Lunar Festival Prepping

The Lunar Festival is only a week away, so I've been starting to plan out how I'm going to go about getting both new pets from this in-game holiday.

Oh and if you missed the news, Blizzard has finally added companion pets to the last remaining petless holiday! The Lunar Lantern and the Festival Lantern. (Yay, every major holiday has at least one pet now. :P)

Note: It's still not clear or confirmed if a single character will be able to learn both the alliance and horde version of the pets. Both pets are Bind On Use, so let's just hope that we will be able to.

There's really no trick to acquiring enough Coins of Ancestry to purchase a Lunar Festival companion, but it will take some time to wander around and gather them all if you don't have any saved up from previous years.

Note: As far as I can tell, the Lunar Festival currency from previous festivals SHOULD work as currency for these two new pets. Then again, much like the DMF tickets the older pre-revamp currency may simply turn into outdated and void currency (although I'm not finding any info that would suggest this is the case atm). We'll just have to wait and find out once the holiday actually starts.

Unfortunately, if you don't have left over coins from previous festivals, you will only be able to purchase ONE pet. There's a total of 84 possible elders, which will yield a total of 84 coins. Each pet costs 50 Coins of Ancestry (according to the official WoW armory page). So unless they plan on adding even more elders to get coins from or a daily/other means, those without extra currency will be short 16 coins of purchasing two of the same pet on one toon.

This will make trading the Lunar Festival pets tough for some (especially those without any alts), since the gist of "trading" is to purchase two of the same pet - one to learn and the other to trade off to the opposing faction for their version of the pet.

The only other options will be to purchase the opposing faction's companion with gold, or if you have a guildmate/alt character (can be of the opposing faction) to assist you by getting the other pet for you.

Needless to say, those with multiple high level alts will definitely have the advantage in this type of situation. Traveling across all of Azeroth and into some dungeons is no easy feat for a lower level toon. But! Don't despair because after looking at the possible elders available, it should be doable for even a non-max level capped character.

For characters that are at least level 68 (able to enter Northrend):

Faction Capital Elders - 3
Kalimdor Elders - 21
Eastern Kingdom Elders - 17
Northrend Elders - 18
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Total - 59 Coins of Ancestry

Just enough to purchase one pet, and the above calculations don't even include the coins that can be gathered from the Cataclysm Elders, the opposing faction's capital elders, or the Dungeon Elders.

Those who are NOT eligible to travel to Northrend will have to find the elders located in the dungeons. Without the 6 dungeon elders (I'm excluding the Northrend dungeons of course), players lower than level 68 will only be able to acquire 44 coins (BOTH Factions' Capital Elders - 6, Kalimdor Elders - 21, and Eastern Kingdom Elders - 17 should all be accessible to those lower than level 68... to varying degrees of difficulty of course)

IF a toon lower than level 68 can speak/find to the Cataclysm Elders, then gathering enough currency for one pet would be much more plausible. But due to phasing and level restrictions, I'm not sure that's possible. I haven't tried seeking out a Cataclysm Elder on a lower level character, so I can't really say.

In any case, lower level toons might find collecting enough currency for one pet to be challenging at the very least. We'll see though! Maybe it won't be as tough as it looks.

All that said, I guess my plan will be to gather enough coins for the alliance version of the Lunar Festival pet (Lunar Lantern) and then take my horde character around and gather enough coins for the horde version (Festival Lantern). Or I could use an alt to purchase another alliance version of the pet and find a horde buddy to trade with. Of course I'll have to enlist some help from a friend to transfer the pet across the Neutral AH... which I'm a bit apprehensive about. We'll see.

One last thing: As with all things datamined, it should be noted that things may have changed since these two pets were first datamined, and they may have had their faction preferences removed. If this is the case, then it will just be a matter of gathering enough coins across my alts to purchase both pets! That would definitely be ideal. :D

Hopefully all goes well. It's the first in-game holiday of the new year, so let's get it started on a good note yea? Good luck to everyone going after the two new pets!