Ahoy, readers!  The sun is rising on one of my favorite days of the year!  It’s Talk Like a Pirate Day, commemorated with a world event in Azeroth this year!  Sure but it’s a fine day, indeed!  I’ve always had a thing for pirates. Not the modern day variety, mind you.  The romanticized, fanticized, historical version.  It’s in me blood.

See the chap up top there?  That’s Sir Francis Drake.  Cousin to another famous pirate, John Hawkins, Drake was an officially sanctioned pirate for the English crown during Elizabeth I’s reign, terrorizing the Spanish holdings in the new world and bringing back the equivalent of millions in gold and booty to bolster the national coffers.  You may recognize his name from your history classes in the way way back of your youth as the man who defeated the Spanish Armada for the queen and the first person to circumnavigate the globe.   He’s also my great, great, great (I don’t know how many greats actually go here) grandpa.  Seriously.  I’ve seen the geneological charts.  In addition, my daddy’s daddy was a 2nd mate on an oil tanker, while his brother was a captain.  I have some wonderful memories of us gathering at the landing point on the Great Lakes and watching their ships come in, them standing on the deck, larger than life, waving down at us.

So although there is little about me personally that I can readily identify as piratical outside of my geneology (and the fact that I’ve been known to curse like a sailor), I have a pirate calendar on the wall right next to me at the moment.  Son of a Son of a Sailor has been a favorite song since I was about 10 (although throughout my youth I used to sing “daughter of a son of a sailor” with stubborn persistence).  And Talk Like a Pirate Day has always been a huge hit with me ever since I found out about it several years ago.

Therefore, I am beyond tickled that Blizzard has embraced this silly holiday with Pirate Day, a new world event this year.  A 12 hour pirate costume and achievement are yours to be had for joining the Dread Crew in everyone’s favorite Pirate town. 

So if ye be seekin me out today, ye’d best follow the sounds of drunken debauchery to the tip of Stranglethorn Vale.  I’ll surely be arm in arm with the buxom lassie Cap’n DeMeza, swillin grog and raisin’ hell.  Fair Winds and Godspeed, me hearties!

UPDATE:  I have a quibble about Pirate Day… you do not change back into your pirate gear once you shape shift, meaning that druids who are actually doing… anything… aren’t a pirate for a very long stretch of time.  /sniffle.  However, it’s fun while it lasts!  Here’s Sylly in her pirate duds…  Yar!  She do be lookin grand!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AzpByR3MvI

As you can see by my post below about making Tasty Cupcakes and Delicious Chocolate Cakes in preparation for Children’s Week, I’ve been doing what I can to prepare now for this holiday.  If you have participated in the holiday in the past, you will know that there is a LOT of running around involved, showing your orphan sites in Old World and Outlands, and it seems that there will be yet another string of quests this year taking you around Northrend starting with Orphan Matron Twinbreeze in Dragonblight!  There is a lot you can do in advance, however, to cut down on all of the activity that will be needed to complete the quests and achievements next week.  Here’s the scoop:

Many of the items that you will need to complete Children’s Week quests and achievements can be done before you ever pick up your little wards.  In addition, there seems to be some money to be made on this holiday if you are willing to play the market.  Hooray!

In terms of what you can gather up now, here’s a list of items and where to find them:

Tigule & Foror’s Strawberry Ice Cream – you will need to get two of these if you intend to complete both the Bad Example Achievement and the I Scream, You Scream quest, which is part of the Children’s Week questlines that start in Orgrimmar for Horde and in Stormwind for Alliance.  Although this ice cream will be available for sale from special Children’s Week vendors in Orgrimmar and Stormwind, you can pick it up early from Caregiver Isel Nagrand, the Telaar innkeeper in Nagrand located at coords 54.2, 76.  It is also available in the Shimmering Flats of Thousand Needles from Brivelthwerp at 77.4, 77.  If you miss picking this up early, though, it is not a big deal at all because during Children’s Week you will find it is being sold by Emmithue Smails, a Children’s Week vendor in Stormwind City who you will find in the Trade District of Stormwind just to the right of the large tree next to the mailbox in front of the bank. Alowicious Czervik will be standing near the bank in Orgrimmar during the holiday, and will have this for sale, as well.  A word to the wise, pick this up before you start running all over for the Children’s Week quest chains, whether you get it now or you wait until Children’s Week has begun.  Both the alliance and horde quest chains will have you running all over the place and you will be glad to have saved yourself a trip.

