Winter's Veil Achievements

[Merusk]

So, are the hats only dropping in level cap dungeons again, or can I run some 70s with my 70s in the hopes I'll get one of the damn hats this year?

I just found out via the wife that the Apple Cider you need to make is cooking skill 325.  Jackasses. I hate farming cooking meats instead of selling them on the AH.

Am I the only one addicted to these damn achievements?  I spent Saturday running around Eastern Kingdoms on my DK to get areas explored. 

[Cadaverine]

I am terribly addicted to gathering achievements.  At least I know what I'll spend the next two weeks doing. 

[fuser]

I just found out via the wife that the Apple Cider you need to make is cooking skill 325.  Jackasses. I hate farming cooking meats instead of selling them on the AH.

It was mailed to me, so I guess if you have the skill it's free. If not its purchasable from the winter veil vendors ("smokey pastures" are they?). Too bad they made it gray at 325 too, no skillups :(

[Chimpy]

The red hat drops off of the split-up boss in Nexus. 100% drop according to wowarmory in both regular and heroic.

I R achievement nerd.

[Merusk]

My problem isn't getting the recipie so much as my Death Knight and Paladin are both well below even 300 skill in cooking. The pally is closer at 275, (I just didn't want to go to Silithus and do that damn crawler quest.) but the DK is at 25... because I hate farming fucking meats.  

The red hat drops off of the split-up boss in Nexus. 100% drop according to wowarmory in both regular and heroic.

I R achievement nerd.

Oh fucking sweet. About damn time they made it easier to get one of the fucking things.

[bhodikhan]

Best (and fastest) way to level up cooking is fishing. I hate farming meats as well. Fishing makes that easier.

[K9]

Levelling fishing is about as fun as being skull-fucked though.

If you're a true achievement whore you'll level cooking anyway for those achievements (I'm about a month of Dailies and an eternity fighting the RNG with fishing for Cpt.Rumsey's Lager away from "Chef").

mmo-champion has a good breakdown of these achievements.

[Morfiend]

From MMO-Champion.com:

Winter Veil - Achievements Mini-Guide
Merrymaker is part of What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been to get the Violet Proto-Drake. I assume that most of you will try to complete it, here is a small guide to help you becoming a Merrymaker!

On Metzen!
Complete Metzen the Reindeer / Metzen the Reindeer, Metzen is still in the Searing Gorge and in Tanaris, just like all the other years. You can check the map on wowhead. The quests for this achievement start in Orgrimmar / Ironforge depending on your faction. (Like pretty much all the quests for the event)

Scrooge / Scrooge
Another "free" achievement, just buy a Snowball and throw it at King Magni Bronzebeard in Ironforge or Cairne Bloodhoof in Thunder Bluff depending on your faction.

'Tis the Season
To complete this achievement you will need a full set of Winter clothing.
Red Clothes / Green Clothes are crafted by tailors.
Winter Boots are crafted by leatherworkers.
Red Winter Hat and Green Winter Hat are slightly more difficult to obtain. You will need to drop them from various bosses in instance.

Just like last year, the drop locations for these hats have been updated for level 80 players to prevent them from being soloable (but the red hat probably is for the stronger classes, the easiest way to complete the achievement is obviously to rush the nexus with a friend). The known drop locations in Wrath of the Lich King are as follow:
Red Winter Hat - Grand Magus Telestra (The Nexus), Jedoga Shadowseeker (Ahn'kahet),
Green Winter Hat - Mage-Lord Urom (The Oculus)
Feel free to contribute with the missing drop locations in comments.

The last part of the achievement is the Graccu's Mince Meat Fruitcake is contained in Smokywood Pastures Extra-Special Gift and Smokywood Pastures Sampler, they will be mailed to you after freeing Metzen (see the first achievement) or completing Treats for Greatfather Winter.

Simply Abominable
Complete the Stolen Winter Veil Treats / Stolen Winter Veil Treats questline. They require you to talk to the Strange Snowman in Alterac Mountains to get a quest to kill The Abominable Greench

Bros. Before Ho Ho Ho's
When you're done laughing at the name of the achievement, you can check the small guides in Wowhead comments for both faction:
Horde
Alliance
Alliance players have to talk to a lot more people, but Horde players have to go through Northrend (and eventually end up in Icecrown, it might be a problem for players below level 77). The hardest part of the achievement might be getting the Mistletoe, to obtain it just type /kiss while targeting a Winter Reveler. (This is a random "drop", you might have to try it a few times to actually get the Mistletoe)

He Knows If You've Been Naughty
Open one of the presents underneath the Winter Veil tree once they are available. You only need to open ONE present and not all of them, it's basically another free achievement. The presents are only available from December 25th to January 2nd and you'll have to wait a few days before you can complete this one.

