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.

Scholomance – Round 2 – Plus Dire Maul West

We got together on Saturday night and decided to do a short run into Dire Maul West in order to update Vikund’s Paladin mount quest, then head to Scholomance to finish that and update Bung’s Warlock mount quest. We headed out with the group all at level 60, just like last week. I think this might be the first time we have all gone a full week without any of us getting a level.

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

We all started heading generally in the direction of Feralas first. I was actually parked at Feathermoon Stonghold as I had been fishing, both trying to bring up my fishing skill and my cooking skill.

By the time we converged and found the summoning stone (off to the left of the path that leads in) four of us were already there, so there was only a single summon to do.

Our run into Dire Maul West was pretty quick. While we had no rogue and no Crescent key, we did have the “engineer’s lockpick,” (Vikund is an engineer) which is the powerful seaforium charge.

I had not used one before and was a bit disappointed. There was no loud bang or explosion effect. Instead, the door just opened. When I attach a powerful charge to a door, I like to see it at least come of the hinges!

Once in, we could see the area for the quest update. We had to clear out a series of single mob patrols that wander the courtyard, but once done with that, we managed to thread our was across the main courtyard to Tendris Warpwood.

We knocked him down pretty quick and were rewarded with a green “bind on pickup” staff worthy of any non-elite level 55 you care to mention. Bleh.

But we weren’t there for loot, but to feed the ancient equine spirit, Vikund’s once and future steed, if I read the quest correctly.

So we were in and out of Dire Maul in about 10 minutes. Not bad. We do have to go back to finish up Bung’s epic mount quest, which I understand is a bit more than a walk across the courtyard.

Following that, we headed back to Stormwind so I could update my quests and hand over some gems, then flew up to Scholomance.

We did better this time around, at least in the first big room. That was the scene of a couple wipes our first time around.

We managed very well indeed, only losing a mage now and again as we fought our way too then cleared our Rattlegore and his room.

Then came the time for the end of the paladin mount quest. While I skimmed a post about this segment of the quest and grasp the whole “use the right judgements” thing, I was not quite prepared for the battle that followed.

I was expecting a few small fights and then a big guy at the end. Instead we were in for wave after wave of elite mobs. We made it through the first two flavors and were on the second wave of the third when mana, health, potions, and what not began to give out. Skronk used the soul stone when he went down during the fight. Then things got really unstuck and we wiped.

And, it turns out, once you wipe on that battle, that area is no longer accessible unless you reset the instance. And since we were not up to the clearing job again, we decided to postpone that until another time while we went after the update for Bung’s quest.

We headed down to the Alchemy Lab, where Ras Frostwhisper resides, to get the update. We slew the patrols at the close end of the room, updated Bung’s quest, then killed Ras.

That cleaned up, we decided to wrap up one more quest, Krastinov’s Bag of Horrors, before we called it a night.

This meant finding our way to Jandice Barov, who hangs out downstairs. Getting to her was a bit of a challenge, at least until we figured out the way to handle it.

She is at one end of a room with lots of shelves forming corridors across your path. Mobs, some elite, some not, wander up and down these, so you have to clear them without getting too many on you.

It isn’t too tough, but we managed to bite off a few more undead than we should have, then one of us backed up too far and aggro’d another group, and soon we were all dead again.

A soul stone and some resses later, we refined our approach and cleared a path to Jandice rather easily.

The Jandice fight was a big of a surprise. She spawns a whole bunch of duplicates of herself throughout the fight. Finding the right one to target was a bit of a pain. However, the duplicates say they are minions of Jandice when selected, so simply hitting tab until you got the “live” one turned out to be the solution. (I will say here that I am glad that Blizzard adopted a standard UI practice and made shift-tab select mobs in reverse order, as I tabbed past Jandice twice. Instead of having to go “around the horn” to get back to her, I hit shift-tab and was set.)

Bringing her down, we took a victory shot in her little “Sting video” alcove, then headed out.

Since the quest turn-in is right outside the instance, we decided to try to blow past any respawns and run to the exit. And we nearly made it too. Another wipe.

So we ghosted to the instance, went in to revive, then zoned back out to turn in the quest.

The evenings work was enough to push Vikund to level 61. I did not try to get him ahead of the pack, but the run up work for the paladin mount quest actually put quite a bit of experience in his pocket.

So to finish up the mount quests for Bung and myself, we need another trip to Scholomance (which will also let us knock off the last major Scholo quest) and a full trip into Dire Maul west.

Scholomance – Round 1

Having finished up all we cared to in Blackrock Depths in three runs, we actually had several choices as we closed in on what used to be the end-game instances for World of Warcraft. Having only a partial group on the weekend for Christmas, we decided to run down the key to Scholomance and make that our next target.

