Dusi's Guide to Dire Maul East

I do not take credit for writing this it was posted at the European forums first, I did ask the poster if I could copy it and he said it was ok. I can´t link to the post as it is deleted. Although, I have added some stuffs myself.

Quest List

Dire Maul East

Lethtendris' Web
Pusillin and the Elder Azj'Tordin
Shards of the Felvine

Dire Maul North

Elven Legends
A Broken Trap
The Gordok Ogre Suit

Dire Maul North + West

Unfinished Gordok Business

Dire Maul West

The Madness Within
The Treasure of the Shen'dralar

Class-Specific Quests

The Emerald Dream - Druid
The Greatest Race of Hunters - Hunter
The Arcanist's Cookbook - Mage
Garona - A Study on Stealth and Treachery - Rogue
The Light and How to Swing It - Paladin
Holy Bologna - What the Light Won't Tell You - Priest
Frost Shock And You - Shaman
Harnessing Shadows - Warlock
Codex of Defense - Warrior
Foror's Compendium of Dragon Slaying - Warrior, Paladin

The east wing of Dire Maul is challenging, but still the easiest of the three wings, and the area you'll need to do first to get the key to the north and west wings. There are also a number of quests and bosses spread throughout the East wing, capable of giving up some nice loot, which makes it worth running through more than once.

1. The entrance to Dire Maul East can be found, unsurprisingly, to the right of the large pit in the Broken Commons. Zone in.

2. The opening area of Dire Maul East is known as the Warpwood Quarter. There's a large pit in front of you (down below is The Conservatory, which you'll get to soon enough), and a path that winds counterclockwise to the right. For the most part, you'll run into a mix of plant and tree-like creatures - Warpwood Tanglers, Treants, Lashers, and towering Warpwood Crushers.

3. As you round the first corner, you'll see a small little imp named Pusillin. This is the NPC for the quest "Pusillin and the Elder Azj'Tordin," and he also gives up the Crescent Key that opens Dire Maul North and West... when he's good and ready. You'll have chase him further into the instance before he'll give up the goods, however.

4. The group continues clearing until they reach the northeast corner of the Warpwood Corner. From here, it's possible to go left and north, but many groups will skip that area completely. To continue your chase with Pusillin, you'll need to go right into a narrow hallway, called The Hidden Reach.

5. Partway down the hallway, you'll have the choice of continuing straight or making a right. To continue chasing Pusillin, you need to continue forward. (You'll be back to the room on the right soon enough.)

6. As you go down the hallway, you'll run into some stealthed patrols; these can cause real problems if your group isn't alert for them. As you emerge into the next room, the group will dispatch of a few groups and bear to the right, where there's a small ramp leading up to a small platform, where Pusillin waits for you.

7. This time, when you talk to Pusillin, he spawns a number of Wildspawn Imps and transforms himself into a nasty demon. If you have a mage on hand, it's easy to dispose of the imps while everyone else pounds Pusillin. When he's dead, he drops the Book of Incantations needed for his quest, as well as the Crescent Key for anyone who needs it.

8. At this point, most groups will turn around and backtrack to the room you passed a few minutes ago. There are a lot of mobs here, but if you stick to the left wall, you can skip most of them. At the rear of the room is a large ramp leading upward to the mage Lethtendris, who is the target of the quest "Lethtendris' Web."

Lethtendris can drop: Quel'dorai Channeling Rod
Felhide Cap
And some greens to

9. The fight with Lethtendris is pretty simple; the warrior tanks her for a few seconds while everyone else beats up her minion, then jumps on her. Once she's down, she drops the needed quest item, and everyone moves back down to the bottom of the ramp.

10. At the base of the ramp, there's a curved hallway that leads further downstairs. There are a few groups of mobs to clear at the bottom, and then you'll find the boss Hydrospawn waiting in the center in a small shallow pool. Aside from dropping some extra loot, he's also the objective of the mage quest "Arcane Refreshment."

Hydrospawn can drop: Waterspout Boots
Tempest Talisman
Waveslicer
And also some greens.

11. After Hydrospawn, the group hugs the right wall and continues north through the far doorway, and takes the hallway that leads to a small platform upstairs. Here, you'll find a Wildspawn Hellcaller protected by a few non-elite mobs, and then the boss Zevrim Thornhoof.

Zevrim Thornhoof can drop: Satyr's Bow
Helm of Awareness
Also some resistance helmets(Not high drop chance)
And some greens.

12. The fight with Thornhoof isn't bad, except that he might occasionally teleport someone onto the altar and begin whooping on them. When the fight is done, you'll hear Old Ironbark -- the huge tree in the Conservatory -- yell "At last! Freed from this cursed grasp!" You're now ready for the final stretch of the instance.

13. Instead of backtracking downstairs, the group can run to the southwest corner of Thornhoof's platform and jump down, which should put you right back at Hydrospawn's pool. Avoid the groups and take the door to the southwest, which leads to The Conservatory.

13. Your goal in the Conservatory is a door at the very north. To open it, someone will have to talk to Old Ironbark, who will then rampage and bust the door down. It's possible to fight your way to the door, but that involves fighting a lot of patrols, and it's also possible to hug the east wall and sneak to the door, only fighting a few single mobs here and there.

14. The final battle of Dire Maul East takes place in the Shrine of Eldre'Thalas, where there are a few Warpwood Crushers guarding the upper areas, and then a central area down below where Alzzin the Wildshaper awaits. It's a pretty straightforward fight - he shapeshifts a few times, and then a bunch of non-elite minions come running out to assist, which can easily be dispatched of with a mage.

Alzzin the Wildshaper can drop: Ring of Demonic Potency
Razor Gauntlets
Energetic Rod
Energized Chestplate
Fiendish Machete
Whipvine Cord
Gloves of Restoration
Merciful Greaves
Shadewood Cloak
Ring of Demonic Guile

15. Once the fight is over, you'll see a few glowing shards on the ground near Alzzin's camp. These are for the quest "Shards of the Felvine." Pick up one of the shards and exit via the tunnel behind the camp, which deposits you in the central area of Dire Maul.

Jame's Blackrock Depths Guide (BRD)

Blackrock Depths guide

Introduction:

Blackrock Depths is to this day the biggest instance you can find in Azeroth, it is a huge zone, and this guide will help you to find your way in it. This zone has also the biggest amount of quests ever seen in an instance. So I will try to keep everything to the minimum in the walkthrough.

I highly recommend you read the quest gathering section carefully before anything, because many quests are linked to each other, many have pre-requisites, some start outside the instanced area even. Be aware that BRD (BlackRock Depths), has been designed for a solid 5-man group, and that it also has been designed to clear the instances a few times before you get to complete every quest (especially the most rewarding ones). You can be sure you will at the very least do 3 BRD runs before you have all the quests done. Anyways, when you will be feeling at home with this place, you will realize it is a goldmine, and you will probably want to go back to it a few more times. (You will have to one day or another anyways, because the portal to Molten Core is there :roll: )

Gathering the quests:

Horde & Alliance:

NOTE (Important): The quests marked in Orange are the ones you must have up (or already completed) before you enter the instance for the first time. Try doing the Disharmony of Flame (Horde) / Overmaster Pyron (Alliance) quest as soon as possible, so you can get access to all the Orange quests listed. If there is still a quest you can't access, don't worry, come back later after your first BRD run and check again, it should get unlocked at some point.

• [60] Attunement to the Core (Elite) , given by Lothos Riftwaker, an elf outside the instance. You need to do this quest to be able to teleport easily into The Molten Core by jumping out of the window next to Lothos Riftwaker. A must do for when you are level 60.

• [52]Dark Iron Legacy (Elite) , given by Franclorn Forgewright, outside the instance (see map). Franclorn is a ghost, so in order to talk to him, you must be in ghost form (die pls!). It's important that you get the quest from him before entering the instance, because it's the only way to get the Shadowforge key, which unlocks the doors to the interesting areas of BRD. Don't bother with any quest not marked in orange for now, and follow this guide blindly.

• [53]Ribbly Screwspigot (Elite) , given by Yuka Screwspigot in Flame Crest, Burning Steppes.Pre-req for this quest is to complete the quest Yuka Screwspigot, given by Yorba Screwspigot in Tanaris.

• [54]The Love Potion (Elite), given by Mistress Nagmara inside BRD, at the Grim Guzzler Tavern. This quest requires you to gather different components in different places of Azeroth. Completing it is worth it, besides the item reward, Mistress Nagmara has another function. When you have completed the Love Potion quest, on your next runs to BRD, she will open the backdoor of the Tavern for you if you talk to her. That way you won't need to kill Phalanx everytime you go through the Grim Guzzler.

• [58]The Heart of the Mountain (Elite) , given by Maxwort Uberglint, at the Flame Crest, Burning Steppes. This quest's objective is to open every coffer in the BRD Vault. For that you need your group to have gathered 12 Vault Coffer Keys. They can drop from any Iron Dwarf in BRD.

• [58]A Taste of Flame (Elite) , given by Cyrus Therepentous. Objective is to kill Bael'Gar in BRD (see map) and to capture his fiery essence with the help of an Altered Black Dragonflight Molt. How to get the Dragonflight Molt: A long serie of quests starting with Kalaran Windblade, in Searing Gorge, you can find him North of the area called 'The Cauldron' (loc 39,39). He will have you do a bunch of quests, starting with [48] The Flawless Flame, until you get to the point where you get the Torth of Retribution, and then he will send you to Squire Maltrake. Squire Maltrake will give you the quest [52]Set Them Ablaze!, you will have to use the Torch on the braziers in each of the 4 towers. After you finish the quest, Kalaran will turn into a dragon (not an aggressive one, don't worry) and talk to you, and a chest will appear on the ground. Opening it gives you a quest, complete it and you will get a box. Inside this box is the Black Dragonflight Molt. Now that you have the Black Dragonflight Molt, go talk to Cyrus Therepentous, he is in the Eastern part of Burning Steppes, in a cave (loc 39,39).
  

Horde:

• [52]Disharmony of Flame (Elite), given by Thunderheart, in Kargath Outpost, Badlands. Objective of this quest is to kill Overmaster Pyron, who can be found outside of the BRD instance, he roams around the bridge leading you to the instance portal.
  
• [56]Disharmony of Fire (Elite), given by Thunderheart as well. This quest is the follow up of Disharmony of Flame. Objective is to kill Lord Incendius (details about this can be found in the walkthrough) and to loot a tablet from him.

• [52]KILL ON SIGHT: Dark Iron Dwarves (Elite) , given by the WANTED poster in Kargath, Badlands. Anvilrage Footmen, Warden and Guardsmen can be found in the first areas of BRD, you can hardly miss them. This quest leads to the following:

• [54]KILL ON SIGHT: High Ranking Dark Iron Officials (Elite), given by the same WANTED poster after you completed the previous quest. You can find those Dark Iron Officials mostly on the Dark Iron Highroad (close to Bael'Gar, check map).

  When you have both KILL ON SIGHT quests done, a new quest will unlock:
  

• [58]Grark Lorkrub (Elite), given by Lexlort in Kargath, Badlands. This quest will send you to Burning Steppes, you can find Grark Lorkrub inside the Blackrock Orc fortress, east of blackrock moutain. Finishing this quest unlocks a last one:

• [58]Operation: Death to Angerforge (Elite), given by Warlord Goretooth in Kargath, Badlands. (See above for pre-requisites). Will describe later on how to get to General Angerforge and how to kill him.

• [52]Commander Gor'Shak (Elite) , given by Galamav the Marksman in Kargath, Badlands (he is on top of the Guard Tower). If you don't get this quest, then try doing Disharmony of Flame to unlock it. After you complete the Commander Gor'Shak script sucessfully (Commander survives), go talk to Kharan Mighthammer. He is in the opposite jail. Listen to his story and then you will be sent to Thrall.

• [59]The Royal Rescue (Elite), given by Thrall in Orgrimmar, the pre-req for this quest is to complete the Commander Gor'Shak quest. The objective is to Kill Emperor Dagran Thaurissan and to rescue Princess Moira Bronzebeard. (Will be described later)

• [55]Lost Thunderbrew Reciepe (Elite) , given by Vivian Lagrave in Kargath, Badlands. Will describe how to get that reciepe later in the guide.

• [55]The Last Element (Elite), given by Shadowmage Vivian Lagrave in Kargath, Badlands. Pre-req for this quest is to complete Disharmony of Flame. Objective is to gather 10x Essence of the Elements, which can be dropped by Golems and Elementals inside BRD.

• [58]The Rise of the Machines (Elite),given by Lotwil Veriatus, East of Kargath, Badlands. Pre-requisite for that quest is to complete [54]The Rise of the Machines, given by Hierophant Theodora Mulvadania in Kargath, Badlands. The pre-req quest can be done solo at lvl 54+.

Alliance:

• [52]Overmaster Pyron (Elite), given by Jalinda Sprig, at the Alliance outpost in Burning Steppes. Overmaster Pyron is a Fire Elemental, you can find him right before the intance portal to BRD.

• [56]Incendius! (Elite), given by Jalinda Sprig as well. This quest is the follow up of [52]Overmaster Pyron.

• [55]Hurley Blackbreath (Elite), given by Ragnar Thunderbrew at the Tavern in Kharanos, Dun Morogh.

• [56]The Good Stuff (Elite), given by Oralius, at the Alliance outpost, Burning Steppes. Any humanoid type inside BRD can drop Dark Iron Fanny pack. You will complete this quest on your way through the instance.

• [54]Marshal Windsor (Elite) , given by Marshal Maxwell, at the Alliance Outpost, Burning Steppes. Objective is to find Marshal Windsor in BRD. (see map)

• [54]Abandoned Hope (Elite), given by Marshal Windsor in BRD as a follow-up from previous quest.

• [58]A crumpled up note (Elite), found on any mob in BRD. Right-Clicking the note starts the quest, which requires you to go and talk to Marshal Windsor again. The note only starts to drop AFTER you've turned in [54]Abandoned Hope (Elite) at Marshall Maxwell in Morgan's Vigil.

• [58]A shred of Hope (Elite), given by Marshal Windsor after bringing the Crumpled up note to him. Objectives of that quest is to gather the marshal's lost information. For that you have to kill General Anvilrage and Golem Lord Argelmach (details about this in the walkthrough). After you complete this quest and turn it in at Marshal Windsor, he will give you the follow up below:

• [58] Jail Break! (Elite) This is the dreaded escort quest, you will have to escort Marshal Windsor out of BRD. And you MUST do it, it's a very important quest as it's your onyxia key quest line. Details about this will be given in the guide at the proper moment.

• [59]Kharan Mighthammer (Elite), given by King Magni Bronzebeard himself, in Ironforge. Kharan Mighthammer is in one of the jails in BRD. (see map) The pre-req for this quest is to complete [54]The Smoldering Ruins of Thaurissan given by Royal Historian Archesonus, in Ironforge. That quest is easy to complete solo, go to the Ruins of Thaurissan in the Burning Steppes and look around for little stones and click them.

  After finishing the previous quest (talking to Kharan Mighthammer), he will give you the quest The Bearer of bad news ,go back to King Magni Bronzebeard who will give you the follow-up quest:

• [59]The Fate of the Kingdom (Elite), objectives are to kill Emperor Thaurissan while letting Princess Moira Bronzebeard alive (even though she will be beating on your group). Details about this later in the walkthrough.

Where:

The entrance to the Blackrock Mountain can be accessed either from Searing Gorge or Burning Steppes. It doesn't matter what side you come from. You will appear in a large cave, with a floating rock over the lava pit, bound by huge iron chains to the inner walls of the moutain. This area appears on the map, this is where Franclorn Forgewright is marked. You aren't in the Instance part yet, but the guide will start here...

Walkthrough:

I am assuming you followed my directions so far and have all the Orange quests up (or completed). Starting from that, let's move to the first step:

Group composition:

Note: I strongly recommend NOT going there unless your group average is 55+ at least.

• 1. Healer: Priest or Restauration-heavy Druid
• 2. Tank: Warrior or Prot spec Paladin
• 3. Mage or Warlock: TRY to get a mage (with Improved Arcane Explosion talent), you can still do the instance without a mage, but your life is gonna be much easier if you got one with you. Not only for the usual benefit of having a mage (Polymorph and DPS), but more because when you will get to the Lyceum you will need to use AEs (Area Effect attacks) a lot. If you don't get a mage, try hard to get a warlock. Hellfire is a nice replacement for Arcane Explosion. But also, Warlocks are really great to have in BRD. Because they can banish elementals, and you will see how hard those elemental pulls are. Having Both Mage and Warlock is great as well.
  
• 4. Support:Backup healer, tank and buffer such as Shaman or Paladin is very nice to have.
• 5. DPS: A Rogue is the primary choice here, improved sap helps a lot and their DPS is most welcome. Can also go with a Hunter which is really nice dps plus some offtanking power. PS: This was just a list of classes that make your life easier in BRD, it's basically your 'ideal' group setup for this zone. BUT you can still (if playing with skill) clear BRD with weird group compositions, it will just be harder.
  

1. The Jail Area:

If you don't have a rogue with a high enough Lockpicking skill, you will have to hunt for the Prison Cell key. It's dropped by High Interrogator Gerstahn, 50% drop rate. You can find Gerstahn in the middle of the jail area. Once that is done, you can open the cells and talk to NPCs trapped in there.

Alliance: Go talk to Kharan Mighthammer and Marshal Windsor. (Both marked on the map) You will normally get the follow-up quests: [54]Abandoned Hope and The Bearer of Bad News. Don't forget to turn those quests in before your next BRD run. Or, if your group is ok with it, warp to Ironforge, turn in The Bearer of Bad News and get the follow up, then fly to Morgan's Vigil and turn in [54]Abandoned Hope, get the follow up, also turn in [52]Overmaster Pyron (Elite) and get the follow up [56]Incendius! (Elite).
Go back to BRD, kill mobs until a "Crumpled Note" drops, right click it to get the quest [58] A Crumpled Up Note, go to Marshal Windsor and turn in it, get the follow up A Shred of Hope.

Horde: Go to Commander Gor'Shak, and clear the camps of mobs around his cell before talking to him. When you will talk to Commander Gor'Shak and activate the rescue quest, a huge bunch of mobs will storm the cell and try to kill Gor'Shak. You must protect him at all cost. This fight is surprisingly one of the hardest to accomplish in the zone, there is a lot of Elite mobs in the pack, you are fighting them in a very small area, so targeting is a bitch, and on top of that, Commander Gor'Shak doesn't have much Hit points.
Hints: Warrior, spam that Demorilizing Shout and then try to build solid aggro on everything. (having Thorns or Warlock Imp DS helps)
Everybody else, assist on the same target, take them down one by one and fast. Watch the Health of Gor'Shak permanently and try to see if something is hitting him (use " V " Targets). If it's the case, try to draw aggro from that mob, even if you aren't a tank type. If you fail, you have two choices, either you reset the instance and try it again right now (you are still close to the entrance), either you decide to try your luck on your next BRD run.

If you suceed, congratulations, go talk to Kharan Mighthammer in the opposite cell, listen to his story, and then you can get the follow-up quest from Thrall ([59]The Royal Rescue), after turning that quest in Kargath. Don't forget to do it before your next BRD run.

