CowTip: Tooltip Mod

CowTip is a highly customizable tooltip mod that I have used for a very long time. My favorite aspects of this tooltip mod are:

• I can see your guild rank.
• I can see your talent spec.
• I can see your target.
• ...and it's all colored by threat, faction, etc.

Unfortunately, out of the box, there is a ton of info cluttering up your tooltip with this mod. I recommend cutting it down to something more readable by removing the labels and anything else you don't want to see, and consolidating the reputation/threat into coloring. Further below, I will give the exact lines that I use to cut down my tooltip to make it easier to read at a glance.


AVAILABLE INFO

What my tooltips tell me:

• Raid Target Icon, if applicable
  
• Name: colored by hostility, and adding the realm name if not my own realm.
• Target: who they are targeting (colored by class)
• Their guild and guild rank (colored by aggro, or green if my guildie)
• Level and Race (colored by difficulty), and classification (colored by class)
• Faction and if pvp flagged (colored by hostility/faction friendliness)
• Pet happiness level (if it is your hunter pet)
• Zone (if not the same as you)
• Talent spec (class colored)
• Health and Power bars

What it could also tell me, if I chose to add it:

• Threat
• Debuffs (poison, etc)
• Buffs (shield wall, DI, soulstone, etc)
• Shapeshift form
• Spellcasting (the current or last spell cast)
• Guild Notes (if in your guild)
• Druid Mana
• AFK/DND/Dead/Offline
  
• XP/Rest XP
• Combo Points
• Range
• Reputation
• If target is MT, MA, ML, raid or party lead, feigned death, or even just tapped
• # of raid members targeting them
• ...and probably some other stuff I missed while browsing the dog-tags.

LINE TEXTS

To edit, you need to go to Line Texts.

For the details on all of the syntax available for your tooltips, you can Open the DogTag help. The DogTags are the syntax used to tell CowTip what information you want displayed, and how to display it (it is also used by other Ace mods, such as PitBull). Frankly, the syntax confuses me too, but you can get some really nice tooltips just by slightly tweaking the defaults so it's not *necessary* to dig through these DogTags.

To edit your tooltip's lines, hit "Edit." You can use copy-all (ctrl-a), copy (ctrl-c), and paste (ctrl-v).

I highly recommend that you create a backup profile of the default settings, so you can restart from scratch if you accidentally delete a line and don't know what to put back in there.

The Line Texts are organized as though your tooltip was a table with 2 columns. There is a left side and a right side, and the location you paste the syntax in will roughly correspond with the location the data will appear on your tooltip. From the defaults, I did remove most of the left-side labels since I found them redundant and cluttering.


My tooltip line texts are:

Left side:

• [(if [IsPlayer or [IsEnemy and not IsPet]] then HostileColor end) NameRealm]

Right side:

• the first slot I leave empty
  
• ["Target:":Gray] [(if Target:IsPlayer or (Target:IsEnemy and not Target:IsPet) then ClassColor(unit=Target) end) (if IsUnit('player', Target) then '<>' else Target:NameRealm or 'None' end)]
• [(if Guild and Guild = 'player':Guild then Green end) (if Target:IsEnemy then AggroColor end) Guild:Angle] [GuildRank]
• [DifficultyColor] [Classification] [Level (if IsPlayer then Race else Creature end) (if IsPlayer or [IsEnemy and not IsPet] then Class:ClassColor end)]
• [HostileColor] [PvP] [Faction]
• [Status]
• [if IsUnit('pet') then HappyText end]
• [Zone]
• [ClassColor] [if TalentSpec then TalentTree ' ' TalentSpec:Paren end]

You can find lots of interesting dogtag line texts here: Elitist Jerks DogTags Thread


SKINNING

You can re-color your tooltips and skin the health bars as you wish. Personally, I use a "Blizzard Out of Control" background pattern, and set all of the individual background status colors to black since I found the different colors distracting (you may wish to tweak the background colors as well, or leave them at the defaults).

