help you get your new mount, non-combat pet, and eyesight-enhancing goggles. For more information and screenshots, you might want to check out MMO-Champion's Brewfest guide.

Where do I go?
Most of the quests are located in Durotar for Horde or Kharanos for Alliance. There are also Brewfest beer gardens located outside Silvermoon City, Darnassus, Undercity, Stormwind, Thunder Bluff, the Exodar, and Shattrath.

Brewfest Events
Dark Iron Dwarf Attacks
Dark Iron dwarves will try to steal the Brewfest Kegs every hour on the half hour. Pick up a Complimentary Brewfest Sampler by targeting target one of the Barkers from any brewery and /waving. He'll toss you a sampler, which you can then drink. Once it's empty, chuck the empty mug at a marauding dwarf. Each Dark Iron attacker you hit will earn you a stacking buff (up to 25). Talk to the Brewfest Rewards vendor to be rewarded with a ticket for each dwarfs you hit.

Brewfest Quests
Catch the Wild Wolpertinger
Wolpertingers are invisible jackalope-like creatures. Essentially we're talking a rabbit with antlers, wings, and a set of tiny fangs. This quest will reward you with your own Wolpertinger Tankard, which houses an adorable noncombat pet that is only visible to you or to characters who are drunk. To catch the wild wolpertingers, first drink enough to get your character totally wasted. You'll have several seconds of "completely smashed" to target the wolpertinger before you need to drink more to be able to see it. Then use the provided net to ensnare the wee beasties. Tip: to see the wolpertinger more clearly, you might want to go into your video settings and temporarily turn off the drunk effect by switching off full screen glow.

Now This is Ram Racing... Almost
Learn how to ram race with this quest. (Tip: if you drop the Ram Racing Reins, you can replace them by talking to the apprentice standing next to the quest dude.) Your ram steed has four speeds, but can get fatigued if you make him run too fast for too long. Keep an eye on your ram's Fatigue debuff -- if it gets to 100, you'll have to stop for 15 seconds. Keep clicking the reins to shift between speeds. You can also run your ram by an apple bucket to remove the debuffs. After you complete this quest, you can then do the quest There And Back Again, followed by the ram racing daily quest. Update: Wowinsider is reporting that these quests can actually be done once every 12 hours, so I guess that makes them "twice dailies?"

Did Someone Say, "Souvenir?"
Turn in your voucher and receive a Brewfest Stein from the festival greeter. You can refill your mug from the kegs throughout the grounds.

Pink Elekks on Parade
Pick this up at the main festival grounds, along with Catch the Wild Wolpertinger. For this quest, you'll have to travel to each of the three other festival beer gardens for Alliance or Horde, get drunk, and chase off the aforementioned Pink Elekks. This quest has now been fixed so that everyone can pick it up, and rewards you with 40 tickets.

Seek the Saboteurs
After a Dark Iron Dwarf attack, you may notice a set of Dark Iron Sabotage Plans on the ground. Loot them, and you'll get this quest to find Coren Direbrew in the Grim Guzzler in BRD. He's hiding in the bar behind the plans seller. Reward: Dark Iron Tankard (a level 54 off-hand which you can drink from).

Brewfest Daily Quests
There and Back Again
This is a delivery quest with a build-in time limit. Pick up the quest at the festival grounds, and you'll be given a racing ram. Head into the nearby town (Kharanos or Durotar) and grab a keg from the NPC standing next to the stack of barrels. Run your ram back to the festival and drop off the keg. The first time you do this quest, you have to deliver three kegs in four minutes, which will earn you 15 Brewfest prize tickets. After that, the quest will give you five tickets for each keg you deliver in the time allotted, with bonus time added every time you deliver a keg. You should be able to get 40-50 tickets a day this way, once you get the hang of the ram. If you're looking for some more help getting started with your ram, I've written some additional ram riding tips.

Bark for the Barleybrews!Thunderbrews/T'chali's Voodoo Brewery/Drohn's Distillery!
These repeatable quests require you to take a ram to the four Brewfest flags (the ones with the big mugs on them) in Ironforge or Orgrimmar and promote a given brew. Since these quests were bugged on the PTRs, it's unclear whether you can complete the quest for both of the rival brewers, or if you have to pick one. You can only bark for one faction each day, and the quest is on a four minute timer.

Brewfest Rewards
600 tickets - "Honorary Brewer" Hand Stamp
This stamp certifies you as an official Brewfest ram rider, allowing you to purchase both the normal level 40 Brewfest Ram (for 10g) or the Swift Brewfest Riding Ram (100g). The mounts are permanent, and are the same for both Horde and Alliance.
100 tickets - Eyesight Enhancing Romance Goggles ("Guaranteed to make EVERYONE look attractive!")
Equip these goggles, and you'll view every character or NPC you meet as either a gnome (Alliance) or orc (Horde). Sadly, the goggles have a 7 day duration.
Other, less awesome things to redeem your tickets for: Brewfest Pony Keg, Brewfest hats, Brewfest regalia, various food & drinks.