2. The Ring of Law

Get out of the jail area, head to the next tunnel to the east, and enter the Arena where you will have to defeat the Ring of Law (Check map). The ring of Law is a script, it is started when someone steps on the circle in the middle of the arena.
After about 20 seconds, waves of mobs will start to attack you.

There is 3 waves, which consist of a few Elite mobs for the first two, and a Boss mob for the last wave.
The mobs you will have to face are randomly generated from a set list. As far as I can tell, I fought 5 different type mobs / bosses in this script.
The boss mobs have a chance to drop decent blue items. But the main reason why you are doing this script, is that it's the only way for you to access the Shadowforge city and to get your key done, and it also puts every arena spectator in non-agressive mode, which is handy because you will have to cross the upper part of the arena.

Once you have completed sucessfully the Ring of Law script, the gates on each side will open, the one that interest you is the West gate, take it and go up a small corridor, you will end up in a room which we will named the ''Shadowforge Lock'' room, you will see later why. After clearing a few mobs in this room, take a Hairpin turn on the right, and up the stairs. You will then be on the Upper part of the arena, where the spectators are. Go all around it to the opposite side, then start clearing your way North, toward the Vault room area, through the Domicile. Pulls can be tricky here, so pull with caution. Once you reach the Vault room, skip it, you most likely don't have 12 Vault coffer keys yet, so no need to bother with that room for now. Keep going forward and go down the slopes toward Fineous Darkvire, the Architect. Pull the golems carefully until you can get Fineous Darkvire solo. (he roams up the slopes at some point, just wait until he does). After you kill Fineous, look the hammer from him, Ironfel. Now go back the way you came from until you reach the entrance of the arena, but this time go further south, to the Shrine of Franclorn Forgewright, and get your Shadowforge Key done.

Note: (Horde) I would now recommend that you finish your first KILL ON SIGHT quest and then go turn it in and get the follow up KILL ON SIGHT quest from Kargath. Because on the way to bael gar you will find all the Dwarves you need to kill to finish this quest.

3. Bael'Gar

Use the map to find your way to Bael'Gar, you can easily access him now that you have the Shadowforge Key. He is a LVL 57 Elite magma-giant looking monster, is pretty straight forward battle, he hits hard and has a lot of HP, every once in a while he summons a mini bael'gar and does a 1500DMG area effect attack at the same time. So when you see him starting to summon, go out of range (unless you are the warrior). The adds he summons can be killed very quickly, they have low hit points.
When you take him down, don't forget to use the Altered Black Dragonflight Molt on his corpse to get the Encased Fiery essence. [58]A Taste of Flame Completed!

4. Lord Incendius

Follow the Dark Iron highway east until you reach the lair of Lord Incendius. Lord Incendius is an easy fight, he is a level 56 Elite fire elemental boss, hits reasonably hard, nothing too hard about him. Kill him and don't forget to loot the Tablet of Kurniya from his remains. Congratulations, you just finished [56] Disharmony of Fire (Horde) / Incendius! (Alliance).

5. General Angerforge

To get access to General Angerforge, you must first go to the ''Shadowforge Lock'' Room, it is now easily accessable to you because you have the key, and the door to this room is actually quite close to the entrance.
Up the stairs and on the left is a little passage toward General Angerforge, but you can't access it yet because you need to unlock a gate. To unlock it you need to click a giant trigger:

This huge lock is located downstairs in the room, and it requires the Shadowforge Key to be activated.

Now that you unlocked the gate to shadowforge city, go upstairs and take the little passage toward General Angerforge.

General Angerforge is your first 'real' fight in BRD. So prepare it well and clear everything in his room before you engage him. Getting adds while fighting him would probably mean total wipeout.

How to: The General has 4 guards, but they are non elite and have about 1000 Hit points. They die extremely fast, so take them out while your Warrior tanks the general. The General himself has a lot of HP and hits reasonably hard, but the real difficulty in this fight is that when he gets low on health, he will call for help. About a dozen of dwarves will come to his aid, don't panic though, most of them are the wuss type (1000 HP). Finish the General as fast as possible first, then use your AE attacks to kill the weak mobs quickly. Some of them are Elite AND Healer types though, make sure your tank taunts those well. Once the 1K HP adds are dead, stop AEing, just Assist each other on the same targets, and interupt their heals.

Congratulations on winning your first big fight in BRD!

Note: (Horde) Try to complete the WANTED quests as fast as possible and the [58]Grark Lorkrub (Elite) quest so you get [58]Operation: Death to Angerforge (Elite). Don't hesitate to go out of your way and kill the remaining Dwarves you miss to complete the WANTED quests. If you do it well, you should have the last quest up for your 3rd BRD run. And the quest reward for killing Angerforge is then very interesting:

and 7750 XP.

Note: (Alliance) "Loot Marshal Windsor's Lost information".

6. Golem Lord Angelmach

After killing the General, go back up the stairs and then across the room down a few stairs. You will enter a large room, full of little engineers (non elite) and a few Golems (Elites). Pull very carefully in this room, and don't charge, PULL, way back to somewhere safe. You need to clear the whole room, because Lord Argelmach will call for help and the whole golems + little engineers will aggro.

Once you have the whole room clear, prepare for Argelmach, which is not an easy fight.

How to: Golem Lord Argelmach himself hits fairly hard. He procs quite often a 500dmg DD. He has good amount of Hit points, and on top of that, has 2 Golem guards, which both hit quite hard.

It's gonna be hard fight. So prepare beforehand.

The warrior will be focusing on Argelmach himself and one of the two golems if needed (if lacking offtanks), and make sure to have solid aggro. The rest of the group will be taking out the adds one by one. Decide before hand who will be offtanking one of the adds. A hunter pet, a warlock pet, a druid in bear form, a paladin or a shaman, you have multiple choices... You decide who will be offtanking what before engaging. And you also decide in what order you will kill the golems.

Stick to the plan, focus, and you should make it.

Note: (Horde) "Loot Argelmach's Head".
Note: (Alliance) "Loot Marshal Windsor's Lost information".

7. The Grim Guzzler

There is one thing preventing you to reach the next room, the grim guzzler: 2 pulls of 3 Fire Elementals.

They are maybe harder than many boss fights in BRD, so don't take them lightly. They hit for 400+ on average, and have some nasty damage hield. Whoever stands close to them gets damaged.
If you have a warlock, one can be banished, which is a huge relief. If you don't, you gonna have one hell of a fun fight.

Basically you have to face 3 of those fire elementals at a time.

Use every ability you have to win. You can't have a warrior tank all 3 at the same time, he will most likely die too fast, or the healer will get jumped after the first heal. So have the warrior tank just one, and kill that one first. About the 2 remaining elementals, you have several options:

Hunter freeze trap (even if it's only a 20 second duration, it buys you time, its a big help), sacrifice a hunter or warlock pet on one of the elementals, it has a high chance to die but it will buy your group enough time to finish the first elemental. Have a mage kite one of the elementals around (lots of space in this big room) while you deal with the others.
You can also use a paladin / shaman / druid to offtank one of the elementals.

You must try at all cost to take the first elemental down fast, then the warrior will be free to tank the 2nd one. Also, try to space those elementals, so you don't get hit by the 3 damage shield auras they have at the same time.

Set up a plan depending on what classes you have in your group, and stick to it. It WILL be a hard fight. You have been warned

After those 2 hard pulls are behind you, you can enter the Grim Guzzler.
The grim guzzler is a tavern, full of non agressive mobs, you can talk to all of them BUT one: Ribbly Screwspigot, as he becomes agressive if you talk to him, so save that for later.

Get the quest [54]The Love Potion (Elite) from Mistress Nagmara.

Lost Thunderbrew Reciepe:

Move your group to the side room (filled up with kegs), and start destroying the kegs there. A bunch of elite mobs will come for you, pretty standard fight, once they are dead, loot them, one of them has the item you need to complete [55] Lost thunderbrew recipe (Horde) / [55] Hurley Blackbreath (Alliance).

Stay in this room for the next fight:

Ribbly Screwspigot:
Send your warrior to talk to Ribbly Screwspigot, he will turn agressive, and so will his cronies. Have the warrior run then back to the keg room and fight them there. Loot ribbly's head, congratulations on yet another completed quest.

Phalanx:

Set up your group right next to where Phalanx stands, up the stairs in the corner. Have one person of your group (preferably not the warrior or the priest) go talk to the barkeeper and buy the beer he has (6 should normally be enough).

(Note: He sells alchemy Recipe: Transmute Fire to Earth)

Then look around for Private Rocknot, he will be ASKING for beer. So give him beer a few times, until he gets into a drunken rage and starts to mess around in the tavern.
When he does, Phalanx will become aggressive, acting as a bouncer, and destroy the backdoor of the Tavern (right next to where your group is positioned). Right after the door is shattered, engage Phalanx and fight him in the corner. He is an easy fight, just hits hard. He also just opened the door to the last areas of Blackrock Depths

Note: If you have completed the Love Potion quest, in your further BRD runs you won't have to activate Phalanx to break the door anymore, you will just have to talk to Mistress Nagmara and ask her to go get a room with Private Rocknot. And she will do that, and open the backdoor in the process

8. Ambassador Flamelash

Check the map and start working your way to Ambassador Flamelash, once you get to him, pull him. He is a DPS fight, the faster you kill him the better it is. As long as he is alive he spawns little fire elemental adds, which can become quite dangerous if they live too long.
If it's getting ugly and your healer is getting swarmed by adds, don't hesitate to use Challenging shout or Intimidating shout.

9. The Seven Dwarves

Work your way towards the chamber of the Seven.
When your group is fully buffed and ready, talk to Doom'Rel, he will start the Script.

The script consists of 7 Boss mobs, they will come one by one on a set timer. So the faster you kill them, the better it is. If you are too slow in killing one, you will end up having two of them on you at once, etc.

They are all different classes (Priest, warlock, warrior, rogue, etc) with all the abilities it implies.

Note: They can be Stunned and Interrupted. And also Shackled!

If you are quick enough, you will overcome this tough battle, and the chest of the seven will appear on the floor. (Good items) and the door to the lyceum will open.

Also, if you are a miner, you can learn Smelt: Dark Iron from Gloom'Rel in this room, talk to him before you start the script. He asks 10 Truesilver Bars, 20 Gold bars and 2 star rubies just to teach you the skill.

• To smelt dark iron ore into dark iron bars, you need to get to the Dark iron forge. After the Seven Chamber, go down the stairs and take a right, clear a few fire elementals and you will find the forge.
• To Create dark iron items (such as Dark Iron Pulverizer), you need to use the Dark Iron anvil, which is located in the lair of Lord Incendius).

Once you are done with this room, move down the stairs toward the Lyceum, a fun area! :roll:

Straight ahead will be a big gate, to the Lyceum, to the right though is a path guarded by two groups of fire elementals, if you want to complete your quest [60] Attunement to the Core, that's where you must go. Right next to the green instance portal (to the raid instance: The Molten Core), the core fragment can be obtained from a stalagmite that is to the left of the entrance. Loot the core fragment to complete the quest.

10. The Lyceum

Goal: Light up the two braziers in two corner of the Lyceum. It will open up the door to the Emperor area.

How to: Scattered around the room are Shadowforge Flame Keepers, they have a 75% chance to dorp the Torch you need to light up a Brazier. So you will have to kill those twice AT LEAST if you are lucky.

Now the problem is that room is FULL of bunches of mobs (packs of 20 mobs or so). And the second problem is that they are on a 2min or so respawn timer.

The good news is that they are those weak 1K hp mobs, and die in about four Arcane Explosions from a mage. Or Hellfire from a warlock.

Now all you have to do is charge those bunches of mobs, AE them quickly, drink, move on to next bunch, while hugging the wall as much as possible. Be careful about the patrols, and try to find the Torch keepers. Once you got a torch, work your way toward a brazier and light it.

This is where having no mage or no warlock becomes a real pain. It is NOT impossible, but it is really a lot harder.

Key to win in this area is to be fast, to all move as one, and to beat the respawn rate.

Once you manage to light both brazier, the door to the Emperor area will open. Work your way there, congratulations if you manage it!

11. Magmus

The last guardian before the Emperor stands before you. Magmus isn't hard once you know the only surprise feature of this battle. The statues on each side of the corridor actually are Flamethrowing devices, they activate when you engage Magmus.

So the key to this fight is to position your group at a spot with no statue on the side. Magmus hits hard and has a lot of HP, but besides this, he isn't hard.

11. Emperor Dagran Thaurissan:

Finally the big boss!

Step 1: Clear the whole room (including the side floors)
Step 2: Engage the Emperor, have your warrior tank him. The princess will help him, but she doesn't hurt nearly as much as the emperor. Best would be to have a Voidwalker or a Hunter pet tank her while the rest of the group deals with the emperor.

Note: If you have the final quest up [59]The Royal Rescue (Elite) (Horde) / [59]The Fate of the Kingdom (Elite) (Alliance), you must NOT kill the princess. If you do the quest fails. You must kill Emperor Thaurissan and then the princess will be non-agressive. You can then talk to her and finish the quest.

Emperor Thaurissan has a large loot list, and some of them are great. On top of that, finishing the princess rescue quest nets you 8000 XP and one of the following rewards:

Note: (Alliance) There is still one quest we haven't done: [58] Jail Break! (Elite). You actually don't have to do it during this BRD run, you can come back later and do it. That's what most people do, they shout "LFG Jail Break" in the LFG channel. People see it as a very difficult quest, but it's actually quite easy if you do the following before accepting the quest:

• Clear the whole Jail area, including the cells. Marshal Windsor will go through the whole ring to retrieve his gear.
• Clear the Ring of Law

If you have the whole path cleared, it will be quite easy, there will still be a few mobs that spawn to ambush Marshall Windsor, but nothing too hard.
Now that those preparations are made, go to Marshall Windsor, have everyone turn in [58] A Shred of Hope (Elite). Once everyone has done that, one person should start Jail Break! and everyone will get the quest. Marshall Windsor can't be healed, so just watch out for his health and taunt things off him asap, that's the only risk. Good luck!

I hope you enjoyed this guide into the Blackrock Depths. I tried to keep it as short as possible due to the size of the content of this zone. So if you lack information on any part of the zone, or think I should give more details somewhere. Please say so, and I'll complete it asap.

Thanks for reading!

-Jame

Copyrights WoW-Pro All rights reserved.

Jame's Guide to the Sunken Temple (aka the Temple of Atal`Hakkar)

Sunken Temple Walkthrough

Introduction:

The Sunken Temple is located in the Swamp of Sorrows, it is an instance designed for a 5-man party. It is definitly a place worth visiting when you are in the lvl 51-55 range, it is a really fun instance and the rewards are very good for this level. Make sure to check out the class quests at the bottom of the page (http://www.wow-pro.com/node/803).

Quests:

The quests marked in Orange are the ones you must have BEFORE you enter the Instance for the first time. The rest are follow ups or quests you get inside the instance.

Both:

• [53] Jammal`an the Prophet (Dungeon), given by the Atal`ai Exile, you can find him in the Hinterlands, Go to the southern part of Shadra'Alor. There's a broken-down temple and the exile is on a platform on the left as you face it.

• [51] Into the Depths (Dungeon), given by Marvon Rivetseeker in Tanaris. You can find him in the middle of the desert, South of Gadgetzan. Before he gives you this quest you will need to go talk to Angelas Moonbreeze in Feralas (Alliance) or Witch Doctor Uzer'i in Feralas (Horde). They will send you to talk to Marvon Rivetseeker. He will give you quest[51] The Stone Circle, you will have to go get a Stone Circle in Ratchet at the Workshop (left when walking off the docks), the stone circle is in a box on the floor, at the shop. Once you got it, go back to Marvon Rivetseeker, and he will give you the quest [51] Into the Depths.

• [51] Secret of the Circle (Dungeon), you get this quest inside the instance, right after you complete [51] Into the Depths. It will be described in the walkthrough.

• [53] The God Hakkar (Dungeon), given by Yeh`Kinya in Tanaris (Steamwheedle Port). This is part of a serie of quests, the initial one is given by Yeh`Kinya as well : [44] Screecher Spirits, the follow up is [47] The Prophecy of Mosh'aru (Elite). You will need a lvl 45+ group to do this quest(or less than that if you are lvl 50+) the tablets can be found on two named Trolls, Hydromancer Veltha and Theka the Martyr, inside the instance Zul'Farrak. The follow up for that quest is [50] The Ancient Egg (Elite), the Egg is deep inside a cavern, on top of the temple of Jintha`Alor in the hinterlands. The mobs on the way up to the cavern are all elites, so go there with at least 2 or 3 lvl 50s (unless you are really higher level or really sneaky :roll: ). After you get the Ancient Egg, go back to Yeh`Kinya, and he will finally give you [53] The God Hakkar (Dungeon). This quest is a lot of work especially if you didn't do the first parts when it was of your level, but the final rewards are totally amazing for this level.

• [55] The Essence of Eranikus (Dungeon), this quest is started by right-clicking an item you get when looting the the corpse of Shade of Eranikus, the final and hardest boss mob in the temple. This will be described later in the walkthrough.

Horde:

• [50] The Temple of Atal'Hakkar (Dungeon), this quest starts with [43]Pool of Tears, given by Fel`Zerul in Stonard. You will have to gather Artifacts, you can easily find those underwater in the pool around the Sunken Temple entrance. Can be done solo. Then you will get the follow-up quest, you will have to go talk to the Atal`ai Exile, he will send you back to Fel`Zerul, and you will get the final quest: [50]The Temple of Atal`Hakkar. The Fetishes of Hakkar can be found on any Troll in the Sunken Temple. You will probably not finish this quest in one run, but you can come back and kill the Trolls outside of the instanced part of the Sunken Temple to get the last fetishes you need.

Alliance:

• [50] Into The Temple of Atal'Hakkar (Dungeon), given by Brohann Caskbelly in Stormwind City. This quest is obtained after completing a long serie of quests, to start it you must first talk to Brohann Caskbelly, he will give you the quest [43] In search of the temple, you'll just have to find the temple and enter it. Then go back to Brohann, he will give you [43] To The Hinterlands . You will go to Aerie Peak outpost in the Hinterlands and talk to Falstad Wildhammer, and then talk to Griffon Master Talonaxe, who will give you the quest [43] Rhapsody Shindigger, Rhapsody can be found east of Aerie Peak, talk to him and he'll give you a quest. That quest will send you gathering items in Tanaris and Feralas. Once completed, go back to Rhapsody, he will tell you his tale and give you a tablet. Go back to Brohann Caskbelly in Stormwind, he will finally give you the quest [50] Into the Temple of Atal`Hakkar. The Atal`ai Tablet can be found anywhere inside the Sunken Temple.