The skins and textures for both the background and the bars can be pulled from sharedmedia libraries. I set my health bar (bottom of tooltip) to have the LiteStepLite texture, and the power bar (lefthand side of the tooltip) to have the Lyfe texture.


POSITION

This panel alters your settings for the location your tooltips will pop up on the screen. Personally, I've never been a fan of having the tooltips pop up in the lower right-hand corner, and usually anchor them to the right side of my screen instead.

There is also a menu for selecting what tooltips even show (the "Show Tooltips" menu), so you can choose to show or hide tooltips of Unit Frames, Non-Unit frames, World Units, and World Objects. You can further clarify if these will only show in combat, or even if your tooltips will only show if you are holding down a specific modifier key (CTRL, ALT, or Shift).





~ If you have any useful custom line texts for CowTip, I'd love to hear about them! ~

Ulduar10: Ignis, Razorscale

My guild initially skipped these two, wanting to instead put our time into the harder bosses. Then a competitive streak filtered in, and we realized that we'd be tied for top 10-man progression on our server if we stopped by and kicked these two over on our warpath through the instance. They're both dead now.

As a side note, the T8 shoulders look pretty cool up-close (even have little pawprint shapes on them, and swirly twigs and moons and stuff!), but when zoomed out they look like you've just got pompoms on your shoulders.

Ignis the Furnace-Master: "Insolent whelps!"
Big guy with a molten codpiece. Usually, a fight like this would be rather frightening for a plant with all the fire and such, but it's probably a place where we shine the most: lots of aoe damage and snap-heals. The strat we used was to cluster the ranged/casters in the center of the room between the two water pools, and have the MT kite-tank the boss in circles around us, always keeping the boss facing away. The OT ran around picking up adds as best he could (a good resto druid is SUCH an aggro magnet) and running them through the fire and water, calling dps as needed to shatter them.

• Keep full stacks of LB on both tanks, if necessary (given strengths of cohealers, etc), once things really get rolling with the adds. It'll eat up your mana, but if your dps is good enough, you'll be able to manage it with an innervate and a mana pot and have the boss dead before you're completely OoM.
• Slag Pot: Ignis will periodically grab someone and hold them in the molten pot chained around his waist. People inside need to pop barkskin, etc to help shield from the damage, and as a healer you should help keep them alive. You cannot attack from within the slagpot, but you can still heal people, and yourself, while you are in the slag pot. If a healer is in the slag pot, they CAN HEAL THEMSELVES and should do so.
  

**If you are looking for tips on how to target the victim of the slag pot, check my post here (CLICK!)**

• Flame Jets: Do not be caught casting a spell when this ability goes off, or you'll be spell-locked for 8 seconds. It also causes a knock-up into the air, and deals raid-wide damage. Yay Wild-Growth and Rejuv.
  
• Scorch: this is the big burning spot he puts on the ground on the tank, and what the tank will be kiting him away from so they don't stand there and crisp themselves. You shouldn't stand in it, either. The OT will have to run through it to debuff the adds, and should call out when he's entering the "scorch" so that you can be alert of when he'll need extra healing, especially if your LB's dropped due to range.

If you get aggro from an add, call it out to have one of the tanks pick it up off of you quickly. Target the add to assist their taunts. The MT can pull it off of you, if necessary, while the OT may be too far away to rescue you.


Razorscale: "Rawr!"
A pretty proto-drake, though sadly, she is the twisted outcome of what "Loken" did to Veranus after he defeated Thorim in the Storm Peaks questline. Akin to Utgarde Pinnacle, you must bring her down using harpoons. As a healer, all you have to worry about is bouncing around avoiding fireballs and keeping those in range of you alive, until the group brings her down and then it's just a tank-and-spank to heal, with some minor kiting to get out of the patches of fire. My guild initially attempted the "v strat" as discussed on wow-wiki, but ultimately decided to just stay out of the circle and split up as two separate parties (closer to the 25-man strat), each party on either side of the circle with a tank, a healer, and mixed dps.

