Guide to the new Darkmoon Faire
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20121025115853im_/http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2010/12/darkmoonfaire.jpg)
If you're as confused as I was, I hope the information past the cut is helpful. How long will it take you get all the pets and mounts? How do you cheese Blastenheimer Bullseye? And how the hell did Corki manage to get himself captured by a bunch of carnies?
I'm lying about that last bit. I have no idea why Corki's part of the zoo, and I have no intention of springing him again. Ever.
![](https://web.archive.org/web/20121025115853im_/http://www.blogcdn.com/wow.joystiq.com/media/2011/12/wi-darkmoonfireworks.jpg)
As with its older version, the new Darkmoon Faire runs for one week from the first Sunday of each month.
How do I get there?
While the Faire is active, a portal will appear in both Mulgore and Elwynn Forest where the Faire itself used to be staged. If you're not familiar with the previous location of the Darkmoon Faire, it's easy to find:
- Elwynn Forest Just south of Goldshire
- Mulgore Southwest of Thunder Bluff
What can I get from the Faire?
Heirloom gear, noncombat pets, mounts, and vanity items. The profession quests also award skill-ups. Of note here is that the vanity items include replicas of the old dungeon sets from classic WoW for transmogrification.
That heirloom items are available with Darkmoon Prize Tickets is especially interesting, as it means that even new players on their first toons will be able to get heirlooms while leveling (albeit in a more restricted manner than a level-capped player can).
How do I buy the new Darkmoon items?
The Faire offers both weekly and daily quests that award Darkmoon Prize Tickets, a currency used to purchase items.
How many tickets can I get in a week?
You're functionally capped at 145 Prize Tickets per week. The six new pets all cost 90 tickets each, and the two new mounts cost 180 tickets each.
How long will it take to get the pets and mounts?
Assuming you want all the pets and mounts, you'll need at least seven Darkmoon Faires (i.e., seven months) to afford them all. Budget more, obviously, for any vanity items you might want.
What's this Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide that I'm given?
The Darkmoon Adventurer's Guide is an item that allows you to loot Darkmoon artifacts from player corpses in battlegrounds or 5-man, heroic, and raid bosses. The artifacts reward you with additional tickets once turned in at the Faire.
If you take the breadcrumb quest to get to the Faire, you'll be given one at the end of the quest. If, like me, your main can't get this quest, you can still pick up the Guide from Selina Dourman.
Having carried the Guide on a tanking druid for several days now, it's my impression that the Darkmoon artifacts are not a common drop, at least in 5-mans. I've killed the bosses in the new 5-mans many a time and seen an artifact drop exactly once. However, Blizzard confirmed earlier that you can continue to loot Darkmoon artifacts even while the Faire isn't on, so it might be worth keeping the Guide in your pack between Faires. In addition, the artifacts are tradeable, and if you're really desperate for a particular one (e.g., you hate PvP and wouldn't ordinarily have access to the battlefield artifacts), keep checking the Auction House.
Collecting all the Darkmoon artifacts rewards the achievement Darkmoon Despoiler (see below).
New Darkmoon Faire achievements
The Darkmoon Faire gets its own subheading under the World Events section of your achievements tab. While a full guide will have to wait for OverAchiever to tackle it, these are all of the achievements present as of patch 4.3:
- Blastenheimer Bullseye This may be bugged for certain racial models, although several people have said that jumping in the center of the bullseye immediately after landing seems to work.
- Come One, Come All! You should get this immediately while porting to the Faire for the first time.
- Darkmoon Defender You'll have to have the Adventurer's Guide in your packs and loot player corpses in Battlegrounds (in the same way that you'd remove insignias) in order to do this.
- Darkmoon Despoiler Turning in each of the nine Darkmoon artifacts will reward this.
- Darkmoon Dominator The Darkmoon arena is pretty similar to the Stranglethorn arena, except you can count on its being a lot more popular for the forseeable future. You will probably need some friends to help you do this. It involves looting the Pit Fighter trinket 12 times from the chest that spawns every three hours in the arena.
- Darkmoon Duelist However, this achievement only requires you to do the above once.