Walkthrough

Group composition:

• 1. Tank Warrior, Prot spec Paladin or Feral Druid
• 2. Healer Priest, Restoration Shaman, Holy Paladin or Restoration Druid
• 3. Crowd Control Mage, Warlock, Rogue, or even a Shadow Priest (Shackle undead helps a bit here)
• 4. DPS or Utility class (Shaman/Paladin)
• 5. DPS

Where:

The entrance to the Temple of Atal'Hakkar is located in Swamp of Sorrows, in the southeast part of it. To reach the instance portal, follow the directions on the map below:

1. Secret of the Circle:

After entering the instance, go right. Go down the spiral stairs, then you will have a few pulls to deal with, and you will reach the Altar. Complete the quest [51] Into the Depths , you will get the follow up [51] Secret of the Circle. If you activate the altar, a serie of green lights will appear at different spots in the room, you have to memorize the order in which the lights appear, and reproduce it later on by activating statues on the upper floor of this room. If you have troubles with this part, check the following map, the order in which the Statues must be activated is shown:

Before activating the statues, you must first clear the pool down the stairs past the Altar. A boss mob will spawn there after you sucessfully click all the statues, so clear the pool.
At this point, you are probably wondering how the hell do you access those statues. :roll: Go back up the spiral stairs, and take the next path to the right (marked as ''to the 6 guardians'' on the first map). You will soon reach a room with 2 sets of stairs. One going up, the other going down. Go down! You will reach the Hall of Serpents. Clear your way through this Hall, and activate the Atal`ai statues one by one, in the order described in the above map.

After clicking a statue, a green light should appear. Once you have activated all 6 statues in the right order, an Idol will appear in the Pool, and also a mini-boss guarding it. Jump down at the Altar and prepare for the fight. The boss is pretty easy and straight forward.

After defeating it, you will have access to the Idol, go click it and you will be rewarded with 3 good items. Go back up to the entrance and take the way ''To the 6 Guardians of the force field''. This time, take the stairs going UP.

2. The 6 guardians of the force field:

This area is kinda similar as the Hall of Serpents. You have to clear your way through a circle corridor, and the 6 guardians can be found in the side rooms. The pulls will be a mix of Humanoids and Undeads, so use Shackle Undead, Polymorph and Sap if you have that. Sometimes you will have to go down a flight of stairs to reach the named's rooms. You can kill them in any order you like.
You can see them marked as green stars in the map below:

They are all quite easy to defeat but pay attention, some of them have annoying abilities. One of them especially, casts a totem, that spawns Skeletons every 2 seconds or so. Destroy that totem fast or you will end up swarmed. Besides this, they are really easy. Their names are: Zolo, Mijan, Hukku, Loro, Zul`Lor and Gasher. They mostly drop nothing, but very rarely drop green or blue items (5% chance) of low quality. So why kill them? You have to, for the simple reason that if you don't kill the 6 of them, there will be a force field preventing you from reaching Jammal`an the Prophet. Take also note that the Shade of Eranikus isn't targetable as long as Jammal`an is alive. So that's two very good reasons to kill them, no matter how worthless they are.
Once the 6 guardians are dead, the force field will vanish. Go back to the entrance, and take the leftmost way, marked as ''To Jammal`an the Prophet... etc''.

3. Jammal`an the Prophet:

At the end of the stairs, you will find dragonkins. Pulls will consist mostly of 1 or 2 Elite dragonkins and a bunch of non-elite whelps. If you have a mage with instant arcane explosion, AE them. If you don't, assist one person and kill them one by one. Have the warrior spam Demorilizing shout a few times and try to keep aggro on most dragons. Thorns or Imp pet fire shield helps a lot.

Note: Druids, don't even bother casting Hibernate on those dragons; for some obscure reasons, they got extremely high resistance to it. It's not worth it. (unless they changed resist rates on those since last time I went, which was a long time ago)

After a couple of pulls you will reach a large circle room, full of dragonkins. Look on the map above for Jammal`an the prophet and start clearing your way towards his chamber.

Once you reach his chamber, and before you start pulling, there are a few things you should know:

• 1. The room is full of trolls, most are undead.
• 2. They cast FEAR. So pull them WAY back to be sure nobody gets feared into more trolls.
• 3. Some of them when they die turn into specters, which start hitting on someone in your group. They are invulnerable and actually hit hard. But they move EXTREMELY slow and disapear after about 15 seconds. So run away from them until they vanish.
• 4. You must clear the WHOLE room before you attack Jammal`an, because they will come to his aid.

Once the room is clear, you will be left with two mobs: Jammal`an the Prophet and his buddy, Ogom the Wretched. Ogom is just an annoyance, have someone offtank it (a shaman, a paladin or a bearform druid, or even a warlock pet). The real threat is Jammal`an, who is a caster and hurts a lot, also, jammalan casts a curse which charms the target and makes him attack his group members. You cannot dispell this curse.

So basically, kill Jammal`an first and kill him fast, and be ready for a difficult fight.

Jammal`an can drop very good cloth pants, decent cloth vest, or crappy cloth gloves. Each have about 30% chance to drop, so pray you don't get the gloves at least :roll:

Also, don't forget to loot his head, and you will complete the quest [53] Jammal`an the Prophet.

Killing Jammal`an triggers the spawn of two Dragons: Dreamscythe and Weaver. You will find them flying around in the big circle room. You can pull them one by one. They are rather easy and have a 30% chance to drop really good blue items.

Now before we start heading to the last big boss, Eranikus, let's first finish your last important quest: [53] The God Hakkar.

5. The God Hakkar:

Clear your way through the dragonkins, and go to the room marked as 'The God Hakkar' on the map. You will enter a room with a summoning circle in the middle. Before you do anything, explain your group what is this script about:

• 1. When someone of your group will step inside the circle and click his Ancient Egg, the script will start and a bunch of mobs will spawn all across the room.
• 2. Set up your group in one of the corners, you can avoid most of the aggros this way.
• 3. The goal is to make the God hakkar appear. For that you need to put Hakkari Blood on each of the braziers in the 4 corners of the room. Hakkari Blood can be looted from the Hakkari Bloodkeepers, they spawn every now and then in the room during the script. So pull them and kill them as soon as you see them appear. You might have to counterspell or shieldbash them to make them come to your corner, as they are casters.
• 4. Nightmare Suppresors (Dragonkin) will come every now and then from the gates and try to interupt the summong of hakkar. They /yell something everytime they come, so you can't miss them. You must send someone to pull them and bring them to the camp as soon as they appear, or they will interupt the summoning of hakkar and remove Hakkari Blood from one of your brazier.
• 5. Once you have put Hakkari Blood on each of the 4 braziers, the Avatar of Hakkar will appear. You will probably have a lot of mobs to deal with at the same time. So pull the Avatar of Hakkar to the corner where your group is, and let your warrior offtank it while you kill the thrash you have in camp. Once that is done, kill the Avatar.

When the Avatar of Hakkar dies, every other monster disapears, script completed sucessfully! Loot the Essence of Hakkar and right click your egg to fill it up the Essence of Hakkar -- Quest Completed!

Also the avatar can drop quite good items, 6 different blue items, such as:

Now on to your last epic battle, the Shade of Eranikus!

6. Shade of Eranikus:

Eranikus has the best loot table in the zone, and he is also the hardest mob to defeat in the zone. Don't bother if the average level of your group isn't around lvl 53, because Eranikus is himself lvl 55. So anyone below lvl 53 will see him Orange, and it will be hard for anyone in this case to deal sufficient damage to him. This doesn't apply to the healer of your group though, who can heal just fine no matter what level Eranikus is.

Anyway, there are a few tricks to this fight that I will reveal, so even if you feel your group is a bit low level, you can go and try.

First of all, you must kill EVERY single Dragonkin in the whole area. They come to the aid of Eranikus when you engage him.

Once you have the whole circle room and the corridors cleared, go toward the chamber of Eranikus, on the way you will find two other dragons: Hazzas and Morphaz. They share the same loot table as Dreamscythe and Weaver, and are about as hard. The only difference is that you have to fight those two at the same time, so this isn't an easy fight. But if you managed Jammal`an and the Script of Hakkar, you should be fine.

After those two last dragons bite the dust, you will be left with only one challenge to accomplish: defeat the Shade of Eranikus.

How to:

• Eranikus hits fairly hard, about 400-500 on a well equiped defensive tank.
• He has a lot of hit points.
• Deep Slumber, this is his killer ability. It puts a target to sleep for 15 seconds. You cannot dispel it, you cannot do anything against it. And the worst is, he will most likely cast it on your tank, and then go hit your casters for 800-1000 dmg a pop. To counter this, you need to have another person meleeing Eranikus (ideally a rogue, if not, a paladin, shaman, or even a druid in cat form), preferably someone you can afford being put to sleep for 20 seconds (basically anyone beside your tank and your healer).
  So as soon as your tank engages Eranikus, have that other person go with him and melee and build some aggro. The ideal would be that this person has high aggro on Eranikus, but doesn't overaggro your tank, or it could get uggly. And if you do this right, Eranikus will pick that person as target for Deep Slumber, and that way your tank will always be taking the hits.
  
• He also has some kind of annoying AE dmg + Knockback + Stun attack. So make sure everyone but the tank and the Deep Slumber decoy are at max healing / nuking range.

Note: It happens quite often that he sleeps your tank the first time he does it. A shaman, a paladin, or a rogue with evasion up can pull the aggro and survive Eranikus until your tank awakes and Taunts. Give your tank a few seconds to rebuild aggro before you start nuking Eranikus again, and let him pull it away from camp.
Normally if you did it right, he will not Deep Slumber your tank again, and will pick the other person meleeing him.

Once you have the Deep Slumber under control, the fight is pretty stable, but still mana intensive, because he hits hard. If you die it's not an issue, you can quickly run back to the temple, take the leftmost path, and be back to his lair in 5 min for another attempt.

He is worth the trouble, drops at least 1-2 blue items, here are some of them:

And if you are really lucky (0.1% chance :roll: ):

Also, you will find Essence of Eranikus on the corpse. Loot it and click it to start the quest. To finish the quest, just go to the brazier in the left corner of the room, and you will get experience and a trinket as reward. (keep this trinket in bank if you don't use it, because it's currently part of a greater chain of quest, but not completed yet)

This was all you needed to know about the Temple of Atal`Hakkar instance, and I hope you enjoyed this guide. If I forgot anything, if you want me to add something, or if you find any mistakes please say it

Thanks for reading!

-Jame

Copyrights WoW-Pro All rights reserved

Jame's Lower Blackrock Spire Guide

Guide to Lower Blackrock Spire

Introduction:

Blackrock spire is one of the most important high level instances out there, in terms of items, and also because it is a step you have to go through if you want to access the Upper Blackrock spire, and later on get a key to Onyxia's Lair. I made no map for this zone, because it is simply a mess, with tons of floors, layers over layers, a map just simply would be too unclear and wouldn't help me in the guide at all. I will instead describe the path to take in this instance step by step.

Quests:

Note: Quests written in Orange are those you must have before entering BRS the first time. Other quests are either follow-ups or starting inside BRS.

Both:

• [58]The Final Tablets (Elite), given by Prospector Ironboot in Tanaris (Steamwheedle Port). This quest is the follow up of a long serie of quests. The first one is [47] The Prophecy of Mosh'aru (Elite), given by Yeh'Kinya in Tanaris (Steamwheedle Port as well), and requires the 1st and 2nd Tablet of Mosharu (found in Zul'Farrak). The follow ups are [50] The Ancient Egg (Elite) (found on top of Jintha'Alor in the Hinterlands), then you will get [53]The God Hakkar, this takes you to Sunken Temple (lvl 51+ Instance) where you have to complete the script with the god Hakkar, and fill up the Egg with Hakkar's essence. The follow up for that quest is [58] The Lost Tablets of Mosh'aru (Elite), given by Prospector Ironboot. Those tablets are located in the Eastern Plaguelands over the Temple at the Mossflayer troll camp. Then you will finally get the quest for the last two tablets, which happens in lower Blackrock Spires. It will be described later in the guide where those tablets exactly are.

• [59]En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why (Elite), given by Kibler at Flame Crest (Burning Steppes). Basically you have to collect eggs. Be aware though, that opening those eggs can sometimes spawn every annoying spiders. So do that quest only if your group really wants to get a cute spider pet and feels like killing extra spiders :roll:, the spider area will be described later in the walkthrough.

• [59]Kibler's Exotic Pets (Elite), also given by Kibler. The worg pups can be found in the same room as the boss worg, Halycon. It will be described in the walkthrough.

• [60]Mother's Milk (Elite), given by Ragged John at Flame Crest (Burning Steppes). At the spider area you will find a named spider, the Mother Smolderweb, she casts some AE Poison on your party. If you want to finish the quest, do not cure the poison, Hearth out to Kargath (Horde) or Lakeshire (Alliance), and go to Flame Crest. This is not so much trouble actually, because you can then zone back into BRS and take a shortcut straight to the Spider Area, I will describe this later in the walkthrough.

• [60] Seal of Ascension (Elite), given by Vaelan (Inside Blackrock Spire, will describe in details where he is in the walkthrough). This quest is the key quest to Upper part of Blackrock Spire, it requires you to find an Unadorned Seal of Ascension, which is a ~0.50% Chance drop from any humanoid (Ogre, Orc, Troll) in Blackrock Spire. You also need 3 Gems for this quest, the Gem of Spirestone (dropped by Highlord Omokk), the Gem of Smolderthorn (dropped by Warmaster Voone), and the Gem of Bloodaxe (dropped by Overlord Wyrmthalak). Those gems are about ~15% drop rate. Once you have the 3 Gems and the Unadorned Seal of Ascension you will have to go speak to Vaelan follow his directions.

• [60]Urok Doomhowl (Elite), given by Warosh (Roaming NPC inside BRS, you can't miss it). The quest objective is to First find a Pike (will describe that later), to kill Highlord Omokk, and loot his head. Then go to a certain place and put the head on the pike, and plant the pike on a pile of skulls, which will trigger a script, a very hard script. At the end of that script, after killing tons of Ogres, you will face Urok Doomhowl, kill him, and get Warosh's Mojo. This will be described in details later in the walkthrough.

Horde:

• [61] Warlord's Command (Elite), main and most important quest (it is the first thing you need to do if you want to start your Onyxia Key quest as well). Given by Warlord Goretooth in Kargath. You must talk to him and go through his dialog, he will then give you a letter. This letter starts the quest. It is said that you need to have at least Friendly faction with Orgrimmar, or Warlord Goretooth won't give you the quest.

• [59]Operative Bijou (Elite) , given by Lexlort in Kargath. It will be described later where exactly Bijou is located.

• [59] The Pack Mistress (Elite), given by Galamav the Marksman in Kargath (on top of the tower).

Alliance:

• [59]Bijou's Belongings (Elite), the quest is given by Bijou herself inside the instance. It will be described later where she is exactly. This quest is important because it's part of the main quest line in BRS.

• [59] Put Her Down (Elite), given by Helendis Riverhorn, at the Alliance outpost in Burning Steppes.

Walkthrough:

Group composition:

• Tank: Warrior or Prot spec Paladin
• Healer: Priest or Druid
• Recommended: Mage. (if not, warlock with succubus, or druid in case you also have a priest as main healer)
• DPS / Support
• DPS / Support

Level requirement: level 58+ at the very least, being lvl 60 is recommended.

Keep in mind these are just general guidelines, I have done Blackrock Spire with the weirdest group compositions. But ultimately, you need a solid group, and a certain mix of classes and abilities, or you won't get far. Mage helps greatly, especially when you will be dealing with spiders. If you don't have a mage, a druid will be a decent replacement (they can Sleep the spiders)

1. To the first fork:

Note: I'm going to describe the shortest way through the instance, this means we will be skipping as much mobs as possible, and use all the shortcuts. If you prefer not skipping content, feel free to kill everything in your way, and just follow my general directions.

After entering the first room, pull the 2 Orcs on the left. There is also a 3rd Orc roaming from the left to the right, kill it. Then move your group, hug the left wall, go up the stairs, and wait on this 'bridge' for a patrol. Kill the patrol. On the left is the Door to Upper Blackrock spire, on the right is a drop off. Go to the drop off and jump down. Wait for another patrol there, be careful to not aggro it until it is far enough from the other mobs in this room. Pull and kill it.

You are now facing your first 'big' pull. 4 Orcs + 2 Pets (non-elite).
If one of the Orcs is a warlock, follow these rules:

1. If you got a mage or a warlock using succubus, sheep / seduce the Warlock, and kill it last.
2. If you do not have the above classes, kill the Warlock FIRST. (Yes, even if you have a rogue, Sap just doesn't last long enough and the warlock will most likely awake before you are done with the rest).

But why? Because the Scarshield Warlocks have a special ability, they open a portal, and demons come through it, Imps, felhound, etc. You end up being overwhelmed and soon enough the whole burning legion is zerging your group, if you let them alive too long. So when you kill them, use stuns and interrupts as much as you can.

Once you are done with your first big pull, go down and left, until you reach your 2nd big pull. 4 Orcs. Follow the same rules as above.

Note: This room has a ''shortcut'' access, let's name it the ''Shortcut to Orc alley''. If you go to the right and jump down, and then walk further along the ledge, you will then be able to jump down to an area full of orcs, close to the Spider area, but this isn't any use to you right now as you first need to clear the place down there.

Pull the Scarshield Raider and his two pets on the left, the group of mobs on the right should not aggro. Then hug the left wall and move down until you face another group of 4 mobs down the slope. You can skip those mobs, just go left as much as you can and climb up the slopes.

Note: If you go totally up and left on those slopes, you can reach the platform where the Scarshield Infiltrator stands alone, do not fear, this mob is actually a friendly NPC in disguise, Vaelan, he will turn into a human form when you get close. Vaelan is the NPC who gives you the quest for the UPPER blackrock spire key. But this doesn't interest you until you get your Unadorned Seal of ascension and the Gems. (see in the quest section above).

Anyway, just go around that bunch of mobs until you get to the next bunch. It should be 4 Orcs + 2 Pets again. Deal with them and go further left until you reach a wooden bridge. This is where the pulls get tricky because you have to fight in a very small perimeter, have to deal with a warlock, and also other casters that you must somehow pull to your group, (use counterspell, shieldbash, etc) or they will run when low on health and aggro more.

After clearing those, pull the Scarshield Raider and his 2 pets, he should come solo. Then, provided everybody in your group is lvl 60, you can skip the mobs on the left. Just hug right and get on the next wooden bridge. If not, kill them.

Clear the mobs after the 2nd bridge, and move up. Along the left wall you should see clickable 'Roughshod Pikes', pull the sleeping orcs next to them. (they sleep but they aggro if you get close) And then loot the pike. It is needed for the quest Urok Doomhowl later on. By now, you should already have met Warosh, that ugly Trogg looking npc roaming around, and you should have the quest from him.

Pull to the right, then move up around a large crack in the floor, you will then be facing an Arch guarded by 3 Ogres. This is the first fork, you have two choices, go straight, to the Ogre area, or go right and down the slope, to the Troll area. We are going to the ogre area first!

2. The Ogre Area:

Pull forward, do not fight on bridges, the Ogre reavers tend to toss people in the air, so be careful about this. After you pass the bridge, you will enter a big room. On the left is a small rock 'hill', with ogers on it. Ignore those, and go right, clear a few more ogres until you reach the first Boss - Highlord Omokk, and his 2 guards.