With a Little Helper from My Friends
Earn 50 honorable kills as a Little Helper from the Winter Wondervolt machine. The machines are outside Orgrimmar / Ironforge, just step into it to get a 30 minutes transformation buff and enter your favorite battleground to kill a few people! (Note that the transformation does NOT persist through death, you will have to finish/leave the battleground and get another transformation if you die)

Fa-la-la-la-Ogri'la
Complete Bomb Them Again! after transforming your mount with Preserved Holly / Fresh Holly rewarded from various quests and Winter Revelers during the event.

Crashin' & Thrashin'
This achievement requires to use the special ability of your Crashin' Thrashin' Racer Controller and smash other player's racer (Video. This item is available from the presents under the christmas tree and won't be available before December 25th. (Except if you still have unopened presents from last year)

Let It Snow
During the Feast of Winter Veil, use a Handful of Snowflakes on each of the race/class combinations listed below. This achievement could be hard because the only way to get Handful of Snowflakes is by kissing Winter Revelers once an hour. Hopefully, they're not soulbound and can be sold / exchanged between your characters, depending on how desperate you are you could just create level 1 characters to get enough of them. (You could also do that to sell tons of them at the AH ... but you can't sell conjured items.)

The Winter Veil Gourmet
Depending on your character, this might be the hardest achievement. It requires you to cook Gingerbread Cookie Egg Nog and Hot Apple Cider. The patterns are all available from the NPC, there are only two small problems:

You will need Small Egg for two of these recipes, and will probably have to run to a low level zone to farm them along with 30 other players. (Buying them at 50G/stack at the AH is also an option)
Hot Apple Cider require 325 cooking skill! If you never took the time to level your cooking, you will have to go through all the leveling just to complete this achievement.

Needless to say that the price of cooking reagents will most likely skyrocket.

A Frosty Shake
During the Feast of Winter Veil, use your Winter Veil Disguise kit to become a snowman and then dance with another snowman in Dalaran. The Winter Veil Disguise kit is one of the reward mailed to you after completing Stolen Winter Veil Treats.

[Ingmar]

People who do achievements on more than one character =  . You're mad, Frink!

[Xerapis]

It's really rather frustrating that so many of the achievements are really for hi-to-max-level characters.

My poor little guy is still in his mid-20s. Leveling in Korean was teh suck. Luckily, I recently managed to overcome that limitation.

And last night I made a bunch of gold by selling gingerbread cookies. I love people who don't take cooking.

I ALSO LOVE FISHING! It is fun and relaxing, which I imagine being skull-fucked is not. Different strokes and all. Funny thing...I hate RL fishing. Mostly because of the much lower catch rate. And you can't get the one ring while fishing IRL.

My singular Winter's Veil achievement to date: SCROOGE!!! I was a little disappointed that Cairne didn't react at all to the snowball. I mean, I died twice to get the damn snowball. To Alterac ogres, I was a delicious holiday treat trying to dash past them to get to the snow.

[Merusk]

... Died?

So the snowballs you can buy off vendors for like 20s don't work? 

[Xerapis]

Real players only use natural snowballs. 

I'm one of those crazy people who insist on making the run all through Desolace naked at level 20 just to buy the cooking book myself instead of using the AH for it.

Yes, I know I'm weird.

[Lantyssa]

You, too!?

[Arinon]

Getting cooking up on my DK isn't going to be as much of a pain as opening up Ogril'a is.  You can solo most of the quests but one of them requires 5 people.  Not in a 'man this is hard to kill' way but in a '5 people must stand just so to summon some dude' way.  Though I hear you can cheese it with 3 and some fast feet.

[Merusk]

I have folks willing to help me with Ogri'la so that's not a problem.  Social networking ahoy!

[Xerapis]

Yeah, if I can manage to overcome my natural dislike of the activity, I might just ~shudder~ speedpowerlevel up to the point where I make my boyfriend snag some of his buddies to help me out with some of the unlocks and such. I don't want to have to wait until next year to finish up the achievements.

At least I'm a hunter. I'm ideally suited by class for racing to the endgame. I don't really have the social network, but at least I have a dedicated link to one. 

[Chimpy]

if you search for winter reveler on Wowhead there is a great macro/howto to get double mistletoe every hour.

Highly recommended for fellow achievement nerds like myself.

