Midsummer Fire Festival: Gold and XP Galore

By now, you’ve probably noticed all of the bonfires spread throughout Azeroth and Outland. They and the quest givers around them are part of the Midsummer Fire Festival, and they’ll be hanging around until the 4th of July.

At first, I dismissed them as a nuisance. I’ve never partaken in seasonal quests before, figuring they were gimmicky (but maybe fun) wastes of time. After some more careful examination, I’ve realized that these two weeks are an awesome boon to anyone leveling a character and a good source of gold.

Play With the Bonfire Pole

My first introduction to the Midsummer Fire Festival was the bonfire poll. I was taking my Druid out to do some quests in Duskwood with a Paladin friend of mine. Before we left town, he said, “Make sure you get the bonfire buff.”

I didn’t know exactly what he was talking about. I thought he meant the zone-wide buff that gives you a chance to inflict fire damage on hit. So I responded, “Huh?”

“The XP bonus. Get over here and channel the pole!”

So I did. When you channel the pole around any bonfire, you get a buff that increases XP gains from killing monsters by 10%. The initial buff has a duration of 3 minutes, and if you just leave your character alone it will channel up to a full 60 minute buff.

Woah! There is a bonfire just outside of every town, so there’s no reason you should ride out to quest without a full hour of this buff. That’s a great, free, boost to your XP gains.

Festival Quests Give XP?

Although I started using the pole, I kept ignoring all of the quest givers around the bonfires. I didn’t think they had anything to offer but the tokens to purchase rewards with.

Turns out I was way wrong on that account, too. Most of the quests that they give you offer a decent amount of XP.

At every friendly bonfire, except for the ones inside capital cities, you can talk to one of the quest givers and complete a quest called, “Honor the Flame.” You accept it and complete it right there. And get free XP and gold.

If you’re maxed out at level 70, you get almost 6 gold as a reward. Not bad. But if you’re leveling, you get a decent XP boost. The amount of XP ramps up with your level. I’m not sure of the exact formula, but both my 28 Druid and my 40 Rogue were getting a little over half a bar (~2.5-3%) xp from turning in an “Honor the Flame” quest.

But wait… it gets better. If you’re in a contested area, you can travel over and desecrate the opposite faction’s bonfire. When you walk up to the tented area, none of the NPCs will attack you, and there should be a quest icon over the bonfire. Channel that, accept the quest, turn it in, and head for the hills.

Warning: Desecrating a bonfire will flag you for PVP.

With that said, it’s definitely worth it. Desecrating a bonfire gives you roughly twice the XP as honoring your own faction’s flame. Both of my characters got a little over a bar (~5.5%) XP for desecrating an opposite faction’s flame.

Check out the “Honor the Flame” quest page on Wowhead. A user posted a pretty exhaustive list of all the bonfires that you can visit for these quests.

There Are Daily Quests, Too?

As if there weren’t enough dailies… the Midsummer Fire Festival gives us two more. If you go to a capital city, you can talk to one of the quest givers and get “Torch Tossing” and “Torch Catching” quests.

The first time you do them, they’re regular quests. After that, you can repeat them (with tougher goals to reach) on a daily basis. Each time you complete these quests, you get a monetary reward (~12g at level 70) and XP. The XP is similar to that for desecrating a bonfire - roughly 5-6%.

Take the Free XP While You Can

This morning, I took my level 40 Rogue (with a brand new land mount) and rode around to a lot of the zones that I’ll end up in soon. I grabbed the flight points, honored the Alliance flames, and desecrated the Horde flames. I also completed the Torch Tossing/Catching quests.

After about an hour of running around doing this, I’d earned about 75% of a level worth of XP.

In terms of time efficiency, this is roughly equal to doing some good questing. However, it has the added benefit of being outside the normal quest circuit.

What I mean is that this is bonus XP - one to two levels worth - that you normally wouldn’t be able to get while leveling. This allows you to follow your regular leveling circuit (i.e. using James’ Leveling Guide), but be ahead of pace. You could cut out a couple quests you don’t like, or perhaps ditch a whole zone (*cough* Felwood *cough*).

Don’t turn your head at free XP. Start doing some of these quests on any toon that you plan on leveling.

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