I’ve been immensely distracted within WoW by the midsummer fire festival quests. My obsession has been to find as many bonfires as possible, and grab all the flight points (FPs) along the way. This has been great for leveling – I started this with my human warrior Aabde around lvl 18 and am up to 23 – but it also has given me an excuse to sneak into practically every corner of Azeroth, especially areas that are way above my level. It’s been immensely entertaining, especially since there’s a real sense of accomplishment from being the lowest level character in the zone, and still managing the extinguish a Horde bonfire.
I actually have found it easier to extinguish Horde bonfires on Kalimdor than in the Eastern Kingdoms. I also have managed to get all but three Alliance bonfires in Kalimdor, though the three remaining are the trickiest (Tanaris, Silithius, and Winterspring). I am honestly amazed at how easy it’s been to extinguish Horde bonfires, though. I have numerous strategies, ranging from just walking along the road (surprising number of bonfires are right outside the gates of Horde settlements, so you can go right up to them without getting aggro by the guards) to the infamous “corpse-hopping” where you systematically advance by getting killed, then ressurecting at max res radius in the direction of desired travel. And I wasn’t too shy to ask Guild members for an escort when I lacked another strategy – that’s how I hit the Horde bonfire in Dustwallow Marsh, thanks to a lvl 42 patron.
My most innovative approach however was to swim. I swam from Ashenvale all the way to Feathermoon Stronghol along the west coast of Kalimdor. This got me in position to run through Feralas, and also hit the Horde bonfire in Desolace. I’m going to try to get into Tanaris next – I cant survive a run through Thousand Needles so this is my only way in. I’ll swim from Theramore and head south, then make my way to Gadgetzan. I’ve heard that if you die in the waters off Tanaris coast, you resurrect in Gadgetzan anyway, so this should be pretty easy.
After Tanaris, I’ll try to get into Winterspring via Moonglade (I’m told that if I drown north of Auberdine, I can res inside the adjacent zone). And then I’ll try to figure out a way into Silithius, probably by asking someone lvl 80 to escort me in.
Unfortunately I have five more bonfires to get in the Eastern Kingdoms, so I’ve given up on realistically achieving Fire Warden status there. But I think Kalimdor is within my reach. Anyone have any suggestions?
Wow, you’re making good progress!
The Moonglade trick works… just watch to see that you’re in that zone (a small patch of water north of Auberdine) and drown yourself. However, the tunnel that leads out is filled with rather angry lvl 50-something monsters. There’s a whole (hopelessly dull) series of quests and reputation grinding you can do to get them to not kill you on sight, but at your level you’ll be in for long, repeated corpse-runs if you try and leave Moonglade that way
That trick will work for Sithilus, though it’s a *LONG* swim. There’s a similar spot if you keep swimming around the coast you can drown and rez in Silithus.
As far as the Eastern Kingdoms go, you’re in for a rough ride. Many of the bonfires are inland, often in high-level zones (Burning Steppes is going to be a NIGHTMARE). Your best bet is a guildie… not sure if it would work, but see if someone has a war mammoth or motorcycle mount… those allow passengers to ride along, and you might be able to get an 80 to drive you in, let you grab the fire, and ride out. Hopefully, your presence on the mount won’t aggro anything.
As far as fires go, it’s generally just as easy for Hordies to desecrate Alliance fires. I only had one Alliance player even TRY to attack me, and he was a lvl 16 going after my lvl 80 death knight. I have no idea why he attacked me, because my pet ghoul killed him before I could even react.
The good news is that next year you shouldn’t have any problem finishing the achievements and getting yourself a nifty “Flame Keeper” title.
for Silithus, i can fly to Feathermoon and then swim from there, should be shorter. Also, why cant i just swim around to wintergreen too? would that work?
I assume you mean Winterspring. 😉 Truth to tell, I’ve never tried that. I don’t know if there’s a similar spot on the coast that is part of Winterspring, but if there is there’s no reason it wouldn’t work.
The Feathermoon trick should save you some time, but it’s still a long swim, and there’s a patch between the island and the mainland where you become fatigued if you swim it. Not sure if you can cross it before dying. If it’s too big, you can end up unable to retrieve your body and be forced to spirit rez.
If you aren’t using it already, mapWoW.com is a great resource, sort of a Google Maps for Azeroth. It might show you the best ways in and out of areas.
actually, I was browsing some thotbott forums and some users claim that Blizzard has moved the zone boundary to the mountains, so you cant get into Wintergreen that way. Hopefully thats not the case for Silithus, too. There were some spots between Desolace and Feralas where the deep water went right up to the land’s edge, making swimming somewhat hairy – I had to strike out across the dark blue area and get fatigued in a couple of places since there was nowhere else to swim. In both cases the deep water stretch was fairly short so I made it without taking any fatigue damage. When I drowned for access to Moonglade, I think I had about a solid two minutes from the time I first saw the fatigue bar to taking maximum fatigue damage, so that should be enough to cross all but the largest stretches of deep water.
However, Anachronda told me a better trick than swimming to gain access to high level zones – die and then board a boat as a spirit. The intercontinental journey hands you off to a different server, so you are able to res at any graveyard on the destination continent. Its a tedious method but less so than swimming painstakingly around the outer rim. I plan to try this today – the benefit is that I can actually use it to bounce between continents on each run and pick up some eastern bonfires too. lets see how it goes.
incidentally, I grabbed Tanaris, both Horde and Alliance, yesterday. Both are just outside the Gadgetzan city walls so it was trivially easy. I tried to run through Thousand Needles from there and made it past the salt flats by running along the canyon wall, but when I got to the narrow canyon I was toasted quite quickly. I’ll try it again via the corpse-hop method when I have more patienmce. I really think I can get both bonfire achievements for Kalimdor by the festival deadline if I am efficient about it (and my 2yr old cooperates).
I just completed the Achievements, Extinguishing the Flame and Fire arden, for Kalimdor. I am level 24. I dunno who else did this at a low level, but surely I cant be the only one. Am I?
now, I want to get me some Fire Festival gear… i think ihave to spend these Fire Blossoms by friday..
Grats!
It’s definitely rare for a low-level to do that. Since all that counts towards the Flame Keeper title, next year you won’t have to do it again if you don’t want to. And compared to what you’ve done, the fires of Outland are easy.