There are a number of food items that you can pick up in advance from Aimee at Pie, Pastry and Cakes, located in Dalaran near the barbershop at coords 51.2, 28.4.  From her you can obtain a Red Velvet Cupcake, a Dalaran Doughnut, a Dalaran Brownie, and a Lovely Cake that can be divided into Lovely Cake Slices.  Go visit her with 4 of your friends who want to participate in the holiday if you can, as most of these items are sold in stacks of 5.  You will need to eat one of each of these confections in front of your orphan to complete the Bad Example achievement. 

In addition, you are going to need to eat a Delicious Chocolate Cake and a Tasty Cupcake for that achievement.  These items, however, cannot be purchased from vendors.  They can only be made by people with the cooking skill who have the recipes.  If you cannot cook or do not wish to gather the ingredients yourself, you can look for these on the Auction House.  If you can find them now, you’ll probably save yourself some gold, as the price is likely to skyrocket once the holiday begins. 

However, if you are a cook, or if you are frugal and want to save yourself some gold, you might want to farm the ingredients ahead of time for these two items. 

The ingredients for a Delicious Chocolate Cake are:

8 simple flour – sold by cooking suppliers in all major cities
4 ice cold milk – sold by food and drink vendors and innkeepers in major cities in Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor, as well as in low level towns on these continents.  Also drops off of low level mobs.
8 small eggs - dropped by low level birds in many areas.  The highest drop rate appears to be from Dire Condors in Redridge Mountains, located both to the north and the south of the lake in the middle of this zone.
Flask of port - sold by many, including bartenders and barmaids in the major cities of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor.
3 mageroyal - available as a drop off of numerous low level mobs (visit link for list) or can be gathered by herbalists.

 Tasty Cupcakes require fewer ingredients:

 2 simple flour – sold by cooking suppliers in all major cities
Northern Egg - drops most frequently from Goretalon Rocs in Sholozar Basin

 If you are a cook, you might consider making up extra cakes and cupcakes for sale on the auction house.  Even if you are not, however, it might be well worth your while to farm the ingredients for these recipes for two reasons.  1) you will probably be able to find a cook who will make what you need for nothing more than a tip if you have the ingredients already.  2)  the ingredients themselves will likely skyrocket in price over the next week as people seek them out to have their own recipes made.  Mageroyal, for example, is already selling for twice its normal cost on my server’s auction house. 

In addition to selling the food items that can only be made by cooks on the auction house over the coming week, and the ingredients of those cooking only items, you might also consider buying up extras of the items sold by Aimee at Pie, Pastry and Cakes in Dalaran to try your luck with them on the Auction House.  There are always players who lack resources, ambition, or time to go seek out items like this.  Not knowing where to find them, or not wanting to bother to make the trip to get them, they might seek them out on the auction house.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look on your local Auction House at the non-combat pets.  I bet you will find dozens that are available from vendors throughout Azeroth.  People buy them from the vendor, listing them on the Auction House for twice their value, and make a profit every day this way.  These food items that can only be found in one shop in the whole game should be no exception.

Lastly, as this is a PVE druid blog, I’m guessing that most readers here are not heavily into PVP.  I know I’m not.  So part of what I will be doing in preparation for Children’s Week is studying up on the battlegrounds that are part of the School of Hard Knocks achievement.  I’m dubious that I will get this one done, but it is possible that I will give it a shot.  Therefore, I’ve done a little work to gather some resources for the uninitiated:
How to capture the flag in World of Warcraft
WOW:  Master of Eye of the Storm
Warsong Gulch Battleground Guide
Alterac Valley Battleground Guide
Arathi Basin Battleground guide
Eye of the Storm Battleground guide 

Good luck out there!  I hope you and your orphans have the time of your lives!

Edit:  although there was speculation that there would be a Northrend component to Children’s Week this year, Orphan Matron Twinbreeze does not offer any related quests.

