This is going to be an example of why I should write up our instance events the day after we do them. Things are usually pretty fresh in my mind then, but now, three days later, it is all a bit fuzzy. Maybe the team will correct me on some items, or add things I have forgotten. Or maybe they won’t remember either and my version of events will become the accepted shared reality. I would like to complain that I was too busy to find the time to do the write up on Sunday, but I spent a few hours playing Echoes of Faydwer instead of doing it.
The first thing you have to ask yourself before starting out in Razorfen Kraul is, “Do I like the sound of squealing pigs?” If the answer is “yes,” then this is the instance for you!
The quillboars that inhabit RFK let out a very loud squeal of horror, rage, and remorse upon death. I play with the sound off and my headphones plugged into my laptop where I run IM and Skype, but Skronk runs open speakers and mic on his end, so I could hear every piggy death very clearly through our VoIP connection. That is actually saying something, because usually I can only hear the loudest and/or most annoying sounds from Skronk’s machine. Quillboar death is both loud and annoying, so adjust your sounds settings appropriately.
So we got ourselves together on Saturday night to play for the big bad wolf’s team and attempt to blow down the front door of the piggies’ house/cave and then kill them individually or in small groups. Simple murder for hire or an analogy for class warfare and revolutionary justice? You make the call!
The lineup for the night was:
29 Warlock – Bungholio
30 Priest – Skronk
30 Rogue – Blintz
30 Warrior – Earlthecat
31 Mage – Ula
We got on a little early but had to make a short run to make sure everybody had the quests for the zone. The first quest, “Blueleaf Tubers,” is picked up in Ratchet. The quest giver, whose name escapes me, stands next to the bank in Ratchet, so he is easy to find. Do not run off too quickly when you get the quest. You need to pick up a crate, a rod, and a manual from the pile of items next to him. These items are all required to complete the quest and the crate and rod are required to harvest the blueleaf tubers, but more on that later.
The second quest is “The Crone of the Kraul.” For this one you have to run past RFK, go down The Great Lift, and head to the little graveyard that is off to the left/north. There you will find a dead dwarf with a notebook. You pick up the notebook, read it, then head towards Feralas to where the alliance flight point is, right on the edge of Thousand Needles. Get the quest update from the night elf, grab the flight point if you do not already have it, then run back to RFK.
With quests in hand, we hit the instance.
A very short way into RFK you have a choice of directions to take. If you head one way you are on your way after all the named mobs. If you head the other way you can pick up the two quests that are in the zone. We decided to go through the named mobs first, then take a short cut to the quest side, saving us some time.
Inside
We also had out items for the “Blueleaf Tubers” quest. The crate contains a snufflenose gopher, or five snufflenose gophers, depending on how you look at it. The crate has five uses. If it thus represents five gophers, or one gopher with five lives, is not explained. When you click on the crate, the gopher emerges, but only if you are near some blueleaf tubers. This early on, the gophers could not be coaxed from their crates, so on we went.
In the named wing of RFK you fight your way through a selection of quillboars and their boar pets. Somehow it seems odd to me that quillboars keep their not so distant cousins as pets. It would be like humans keeping chimps as pets en mass.
Eventually you come around the end of the instance and end up in a four way intersection. From where you come up one side loops back left, one loops back right, and goes on straight ahead. Looping back to the right will get you to Death Speaker Jargba. Looping back to the left will get you to Aggem Thorncurse.
We went right first and fought our way up to Death Speaker Jargba then left to take out Aggem Thorncurse. Neither fight was very difficult for our group. I do not recall what Jargba dropped, but Aggem dropped a common dagger called Thornspike.
We then headed back to the last route, which headed uphill. This lead us to Roogus, who is just a name on my notepad, but who is listed as a named mob for the zone. We fought through him, the started a new action.
Just after that point, we hit a point where the gophers would activate. Skronk got a gopher out, then I did. When the snufflenose gopher is out, he starts to follow you around like a pet. When you use the control rod for the gopher, he starts to seek out the blueleaf tubers. We could not see any tubers, we were in a clear spot with some more quillboars across a long bridge from us. Skronk and I both activated the rods and off our gophers went.
Straight across the bridge and into the quillboars.
The last question on Skype before they got there was, “Do you think they will pull aggro?”
The answer, we learned very quickly, was “Yes they do!”
Skronk’s gopher, which set out first, pulled the group of three quillboars that was across the bridge from us, but only after being stomped on and killed in a single blow. The poor little gopher never had a chance.
But the three quillboars then came running for Skronk. As we were fighting them, my gopher ran into some more quillboars and, no doubt, got squashed as well, bringing us two more mobs.