• As a general rule, don't stand in front of the boss when she's on the ground.
• Devouring Flames (P1): this is a large patch of blue fire she spits at whoever is closest to her while she's flying. With our organization of the groups, we assigned a hunter or warlock to act as the "tank" for this, where he was nearly constantly on the move to stay closest to her while trying to shoot the mobs to assist in dps, or sent his pet in to tank it when she went off to a far corner. It worked out really well, and he didn't take much damage, but I did make sure to always keep a rejuv on him and keep an eye on him and his pet when he went out of my range. The "flame tank" doesn't have to be attacking Razorscale while she's flying; he just has to be the closest person to her, or have his pet do so.
  
• Fireball (P1): she spits these at everyone, and they do hurt for a chunk of damage. I have read that you can dodge them, since while she casts them AT a specific person, they do not CHASE that person as they travel. Keeping on the move constantly is one of our strong points as druids, so make use of your strengths. Regardless, these fireballs are why you want to keep everyone topped off. If you'd prefer, you can keep Razorscale targeted so that you can see who she is casting them at.
  
• Adds: these spawn out of tunnelers in various locations, and are what your group is killing while Razorscale is in flight. Make sure you keep your party up, particularly when they grab the "big guy" who spawns in the center ring. Be especially mindful of healing your tanks when Razorscale lands (or rather, gets dragged out of the air with harpoons) and everyone moves to the center behind her, as they will likely be turning their backs on several mobs while doing so.
• Harpoons: there are 2 of these in the ten-man version, and they are used to bring Razorscale out of the sky. Designate a single dps to run over and fire these off when the harpoons are repaired by the NPCs, but have them hold off on firing the second harpoon until most of the current wave of adds are dead. Once Razorscale is down, the dps should all switch to attacking the proto-drake, and get as much damage on her as possible before she breaks the chains. Each time she escapes the chains, she'll do an aoe knockback effect around her. Above 50% life, she will leap back into the air after breaking the chains.
  
• Phase 2: at 50%, she'll stay grounded. DPS should mind their aggro as the 50% mark nears, because she will attack the highest threat first. Keep behind of the boss and sorta off to the side, out of the way, and watch where your tanks might turn her as she's kited. This is a simple phase compared to phase 1, provided she is kited to get the tanks and dps out of the fire patches. There should be two tanks for this phase, and they will need to taunt her back and forth whenever either tank gets a stack of two Fuse Armor debuffs.
  

Off topic: Blogs, Words, and Miscommunication

(Since I'm writing this as a personal reflection, I'm not going to make any attempt to format or organize this post... just read as you will, as you wish.)


One of the hardest parts of blogging (or, indeed, writing any sort of instruction) is covering all bases and making yourself as well-understood as possible. Your mind may be thinking one thing as you type your words out onto the screen, but the meaning behind those words can be lost as a reader skims over them, picks out the important points, and possibly misses other equally important ones.

Communication hiccups have been a problem stumbled upon to varying degrees by anyone who has ever written something for the purpose of instruction or explanation. I myself am relatively new to the blogging community, and already have had to go back and re-word several of my posts to better explain my meaning, or to highlight points that commentators seemed to miss. I'm quite certain that I am not alone in this experience.

My own work is in Distance Learning, and quite a bit of my college degree was focused on the importance of being concise with your data. Technical Writing was one course I took that lead to great insight on how to best arrange your thoughts, but it was only through experience comparing guides or course materials and then writing some myself that I can see just how much the reader's own interpretation can impact their entire understanding of what the author is trying to say. Assumptions in particular are one of the deadliest trip-wires out there.

Much of what we write will be skipped over, skimmed by eyes speeding to find the points the reader cares most about. This happens when we read news articles, books, blog posts, and even trade chat. I can't help but wonder what eyes may miss even this one lone sentence, lost in the midst of a paragraph. We can color words, emphasize them with bold, italics, or underlines, and even set them flashing on a computer screen, but if the reader doesn't interpret it correctly or even choose to read that section of the document, they may misinterpret your entire point.