Just a quick post this morning.  I’ve got another post in the works for later today.  But I wanted to remind everyone that even though you may be knee deep in Easter eggs right now, don’t forget that Children’s Week is coming!  I’m getting ready by farming up the ingredients for Delicious Chocolate Cakes and Tasty Cupcakes to feed the masses trying to set a Bad Example for their orphans.  If you’re a cook, fire up the ovens!  You might make some extra coinage by catering to the sweet tooths and bad habits of your fellow players.  =)

/yawn
/stretch

In the wee hours this morning I finished up the Noblegarden meta achievment.  Sylly the Noble at your service!  I must admit that as time went on, I lost some of the delight in the event that I posted about yesterday.  It became much more of a grind for me.  I think that it might have been better to space it out over several days, but I don’t have much time during the week days for anything but raiding, and next weekend is Children’s Week, so I decided to get it all out of the way as quickly as possible.  In doing so, I picked up some tips on how to get all of the eggs you need to complete the achievements or to purchase the goods that you are interested in. 

Overall, I picked up  164  eggs with chocolate in them yesterday.  100 for the Chocoholic achievement, 4 for Noble Garden (5 to buy the Noblegarden egg, but you can loot it after you hide it, so you get one back), 10 for the daily quest, and 50 to buy an Elegant Dress.  I actually didn’t farm 50 chocolates just to buy the dress.  I was farming them go get the Spring Robes to complete the Desert Rose achievement.  The robes dropped for me when I had about 38 chocolates, though, so I farmed 12 more for the dress since I was most of the way there.  In addition to those 164 eggs, I opened two with Tuxedo shirts, one with Tuxedo pants, two with Spring Flowers, and two with Spring Circlets. for a grand total of 171 eggs to complete all Noblegarden achievements with the exception of Dressed for the Occasion, which is not part of the meta achievement for the holiday.

Here is some advice on how to make this process as painless as possible.  First, if it makes sense for you to do this in the very early morning, than by all means do so.  When I was camping eggs Sunday morning I was camping one spawn at a time.  At 4:00 on Monday morning, I was camping 4 spawns at a time, and scooting around occassionally to pick up others, too.  I know this isn’t possible for everyone, but if you can gather eggs when there are very few people on, the process will go much more quickly.

Along the same lines, go to a place that isn’t very heavily trafficked if you can.  I did a lot of gathering at Azure Watch in the Draenei starting area, as the Exodar is easily Alliance’s least visited and most out of the way city.  There were people there, sure.  You had to go out there for the Spring Fling achievement, and others had the same idea that there might be less competition there.  But at 3 a.m. it was mostly a ghost town.

If you open an egg that turns you into a bunny, by all means stay a bunny!  When you are a bunny, the egg spawns are at eye level, making them much easier to see and to snatch up.

If you are gathering during a high traffic time on the server, find a spot where there is at least one spawn, or ideally two or three, within reachable distance of one spot.  Plant yourself there and stay put!  While you might find eggs if you go running around looking for them, there is a high chance that they are being camped by someone patient who is waiting to pounce on them the instant they appear.  You’re much better off being one of those patient people than you are being a yahoo running all over the place hoping for someone to be snoozing.  So find a spot, hunker down, throw on a movie or your favorite tunes, and wait. 

Yesterday at the height of the frenzy I was camping a one egg spawn spot.  I turned on autoloot to snatch the eggs as soon as they appeared on my screen.  I was in bunny form, hiding under a bush outside of Darnassus that had a spawn point that was pretty well hidden underneath of it.  Was it slow going?  Yes.  But it was steady.  Eventually someone directly behind me camping another spawn in an identical way wandered off and my one egg spawn hiding spot became a two egg hiding spot.  While people yelled around me about how it was impossible to find eggs, I collected them by the dozen by being still and patient and listening to some of my favorite music.

Eventually, I ended up zooming in my camera as far as it would go, so that my whole screen filled up with the egg spawn area.  It allowed me to block out the chaos of people running all over the place around me, of spawning bunnies, and so forth.  I also put away my own bunny pet after she had had her little love connection in each area, because when I did not, bunnies were jumping around having baby bunnies all over the place.  Once I cut down on the visual noise, I could be less attentive, for any movement on my screen could pretty much only be the spawn of an egg.  I held my cursor over where the egg would spawn, and right clicked the second the pointing finger turned to a gear shift.  I stymied many a potential egg stealer in this way, by being patient, still, and quick to react.

Also, open your eggs as you go.  There is always a break of some seconds at least between spawns at the same point, and you might as well spend some of that time opening the eggs, which you will have to do, anyway.  You never know… something you are waiting for might be inside one of them.  If you don’t open them, you might just go right on gathering eggs for longer than you actually needed to!  The horror!