How to: Highlord Omokk is possibly the easiest boss fight in Lower BRS. Sheep, Sap, Succubus seduce one of the guards, or both if you can. If you can only Mez (mez is anything that puts a mob to an inactive status) one, have your warrior tank the boss while the rest of the group focuses on killing the other ogre.

Highlord omokk has one annoying ability, he tosses the tank in the air, and this tends to erase the aggro list. So, warriors, have taunt / mocking blow ready.

Note: When he dies, have everyone in the group check the corpse. He can drop a Gem of Spirestone (of the UpperBRS key), and if he does, only ONE person can see it on the corpse at first check. After that person sees the gem and gets off the corpse, everyone should be able to see it. This is because this Gem is awarded as 'Group Loot' to only one person. So if you don't want to miss on those Gems (which are a ~15% chance drop), make sure everybody checks the corpse!

Also, loot the head. You will need it later to combine it with the Roughshod pike (Urok Doomhowl quest)

Highlord Omokk's loot list consists of 6 blue items, some of them, such as the warrior set belt, are really good:

Horde: check the floor next to where you fought Omokk, there might be 'Important Documents' for the main quest.

Go back to the fork, and this time go toward the Troll area.

3. The Troll Area:

Go down the slope, clear the few trolls there. Then start pulling the next room back to the slope. I really recommend pulling a good part of it before you move in, as those trolls really like to run away in fear and bring friends.

Some of those trolls cast Hex Frog, so have dispel ready.

Once you feel you have pulled enough of the next room, move in. Straight ahead in the middle of opposite wall, is a door with a stair leading you to the room where an optional boss is: Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin .

I recommend pulling the whole room (besides the Boss and his 2 guards) way back to the previous big room. They like to run and get the boss to add.

How to:

Mez the 2 adds if you can. If you can't kill the loose ones first while your warrior is tanking the boss.
The difficulty of this fight is that the boss casts AE Frog Hex. So be sure your warrior is tanking the boss far away from the rest, and have dispell ready.

Shadow Hunter Vosh'Gajin loot list contains 1 common green item and 6 blue items, namely the Rogue set gloves:

So don't wonder anylonger why your rogue/hunter friend pesters you to go and kill that annoying named :roll:

Note: In the back of the room is one of the two missing Tablets from the quest [58]The Final Tablets (Elite).

Go back to the big room and start clearing down the Slope to the middle platform.

4. To Bijou

Warning: Beware of the patrols here.

When you reach the platform in the middle of the 3 slopes, go to the opposite side, up the slope, clear a few more trolls, and on the left will be the NPC Bijou.

Get the follow up quest from her, Bijou's Belongings. Once you have the follow up quest, go back down to the middle platform, and take the slope leading down, then pull to the right. Clear yourself a way to the door infront of you down the last slope. 2 more pulls and you should be facing the 2nd Boss:

5. Warmaster Voone:

Nothing special to say about the encounter, he hits like a truck, especially by the end of the fight. When he dies, don't forget to check the floor for Important documents (Horde), also check for a Bijou's belongings, which look like a brown suitcase. If it's not there, it will be further, in the Orc alley. Also, Warmaster Voone has a ~15% chance to drop the second Gem you need for the Upper BRS key, the Gem of Smolderthorn. Make sure everyone checks the corpse.
In his room you can also find the last tablet you miss, and complete the quest The Final Tablets.

The loot table of Warmaster Voone consists of 5 Blue items and 2 Green items, one of them is the Ranger set Gloves:

Alliance: As soon as you get Bijou's Belongings. I recommend you go back to Bijou immediatly and get the followup quest, which will have you take a message to Marshall Maxwell at the outpost in Burning Steppes. Maxwell will give you the main quest for BRS, [61] Maxwell's Mission (Elite),so it's even worth it to warp and run back. But you can wait to fight the Mother Smolderweb before doing that, because you will need to warp back to the outpost if you want to complete the quest Mother's Milk as well.

Now is the time to take your first big shortcut! Go back up all the way to the start of troll area, past the big room full of trolls, until you are back at the first ramp, where you encountered the first trolls. The exact spot where you must jump down is located right next to the door connected to the big room. Be very carefull before you jump, you must aim so you fall as close as possible to the corner right under you. If you jump too far or too much to the right, you will immediatly aggro mobs. If you do though, keep your cool, deal with them, and be very careful to not let them run and aggro more.

6. The Orc alley:

After jumping down, ignore the Orcs on your right behind the rock. Start pulling from straight ahead of you.

Pulls are very tricky here, so do it with caution, as you get very quickly 2 camps at the same time and will probably wipe from that.

Firebrand Grunts are the melee type and use Mortal Strike, beware. :roll:
Other than them it's mostly casters, but luckily no more warlocks.

Bijou's belongings can be found somewhere on the sides, all along the Orc alley. So keep your eyes open for it. Keep pulling and working your way through those orcs, until your reach the Spider area, this is when things get tougher.

Note: The orc alley is where you land if you take the 1st shortcut I described at the beginning of the walkthrough, after the 2nd big pull (4 Orcs) of the instance.

7. The Spiders:

This is the place everyone dreads, where many groups stop and give up. Though, trust me, those spiders aren't that hard with a bit of organization.

The deal: The first pull of spiders will consist of 2 Elite Spire spiders (don't even try to split them) + a bunch of mini spiders, those spiders actually are halfway between Elite/Normal, Hitpoint wise. They also hit really fast, which is bad when they start beating on casters.
The big spiders cast a stun, a long stun. (about 8 second long) And this stun can hit several targets at a time, so if you can, don't be too close to it.
Last thing I should mention, is that when you kill one of the big spider, a bunch of other little spiders spawn.
So if you can count, that is a lot of Spiders

The drill:

• Make sure everyone is full mana before pulling.
• Assign targets before pulling. Decide which of the two spiders the mage/druid will be sheeping/mezzing. If you haven't got either, assign who will be offtanking the 2nd spider. No matter who it is, this person must keep the 2nd spider away from the rest of the fight.
• The warrior will be tanking the 1st spider and as much of the little spiders as he can. (Spam some demorilizing shout and have Thorns or Imp Fire shield up helps a lot).
• Kill the little spiders first in the fashion you prefer, AE them or /assist kill them one by one.
• Kill the 1st Big Spider. When she dies, more little spiders will appear, kill them, just like you killed the other ones before.
• Depending on the general mana situation of your healer, keep sheeping/sleeping the 2nd big spider until enough mana is regenerated.
• Go for the 2nd spider, from now on it should be easy. The main difficulty is to control the pull and the first spiders.

Note: Try to pull those spiders way down the ramp, on flat ground, to avoid evade bugs. Also note that the stun can be dispelled.

If you manage to be victorious, this means your group can probably go until the end of the instance. Congratulations. But don't cheer too fast though, there are much more spiders to kill. (I hear you cry)
Loot the immature venom sacs and put them on a hotkey, you can right click them to remove the poison from the Mother Smolderweb.

8. Mother Smolderweb:

After the first pull of 2 spiders. You should be able to pull the Spider named, Mother Smolderweb, she isn't that hard. Just like any other spider, with more hit points and hits a bit harder. Also splits into more little spiders when she dies. She can drop the Druid set Boots:

She also casts the poison you need to keep on yourself if you want to finish the quest [60]Mother's Milk (Elite). If you do, after the spider dies, warp back to Kargath/Lakeshear and go to flamecrest as fast as you can. It's kinda annoying because the venom of the spider is actually casting net on you and immobilizing you every now and then :roll:
Then just run back to BRS, and take the 1st shortcut, jump down on the right after entering the room where you fought your 2nd big pull. (which consisted of 4 Orcs). This will take you back to Orc Alley, really close to Spiders. Go back up the ramp, and pull the solo roaming spider. You can then skip the two spiders in the 'pit' on the left. Just run as close as you can on the right, at the edge of those ramps. Stop at the point where they cross, and pull the next 2 spiders there. Deal with them exactly as I described the first pull.

Keep going forward, there is 2 more double spider pull to do!

Note: The 3rd double spider pull might have a rare spawn named spider in it, which is in a way a luck, but in another way bad, because this named, The Crystal Spider, upon death, spawns double the amount of mini spiders Have fun dealing with them! And beware of the evade bugs.

If you go through all the spider pulls sucessfully, you will reach a platform, with ogres all over it. Oh, and if you feel up to kill a few extra spiders (who knows!), you can click the eggs and try to finish [59]En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why. Open one egg at a time, as it can spawn spiders.

9. Urok Doomhowl's pad:

Once you have that pad full of ogres clear, you will find a pile of skulls in a corner. If you plant the Roughshod Pike + The head of Highlord Omokk on it, a script will start.

Don't do that now though, there is a very high chance you will wipe on this script. It is the hardest battle in the whole dungeon and it is optional. You can come back after you have killed the other 'easy' bosses and do this script as last thing you do before leaving the instance. I will describe in the last paragraph how to deal with this hell of a script

10. To Halycon:

From the Ogre pad, move on and pull a bunch of scorpids, AE them. They are easy. Another pull of those and then you should probably meet your first patrol, deal with it.

Go up the stairs and wait for another patrol coming down from the other stairs. Turn right and pull the 3 orcs standing there against the wall. Left of those 3 orcs is the entrance to Halycon's Nest. So don't get too close until you are ready.

Warning: One thing you should know before pulling Halycon, there a lot of Worg pups in her room. Those are the ones you must capture to finish [59]Kibler's Exotic Pets (Elite). Just target one of the pups and right click the cage from your inventory. If pulled carefully, you can probably get the bunch of pups without agroing Halycon herself.

In any case, pull Halycon and defeat her, she is quite easy. The only hard thing in the fight is that when she dies, her mate comes to avenge her. Gizrul the Slavener is a bit tougher than Halycon. But it shouldn't be much of a problem.

Gizrul can drop several blue items, namely the Druid set Spaulders:

Also worth mentioning, by killing Halycon you just completed another quest: The Pack Mistress (Horde) // Put her down (Alliance).

When coming out of Halycon's nest, you have two options. Go right and up the wide stairs, and clear up to an Optional NPC: Quartermaster Zigris. He is a rare spawn but is often there. So if you want extra loot, go for it. Else, start pulling from the other door, from up the stairs.

Pull a good chunk of the next room (a large room with cracks in the floor and wooden planks to cross them) before going up. Runners are the main killer here.

Also, beware of the Evokers, they deal massive damage plus AE Knockback and stun. Mez them or kill them first.

Keep pulling a path through this big room, until you can reach the opposite side and go through the door that leads you to the last area, and the last boss.

11. Overlord Wyrmthalak:

Keep going right and up until you face Overloard Wyrmthalak.

Infos:

-Wyrmthalak hits fairly hard, has quite a lof of HPs, and has one annoying ability, he tosses people up in the air. Which has the secondary effect of wiping the aggro list. Have taunt ready..

-At some point in the fight, he will call for help. And 2 adds will come running to his aid, they will come from behind.
Deal with them, sheep or succubs mez them if you can. If not, kill them while your warrior offtanks wyrmthalak.

When wyrmthalak dies, don't forget to make everyone check the corpse for a possible Gem, and also check the floor for possible Important documents (Horde).

There, now you know how to kill the 3 main bosses of Lower Blackrock Spire. That means you can farm them at will (they drop nice items), and also work on getting all 3 Gems for a key to Upper Blackrock Spire. Also, you will need to come back if you want co complete your main quest. (If you are horde and still miss the important documents as well).

Overlord Wyrmthalak's loot list consists of 6 Blue items (including the Ranger set Spaulders), and if you are lucky, a purple item:

But there is one last thing you must face before going out of the instance, you have to save that stupid Trogg, warosh, and get his mojo back!
In short, you have to defeat a very hard script, and Urok Doomhowl.

12. Face Urok Doomhowl:

Go back to the Pad with the pile of skulls. You can take a shortcut, jump down in the first crack you stumble on in the big room with the planks / cracks. Move your group to the pad and brief them.

What happens when one places Omokk's head on the pike, on the pile of bones:

• A bunch of Ogres starts to spawn. Per waves of 3 max. They are Elite, they hit hard, and they spawn fast. No 5-man group could normally withstand so many elite mobs, but there is a trick to this encounter.
• The pike you just planted in the skulls has a magical ability, it can nuke one ogre dead every 30 seconds. So you must have someone on duty, next to the pike, ready to click it everytime it's possible.

• Organize your group well. Sheep or Succubus mez them, assist one person, take them down as fast as you can. Try to bring a Full HP ogre next to the pike every 30 seconds and nuke it dead.

• Also, the Urok Enforcers really hurt. They are easy to reconize, they use 2 Hand spiked maces, and hit really hard Try to get those nuked down and killed fast, because they are the main threat.

If you stay alive long enough through those waves of Ogres, Urok Doomhowl will appear. He will most likely appear as you already are overwhelmed by Ogres. But do not panic, he can be either: Sheeped, Succubus seduced, or even kited. He walks very slow.

Anyway, don't fight him, mez him or kite him. And deal with the remaining other ogres. The nuke-pike disapears when Urok spawns too, to spice things up a little more.

Once there is only Urok left alive, fight him. He isn't that hard when he is alone. He hits reasonably hard and fears, nothing too bad :roll: .

Upon killing him, Warosh will appear next to you, loot the Mojo from Urok, and complete the quest!

Urok Doomhowl's loot table consists of 3 Blue items, the Shaman set boots (which could use an upgrade), great plate boots, and good leather gautlets with random stats:

That's all there is to know about the Lower Blackrock Spire instance, and soon I will release a guide about the Upper Part, which is designed for small raids.
I hope you enjoyed this walkthrough, and that it wasn't too confusing without a map. But once you have done a few runs in BRS, you will understand why a map wouldn't have helped much.

If you see anything lacking or inaccurate in this guide, please post here or inform me by private message. I will do my best to keep it up to date.

Thanks!

-Jame

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Jame's Maraudon Guide

Jame's Maraudon Instance Guide

Introduction

Maraudon is a beautiful instance located in Desolace, it is made for a group of 5 players and can be very rewarding when done the right way. It is quite a big instance but the cool thing is that you can do half of it (takes about 3 hours) and the other half another day without having to clear all the way again. Basically the first half of the instance is where you will find and complete the quest that rewards you with the Scepter of Celebras. Right-clicking the scepter will teleport you directly to the 2nd half of Maraudon, where the strongest boss mobs are (and where the best loot is, mostly). Thus making Maraudon a very interesting instance that you can run several times until you got all the rewards you want from it! Follow this guide, and you will

Level recommended

• For the first half: 47+
• For the 2nd half: 49+

Overall, if you want to be able to kill everything including the last bosses, try to have everyone level 49+, besides the main healer of course, who can be a tad lower.

Group compostion

1. Healer: Priest or restoration specced druid
2. Tank: Warrior > Paladin/druid bear
3. AE class: Mage is the best choice followed by warlock. Try to have one of these, it will really help.
4. Try to keep it down to two melee classes (Warrior + Rogue for exemple). Maraudon is not so melee friendly, several mobs (like the Princess) are tough for melees.
5. You MUST have at least one range attack class (Mage, Warlock, Hunter, Shaman, Druid/Priest if they aren't your main healer). The Creeping Sludges will require kiting (will explain that in detail), so you need at least 1 range attack class, preferably two.

Quest gathering

Alliance:

• [42] Shadowshard Fragments [Shareable] From Archmage Tervosh at Theramore Keep in Dustwallow Marsh.
• [47] Vyletongue Corruption [Not Shareable] From Talendria at Nijel's Point in Desolace. This quest has been made easier since patch 1.12, so go for it.
• [51] Corruption of Earth and Seed [Shareable][Main Quest] From Keeper Marandis at Nijel's Point in Desolace.

Horde:

• [42] Shadowshard Fragments [Shareable] From Uthel'Nay at the Valley of Spirts in Orgrimmar.
• [47] Vyletongue Corruption [Not Shareable] From Vark Battlescar at Shadowprey Village in Desolace. This quest has been made easier since patch 1.12, so go for it.
• [51]Corruption of Earth and Seed [Shareable][Main Quest] From Selendra south of Shadowprey Village in Desolace.

Both:

• [47] Twisted Evils [Shareable] From Willow in at Kormek's Hut in Desolace (62,39), northeast of the Kodo Graveyard.
• [48] The Pariah's Instructions [Not Shareable] From Centaur Pariah in Desolace. He wanders from (50,86) to (43,84), that's in between the Gelkis Village and Mannorok Coven.

Where is Maraudon?

Before going in:

I'd suggest binding yourself in Desolace. At Nijel's Point for Alliance, at Shadowprey Village for Horde. The only way out of Maraudon when you are deep in is to use hearthstone, mage portal or death. So it's much more convenient to hearthstone to desolace so you can turn in your quests after you are done with Maraudon.

Alliance: From Nijel's Point go southwest until the entrance to the Valley of Spears (40,60), which is located west of the Kodo Graveyard. Go through the valley of spears until (38,57), there stands the gate to Maraudon.

Horde: Go east from Shadowprey Village until (29,74), then go north and through the Valley of Spears until (31,61). There stands the meeting stone and the entrance to Maraudon further up.

Walkthrough

1. The Amulet of Spirits and the 1st Kahn

After entering the gates of Maraudon, go through the first tunnel until you find a centaur with the name "The Nameless Prophet". Kill him and loot the Amulet of Spirits from him. You can find The Nameless Prophet anywhere between the entrance and the fork to the crystal tunnels. As soon as you kill The Nameless Prophet he respawns instantly somewhere else.

Put the Amulet of Spirits on a hotkey.

Then go further in and you'll be at the first fork. To the left you'll see purple crystals, to the right orange crystals, and straight ahead is an arch with 2 centaur statues. Go straight ahead until you find a non agressive centaur named Spirit of Kolk. Use the Amulet of Spirits on him, this will make him agressive, kill him and loot the Gem of the First Kahn.

Note: Behind Kolk is a room with a pedestal. It's on this pedestal that you have to stand and click on your Scepter of Celebras to be teleported to the 2nd half of Maraudon. But you don't have the scepter... yet

2. The Orange crystal path

Go back to the fork and this time go to the tunnel with the orange crystals, in the first cave you'll find a friendly NPC centaur named Cavindra, get the quest [49] Legends of Maraudon from her. It is the quest which allows you to forge the Teleport Scepter I told you about before.

Just a bit further in and around the corner to the left you'll find a red pool, if you want to do the quest [47] Vyletongue Corruption, fill up the Cerulean Vial you should have in your inventory (a black potion looking thingy).

Then from the red pool, if you look in the northeast direction, you'll be facing two ways: one to the right going down, and one to the left going slightly up. Take the left one, and go to the end of it (39,57), you'll find the 3rd Kahn there next to a big crystal. Use the Amulet of Spirits on him, kill him and loot the Gem of the 3rd Kahn. From the big crystal look towards the east and you should see a tunnel. Go through this tunnel you'll find the instance portal quickly, zone in.

Now you should follow the orange path (path 1 on the map)

3. To Noxxion

After zoning in, start clearing your way towards the area where Noxxion is.
It's time for your group to take a decision: Do the quest [47] Vyletongue Corruption or not? It's optional, but this quest has been made much easier since patch 1.12, so you should go for it for some easy extra xp reward.

