The Test of Righteousness

At some point around when we were doing the Fire Hardened Mail quest, Skonk had mentioned that we ought to make sure and do the Paladin class quests, which culminate with a nice 2H weapon.

This all starts out with the Tome of Valor quest chain.  Skronk had done that already, but I went out and got it in the bag pretty quickly.  The action takes place out in a corner of Westfall and I was able to solo the combat event at level 20 on the second try, the first giving me the insight of how I needed to approach things.  Daphne, who you are there to defend, is pretty tough so you can get away with letting her off tank for a bit while you clear out the rest of each wave.

That done, you can start on the Test of Righteousness quest in Stormwind.  That sends you to the right person, Jordan Stilwell outside of Ironforge, where you get a task to go collect four items for him.

Skronk and I got out our paladins, Fergorin and Wilhelm, and tackled two of the items immediately.

The first was out in Loch Modan.  It is just a box you need to pick up in among the elite ogres.  You do have to stop in Thelsemar first, where you will find a quest to get the box.  Once we had that, the ogres were not much of a problem.  The box is out in the open rather than being deep in one of the caves, so we only had to knock down a couple ogres to get it.  Then it was back to Thelsemar to finish that quest, leaving us with the first item in our inventory.

On a roll, we ran off for the next item, which is in Shadowfang Keep.  We had recently done the run there with a group and were able to get through the first boss with just three of us, so felt we could probably get to the item we needed.  It was just out in the courtyard, in the stable area.  We managed that without too much drama.

After which we called it a night and sort of forgot about the whole thing for a couple weeks, until Skronk mentioned it this past weekend.  Having had both Fergorin and Wilhelm out for the various group mixes we ran, it seemed like time to carry on.

Skronk had some free time after out run on Sunday and went and picked up a third piece, the one in the Deadmines, and did it solo, though he described it as quite the slog even at level 29.

By Wednesday night I had worked Wilhelm up to 28 and was on questing when Skronk got on and told me the tale of his assault on the Deadmines, then wanted to know if I had time to go with him for the fourth piece, the purified Kor Gem.  I was keen, as I still needed it as well, so we met up in Menethil Harbor to take the boat to Auberdine.

Paladins at sea

Once there you need to pick up a quest to retrieve a corrupted Kor Gem.  The reward for that is the purified version for the main quest.  Then corrupted gems drop off of naga in and around the Blackfathom Deeps instance, which is one we have actually skipped so far.

Quests in hand we headed on down the road to Ashenvale where you can find the instance on the coast.  Fortunately the two of us were more than a match for any of the elites outside the instance and the item drops from nagas there.  We had to kill a few, but the corrupted Kor Gem dropped soon enough.

Then we had to stop ourselves from stoning back home because this wasn’t the gem for the main quest.  Instead we trotted over to Astranaar (which is a somewhat shorter run than going from Auberdine to BFD, so use the flight point both ways if you can) and flew back up to Darkshore, where we turned in the sub-quest and got the purified Kor Gem.

Now was the time to stone back to Stormwind.

At that point Skronk was done, but he offered to run through the Deadmines to help me get the last item.  With the two of us we expected it would go easier.  So it was off to Westfall again.

Heading towards Moonbrook

Once inside the mines at our level… Fergorin was 29 and Wilhelm was 28… you find that your aggro radius is pretty small.  You can squeeze up to the wall and watch elites walk past down the middle of tunnels.

Watching an elite mage walk past

You can’t get past them all, but you can slip by more than a couple of them.  And then there are the miners, which are easy non-elites, but who are strewn along the edges of the tunnels.  You have to carve a path through them, though you can do it one by one since, again, aggro radius is small once you level beyond the instance range.

Beating one miner while another just works away

The effort comes when you have to get past the first boss, Rhahk’Zor.

The ogre boss of the Deadmines

Skronk described his solo encounter as quite a long slog.  He managed it solo, but he was forever on the edge of being out of mana, just able to get a heal in often enough to keep going.  For the two of us it wasn’t a complete walk-over… I used a potion at one point… but we dispatched him and his two helpers in what ended up being about a four minute fight.  Long enough that mana started to fade from heals as he does hit boss hard.

After that it was more clearing through up to the room with The Shredder.  You don’t actually have to fight another boss, you just have to get one of the goblins from that room.  They all drop the item if you have the quest.  We ended up with two goblins, but they were easily managed.

One Goblin woodcarver down, one to go

Goblins down and looter, we were done and ready to hearthstone back home.

Except, of course, this wasn’t retail WoW and our hearthstones didn’t have 20 minute cool downs nor did we have three stones to choose from.  With half an hour left on the recall clock, we had to walk back out.  Walking places is the theme of WoW Classic in its way.  That meant a bit more fighting, but I also was able to grab a couple more tin mining nodes for Wil along the way.

Out of the Deadmines and the caves, it was off to Ironforge to speak with Jordan Stilwell.  And he isn’t just one of those vending machine NPCs, he takes your items and goes off to craft you a weapon.

Jordan Stilwell working on my hammer

The downside of that is only one person can do the quest turn in at a time.  When Jordan Stilwell is acting out his part he won’t accept any new requests.  That isn’t so bad on a special quest like this, but you want to use this sparingly on quests that everybody does, a lesson Blizz no doubt learned.

So Fergorin had to wait a bit before it was his turn.  But he still got his hammer in a short enough time.

And a hammer for you

And there we were, quest done, hammers in hand.

Posing with Jordan Stilwell

That was another quest chain I never did back in the day.  I was far too fixated on getting forward in levels back then, which seemed the ultimate goal, to stop and work on some of these class quests.

The hammer itself is pretty good.  I got a decent hammer as a quest reward from our Gnomer run on Saturday.

The Mechanic’s Pipehammer

But this hammer, Verigan’s Fist, was a considerable step up from that.

Verigan’s Fist – Paladins only please

I’d still drop it for the Manual Crowd Pummeler from the Crowd Pummeler 9-60 in Gnomer, but we might be done running Gnomer at this point, so Verigan’s Fist will probably be my weapon for a while.