This time we were loaded for bear. This time failure was not an option. This time the portents were favorable, the omens good, and the magic 8-ball said “Definitely Yes!” The cliches were all lined up in our favor.
And our own line up for the night was:
19 Warlock – Bungholio
20 Priest – Skronk
20 Warrior – Earlthecat
21 Mage – Ula
21 Rogue – Blintz (me)
We agreed that names could be used. We will not, however, sign autographs during the designated instance play time.
Our start time is set for 10pm. We were all on early, but a little bit of last minute blacksmithing pushed us past the hour. Still, by 10 after we were all in Moonbrook and ready to enter the Deadmines. As usual on a Saturday night the Defias Messenger was spending the evening dead for quest reasons, the Defias Traitor mystery tour was departing Sentinal Hill for Moonbrook every ten minutes, and a procession of level 60s were leading low level players through the instance.
The level 60s had cleared the outer zone so we just hugged the right wall and followed our usual path to the instance, jumping the guardrail and dashing past the crowd gathered outside.
Compared to our previous two runs, we were very sloppy this time. We did things that would have caused a wipe the first time around and caused us at least some worry the second time. This time we were out in force though. We slew all who stood before us.
Rhahk’Zor – Dead
Sneed – Dead
Gilnid – Dead
Miner Johnson – Missing Again
Our group rolled through without much thought to strategy until we got to Smite. Then we got serious. We had been stopped on or near the ramp to VanCleef’s ship the last two weeks.
For Smite we used last weeks tactic of having the tank hold smite while we worked over the rogues. The rogues went down rapidly, and we all turned on Smite. Despite the theatrics that happen at Smite’s 66% and 33% hitpoint thresholds, we were never in any danger. Earlthecat even disarmed Smite when he picked up his last weapon.
We started up the ramp and cleared around to the left. This time we caught Cookie between fights and he went down fast, Skronk winning the roll for Cookie’s Stirring Rod. (Bung picked up the roll on a Starcaller wand that dropped by a Defias Pirate earlier, leaving Ula the odd mage out in the wand bonanza. Her response was, “I hate this game.”)
After clearing left, we came back around and fought our way up the second set of ramps until we were on the main deck. All who stood between us and the main deck fell before our blades.
And there we were. Two fights away from the end. No deaths yet and very little drama.
We pulled Captain Greenskin and his two minions back from VanCleef’s room and took them down in a fight that went faster than Smite.
Now it was just VanCleef.
We spelled up, I checked my poisons, and then Earl pulled him.
We went with out past formula of sheeping one rogues, off tanking the other with Bung’s voidwalker, and concentrating on VanCleef. It started off well. We even kept VanCleef from summoning his second two rogues until he was almost dead. But then he did, just before he died.
Now there was some confusion. Rogues went after Skronk, Ula, and Bung as we tried to coordinate. Earl held a rogue while I pulled another one off, but then Skronk went down. No more healing spells for us! Bung went down next as a rogue went after him. Then Ula was down before we could dispatch even one of the four rogues.
Earl finished off one rogue before another came at him. He had two rogues on him while I was working on mine.
Earl took down one of his rogues but then went down fairly quickly to the second. I finished off my rogue just as Earl went down leaving just me and the one remaining rogue.
Fortunately, I was not hurt too badly from the first rogue and I had not yet used a healing potion or my health stone. The battle went on, two rogues fighting to the death. I had to use my potion, then my health stone, and I was getting ready to gouge and run so I could bandage myself when I scored a big critical hit (duly announce to the whole group on Skype in true rogue fashion) and the last mob was dead.
We won!
Skronk used his soul stone to revive, then ress’d up all of the fallen. We stood over VanCleef’s corpse in our triumph.
Van Cleef Down
The screenshot was taken at 11:55pm, so we were done in under two hours. (That includes a five minute interruption when my daughter woke up after the Smite fight and I had to get her some water.)
Earl got the Cruel Barb off of VanCleef, we all collected his head and the note from the corpse (Bring me the heads of Edwin VanCleef?) and, uh, “headed” back to Gryan Stoutmantle to finish the quest.
Gryan shouted all of our names in Westfall, with some snickering as he got to Bungholio, and we all had the option of getting to bed before 2am.
Next week’s target is the Wailing Caverns.
The Ancient Gaming Noob 