If your group decided to do the [47] Vyletongue Corruption quest, you should be looking for little plants looking like this:

You just have to stand next to one and right-click your Cerulean Vial. These plants are only found on this side of the instance, from here until the poison falls. Everytime you cleanse a plant, 3 elementals will spawn, they are not elite so it's really easy to deal with them.
Basically you have to find 8 of these red plants and do that 8 times to complete the quest, and the whole group gets a quest update for each plant.

On your way down you'll most likely find the 5th Kahn sooner or later, kill him and loot the Gem of the 5th Kahn.

At some point you'll face the following mobs:

If you don't read the following, your group will be destroyed.

Info: Creeping Sludges come in packs of 2, 3 or 4, they must NOT be melee'd. They pulse a 200 dmg poison area attack every 2 seconds to anyone that is in close to them. So imagine 3 of these in a bunch, pulsing 600 dmg every 6 seconds on all of your melees.

How to: Let your mage or warlock do the initial pull with an AoE (Blizzard, Rain of Fire for exemple). The Creeping sludges walk extremely slow, they can be easily kited. (To kite something means to kill it without ever being in melee range, using ranged attacks). Basically have all your classes with range attacks use them (shaman shocks, hunter bow shots, etc) while running these Creeping Sludges in a large circle. This of course means you'll have to have cleared a rather large space before pulling.

They are actually very easy to kill once your group knows the drill, just don't let them get close to you and fire at will!

Once the creeping sludges are split, your melees can go chase one (only if it's far away enough from the others) and melee it fast, if they get low on health they can move away and wait for a heal.

So that's how you deal with Creeping Sludges

Normally, there is only 4 Creeping sludges on your way to the larva spewer, and you should be able to get them by pairs if you pull smart.

After you got those 4 Creeping Sludges clear, take the tunnel to the left and you should be in the room with the Larva Spewer. Pull the two Barbed Lashers in the way and also wait on the centaur patrol if you didn't catch it yet. (2 elite centaurs, which are humanoids so they can be crowd controlled).

You'll be facing a swarm of non-elite larvas and a Larva Spewer. The Larva Spewer spews an elite larva and keeps respawning it so it's useless to kill the elite larva, just let it wander away. When the elite larva is away, pull the small larvas and AE the hell out of them while one person (a melee preferably) goes to the larva spewer and destroys it. (Takes a click and 5 seconds channeling without being interrupted).
One word about AE though, if you have a mage and if that mage uses his/her AE effects like Arcane Explosion in order to kill the bunch of larvas, the mage will take A LOT of damage. So make it clear with your healer that while the mage is using AE on the larvas he needs to be perma spam healed with fast heals and preferably shielded (with PW:S). This is really essential, your healer must pay full attention, he can't be watching TV and start healing after 30 seconds... the mage will loose health rapidly, so brief your healer well.

Once you got the Larva Spewer destroyed, clear your way down to Noxxion.

Noxxion is the toughest boss of the first half of Maraudon, but he's actually quite easy if you got a sharp mage (or warlock) and a decent healer.
Here's how the fight should go:

• Tank charges Noxxion and everyone starts damaging him
• After about 10 seconds, Noxxion will split into 8 Noxxion Spawns. Your healer (who should be standing back) must shield the mage/warlock immediatly and then focus on healing him. The mage/warlock should immediately start to AE the spawns, the rest of the group must of course help with any ae attack they got.
• Once the spawns are dead, Noxxion will repear, your tank must try to get aggro on it as best as he can, and others should use their long cooldown damage abilities at this point. If your group has sufficient dps, Noxxion will die before he gets to split up a second time. If he does split up again, well don't panic, just repeat what you did before and clear the spawns.

Key to this fight is to make sure your healer is standing away from Noxxion when he splits up, so as to not get the initial swarm of elementals, and the rest of the group must get those spawns dead as fast as possible. AEs are of course the best way.

Noxxion mostly drops nature resist gear, but if you are lucky (15% chance) he can drop this very nice caster wand:

Here is the nature resist gear, for the Ahn'Qiraj lovers:

Most importantly, don't forget to loot the Celebrian Rod from Noxxion. Congratulations, your Scepter of Celebras is 1/3 complete!

4. To Razorlash (Optional)

Don't bother with Razorlash unless you are interested in one of the following drops, it's mostly Nature Resist gear, for those who plan to go to Ahn'Qiraj later on, this should be interesting:

If you decide to skip Razorlash, go to the next paragraph. If you decide to go for Razorlash, there isn't much you need to know besides:

If you encounter pulls consisting of 3 Constrictor Vines and 1 Barbed Lasher, make sure you kill the Barbed lasher first, they are really annoying with their AE knockdown ability.

Besides this, there's no real difficulty going to Razorlash, who's also quite an easy kill. Send tank in, heal tank, dps Razorlash until hit points = 0%. That's it

5. To the Violet Crystal Path

Go backtrack, zone out of the instance, go back to the fork but this time go through the violet crystal tunnel. At the first fork go right, you'll find the other instance portal, don't get in though yet. On the opposite side of the instance portal you'll see a bridge with two blue flames, go over the bridge, after the bridge go left and then a u-turn left again down a small slope which takes you to another bridge (a smaller one). At the other hand of the bridge you'll find a small shrine, and the 2nd Kahn. Kill it and loot the Gem of the 2nd Kahn.

Before you go to the instance portal we passed on the way, kill Shadowshard Smashers or Shadowshard Rumblers (those rock elementals) in the violet crystal cavern until you got 10 Shadowshard Fragments. It's a very quickly done quest as the elementals always drop a fragment, and the whole group can loot it!

When you're done with that, zone in the instance. You should follow the violet path (Path 2 on map)

6. To Lord Vyletongue

The way to Lord Vyletongue shouldn't be a problem. The hardest pulls you'll meet consist of 2 Satyrs (elite) and 4 Imps (non-elite). Let your warrior charge a Satyr and then your casters should go in and AE the imps.

On your way to Lord Vyletongue, you should find the 4th Kahn. Kill it and loot the Gem of the 4th Kahn. Open your inventory and right click one of the gems, they will assemble into the Amulet of Spirit and forge the Amulet of Union. You just completed the quest [48] The Pariah's Instructions (and made some space in your bags by getting rid of the 5 gems).

When you are in front of Lord Vyletongue's building, don't rush in carelessly, there are 2 stealthed satyrs guarding it's entrance, pull them and kill them. Then the only thing you'll be facing will be Lord Vyletongue and his two stealthed guards (those you'll have to fight at the same time as Lord Vyletongue).

Lord Vyletongue is actually a pretty easy fight. If you got a warlock, banish one of the satyrs, kill the other satyr and then kill Lord Vyletongue. If you don't have a warlock, just kill the two stealthed satyrs first and then deal with Lord Vyletongue.

The best way to deal with this battle is to kill the stealthed guards first while your tank is on Lord Vyletongue. Lord Vyletongue actually doesn't hurt that much but is annoying to kill because he teleports about. So save him for last.

Loot the Celebrian Diamond from him, thus making your Scepter of Celebras 2/3rd complete. Lord Vyletongue can also drop some interesting items:

7. Celebras the Cursed

After Lord Vyletongue, keep going until you reach the point marked as "drop off" on the map. You'll have to go through a couple more of those "creeping sludge pulls", but it shouldn't be a problem for your group anymore. If you are lucky on your way to the drop off, you might find Meshlok the Harvester, he is a rare spawn, he looks like a cavern lurker (those ugly treant looking things) and he wanders in the yellow waters before the drop off, as shown on the map. He can drop some good stuff:

Including a decent NR piece:

Sadly he's not there most of the time, but anyway, time to move on.
Go to the "drop off" point and jump down, you might aggro a cavern lurker when jumping down, kill it while staying close to the waterfall. Go west while staying close to the southern wall, you can skip several thrash pulls this way. Keep going until you see Celebras the Cursed.

Celebras the Cursed is guarded by 3 non-elite treants, and during the fight he will attempt to summon more treants. Thankfully Celebras can be interrupted, counterspelled and stunned. So make sure everyone in your group uses their spell interrupting abilities on Celebras so he doesn't get to summon more treants, or you will be swarmed.

No matter what, ignore the treants and just kill Celebras the Cursed as fast as possible, then kill the treants with AEs.

Celebras the Cursed can drop the following items:

Including a nature resist piece:

After Celebras is defeated, he will reappear as a non agressive NPC named Celebras the Redeemed, talk to him, go through his dialogue, take his quest, watch him walk to the altar and forge the Scepter of Celebras, complete the quest and voila!

You now got your Scepter of Celebras, which will allow you in your future Maraudon runs to skip all the previous area and start the instance after Celebras the Cursed!

So now there is about 2-3 hours to go if you want to get all the remaining bosses, including the most important one: Princess Theredras. If your group is still up for 2-3 more hours, go to the next paragraph of the walkthrough. If not, you can get out of maraudon and form another group and directly teleport them to the 2nd half of Maraudon and continue on the next paragraph!

8. Earthsong Falls

This is where you end up after using the Scepter of Celebras from the pedestal behind the 1st Kahn, or after going further past Celebras the Cursed and jumping down the waterfalls. Follow the yellow path from the map for now.

You'll quickly find some Thessaly Hydras roaming around the cavern south of earthsong falls. They hit reasonably hard and have one special ability you must be careful with, they knockback every now and then anyone in too close range. So you want to avoid being knocked back into more of those hydras.
Melees: always fight so your back is facing a wall or a safe place (like the waterfalls from where you arrived).
Casters: Fight at max casting range so as to not get hit by the knockback.
Clear all the Hydras on your way until you reach the tunnel to the south, and make sure you don't skip any of those hydras, because some of them roam up to the tunnel, you don't want them to add on you while you're already dealing with the next pull.

The next pull consists of 3 Subterranean Diemetradons, they are beasts so they can be sheeped or hibernated. Their special ability is an area effect 10 seconds silence. Casters: Stay at max casting range.

Once you've dealth with the 3 Diemetradon, wait for the first patrol of elementals. Elemental patrols are either composed of 2 Theradrim Guardian or 1 Theradrim Guardian and small elementals (non elite). If you got a warlock in the group, they can banish the elementals, making it easier. If not, you must know that when a big elemental dies, it splits in 4 tiny elementals. What my group usually does is kill the two big elementals and then AE the 8 tiny elementals. It works well.

After you've taken care of the 1st rock elemental patrol, go further in and kill the next 3 pulls which consist of diemetradon again, then go up the slope and wait for the 2nd elem patrol, kill it. Now you have a choice, you can either decide to skip Tinkerer Gizlock or not. If you decide to skip Tinkerer Gizlock, go directly to paragraph #10.

9. Tinkerer Gizlock (Optional)

If you want to kill Tinkerer Gizlock (read: if your group is interested in one of his drops), take the tunnel to the north, the one with snake packs called "Deep Borer" and follow the pink path on the map. These snakes are easy, with or without AEs. After the first snake pull you'll be entering a larger room with a ramp going down, try to get the rock patrol out of the way as soon as possible, then work your way down until you end up facing a goblin named Tinkerer Gizlock.

He is an easy fight, just make sure non-melees stay at max range from him, he is a caster and casts some AEs. He doesn't have much HPs for a boss, burn him down quickly. He drops decent items including a very good caster sword:

After that, go backwards and back on the Princess path, until you reach your next choice. Kill Landslide or not? If you decide to skip Landslide, just go to the last paragraph and stay on the princess path (yellow path on map).

10. Landslide

Go further up the 2nd part of the slope (to the south) and wait on the 3rd elemental patrol, dispatch it. Now you should have some big giants in sight, named Primordial Behemoth. Go over the bridge and kill the first one if he is alone, if not wait for the behemoth patrol to wander off, nothing much to say about these giants besides they hit rather hard.
About the Primordial Behemoth patrol, you should lookout for it but this giant walks really slow, so you should see it coming from afar and be able to pull it solo. After having killed the first giant after the bridge, you can decide either to skip Landslide or to go directly for the princess. If you decide to skip Landslide (nobody in your group wants any of his drops), skip the following and go directly to paragraph #11.

If you do want to kill Landslide, follow the green path from the map, work your way up the slope. Your last pull before Landslide will be 2 giants at the same time, I strongly advise that you assign one tank to each giant before engaging (your secondary tank can be a shaman, paladin, druid, or even a warlock/hunter pet, but just make sure the giant won't be on the loose).

After that you'll be facing Landslide, the giant boss. He hits hard, has a lot of HPs, and has two abilities you must know of:

• 1. He knockbacks his main target (the person on top of his aggro list, most likely your tank) far away. So your tank must position himself with his back to a wall, that way he won't get punted far away and lose aggro.
• 2. He does a wide area warstomp, which stuns everyone for a painful 5 seconds. Casters should try to fight Landslide at max range to avoid the stun. Also, make sure to never let your tank go low on health, because if you get stunned at that moment, odds are your tank will die during the 5 sec stun.

Everyone must make sure to control their damage output at the start to let the tank get sufficient time to build a solid aggro. After that they can go all out.

With that in mind, Landslide shouldn't be a problem, and he drops some nice items:

Including this nifty plate helm, which is also good nature resist gear:

11. Princess Theradras and Rotgrip

Go towards Princess Theradras, follow the yellow path. Pull the 4 diemetradons and kill them, then go further in and you'll be entering an open area called "Zaetar's Grave". Wait for the rock elemental patrol and kill it. Then you have to start clearing your way through pairs of giants. You can skip the first 2 behemoths to the left, all the others you will have to kill on your way down the slope leading to Princess Theradras. Shortly you should be facing the charming Princess Theradras. Here is how you kill her:

Abilities:

• Every 20 seconds or so she does a point blank area effect with several waves that knockback anyone in melee range and also damage them.
• Every now and then she will randomly cast fear on people, it can't be dispelled, but undeads can use will of the forsaken, warriors in berserker stance (not recommended if you are tanking though) can use berserker rage. If you got a dwarf priest with you, he can use fear ward on your tank, it works!
• Every now and then she'll throw a rock randomly at a ranged attacker, disrupting their casting.

How to:

• Melee classes are heavily crippled in this battle, she keeps pushing them back and damaging them with her ae, so you should only let pure melee classes (Tank, Rogue) in melee. Paladins or Shamans will be more useful standing back and healing or nuking, unless they are the main tank of your group of course.
• Melees: when she uses her AE knockback waves, don't even try to fight the knockback and stay close to her, just let her push you away and wait till she's done farting before you go in again.
• Casters: stay at long range, you should never get hit by her AE knockback.

Anyway, it is a slow and long fight, probably the hardest battle in Maraudon, but really manageable if you follow the above. Congratulations on killing Princess Theradras and completing the main maraudon quest! The princess also drops nice things, always 2 blue items out of 7, here are some of them:

and the only nature resist item she drops:

After the princess is dead, a ghost centaur named Zaetar's Spirit should appear in the middle of the Princess' lair. Talk to it and get the quest [51] Seed of Life (Dungeon), which you can turn in at Moonglade for extra XP and 1gold 50silver.

Don't go yet, there is still one boss to get, and it's very close. Buff everyone with underwater breathing if you got a warlock in your group, if you don't it's ok, it will just be less comfortable.

Go to the northern waterfall directly next to the princess lair, look down from there before you jump, make sure you don't see a huge crocodile named Rotgrip swimming there before you jump. If the croco is not around, have your whole group jump down there and stay close to the waterfall. Wait for Rotgrip to come close and pull it to this corner. He is an easy fight, he just hits hard and is underwater, no difficulty besides this. Rotgrip is worth killing because he can drop:

and these nature resist boots:

That was all the bosses! Congratulations on clearing Maraudon completely. The only way out is to use Hearthstone or ask a mage for a portal, or to suicide! I hope you enjoyed this guide and the maraudon instance

Note: For the AQ20 / AQ40 nature resist gear farmers, when you go as deep as Landslide or Princess Theradras, the fastest way to go out and reset the instance is definitely to:

1. Go naked
2. Suicide
3. Run back in as ghost and zone out, reset the instance

Voila!

-Jame

© Copyrights www.wow-pro.com All Rights Reserved

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Jame's Scholomance Guide

Scholomance Guide

Introduction

Scholomance is one of the most difficult high level instances, made for a Solid 5-man party. It is a masterpiece of instance design, the quests have solid lore, and progressing through them while you explore the zone is a real challenge, and can be very fun and rewarding (even though some of the items could use a buff). It can be as well extremely frustrating if you don't know how to take on this dungeon, but with this guide in your hands, you will have no excuse. Read this guide completely, while taking a look at the map to get a general idea of the way to go. When you feel ready enough, gather the quests, form a group, and try your luck.

Where

The entrance to Scholomance is in Western Plaguelands, on that big island in the Southeastern part of the zone. You can't miss it.
If you hear invisible ghosts talking on the island, don't think you are going insane, they are part of the serie of quests involving Scholomance, and you will hear more about this later in this guide.

Key

There is two ways to get in Scholomance:

• A Rogue with maxed picklock skill.
• Do the following quests to get the key: Horde: Get the quests from High Executor Derrington, at the Bulwark, in Tirisfal Glades. Complete the Scourge Cauldron series of quest and also All Along the Watchtowers. He will eventually unlock the key quest then: Scholomance, and send you to Apothecary Dithers, who will give you the Skeletal Fragments quest. Follow this easy serie of quests and you will be sent to Gadgetzan, Ungoro Crater, where you will have to complete a few steps, and then back to Apothecary Dithers who will give you the quest [60]Araj's Scarab (Elite). You will need a good full group for this one, you will have to spawn the Lich Araj in Andorhal, and to defeat him and loot his scarab. After this setp is completed, go back to dithers, you will be rewarded with your key to Scholomance.
  Alliance: The alliance quest is a mirror from the Horde one. The alliance got exactly the same set of NPCs in Alterac Mountains, at the border of Western Plaguelands, they got their equivalent of the Horde's Bulwark. Finish the quests given by Commander Ashlam Valorfist until he gives the Scholomance quest.
  

Quest Gathering

During your first Scholomance runs, you will only need the three following quests, very quick and easy to get:

• Barov Family Fortune Horde: Alexi Barov, at the Bulwark.
  Alliance: Weldon Barov, at the Chillwind Point.

  The goal of this quest is to gather Four Deeds, scattered within the instance. The Follow up is a PvP quest. More about this later.

• Plagued Hatchlings Both Alliance and Horde can get this quest at the Light's Hope chapel - Eastern Plaguelands, the npc who gives it is Betina Bigglezink.

  Self-Explanatory quest, will give location of those Hatchlings later on in the guide. Once you complete this quest, if you go back to Scholomance and kill Plagued Hatchlings, they might drop a 'Healthy Dragon Scale', which starts another quest. The only reward seems to be a faction hit, and it is repeatable.

• Doctor Theolen Krastinov, the Butcher Both Alliance and Horde as well. This quest is given by Eva Sarkhoff, a NPC standing still right next to the entrance of Scholomance. She does not have an exclamation mark over the head, you need to talk to her and listen to her (creepy) story to get the quest.

  More informations on The Butcher's location later on.
  

Group Composition

I'm not gonna lie to you, if you want to be able to clear Scholomance with a 5-man party, your group composition will have strict requirements. At times it will be nearly impossible to go further if you don't have the right classes set with you.

