Embracing the Dungeon Finder

Saturday afternoon found Potshot and I running around with alts on Lightninghoof.

I had Grungur, my healing shaman on and he had his pally on, who was only a couple levels ahead of Grungur, and also spec’d healing.

Thinking we might get some good, fast exp, he re-spec’d to protection and we hit the dungeon finder as a healer tank pair.  We got off to a bit of a slow start… working as a team we tend not to be the “gogogo!” types, something which lost us one impatient DPS player… but we hit our stride pretty quick.  And joining as a tank/healer pair meant never waiting for more than about 5 seconds to get a group.

Earl showed up and got out one of his alts, a fury warrior, and joined us as DPS for a run.  We had a bit of a hiccup with the dungeon finder at that point, as the level spread between us left only one dungeon possible to run (the armory in Scarlet Monastery) but when we tried to do random (because we wanted to goodie bag) the system kept picking dungeons that at least one of us were not eligible for.

Still, the experience was good, so we thought we would go the random dungeon route with our main characters that night, since we were a bit shy in levels to get the quests for Sunken Temple.  Going into the night, our group was:

46 Blood Elf Paladin – Enaldie (Ula)
47 Tauren Druid – Hurmoo (Vikund)
47 Tauren Druid – Azawak (Skronk)
47 Orc Shaman – Earlthebat (Earlthecat)
47 Undead Mage – Bigbutt (Bungholio)

The first thing we had to do though was go back to Maraudon and finish up the quests that are (mostly) in what I will call the vestibule of the instance.  We had to knock off the first three khans, kill some elementals, and take a quick peek into the instance to cure some tainted plants.

Finishing up Maraudon Quests

That did not take us too long.  Once we turned in the quests it was time to queue up for a random dungeon with the dungeon finder.  And that dungeon was:

Maraudon!

Although it was called, Maraudon – Pristine Waters.

I guess they have Maraudon chopped up into more manageable chunks for dungeon finder.  This chunk puts the group in mid-air over the waterfalls that leads to the last section of the instance.  You drop into the deep water and can swim to the shallows.

In the shallows, ready to start

If I recall right, that is about where the staff of Celebras used to drop you, back before it had stats. (And decent stats too, Hurmoo is wielding that staff.)

That leaves a pretty reasonable chunk of Maraudon to take care of.  And to complete the dungeon and get the goodie bag, you do not even have to go after all of the bosses, you can just go straight for the princess.

We opted for a detour to Landslide, but then headed for Princess Theradras.

Stalking the princess again

The princess did not take us long, and soon we had our loot.

That went so fast, we queued up again.  And this time we got…

Sunken Temple!

Well, crap.  We were going to hold off on Sunken Temple until we had all the quests.  The experience from quests has been really good, so we don’t like to skip it.

Still, there we were.  We didn’t want to wait out the 15 minute re-try timer just to get it again, so we decided to give it a go.  At least this would be a good warm up.  All we had to do was kill the Shade of Eranikus.  However, you have to do a few things before you can do that.

And so began a blurry trip down memory lane.

We went and killed the mini-bosses on one level.

Then we went and activated the statues in order on another level. (Fortunately, Alpha Map has the order listed.)

Then we headed down to the very bottom level, killed the boss, and activated the altar which I don’t suppose we really needed to do, since it just shows you the order you need to activate the statues, and we’d already done that.  Score one for thoroughness I suppose.

Finally, we headed to what I will call the main level and began clearing everybody out.

Dealing with Morphaz

All the dragons and dragonkin were a boon for Azawak, who is the leather worker in our group.

We ended up with just Jammal’an the Prophet and Eranikus.  But Jammal’an was behind a force field and Eranikus wouldn’t give us the time of day.

Excuse me, Mr. Ghost Dragon? Can we kill you?

We ran around a bit, just to see if there was anything left in the area we needed to do, but all seemed quiet.  We did find the Elder Starsong who hangs out in Sunken Temple during the Lunar Festival.

Elder Starsong

Then Bigbutt spotted one of the mini-bosses still alive up in his balcony.  We missed one.

That meant finding our way back, which wasn’t so easy because Sunken Temple seems to respawn pretty quickly.  That means you can just go where everything is already dead and know you’re on the right track.

We fought our way to the last mini-boss, killed him, then jumped down from his balcony to the main floor and headed for Jammal’an.  Sure enough, the force field was down.  We knocked off his congregation, remembering to simply avoid the ghosts that sometimes appear, and were able to take him and his assistant down pretty readily.

Then it was out to the center again for the last two dragons before Eranikus.  Once they were dispatched, we were finally ready for the last fight.  As has often been the case, the final fight was pretty much a foregone conclusion.

Unlike our usual ending, we got an achievement AND a goodie bag.

The corpse of the shade of Eranikus

The experience was good.  We all ended up at least two levels higher than we were when the night started.  Now we just need to go grab all the quests and do it again!