World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Brewfest has returned to World of Warcraft so grab a mug and head out to our 2011 Brewfest Guide to discover what's new and how to earn your achievements.

It’s that time of year again in World of Warcraft for us to all celebrate the most inebriating holiday there is. That’s right, Brewfest has hit WoW again the third year running with a few changes, a lot of memorable drinking and tons of fun. What’s Brewfest you ask? Well, just look at the first word! It’s all about brew and the various types of spirits along with sausages, strange clothing, and well more drinking!

Teetotalers back up and get away because Brewfest is a drinking holiday where you’ll be doing a lot of that, drinking, and advocating the fine distilleries throughout Azeroth. There are achievements (that play into the world event meta achievement), epic items, and tons of souvenirs too. Are you ready to get your game on? Let’s start!

2011 Updates

Brewfast has changed slightly this year. The loot included off of the boss is ilvl 365.

2010 Updates

Nothing new this year, other than the boss battle is now located within the dungeon finder instead of having to use the remote or walking there to do it.

Brewfest Basics

Where to go, how to find it, and what does it give ya.

Brewfest is located outside of Orgrimmar and Ironforge. It started September 20th, 2009 in WoW and runs for 2 weeks until October 4th. It’s an homage to Oktoberfest which is held in Germany and starts two weeks before the end of the first Sunday in October. Oktoberfest is a beer festival in Munich, Germany that’s emulated across the world as a great excuse to enjoy a lot of fine food and booze. In WoW, it's a great way to get some easy epic items and to get some awesome achievements.

Brewfest uses a unique currency called [Brewfest Prize Tokens] that are awarded through various events and quests. These tokens can be turned in for some awesome souvenirs and some items that’ll work towards the Brewfest achievements.

Speaking of achievements, there is a total of 10 achievements (one which can’t be completed for a whole year, but doesn’t count towards the meta-achievement) and one additional meta-achievement. All together that’s 110 points and the title “Brewmaster” to tack on to your name.

The events that take place involve ram racing (both a race to get barrels and barking runs), going into Blackrock Depths to fight a boss, and a few other generalized quests.

There is a pair of free glasses given by an NPC that’ll put you in a drunk state which is useful for some of the quests.

So let’s start looking into things, shall we?

Brewfest Prize Tokens

The currency and what it can get for ya.

Questing during Brewquest (both while drunk or sober) will get you Prize Tokens (changed from Tickets from a previous year) which can be turned in for some loot. You’ll need 552 tokens total to get all of the achievements, but that won’t be hard if you keep working at the various Brewfest quests that are to be had. Here’s a list of what you can buy, so you can plan.

At the start of the festival, doing all of the intro quests expect to get 125 starting tokens. Then each day you can get 25 from dailies and then another 20ish from the “Do you have additional work?” ram racing option. So that’s about 45 a day over 14 days which equates to 630. All together you can get about 755 tokens, enough to buy most of the things in the store.

Achievements

It doesn’t take a lot to achieve being drunk in WoW, but it does to get all of these achievements!

Here is a list of all the achievements and how to do each one. Remember that you have only the two weeks to get them down.