• 1: Warrior or Protection/Retribution Paladin
• 2: Priest - As much as I am a firm believer that druids can perform the job of a healer as well as Priests when played with skill, in this instance you will need a Priest, for one simple reason: Shackle Undead (Makes an undead target unable to move or to act for 50 seconds, hitting the shackled target breaks it free) There will be a few cases in the instance where you will totally rely on that spell, or hell will break loose.
  
• 3: Mage - Not as required as the priest here, but I highly recommend having one. Actually, if you don't have a Druid in spot 4 or 5 of your group, mage becomes obligatory, or you won't be able to kill a certain mob.. why? because of one spell: Remove Curse. On top of that, Polymorph and Counterspell will help greatly at times.
• 4: You need a secondary tank (or 'OFF-Tank') for a few cases, your choices are : Warlock (Voidwalker), Shaman, Paladin, Hunter (pet tanking), and Druid (Bear form). Those choices are all very viable, it's up to you.
• 5: Take any class you want, preferably high DPS.

Entering Scholomance

The real guide starts here, be mindful that I am assuming you have a warrior, a priest, and either mage or druid with you. If you don't, you will have to find your own way to deal with a few pulls and bosses.

The Entrance:

Marked on the map with an 'E', you face a bridge with railings on each side. You can jump down later on by the sides, when the room below has been cleared (and when you have the Key to the Viewing Room), it's a nice shortcut to use if you wipe post-viewing room. For now, do not jump down or you are in for a corpse run.

Facing you are 4 Risen Guards - Undeads. Nothing special about them, you can pull them by Pairs, if you shoot the ones at the sides. Easy pull, shackle one, kill the other. Rinse and repeat.

1st room: The Reliquary

Now things get more serious, the party must remain on this bridge and the next room must be pulled to them. ''But, but... I like running around curiously and rushing into mob packs headlong, that's my way of the ninja '' - I hear you cry. But there are a few things you must know about Scholomance:

• Almost every single room has Patrols, on a fast (10min?) respawn timer.
• Many mobs cast fear, and you end up very often running into adds and wiping your group.

The following room, named ''The Reliquary'' isn't easy, it has both: A lot of patrols, and lots of mobs able to cast fear. On top of that, you will need to clear a major part of it, because it has the first Deed you need: The Deed to Southshore.

How to do it: The Warrior goes through the door alone, and pulls very carefully, tries to get patrols first, and then pulls group of mobs one by one. Head left at the stairway, clear the gate down the stairs, this is where you will go after you got the deed. Check where the deed is exactly on the map, and pull towards it. Yes, Pull, back to the stairs and up toward the entrance bridge, where your group is. Do not hesitate to overclear the room to be sure nothing will aggro your team when they go for the Deed. Don't get discouraged if Patrols respawn while you are still clearing towards the deed, be patient and kill the patrols again, don't haste it or you will wipe. Most mobs in this room are Humanoid spellcasters, sap, polymorph, mind control, use them if you got them.
A few skeleton guards as well.

Note: The special feature of this room is that it has 'reserve' patrols. Sationed under the stairs in the Reliquary, when you kill the first patrols, those will walk and replace the patrols you just killed. So, do not get scared ''Omfg fast repop'', it's a feature of this room. Be patient.

If you managed the above you should have the Deed to Southshore in your possession and the way clear to the door that is down the stairs to the left. Move your group there, into that little room. 2 risen guards are awaiting you infront of the gate of the next room. You know how to deal with those. The room beyond the gate you just cleared is the ''Chamber of Summoning'', yet another tricky room.

The Chamber of Summoning:

• 6 camps of mobs in this room, each time 1 Summoner and 2 Necromancers.
• 3 undead solo mob patrols. Can be all solo pulled if careful enough.

You must clear the whole right side of the next room, so this is only 3 camps of mobs and a few patrols.

You must NOT rush into the camps of mobs, even if patrols are cleared. If you do, there is a very high chance that you will aggro one of the other camps (because of fear, and mobs running away). Pull everything into this little room you just cleared. This is not as easy as it sounds though, because those Scholomance Dark Summoners are nasty, when pulled, they stand where they are and start chain summoning skeletons, you end up swarmed very quickly.

How to:

If you got a mage - Have him sheep one of the necromancer and then Counsterspell the summoner right after. it will come to your group, and he must be killed as fast as possible. If it still manages to summon skellies and you see their number rise above 4, it's time to use AEs (Area of Effect attacks, such as Mage's Arcane Explosion or Warlock's Hellfire). They have low hit points.

If you don't have a mage - Have the priest use mind control on the Summoner and walk him into the room safely. When Mind control breaks, switch immediatly to the Summoner and kill him.

Another working tactic is to send the warrior shield bash - silence the summoner and babysit him back to the room. This is not as good as the above two, but it still works.

Pull the first 2 camps on the right that way. As soon as the 2nd camp is cleared, call the move, tell everyone to HUG the right wall and to set camp into the little room to the side, this is the room marked as ''Kirtonos the Herald'' on the map. It is safe, and you are not at the point int he quest line where you can summon Kirtonos. Why move there to pull the 3rd group? Two reasons - It would be a long pull, long enough for Counsterspell to fade before the summoner is in the room. The other reason is that you don't want the Patrols of the reliquary to catch up on you. Because they do patrol very near the gate of that little room you set in.

Pull the last group of mobs from the right side to this new room, in the same fashion you pulled the previous 2. If patrols respawns, pull them first, and proceed. It is up to you to clear the last 3 camps of Summoner/Necros, but they can be skipped by walking close to the right wall.

Stay in this room for the first pulls of the next big room, which we will name 'the Fork' (it has access to Jandice Barov area, also to the Key dropper: Rattlegore, and most importantly to the room below the entrance bridge, which connects to the Viewing Room).

The Fork:

Send your warrior to peek inside the next room, very carefully, have him pull the first pack of mobs that is directly to the right when entering the Fork room. Once that is done, you may move everyone inside this next room, to the right, this is your new pull spot.

This room has a few patrols and various camps of mobs, but it's not nearly as annoying as what you experienced so far. If you got there without wiping yet, you did a very good job.

How to: Proceed to clear methodically the next room, patrols can be solo pulled, nothing special about it besides a new type of Undead, frozen shade looking type of mob, Spectral Tutors, they are annoying because they split into illusions and take a bit long to kill. So, shackle them and kill them last if you can. Rest are humanoid casters, you know how to work on those.
At the opposite end of this room is the Deed to Tarren Mill. (check map for accurate loc)
And 3 different paths to choose, the one to the right is down to the basement, where Jandice Barov resides. You are not there yet in the quest line, don't bother. The gate to the left is connected to the room that is below the entrance bridge, and is also the only way to get into the Viewing Room, (where the loot awaits!) but you need a key to get in there, picklock doesn't work.
So your interest resides in the front gate, which opens the path to the Great Ossuary. -Warning- , do not even take a peek inside, dont get too close to that gate until the whole group is warned and ready about what's coming up.

The Great Ossuary:

This room contains a bunch of those Plagued Drakelings that you are supposed to kill for a quest, the bad news is, you will get to kill more than 20 of those, and they are nasty

Each bunch of drakelings is connected to a creature handler (humanoid).
The drakelings aren't elite, but got quite a lot of HP for non elite, and hit fairly hard. On top of that, they have some kind of knockback ability.

The best way to do them seem to be AE'ing, but the problem is, they are ranged attackers, and will just stand back spitting at you forever.

Solution: Set up your group in the corner of the room where the Deed of tarren mill was, and when pulling them, run back there and hide against the wall. If they don't have a LoS (Line of Sight) on you, they will end up gathering infront of you, and this is when you unleash the AEs.

Be extremely cautious when pulling them though, look at the Creature Handlers precisely, and shoot them when they are as far as possible from the next creature handler. If you get two packs of those at the same time, I highly doubt you will survive it. Keep the Dragon handlers stunned and shield bashed as much as possible, they cast nasty AEs.

Anyway, if you manage to clear this room full of drakelings, you will have a path clear to Rattlegore, guardian of the Key to the viewing room (see map for path). You can breathe a few seconds in the great ossuary, as there is no patrols in this room, for a change.

Meet Rattlegore:

I didn't draw the Room where Rattlegore resides because it's simply useless, there's only one way, you can't miss it. On the way down to the Key Master's chamber, you will meet a very friendly new type of mob - The Risen Construct.

Be warned - They hit super hard for common mobs. You kinda want to deal with one at a time. They can be shackled though, so pulling two is still manageable if you have a priest.

After killing 2 or 3 of those on your way down a couple flight of stairs, you will finally reach the room where Rattlegore is.

Bad news: Rattlegore is surrounded by 20 more of those Risen Constructs.
Good news: They can all be single pulled, with love and care. And You don't need to clear all of them, because Rattlegore doesn't call for help (Thank god). So just clear as many as needed to be sure you can get a clean pull on Rattlegore.
However, there is one of those Risen constructs who seems to never get away enough from Rattlegore, kinda acting like a guard. If have tried many times to split them, unsucessfully so far. Please let me know if you manage it -

This isn't a big problem though, shackle the construct and kill rattlegore. The fight is a fair challenge, as rattlegore enjoys tossing the tank into the air and wiping his aggro list in the process. On the other hand, he is not immune to stuns, so use them as much as you can. Keep the add shackled and you should be fine.

Rattlegore drops nothing of value besides the 'Key to the Viewing Room'. Which is a one time use key, so no need to fight over who gets it. It opens the door to the Viewing room (duh), and then the door remains opened, until you reset the instance.

You just accomplished the most annoying part of the instance, now is the time to get some reward for it, but do not start slacking off, you are still fighting against the clock. (You always are in this instance).
Go back to the great ossuary and from there pull your way towards the room on your right, in other words, the room below the entrance bridge. it has a mix of Undead mobs, elites and non elites, roaming aimlessly, most pull should be less than 2 elites 2 non elites. There is one real threat in this room, the Diseased Ghouls.

Diseased Ghouls:

The diseased ghouls, upon death, spread a disease cloud around their bodies. This cloud is the most harmful DOT type spell you have ever seen. Every tick is 600-700 damage, and it happens every seconds... as long as you stand in the disease cloud. So two things to keep in mind when you get those ghouls on a pull. Shackle them, keep them until they are the last mob you have to deal with. Before they die, have your warrior move them into a corner, and fight them at his max melee range, as soon as they drop dead, the warrior will have to back off as fast as possible. The warrior can also use concussion blow (5sec stun) when the ghoul is really low on Health, and back off before it dies while the casters / ranged attackers finish it off quickly. Without knowing beforehand, it can result in half your group (the ones meleeing) dying in 5 seconds and going 'wtf?', I say this from personal experience

Once the next room is cleared, move in. You are now much safer than you ever were so far, and you can even afford a full wipe and still get back on your feet. If wipe occurs, you can run back and jump off the bridge and land in this room, which is on a long respawn timer (2 hours I believe)

Two doors in this room: One is to the viewing room (marked as ' V ' ont he map). And one to the right: this gate you can't open yet, it opens access to a special treasure chest (like Chest of the Seven in BRD). To open this chest, you must activate a switch in the basement, right next to where Jandice Barov is. Don't bother with it now, you have much better to do. Open the Door to the Viewing Room and enter it, it is safe.

The Viewing Room:

The viewing room is filled with non-aggressive NPCs, two of them are nameds. Vectus and Marduk Blackpool. You can talk to every NPCs in this room, none of them will attack you. If you want to clear this room and kill the two nameds, you have to complete the Dawn's Gambit quest, which takes you through a long serie of quest, starting in the Burning steppes with Tinkee Steamboil. The first quest of the serie is Broodling Essence, after a few steps (and a trip to winterspring), you will have to go to Upper BlackRock spire twice, at the dragon egg hatchery, and then after a few more steps, you will finally be rewarded with a Box, the Dawn's Gambit. When opening that box in the Viewing room, the students are turned into skeletons and killable quickly with a few AEs, then you have to deal with the two nameds, Vectus and Marduk Blackpool, which can drop blue items. (very low drop rates though)

Vectus:

Marduk Blackpool:

However, the quest rewards for killing Vectus and Marduk are decent, even though they could in my opinion use a little boost, considering how long the quest is, and how hard it is already to get to the viewing room, anyway, here they are:

Anyway, that's not what we are here for mainly, the best part of the instance is next door, so on to the good stuff, the Six Chambers and Darkmaster Gandling.

So there you are in the Viewing Room, with two choices - Go south and down to the Laboratory of Ras Frostwhisper, or go east, to the Six chambers.

If this is your first time here, I would suggest going south (opposite door when entering viewing room), to Ras Frostwhisper. Because he is easier, takes much less time than the 6 chambers, and also because this is where you get the Deed to brill.

Ras Frostwhisper

You should have no problem pulling his room. It contains a few Skeleton guard patrols, and a few camps of mobs, made of 1 undead and 2 humanoid casters mostly. Nothing special about them, just pull them carefully. Ras Frostwhisper is in the back of the room, next to a big desk (or alchemy lab?), and he walks all around it. There are two guards behind this desk, but you can pull Ras solo when he is infront of it. Pull him way back from those 2 guards though, because Ras Frostwhisper, has the whole spellcaster arsenal to his disposal, including Fear.
He nukes hard and does AE damage. You can drain his mana down if you can afford it, but it's not even necessary, as he will probably die before you get him out of mana. He has an annoying knockback / Stun ability and he goes for a new target when he does that. That's the biggest annoyance about him since a warrior will always have to run back and taunt him every time this happens.

Once he is defeated, don't forget to go and loot the Deed to Brill (check map for location). One more Deed to go!

Ras Frostwhisper always drops a Blue item, as far as I know, from the following list:

And very rarely (~5% chance), he can drop the following Alchemy reciepe:

To craft this flask you need an Alchemy Lab nearby, so it seems the ''Desk'' Ras Frostwhisper wanders about is actually the Alchemy Lab you need to produce flasks. I'm not 100% sure about this, since I have never seen the Reciepe drop myself, but it seems logical.

Anyway, go back to the viewing room and go through the other door, you are finally gonna get rewarded for your efforts.

The Six Chambers and Darkmaster Gangling:

Shortly put, there is 6 chambers: 3 on the Upper floor, 3 on the Lower Floor. In each of those chambers is a named and bunch of mobs guarding it. Each named randomly drops a piece of Armor Set, out of those four:

• Necropile Raiments - 5 pieces (cloth)
• Cadaverous Garb - 5 pieces (leather)
• Bloodmail Regalia - 5 pieces (mail)
• Deathbone Guardian - 5 pieces (plate)

The stats are too low on most pieces of this armor set, in my opinion, some green items you can buy at the Auction House have better stats. So, they could use a little boost. However, the full set bonuses are nice to have. And one cannot be picky when you have the opportunity to kill 5 nameds dropping those items in such a short span. On top of that, they aren't that hard to kill. It's the 'getting to them' part that is hard.

1 of those 6 nameds doesn't share this loot table though, he drops nothing, his name is The Lorekeeper. But you still need to kill him if you want Darkmaster Gandling to appear.

So, let's start killing them already?

It doesn't matter which room you start with. But I will start with the lower rooms, just because it's in my habits when I got with my team to Scholomance.

Warning: In some of the rooms, you can skip a few monsters and pull the named without aggroing them. But don't do that, you must clear everything. You will see later why, when facing Darkmaster Gandling.

The Vault of Ravenian:

Down the stairs, this is the room to the right. The boss of this room is named The Ravenian. There is nothing special about that room, the pulls are pretty standard, so is the named. You shouldn't have any problems if you managed to go this far. On to the next room, the middle one, facing the stairs.

The Barov Family Vault:

This room has only one type of mob, Risen Guard (undead). Most pulls will be single or pairs if you do it carefully. Then you will be left with 3 Mobs, in the back of the room. Lord Alexi Barov, and 2 Risen Guards.
This is yet another moment where the group composition pays off. How to deal with a named and two lvl 60ish elite skeletons?

1st skeleton: Shackled.
2nd skeleton: Offtanked (remember I said you would need one.)
Paladin, Druid, Shaman, VoidWalker, Hunter pet, they all can do the job, and they must try to keep themselves healed up without relying on the priest, who will be very busy shackling the other add and healing the warrior
Lord Alexi barov: Tanked in a corner by the warrior.

Why in a corner? Because Lord Alexi Barov has an aura, with quite a range, and this aura deals about 100+ dmg every tick to anyone close enough. So everybody besides the warrior (including the offtank), must be far away enough from Lord Alexi barov, or your whole group will take so much damage that mana will be an issue too soon. Of course, if you have a rogue in the group, he won't have a choice and will have to take the Aura damage. Since Lord Alexi Barov is your primary target. He must die first, and as fast as possible.

The most dangerous thing with this encounter is that Lord Barov also casts a curse every now and then. This curse reduces healing effects by 70%... Needless to say a Warrior dies quickly if this isn't cured fast.

So make sure you assign the job to the mage or the druid beforehand. (if the druid is already on offtanking duty, have the mage do it)

If everybody follows this plan and doesn't do any major mistake, you will make it.

Here is an alternative way of fighting Alexi Barov, submitted by "Archimage":

Use whichever strategy you prefer. What counts is that you end up killing this Barov dude!

You made it? Congratulations. Don't forget to loot the Deed to Caer Darrow before moving on to the next room. (the one on the left when coming from the stairs.)

The Shadow Vault:

Not going into details on how to clear this room, nothing special about it. The boss is Lady Illucia Barov, she is a spellcaster, and can fear, silence, charm. But besides all that, she isn't all that hard. Kill her and move back upstairs, you still have 3 rooms to clear, and let's start with the one to the right (south on the map).

The Coven:

This room is a mix of humanoid spellcasters and skeletons. Everything is standard in matter of pulling / fighting. Just one little surprise is the curses they cast. One is a corpse explosion curse, which hurts badly, and one is a Timebomb curse, which does 2000 dmg to you if you don't remove the curse before it expires.

You will then be left with the named, Instructor Malicia, and a Humanoid spellcaster who seems to be her guard. So sheep the guard, or sap it, or mind control it, or succubus seduce it. It's up to you. Instructor Malicia is easy, just keep an eye on the curses though.

Let's pick the middle room next, where you will complete the third quest.

The Hall of the Damned:

This is where Doctor Theolen Krastinov, the Butcher, resides. The denizens of this room are a mix of Diseased ghouls (you know how to deal with those), and some weird non-elite skeletons, who happen to be Immune to everything besides melee damage and Holy spells (such as smite).

You will fight The Butcher solo, and you shouldn't have much troubles. He hits reasonably hard and doesn't do anything special besides a stun/knockback ability that wipes the target from his aggro list.

Once he is dead, look to each sides of the room, you will see piles of flesh. These are the remains of Eva Sarkhoff and her husband. Get rid of them and you will complete the quest.

On to the last room...

The Hall of Secrets:

The Hall of secrets is filled by huge load of zombies, the Slow walking type of zombies. They are non elite but still have a fair amount of HPs. They don't hit hard at all, but they often proc a disease which Hurts like hell. So be very quick on removing those.