What does a > sign mean to you, and what does it mean to your reader? Or a = sign, or that you left out something else to compare, or that by "players" you simply meant "friendly targets counted as being in your raid group" but felt that was too much of a mouth-full to continuously type? How extreme will a reader take what you say, how far will they cut it down to black-and-white? Will they later remember your clarification on it, or that there may be factors beyond what simple math can describe? Will anyone even read it?

Who is at fault? Is it the reader's job to take the time to fully read every word, see every letter? How esle wluod it be pbosisle to iretprent tihs stnence? Is it the writer's job to summarize and organize their documents as accurately as possible? I think it is some of both. Most of us know about "TL:DR," Too Long: Didn't Read: a lot of casual readers will have entirely skipped this paragraph by now. Yet if the author doesn't go into explicit detail on their math, comparisons, and reasoning, they can be questioned on that, too. If the author doesn't repeat a point multiple times as a conditional to their statement, it may be missed the one time that they did say it, and get questioned for it, or their whole post may be misrepresented by others, particularly if they are making a bold statement.

As bloggers for a widely-popular video game, it seems we must cater to all kinds of readers, and that makes the job incredibly difficult. Many blogs are looked to as sources of experience and answers to how exactly someone must play or to make themselves better, or what to do in the delicate social situations that the game--and life--sometimes leaves us in. It is an incredible responsibility, one that brings me to admire various bloggers for their shouldering of the burden and scrutiny. We have to figure out how precise we have to be with our words, and remember that not all of our readers will hold the same assumptions that we do. We know that we all make mistakes, or that someone who does read our words may misinterpret them in some way. We also know that inevitably, there will be someone who disagrees, be they right or wrong.

It is a tight line to walk, but one that we all must be aware of, be it as writers and readers alike.


(As a point to reflect on, this post has been edited 5 times since publishing.)

Ulduar10: Ignis, Razorscale

So, my guild initially skipped these two, wanting to instead put our time into the harder bosses. Then a competitive streak filtered in, and we realized that we'd be tied for top 10-man progression on our server if we stopped by and kicked these two over on our warpath through the instance. They're both dead now.


Ignis the Furnace-Master: "Insolent whelps!"

Big guy with a molten codpiece. Usually, a fight like this would be rather frightening for a plant with all the fire and such, but this battle is probably a place where we shine the most: lots of aoe damage and snap-heals. The strat my raid uses is to cluster the ranged/casters in the center of the room between the two water pools, and have the MT kite-tank the boss in circles around us, always keeping the boss facing away. The OT ran around picking up adds as best he could (a good resto druid is SUCH an aggro magnet) and running them through the fire and water, calling dps as needed to shatter them (a single ranged player was in charge of shattering the adds on the OT's call, and if he was in the slag pot, then he designated someone else to get it until he was free).

• Heals: Keep full stacks of LB on both tanks, if necessary (given strengths of cohealers, etc), once things really get rolling with the adds. It'll eat up your mana, but if your dps is good enough, you'll be able to manage it with an innervate and a mana pot and have the boss dead before you're completely OoM. Aside that, WG the raid as needed, keep a helping of rejuvs ticking around to offset the raid-wide damage and provide for Swiftmends, and don't get caught casting nourish or regrowth (or a non-NS'd HT) when the flame jets go off.
  
• Slag Pot: Ignis will periodically grab someone and hold them in the molten pot chained around his waist. People inside need to pop barkskin, shields, etc to help shield from the damage, and as a healer you should help keep them alive. You cannot attack from within the slagpot, but you can still heal people, and yourself, while you are in the slag pot. If a healer is in the slag pot, they CAN HEAL THEMSELVES and should do so. For tips on quickly finding the victim of this ability, refer to this post.
  
• Flame Jets: Do not be caught casting a spell when this ability goes off, or you'll be spell-locked for 8 seconds. It also causes a knock-up into the air (resistable), and deals raid-wide damage. Yay Wild-Growth and Rejuv.
  
