Claiming Fire Hardened Mail

While we were getting ourselves set for Shadowfang Keep, Skronk had asked if I have gotten Viniki very far along on Fire Hardened Mail quest, the warrior class you pick up at level 20.  I had to admit that, while I had grabbed it, I had not done anything with it as when you get it the quest is “warning danger level” red in your quest log.

He mentioned that he and Ula had managed to finish it off as a duo, though not without some considerable effort, so they could probably help out.

So the next day when I got online I set about making some progress.  Viniki was level 26 and the quest was moving into the range of viability.

The first bit was simple enough.  You need 50 drops from spiders out in the Wetlands.  They were levels 20-23, so it was just a matter of chopping them down.  The main annoyance was that then required drops only stored in stacks of 20 in my bag, and in the current WoW Classic age of inventory management dedicated three bag slots to anything is a big ask.  But I figured I would make due.

After that it was time to travel.  The next stage is out on the Stonetalon Mountains.  I may have forgotten quite a bit about vanilla WoW, but I do remember running the length of that zone to get myself up to Desolace at one point, which ended up taking me something like 45 minutes.  A long trip.  So I was headed that way again.  But the first bit would be short I thought, just a run across the breadth of The Barrens.

Ratchet to Stonetalon Mountains

Of course, I was deceived again by the scale of The Barrens.  It takes longer to run across, even at its short point, than you think.  But I made it and even remembered to not run straight up the road where the zones meet, avoiding the Horde guards at Honor’s Stand.  From there signs would show the way.

Stonetalon Peak this way

Not that there are a myraid of ways to choose from.  The road through the zone has some turn-offs, but my destination was at the very far end in the Charred Vale.

The Stonetalon Mountains

Starting in the lower right I just had to follow the path, bearing right at the lake to go to Stonetalon Peak to get the Alliance flight point.  The way Classic works you may find you need flight points you don’t necessarily travel to as they can provide connections.  While I was on my way there Skronk logged on.  He swapped to his level 22 paladin, who happened to be in Ashenvale, to come join me.

I grabbed the flight point and a quest that was to hand, and headed for the charred vale where Skronk caught up, having grabbed the flight point and the same quest as well.  He went AFK for a minute and I promptly got us killed.  He was on follow and his aggro radius was such that I managed to pull half a dozen mobs when I went to stalk one of the chimeras I needed for my next set of drops.

Oh well.  We got ourselves settled and Ula joined us with her warrior, which gave us more than enough muscle to finish off harpies and get the drops I needed for the quest.

From there we ran down into Desolace to grab the flight master at Nijel’s Point.  That was a bit dicey with Skronk’s pally in tow, as his aggro radius was about max size relative to the mobs there, but we made it to the flight point after a couple of encounters.

From there we wanted to go to Razorfen Kraul, the location of the last item on my list.  We decided to fly to Theramore and run from there.  We’d run through the swamp at a lower level already.

Over those familiar centaur camps

From Theramore we trotted out to The Barrens again and headed south to RFK.  Skronk said that when they did this for Ula’s warrior it took a while and some strategic dying was involved, along with some outright running for the exit.  But with three of us it seemed to go okay.  We were able to take on ones and twos without too much drama.

Fighting in RFK

Skronk’s pally healed while the two warriors got stuck in to tank and DPS.  This mostly worked.

There was one point when we got too many on a pull and had to run for the exit, with Ula’s warrior getting trapped and dying.  That also served as a reminder to put Escape Artist, the gnomish racial ability that gets you out of traps, on our respective hot bars.  Fortunately with a pally along a ress was available.

When we had cleared our way to our target, Roogug, we were able to get just him and one caster.  This was another fight where we thought we might have to take down on mob, flee, then repeat until we could cope with the whole thing.  But with three of us we were able to handle the fight.

Battling with Roogug

A little bit of healing goes a long way in these situations.

With Roogug down I had the last piece of the quest.  But since we were down at the southern end of The Barrens in any case, we decided to extend our trip to pick up one final flight point.  We wanted to get the one at Thalanaar in Feralas at the edge of the Thousand Needles zone, which meant taking the Great Lift.

I had read/heard that with WoW Classic you could only see the positions of the cars of the Great Lift, but it didn’t really strike me until we got there.  The cars just don’t show up the way they did back in the day, no doubt due to the update client/server tech being used.

So we sat there for a bit and discussed possible options.  The two NPC guards mean you cannot just saunter up for a peek.  In the end I decided just to rush the ramp and see what I could see when I got to the end.  Worst case I would simply jump off.   I have done that before.

In running I picked up the near guard and, as I reached the end of the ramp, saw the elevator car just starting its descent, so I jumped for it… and sailed right over it and down to my death.

Viniki at the bottom of the lift

However Ula and Skronk, following on behind, were ignored by the guard as he ran back to his post, so were able to wait for the car to return and take it down to the floor of Thousand Needles.  Again, having a pally around for a ress came in handy.

Once restored we made our way to the east end of the zone to Thalanaar and collected the flight point.  From there we flew back to Stonetalon Peak to turn in that harpy quest that we had finished up, after which we were done.  I recalled back to Stormwind and turned in the quest and collected a nice new bit of armor.

Fire Hardened hauberk

This was another quest line I never did back in the day as I do not think I bothered rolling a warrior as an alt until Warlords of Draenor.  It was a chance to go back and experience something I had missed the first time around.