A Little Christmas Present from Padhric

Since I'm in the giving spirit, here's a little piece of information some folks may find useful. After playing around in the Yule Festival for a couple of years, it appears no one else knows about this tip.

As everyone knows, the Sack of Presents you get from the hobbit Sandydowns each day for completing a single Yule quest can occasionally yield some nice items like Symbols of Celebrimbor, stat tomes, emotes, etc. It is also well known each character can collect a Sack of Presents once per day. Therefore, it makes sense for each character to complete the easiest quest available in order to try their luck at getting something useful, and the easiest quest in Winter-home to quickly complete is undoubtedly Empty Keg Emergency. This post will tell you how to finish that quest even faster than usual.

The first step is obvious: go collect the keg, then turn around and head toward the Frostbluff Theatre. You will come to the intersection where the street T-bones and you can either go straight ahead (past the fireworks crate) or turn left (toward the theatre). This is where most people will go straight, then bear right and jump over the wall down to the keg and complete the quest. The only hitch is you have to be on the lookout for that one pesky guard who patrols the street to the theatre. Depending on your luck, he might be a non-factor with his back turned, but he does like to come to that intersection and halt there, impeding your progress and forcing you to wait.

As Inigo Montoya once said, "I hate waiting."

Here's how to avoid all guards without ever stopping your movement: instead of trying to jump over wall AFTER that nosey guard finally decides to turn away, jump the wall BEFORE you even reach him. The wall you jump consists of wall (before the intersection), then a building (at the intersection), then more wall (after the guard and the intersection). just before the building starts on your right there is also a tree. What you want to do is jump the wall in between the tree and the building. This way you never even encounter that guard and you can cycle through your toons much faster.

This trick lets you avoid any guards while never stopping your motion, enabling you to complete the Empty Keg Emergency quest as fast as possible.

But wait, you say, isn't there a guard at the foot of those stairs and won't he see me if I jump down that close to him? Yes, there is, and no, he won't if you do it right. The trick is to hug that building when you jump the wall. All of the walls in Winter-home have a little ledge on them, and you want to land on this then walk along it for a split second before falling off. You want to aim for the two o'clock position, ultimately falling on the first of the three feast tables which make up the final station of Ona Kay's eating contest (or on the bench -- you'll be safe either way).

The one hitch to this is making sure you are especially careful when trying this with a Hunter or a Warden with their speed buffs engaged. The additional momentum tends to make you hit the wall and bounce back backwards rather than hug it, which can knock you into the range of that guard at the foot of the stairs. Turning off the run buff mitigates this, or you can just be especially demonstrative about hugging that wall.

But wait, you say again, isn't this an awful lot of trouble for something that's already easy enough? Well, yes, it is, but it is also foolproof and you never have to stop moving. Besides, when you have 33 characters to run through this exercise every day like I do, the extra seconds are worth it!

Merry Christmas!

Padhric
Master of Toons