There is a long player history of frustration when trying to win the Thanksgiving event The Mighty Gobbler. I will try to make a post that dispels some of that. So yeah, Spoiler Alert. But be aware that no matter how much info you know about this quest, it will still frustrate some of you to the point of giving up and going back to what you were doing before. You won't be the first player to say the hell with it, and you won't be the last.
The Gobbler npc is in The Overthere zone. Just go to a Normal fairy and type "overthere", sans quotes. You'll be ported to the Warsliks Woods zone out. The Gobbler is in the upper right corner of the zone map.
The Gobbler requires your toon to be grouped with at least 3 other toons, but those toons do not have to be in the zone.
When you start the race, you will be illusioned to a cockatrice, which wobbles severely when you run. If you are one of those types of players that can get dizzy or nauseous from closely watching jiggling computer graphics, then be very aware. Along with the illusion, you will be denied the ability to zoom in or out. You also won't be able to swtich camera modes (default keystroke for this is F9). You will be stuck in first person mode. The illusion did not seem to be timed, and it had no buff icon. I had to zone out to get rid of it.
When I would lose the race due to quest timeout (you are given 10 minutes, which you can see in the Quest Journal (ALT Q)), The Gobbler would not talk to me if I simply ran back to him. I had to zone out and zone back in again. And since CoH is not allowed in the zone, it meant running back to the Gobbler. Not really a big deal if you are only doing this quest once...but if you are trying to do this quest multiple times so that you can post a write-up...yeah. But once I did zone out/in, I could redo the quest right away.
When I would win the race, I could run back to the Gobbler and he would seemingly let me do the race again. But I would get a main window message saying that the quest failed, and a yellow message in Main Chat saying the I must wait an hour before playing again.
So far, the rewards for winning (based on my own rewards and the rewards that other players have told me about) have been one of the following:
5x Symbol of the Gods
3x Lillu's Magic Distiller
1x Vial of Prismatic Dye
Adventure Tokens (number and type was not mentioned)
Since a single Dye is more of a slap in the face than a reward, I have to assume that the number of reward units is random rather than fixed. Based on what I have seen, I will guess its one thru five.
The race is started by talking to the Gobbler. It starts as soon as you click on the link "friends". As soon as you do, your group will undergo what I call a "cast event". A cast event will usually (but not always) include a warp to one of about five set coordinates in the zone. Your group will not be warped together, but instead be scattered about. One of those warp points is close to The Gobbler. The cast event can also include a snare (Avatar Snare) that can have either a one or two minute duration. Or, a cast event can clear that snare. The direction that you will be facing after a warp is random. A cast event usually (or always?) includes a red message in Main Chat saying that you hear sounds of nearby gobblers. Along with that is a message saying "Unknown spell effect 160 in spell Free spell (id 3904). I think that simply means that Lillu has not given full info about the cast to the spell database.
After the race is started, the quest will be given an entry in your Quest Journal, along with a 10 minute countdown timer. There is no guarantee that the race will be won by anyone. I think that for the race to be won, someone has to have been lucky enough to have been warped to a location close to the finish line AND have had the snare removed (or it expired) AND there be enough time left to run there.
Because your group is scattered about, and because the race only lasts 10 minutes, there will only be one of your toons that wins. So why does the quest require a group? I don't know. Perhaps one of the strategies of winning is to keep an eye on which groupie is where, and run only the toon that happens to be closest to the finish line. But for me, thats too much for my brain and so I would pick a toon and just run him and ignore the others.
I don't know how multiple groups interact with this quest. Does the first questing group determine the timer for everyone else? Or does each group actually get their own independent race? I did the testing of this quest when my toons were the only ones in the zone.
When your toons get close to The Gobbler, they will get a stack of 10 Short Beers on their cursors. You can repeat that process...step back from The Gobbler then get close...as many times as you want to get more beer. As for what purpose the beer serves...I don't know. I tried doing the race sober, and then drunk, and then clicking on a beer after each cast event, and then clicking on a beer before but I could not see any effects on the quest. The beer did not block the snare, nor block the warping, nor did it seem to affect the timing of those things.
I tried a few things to better my chances of winning. For one, I did this when no one else was in the zone (which was pretty easy to do since hardly anyone wants to do it). I also put an grouped toon at the finish line...when the race would start, I would bring up the zone map and then target that toon so that there would be a nice red line on the zone map to help me keep pointed in the right direction. And, I pushed the autorun key (default keypress is NUMLOCK) and keep my toon autorunning the whole time.
Btw, the finish line is at the bottom of the map, right before the Frontier Mountains zone out. You don't have to zone out to win. You simply have to run past that map point.
I could only stand to do this quest seven times before giving up. I did win twice. If anyone has been able to figure out the things that I couldn't then by all means post it.