Skronk said that at one time, not having the key was no big deal, as there were always people just behind the locked door to let you in. But now, with the Outlands readily available, he felt we ought to spend the 15 gold to make sure we were not left on the door step saying, “Helloooo? Anybody in there?”

That was fun, we picked up some additional quests for Scholo as well as some additional experience.

Of course, two days later, after getting lost, I managed to pick up the plans for the engineers door knocker, the powerful seaforium charge. (I love that name. I can see somebody trying to think of a name for an explosive… “C4…umm?”)

And, in the end, last Saturday night, there were a couple of groups sitting in the foyer of Scholomance, so we were covered at least three ways to Sunday. So in we went, the lineup as follows:

58 Warrior – Earlthecat
58 Warlock – Bungholio
59 Mage – Ula
59 Paladin – Vikund
59 Priest – Skronk

We had all beefed up a level or two since our last run. That is one of the things since patch 2.3, and work between instances now pushes us further along pretty quickly.

Still, we needed those levels. Scholomance is actually something of a step up in difficulty relative to what we have seen in the past. And this was proven by us getting wiped in the first room. On pretty much the first fight.

Ouch.

Groups of mobs, packed pretty closely together, with seemingly larger than usual aggro zones seemed to be the order of the day. Mobs that like to run and can often cast fear.

We nearly wiped again when I got feared into another group. Skronk made it safely out the front door this time, so there was one less person who had to run from the grave yard, which is, fortunately, very close to the front door of Scholo. Then we came very close to disaster again with an accidental proximity pull that ened up in a tough fight that we managed to muscle through.

And this was all in the first big room within fifteen minutes of us starting the instance.

We found that we had to stick together more tightly than before and show more care than we have had to in the past.

We managed to finally work our way across the first room of the instance and pick up our first goal of the night, the deed to Southshore, part of the Barov Family Fortune quest.

That taken care of, we began to delve beyond the first room in search of the next target, the deed to Tarren Mill.

This was a bit of a challenge, as down the stairs and into another room we ran into more trouble and wiped again.

We reformed and pressed on slowly and carefully and managed to avoid anything beyond individual deaths for the balance of the night. We made it to the second Tarren Mill deed.

We then took a trip into the next room to slay some dragon broodlings an clear the way to the first named target of the night, Rattlegore.

The Rattlegore fight went well, thanks largely to Earl’s pulling abilities. Rattlegore is in the center of a room with a bunch of stationary and two wandering minions that are all around him. Earl went in and, one by one, pulled each and every one of them out of the room without disturbing Rattlegore, so that the final fight was very straighforward.

Here are Earl and I giving it to Rattlegore:

After that, we worked our way back and headed towards the deed to Brill in the alchemy lab. We stood looking in at Ras Frostwisperer.

And then we cleared the room and killed him. Us victorious.

We picked up the deed and headed on to the deed to Caer Darrow that resides back with Lord Alexi Barov.

On the way to him, we thought we ought to further one of our other quests by slaying Dr. Theolen Krastinov. This turned out to be the last dramatic fight of the night. Krastinov hits like a bus and, and one juncture in the fight, made a point of chasing down and slaying some of the casters and then Earl.

Fortunately, he was way down on hit points and with a potion, a health stone, and lay hands, I was able to hold him until we could finally finish him off. Here we are after the fight:

Which left only Lord Alexei Barov to take down before we finished up for the night.

That fight was a bit of a challenge as well, but we ended up nailing it. Alexei has two minions. Skronk shackled one and I pulled the other (hey, undead, the pally can pull!) way back out of range of Alexei’s aura, while Earl kept Alexei busy. We were able to dispatch the two minions rapidly and get down to help Earl before he was in much danger.

And so Alexei went down. Here we are, his corpse is under the water.

You can see his glowing sword, which is not something he drops. Too bad.

And then we were done for the night.

I was not keeping notes (again) so I do not have the loot distribution, but along the way I managed to win the Bonechill Hammer and the Deathbone Chestplate.

Ula opened a portal to Ironforge for us and we ran the circuit to turn in the quests we had completed. Everyone in the group was 59 by the time we left Scholo, but with the last quest turn-in, Skronk hit 60, the first one in our group to do so.

Congratulations to Skronk! (a.k.a. Potshot)

We have managed to keep the group very close in levels over the last year.

We are not worried about Skronk getting too far ahead.

To go from level 59 to 60 you need 172,000 experience points. To go from 60 to 61 you need 494,000 experience points. I am sure we will all be level 60 together for a while.

We still have much more to do in Scholomance, including tasks for my epic mount, so there will be more on this instance to come.