- Darkmoon Dungeoneer This is the same as Darkmoon Defender, but it involves the five Darkmoon artifacts available from 5-man and heroic dungeons.
- Faire Favors Assuming that you have two primary professions and all four secondary professions (fishing, cooking, archaeology, and first aid), you should be able to get this done fairly easily.
- Fairegoer's Feast You'll only need to visit two vendors on the island, Stamp Thunderhorn and Sylannia, in order to do this. Please note that some of the drinks and food involved require level 85, so lower-level players cannot get this.
- I Was Promised a Pony Very easy. The ponies are located on the southeastern end of the Faire.
- Quick Shot Turning your character in the direction of the target needed is all that's required. Apart from actually shooting, that is.
- Step Right Up You should get this over the course of doing the daily quests on offer from the carnies.
- Taking the Show on the Road (Alliance)/Taking the Show on the Road (Horde) The Darkmoon Fireworks in question are sold by Boomie Sparks at the Faire. Blizzard recently changed the fireworks to have a seven-day duration and require the Faire to be on, so you will have to do this otherwise simple achievement while the Faire is active.
There's one pet that doesn't have to be bought here but rather fished.
- Darkmoon Balloon
- Darkmoon Cub
- Darkmoon Monkey
- Darkmoon Tonk
- Darkmoon Turtle
- Darkmoon Zeppelin
- From fishing in the waters around the island: Sea Pony. This is currently estimated at a one-in-1,000 drop rate.
- Darkmoon Dancing Bear
- Swift Forest Strider
There are new daily and weekly quests on offer at the Faire. The new profession-related quests (available weekly) are as follows:
- Alchemy A Fizzy Fusion
- Archaeology Fun for the Little Ones
- Blacksmithing Baby Needs Two Pair of Shoes
- Cooking Putting the Crunch in the Frog
- Enchanting Putting Trash to Good Use
- Engineering Talkin' Tonks
- Inscription Writing the Future
- First aid Putting the Carnies Back Together Again
- Fishing Spoilin' for Salty Sea Dogs
- Herbalism Herbs for Healing
- Jewelcrafting Keeping the Faire Sparkling
- Leatherworking Eyes on the Prizes
- Mining Rearm, Reuse, Recycle
- Skinning Tan My Hide
- Tailoring Banners, Banners Everywhere!
- Test Your Strength The Grisly Trophy is a (somewhat random) drop off any mob that rewards experience or honor. It does not need to be looted and will simply appear in your packs automatically. You'll find some useful discussion on how best to farm them in Monday's Queue, although you should be able to amass 250 fairly easily if you run 5-mans with some regularity. It definitely won't be as quick as going off to farm them on your own, but you don't need to go out of your way to farm them if you don't want or need them all at once.
These have now become Tattered Darkmoon Faire Prize Tickets and are functionally worthless. Sorry, folks: There doesn't appear to be a way to exchange them. You may want to hang onto them for nostalgia's sake or in the event that Blizzard decides that participation in the older Darkmoon Faire is worth being a feat of strength.
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Filed under: Events, News items
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Teni Dec 7th 2011 3:36PM
CORRECTION: The daily quests do *NOT* give you profession skill-ups!! You're talking about the profession-related quests, which give you DMF tickets, a DMF game token (that lets you play the dailies), and some skill-up points. Apparently you can only do these once a month.
Oh and by the way, that thread about items costing too much at the new DMF? The thread is now at over 60 pages (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/3657441916) without end. I don't think any of us want freebies just handed to us, but I think many of us believe the effort-reward ratio is way too stiff right now. Here's to hoping they'll listen to our suggestions and offer some serious tweaks.
Neothanos Feb 5th 2012 12:56PM
Agreed they took keep subscriber a bit too far.
mbison Dec 7th 2011 2:12PM
"Test Your Strength The Grisly Trophy is a (somewhat random) drop off any mob that rewards experience or honor."
It is actually not random. The trick is that you have to land the killing blow. So if you are in a group, the player who lands the killing blow on the mob receives the Grisly Trophy.
The Dewd Dec 7th 2011 2:18PM
That seems somewhat unfair to tanks and even more so to healers.
LynMars Dec 7th 2011 2:31PM
My healer and tank mains disagree. I have around 200 on my healer, and she nearly never gets killing blows.