Finally, I took breaks.  When the monotony of egg camping became too much for me, I’d go off to do another part of the achievments, hiding an egg in Stormwind or gathering a group of guildies to go to Un’Goro to lay eggs at the hotsprings.  I would recommend spacing out the achievements of the holiday so that you can punctuate your egg watch with some of the fun silliness that is also part of Noblegarden.

I’m now really happy to have accomplished everything that I needed to for the holiday in one day.  There is a chance that I might go back to do the daily a couple of times to see if I can’t get that elegant dress out of an egg for that last achievement.  I would not say that the egg sitting was the best time I’ve spent in the game.  However, I was able to get through it very well, sanity in tact, by approaching the task as I have described.  Best of luck!  Now that I’ve gotten all of my eggs, the field is all yours!

Although I’ve been playing Warcraft for almost two years, this year marks my first participation in Noblegarden.  I don’t know how I missed it last time around, but it completely slipped past under my radar.  I’ve always been sort of hit or miss with the holidays, really enjoying some, while finding others to be boring at best, and obnoxious at worst.  Noblegarden, however, I find to be so lighthearted and fun that I suspect that Bugs Bunny may have personally scripted it!  There are some aspects of this holiday that have just made me giggle right out loud.  Here are some of my favorites:

1)  My… er… prolific Spring Rabbit.  Don’t let looks fool you.  This sweet, innocent looking pet is more amorous than a frat boy at a strip club with a fake i.d.  I’m considering calling a vet just to make sure it’s healthy for her to keep reproducing so much.

2)  Big, burly male toons donning Elegant Dresses to be kissed so that someone can get the Blushing Bride achievement.  I saw one this morning in Stormwind yelling, “Kiss me!  Kiss me!” and almost wet my pants laughing.

3) Orc chicks in bunny ears.  There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that bunny ears are now the best fashion accessory for female orcs, ever.  EVER!

4)  Laying eggs – I logged on this morning and my guildie Dwyn immediately whispered me to come look for eggs.  Delighted, I hightailed it down to SW.  I was promptly turned into a rabbit and, to my utter surprise, started laying eggs.  Wonderful, tiny, colored eggs.  Added bonus that there is an achievement for making a journey to Un’Goro crater with a friend to lay eggs there.

As a side note, I thank Blizzard for making some of the items needed to complete the achievements available on a vendor, so that eventually you can get what you need to complete them in a non-random way, even if it takes you a long time to do so.  I personally am not trying to complete the What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been achievement for the protodrake, but I do get weary of the understandable frustration of others when the random number generator goes against them.  The added vendor for this holiday helps the whole atmosphere to remain as it should be, light and fun.

So get out to the starting areas and take a look around if you haven’t yet.  Even if holidays aren’t high on your list of things you enjoy about playing, you might find that this one brings enough chuckles to make you glad for participating.

It just doesn’t seem much like Easter in Warcraft this weekend with Noblegarden postponed for the 3.1 patch release.  I really like the silly holidays in the game, so I’m a little sad to have to wait for this one. To cheer myself up, I decided to seek out some of the fun “easter eggs” Blizzard had planted in WOLK to see them for myself.  Here’s a little tour…

Endora Moorehead

One of the reagent vendors in Dalaran is named after Endora Moorhead, a witch and the mother of Samantha on the television show, Bewitched.

Bambi

Wandering around Grizzly Hills you can find Blizzard’s nod to Bambi, along with his mother and his friends Flower and Thumper.

 Friar Tuck

Robin Hood was my favorite Disney animated film when I was a kid, so I just love this guy, even though he doesn’t love me and wants to kill me when I get too near lol!

Ghepetto

I love that the toy maker in Dalaran is named after Ghepetto from Pinocchio!  Very sweet!

Lost Hatch

We’re total Lost nerds at my house, so this is probably my favorite Easter Egg of all!  There is a hatch in Sholazar that looks like the hatch in Lost.  If you mouse over the lighted window, numbers come up which are one number off from the string of highly important numbers on the T.V. show.  So, so, SO cool!  =)

Indiana Jones

Indiana Jones has been a favorite for me since I was just a kid.  I could watch those movies a million times!

The X Files

We used to watch The X Files around here, too, so this redhead named Agent Skully cracks me up!

Battlestar Galactica

Another show we watch(ed) at my house.  Love the spoof on Kara Thrace in Borean Tundra.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I never watched this particular show, but I used to babysit some kids that did.  Have you seen this in the Dalaran sewers?

Wolverine

Loguhn Ripper of Flesh… lolz!