I spent some time tooling around on Darkmoon Island this past Sunday, running errands for some carnies and fishing up a storm. the fishing is what netted me the Sea Pony vanity pet you see in the screenshot above. It too fewer than 50 casts off the coast (both in and outside of wreckage pools) to catch this guy. I obtained my second sea pony, on my Forsaken shadow priest, in a scant 12 casts. But in contrast, my gnomey shadow priest fished the coast off and on for several hours (while I baked cookies) and never saw a sea pony land in her bags.
The sea pony fishing wasn’t the only excuse to bust out my mad professional skills on the island however– there are quests you can complete for all flavors of professions, netting you some rep with the Faire, plus prize tickets and cash or XP depending upon your level. Some of the professional quests will require that you bring some supplies with you (or head out the portal to your staging area at the end of the dock to go grab some.) Thus I started bringing my stack of flour with me on all my chefs, and blue dye/red dye/simple thread on my tailors.
One of the more silly but fun aspects were the many new World event achievements the Faire brought with it, including the “I was Promised a Pony” achievement. As seen below, there are some ponies you can abscond with and ride around the island on for a bit. And who doesn’t like ponies?? EVERYBODY likes ponies. But I digress.
The Faire also hands out some quests that involve incenting you to grind mobs complete Battlegrounds and Dugneons back on the continents. Thus, even though there is a little bit of a grind involved if you plan to save up your tickets to purchase some of the fabulous prizes (which include mounts and vanity pets, heirlooms, and replica tier gear) they actively aim to make it feel less grindy than Firelands for instance. Somehow I doubt I will return to the Faire to play the games very often, or complete the in game challenges to rack up the tickets for even one pet, but it was a nice day’s excursion to bring out my favorite toons to go see.
Sandbox Tigers.
Bought 50 Darkmoon Tigers to play with during raid (10 = 1 ticket). I’ll definitely come back every month to refresh my supply.
Right now, I’d say the most fun I’m having is hanging out and selling the raw mats people need to finish their quests up. Flour, Coarse Thread and what not. 50G for a stack of 20 is pretty good profit.
My favorite game was Whack-a-Gnoll. Hogger, take THAT! I did decide to go ahead and start grinding tickets (even got a couple of the quest items in dungeons I ran last night, which I have done in half a year!) so that I can eventually get all the pets. I know it will take me a while, but the Faire comes to town every month, so I have time to build them up. Overall, I’ve enjoyed the changes to the Faire. I couldn’t be bothered before. Now, it’s actually encouraging me to run dungeons!
My favorite thing would have to be…
hmmm…
Game-wise, I have to say my favorite is whack-a-gnoll.
Feature-wise, I love how they got that spooky feel to the whole place.
Opportunity-wise, I like that we have an alternative to farming heirlooms which will really help if I decide to play on other servers again.
I also like that I can go there and farm the fishing pools for Cataclysm level mats on a toon of any level. I don’t mind leveling fishing when there’s decent rewards to be had for doing it.
I loved playing on my sandbox tiger in Wrath (thanks to a lucky card game packet of cards.) If I were still raiding I would have grabbed some of these too!
I thought about doing that as well– seems like a nice easy way to make some extra cash, especially for your lowbie characters!
I love that the Faire is actually encouraging you to head into the dungeons. That rocks! I am also a fan of the whack-a-gnoll…now, if only they had skee ball! 😉
The pools of wreckage were very good to me– my leatherworker now has a ton of great leather to work with for making my baby shaman some nice level 85 gear.
I also love the slightly sinister and spooky edge to the Faire Isle. I wonder just what will end up living in the cave…
I like ponies.