Mere weeks after the Winter Wonderland holiday event, Blizzard Entertainment has kicked off their first seasonal event of 2017. The Lunar Festival celebrates the Chinese New Year (Spring Festival). This year it falls on Saturday, January 28, and heralds the Year of the Rooster.
Like previous events Blizzard is celebrating throughout several of their games. Check each game’s section for when the event ends. Here’s the breakdown of festivities.
Overwatch
Overwatch get’s the biggest bag of goodies from the event. All loot boxes have been replaced with Lunar Boxes, and include 100 new cosmetic items that fit the theme. You can find firework poses, sprays, and a bunch of fancy new skins. Lunar Boxes will contain at least one item from the limited Year of the Rooster collection.
Seasonal events also bring a new Arcade Mode. With the Lunar Festival Blizzard added a Capture the Flag mode called Capture the Rooster.
A developer video with Jeff Kaplan breaks down their struggles with adding a Capture the Flag mode. Given the wide variety of mobility powers in most heroes, Capture the Flag has been a tricky mode to implement. By adding it to the Arcade, they can test how players respond to Capture the Flag in a non-competitive setting.
Overwatch’s Year of the Rooster ends February 13.
Heroes of the Storm
A new Event and Daily Quest have been added. The quest adds a brief mini-game at the beginning of a session, as you try to bring the correct offering to the rooster. Completing the Daily Quest nets you 200 gold. The Event Quest tasks you with completing 25 Daily Quests (so you’ll need to play with people that still need to complete their Daily Quests). On completion you’re rewarded with a Lunar Rooster portrait and mount. A new Golden Rooster mount can be purchased for 10,000 gold.
Two new skins have been added that fit the theme of the event – Monkey King Samuro and Lunar Li-Ming. They can be purchased separately or as part of the 2017 Lunar Festival Bundle, along with a new Nimbus Cloud mount. Blizzard also brought back last year’s Lunar Festival Bundle, including skins for Jaina and Illidan.
Heroes of the Storm’s Lunar Festival ends February 13.
World of Warcraft
During the Lunar Festival you can collect Coins of Ancestry by visiting special Elders around Azeroth. These Coins can be used to purchase special holiday items from a vendor in Moonglade.
World of Warcaft’s event ends February 4.
Starcraft II
The Lock and Load Co-Op Mission will feature the Ulnar New Year mutation throughout the event. Every time an enemy is slain, fireworks are launched from its corpse, damaging nearby units. On the flips side, envelopes of gas and minerals will randomly spawn all over the map to give you extra resources.
Starcraft’s Ulnar New Year ends January 30.
