With the autumn season we have one of WoW’s seasonal events active in Hallow’s End. Many of these events have seen little additions and changes over the years and have plenty of things to occupy a bit of time for collector players. Hallow’s End is no different with mounts on offer as well as a uniquely animated alternate hearthstone, event-exclusive pets, plenty of toys and a meta achievement for the tittle “the Hallowed”.
Most items from Hallow’s End can be purchased from vendors outside of major cities near a wicker man for “Tricky Treats”, though for some this is a fallback plan in case they don’t drop from their initial source. Getting your hands on the Tricky Treats themselves is done by completing a set of once only trips, daily quests throughout the event, and fighting a special boss, The Headless Horseman. Some of those items just add to collections, like Naxxy, but others are instead used for the holiday achievements to earn the title.
Tricky Treats and Where to Find Them
The first, and most time-consuming part of collecting the various rewards on offer from Hallow’s End is in quite literally going Trick-or-Treating throughout the game. In every Inn, you can find a Candy Bucket offering a quest for you. The upside is that each one offers you some of the Tricky Treats you’ll need to buy up your rewards. The downside is they offer an average of two each time. If you wanna get the most rewards in a single year’s run, you’re going to need to visit every Inn available to your faction. There are far too many to list, but make sure to pick the “Hallow’s End Treats for” quest before starting. For Alliance, this is “Treats for Jesper” who is located outside of Stormwind, on Horde you’re looking for Spoops outside Undercity. Each will ask you to visit your various major cities and perform emotes for the innkeepers there. Since you need to travel to all these inns anyway, you end up with 10 extra treats for almost no extra work.
Next up, there are several daily quests available. Most of them will begin at your faction’s wicker man and require you to engage in some relatively simple holiday-themed object clicking. They’re fast and simple and give you a bit of currency, but the more important ones that might be missed are the Fire Brigade dailies available in the local villages around Azeroth. They involve putting out fires set by the Headless Horseman, after which you receive a reward of treats. Costumed Orphan Matrons can give these quests, though you’ll need to find a village under attack by a shade of the horseman to get full rewards. This can sometimes prove to be a little more trouble than its worth as it can involve a lot of waiting around. Unless you’ve been very unlucky with your non-purchased drops, you might be able to skip out on these quests.
Finally, you can fight the Horseman once a day. This averages awarding about 5 treats, and can also drop several of the possible purchases directly which can reduce your total need. Particularly if you get your hands on a Sinister Squashling or Magic Broom. These both have fairly decent drop rates and knock 150 treats off the total you need to collect everything. Each of your characters can do a run and probably should, as every level 45+ you run it on gives you a chance at the Horseman’s Reins, which can’t be purchased and unlock a mount.
Horseman Boss Guide
The Headless Horseman is a fairly simple encounter that is accessed from the dungeon finder. When you complete your queue, you’ll be in the Graveyard of Scarlet Monastery where the encounter waits to be summoned from a Jack ‘O Lantern in front of the southern mausoleum on your left as you enter. Interacting with it and selecting the available dialogue option spawns the boss and starts the encounter.
From there, you enter a three-phase fight with the Horseman. During the first two phases he uses basic abilities that are fairly non-threatening as long as your party isn’t actively running into them. Be aware of ground AoEs and flaming skulls, but otherwise the first two sequences are simply about depleting the Horseman’s health bar which spawns his head, and then killing the head to move to the next phase.
In the third phase, however, the Horseman spawns a large number of pumpkin enemies and these can actually be fairly threatening for a lightly geared tank. As this is a holiday queue, it’s open to a wide range of levels so you might need to take care to handle these adds quickly. Regardless of whether or not you need to focus the Pulsing Pumpkins down, lowering the Horseman down again spawns his head a final time. Killing it kills him and rewards your Loot-filled Pumpkin for the day, this will immediately enter your inventory and can be opened to check your loot. You can also loot the Horseman separately, though his proper table only seems to come from the pumpkin.
“…the Hallowed” Title
Once you’ve gotten your treats all lined up and purchased the things you want, the final reward tying it all the together is the Hallowed Be Thy Name achievement which simply requires you to complete most of the other Hallow’s End achievements. Most of these are fairly easy, but all told you’ll need to complete virtually all the dailies, down the Horseman, eat so much candy your character pukes (literally), wear all the wand costumes, and get ten PvP kills while carrying one of the candy buffs. This last one is notable for actually having a hint of difficulty to it, but simply eating a G.N.E.R.D. before a battleground should quickly rack up enough kills to clear the G.N.E.R.D. Rage achievement, after which you have smooth sailing. The achievement is more time consuming than hard which can be a bit refreshing for someone after achievement points compared to some of the very intricate requirements for other meta-achievement collections. The most expensive portion is Sinister Calling, which costs 300 treats by itself if you don’t get the items to drop from the Horseman. Otherwise, you can get the title with only about 25 treats which you’d get just from visiting all the inns required for the achievement.