• Scorch: this is the big burning spot he puts on the ground on the tank, and what the tank will be kiting him away from so the tank doesn't stand there and crisp themselves. You shouldn't stand in it, either. The OT will have to run through it to debuff the adds, and should call out when he's entering the "scorch" so that you can be alert of when he'll need extra healing, especially if your LB's dropped due to range.

This fight has no phases, aside a continuous stream of adds. If you get aggro on one, alert the tanks immediately, because it can kill you. The MT can pick it up off of you temporarily if the OT is too far away. Target the add to assist their taunting it off of you.


Razorscale: "Rawr!"

A pretty proto-drake, though it is sad to see what has become of her after Loken captured her with Thorim outside in the Storm Peaks (Sons of Hodir questline). Akin to the protodrake in Utgarde Pinnacle, you must bring her down using harpoons. As a healer, all you have to worry about is bouncing around avoiding fireballs and keeping those in range of you alive until the group brings her down, and then it's just a tank-and-spank, with some minor kiting to get out of the patches of fire. My guild initially attempted the "v strat" as discussed on wow-wiki, but ultimately decided to just stay out of the big red circle (for the most part) and split up as two separate parties (closer to the 25-man strat), each party on either side of the circle with a tank, a healer, and mixed ranged/melee dps.

• As a general rule, don't stand in front of the boss when she's on the ground.
• Devouring Flames (P1): this is a large patch of blue fire she spits at whoever is closest to her while she's flying. With our organization of the groups, we assign a hunter or warlock to act as the "tank" for this, where he was nearly constantly on the move to stay closest to her while trying to shoot the mobs to assist in dps, or sent his pet in to tank it when she went off to a far corner. This ranged tank doesn't have to be attacking Razorscale while she's flying, he just has to be the closest person to her, or else have his pet be the closest. It worked out really well, and he didn't take much damage, but I did make sure to always keep a rejuv on him and keep an eye on him and his pet when he went out of my range.
  
• Fireball (P1): she spits these at everyone, and they do hurt for a chunk of damage. I have read that you can dodge them, since while she casts them AT a specific person, they do not CHASE that person as they travel. Keeping on the move constantly is one of our strong points as druids, so make use of your strengths. Regardless, these fireballs are why you want to keep everyone topped off, particularly the "squishies" such as mages. If you'd prefer, you can keep Razorscale targeted so that you can see who she is casting them at.
  
• Adds: these spawn out of tunneler vehicles in various locations, and are what your group is killing while Razorscale is in flight. Make sure you keep your party up, particularly when they grab the "big guy" who spawns in the center ring. Be especially mindful of healing your tanks when Razorscale lands (or rather, gets dragged out of the air with harpoons) and everyone moves behind her in the center circle, as the tanks will likely be turning their backs on several mobs while doing so.
• Harpoons: designate one or two players to fire off the harpoons as they become ready. Once 2 have been fired (in the 10-man version), Razorscale will be dragged down to the ground where the raid can commence beating on her. When this happens, all dps on adds should be stopped in favor of damaging the proto-drake, so I recommend holding off on the second harpoon until there are few adds remaining, and before the next wave spawns. Razorscale herself will do an aoe knockback when she gets loose from the harpoons' chains after a dazed period.
  
• Phase 2: at 50% health, she'll stay grounded. Keep behind the proto-drake and sorta off to the side, out of the way, and watch where your tanks might turn her as she's kited. This is a simple phase compared to phase 1, provided she is kited to get the tanks and dps out of the fire patches. Do not stand in front of her unless you are a tank. You may get bored as a healer in this phase and start pew-pewing, but make sure to keep rolling hots on the active tank amidst the wraths and moonfires. Tanks themselves will need to swap who is currently tanking to keep from getting more than 2 stacks of the Fused Armor debuff, which slows their movement.
  

Jousting in WoW

Patch: 3.1.1

First things first: lag is your worst enemy.

You will need to adapt your jousting strategy to account for lag, or just plain wait until it's as lagless as possible before you try to joust anything remotely difficult (commanders in front of the citadel in particular). Seriously. I updated my computer last weekend, and suddenly, jousting is FUN.

