Brewmaster!

Not everybody likes Brewfest.

In fact, not everybody is all that keen on game holidays in general.

I must confess that I used to be one of those people who greeted such holidays with a tepid response on the best of days.  Well, unless Rudolph was involved.

And then, of course, Blizzard put in 900 or so happy shiny achievements into WoW, many of which are related to holiday events.

Now I am out there at almost every holiday doing at least a few of the achievement worthy activities. (And you can imagine my disappointment when Harvest Festival didn’t have an achievement of any sort.  Remember that Saturday Night Live skit where Bill Murray was given a treat for each gag, then when he didn’t get one he got all upset?  Probably not.)

There is obviously some deep psychological significance to the fact that I will run off and do some rather silly things just to get an achievement.

Go Vikund!

Yeah, there is my character in Dalaran dressed up in Brewfest finery, completely smashed, and dancing away for an achievement.

See, once we managed to kill Coren Direbrew on Saturday night, I figured I was well on the way to finishing off the Brewfest achievements and getting the Brewmaster title.  I just needed to figure out how to collect enough Brewfest tokens to cover all my bases.

The problem was that I went off and bought the pink elekk as soon as I had 100 tokens.  Then I counted out what else I needed and realized that 550 tokens were required to get the above achievement and the Brew of the Month Club achievement.

Even with three daily quests, that seemed like a lot, especially since I didn’t discover the third quest until a few days into Brewfest.

There are two quests that show the blue exclamation point, the brewery barking and the quest that comes up when you fend off the Dark Iron dwarves when they invade Brewfest.  Then there is the guy who has the racing ram quest that you run once.

At that point here is a cool down (supposed to be 18 hours, but it seems shorter as I managed to run the quest before going to work then late in the evening, which is less that 15 hours) after which you can talk to him again and he’ll give you the reins and a time limit during which you can make as many round trips as you can manage (each trip extends your time) earning 2 tokens for each barrel you deliver.

Once I figured out how this really worked (it is explained in detail on WoW Wiki) I was able to start grinding out quite a few tokens a day.  Still, 550 is a lot of tokens, and I can’t get on every morning and night.

Then I read somewhere, and I wish I could find the post again so I could link it and give proper dues, that you have two hours during which you can return anything you buy from the Brewfest vendor.  That is more than enough time to buy the Brewfest apperal, get to Dalaran, get smashed, do your dance, then get back and return everything and get your tokens back.

That sounded like the plan for me.

So off I went.

Once done in Dalaran, I took the portal back to Ironforge and rode out to Brewfest.  I returned the lederhosen for a 200 token refund, but I couldn’t bring myself to return the hat.  I actually have a very similar hat in real life which I have worn to Oktoberfest celebrations out here on occasion.  So I am saving that in hopes of there being an appearance tab some day, or just to look silly when I want.

The Hat

The 200 token refund was enough for me to purchase the Brew of the Month Club application, which I hurridly filled out and turned in, covering the last major achievement for me in Brewfest.

The Brew of the Month Club then sent me a nice note welcoming me.

So I have that to look forward to every month.

All in all Brewfest has been a lot of fun this year and I am glad that the achievements were there to tempt me to get involved with it.

Not that it was without conflict of a mental nature.

My daughter gets to play WoW on the weekends and, of course, she found Brewfest.  There is nothing quite like your child announcing that she is the “Drunken Master!” to set off the bad parent alarms in your head.

I did try to rationalize this a bit, pointing out to my lovely but frowning wife that when I was our daughter’s age I was tending bar for my grandparents and could make a quite respectable Manhattan.  Go watch The Thin Man.  That was how my grandparent’s generation treated alcohol.  Growing up in the midst of that I somehow successfully avoided becoming an alcoholic.  Heck, I look at the per capita alcohol consumption figures and wonder who is drinking the vast majority of my 8.6 liters of pure alcohol. (And what is with Luxembourg and 15.6 liters per capita?)

And I did use the opportunity to explain to my daughter that the motion impairing effects shown in the game after consuming alcohol were all too real and that was why the law prohibits drinking and driving.  She got that since she was really annoyed by the whole weaving around and actually asked me to show her where to get the Synthebrew Goggles so her character wouldn’t have to drink any more to catch pink elekks.

But I have to admit, after running through the Brewfest quests on the first night, I actually wanted a beer.

I should probably just let my daughter taste a beer one of these days.  That was enough to keep me off of the stuff until college.