Scholomance – Round 3 – Epic Win

It was Saturday night, we were ready for our last run into Scholomance, Blizzard wasn’t experiencing any problems, and we were all ready to go. Out goals for the night, slay Kirtonos the Herald and finish up the paladin epic mount quets. The line up:

60 Warrior – Earlthecat
61 Warlock – Bungholio
61 Mage – Ula
61 Paladin – Vikund
61 Priest – Skronk

Before we went in I had to abandon the quest “Judgement and Redemption,” the last stage of the paladin epic mount quest. It appears if you fail the last battle, as we did on our first try, you have to do this to reset yourself for the battle. Unfortunately, I flew out the the Western Plaguelands before we figured this out, so I had to recall Vikund back to Stormwind, abandon the quest, then accept it again from the quest giver, Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker.

That out of the way, we got ourselves out to Scholomance.

We got in and did not have to fight our way through too many rooms before we got to Kirtonos’ side chamber. We all had the “blood of innocents,” the item that let’s you summon Kirtonos, so Earl ran in and when everybody said they were ready, he used the blood to summon.

That is when we found out about a twist to the whole encounter.

At the entrance to the chamber where you summon Kirtonos is a portcullis. When Kirtonos shows up, the portcullis comes down, cutting the room off from the rest of the instance. Anybody on the wrong side of it is out of the fight completely.

Most of us were in the room when the portcullis went down, but Skronk happened to be just outside, so he could not participate in the battle at all, not with damage nor with healing.

Paladin healing powers to the rescue.

It was a tough fight without Skronk in there healing, especially since Vikund is spec’d protection, so is more geared to being a backup or off tank than a healer. But we managed it, though I did have to use Vik’s lay hands to finish up the fight.

While Kirtonos only dropped the Clutch of Andros, which nobody wanted except as vendor trash, the quest to kill Kirtonos yielded the Spectral Essence, a very important item to Skronk. The Essence lets you see the ghosts in Caer Darrow, the town around Scholomance. Several of them are vendors, and one of them sells the recipe for the major mana potion recipe, something that otherwise only drops once in a while from Darkmaster Gandling in Scholomance itself.

Skronk, being our alchemist, wanted that recipe, naturally enough. And now he had they key.

That out of the way, and our mana potion needs secured for the near future, we worked our way on to the Great Ossuary and Rattlegore. We needed to clear him out of the way to start the final dance for the epic mount quest.

Here we fumbled again, but just a bit.

Earl, who did an awesome job with pulls the first two times we faced Rattlegore, mis-timed a pulling shot and we ended up getting the big guy and two minions when we were not expecting it. Even the finest artist errs once in a while.

That ended up as a wipe, but there was only a few minutes left on the soul stone, so once Skronk used it we were able to buff up again, get ourselves set, summon a new soul stone, and finish the clearing operation.

This time around we took care of everybody and had the Great Ossuary to ourselves.

Then it was time to figure out how in the heck we were going to handle the battle fiesta that you must go through to get the paladin epic mount.

Skronk and I each pulled up a couple of sites that described the fight. I seemed to get a pair of sites that recommended doing the fight with five paladins. Since we were four paladins short, the tactics were not completely helpful, but both sites described what we were to face.

And one site told us to stand in the northeast corner of the room.

So we gathered there, then I ran out, planted the Divination Scryer, which summons all the bad guys, then stood back and waited.

This time, coordinated and concentrated in one corner of the room, we were able to do a pretty decent job of handling the spawns. There were a couple of panics when things spawned right on top of the casters while the tanks were arrayed out in front, but otherwise things went pretty smoothly.

Off in the corner, we found we could rest, eat, and drink between battles as long as the spirits were on the other side of the room.

The only time we had to leave the corner was with the fourth wave, the shadow spirits, as they were casters and seemed to be able to target us in our corner while our casters could not get line of sight on them.

Once the main guy, the aspect of shadows was down, the Dark Knight Darkreaver, Lord of the Redundant, showed up and the last battle was on. to give a time check on how long this all took, about three quarters of the way into the battle, the soul stone expired again (30 minute timer on them) so it was not an epic effort, but it was a decent series of battles.

The Dark Knight’s main tactic is to mind control a party member and send him after the rest of the group. He chose me over and over, but it did not do him much good. Earl and I had advanced to the center of the room to engage him while the casters stayed in the corner. Every time I was charmed, he would run me at the casters, but by the time I would get to them, the charm would wear off and I would run back.

I got a lot of exercise, but did not do a lot of harm to my own side.

Finally, the Dark Knight went down and the spirit horse appeared.

I tried to talk to the horse.

I was missing something and could not complete the quest.

I looked around, looted the Dark Knight’s corpse, got the charger’s redeemed soul.

I tried to talk to the horse.

I was missing something and could not complete the quest. Plus it was starting to look like a routine from “Mr. Ed.”

I found that the charger’s redeemed soul was not, in fact, the charger’s redeemed soul, but rather a claim ticket for said soul, which I had to click on to use.

I tried to talk to the horse.

This time I was able to complete the quest. The epic mount was mine along with nearly 15K experience.

Meanwhile, Skronk discovered that the Divination Scryer was a key to maintaining his churlish figure.

Is that dwarf wearing a robe or a muumuu?

At that point it was not too late, so we decided to head down and off the remaining faculty, ending with Darkmaster Gandling.

Once complete, we would be done with Scholomance, having slain most of the bosses as well as the end boss.

This involved the usual clearing and slaying, and finally we hit Gandling, a fight which was only notable because his in-fight trick is to teleport party members away during the fight. You end up in the rooms of the other faculty members, which can be awkward if you haven’t bothered to kill them first. We had and we prevailed in the end.

Here we are in victory. Vikund is still suffering from a shrinkage curse he got during the battle, so is a bit undersized:

Gandling did not drop the mana potion recipe, so it was a good thing we had other options, but he did drop the Dreadmist Mask, which went to Bung, being quite the warlock style item. Warlock chic:

We then prepared to head out. Unfortunately, the instance behind us had respawned. We did not want to stone or portal out, as we had a quest to turn in outside the instance.

So we tried to sprint out.

That worked out about as well as it usually does, and we all died before we got fifty feet.

Fortunately, the graveyard is close to Scholomance, so we ran back to the instance, revived the headed back out.

We turned in the quest. Skronk was able to buy the major mana potion recipe. Earl hit level 61. And we all lined up on our epic mounts for a group shot.

The magnificent seven, minus two.

Now we have to decide what to hit next.

The call of the Outlands is pretty strong, especially since we have already dipped our toes in for some of the gear updates.

On the other hand, there is a little bit left undone in the old world.

While we have done Dire Maul West, which is the end of that set of instances, there are two more wings we have not seen.

And then there is Blackrock Spire, which we have not touched yet, and for which we all have a load of quests. And those quests are bound to be good, at least in experience, since they boosted the yields for all the old zones.

You will have to tune in next time to see what we decide to do.