Problems lag causes:

• "Too close" to charge the guy who's clear across the screen.
• "Too far away" to melee the guy standing in front of you.
  
• You get charged/shield broken while the enemy is standing in front of you.
• The enemy runs away... and keeps running... and running... and running... and then BAM you're dismounted.
• You pressed the charge button. You think. Did you? Hmm... OH! Look, we're running into a tent wall.
  

So, with lag in mind, try to joust when your lag will be as little as possible. It makes a HUGE difference in your survivability, success, and enjoyment of the mounted-combat dailies.



How to Joust NPCs and take Minimal Damage:

1. Accessorize. This is a game, and this is one aspect of the game where the stats on your gear don't matter one bit. You can ride buck-naked and still put a beat-down from horseback, as long as you have a lance equipped. While I wouldn't recommend this for *real world* jousting, in WoW, it's perfectly acceptable to ride into combat wearing a pink dress, bunny ears, and dragging a little kid along behind you stumbling beneath the crushing weight of an over-packed backpack and 3-pennant flag. If you'd like to strike fear, don your old pumpkin hat from Hallow's End and make them think they're facing down the Headless Horseman. Wear what you want because a) it will make you feel better, and b) it *might* just demoralize your foes that you can beat them in a bikini, or at the least, it might distract them. Do it for giggles.


2. Keybind your 3 main abilities: thrust, shield-breaker, and charge. You want these as comfortably close your movement keys as possible: I chose q, mouse button 3, and e respectively. I keybound them on my Bartender action bars, since it allows for stance and vehicle-bar-swapping support.
   


3. Shields up, Captain! When you mount up, with lance equipped and properly accessorized, put your shields to a full 3-stack. This is not cheating: the Boneguard Commanders do it, and the Champions in the ring do it. It is simply smart play to keep your defenses up.


4. Pick your prey. If you're a Valiant, you can go to either of the two Valiants' rings to pick a fight with an NPC (horde and alliance doesn't matter), and if you're a Champion, you have the whole Champion ring to choose from. Both ranks can pick a fight with the Boneguard Lieutenants and Commanders, if you wish to fight for justice rather than sport. For the commanders, I recommend pulling them up the stairs towards the citadel so that you don't aggro tons of things (especially those pesky gargoyle scouts!).
   


5. Charge them! For ring fights, wait for you enemy to get in the center ring, and charge them from the sidelines. This is your heaviest damage-dealing attack, and you want to close with them before they charge you back.


6. Wheel around with the mouse and movement keys while spamming your shield-breaker (this is why I bound the ability to a mouse-button). This is a maneuver most old-school hunters learned while working on their epic bow quest-line, and is a handy skill for most any player to know: jumping while moving one way, then spinning with the mouse in mid-air to turn and face your opponent again to that you can shoot a ranged ability at them. Since the charge effect gives you a speed boost, tightly circle them while trying to face them (strafe a bit if you have to) and try to stay behind them or to their side, and it should prevent them from getting a charge back at you while you wait for the speed boost to wear off.


7. Stab them in melee. If you're feeling plucky, you might run away and wheel-about midair to throw another shield-breaker before they can react, and close back into melee before they can do the same to you. The more you do this, the less armor they have.
   


8. Keep shields at full. Reapply your shields whenever you loose one, and also reapply them before the whole stack simply wears off after a minute's duration. If you loose multiple shield charges, getting them back up around the cooldown should be your top priority.
   


9. When they run, charge after them. How nice of them to provide their backs to you. If your charge isn't up, use shield-breaker and close with them fast before they turn and charge you.
   


10. Rinse, repeat step 6-9.

This strategy has served me well in the Champions' Ring (I've been able to take out all 4 without needing to heal between fights, if I'm careful), as well as in being able to solo the commanders at the citadel. Just don't get *too* cocky, or you'll end up dismounted amidst the dozens of foot soldiers and get squished... >.>

I have not dueled anyone yet, not since a very failed duel on the first day. I'm an odd druid who avoids duels like a plague. I'd like to know, though, if this tactic will work in duels, or if the unpredictability of a live opponent will make it far more difficult, requiring more reliance on remembering their charge cooldowns, and wheeling mid-air for quick breaks or charges.


