Last year during the Lunar Festival, my main really struggled with the Red Rocket’s Glare and Frenzied Firecracker. She managed to achieve Elders of Northrend though only level 70 at the time (not without difficulty and determination) but with typical latencies in the 500s these two eluded her. My major fear was that this year she would be left with just these two achievements shy of the violet proto-drake 
. With a bit of research and experimentation I’ve now been able to get both achievements on six of my characters (woohoo) though my latencies haven’t changed significantly. So my tips for those finding these achievements almost impossible are:
- Reduce your latency as much as you can by temporarily deleting add-ons, reducing your video settings to the minimum, shutting down other programs that might interfere etc. (Obviously faster internet or extra RAM can help too … ).
- Choose your time and place – that is low-populated areas at less popular times (between 2-5am server time, certain week nights etc). Isolated or little travelled areas are ideal. However, the Red Rocket’s Glare requires a rocket launcher so, unless you are or have a friendly engineer with a rocket launcher, Darnassus or Exodar are good choices at the right times. I kept my eye on the latency (mouse over computer icon on your toolbar) and on the rare occasions it dipped below 400 ms I took the opportunity to fire away – whether it was in the wilds of Desolace or an isolated stretch of Dragonblight, whether it was deserted Darnassus, Exodar or even Ironforge. Parking your toon at the cluster launchers & then alt-tab-ing out of WOW for several minutes seems to reduce latency for a period long enought to launch those rockets.
- Increasing your haste or speed with potions, spells etc may help.
- Buy plenty of rockets so you don’t have to keep running back to the vendor (perhaps 20-40 of each).
- Put the rockets at the beginning of your tool bar (number 1 or 2 position).
- Track the achievements – this puts a timer up.
- For Frenzied Firecracker use first-person view angled down so about all you see is the patch of ground where you will be clicking.
- Spam away – with an eye on the timer. In the case of the red cluster rockets hit the number key you’ve linked the rockets to as fast a possible. In the case of the firecrackers hit the number key and click the mouse simultaneously and as fast as possible. Some recommend looking at your cool down and trying to time it – and I’m sure it does work for some but higher latencies would make timing more difficult, checking your timer becomes distracting and just a microsecond hesitation will put you out of synch – and you will have to start all over again.
- If you go over time, stop, allow the timer to reset and start again (or do it again later). If you don’t, the timer will keep going and will show the overflow attempts (eg 2/10). While it might appear that the timer is broken the real problem is not firing off enough fireworks before the timer resets.
- Don’t sweat it – just take your opportunities as they come, don’t give up but do keep your perspective. There are other titles, other drakes …. life’s too short to get too frustrated over a bunch of pixels.
- Good Luck – and Congratulations
Kharin