There is several ways to do it:

1. You can simply do a simple AE style pull. Keep the mage/warlock alive, and be very quick to remove the diseases. However, sometimes the pulls can be very heavy in this room, we are talking about 10+ mobs. And there is a safer way...

2. Set up your group down the stairs, and have a warlock or mage pull. When the zombies get close to the doorway, have him cast an AE on them. Then he will walk those cute zombies all around the room of the Upper floor, while shooting AEs at them everytime he gets the chance. Your warrior goes upstairs and taunt the zombies one by one and brings them down to the group where they will be quickly dealt with. It takes a longer time than the first method, but it's safer.

After a few of those 'fun' pulls, you will be left with the boss of this room - The Lorekeeper. He's kinda weak and doesn't drop anything of value. Go in his room and kill him.

Once he dies, you will hear Darkmaster Gandling shout. That means he just appeared down the stairs, in the middle of the 6 chambers.

Darkmaster Gandling:

Before you engage this fight, take a few minutes to explain your whole group what is gonna happen. Because believe me, it can be quite surprising the first time

Darkmaster Gandling is the caster type, he has abilities such as Shadowbolt Volleys and other annoying spells, curses namely. But this is nothing compared to his main ability: He banishes a target every now and then to one of the six rooms (the ones you just cleared entirely, right?).
When you appear in said room, the door is locked, and three lvl 60 Risen Guards block the way to you. Omgomg you are fucked!
Or not, they are level 60 and look like the usual risen guards, but they hit for 20-40 dmg and have low hit points. Kill them as fast as you can, it will open the door and allow you to jump back in the fight.

Now the key to defeat this encounter is only speed execution. You must be fast, everybody must do as fast as possible when it comes to getting out of the rooms and also getting Darkmaster Gandling's health down to Zero. Manaburning him helps a lot when you finally get him out of mana, he doesn't hurt much without his spells.

If you happen to wipe against him (or with anything past the viewing room actually), keep in mind that you can ghost run back to the instance and jump off the bridge at the entrance, you will be back into the viewing room immediatly. Be careful are there might be a patrol in the corridors between the viewing room and the other rooms.

If you manage to kill him, you will be pleased to find he has very decent loot, and that he drops more than one blue loot usually, namely, he drops the Head piece for each classes Blue Armor set (8 pieces to gather, scattered through Blackrock Spires, Stratholme and Scholomance):

and various other items:

Now would be a good time for you and your group to Hearthstone and to turn in your quests, you need the follow ups.

The Plagued Hatchlings has no follow up quest, sadly.
Doctor Theolen Krastinov, the Butcher has one on the other hand. Eva Sarkhoff sends you back into Scholomance, this time to the basements, where Jandice Barov awaits you.
Barov Family Fortune has a follow up quest as well, which is a PvP quest.

So get some rest before your next Scholomance run, you still have a lot to do.

The Second Run

So you are ready for the 2nd round?

Where to Start:

Get the follow up quest from your local Barov brother (Alexi Barov at the Bulwark for Horde // Weldon Barov at Chillwind point for Alliance).

The objective of the quest is to assassinate the brother of the opposite faction. Thos NPCs are PvP flagged, so you might encounter some problems when killing them, if any players of the opposing factions are near.

Alexi/Weldon Barov are lvl 60 Elite. They are standard melee mobs with a high dmg output and can take a decent beating as well. Go there with full, well balanced group at least. When you engage him he yells for help, the whole zone hears him, so you need to make a quick deal of him, before any enemy player joins up. Actually it would be best you go there with your full party, so everyone can loot the head. Mind you, the Barov brothers are on a very long respawn timer (few hours).

Bring the head to your local Barov brother and get this cool trinket reward:

You can summon those 3 level 60 servants, every 10 minute. They fight for you during 15 seconds. It can be quite usefull sometimes, they are a nice decoy

So now you are left with one quest, Krastinov's Bag of Horrors, the follow up of The Butcher quest, given to you by Eva Sarkhoff. It's time for you to gather a group again and to venture into Scholomance. This time your primary target will be a new creature: Jandice Barov.

You already know your way through Scholomance until that room we named 'The Fork'. So go there, and this time, turn right at the end of the room, and then head down to the area where you will meet Jandice Barov (shown on map).

Jandice Barov:

Welcome to the Sunken catacombs, this room is one of the hardest to go through in Scholomance. So arm yourself with patience.
It is a big room, with 3 walls in the middle. It is up to you to choose to go left or right. But it has to be either, you better not try going there through the middle, or you will have to deal with much more mobs.
3 type of mobs roam aimlessly in this room:

• Diseased Ghouls, remember those?
• The slow walking zombies you fought in one of the 6 chambers. Non Elite, hit fairly low, but their disease hurts like hell. Cure it fast. Or even better, have your mage, shaman or warlock kite solo-kite them. So nobody gets hurt. They must just be careful to not aggro more mobs while kiting.
• The non-elite skeletons that are Immune to all besides melee and holy. You fought those already, in the 6-chambers.

How to deal with this room:

1. Pull very carefully, this room is quite packed, if you do well you should have only 1 elite per pull + a few non-elites. Some of the mobs run around a high speed, so study the room well before you pull.
2. Shackle the ghouls, deal with the non-elites, have your melees kill the skeletons, let your casters kite the slow walking zombies.
3. The room is on a reasonably fast respawn, so you have to clear fast and move up along the wall (right or left, you decide) everytime you can. Right seems to work, I always cleared to the right and it worked. So go right if you aren't sure!

Jandice Barov awaits you at the opposite side of the room, and if you manage to reach her, you did 90% of the job. She isn't very hard, has a special 'copy image' ability, which basically summons a bunch of illusions of Jandice. They are on a 10-15 seconds timer and have 3100 HP. I wouldn't bother killing them. Tab-target through them until you find the real Jandice (the only one which doesn't have "illusion" written in its name) and just keep on attacking her.

She will drop the quest item, plus 1 or 2 green items, and sometimes one of the following blue items, including the Warlock's Armor Set shoulder slot:

Before going anywhere, look around, right next to where you killed Jandice should be a torch. It is actually the Switch to the litttle gate in the room connecting to the Viewing room, clicking it will grant you access to the special chest. Which contains 2 green items. It's no big deal, but it's on your way to Viewing room, so it's all extra.

Whenever you get the chance, zone out of the instance and turn in the quest to Eva Sarkhoff, get the follow up:

Kirtonos the Herald:

Fight your way to the Summoning room, and this time I recommend clearing it entirely. When that is done, go to the porch and use the Blood of Innocents on the brazier. It will summon Kirtonos the Herald, a gargoyle looking fiend who will come flying your way. Then land and change to his human form, punish him for the thousands of lives he has taken. He is totally doable for a group of your caliber.

He drops 1 or 2 blue item every time, and its mostly good stuff (including warrior armor set boots) :

Go back to Eva Sarkhoff when you can, and finish the quest.
Note: Before you ask, yes you can summon Kirtonos the Herald again even if you finish the quest. Blizzard patched this, and now if you want to summon Kirtonos again after completing the quest, you have to go get the Blood of Innocents from Doctor Theolen Krastinov (in the 6 chambers).

The reward for the quest Kirtonos the Herald is at first glance, well, weird:

But this turns out to be a valuable reward. When equipped, you can now see every ghost populating the island of Scholomance.

Most importantly two of them:

• 1. Magnus Frostwake, sells various rare blacksmith and alchemy reciepes (major mana potion, transmute water to air)
• 2. Magistrate Marduke, gives you the last serie of quest... with at the end the biggest quest reward of all Scholomance quests. It's worth it, to say the least.

The Human Ras Frostwhisper (Elite):

Travel to Stromgarde Keep, in the Arathi Highlands, and search for an item that belonged to Ras Frostwhisper before he became a lich. The item you must find is Keepsake of rememberance.

The item you look for is a book, you ll find it on the floor in various places in Stromgarde keep. People have reported that they found it on top of the Tower in the ogre area, or in the chimney of a destroyed house in ogre area, or in a chimney of an inn in the syndicate area, there was reports of more books found at other places in stromgarde keep.
(I found my keepsake on top of the ogre tower, so I can confirm that one 100%.)

Back to Magistrake Marduke, who sends you to Leonid Barthalomew the Revered, at the Light's hope chapel (eastern plaguelands). Leonid tells you that to turn the Keepsake into a Soulbound Keepsake, you need to go to the place where Ras Frostwhisper died.
This is where things get ugly. Ras Frostwhisper died in Stratholme, in the room where resides Baron Rivendare. You have to go there and place the Keepsake on a pentagram in the Baron's chamber.

Note: I will write a 5-man Stratholme guide as soon as possible, which means, as soon as Blizzard fixes all the bugs in this zone. Until then, I suggest you try to organize or to join a Startholme raid. It's not very hard with 2 groups or more.

If you get to Baron Rivendare's room and place the keepsake on the pentagram on the floor, you will get a ''Soulbound Keepsake''. Go back to Leonid who will send you back to Magistrate Marduke, who will give you the last quest:

The Lich, Ras Frostwhisper (Elite)

Go back into Scholomance, to Ras Frostwhisper's room. (you know the way). Use the Soulbound Keepsake on him, which will turn him in his human form.
Be careful though, the transformation takes 10 seconds to channel, so if your tank is the one with the Soulbound Keepsake, he won't be able to tank Ras for the first 10 seconds of the fight, so have your backup tank (shaman, paladin, druid, voidwalker) tank Ras while the transformation is being done.
Kill him (he's the same as in Lich form), and loot his head.
Bring his head back to Magistrate Marduke, and you will get this reward:

And to choose between one of those items:

That is all, now that you know all the secrets of Scholomance, I leave the rest up to you. This place is great, just a few items need to be upgraded and it will be a perfect instance for your party. Not to mention you raise your Argent Dawn faction there, and get a ton of Scourgestones. One more reason to go back there and to do this instance a dozen of times. So, have fun

I hope you enjoyed this guide, feel free to do any suggestions and to point out anything I might have missed, thanks.

-Jame

Copyrights WoW-Pro

Jame's Stratholme Guide

Stratholme Guide

Introduction

Stratholme is one of the hardest instances designed for a single group, if not, the hardest instance. It is also the most rewarding in terms of loot (you can get your class set Leggins with a single group). Some of the quest lines yield amazing rewards too. Stratholme is divided into two part, The undead side and the Live side (full of fanatics from the Scarlet crusade). So I will be dividing this walkthrough into 2 parts, starting with the live side, since this is where you should start anyway if you follow the quest progression of Stratholme.

Quests

Both:

Quests marked in Orange are the quests you should have before entering Stratholme the first time.

• [61] The Great Fras Siabi (Dungeon), given by Smokey LaRue at the Light's Hope Chapel (Eastern Plaguelands) It will be described later on in the walkthrough.

• [61] Houses of the Holy (Dungeon), given by Leonid Barthalomew the Revered at the Light's Hope Chapel (Eastern Plaguelands). You will find the Holy Water in supply crates in stratholme. They are scattered everywhere on the floor inside Stratholme, be warned though, most of the crates are traps (spawns a dozen of maggots, rats, etc... easily killed with a couple of AEs though)

• [61] The Flesh Does Not Lie (Dungeon), given by Betina Bigglezink Light's Hope Chapel (Eastern Plaguelands). The Plagued Flesh samples can be found on any ghoul type of mobs, also can be found on Scarab types, on Abominations and on some nameds. The follow up for this quest is:

• -- [61] The Active Agent (Dungeon), given by Betina Bigglezink Light's Hope Chapel (Eastern Plaguelands), after completing the quest above. The Scourge Data can be found in a little box, in one of the three Ziggurats in the Gauntlet area (Undead side), this will be described later on in the guide.

• [61] The Restless Souls (Dungeon), given by Egan, you can find Egan in the last house west of the Plaguewoods (Eastern Plaguelands). But first you have to get the initial quest from Caretaker Alen, who is located just a bit south of the Light's hope chapel. After getting the quest, you will be sent to talk to, and you will get a Gun, Egan's Blaster. In Stratholme, you will find non-agressive NPCs named ''Ghostly Citizen''. Blast them away with the gun, and they will split into multiple Restless Souls, blast those souls away one by one to free them.

• [60] Of love and family (Dungeon),, this quest is obtained after doing all the quests given by Tirion Fordring. You can find Tirion Fordring in Western Plaguelands, follow the Thondoril River north (close to the bridge to Eastern Plaguelands), he is standing infront of a little house east of the river. Do all the quests he gives you, then he will talk to you, go through the dialog and then he will give you [57] Of lost Forgotten Memories, then [58] Of Lost Honor, and then finally [60] Of Love and Family (Dungeon). The painting you have to find is located at the end of the Scarlet area inside Stratholme, in the room for the Archivist. It will be described later in the walkthrough. After this quest is complete you will have a final step to perform, which you can do solo. Then you will get the final rewards of that long serie of quest, they are really amazing.

• [61] The Archivist (Dungeon), Main quest line and most important one in stratholme. Given by Duke Nicholas ZverenHoff at the Light's Hope Chapel (Eastern Plaguelands). It will be described in details in the walkthrough. This quest has a follow up:

• -- [62] The Truth Comes Crashing Down, after you have completed The Archivist, if you go back to the Scarlet bastion and defeat the last boss there again (Balnazzar), he will drop a head. The Head of Balnazzar starts this quest. You will go talk to Duke Nicholas Zverenhoff again, and he will give you the last follow up quest:

• --- [62] Above and Beyond (Dungeon), your goal will be to kill Baron Rivendare himself, at the end of the Undead side. It will be your hardest fight, and the rewards will be great. After you got the Head of Baron Rivendare, go back to Duke Nicholas ZverenHoff, complete the quest, he will then send you to the commander of the Argent Dawn: Lord Maxwell Tyrosus. Talk to Lord Maxwell, complete the quest, and you will then have access to the Argent Hold (a chest on the floor next to Lord Maxwell) where you will find your final rewards.

• [60] The Medallion of Faith (Dungeon), this quest is started inside Stratholme. And you don't need to accept any quest, it is just a 'Get the item and turn it in' quest. You will have to find a Medaillon of Faith, in a chest guarded by Malor the Zealous, in the Scarlet bastion. Once you have the medaillon, you will have to give it to Aurius, a Paladin you can find in the first house you see when entering Stratholme through the Service gate. If you give the Medaillon to Aurius, he will come to your aid when you fight Baron Rivendare later on. And after the Baron is defeated, Aurius will have a quest up for you, complete it instantly to get great rewards.

Horde:

• [62] Ramstein (Dungeon), given by Nathanos Blightcaller at the Marry's Stead in Eastern Plaguelands. To find the Marry's stead, when entering Eastern plaguelands from Western plaguelands, follow the road east for a little bit, then the marry's stead will be just north of the road. Before getting [62] Ramstein from Nathanos, you will have to complete a serie of quests: [58] To kill with purpose, [60] Ranger Lord's Behest, and then you will get the follow up [60] Duskwing, Oh How I Hate Thee... (Elite), you will need help for that one, Duskwing is an Elite lvl 60 Bat, has a lot of HPs and hits fairly hard. You can find Duskwind roaming around east of the Marry's stead. After you complete the quest you will finally get the final one: Ramstein. You will find Ramstein as one of the last guardians before Baron Rivendare, at the end of the Undead side.

Walkthrough: The Live Side

Group Composition

Warrior or Paladin (prot speced), Priest and Mage are a must have, if you want to be able to do everything including Baron Rivendare. Polymorph makes live side very much easier. Instant Arcane Explosion is extremely helpful in every area of the instance. If you can't get a mage, get a Warlock, they are the best replacement for mage, it will be still possible, but much harder. Priest is really the best choice for healer especially in Stratholme, thanks to Shackle Undead.

Other than that, get a backup healer (Shaman, Paly, Druid) and some DPS (Rogue, Hunter, Mage, or even warlock).

Note: You will need the Scarlet Key (obtained from the Scarlet Monastery instance, check the guide for it, in the Library section) or a rogue with high lockpick skill.

Where: Since we are starting with the live side, you will enter Stratholme by the main entrance. (anyway the Service gate is only accessible once you have the Key to the City, or a rogue with high lockpick skill)

1. To the Great Fras Siabi

The first pulls in Stratholme are AE (area effect) pulls. They are composed of 1-3 Elite mobs and a bunch of normal ones. Have your tank pull them, get them in a bunch and use every AE spells your group has to blast them away as fast as possible. You can also have your priest Shackle pull to have one elite mob less to deal with, if you feel safer that way.
You will most likely already find your first Ghostly Citizens after a few pulls, don't forget to use your Egan's Blaster on them and to blast the restless souls as well.

Warning: Every now and then, an Eye of Naxxramas will appear and /yell The living are here!. Kill it instantly or he will summon 2 lvl 60 Elite garoyles. So be on the watch for those Eyes.

You will soon reach a fork. To the right is on the way to the Gauntlet area, and requires Key to the city. This doesn't interest you for now, so go left. Watch out for the Abomination roamer, and pull it solo. They are already hard enough to deal with solo. Clear the way left up until the next fork, and actually start clearing the whole area to the right and to the left. For one simple reason, when you trigger Fras Siabi, they will all aggro, he has a huge Call-for-help range. To the left you will find a crate named ''Fras Siabi Tobacco''. When opening the crate, Fras Siabi will appear and attack you. He is an easy fight. After he's dead, loot the Siabi's Premium Tobacco from the corpse. You just completed your first quest. Also close to Fras Siabi you will find the Stratholme Courrier...

2. The Stratholme Courrier and Posmaster Malown (OPTIONAL)

The stratholme courrier randomly drops 3 keys, those keys can open 3 of the 6 Postboxes scattered in stratholme. Check the map for their locations. Everytime you open one of the postboxes, 3 Undead Postman spawn and attack you. They are elite, but can be shackled and aren't very hard. In postboxes you will find documents and various letters, it's junk you can just sell to vendor.
When you open your 3rd and last postbox, Postmaster Malown will appear, as well as 3 Undead Postman. The key to win this fight is to Shackle Malown and focus on the 3 Postmen, once they are dead. Deal with malown, he is easy once he is alone. Malown is totally optional and not included in any quests, but he drops good stuff. Namely magister boots, and also a cloth armor set (The Postmaster), with very nice stats if you get the chance to gather the whole set. (That's a lot of work though).

3. To the Scarlet Bastion

So you are at the Fras Siabi spot and wondering where to go? Go North, up until you reach a double iron gate. Caution, this gate is a trap, it closes right after you step in between the 2 gates, and then a huge swarm of Plague rats attacks you. So coordinate your group so all of it moves in between the 2 gates at the same time. Kill the rats with a few AEs.

Past the gate you will reach another fork, you will go left. Keep on clearing your way left, also be aware that there is another Patchwork Horror (abomination) roaming around here. You will then reach the Live area, and find scarlet crusade NPCs hiding behind crates, in a state of siege.

The pulling style becomes different here, no more AEing. Back to regular pulling, sheeping, sapping, assisting. Also worth mentioning, those mobs run away in fear

The Crimson Conjurors are annoying and summon pets. So either kill them first or sheep them and save them for last. Just do not let them loose, they summon elementals.

The Crimson Guardsmen are also very annoying, they knockback and shield bash. So make sure you position yourself so your back is always facing a nearby wall, or you might get tossed into adds.

