We got together on New Years Day with a simple plan. We were going to go collect what we needed for the Love Potion quest in Blackrock Depths, then maybe run on into the instance, to the Grim Guzzler, in order to turn that in. Then we would see how we felt at that point.
Blackrock Depths map
That sounded like an easy enough run and we would get a little xp along the way. We still hadn’t firmed up plans for getting past the Lyceum save for maybe another level or two would help. My mechanical greench idea didn’t seem to stir much hope. Our group was:
- Viniki – level 57 gnome warrior
- Skronk – level 57 dwarf priest
- Moronae – level 57 night elf druid
- Ula – level 56 gnome mage
For the Love Potion quest we needed items from around Azeroth. The first was 4 gromsblood, something Moronae was able to go out and harvest for us before hand.
Next up was 10 giant silver veins each. These come from giants out in Azshara. If you look at the map of the zone, it looks something like a crab claw. The giants are towards the east end of the bottom half of the claw. They are all named Cliff.
Hunting giants
We though we were going to need a lot of giants, but it turned out that the silver veins drop 100% of the time and they drop in groups of one, two, or three. We finished up there in not too long.
From there it was to Un’goro Crater to fill a vial from the Golakka Springs Crater. The hot springs themselves are easy enough to find on the map, but the point where you need to fill the vial is actually up on top of a steep hill next to the pond on the map.
Here is where you fill the vial
From there Ula was able to portal us back to Ironforge. Then it was off to Thorium Point and the run into the instance yet again. New Years Day was a busy time on the server and the way was clear all the way to the instance portal.
We needed to get to the Grim Guzzler, location 15 on the map, which mean going off to the left, through the side door, and into the room where the bridge controls are. We were able to slip in and take care of that.
Skronk slipping up to the control
From there it was now down the well worn path to the bar. Up the ramp, down the hall, across the bridge, and around to the Manufactory. We had the usual problem with one of the groups that has two of the large fire elementals. Their burst damage killed Viniki before I knew what hit him and the group ended up wiping.
This corner is our curse
We bounced back from that, ran through the instance once more, finished off that group, got through the Manufactory, and into the Grimm Guzzler where Mistress Nagmara was waiting for us.
Time to turn in the quest
Once we all turned it in, we tested our new ability. She and Rocknot get together and run out the back door, leaving it open for us.
At that point we had accomplished out primary goal. I took a moment to go over at speak to Lokhtos Darkbargainer, the Thorium Brotherhood vendor I mentioned in my blacksmithing post.
Vending for the Thorium Brotherhood
I had some recipes available to me, though I cannot make any until I get my blacksmithing skill up some more. Have to go work on that later.
Since we were there already, I suggested we take down Ribbly Screwspigot. He is just downstairs in the bar. So we set up in the keg room like we did when we last fought him, then I spoke to him and pulled him and his three companions back there. That wasn’t a tough fight for us… his group is around level 50… and he dropped something nice for us.
Everybody loves a 16 slot bag
Ula won the roll for the big bag.
After that, I noticed that the kegs were set up for the keg room quest, so I clicked on those and in came Hurley Blackbreath and his crew. This time Ula was clear of the doorway. Defeating that group got us another fine drop.
An eyepatch!
This is a nice item if you want to play with what we now call transmog. I wish it was a plate armor item, as I think it would look good on me.
Argh!
But, as a leather item, and an upgrade, it went to Moronae. Unfortunately, when you have fiercely glowing eyes, the eyepatch effect is somewhat ruined.
Moronae shining through
After that we started looking for something else to do while we were there. Moronae mentioned that he had missed looting Fineous Darkview (9 on the map).
That was an awkward target as we had chosen to go across the bridge and not through the Ring of Law, since the latter leads to him. But we had time, so we figured we would give it a shot.
We ran back to the bridge, which has several open windows. The plan was to jump out onto the Dark Iron Highway and take on one of the groups below, then clear our way through Lord Indendius (location 10) to our target.
At the bridge we were looking out of the windows trying to decided which way to go when I tried to jump up on the window sill and managed to jump through the window and down onto the highway.
