Midsummer Fire Festival Event Guide

It’s the height of summer, and that means the people of Azeroth are celebrating the Midsummer Fire Festival! This holiday lasts for two weeks, and during that time you’ll be able to participate in some fun and unique seasonal activities. You can light or extinguish bonfires, dance around a ribbon pole, juggle torches, and face a special holiday boss. In this guide we’ll walk you through everything you can do during the Midsummer Fire Festival, including how to complete the meta achievement, The Flame Warden (Alliance) / The Flame Keeper (Horde), which is needed for What A Long, Strang Trip It’s Been.

The Midsummer Fire Festival is active from the 21st of June through the 5th of July.

Activities

The Midsummer Fire Festival is one of the biggest holiday events in the game with a lot of content to complete. There are multiple buffs you can acquire, quests you can complete, a boss you can fight every day, and of course bonfires, bonfires everywhere.

We’ll go over the buffs you can get from the festival first. To get started with the festivities, scroll down to the Quests section.

Buffs

There are four different buffs you can acquire throughout the holiday:

Ribbon Dance is an experience buff that you can gain from dancing around a Ribbon Pole. It boosts all experience gains for your character by 10%. The duration goes up by three minutes for every three seconds you spend dancing, stacking up to 20 times, or 60 minutes total.

Fire Festival Fury is a damage buff that you can gain by using a Burning Blossom near a festival fire. It gives you 3% increased critical strike chance and an aura that does fire damage to anyone who attacks you. The buff is gained by everyone who is near the festival fire when it is activated and lasts for 60 minutes.

Bonfire’s Blessing is another damage buff that can also be gained by using a Burning Blossom, this time near an extinguished bonfire. It is a zone-wide buff that applies to everyone of your faction who is in the zone, giving them a 30% chance to deal fire damage to attackers. The buff is canceled if the opposite faction desecrates the bonfire.

Fire Festival Fortitude is a stamina buff that is gained by turning in one of the Stealing Flame quests. The buff is gained by everyone in the city when it is activated. The Stealing Flame quests are gained by visiting the bonfires in your enemy faction’s major cities.

Quests

During the Midsummer Fire Festival you’ll find special NPCs in your faction’s capital city who will offer some holiday quests.

The Master of Summer Lore / The Spinner of Summer Tales can be picked up from Commoner NPCs scattered around the city. This is a breadcrumb quest that will take you to the festival camp.

Incense for the Festival Scorchlings / Incense for the Summer Scorchlings will be offered by the Festival Loremaster or Festival Talespinner that the last quest led you to.

Playing with Fire / Playing with Fire is offered by Fire Eaters near bonfires. This is another breadcrumb quest to the festival camp.

Torch Tossing / Torch Tossing will be offered by a Master Flame Eater in the festival camp. To complete this quest, you’ll need to look for the braziers nearby. One of them will have a target marker above it at any given time, similar to a Hunter’s Mark. You’ll have some Practice Torches in your bag that you need to throw at it. The best way to do this is by placing them on your action bars so you don’t have to keep clicking them in your bag.

Torch Catching / Torch Catching is the follow-up quest to Torch Tossing. This time you’ll have Unlit Torches in your bag. Use one near the bonfire to light it, but be ready because your character will toss it in the air and you’ll have to run after it. A zoomed out top-down camera angle works best for this. You’ll want to follow the shadow on the ground and be standing in it when the torch lands. It’s easiest to do this if there aren’t others doing it at the same time, but you may not have that luxury on crowded servers.

More Torch Tossing / More Torch Tossing and More Torch Catching / More Torch Catching are daily quests that are unlocked by completing the quest above. It’s the same deal only repeatable.

Unusual Activity is offered by an Earthen Ring Elder and starts the following quest chain:

• Unusual Activity
• An Innocent Disguise
• Inform the Elder

Striking Back is a daily quest that is unlocked by completing the quest chain above. The exact version of the quest you get will depend upon your character’s level:

• Level 22: Striking Back (Frostwave Lieutenant at Zoram Strand in Ashenvale)
• Level 32: Striking Back (Hailstone Lieutenant at Ethel Rethor in Desolace)
• Level 43: Striking Back (Chillwind Lieutenant on the island in Stranglethorn Vale)
• Level 51: Striking Back (Frigid Lieutenant in a cave underneath Firewatch Bridge in Searing Gorge)
• Level 60: Striking Back (Glacial Lieutenant at Twilight’s Run in Silithus)
• Level 64: Striking Back (Glacial Templar near the Dark Portal in Hellfire Peninsula)

A Thief’s Reward / A Thief’s Reward will be available from your Festival Loremaster or Festival Talespinner after you have completed all of the Stealing Flame quests for your faction. The locations of these are covered in the Bonfires section below. The quests for each faction are:

There are several more quests for bonfires:

• A Light in Dark Places / A Light in Dark Places
• Wild Fires in the Eastern Kingdoms
• Wild Fires in Kalimdor
• Flickering Flames in the Eastern Kingdoms
• Flickering Flames in Kalimdor
• The Festival of Fire / The Festival of Fire

Finally, there are three quests related to the seasonal boss, which we’ll cover in the Frost Lord Ahune section below:

• Ahune, the Frost Lord
• Summon Ahune
• Shards of Ahune

Bonfires

During the Midsummer Fire Festival you’ll see bonfires everywhere, waiting to be lit or extinguished. The most time-consuming part of this holiday event involves traveling from zone to zone to complete the achievements The Fires of Azeroth (Alliance) / The Fires of Azeroth (Horde) and Desecration of the Horde (Alliance) / Desecration of the Alliance (Horde).

