Sylgja here - Wintersday is my favorite time of year!

If you have lots of experience with this festival, then you are already well aware of all of the things to do and ways to enjoy these few weeks!

But if you are new to Wintersday, I am happy to help out and offer up some tips that I have picked up on over the years.

Some observations on Wintersday 2017 -

The addition of multiple paths for the Winter Wonderland JP is a very nice feature for those of us (like me) who are not JP experts. The new "easy" path does not have melting snowflakes so you can take a little more time with your jumps on the first half of the puzzle. The second half is the same for all paths. It is not easy to finish, but it is definitely doable. A video guide might help for anyone who needs to see how it is done.

The addition of being able to enter Toypocalypse with a pre-formed party is another great addition. "Toypoc" is not the most exciting game, as I think most of the effort is right at the start, getting the siege set up. After the first wave or so, there is not much challenge. But at least being able to play and chat with friends and guildmates throughout the rest of the game is more fun than not being able to play and chat with friends and guildmates.

Snowball Mayhem is hit or miss as a PvP game. If you are in a party, you can play with your friends. One of you joins the game and the other should see a prompt in the party chat UI "x joined [PvP Game]." Then you can click on the [PvP Game] link and Join in PvP. There is also supposed to be a party UI option to right-click and Join in PvP, too. Neither of these methods works every time, but will quite often. Then, once in the same match, use B to see the scoreboard and use the Swap Teams feature to get on the same time, if necessary.

I am a big fan of bell choir. It brings my many years of piano playing back into action. I turn the camera nearly directly overhead, then position my hands over the number keys. Left hand on 1-4, right hand on 5-9, no thumbs for this. Then each finger is assigned a note, no hopping around. I also turn the sound off. It is nice to hear the songs a time or two I suppose, but I find it more distracting than helpful.

I highly recommend doing the Orphan Laine mini-quest during Wintersday. There are two very good rewards from completing this - a Wintersday gift tree for your home instance and the Star of Gratitude.

If you are going for other festival achievements, I recommend trying to take care of ones that rely on big groups first. As the initial festival excitement starts to die down, the number of players contributing to some of the donation events dwindles, making it more expensive for each individual to complete. For example, donating coin to Ho-Ho Tron to start up the gift dolyak escort event. In the early days of the festival, the maps are full and the event will start in no time.