• Direbrewfest: Kill Coren Direbrew. Pretty simple, right? That’s all you have to do. See our guide below on how to do that.
• Disturbing the Peace: Wear 3 pieces (the whole set) of the Brewfest gear and /dance in Dalaran. It’ll cost 350 tokens to get this achievement done.
• Does Your Wolpertinger Linger?: Obtain a Wolpertinger! See our quest list to see how to snag one of these pets up.
• Down With The Dark Iron: Just turn in the Dark Iron Event quest. See our Misc section on how to deal with those pesky dwarves.
• Drunken Stuper: Fall 65 yards while drunk. Have you down the regular falling achievement yet? Repeat that, but while completely smashed (as drunk as you can get). Druids/Rogues can use their passive fall damage decreasing abilities to breeze through this and anything that makes you immune to damage (fall damage) works. Just can’t slow fall or flight form halfway down.
• Strange Brew: Drink all of the booze sold from the vendors at Brewfest. Huge list of em, but easy and not that costly.
• The Brewfest Diet: Same thing as Strange Brew, except it’s for food. The pretzels and onion cheese are on a different vendor than the sausages.
• Have Keg, Will Travel: Use Brewfest Hops to turn your mount into a festive one (2 tokens) or get a mount drop off of ‘ol Direbrew.
• Brew of the Year: This one doesn’t count for the meta achievement. Drink all 12 different brews throughout the year to earn this one. They’re mailed to you.
• Brew of the Month: 200 tokens will enter you into the Brew of the Month club which earns this achievement. Combined with Disturbing the Peace (350) and Have Keg, Will Travel (2) you’ll need 552 tokens to get all token based achievements.
• Brewmaster: Gives you a title. Just need all of the above achievements.

Starting Quests

How to get started with Brewfest.

So you want to enter into the party, right? Well, first things first. Head to Brewfest! It’s outside of Orgrimmar and Ironforge. Now hunt down some quest givers. The first quest available will be “Brewfest!” which will lead you there (from a major city). It’s not needed, though. “Welcome to Brewfest” will be the first quest available in the Brewfest camp and it’ll award you with some free booze. Now, that’ll open up a ton of new quests for you to do.

We’ll go over the more advanced quests down below, but let’s look at the full list and the rewards.

Ram Racing

Now This is Ram Racing… Almost, There and Back Again, and other ram racing fun!

Ram Racing is a key part of Brewfest. You’ll need to master it to get the most tokens out of each day and it’s pretty hard to get the hang of at first.

Now This is Ram Racing is the first quest you get for ram racing and it’s pretty easy. You just need to keep your ram at a certain speed for 8 seconds. You’ll get some reigns, be sure to bind them to an easy key to press. Now let’s see how rams work.

Rams have 4 speeds. Walking, Trot, Canter, Gallop, and the dreaded Exhausted. Rams can gain or lose fatigue based on how fast and hard you’re working them. Walking and Trot heals your fatigue (-4/-2 points per second respectively) while Canter and Gallop add fatigue (+1/+5 points per second respectively). Exhausted happens if you hit 100 fatigue points and lasts 15 seconds. It puts you at 14% of your base run speed. Ouch!

Apples will heal all of your fatigue, but they’re only on the beer run route. Otherwise you’ll have to master control of your ram. The Rental Ram only lasts 4 minutes so use the first quest to get the hang of things. Using the reigns will make the ram go faster. The faster/harder you click it the faster you’ll go. For beer runs (where there are apples) you’ll want to maintain a gallop while barking runs you’ll want to master the art of staying at canter.

Once that quest is done you’ll be given “There and Back Again” which involves making a run to broken down beer wagon and back. There are plenty of apples on your path and in the 4 minutes you have you should be able to easily get three of them back to complete the quest. However, use this time to focus on the path. Ram into the apples (or pass over them, depending on your lag, I almost aim for em then strafe aside) as you move and get the hang of the course. This is VERY important. You don’t want to hit every apple barrel, that’ll slow you down, but you don’t want to hit fatigued either.

Once that quest is done, each day you can help the quest giver out by doing beer runs. Each successful run gives you 2 tokens and another 30 seconds on your ram. This means that you can extend it to about 8-9 minutes and 20 tokens if you’re good at doing it. The first few times you might not get as many, but remember, if you’re going for achievements you’ll want to focus on getting as many as possible. I just got 32 from a run, so that’d be 448 over the events course of time.

There is also a 15 minute limit on the amount of runs you can do, but you’ll probably lose the buff way before then.

Barking Runs (Ram Racing Redux)

Time to scream for booze!

