Over the next 12 days you have a unique opportunity. If you’ve been thinking about starting a new toon or cruising one of your current alts up to level 80 don’t waste another minute!

The midsummer festival is in full swing right now all over the WoW landscape. While there are events associated with the festival that we covered yesterday (such as some serious gold to be made) today we wanted to let you in on how the festival can really buff your leveling runs.

In each zone there are bonfires burning. The bonfires are lit every midsummer to symbolize the hottest part of the year with flames. This all seems a little silly to me, but hey, people do silly stuff all the time when they are making up excuses to have a party! Wouldn’t ice cream be better for this time of year? Oh well, I guess fires when it’s already hot outside is fine.

When you visit a bonfire controlled by your faction (Alliance or Horde) there are several things you can do that will give you rewards or buffs. You can also earn some nice change by visiting bonfires controlled by the other faction and snuffing them out! Here’s how this festival is a once a year opportunity to level those alts.

When you complete midsummer festival quests you will receive an item called Burning Blossoms. These blossoms can be used at the bonfires to light them or you can collect a lot of them and turn them in for some fairly decent rewards. The quests are easy and mostly involve running to talk to various NPC’s so it’s pretty easy to collect the blossoms.

As you are out questing be sure to keep a few blossoms in your bag and be aware of the locations for all the bonfires in the zone as well as nearby zones. Whenever someone lights the bonfire (of your faction) for the zone you are in you will get a buff that adds a 30% chance to add fire damage to each attack you make. The amount of fire damage is pretty big and scales with the level of your character. At lower levels it normally results in a one-shot kill when it procs. At level 70 this buff adds a chance to do 700 fire dmg. But the fire damage buff is only the beginning!

You’ll want to stock up on burning blossoms for this next buff. If you use a burning blossom near a bonfire that is already lit you will also gain +3% to your critical hit rating. This buff also adds fire damage to each attack! You can actually gain this buff as well as the bonfire buff every time you light the fire yourself using a Burning Blossom. With both of the fire damage buffs and increased crit chance you will be blowing mobs up like an elite.

At each bonfire there is also a pole. Dancing around the pole gives you an experience per kill reward of +10%! To dance all you have to do is toggle the gear cursor when standing near the pole. Your toon will go into a frenzied spinning dance and you can watch the experience buff increase as you spin.

Be sure to dance for about 60 seconds every time you visit the pole. This buff has a sort of “slow fill” on the countdown timer. The longer you dance, the longer the buff lasts – up to 60 minutes.

You can see how stacking these three buffs can really speed up your leveling times. Don’t waste this chance to scoot through about 50 levels over the next 11 days. You won’t get an opportunity like this for another year. Get out there now and Dominate with those alts!