~ Note: for a full Argent Tournament Questing Guide, check out Orbitz' guide at Beware Splinters! ~

Macro: Lip Balm

Wanted to share this rather handy macro to make your daily quest, A Blade Fit for a Champion, a little less time-consuming.

/use Warts-B-Gone Lip Balm /kiss

To use: click on a lake frog to target it, check that the GCD on the lip balm is up, and press the macro. It will simultaneously apply the balm and blow a kiss at the frog. Target the next, check cooldown, and press again when ready.

Benefit: no more typing /kiss. I do not recommend adding a /target Lake Frog to the macro, as it will probably target one you've already kissed.

The Noble: Hints and Tips

I have a strange fascination with exploring to uncover things. It has lead me to wanderlust at times, bringing my boots to the trail, or even just to the sidewalk... and in-game, it has brought me much joy and delight in hunting things such as Everfrost Chips. Thus, this easter egg hunt got me very, very excited.

I was out there in Mulgore at 1am, running circles around the tents finding eggs. I didn't get to sleep until very, very late... and then was up again at 10am to start it all up on my feral druid, too! By 4pm (with breaks for gardening, housework, shower, and dailies), I had gotten the Noble title on my main, and need only to complete the Shake Your Bunny-Maker ear-ing of people on my feral druid.

I understand that the frustration of fighting for spawns of little eggs hidden around out-of-the-way towns is not for everyone, so I will share some suggestions on how to handle this achievement.

The Egg Hunt

• To begin, head out to one of the "starting villages" for your faction (does not have to be your specific race). These are the towns a lowbie first reaches that have a mailbox. For horde, I found the lowest density of people in Mulgore and Brill; for Alliance, I found the least in Kharanos and Dolanaar. If you're feeling adventurous, you *can* go to the starter towns of your opposing faction to loot eggs, but you won't get the starter quests there.
  


• Speak first to the quest-givers outside of the inn. They'll give you a starting goal and a click-use basket offhand that gives you a 60% speed boost buff. I recommend keybinding this somewhere where you can comfortably spam it. This does work while in cheetah/ghost wolf form, but does not stack: you will either be 40% speed from cheetah (etc), or 60% from the basket.
  


• Scout the whole town, picking up eggs (which are painted in some variation of blue/purple/green) as you find them. Make note of the locations that others are camping as spawn points.
• Within bushes
• Under wagons
• Under windowsills
• Wedged into corners of buildings
• On grills, tables, or racks
• In fountains
• Under benches and tables
• In boxes
• Under ramps
• Up against Mailboxes
• Between baskets and crates
• Etc.


• The "Tiny" eggs are not lootable. They are laid by players who were turned into bunnies and sat too long in one spot.
  

• If at all possible, attempt to egg hunt during a low(er)-pop realm time: while most are sleeping, are at work, or at school. Lunchtime will probably see a heavy burst around noon to 2pm server.

Now, at this point, you can gauge how much competition you have. Is nearly everyone camping a single spot? Are there many people making circuits of the area? How heavy is your server population, and is it one of those heavy-load times of day?

Hunting Style

There are two egg-hunting methods you can choose from, or switch between: the Camper, and the Hunter.

• Camping: choose the best location you can, preferably with no one else camping that clump of bushes or corner. Some spots are better than others as they may have 3-5 egg spawns within click range, some may only have 1. Your initial scouting should help with selection. Cons: this is incredibly dull, and you often feel territorial about your chosen spot. This leads to further frustration with the event, and may lead to harsh words with others who want their fluffy bunny as much as you do (I saw people cussing each other out in Goldshire). Above all, the camping method requires patience, as you wait for them to spawn in under your mouse. Sylly at Rolling Hots has written up her camping method here.
  


