Some Winter Veil Tips

And a happy Feast of Winter Veil to you! I hope Greatfather Winter (GFW) is being kind to you and yours.

Some quick tips for doing some of the Winter Veil quests. Some may consider these spoilers, so proceed with caution.

1. First, Gingerbread Cookies. They need eggs. Small eggs. Large Tanaris roc eggs simply won’t do. Hie yourself to Kalimdor though–Darkshore to be exact. Oh…take a high-level hunter if you can: Nothing says quick One-Shot like Arcane Shot! Kill Moonkin till you have a dozen or more eggs. Need more? Kill more. Nothing drops eggs faster than an arcane-shot crit on a moonkin. (And by the way, Ice Cold Milk is sold by most innkeepers, including the one closest to GFW in Iron Forge. Going to guess it’s similar for wherever he is in Horde lands (Orgrimmar?).)
2. Freeing Metzen: You can go to one of two places: Searing Gorge or Tanaris. In Searing Gorge, he’s found at the Dark Iron Dwarf camp in the NE corner of the zone, very close to the gate from Loch Modan. (If you don’t yet have the Searing Gorge Key, why not take care of that quest at the same time?) If you’re coming from Iron Forge, Searing Gorge is a lot easier and faster to get to than the Pirate Cove in Tanaris. For two years I’ve gone to Tanaris. Duh.
3. The Abominable Greench: This is an abominable quest. It’s okay until after you talk to the snowman in the Alterac Mountains. Then you have to find the Greench. Then you have to kill him. The last part is easy; you’ll get tons of help (he’s a 36 Elite, btw), especially on the first day of the Feast. But first, you have to find him. He pops in one of 7 locations (that I know of; there may be an eighth, but I really don’t think so). Helps to have an elite riding mount. And it helps even more to have the following macro (because finding him isn’t enough: You also have to be the first to hit him to get kill credit 1.27 seconds later):

        /target The Abominable Greench
        /cast Arcane Shot
        /attack

    Substitute any instant attack (this is harder for some classes, e.g., rogue, than others; warriors may want to Charge). Now by pure dumb luck yesterday, I was riding the circuit of where the Greench pops, when I happened to hit the macro at the exact instant he popped…practically on top of me. I probably disappointed a few folks, but since I’d been there for 90 minutes or more already, I wasn’t feeling too guilty (especially since the group I was in at one point, suggested we "spread out" so I was too far away when the original three members of the group got the kill).

One trick I did NOT try, and I’d be very interested to see if it works: For the Headless Horseman quest a couple months ago, he could be killed by a raid group, and all raiders got credit. Obviously, the Greench can be killed by a group; will a raid get credit? Let me know if you try this!

Now I need to go make more Gingerbread Cookies. 

 Update: Kaliope has posted some additional advice over at her WoW Crafting Blog. Check it out!