Midsummer Fire Festival Guide (WoW)

Working towards getting your Violet Proto-Drake?? Me too! Here is my guide to completing all the Midsummer Fire Festival Achievements in just one sitting! (This will get you the title "Flame Warden" as well!)

Alright, so assuming you are starting with NONE of the Midsummer gear, you are going to need 400 Burning Blossoms. Seem like a lot of work and many dailies?? Well, it's not! You will only need to do the quests once!

Here's a quick breakdown:
Sandals of Summer (200 Blossoms) + Vestment of Summer (100 Blossoms) + Mantle of the Fire Festivall (100 Blossoms) = Complete Midsummer Set (400 Blossoms)

So how are you going to get all the Burning Blossoms you need for your set?? Simple! By doing the Fires of Azeroth and Desecration of the Horde/Alliance achievements. You will receive 5 Blossoms per Flame that you Honor, and 10 Blossoms per Flame that you Desecrate. For Alliance, this will get you 460 Burning Blossoms, and for Horde this will get you 470 Burning Blossoms. Also, you will get 100 Burning Blossoms for stealing your opposing faction's flames. This will leave you will more than enough for the whole Midsummer set!

See maps below for all Flame locations!

You will need the set in order to complete the Burning Hot Pole Dance Achievement. Once you have the set, just click on the ribbon pole and let your character spin around for 60 seconds. It's very easy!

For the King of the Fire Festival achievement, you will need to steal the 4 Capital City Flames from your opposing race. Each flame is an item you receive by "opening" the flame. Then the item starts a quest which will send you back to one of your Capital City Flames. Once you turn in all 4, you will get the achievement and the Midsummer helm.
(Note: Paladins can pick these up while in bubble. Also, if you are getting owned and can't get it, try rezzing right on, but behind the Flame, usually the players around won't notice you until you've had a chance to grab it!)

For the Torch Juggler achievement, you will need to acquire 15-20 Juggling Torches from the daily torch juggling quest. They are not soul bound, so if you only have one character, and don't want to make 2-3 alts to get these, you can probably just buy them in the auction house. Once you have them, make your way to Dalaran, find a nice secluded corner, set them to your action bar, target the ground right beneath you, and spam them like crazy. Also a very easy achievement!

For the Ice The Frost Lord achievement, all you have to do is get into a group and kill Ahune. He is in the Slave Pens in Zangarmarsh and is summonable once a day per character. He is a 70, so you'll want to be at least level 70, and he is two man-a-ble at 80 if you're geared/experienced enough. There's no pre-requisite to summon him.

Here are some maps that helped me Honor/Desecrate/Steal all the Flames I needed in just one sitting! (I printed them off so I didn't have to keep minimizing to look at them, and planned out where I'd travel by drawing on the print out. Of course, I ran into some nasty hordes and had to bubble-hearth a few times, so planning my path didn't really help, lol)






































































I hope all this helps you get your achievements and get them quickly!!! Also, if you have Blossoms left over, be sure to grab the pet from the midsummer festival vendor to go towards your Little Game Hunter achievement. Also, Ahune has a chance to drop a pet!!

Best of Luck!
LGG <3

The Sims 3 - My Big Disappointment of 2009

Like any true Sim fan, I have been excited about the release of the Sims 3 since last year! I was very into the original Sims and all it's expansions, and then even more into the Sims 2 and all the expansions for it! When Sims 2 came out, it was so much better than the original Sims in so many ways, that you didn't really notice that you were missing the content of all the expansions. The addition of Aspirations really made up for it, and each expansion was just like a nice bonus.

With Sims 3, I must admit that I was rather disappointed! I had all the expansions for Sims 2, and going from that to Sims 3 was like just like taking away all the expansions! Sure, there are some new things! Items are now customizable in game, which makes designing and decorating your homes more fun. They've added gardening and fishing. Your Sim can have traits which make them a little more unique than before. You can wander around town without going through loading screens, and there's no more "fears" like in Sims 2. Other than these things however, it is the same as Sims 2! I have all the system requirements, but I can still only run the game at it's minimum settings, which leaves it even looking the same as the Sims 2, lol.

I mean, once they start popping out the expansions for this game, it will be great, but you'd think they could maybe include some of the Sims 2 expansion ideas (Nightlife, University, Free Time, Open for Business) in with the first Sims 3, rather than making us wait for them, and then pay extra for them! Personally I played the game for the first three days, and then once I had done everything, completed 4 different Sim's lifetime aspirations, whoo-hooed out a few dozen babies, I got bored of it! Also, just like in Sims 2, once your Sim family makes enough money, and you build your giant mansion, it basically runs so slow you have to stop playing them (even with the system requirements!)

If you are on the fence about purchasing this game, I'd say don't! I mean, if you are a die hard Sim fan, you're definitely going to want to switch to the Sims 3, but maybe not for a few years! I'd stick with Sims 2 and all the expansions until Sims 3 gets boxed with at least two new expansions! Otherwise, you're just going to get bored and wish you hadn't uninstalled your Sims 2 to make room for Sims 3!

Sorry Sims, I love you, but you really let me down this time!