We managed to fight and kill all of our new found aggro, but it was difficult. It was difficult because because we were all laughing. I was in tears I was laughing so hard. There was something about a poor little snufflenose gopher, minding its own business, being stomped by a gang of quillboars that was absurdly hilarious.
Eventually we stopped laughing, fought some more quillboars and a range of bats that are in a lower part of the zone, and ended up at Charlga Razorflank. She is the mob you need for “Crone of the Kraul.” She nicely left us 5 heads (or is that one head split 5 ways?) so we could complete the quest as well as dropping the Heart of Agamaggan shield. Earl already had a better shield, so it got disenchanted down to a large glimmering shard.
After that we looped back, killed the aggros in front of a big, shimmering portal, then killed the two level 15 gatekeepers who run the portal, which opened it up for us. This let us into the last and biggest named mob in the zone, Agathelos the Raging.
Here is Agathelos foolishly turning his back on us. Note the raid icon for sizing reference. He is a big pig.
You can be a big pig too
He was also a pretty quickly dead pig. Or boar. Or whatever.
It was my lucky night, two instances in a row, as Agathelos dropped the Swinetusk Shank, a rogue stabby item if there ever was one.
Here we are in our traditional victory shot.
Sausage Time
Now that we were done with the named end of the instance, we wanted to run back, pick up the quests in the zone, find the damn tubers, and get ourselves out of piggy town. We had a plan.
It had been noted somewhere that from near the location of Charlga Razorflank you could jump down into the canyon below which is where the two in-zone quests are, “Mortality Wanes” and “Willix the Importer.” We began looking for a place to jump down safely. The quillboars and their pets seemed to be pretty thick on the ground below us. Not to the extent that would wipe us, but we went looking for an easier spot. We traced our way back to one of the bridges over the canyon we had crossed earlier. Here we could see spots to drop in that would mean a smaller fight.
Only we could not jump over the side of the bridge. The game won’t let you.
We found that at one end of the bridge you could jump off the side of the path, onto the rocks that lead down into the canyon. Unfortunately, we made this discovery as a series of independent actions, leaving two of us, Bung and Skronk, on one side of the bridge and three of us, Ula, Earl, and myself, on the other.
Oops.
Things went awry from that point. We were now in within the aggro radii of the mobs below, so two separate fights began. Bung and Skronk tried to get over to us, but that ended up dragging a few more mobs into the battle. Slowly we started getting killed. After Skronk went down, we decided to gamble and use the soul stone, revive him, and see if we couldn’t finish off the last couple of boars on us.
We couldn’t. We got wiped.
If we had jumped off at Charlga together and just took on the nearby mobs, we would have been fine. Well, die and learn.
When you die in RFK, you come back at Camp Taurajo, which is a bit of a hoof back to the instance.
So we ran back and started heading to the quest guys from the entrance. This wasn’t a bad thing. “Willix the Importer” is an escort quest, so we were going to have to kill everybody between him and the entrance anyway. It also helped with the blueleaf tubers.
We slew our way to the quest point, then started looking for tubers. We all let our gophers out and they began searching out the tubers. They run along to a spot, stand there, then the tuber appears and you harvest it.
Ula’s gopher succeeded in finding the five aggro boars we hadn’t killed and got stomped, but for the most part the snufflenose gophers had an easy time of it. They do wander far and wide in search of tubers, so killing everything on your way in helps.
Once done there, we spoke with Willix and began to escort him out of the instance. As is usual with escort quests, he brought his own aggros, announced every so often by him stopping and intoning some line about the dangers of the area or how much the quillboars wanted to stop him. The last fight on the way out of the dungeon had an aggro that AOE’d and slew all the gophers.
The combat stats report showed the following:
Snufflenose Gopher:
Damage Taken = 636 (0.7%) #8
[Melee] = 243 (38.2%) 0/2 0.0% 121.5 Avg
Thunderclap = 217 (34.1%) 0/5 0.0% 43.4 Avg
Sonic Burst = 120 (18.9%) 0/1 0.0% 120.0 Avg
Shoot = 56 (8.8%) 0/1 0.0% 56.0 Avg
That pretty much accounts for our eight gopher deaths, since they appear to have about 1 hit point, thus die whenever struck by anything.
We got Willix to the entrance, got our reward, left RFK, and went about our merry way turning in quests.
We managed to get ourselves flagged on the way back to turn in the quest in Feralas. Ula sheeped the guard at the Great Lift, so we got flagged as a group. Fortunately we did not run into any level 60 horde toons, so we were spared any griefing. We did pass a level 37 undead player who, I noticed, clicked on each one of us as we ran past (I love that when you target anybody, it shows you who they have targeted) but decided that we were a bit too formidable to take on.
Not my best instance write up by far, but we plan to go back and run the named mob side of the zone again some time.
Our next target is Gnomeregan!
The Ancient Gaming Noob 