[Gobbeldygook]

I've always felt the idea behind achievements was to reward you for breaking out of your routine and doing something different.  Sure, I could run Oculus with a standard spread like 1 red/3 amber/1 green and complete it...but how about today we try it with 5 greens?

That's why the Winter's Veil achievements are LAME.  I was halfway done before I even left a capital city.  The ones that make you leave your capital city end with

A. Going to one of two zones (your choice) and clicking on an object in the environment.
B. Killing a level 36 non-elite yeti palette swap.
C. Going to a some NPCs and sprinking mistletoe on them that I got by idling in Dalaran while watching Dexter because the mistletoe debuff doesn't fade while logged out.
D. If you don't have a hat from last year, you have to go run a level 72 instance until you and 1-2 friends have hats.

Why couldn't the greench be a 5-man boss, perhaps in BRD, and VIVIDLY GREEN?  Or Metzen could have been in outland this year and involve a chase like the Netherwing Races?  Or the hats only drop 100% on Heroic?  Or the snowball target be an OPPOSITE faction leader?

Most of my guild is just waiting for the 25th so they can get get their racer and dull pip on their collar.

[DraconianOne]

Stuff

You've already got the the Scrooge acheivement haven't you? 

[Merusk]

if you search for winter reveler on Wowhead there is a great macro/howto to get double mistletoe every hour.

Highly recommended for fellow achievement nerds like myself.

No, I wouldn't recommend it at all.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13587478958

[Paelos]

if you search for winter reveler on Wowhead there is a great macro/howto to get double mistletoe every hour.

Highly recommended for fellow achievement nerds like myself.

No, I wouldn't recommend it at all.

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=13587478958

I had two of my friends ask me if I had my double-hit macro set up for the revelers. My response was: "Doesn't that sound like cheating to you?"

Theirs was: "Who cares? Double stuff!"

[Chimpy]

Since the post it was in has been up for over a year, I said what the hell and did it.

If they give me a 3 day ban and take my misteltoe achievement away fine, whatever. Their stupid mechanic of wait an hour for 5 fresh holly instead of what you need is the problem.

Using that macro it still took me until late at night to get enough mistletoe to do the achievement. I do have about 80 fresh holly though. Ya gamebreaking, oh well.

[Paelos]

Since the post it was in has been up for over a year, I said what the hell and did it.

If they give me a 3 day ban and take my misteltoe achievement away fine, whatever. Their stupid mechanic of wait an hour for 5 fresh holly instead of what you need is the problem.

Using that macro it still took me until late at night to get enough mistletoe to do the achievement. I do have about 80 fresh holly though. Ya gamebreaking, oh well.

They opened the event yesterday though. It's like 18 days long. Are we really that hard up to macro cheat for a meaningless achievement in the first day of release? That was moreso the point. Is their system to blame? No, it's just not designed for instant gratification. Hell, let's string them right the fuck up!

[fuser]

'Tis the season, I love this market... playing around with the tradeskill components/items is insane on a large server.

[fuser]

C. Going to a some NPCs and sprinking mistletoe on them that I got by idling in Dalaran while watching Dexter because the mistletoe debuff doesn't fade while logged out.

This is tough but doable at 70. Problem for the horde(haven't checked alliance) is the brother is on the zeppelin in Icecrown (which of course you need epic flying + cold weather flying). I'll post some maps later but you can get there and accomplish it at 70


Edit:
Speaking of which here's how to get to Icecrown under 77, and here's how to sprinkle mistletoe on Brother Keltan.

[Kitsune]

I just got the last achievement tonight, and wouldn't've gotten that if not for having raided Orgrimmar yesterday while transformed into a holiday gnome.  Yay for fortyish free honor kills in an hour!

I'm not much of a PvPer.

The bitch of the thing for me is that my main's a feral druid, and shapeshifting undoes the gnome transformation, so I had to stay elfy for the duration of the fights.  I wound up doing healing duty for the raid to make myself useful, as my offensive magic is pretty much a joke.

[Kail]

I just got the last achievement tonight, and wouldn't've gotten that if not for having raided Orgrimmar yesterday while transformed into a holiday gnome.  Yay for fortyish free honor kills in an hour!

Got about thirty or so defending for a round of Wintergrasp.  You can really live a long time on that map if you ride around in a tank and keep close to the defender's portals.  I somehow magically hit the exact right level range to get all these done really quickly; high enough to get to the zepplin, but low enough that I could still queue for non-heroic Nexus for the stupid hat.

[Merusk]

I just went into AV and hung around the inevitable Alliance turtle that always develops when there's more non-pvpers in there trying to get achievements than folks who actually know what they're doing.  50 kills in 10 mins.