I went through this window
Fortunately for me, the group below had just marched off, so everybody else jumped down to join me. We setup and took out the group, then noticed that things were not as we had expected. We always call it “the bridge,” when in reality, it is the gate that forms the bridge we cross. And to get across you have to close it. So it was closed and we were on the wrong side.
It is a gate
So we started trying to figure out how to get to where we needed to go. Moronae offered to try and stealth back down the Dark Iron Highway to the room where you close the gate in order to open it back up again. We waited while he went… but he got spotted and ended up dying. So we waited for him to run back to the instance and go to the room. But, once there, he reported he did not get the option to move the wheel.
“Of course!” I thought, “You need the Shadowforge Key to do that!” And what we were trying to do was finish the quest for Moronae that gets you that key. So we decided to yolo our way down the Dark Iron Highway since we were pretty much stuck there against the gate. I led the way, while Skronk put a bubble up on me.
Down the Dark Iron Highway
I was the only one who made it. So we got everybody back together and went to the room where you close the gate only to find that none of us got the cog wheel. It seems that you can only close the gate form there, not re-open it.
Still, our initial plan did not seem bad. We ran back to the bridge/gate and, this time, jumped out the window on the correct side and fought the group just below. There is actually a ledge below the window and Ula and Skronk were able to stay up there and cast, out of range of the mobs.
Fighting on the right side of the gate this time
That led to some problems with the mobs going into “evade” mode, since they were being shot from an unassailable location, but I was able to taunt them back into combat to finish them off.
From there we were able to work our way to Lord Indendius.
Lord Incendius awaits
He was no problem, though we did take the fight back in the hallway this time, having learned about his knock-back last time we fought him and not wanting to end up in the lava by mistake.
We were there at the Black Anvil, which is where you need to go to forge Dark Iron Bars from Dark Iron Ore… however, I did not yet have the recipe for that. That comes from the seven dwarves room, down the other path.
On the far side of that was the area where Fineous Darkview roams. We cleared one of the golem groups when he wandered into range. In a rash moment I popped him with my gun to pull him, but got another golem and his three helpers together. That was more of a fight than we were expecting. We focused on Fineous, but things got out of hand as the non-elites have ranged attacks at started going after Skronk.
We killed Fineous, but Skronk went down as well. We started shouting at Moronae to loot the corpse to get the quest item in case we wiped, but then his inventory was full and there were a few awkward moments while I pulled out every ability I had that wasn’t on cool down to keep going.
We ended up surviving. Moronae ressed up Skronk and we saw what else Fineous had. He dropped the Chief Architect’s Monocle, which was definitely mage gear. That went to Ula, who got to show off our second single-eye piece of gear of the run.
Ula with her new Monocle
We got ourselves back together and buffed up again and I took a screen shot of the group, having survived another fight.
Healing up down by the Black Anvil
To finish the quest for Moronae we had to keep going back up the path towards the monument to Franklorn Forgewright, where you turn in the quest. But part of the way there we found ourselves once again outside the vault.
We’re here once more
We did not finish up the vault the last time we passed by, so we figured we could pause for a bit to try it again. Everybody swore not to open up or look at the portrait, which got us in so much trouble last time. Instead we cleared the group inside, then took down the boss and his pet, allowing us access to the vault area.
All I could recall was that you needed to have a dozen relic coffer keys to open up the twelve normal vaults in order to gain access to the final vault. By this time, our ninth run in the instance, we all had a stack of those keys, so we started opening up vaults haphazardly, ignoring the four frozen golems in the center of the room.
Let’s open up some vaults
I had forgotten the bit about the golems coming to life and attacking once you open the twelfth vault, which naturally took us by surprise. Things did not go well.
Golems attack… and knock me out momentarily
We managed to wipe without killing a single golem. By that point we had been going for quite a while and respawns behind us were clearly going to be an issue. We decided to call it a night at that point.
We still have things to finish in Blackrock Depths, but we are considering taking a break and maybe going after Dire Maul East as a diversion next time. BRD will still be there waiting for us. We might even want to finish the vault successfully just once.
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