WoW Dragonflight Holiday Refresh 2023 - Hallow's End

A quick overview of the new Hallow's End event and how players are reacting to it.

Published Oct 23, 2023 11:40 AM by Lyubomir Spasov

WoW Dragonflight Holiday Refresh 2023 - Hallow's End — Blizzard Entertainment

New Loot and Achievements

With World of Warcraft's emblematic Halloween event taking place in Azeroth, let us see what the Headless Horseman has brought this year in his bag of treats.

Windborne Velocidrake: Hallow's End Armor - a stylish piece for your Dragonriding mount to set the mood for spooky activities.
Bucket of Morbid Treats - an off-hand weapon that can be purchased with Tricky Treats from Dorothy in Stormwind if you are Alliance and Chub in Orgrimmar if you are Horde.
Arfus - a cute companion to go trick-or-treating with.
The Scarlet Key - a key that allows you to access all 4 previously removed dungeons in the Scarlet Monastery. You can now farm your favorite transmog items.

There are the new achievements you can unlock for all of you completionists out there:

A Cleansing Fire - obtained by defeating the Horseman.
Don't Lose your Head, Man - obtained by defeating any version of the Horseman.
Kickin' With the Wick - obtained by defeating the horseman with all 4 Wicker Men curses active.
The Lich King - obtained by getting the Arfus pet.
Tricks and Treats of the Dragon Isles - obtained by visiting all of the Candy Bucket locations in the Dragon Isles.

New Hardmode for Headless Horseman Encounter

Make sure to grab the new questchain for defeating the Headless Horseman as it sheds a light on the lore of his origin. You can try out Hardmode by taking these steps:

Queue up for the dungeon.
Once inside the dungeon, talk to the 5 Wicker Men to your left.
You will need to be cursed by them in order to play Hardmode. There are 4 curses, one of which is given by each of the 4 smaller Wicker Men. The Large Wicker Man in the middle will enable all 4 curses at once.

Here are what the curses do to make the fight more engaging:

Ember Curse - Cursed enemies emit Shadowflame around their location periodically. Each blast inflicts a stack of Wicker Man's Shadow (The Wicker Men delight in the target's suffering, reducing the target's maximum health by 10% per stack).
Cursed Hot Head - Cursed enemies suffer dark hallucinations manifesting in front of their location. Moving to the hallucination dispels it. Ignoring the hallucination inflicts two stacks of Wicker Man's Shadow to the enemy.
Shadow Curse - Insidious Cackle shackles the souls of cursed enemies in fear. The shackled soul slowly moves towards consuming flames. Souls that reach the flames before their shackles are destroyed inflict two stacks of Wicker Man's Shadow to the afflicted enemy.
Thorny Surprise - Piercing thorns erupt under cursed enemies periodically. Enemies hit by the thorns suffer a stack of Wicker Man's Shadow.

Are Players Enjoying the Holiday Refresh?

Whilst Blizzard Entertainment are trying to bring new life to these holidays events, many players are left wanting more from the promised refresh as seen on the roadmap for Dragonflight.

Making an announcement about these refreshes raised hopes and expectations which were quickly dashed by what we got.

They shouldn’t have hyped it. Ironically if it was just released without any announcement I would have appreciated it more because it is actually “something” unlike so many years past which added nothing.

- /u/ Go-See-Cal

Besides the new rewards and Headless Horseman changes, players have grown tired of the lack of ingeniuty the developers put into these events as the fun is quickly shadowed by the gruelling feeling of grinding away to get the much desired The Horseman's Reins mount.

With Brewfest seemingly having disappointed players as well, we hope that Blizzard delivers more for the upcoming holiday events.