Shiny Shenanigans

So shiny much wow

Information

Shiny Shenanigans is a timed mini-event that appears a few times a year. It will generally last a ‘long-weekend’ Friday to Sunday.

The objective of the event is to hunt pinatas which are scattered around the zones. The pinatas drop artifacts from the shiny shenanigans sets, completing these sets will award you with ‘glowing eyes’, a special cosmetic ability that makes your characters eyes glow, there are different coloured glowing eyes depending on the specific artifact set you have completed.

Any level player can participate, the pinatas appear in all zones. you need to mentor down or up to within 7 levels of the pinata in order to get loot from them.

I have written a small guide for the event, this guide includes tips on finding pinatas, mentoring down, how to farm them, the general rules of etiquette, all the artifacts and their rewards.

TIP: Pinatas count as footholds, so if you have a quest or weapon upgrade that requires killing footholds, this is a good time to do it!

TIP: When the event starts it may take 20mins or so for the pinatas to start appearing, don’t panic!

TIP: You can keep track of how many pinatas you have killed by opening up the leaderboard [ ; ] and looking in Planes > Footholds Defeated.

Event Scheduling
Please see the main events page for event scheduling information.

Finding Pinatas

Pinatas can be found in every zone, there are 15 spawn points in each zone and up to 5 pinatas should be up at all times in each zone, the only exception being tyrants throne, as this is such a small zone only 3 pinatas will be up at a time.

Porting to any zone in the game and opening up your map [M] will show you where the pinatas are.

These little party balloons on the map are locations of pinatas.

When you get to the location, you will find an artifact pinata!

During busy times when everyone is farming (when the event has just started and during normal peak playtimes), you may only see 1 or 2 pinatas on the map, maybe even none! You will need to wait for them to respawn, switch shard or try a different zone.

The artifact pinata will change colour as you DPS it down, the colour of the pinata when it dies/pops will determine the type of artifacts that the pinata drops..

White = Normal
Red = Twisted
Blue = Unstable
Green = Poison
Orange = Burning
Purple = Nightmare

The pinata will randomly switch between these colours, so if you are after a specific type you will need to DPS the pinata down to about 5% and then wait until it’s on the right colour before you then kill it.

Once the pinata is destroyed it will drop artifacts in the area around it..

You will have around 20 seconds to pick up as many artifacts as you can.
You will also receive one artifact in your rift loot bag so make sure to collect that too.

Mentoring + Farming Pinatas + Etiquette

Mentoring

To destroy a pinata and RECEIVE LOOT, you must be mentored to the level of that pinata. The general rule of thumb is to be within 7 levels of the pinata.. of course most peeps will choose to be 7 level above the pinata rather than 7 levels below 🙂

So if you go to Stillmoor and want to kill level 50 pinatas there, you will want to be level 57 or below. HOWEVER – in Stillmoor, and many other zones, there will be different level pinatas, in Stillmoor for instance, the pinatas to the west will all be level 50, whereas the pinatas in the east are likely to be level 49.. killing a level 49 pinata while mentored to level 57 will NOT give you loot, you would need to mentor down again to level 56. so be aware when running across zones, check the pinatas level each time and be sure you are mentored correctly before going for the kill.

To mentor down,right click your char portrait and select ‘set ascended mentor level’.

You will then be able to choose to mentor to whatever level you want.
This will allow you to farm pinatas in any zone you want to, from Freemarch to Vostigar Peaks.

For more information on mentoring please see the mentoring guide.

Farming Pinatas

Pinatas are only up for a few days at a time, they are the only way to obtain the shiny shenanigans artifacts. If you want to finish these sets and claim the shiny eyes rewards you will need to farm them hard when they are up.
Finishing the sets is dependent on the relic artifacts dropping for you. The first time this event aired, players were killing hundreds of pinatas, picking up thousands of artifacts and only having 1 or 2 relic artifacts drop. After many forum complaints, the Devs promised to revise the loot numbers and increase the rate of relics dropping.

To farm effectively, the first thing you should consider is which reward you want!
If you are only interested in purple glowing eyes then you will want to only pop pinatas when they are purple, a green pinata will work towards green eyes, blue pinatas for blue eyes etc.
This means you will need to bring the pinata to between 5% and 10% HP and then WAIT for the pinata to turn the correct colour.
Due to different lighting effects or graphics settings it can sometimes be hard to see the exact colour of the pinata, you can hover over the pinatas buff to double check before you kill

Are you in a good zone?
With many different zones to choose from, I find it is better to farm in ‘end game’ zones. Meaning the zones at the end of each expansion. These are, Shimmersand, Stillmoor and Ember Isle. Ashora, Steppes and Dendrome. Tarken Glacier, Planetouched Wilds and Tyrants Throne. These zones will generally give you the maximum DPS while mentoring.

Are you switching shard?
Once you have destroyed the artifact pinata on one shard, switch shard and there is a good chance there will be another one up in the same place, work your way up the list of shards til you are back where you started, then move to another location and repeat.

