Winter Veil in World of Warcraft .

New Year, New Danger

As of 10am CST Europe, Winter Veil was live on World of Warcraft servers. This year you can expect to see a change to the normal seasonal fare, with decorations again available in your Garrison, some surprises in your gift selections, and a whole new set of dailies in Frostfire Ridge for max level players. Needless to say, there’s quite a lot going on, so let’s give you an easily digestible overview of everything you can expect from the latest of Azeroth’s seasonal celebrations:

Must do the Weekly Pet Trainer Quest

Meet This Year’s new Christmas Curmudgeon

The big guy at the top of this article is Grumpus, who’s integral to the sets of dailies you’ll see on my map above. These you can pick up from your Level Three Garrison, and the rewards for completing these various tasks are Merry Supplies. As was the case with Hallows End, you can then swap a day’s worth of these rewards (five lots) for a selection of seasonal adornments, plus a couple of added extras. Most importantly, these items are Bind to Battle net account, so you can decide who benefits from your work each day:

For the Toy Collectors amongst you (as you can see I’m at 4 to go before I reach 200!) this is a day’s worth of work, and once you have all the decorations to keep and use presumably all the way until Legion releases? It’s worth keeping on with the grind, because you can also swap five Merry Supplies for a chance at the Minion of Grumpus, which has the distinction of being a BoE Mount. You’ll need to ask your Event Co-ordinator for a Savage Gift, which also has the chance to drop some very useful additional goodies. These include Medallion of the Legion (extra XP for everybody), Frozen Arms of a Hero (equip a Follower with max level gear) or the Elixir of the Rapid Mind, which increases experience gain by 300% for 15 min. That’s a lovely useful item if you’re thinking of levelling anyone over Christmas, and even if none of these things are of any use to you, they’re bound to sell for a decent coin return on even the quietest of AH’s. There’s also Apexis, Garrison Resources and Oil too. So if you’re not a collector? That’s probably a decent pay day or a long-term investment for those of you preparing for Legion next year. To give me an idea of what the quests felt like before I wrote about them, I ran a couple of alts through the sequence earlier. If my server is any indicator? You’ll want to group for ‘What Horrible Presents‘ at least until the spawn rate’s sorted and hot-fixed. Needless to say that for your time and effort, all of this stuff’s worth doing, especially once you’ve decked out your Garrison for the holidays.

 

But Wait, There’s More

Brisk business in Ironforge this morning

However, if you’re not L100 yet, there is still plenty to see and do. Greatfather Winter’s remains in his traditional spot by the Bank at Ironforge, and there’s presents under the tree that you’ll (obviously) have to wait until Christmas Day to open. But for now, you have dailies to complete and pets/toys to be collected here too. What’s less clear, but quite likely, is if there will be any additions to the loot tables for this more traditional side of Azeroth’s seasonal fare: for that, I’ll need to be doing these right up until January 2nd. Needless to say, the queues of people is a welcome sight, and with a number of alts still needing to be levelled, every bit of XP will count. As a reminder: you’ll need to travel to a cave in the Hillsbrad Foothills to free Metzen the Reindeer, who’s been captured and is being held prisoner. Killing the Abominable Greench is a daily quest that can also reward you with chance at the Vanity pet Lumpy. There’s also the chance to give Greatfather Winter milk and cookies (don’t buy the AH Eggs, huge rip-off, go farm your own!) plus a vendor that will provide you with notable gifts from Winter Veils past. Oh, and don’t forget to learn a bit about why we celebrate this holiday whilst you’re indulging in a gift overload: go look for ‘The Reason for the Season’ quest from a questgiver located near the bank in either Ironforge or Orgrimmar. 

It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Talking of those of you who like their Vanity Pets… Blizzard will not disappoint, and this year’s new addition is the Grumpling. I’m also very pleased to state that you won’t need to grind tokens or complete quests to find him either: in the Grumpus area of Frostfire Ridge he can be looted from the clickable piles of snow you’ll find around the quest targets. It didn’t take me long to find him this morning, so you can tick this new addition off your list with hopefully only a couple of hours effort. It’ll give you something to do whilst you wait for the questline toys to spawn, if nothing else. There’s also hints of some new items that could either be in gifts or as drops: a Red Wooden Sled (let’s hope called Rosebud) that will add to your Toybox and allow friends to take you for a ride or a Battle Pet for you to drag behind you, a bind to Battle.net account Snow Blower plus a new variety of Apple Cider that facilitates quicker gathering. Plus that perennial favourite BoE weapon for rogues, the Minature Winter Veil Tree, is now iLevel 670 for all those alts that think Greatfather Winter forgot their Winter veil lists.

Needless to say, where many of these items appear won’t be clear for a little while yet, so I’d keep an eye out on my Blog where I’ll do my best to keep you up to date on developments.

You’ll also find the complete range of Seasonal Achievements still completable: mounts can be transformed, you yourself can become a Winter’s Little Helper (seek out a PX-238 Winter Wondervolt outside a capital city) plus there’s still the opportunity to pick up Seasonal Garb that should hopefully become part of the Transmog Wardrobe in Legion to boot. 5 Man and Raid Bosses in Northrend, Cataclysm, Pandaria and Draenor expansions still have a chance to drop either a Green or a Red Winter Hat to complete the outfits that can be produced by Tailors. Time to pull out those unused alts and see if Greatfather Winter’s sent you a gift in your mailbox! Mostly, it’s an opportunity to log in, see if you got tossed from your Guild and if you didn’t, to wish everyone the best of all Seasonal Gubbins before selling all that rubbish in your bags you’ve not touched since you last played…

Whatever your reason for taking part, I hope you have a Happy and Festive Winter veil. I think I’ll be off to rescue Metzen now, because I can guarantee by the time I’ve done so he’ll have been captured and I’ll have to do the same thing all over again…

Related: Blizzard Entertainment, Column, Event (In Game), Winter Event, World of Warcraft, WoW Wednesday