Barking runs work just like ram racing does. Except there are no apples on the track. You have four minutes to go into Ironforge/Orgrimmar and bark at four locations. You’ll have to mix canter and trot together otherwise you won’t be able to make the time (the standard 4 minutes). Just mix the two up going to the flags (I rarely have to drop canter). You can do this easily in 2 ½ to 3 minutes.

Direbrew Time

Look here for epic trinkets!

Ah, alright. So you want some ilvl 200 trinkets eh? Well you’ve come to the right place. Grab the quest “Save Brewfest!” and head to BRD. Turn it in to get “Insult Coren Direbrew”. This is the daily quest to spawn Coren (but the subsequent quest is a onetime only thing). The fight is simple. He does about the usual boss damage, can disarm, is tauntable, and can summon adds. He’s got about 300k health, so he’s easy to take down.

You'll need to use the dungeon finder to find a group for him. After the group is found you'll be teleported directly to the encounter.

So take down the adds and focus on him. You’ll get some booze thrown your way, drink it up or you’ll get knocked down. He drops an assortment of cool items. All of the Molten Front (2011) equivalent trinkets drop (which is great, you don’t have to waste 40 newer badges on em). He also drops two 510 (2011) Stamina trinkets, one summons a healer and another drops an attacker. Then there are two rare mounts and a remote that can give your party a ride to Grim Guzzler.

If you’ve yet to do it, he also drops a “Direbrew’s Dire Brew” that gives 40 tokens if you turn it in. The first time each day you'll receive the treasure filled keg that gives you a chance at a few rare items in addition to 2 Frost Badges. In 2010 the trinkets were not upgraded past ilvl 200.

Drops

• Great Brewfest Kodo: Rare mount drop, available to both factions, is located within the treasure filled keg (at a random chance to get it).
• Swift Brewfest Ram: Rare mount drop, available to both factions, is located within the treasure filled keg (at a random chance to get it).
• Bitter Balebrew Charm: 170 stamina trinket, summons the Black Brewmaiden who does damage to your target on use.
• Bubbling Brightbrew Charm: 170 stamina trinket, on use summons the Brewmaiden who heals your party.
• 40 badge trinkets (84 critical strike rating/spells have a chance to add 590 spell power for 10 sec, 98 spell power, chance your heals add 505 haste rating for 10 sec/84 critical strike, chance on melee to add 1000 attack power for 10 sec/84 dodge rating, on use adds 335 dodge rating for 20 seconds)
• Direbrew's Shanker 2.0: One-handed 2.00 speed dagger that does 143.2 DPS, 38 agility, 38 stamina, 51 attack power, 27 critical strike, 22 hit rating
• Direbrew's Remote: Summons a mole machine to teleport your party to the grim guzzler.

Miscellaneous Tidbits and Facts

When do they tap the kegs you ask? Dark Iron event? Do tell.

Undoubtedly the General Chat for Brewfest will be full of lame jokes, questions about tapping the kegs, and possibly Chuck Norris jokes (even though every super retailer has enough shirts to remind you of that meme). I suggest /leave 1 for your sanity, but if you’ve got some questions here are a few answers.

The kegs are tapped at 6:15 A.M. and P.M. It grants a 2 hour 10% XP boos that works similar to rested XP. So if you’re leveling up then it’s important, otherwise it’s nothing of consequence.

Groups asking for a summon mean the remote straight to the Grim Guzzler. This no longer applies because you use the dungeon finder to fight the boss.

The Dark Iron event happens every 30 minutes and involves an invasion of Dark Irons who are trying to break the kegs. If they break all the kegs, you lose. If you prevent them from being broken you win. Take the free booze on the tables and drink it which will throw a keg at a Dark Iron dwarf. Silver Steins will show up which will make you spin around (which does a lot to help). Save at least one keg and a cog will drop that will give you the daily quest for that day and 10 tokens.

Brewfest lasts 2 weeks and the Harvest Festival (not as big of a deal) lasts during the last week in 2009.

That’s about all there is for Brewfest. If you’ve got any questions why not post in our forums about it!