• Hunting: choose a circuit that includes as many non-camped egg spawns as possible, and run it. You need a good eye for this, and keep rotating your camera with mouse-look as much as possible so you can notice the eggs better. The quicker eggs are looted, the quicker they'll respawn around the town. Keep an eye on the comings and goings of the campers, as they may alter your route. If you aren't finding many spawns on your chosen route, change it up. Usually, the best route is to circle the largest building in the town, or a couple of the buildings. Don't ignore nearby trees, as they likely hide an egg or two of their own on the far side. Cons: if there are lots of campers, you won't find much.
  

The Achievements

I recommend aiming first for the Chocoholic achievement, or work towards purchasing a pet bunny (or the mage book as applicable) with 100 chocolates once you complete the initial quest. This gives you lots of egg-hunting time to collect various pieces of garb and possibly even have the pet bunny drop. Everything off of the vendors except for the click-use egg (purchased for 5 chocolate) can be collected from the eggs themselves. You will need in total:

• 100 chocolates consumed
  
• Spring Rabbit pet (drop or 100 choc)
  
• Spring Robes (drop or 50 choc)
• Spring Flowers (drop or 50 choc)
• Blossoming Branch (quest, drop, or 10 choc)
• White Tuxedo Shirt (drop, 25 choc, or gift from a buddy)
• Black Tuxedo Pants (drop, 25 choc, or gift from a buddy)
• 1 NobleGarden Egg (5 choc)
  

You will get an extra achievement for looting the tux shirt and pants from eggs, as well as for looting an elegant dress; these are not required for the overall title and eventual proto-drake-mount achievement, however. If you're as happy about hats as I am, you may want to pick up the Spring Circlet perma-rabbit-ears-hat for your collection, though it can also drop from the eggs themselves and is not required for any achievement.

Once you have these necessary things completed and gathered, you can leave the egg hunting behind and focus your efforts on completing the achievements:

• Spring-Fling: begin working on this the moment you have your bunny pet, to cut down on travel. When your Spring Rabbit comes near someone elses' Spring Rabbit, they will... get hearts over their head and make baby bunnies using some sort of floral sorcery. You'll need to let your little sailor of a rabbit have such a fling in each of the four starting towns of your faction.
  
• Shake Your Bunny-Maker: the flowers have a 5-minute cooldown, so take care of this as you go about your dailies and travels. Dalaran is one of the best places to find each race. The hardest to track down will usually be female dwarves, orcs, and trolls. IMPORTANT: check if the person has the 2-minute carrot-icon ears buff on them before you use your flowers on them, or you won't get credit, but you'll still be sitting there with a cooldown on your flowers.
  
• Noble Garden: sometime in your travels you will likely end up in Stormwind or Silvermoon City, and at that time you'll want to have an egg on hand from the vendors that you yourself can hide. Either leave this for a friend or random passerby, or you can loot it yourself after dropping it!
  
• Blushing Bride: don your tux shirt and pants, find someone wearing the peachy-pink Elegant Dress, and send them a kiss. Easy to do, just don't wait til late in the week to take care of this, or there may be fewer dress-wearers lurking about the cities.
• Desert Rose: don your Spring Robes and port out from Dalaran to the Caverns of Time (Tanaris). Once out in the desert, click-use on the robes to plant a flower. Ride up past Gadgetzan into Thousand Needles/Shimmering Flats, and repeat; then head back to the flightpath at Gadgetzan to fly to Ungoro. In Ungoro, take care of your Hard-Boiled achievement (see below), then ride up to Silithus to plant your next flower. Fly from Silithus to Desolace for your fourth planting, and then hearth/travel across the world to Badlands for your final flower.
• Hard Boiled: while stopping by Un'Goro, have a friend with you, or find a pug-type who also has the Blossoming Branch. Head to the hot springs on the western side of the crater and bunnify each other, then wait quietly in the water until you lay an egg.

Try to get all of this done before Children's Week begins, so that you have less pressure to do both at the same time! Good luck, and have fun :)


(Oh, and if all those Chocolate Eggs give your character a tummy ache, I recommend some Goldthorn Tea.)