The Witching Hour is upon us!

It’s June! And for achievement hunters, this means one thing (well, one thing among others…): Bewitched is near! This event is very important because there are 7 achievements to be obtained from it, for a total of 20 points. Make it 8 achievements and 22 points if you count in I Did My Part. The Bewitched exclusive achievements are:

• Fire Lighter
• Fire Devil
• Pyromaniac
• Witches Lil’ Helper
• Banebringers’ Bane
• Honorary Witch
• Bewitcher

There are 3 related to Dry Pieces of Wood (Fire Lighter, Fire Devil and Pyromaniac), 3 achievements related to ingredients (Witches Lil’ Helper, Banebringer’s Bane and Honorary Witch) and one related to both (Bewitcher). The latter is the one you should not focus on, because you will naturally obtain it before getting the other achievements. Ingredients and Wood achievements are obtained by using a certain amount of them, cumulatively. This means that you only have to prepare for two things: using ingredients in the Cauldron and adding Dry Pieces of Wood in the fire. We are going to divide the article into those two parts.

Dry Pieces of Wood: buy and farm them

You’ll need to use a whopping total of 500 Dry Pieces of Wood to get the 3 achievements related to them. Getting this amount by yourself can be very hard, specially if the world you play on has a high population. So, in order to get these achievements, here are some things you can do:

• Buy them! That’s obviously the easiest way to get them. The Dry Pieces of Wood can be traded in the market and do not disappear after the event. In fact, you can even use them outside of the event and they’ll count for the achievement. The obvious downside of this is that a lot of players do it, so their price may be prohibitive for you.
• Loot them! Dry Pieces of Wood are dropped by Bane Bringers during the event. Bane Bringers will always spawn during ingredients rounds, but also randomly during the event.

Farming Bane Bringers is a very good source of the Dry Pieces of Wood. Not many players will be there, and depending on your world and time of day, you may even get the spawn all for yourself. If you have the time to spare, try to spend it there waiting for raids as much as you can. Make sure you’re on a Knight or Paladin, however. Bane Bringers are very strong to all elements (10%) but physical (110%). You’ll do better with a level 100 Knight than with a level 800 mage. The drop rate of Dry Pieces of Wood is 100%, so each Bane Bringer killed will drop one, but you do have to be the highest damage dealer. Also, you can try setting a prey on the Bane Bringers on loot (to get rewarded with two Dry Pieces of Wood instead of one) or on damage (in case you can only play on ingredients round and are struggling to be the highest damage dealer). Last but not least, their boss, Bane Lord, spawns quite often in raids and always drops 3 pieces alone.

If you have ingredients to add to the cauldron, however, focus on them! Dry Pieces of Wood can be bought (usually for better prices when the event is far away) but opportunities to add ingredients are few and precious.

Ingredients: be prepared in advance

The magic number for ingredients is also 500, but adding them can be rather tricky. You’ll need to prepare yourself not only in game but also in real life, to the best of your capacity, of course.

Collect the ingredients

The game preparation consists of gathering the ingredients before the event even starts. Some of them are super cheap, but others can become quite expensive. There is an altar close to the NPC Minzy which shows those ingredients

The full list of ingredients since 2019 is the following (in alphabetic order):

• Bat Wing – dropped by all kinds of bats
• Centipede Leg – dropped by centipedes
• Goblin Ear – dropped by regular goblins (see below)
• Lancet – dropped by Blood Hands and Blood Priests (see below)
• Lump of Dirt – dropped by rotworms, lancer beetles and tunnel tyrants
• Marsh Stalker Beak – dropped by Marshall Stalkers (see below)
• Minotaur Horn – dropped by all kinds of minotaurs
• Scorpion Tail – dropped by scorpions
• Small Flask of Eyedrops – dropped by all kinds of bonelords
• Spider Fangs – dropped by all kinds of spiders
• Sulphurous Stone – dropped by brimstone bugs, stone golems and orewalkers
• Tarantula Egg – dropped by tarantulas

The sooner you start working on this, the better (so it may be a little too late for this year’s event, but keep it in mind for the future!). Pay special attention to these items:

• Goblin Ear: Goblins are weak, so why are these a problem? For starters, no one really hunts goblins nowadays, if not for their bestiary (and they might leave the loot behind). Besides, the drop chance is only about 1%, meaning that while completing their bestiary players will, on average, get 2.5 ears. And the ears are only dropped by the weaker goblins, not by stronger ones. Outside of the “Bewitched Season”, they aren’t very expensive, so try to by as many as you can. Near the event, someone will probably buy all existing offers from the market and their price will skyrocket.
• Marsh Stalker Beak: The situation here is similar to Goblin Ears: Not a lot of players hunt the creature that drops them and their drop chance is low.
• Lancet: Lancets are dropped somewhat more frequently by the creatures that carry them, but on the other hand these are stronger creatures only encountered in small numbers mixed with several other creatures. You won’t find them for decent prices in the market once the event starts. A good tip is looting those items while focusing on Drefia’s bestiaries, maybe on a Rapid Respawn Event.

Of course, Bewitched affects the price and availability of all items, even the ones easier to get, so you should gather all of them in advance. A good amount is at least 100 of each, because the selected ingredient is random and the same ingredient could very well be selected several times during the event and others none.

Be at the right place at the right time

Another thing that makes adding ingredients hard is that you only have 12 opportunities to add ingredients per year, and they usually don’t last for more than one minute (of course depending on the server). The event starts at Server Save, and as soon as the world comes online the first ingredient will have been selected (on the first day). From then on, another round starts every 8 hours since the last round ended. This adds some minutes of “delay” after each round, which is useful to know when you need to start adding ingredients as fast as possible. This also means that on the last day, the delay can be as big as 30 minutes, supposing that each server save delayed 5 minutes, for example.

For most players on South and North American worlds, the Server Save is very early in the morning and there aren’t many players online. If you can, try to be online on all 4 Server Saves while the event is active. The whole thing doesn’t take very long, and you can log out by the cauldron, which means that you can log in, add ingredients and log out in a span of 5 minutes before work, class or just before breakfast. This strategy isn’t as much useful on European worlds because of the timezone of the players there, but it’s not useless either. In those servers, it is the other way around, since the last round of ingredients is quite late, so probably less people will be around.

During the event, add timers or alarms for 10 or 5 minutes before the next round. If you’re on the clock, leave your character logged out by the cauldron with all the ingredients in your inventory. If you can, organize your real life tasks so you’ll be free for a few minutes every 8 hours, and with a bit of luck you’ll manage to be present in most rounds during the event.

The time has come: add the ingredients!

When it’s finally time to add the ingredients, it’s also useful to set your client in a way that helps you add ingredients faster. With the Summer Update of 2021, you’ll be able to use Action Bars on the right side of the game window, and that will be very useful for bewitched. But one last time, in 2021 you’ll probably need to use the “classic” method.

Reduce your game window to a rather small size (I find that 100%, as shown below, is a good size), and then add as many sidebars to the client as you can. Then, open your backpack with all ingredients visible. Be ready and watch the exact minute the round will start based on the previous rounds. A good visual hint is a small explosion animation on the ingredients counter (which changes it) and of course the white message to the whole server: The swamp witched need new reagents for their brew!

When the round starts, check the corresponding item and start clicking. The smaller game window means you’ll need to travel a smaller distance with your mouse. Try to do it on a pace, because if you go too fast you’ll miss clicks on the right item or on the cauldron. That’s also why you don’t want the game window too small: it will be harder to click on the exact place on it.

Lastly, other than the achievements, there are some rewards for the events, which are for the whole server or individual:

• Whole server: 10 days of increased Experience Points by 50%
• Individual: each used ingredients in the cauldron and added Dry Pieces of Wood in the fire will grant you favour points, which can be traded with the NPC Minzy for some itens. Most notably, there are 3 colored ravens (black, grey and white) to be used as a house decoration. Note that, even if you have enough favour points, you can choose only one raven per year.

Helping the witches can be a lot of fun or even somewhat frustrating. Keep in mind that is extremely unlikely to unlock all the achievements in just one year, so try your best and learn how to optimize your time and your clicking abilities.

Good luck with the event this year! If you have any questions or other tips, you can leave them in the comments below.