You can honor or desecrate a fire by clicking on it and accepting its quest. For each quest, you will receive the following currency:

• Honor faction bonfire: 5 Burning Blossoms
• Honor neutral bonfire: 15 Burning Blossoms
• Desecrate enemy bonfire: 10 Burning Blossoms

There is another quest, A Thief’s Reward (Alliance) / A Thief’s Reward, that can be obtained by stealing the flames from enemy cities.

Note that dousing an enemy bonfire will flag you for PVP combat, even on a PVE server!

We’ve organized the bonfires by location and faction to help you plan your adventure and work toward each continent’s achievements!

Frost Lord Ahune

Ahune, the Frost Lord, is a special boss in The Slave Pens who can only be summoned during the Midsummer Fire Festival. To summon him, you will first need to speak with an Earthen Ring Elder at a festival camp and accept the quest Ahune, the Frost Lord.

Inside The Slave Pens you will be able to turn in the quest and pick up the daily quest Summon Ahune. The encounter is designed for level 80 characters, but you can technically go as low as level 75. You’ll want to have a full group of five to maximize your chances at loot since each character can only summon the boss once per day. Five people will give you five chances on Normal and one on Heroic (due to the Heroic lockout).

Ahune has two phases. During the first phase, he will take reduced damage. You’ll want to stay out of his melee range and focus on adds (even the tank). This phase lasts 90 seconds. During the second phase, Ahune’s Frozen Core will be exposed and you should throw as much damage as you can at it. This phase lasts only 30 seconds. If he’s not dead by the end of the second phase, you’ll have to go through both phases again.

Defeating Ahune for the first time on a character grants the achievement Ice the Frost Lord. You will also be able to loot Shards of Ahune from the chest, which starts the quest Shards of Ahune that rewards 20 Burning Blossoms and either a Tabard of Summer Skies or a Tabard of Summer Flames (your choice).

The first time your character defeats the Frost Lord each day will grant some gold and a Satchel of Chilled Goods. This loot bag has a chance to contain 5-15 Burning Blossoms and any of the following rewards, which can also appear in the boss chest:

Rewards

Completing Midsummer Fire Festival activities rewards Burning Blossoms, which can be spent at Midsummer Merchants (Horde) and Midsummer Suppliers (Alliance) near the bonfires in your faction’s major cities. This currency only lasts through the event, so any that are unspent when it concludes will disappear from your inventory. You might as well spend them all!

Note that the food items can be used by characters as low as level 1. Any festival food that you don’t use will expire in 14 days of real-world time. These food buffs do stack with other food buffs, so they are great for raiding or any other activity where you want to min-max.

Here are all of the items you can purchase with Burning Blossoms:

You can also buy fireworks during the Midsummer Fire Festival. Holiday Fireworks Vendors will be present in your faction’s capital city as well as Ratchet and Booty Bay. They sell fireworks that can be used as low as level 10.

Achievements

There are a lot of achievements to complete during the Midsummer Fire Festival. We’ll go through them one by one!

The Flame Keeper / The Flame Warden

This is the meta achievement for the holiday, required for What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been. To earn it you will have to complete all of the achievements below. There are no optional achievements for this holiday if you want the meta achievement.

The Fires of Azeroth / The Fires of Azeroth

This achievement requires visiting all of your faction’s bonfires in Eastern Kingdoms, Kalimdor, and Outland. Note that Northrend bonfires are not required for any achievements or quests. There are sub-achievements for each area depending on your faction. For locations of the bonfires, check out the Bonfires section earlier in this guide.

Desecration of the Horde / Desecration of the Alliance

Similar to the one above, this achievement requires visiting bonfires. This time you’ll be desecrating enemy bonfires by putting them out. Again, Northrend bonfires are not required. There are sub-achievements for each area depending on your faction. For locations of the bonfires, check out the Bonfires section earlier in this guide.

Burning Hot Pole Dance

This achievement requires purchasing the complete Midsummer outfit and dancing at the ribbon pole for 60 seconds. All three pieces can be purchased from Midsummer Merchant (Horde) or Midsummer Supplier (Alliance) with Burning Blossom. You’ll need 400 total to buy all three.

• Mantle of the Fire Festival
• Vestment of Summer
• Sandals of Summer

Ice the Frost Lord

This achievement is earned the first time you kill Ahune, the Frost Lord in The Slave Pens. For more details about how to defeat this boss, see the Frost Lord Ahune section earlier in this guide.

King of the Fire Festival

This achievement requires completing the quest A Thief’s Reward (Alliance) / A Thief’s Reward (Horde). This quest will be available from your Festival Loremaster or Festival Talespinner after you have completed all of the Stealing Flame quests for your faction. The locations of these are covered in the Bonfires section above. The quests for each faction are:

Torch Juggler

This achievement is earned by successfully juggling 40 torches within 15 seconds while in Dalaran. See the Quests section of this guide for tips for torch juggling.