Hallow's End 2009, or "Trick or Treat is Awfully Sweet"

Peruse Hallow's End 2008 for more concise quest and achievement listings.

First things first:

• Grab a pug for the level 80 boss in Scarlet Monastery for his kill achievement (75+ can have summons). You'll have more success getting a pug these first two or three days from a major city.
  
• Every hour, trick or treat at an innkeeper for the bag of super-goodies.

Boss Grouping

So I thought it'd be easier to go in to the Scarlet Monastery area and offer my summon to any group free, no strings, don't have to keep me or give me summons back, just want the freaking kill.

Didn't work. That's right, folks, I couldn't GIVE my summon away.

What the hell?

The group I finally randomly whispered was inside already. I talked to the priest and was going to have to wait until they were finished to find out what the dps decided. The tank and heals said they were "willing" to tank and heal it again like my summon meant work and not another shot at a mount or something.

Which, you know. . . they could have just said no and let me keep looking for a group that wanted to exploit me to farm the mount.

I've found that the best shot at a group is to start in a big city and start earlier in the day, when people have their summons up and are looking for groups. Then travel. Not as convenient, but the group gets formed and you don't sit around for an hour.

How did it end? Husband said "Let's go get ice cream." And I said "Yes." So I thanked the healer for his consideration, made the appropriate pleasantries, and logged. Then I got an oreo blizzard.

WIN.

Wand Trading

A ton of people have decided that scalping the rare wands in trade is profitable. And it probably is. But it's also sleazy.

You get wands from the once-an-hour trick or treat innkeeper bags and the fire-putting-out daily. You cannot use wands on yourself, only others. Random use wands do not count toward your achievement.

Join trade chat (preferably from Dalaran) and put this up: "LF _____ and _____ wand, can trade ____, _____, _____." I had three saved from last year. Just keep doing this every few minutes and you'll find people who aren't willing to get gouged by scalpers. (I also randomly got a boss group this way, because people ask for dps/heals/tanks for the season boss in trade!)

Afterward, start giving out your leftover wands for free.

I'm not joking.

It's the best feeling ever, especially if you have a rare one that the slimy scalpers are trying to sell for massive amounts of gold.

If you're not quite done but the holiday is almost over, give out most of the uses on each of your wands while still advertising asking for a trade ("Free ___, ___, and ___ in CITY. Pst. Also LF ____."). People you give your wands to for free often offer their wands in return and you might get lucky that way. Otherwise, just stop advertising the wands you expect to need for trade once you're down to 1 or 2 uses on them.

Bucket Bug

Do the achievement world buckets before Northrend. There's a bug where if you do Northrend first, it prevents you from getting some of the old world and Outlands buckets.

Why would you want to do buckets if you've already done them? Cash and experience. You get a really nice exp boost for the buckets you can reach if you're still leveling, and endgame players get 6g 63s per bucket, making the flight path expenses trivial. If you do all the buckets (115), you get 762g 45s.

Achievements

• Kill boss in Scarlet Monastery graveyard (enter SM, unlocked portal at end on left).
• While in boss, get under the Tricky Treats that fall from sky after his death to catch them (have bag slots). Eat them until you throw up.
• Roll on Hallowed Helm and Sinister Squashling but don't freak if you lose the roll. They fall from 1 hour innkeeper bags too.
• Pick up the yearly candy bucket at your towns in Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, and Outlands (this is easier than Midsummer Fires because you can just use flight paths, the enemy doesn't have buckets to spoil or anything). (Also see wowwiki for map points.)
  
• Take your G.N.E.R.D.S. into a battleground and leech kills. Great time for serious battlegrounders to win a few, btw.
• Trade friends and randoms for wand usages. You can save wands from one year to another (I did that on Birdy).
• Do the Alliance quests or the Horde quests. Alliance should do it early because you're reliant on horde to show up.
• If you get a Tooth Pick, use it.
• Throw Jack-o-Lanterns on all the races. Get them from doing other stuff (boss, dailies, etc).
  
• Do a daily to save a village. (This one or this one.) Just head to your local level 5 town outside any major city to pick one up.
  

Conclusion

At the end of the holiday, the more random achievements count on you getting 1 boss group and trick or treating as often as possible. If you do nothing else this year, do those two things. The rest is more in your control.

If you aren't high enough level to do the boss, do all the tedious stuff instead. Like I said at Brewfest, if you can't summon the boss yet (and don't have friends to run you), then you should level until you're an asset to any pug going in (75).

I skipped the boss last year on Birdfall and got the rest of the meta this year within a day.