One of the coolest features in patch 4.3 was the introduction of the Darkmoon Faire Island, a brand new, self-contained island packed with new games, pets, mounts, prizes, and everything Silas Darkmoon and his merry band of carnies and personalities can muster for your enjoyment. Players earn tickets from completing games, bringing in Darkmoon artifacts from dungeons, PvP, and raids and from doing profession quests. Many players (myself included) were confused as to how many tickets players could earn each week, considering there is so much we want to buy and so many tickets needed to save up for it all. Bashiok has put together a great forum post that outlines just how many tickets you can get per month.

Bashiok's post clearly points out that the max number of tickets a player can get during each Darkmoon Island week is 145 tickets. The only issue is that a mount from the Darkmoon Faire costs 180 tickets, so players will have to wait until the next Darkmoon Island opens to claim their first mount reward. Now that the number of tickets is spelled out, it doesn't actually seem as bad as I originally thought it was going to be.

However, the weird thing that still permeates all of this is why playing the games at the Faire, the real focus of the island, rewards players with the lowest amount of tickets. The random Darkmoon artifacts that you get as drops from PvP, dungeons, and raids give substantially more in terms of tickets than the games themselves; the random pickups or Auction House items eclipse the daily games in terms of rewards. I really like the new Faire and hope that the prize ticket changes for the games can be upped to reflect their focus.

Hit the jump to read Bashiok's breakdown of Darkmoon Faire tickets.

Darkmoon Faire Tickets

Thanks everyone for your feedback. To hopefully clear up some of the confusion over time investment vs reward costs we've broken down exactly how many tickets you can obtain in a single Darkmoon Faire week. The design intent of the Darkmoon Faire is that it's available for one week out of the month, and in that one week we expect you to be able to obtain a significant amount of tickets. To clarify the OP's point of how long it would take to obtain an entire set of cosmetic gear, the math presented was incorrect, and it would in fact only take 4 Darkmoon Faire weeks to complete an entire set. That's of course still no quick task, and the intent is not for it to be. There are plenty of rewards that can be obtained in one or two weeks of the Darkmoon Faire, but we expect that an entire set will take a few events to obtain.

Here's the breakdown:

Tickets Per Faire
Dungeon: 40
Heroic Dungeon: 15
Raid: 10
Tradeskill quests (primary): 8
Tradeskill quests (secondary): 12
BGs: 15
Kill Quest: 10
Mini Games*: 35

Total Tickets per faire: 145

* 5 mini games, available daily: 7*5=35

As an example, here are some options that you can choose over the course of two Darkmoon Faires (2 weeks over 2 months):

Prioritizing mounts/pets: 1 mount + 1 pet, with 20 tickets to spare
Prioritizing pets: 3 pets, 20 tickets to spare
Prioritizing cosmetic armor: 4 pieces of cosmetic armor, with 30 tickets to spare
Prioritizing heirloom armor: 1 piece of heirloom armor + 1 heirloom weapon, with 20 tickets to spare

Keeping all of this in mind we don't feel the current ticket acquisition rates or reward costs are out of hand, but we're interested to hear your thoughts after reading this information and considering the longevity of the content, as well as the 'once a month' format of the faire. We'll be continually evaluating it, and we're looking forward to incorporating more goodies to be won, and more activities to the faire, in the future.

Brace yourselves for what could be some of most exciting updates to the game recently with patch 4.3. Review the official patch notes, and then dig into what's ahead: new item storage options, cross-realm raiding, cosmetic armor skinning and your chance to battle the mighty Deathwing -- from astride his back!