I've heard other healers who do absolutely no DPS at all that they've gotten the trophies.
Pretty sure it's randomized to be fair to those who don't get to do the actual killing.
missemilyblack Dec 7th 2011 2:31PM
This is what I heard as well, but I was gathering trophies in heroics on my healer all day the other day, and she doesn't hit anything ever. Not a whole lot of trophies, but nonetheless she was getting them without ever landing a killing blow.
Astoreth Dec 7th 2011 2:37PM
I have had reports of healers (who were not smiting or otherwise doing ANY damage, much less landing a killing blow) getting Grisly Trophies along with everyone else.
Rajah Dec 7th 2011 2:43PM
No, this is not predicated on killing blows nor amount of damage done. I have been partied with someone who was killing mobs while I was idle and I got Grisly Trophies from their work.
Kuro Dec 7th 2011 2:43PM
You get them from killing mobs that give experience or honor -- meaning mobs with green tags.
At level 85 the 79-80 mobs in Icecrown are still green.
I got on my priest and went to that apothocary area in "Aldur'thar: The Desolation Gate" and spammed Holy Nova while singing "I'm so pretty, oh so pretty..."* Quick respawns, a token from each mob, and even some cloth if I could have been bothered to loot.
*Not really, I went shadow and tab-dotted.
Ez Dec 7th 2011 5:20PM
Oh jeez! Just go to Cathedral of Darkness in Icecrown and kill Zealots for 20 minutes. any decently geared 85 can do it.
catrpillrgrrl Dec 7th 2011 2:21PM
That is not true - I am a healer and never land the killing blow and have received about 100 from running 2 heroic 5mans and some raiding...
Nyold Dec 7th 2011 3:10PM
Me too, I have resto druid, resto shaman, pally healer, and I wasn't using ret aura, thorns, searing totem, or other dps spells. I'm a bad healer, I know. But the point is, I'm getting trophies.
Borayar Dec 7th 2011 8:00PM
You will also get a Grisly Trophy off each kill while performing the Firelands Invasion Daily Quests.
Bronwyn Dec 8th 2011 1:28AM
I've found that in dungeons I get lots of tokens whether I get a killing blow or not, but BGs are a different story.
Tri Dec 8th 2011 4:56AM
They must have changed it then.. I'm a resto druid and over the course of all three new heroics, I bagged about 18 trophies (on the first day). I eventually sought aid in my feral off spec and the Cathedral of Darkness... When I killed stuff myself, I got a trophy for every single kill.
Aaron Dec 7th 2011 2:22PM
Your description from Darkmoon Dungeoneer is incorrect. All but one of these items can be farmed from low-level dungeons such as Stratholme, Zul'Farrak, and more. (See wowhead). I have personally witnessed this on my level 85 druid. You do not need to do level 85 heroics except for the Treatsie on Strategy.
LynMars Dec 7th 2011 2:33PM
I think it's -supposed- to be "of your level" (so lower level characters can also participate) given the text in the quest the strong lady gives, but that may be broken.
Aaron Dec 7th 2011 2:35PM
Lol why the heck are people downvoting? The absolute truth is that you can farm dungeons of any level to get these items. On wowhead this is WELL documented.
Allison Robert Dec 7th 2011 3:13PM
Actually, this looks like a bit of a mistake in the editing process -- that's supposed to read "5-man AND heroic dungeons." I'll go correct. :)
Royal Dec 8th 2011 12:08PM
I can comfirm. Very nice drop rates and very easy to farm; just not in the new dungeons.
I ran the new dungeons over and over and never saw one book.
Then I read wowhead comments and:
1 book after the 4th run in stockades.
1 books after 2nd run in strath.
2 books after 3rd run in scholo.
The books drop from bosses and the type of books you can get depends on the boss. For example the ornate one drops from humans.
Read the wowhead comments for the best advice on this. I am only missing one book now. It drops from the old cata dungeons so I queue for those and not the new ones. I have seen it twice in the old cata dungeons but lost both rolls.
The one book the soothesayer's rune is 100% drop rate just do the first boss of any of the new cata raids. Even the first boss in BH.