World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

Hallow’s End is World of Warcraft’s equivalent to Halloween. It’s a yearly holiday that goes on between October 18th and November 1st each year. It’s a celebration of when the Forsaken broke free from the Scourge. In Arthas: Rise of the Lich King we learn that it was celebrated by the Alliance before the Scourge even came, so to the Alliance it’s exactly like Halloween.

There is a lot to do during Hallow’s End. Trick or Treating gives some of the most festive and fun items in the game while the Headless Horseman is a purple piñata. There are daily quests that give a small chunk of gold and a lot of lengthy achievements to visit every inn in Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Outland. So let’s start digging into this festive holiday.

Activities During Hallow's End

The following are the available activities for Hallow’s End. We’ll go into more detail on the Headless Horseman, Trick or Treating, and the various quests down below.

• The Headless Horseman: The Headless Horseman is a level 80 boss that can be summoned inside of the Scarlet Monestary Graveyard side. You’ll have to do the fire event in order to use the pumpkin shrine to summon him.


• Headless Horseman Attacks: In Kharanos, Goldshire, Azure Watch, Razor Hill, Brill, and Falconwing Square you can take on quests to practice firefighting which then leads to summoning the Headless Horseman who attacks the villages and sets them on fire. Successfully putting the fire out and defeating the Shade of the Horseman grants you a quest completion and some awesome treats.


• Trick of Treating: Every hour you can talk to an innkeeper who will give you either a Trick or a Treat. A treat will give you an awesome treat bag with some treats in it. A trick will turn you into ghost, bat, kitten, Diablo, skeleton, pirate, frog, or ninja.


• Candy Buckets: Every inn has a pumpkin you can go to for a random treat.


• Sinister Squashling Pet: Available from the Headless Horseman or a treat bag.


• Black Cats: Killing one grants a weird “Bad Luck” buff for two hours. No effect.


• Apple Bobbing: Bobbing for apples can get you a stack of up to 5 apples. They heal 48% of your health in 24 seconds (2% a second). Great for a cheat food!


• Attack and Defense of Southshore: The Horde get quests to attack Southshore and the Alliance get quests to negate the attacks and ruin the Wickerman Festival.


• Wickerman Festival: At 8:00 p.m. server time, Sylvanas comes and sets the Wickerman on fire outside of the Undercity. Wickerman Embers are dropped on the ground which give a 10% increase to reputation gains along with experience.


• Flying brooms and a rare horseman mount!


• Pumpkin Bags drop from random level 50-60 mobs.

Hallow's End Achievements

Trick or Treating

Ah, Hallow’s End, why wouldn’t you want to be trick or treating? There are three main components to trick or treating:

Tricks and Treats of Azeroth (Meta Achievement)

This requires you to visit Candy Buckets in every inn in Azeroth and Outland. It’s a rather daunting task, but if you have a lot of flight points then it becomes more of a time consuming endeavor.

Treats

The following are the available treats during Hallow’s End from treat bags:

• Hallowed Wand: Comes in different varieties. Allows you to transform yourself or someone in your party into a Bat, Ghost, Leper Gnome, Ninja Pirate, Skeleton, or Wisp. There is one that will transform you into a random one of the previous outfits. You cannot cast in some of those forms.


• Flimsy Male/Female Mask: There are flimsy masks of each race that you can get. Wearing them puts a silly mask on your head.


• Tooth Picks: Gives you a sparking smile! Makes a little sparkle around your mouth for a minute.


• Candy Bar/Corn/Lollipop:  Restores 3% of your health and mana per second for 25 seconds.
• Hallowed Helm: A 3 armor pumpkin hat


• Sinister Squashling: A cool pumpkin pet.

You can get one treat bag per hour from an innkeeper assuming they don’t give you a trick instead. They disappear right after Hallow’s End, so use your treats before then! Treat bags disappear on logout. You need an inventory space to take a treat bag, but if your inventory is full you won’t get a bag but will still get the hour long debuff.

There are Hallow’s End Pumpkin Treats which give a random fun buff.

