Between Hallow’s Eve and Winter Veil, there is a less flashy holiday known as Pilgrim’s Bounty.

Well, I guess the flash may depend on where you choose to celebrate.

There are several activities and achievements surrounding Pilgrim’s Bounty. The achievements are the goal here, because in order to gain the Plump Turkey battle pet (also the Pilgrim title) you have to complete the Pilgrim meta-achievement. This means you have to complete the following achievements:

Food Fight! – Sitting at a harvest table outside one of your major cities, target a person sitting at the same table and use your ‘pass food’ button (usually hotkeyed to #1 in your seat-cum-vehicle). This is easiest to do day 1, or with friend dragged along for the occasion. Here’s a map of the sites you’ll need to visit.

You can do this at the same time as…

Sharing Is Caring – Use your vehicle to pass out some food, then leave your seat and get in another and pass out that food. Pass one out to each seat before moving on, because you’ll get a stacking series of buffs. This becomes a meta buff if you cycle through all the chairs. You’re now on your way to…

Pilgrim’s Paunch – Get that meta buff from each of your capital cities (Horde Version). If you have a friend who plays a mage, now is the time to promise that she’s totally getting a ton of pets from you for your birthday, just as long as she ports your lazy butt around from city to city for this. You’ll also really want those ports to do…

Now We’re Cooking – The cooking recipes are relatively low level, and even more attainable as one of the main ingredients in one of the recipes is the 1 skill point cooking recipe Spice Bread. The catch you need that mage friend for is that each capital city has a unique ingredient on sale, as well as a few common ones. This means you ought to buy up a job lot of them when you port around, because you need a lot of the cooked foods to complete…

Pilgrim’s Progress – (Alliance Version) Complete each seasonal cooking daily. Each capital city has a unique ingredient on sale, as well as a few common ones. Of course the lady in Thunder Bluff wants pumpkin pie, when the pumpkins are for sale in Undercity, etc. The one catch is that nobody sells turkey. But there are wild ones in Elwynn Forest and Tirisfal Glades…

The Turkinator – You may want to wait to complete this until quite late in the holiday, at off-hours, because with CRZ you’re going to have a hell of a time shooting enough turkeys with this very short buff. I would definitely recommend doing this on a druid or hunter, as both classes have an instant cast spell or two and speed boosts. Try to do it at off hours if at all possible.

On completing each of the daily quests, you can pick one of several items. The first ones I’d go for is the Turkey Shooter.

Turkey Lurkey – Like every other holiday, the achievement where you have to perform an action on a specific member of the opposite faction is an enormous pain, and easier to complete the earlier you start. You use that Turkey Shooter on every race of rogue. I ended up finishing this one last year on the very last day of the holiday by creating a level 1 of the opposite faction and running /who Worgen Rogue. There were 2 of them, and I guessed that the guy who was level 87 and in Townlong had just started the zone. He had, and I got my pet, after a good amount of emoting that I wasn’t going to kill him. The Dwarf, Troll and Worgen seem to be the most difficult to find.

Turkey Shooters are single-use, so you’ll need at minimum 8 of them to get all the rogues. Your shooters disappear when the holiday is over. The other reward from the daily quests, the Pilgrim’s Attire, does not. One achievement involving the attire is time sensitive, but the other can be completed as your leisure.

Pilgrim’s Peril (Horde Version)– Wear your pilgrim gear, and then go to all the cross-faction capital city and sit at the table. You are going to be ganked, by both guards and players, and wearing the Pilgrim stuff makes you an easy kill. If you can res at a table, you can get your achievement the second you res, and then run away. Use the maps above as a guide. If you have an Alliance character I highly recommend doing these achievements on that character. The Horde sites are far more straightforward to access than the Alliance ones for opposite factions, mostly because of the boat travel involved in getting to both Darnassus and The Exodar. This can also be quite a frustrating achievement if you’re trying during peak hours.

Terokkar Turkey Time – The last of the bunch. Wear your quest reward Pilgrim stuff and kill the final boss in Sethekk Halls. If you’re fed up after the PVP and all that, you can put this one on the back burner. You can do this in March or something as long as you kept your Pilgrim clothes.

When you complete them all, you gain that stunning title but more importantly, the Plump Turkey battle pet is now yours!

The Plump Turkey is similar to other battle pets, namely the Highlands Turkey and Turkey. The latter 2 have far better breeds, as the Plump Turkey is only available in H/P, but those are both tamed so will require a bit of legwork. Here speed is important, as one of the main points of strategy to using a Turkey is in the unique stun ability Food Coma. It’s unique in that, not only is a delicious pun (additional pun also intended), but it lasts 2 rounds. In days of yore, people used to go with 3 turkeys and stunlock their pvp opponents until they ragequit. In fact, this is a large part of why the Resilience buff is now a part of the pet battle game. Also punny, Gobble Strike deals small damage but increases your speed by half for several turns.

Sharing a slot with Food Coma is the super popular for PVE debuffer, Flock. It’s quite the gamble in PVP, but the Shattered Defenses debuff is a really important one. Squawk shares a slot with Gobble Strike, dealing small damage and decreasing your opponent’s damage by 25% for several turns. The first slot is a choice between direct damage spells, either Peck or Slicing Wind. Between the decent damage and stun utility it’s an all-around really solid choice as a starter flying pet. It does start off with Uncommon rarity, so eventually you will want to use an upgrade stone on it.

One of the best reasons to nab one of your own is because it’s always nice to have a snack close at hand.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!