Preparing for Sunken Temple

Well, that sounds silly, doesn’t it?

I mean, we did Sunken Temple the previous week, why would we then start preparing for it?

Well, we’ve been big on doing all the quests for instances and seeing all the sites as we make what might be the last run through pre-cataclysm Azeroth, and Sunken Temple has a couple of important quests.

Sunken Temple has the level 50 class quests.  Remember those?

Maybe not.

There were a set of quests, one for each class, that finished up in Sunken Temple.  But you have to be level 50 to get those quests, and as you can see, our line up for the night was just a bit shy of the mark.

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

Hurmoo actually got on earlier in the day to get to 49 to try and keep up, so he still had nearly a full level to go before 50.

Anyway, the class quests each end with a nice blue item as a reward.  This was fine back when you had to be level 50 to have a hope of finishing Sunken Temple.  Our first run at the instance back on the alliance side ended badly when faced with the level 55 Eranikus.

And then came the great November nerf of 2007 on the Tuesday after that first run.  And suddenly Eranikus was level 50 and we walked all over him.  Well, we didn’t wipe in any case.

But they didn’t change the levels of the quests associated with the instances.  So despite being able to finish Sunken Temple, we weren’t high enough level to get the quests.  We decided to work on that.

The quests aren’t simple, talk to the NPC and head into the instance variety either.  No, we had an evening of prep work to do.  First it was off to Steamwheedle.

Taurens on the Beach

There to pick up Screecher Spirits, a quest line that runs along through a couple instances.  This required us to run out to to the Feralas coast to kill three flying snakes, talk to their spirits, and then head back to Steamwheedle.

Flying through Thousand Needles

Once complete, we had to then run off to Zul’Farrak to knock off a couple of bosses for their tablets.

But first we had to engage in a bit of at-level PvP.  A slightly higher level shaman and priest were on the dock at Steamwheedle.  Enaldie rushed right in to tackle them and promptly died.  Then we managed to continue to squander our numerical advantage by joining in one by one until we were all dead.  It took a while, and Earl, Azawak, and Hurmoo keep them busy for several minutes, but in the end we were all dead.

Fortunately for us, they had other tasks to take care of and they didn’t hang around to camp our corpses or otherwise make us any more miserable.  We took our meager revenge on an alliance player hanging around at the Zul’Farrak entrance.  That will show them we’re serious!

Back here again

Once in Zul’Farrak, we made our way reasonably quickly to the first boss.  We managed to bypass quick a bit of the troll trash on the way, but on defeating the first boss somebody, who shall remain nameless, did not get the tablet.

They did not get the tablet because they did not have the quest.  In tracing things back, in turned out that they had not picked up the initial quest.  So it was break time for some of us while others returned to Steamwheedle then flew to Feralas to kill wind serpents, then came back, updated the quests, and finally returned to Zul’Farrak where we reset the instance and started over again.

Fortunately, as I said, the effort to get in and find the bosses was not substantial.

Finishing up our time in ZF

We actually stopped, rang the gong, and killed Ghaz’rilla again, just to do it.  Then it was back to Steamwheedle and off to the next destination, the Hinterlands.

At least we have a mage in our group, so we could get a portal to the Undercity from Tanaris.  However, once there, it seemed that only two of us had the flight point way out in the Hinterlands.  Tarren Mill seemed to be the closest point we all had, so it was off to Tarren Mill.

Luck was with us in that it was Saturday night and we managed to fly in during one of the few moments that Tarren Mill wasn’t under siege by high level alliance players.  We were able to fly in and head to the Hinterlands unhindered.

Through the Hinterlands

We had to head to the far end, both to get the flight point, but also to visit Jintha’alor, where our next quest objective lay.  Hurmoo happened to have a couple of other quests for that area which were sharable.  As on our past visit, we did the slogging fight into Jintha’alor to get to the pinnacle and grab the ancient egg, but on the way out we did the wild ride through everything.

Airborne Kodos!

The ride is not without danger.  But we managed to get down mostly intact.

Post-ride Health

Once clear, we headed down to Raventusk Village, the horde encampment in the Hinterlands, turned in the extra quests we had for the area, then looked towards getting back to Steamwheedle to turn in this leg of the long quest line.  A portal to Orgrimmar and a flight down to Tanaris, then a ride out to Steamwheedle took care of that.  We turned in the quest and got the next segment that leads us to Sunken Temple.

Which left Hurmoo one final task.  We quickly ran out to knock off one more quest which, when Hurmoo turned it in, made him the last one in the group to get this particular achievement.

We were all now ready for our individual class quests in Sunken Temple.  We’ll have to do a bit more preliminary work on a some of them, but we should be ready for our final assault on Sunken Temple come Saturday night.

Oh, and with level 50, Hurmoo can now be a tree.

Make like a tree!

Another advance in healing.