Tricks

Innkeepers can “trick” you with a random polymorph effect or a disguise. The polymorph effect will last 30 seconds while a disguise will last an entire hour.

Southshore Events

There are two quests each for the Alliance and Horde. They grant 250 reputation with each of your side's faction (500 all together for both) and are well worth doing. You’ll get some pumpkin treats too.

Alliance

Sergeant Hartman gives you two quests. One of them involves going to the wickerman next to the Undercity (it’s on the road) and coming back ("Crashing the Wickerman Festival"). The other involves using a stink bomb cleaner on one of the Horde’s “Forsaken Stink Bombs” ("The Power of Pine").

Horde

Darkcaller Yanka is west of the Undercity and has a quest for you to go to the kegs in Southshore and plant some rotten eggs. When you complete that quest you’ll get one to return back to her. You can also get the quest "Stinking Up Southshore" which involves throwing 3 stinkbombs in the middle of Southshore. Easy enough. Do that while you do the "Rotten Eggs" quest.

Headless Horseman Attacks

Go to Kharanos, Goldshire, Azure Watch, Razor Hill, Brill, and Falconwing Square where there will be a Masked/Costumed Orphan Matron. She’ll give you a quest to practice firefighting. You’ll find some burning practice targets near each of these cities. Use the bucket of water and douse them with water to put them out. Do it five times and the quest is done. You can return back to the matron.

When that’s done, you’ll be able to accept a quest (“Let the Fires Come”) to start the event unless the event is already started (then it’s “Stop the Fires!”). You’ll need to grab buckets of water and put out the fire on nearby buildings. This is very hard to do solo because you have a time limit to do it in, so try to do it with a friend. Once the fires are out a Shade of the Horseman will spawn. Defeating him (a few hits from an 80 do it) and he’ll spawn a pumpkin on the ground.

The pumpkin will give you a daily quest to turn in where you’ll receive a “Crudely Wrapped Gift” that will have a random treat in it (including Weighted Jack-o'-Lanterns and Rickety Magic Brooms). The pumpkin will give you the quest to go to the Scarlet Monastery and defeat the Headless Horseman as well.

The “Let the Fires Come!” quest is a daily quest and awards a “Weighted Jack-o’-Lantern” and 3 Pumpkin Treats.

Headless Horseman Boss

Unlike in the days of old, you can only do this with five people in the instance. Your goal is the Scarlet Monastery’s Graveyard wing. You won’t need a key to enter it, so don’t worry about that. You’ll need a group with a healer and a tank and any DPS you can get. He’s not very difficult, so you don’t need any super gear checks or anything silly like that.

To summon him you have to do the firefighting quests above and get the quest to discover his shrine. His shrine is inside of the Forlorn Cloister in the SM Graveyard. Just turn in that quest and get the quest at the shrine. Click the "Loosely Turned Soil" behind the shrine to summon him. He’ll show up and target the summoner so have a tank ready to taunt. A group of five people can summon him five times. He is currently a level 80 elite boss, so be ready for a regular level 80 instance boss encounter.

You can make a macro for "/target head of" to make it easier to target the head.

Phase One

He does nothing special at all in this phase outside of cleaving. When you kill him in this phase he’ll throw his head down and start healing. Get his head to 66% to start the next phase. If you don’t, he’ll start phase one again. He’ll go around whirlwinding while his head is off.

Phase Two

Same as phase one, except this time he’ll use Conflagration. It’ll confuse you for 5 seconds and do 10% of your health every second for five seconds. You can trinket out of it. DPS him down to 1% and he’ll lose his head again. His head will pop off, again, and you’ll need to DPS it down to 33% while he’s healing. Phase three starts when his head is either at 33%. If he heals to full he'll start phase two again.

Phase Three

Same as phase two, except this time he’ll throw four pumpkin adds (Pumpkin Fiends) on the ground. They’re pretty lame and you can AoE them down or a Paladin tank can consecrate. At 1% he’ll lose his head and you need to destroy it this time or else phase three starts again.

Once he’s defeated he’ll drop the following loot (rings are very common, the hat/sword aren't very common, and the mount is rare):