Do you have enough bag space?
You be be picking up loads of artifacts! There are 171 unique artifacts in all the sets, so if you have only 20 bag slots empty they will fill up very quickly and you will end up constantly having to clear out your bags. I found it much easier to use an alt for the farm, stocking up all the artifacts in their bags and then shipping them off to my main every few hours (or just when I happen to have found an epic/relic).

Picking up artifacts..
Firstly, ensure that you have killed all the mobs in the area before you kill your pinata. A lot of pinatas are in out of the way locations with no mobs, but some have mobs right next to them! If you agro these mobs while picking up artifacts it will interrupt you and you wont be able to pick up any more, so kill the mobs first!
Secondly, position yourself a small distance away from the pinata to hopefully plant yourself in easy reach of at least 3 artifacts when they spawn. After destroying a few pinatas you will soon get used to the correct distance.

When farming in a group..
For 2 players, stand at opposite sides of the pinata so you don’t end up trying to pick up the same artifacts, groups of 3 should form a triangle around the pinata, groups of 4 a square.

Multiple Events
The Shiny Shenanigans event is very short and you will be unlikely to finish all the sets (or even one set!) during a single event. The event runs multiple times a year (3/4ish) so you will eventually be able to finish all the sets. It will be the epic and relic artifacts that hold you back from completing sets, be sure to look out for them on the Auction House and maybe keep a few duplicates for trading with other players.
As an example, during October 2020, the event was up for 3 days, Friday to Sunday, I popped 299 pinatas, picking up 1320 artifacts and of these, I looted 3 relics and 3 epics.

Etiquette

A lot of players will be farming the pinatas all at once, it is a much more pleasant experience if players are kind to each other!

If you approach a pinata and someone is already attacking it, there is no problem at all with you joining in, however, position yourself opposite to the other player, so you don’t end up trying to pick the same artifacts, groups of 3 players should aim for a triangle formation, groups of 4 a square, 5 and above, an equally spaced circle. SLOW YOUR DPS while everyone adjusts position.

If you approach a pinata and it is on less than 10% with a player not DPSING it is likely that they are waiting for a specific colour to pop before the kill.. as they were there first it is their choice of colour. The simplest thing to do is to right click the pinata to auto attack it once for kill credit, then turn around and dont DPS, watch the colour changes and when the other player starts DPSING you can join in again for the kill.

If you are DPSING a pinata and can see another player approaching, slow your DPS til the other player gets there and you have positioned yourselves then kill it together for loot.

Unmentored players coming to your pinatas and one shotting them are super annoying. Its a pointless exercise as they wont get any loot from it! It is highly likely that they don’t know how to mentor or that they should! Try to explain kindly in whispers how to mentor, or simply link them this website 🙂

Artifact Sets and Rewards

You can see all the artifacts and rewards in your character screen.

Open up your char screen and select artifacts in the left menu.
Type ‘shiny shen’ in the search bar.
Ensure the drop down menu in the top right is selected to ‘all’ then click search.

There are 7 artifact sets available to collect.

Poison

Reward: Poison/Green Artifact Eyes

26 artifacts in set including..

8 whites/common
6 greens/uncommon
5 blues/rare
4 purples/epic
3 oranges/relic

To make these artifacts drop, pop the pinata when it is green.

Twisted

Reward: Twisted/Red Artifact Eyes

26 artifacts in set including..

8 whites/common
6 greens/uncommon
5 blues/rare
4 purples/epic
3 oranges/relic

To make these artifacts drop, pop the pinata when it is red.

Unstable

Reward: Unstable/Blue Artifact Eyes

32 artifacts in set including..

10 whites/common
7 greens/uncommon
6 blues/rare
5 purples/epic
4 oranges/relic

To make these artifacts drop, pop the pinata when it is blue.

Burning

Reward: Burning/Orange Artifact Eyes

30 artifacts in set including..

8 whites/common
7 greens/uncommon
6 blues/rare
5 purples/epic
4 oranges/relic

To make these artifacts drop, pop the pinata when it is orange.

Normal

Reward: Normal/White Artifact Eyes

32 artifacts in set including..

10 whites/common
7 greens/uncommon
6 blues/rare
5 purples/epic
4 oranges/relic

To make these artifacts drop, pop the pinata when it is white.

Nightmare

Reward: Nightmare/Purple Artifact Eyes

25 artifacts in set including..

7 whites/common
6 greens/uncommon
5 blues/rare
4 purples/epic
3 oranges/relic

To make these artifacts drop, pop the pinata when it is purple.

The Popped Out Set

Reward: Rainbow Artifact Eyes

30 artifacts in set including..

6 whites/common
6 greens/uncommon
6 blues/rare
6 purples/epic
6 oranges/relic

This set is made of duplicate artifacts from all the other sets, one of each rarity from each set.

To make these artifacts drop, you will need to pop the pinata when it is at all the different colours til you have collected them all.

Shiny Shenanigans event didn’t run at all from April 2022 until September 2024. The Devs tried to switch it on during this time, each time it would say the event was running but there would be no pinatas around the world.
On 29th September 2024 a Dev finally managed to push all the right buttons and the Shiny Shenanigans event worked properly for the weekend! Hopefully this means that the event will run regularly from now on.