Clear the way until you reach the entrance of the bastion. Once you have done so, don't open the door, wait a little and you will see Timmy the Cruel spawn, kill him if you are interested in one of the following items.

4. The Scarlet Bastion

Open the door with your Scarlet Key or have a rogue lockpick it. Enter the first hall and on your right will be a few mobs. Pull and kill them.

From now on, you have to be extremely careful, and follow the following rules:

• 1. Always pull mobs way back, so you have enough room to recover if they run away in fear.
• 2. EVERY corridor has a patrol (2 mobs) moving back and forth quickly in each of those corridors. They respawn every 30 minutes.
• 3. Take your time before pulling, check on the patrol and try to pull it as soon as possible, so you won't be bothered by it anymore.
• 4. Every now and then, the scourge will break into the Bastion. You will hear a zone shout to warn you about it. ''The scourge has broken into our bastion'' A bunch of skeletons will come from behind, AE them. They are easy, but it can be bad if they come while you are already fighting a bunch of scarlet minions.
• 5. At the end of every big corridor, after killing the last bunch of mobs, extra Scarlet mobs will pop and move in. There will be a zone shout of the like ''Don't let them break the lines, blabla''. So watch out for those too. You can avoid aggro'ing them if you pulled the last bunch of mobs in the corridor far away enough.

To the left after you are done clearing the first corrider, you will find Malor the Zealous in the side room. He's an easy kill.

On the floor in Malor's room, you will find a brown chest that contains the Medaillon of Valor, this item you will need in the Undead side at the beginning when entering by the service gate. It is only worth it to turn in that Medaillon when you are sure that your group is going for Baron Rivendare. If not it is a waste.

5. Cannon Master Willey

When reaching the 3rd corridor, you will be facing a gate, you can open it with the Scarlet key. Go there if you want to kill Cannon Master Willey, he is optional, but he drops Shadowcraft Spaulders, and plans for Heartseeker. If you have a rogue in your group he will probably beg you to go there!

You will have to deal with:

• Crimson Defenders (annoying paladin mobs with stuns, but not much of a threat)
• Crimson Priests (extremely annoying healers, sheep them or interupt their heals as much as possible)
• Crimson Sorcerers (those case Polymorph and arcane explosion, so they can be a threat too)
• Crimson Battle Mage (those really hurt, lots of AE power, they should be your priority, unless you sheep them and save them for last)

There is also a patrol in the Cannoneer area, and they go as far as up the stairs leading to the door. So be patient and kill this patrol before you start pulling your way in there.

After a good part of the room has been pulled, you can go downstairs. Also, you will find the Crimson Hammersmith somewhere in this area. This NPC is needed for blacksmiths who wish to specialize in Hammersmithing.

At the end of this mini-wing, you will find Cannon Master Willey, standing behind two cannons, and surrounded by piles of cannonballs.

As soon as you engage Willey, a bunch of Crimson Rifleman will spawn in the back and will start shooting at your group. The key to this fight is to have one person handle the cannons while the rest of the group kills Willey.

To use the cannons, you need to loot those piles of cannonballs, and then click on the cannons. They do a huge area effect damage, but you have limited shots, so use them well. Try to wait until there is a huge bunch of those riflemen and then fire at will. So give this task to only one person (not the tank or the healer :roll: )

He can drop several interesting items:

Willey's Portable Howitzer
Master Cannoneer Boots
Shadowcraft Spaulders
Also the plans to make Heartseeker

6. The Archivist

After defeating Cannon Master Willey, go back and up the stairs, then go to the next door. Open it with Scarlet Key or rogue picklock, but be careful, next corridor's patrol roams very close to that door, so with bad timing you could aggro them upon opening the door.

At the end of this corridor, to the left will be Archivist Galford, to the right will be Grand Crusader Dathrohan.

We will first deal with the Archivist:

• He uses a lot of AE spells so be as far away as you can from him, unless you are a melee class (warrior/rogue).
• He also casts something called 'Engulfing flames', it is a DOT that does quite nice damage but also makes you unable to act while you are burning. It can be DISPELLED so watch out for it.

Other than that he is not that hard. Once he dies, don't forget to go in his room and to righ-click the archives, to burn them. That way you will complete the very important quest: [61] The Archivist.

In the archivist room, on the right, is also the painting you need to complete the quest [60]Of love and family. Don't forget to get it.

Archivist Galford mostly drops crap besides the priest's set gloves:

Devout Gloves

In the opposite room is the big boss of the Scarlet Crusade...

7. Grand Crusader Dathrohan (aka Balnazzar):

At first, you will wonder how can the last boss be so easy! He will go down to 40% HP quite easily, and this is when something really cool happens. He transforms into balnazzar, a huge dreadlord. The Scarlet Crusade is actually being led by a major agent of the Burning legion..

Anyway, Balnazzar hits hard, has a lot of HPs, and a few annoying abilities. He casts Fear and charm.

You can't dispel the charm, so just keep in mind your healer might be charmed and unable to heal you sometimes so save your Healing Potions or any survival ability (Last Stand, Shield Wall, Evasion, etc) for when that happens. Fight him at the back of his room (because an army of skeletons has invaded the bastion, up to his room) and you should have no problem. He is a tough fight but there is no trick about it besides everyone must pay attention and give his best.

Once he dies, if you have completed the Archivist quest (and by completed, I mean you have to go turn it in with Duke Nicholas Zverenhoff), you will find the Head of Balnazzar on the corpse, and this head starts the quest that takes you to the undead side, or more exactly, the Gauntlet area.

So you will need to go up until the end of the Scarlet area twice at least. Once to finish the Archivist quest, and the 2nd time (don't forget to reset the instance if you do it twice in a row) to kill Balnazzar again and get the head to drop. I recommend Hearthing out or getting a portal to Undercity, or even suicide and talk to the spirit healer, rather than clearing your way out. Because as I said earlier, after you fight Balnazzar, the Scarlet bastion will be invaded by an army of skeletons, it is part of the script.

Balnazzar can drop the following items:

Crown of Tyranny
Demonshear
Fire Striders
Gift of the elven magi
Lightforge boots
Star of Mystaria
Wrymtongue Shoulders

As well as two extremely rare drop recipes:

Pattern: Truefaith Vestments
Recipe: Flask of Distilled wisdom

Once you have the head of Balnazzar, you are basically done with the Live side, unless you want to go back there to get some of the loots.

Walkthrough: The Undead Side

By now you should have gotten the head of Balnazzar, as well as the follow up quest [62] Above and Beyond (Dungeon)

Your main goal is to kill Baron Rivendare, but for that, you need access to the Gauntlet area. For that you need either a rogue with maxed picklock skill, or a Key to the City. With either of the above, you can enter Stratholme by the Service gate, located east of the main entrance, go directly to chapter 9. in that case. If you don't, then you will have to get a key, and for that you need to kill Magistrate Barthilas. Here is how you get to him from the main entrance:

8. To magistrate Barthilas

From the main entrance, go the same way as if you were going to the Scarlet bastion. Besides, at the last fork, instead of going left, go right. You will pass the Market Row Postbox soon, after this will be a gate on with a rat swarm trap. Keep going until you reach the Festival Lane area, and go left past a large gate. You will see a wooden house and Magistrate Barthilas will be right infront of it, close to the Elder Square Postbox.

When you engage Magistrate Barthilas, the gate closes behind you, so make sur your whole group is on the right side of the gate before you aggro Barthilas.

He is a simple fight, hits hard and has only one annoying ability, he knockbacks and loses aggro. Your tank must be ready to run and taunt, that's it. He can drop a very good cloak:

And most importantly, he drops the Key to the City.

Warning: Only one key drops per magistrate and only ONE person can see the key on the corpse at first. So make sure EVERYBODY checks the corpse, and after that has been done, everybody will be able to see the key on the corpse. You only need one person with the key per group to open the doors.

9. To the Gauntlet

If you came through the service gate entrance, you won't find Magistrate Barthilas here. He will shout that intruders came through the Service gate, and you will find him later on close to the Slaughterhouse area.

You are right now at the elder square's area. In the wooden house you will find Aurius, that Paladin NPC who needs the Medaillon of Faith. If your group is heading for Baron Rivendare and has the power to kill him, then give the Medaillon to Aurius. He will come to your help when you will be fighting the Baron, and reward your whole group with some good items if you suceed.

Head north to the Gauntlet area, you will have to open a couple of gates and you will be there. The Gauntlet area is a Triangle area, with a Ziggurat in each of the three corner. Each of the Ziggurat is guarded by a Boss, you must defeat those 3 bosses and kill the Acolytes inside the ziggurats to destroy the crystals. Once you have destroyed the 3 crystals, the gate to the Slaughterhouse will open up. Let's get started with the first boss.

10. Nerub'Enkan

Start with pulling the Gargoyle roamers, be careful with the Rockwing Screechers, they cast AE fear. You don't want to get feared into more adds, so pull them as close as possible to the gate behind you.

Those Gargoyle roamers are on a 30min respawn timer, so be quick.

Start pulling toward the left then, the banshees cast AE silence, so if you get several mobs in a pull including a banshee, you might want to Shackle Undead them.

The Scarabs cast Net which is a Root + Silence. So watch out for that if you main healer is silenced.

Pull the 3 ghouls on the left once you have cleared most of the Banshees and Scarabs in the middle. The ghouls are also on a 30 Min respawn timer. So it's better if you kill them last.

Move your group to where the 3 Ghouls were, this is where you will be pulling the last bunch of mobs that are between you and the first Ziggurat. You will have to pull a couple of humanoids. Thuzadin Shadowcasters and Thuzadin Necromancers are the two types of humanoids you will find there. Watch out with the Necromancers, they drain mana and drain life for quite a bit. Keep them interrupted and stunned as much as possible.

Once you have a clear path to Nerub'Enkan, pull him to the 3 Ghoul spot where you already were. Nerub'Enkan doesn't hit really hard, but has a good amount of HP and one annoying ability: He summons little scarabs.

Ignore the mini-scarabs for the most part, focus on getting Nerub'Enkan dead. If possible have your tank get aggro on the scarabs (quickly switch to them, hit taunt and sunder armor once or twice should be enough). If you start to get overwhelmed by scarabs (4 or more), have your mage / warlock AE them. They don't have much HPs and should die quickly.

Nerub'Enkan is one of the easiest bosses in Stratholme so you shouldn't have much problems.

He can sometimes drop the Husk of Nerub'enkan

and the Hunter's set boots:

Once he is dead, go inside the ziggurat and kill the Thuzadin Acolytes -- They are weak, can be killed with a bunch of AEs.

After that is done, you will get a zone shout ''A Crystal has been destroyed, blabla''.

Note: If you have the quest [61] The Active Agent (Dungeon), the Scourge data might be inside this Ziggurat, in a little chest on the floor. It can be in any of the 3 Ziggurats, so you will have to check them all.

Go back to the entrance of the gauntlet area, and start heading to the 2nd boss: Baroness Anastari.

11. Baroness Anastari

Baroness Anastari is one of the hardest fight for a 5-man party, I would say the 2nd hardest fight after Baron Rivendare. It is also the most unpredictable fight ever.

Start clearing toward her, and pull the area on the right side of her Ziggurat, there will be about 4 Humanoid casters and a Banshee. You can pull the casters without the banshee, they are already hard enough especially with the necromancers. When those are dead take their spot, this is where you will be fighting the Baroness.

Also, if you have a Blacksmith who wishes to specialize in Swordsmithing in your group, on the floor are plans for it. When you click those plans, an undead smith will attack your group. It's just a normal lvl 60 elite undead.

Before pulling the Baroness Anastari, clear a large area around you. You will need space, she will most likely charm your warrior, priest, warlock and use AE fear and such abilities. So you need a lot of space to fight her. She is already hard enough, you don't want any adds during the fight.

• She has a single attack, shadow based apparently. That does around 800dmg.
• She also casts AE silence sometimes, the range isn't very big but still not neglectable.
• Now the killer abilty: She takes control of someone's body. She will be INSIDE the person's character and using all his abilities (especially the long cooldown ones, so you might as well use them as fast as you can before she possesses you). To get the Baroness out of the person's body, you need to get his HPs down to 25-30%. The person will then be fred, but appear with extremely low HP.

Warning: When the person gets close to 30%, don't use nukes or any high damage abilities. Go very slow on the dps until the person is released, or you will actually finish him off. It is the KEY to win this fight.

The 2nd key to win this fight, is that as soon as she appears out of someone's body, she will cast AE silence instanly. So that means 2 things:

• The healers must be far away so they don't get silenced
• They must immediatly heal the person who just got released (Power shield helps a lot)

She will charm several persons in the group, one by one, randomly. Be warned, this fight is all about NOT finishing off the charmed person and for that you need to control your dps AND to have competent healers who manage to avoid getting silenced AND to immediatly Shield/Heal the person released.

When she is in her real form, go FULL DPS, this is the only moment when you can actually hurt her.

All in all, a very fun fight, but it can get frustrating, so prepare for failing it a few times until everyone gets the drill. (They announced they would make it easier in the next patch though, so until then, have fun with it :roll: )

She can drop the following item, rarely:

Banshee Finger

and the warlock's set boots:

Don't forget to kill the Acolytes inside the Ziggurat and to check on for the Scourge Data if you need it.

Now on to the last Ziggurat and it's guardian: Maleki the Pallid.

12. Maleki the Pallid

On the way down to the last Ziggurat is another one of those Swarm rat traps. They ll be coming through a closed iron gate on the right. Be very careful if you get a Rockwing Screecher there, don't fight it close to that gate, because if you get feared through it, you won't be stuck behind it. It is a known bug that hasn't been fixed yet. So just avoid fighting those Gargoyles anywhere close to that iron gate.

Pull your way toward the last named, Maleki. You can pull the 3 Humanoids on the stairs up to him, he won't aggro. You will get him solo and he is quite easy, he is a necromancer npc, drains mana and life, casts some curses and nukes. He is one of the easiest nameds in Stratholme.

He can drop Skull of Burning Shadows and the Plans for Hammer of the Titans

More importantly he can sometimes drop the Priest's set boots:

Don't forget to kill the Thuzadin Acolytes inside the Ziggurat and to check for the Scourge Data if you need them.

After the 3rd Ziggurat is destroyed, you will get a zone shout, saying that the way to the Slaughterhouse is now open. Head towards there, you will find magistrate Barthilas in the corner if you entered Stratholme by the Service gate. Feel free to kill him for an extra key.

Then have your WHOLE group move past the gate of the slaughterhouse, because, as soon as you will aggro the first abomination there, the gate will close behind you. So make sure everyone is inside before doing anything.

13. The Slaughterhouse

Get full mana and refresh your buffs. Because when you will pull your first abomination, they will start to auto-pull themselves. You will be fighting Bile Spewers and Venom Belchers (both abomination type) non-stop, with little breaks sometimes. Use those to drink immediatly.

After killing your last abomination, Ramstein the Gorger will walk towards you. He hits hard and can take quite a beating. But the most annoying thing about him is that he tosses your tank in the air, stunning it for 3 seconds, and loses aggro. It can't be helped, he will beat on the casters for a few seconds until your tank gets back and taunts him off.

Besides that, he isn't that hard. He can drop some nice items, those in particular:

Don't forget to loot the Head of Ramstein the Gorger.

Don't be thinking it's over though, right after Ramstein bites the dust, a massive swarm of skeletons will rush for your group. They got very low HPs though, AE them.

As soon as they are dead, drink as fast as you can. 5 Elite lvl 60 Skeletons are marching your way.

Shackle one, use Hunter freezing trap if you have, and pray that your warrior is good enough to keep aggro on multiple targets. Assist kill them one by one.

If you survive through all of this, you can chill, go loot the crates scattered around (most are traps though), and prepare for your last and biggest fight.

14. Baron Rivendare

You can move your group into his room, he has a ridiculous aggro range. Move in and go into one of the corner opposite of Baron. While doing that you will notice that he has an Aura. This aura has quite a wide range and does damage every 2 seconds. So you guess it, only the melees (Warrior / rogue) are allowed to be in the Aura range. The rest of the group can nuke and heal safely from the corner.

The warrior will at the beginning of the fight charge Rivendare, and position him so the Aura doesn't hit the rest of the group, while being in range for heals.

Now the baron alone is quite the tank, he has a ton of HPs, and he dishes a lot of damage on the warrior already. He also uses Mortal strike, making it a very mana intensive fight for a priest.
Basically, the priest will have to fully focus on healing the warrior, and do nothing else, or he will probably be out of mana before the end of the fight.

Special ability: Every now and then (about every 15 seconds), Baron Rivendare will summon 6 skeletons, they will rise from each of the 6 piles of bones scattered in the room. They will go for the warrior but immediatly run for the Priest after the first heal. They got low HP and must be killed EXTREMELY FAST by the Mage or the warlock with AEs.

Here is why they must be killed fast: About 10 seconds after the 6 skeletons are summoned, Baron Rivendare will cast Death Pact. That means he will get healed for every skeleton still alive. And that heals him for quite a lot. You CANNOT afford to let him heal a single time, the fight has been caculated to be very mana intensive for a single group. If you let him heal once from those skeletons, your healers will most likely be out of mana before the Baron Dies.

So this is the KEY to win this fight: The mages (or the warlock) must be really quick, as soon as they see those Skeletons being summoned, they must dash for them, AE them to death, then go back to safe spot with the healers.

You should have a backup healer in your group as well: Paladin, Shaman or Druid. Their roles will be: To heal the rogue(s) if there is one (because they will be taking damage from the Aura). To Heal the mage / warlock while they are AEing skeletons, and to backup heal on the tank after a mortal strike if they see a need. A good secondary healer is a great help on Baron rivendare. Their mana regen skills (Innervate, Seals, Totems) will be a great help for this battle too.

Keep all of that in mind and you will make it, you might need a couple of tries till everyone gets the drill, because it is really a tough fight for a single group. But it is far from being impossible.

Aurius, this weak paladin, will join mid-fight too, if you gave him the Medaillon of Faith before. He is little to no help, but anyway, if you defeat the baron, go talk to Aurius, he will let you choose between the following rewards:

Baron Rivendare himself has quite a large loot pool, including ALL the class set leggings. He will always drop one of the legs and one of the following items too:

And if you are really lucky you might get the jackpot:

This awesome blade:

Or a free 100% speed increase mount, with a unique look (actually looks exactly like Baron Rivendare's Steed):

Also, do not forget to loot the Head of Baron Rivendare, you will then complete the final quest. Go to the Light's hope chapel and talk to Lord Maxwell Tyrosus, he will give you access to the argent hold (a chest next to him), where you will get your final reward inside the chest. You will get to choose between two very good weapons (especially an amazing caster Staff) and a shield. Enjoy!

I hope you liked this Stratholme guide, and that it will help you to clear the whole instance with a 5-man group. It can be a lot of fun to clear the whole place with a single party, and very rewarding too. Not to mention, Blizzard announced that a lot more items are gonna be added to stratholme in the next patch, making it even more worth visiting!

If there is anything lacking or unclear in this guide, please let me know, I will update as fast as possible

Thanks for reading!

-Jame

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