We had wrung our hands a some about the state of affairs at Blizzard. A couple of us cancelled our accounts with pithy remarks in the comments. But the fact that WoW Classic is the game that brings us together every week overrode our anger at the company, salved a bit by the ramp up in firings of key individuals. And with the state all over them about this, they’ll be under a microscope for a long while. Just go ask the Riot management team, which has been under investigation for a few years now and still has the government calling them out for bad behavior.
The upshot, however, is that we are still playing and we have actually spent the last three weekends running around in Azeroth rather than Outland because we wanted our epic mounts.
In the revised Outland lineup, where UIa fired the old team, two of the replacement, Wilhelm and Fergorin are paladins, while Beanpole is a Warlock, which means the three of us have special quests for our mounts.
The quests require a number of special items and 350 gold to pay off one NPC or another. Much of it can be done solo, but the first thing on this list for the group was to head to Stratholme again because I needed to get four vials of Stratholme holy water.
Back in Strat
You need five for the quest and I had picked up two in our last visit, but they look like mana potions in my bag so I accidentally drank one during the Omor fight in Hellfire Ramparts the last time we were there. Oops.
So in we went to find some more for me. They drop from crates that are scattered liberally throughout the instance. However I would estimate that less than 1 in 5 crates actually contains something, with the other four unleash some minor mobs or a poisonous malady, so we had to go a ways into the instance in order to fill my order. Far enough to wipe when an old friend showed up.
One of the more memorable vanilla catch phrases
Ula had actually substitted her level 58 booster warrior Scscla into the group for this run, so we were running a different dynamic with warrior DPS rather than a mage. Still, the soul stone was to hand and we were able to ress and get back to it pretty quickly, finding my final vial shortly thereafter.
Then we ran out to Dire Maul, after hitting Stromwind for some quest updates, to go into the west wing to find the ancient equine spirit, the next quest update.
The spirit of the venture
You can see dual wielding warrior Scscla in that shot.
That didn’t take too long, since you just have to get in and defeat the first boss, after which we decided to head up to Felwood to help Beanpole with the next stage of his quest, down in the underground of Jaedenar. Getting there was a bit comic as three of the members of the group were boosted, which meant that they got the new flight point at the south end of Felwood automatically, while Wilhelm leveled up the hard way and only had the north flight point. So we went to the north flight point and rode on down the zone to get where we needed to go.
Beanpole had to get to the end of the underground, talk to Lord Banehollow, kill a few mobs for him, then get his reward and update.
Lord Banehollow
We had some help getting through as somebody else was working on quests and had cleared the way… we then cleared the way for them as we caught up. They were doing that escort quest, so I was happy to help.
We finished up there and then Beanpole went off to update his quests and we were done with that run.
The next week our target was Scholomance. Both paladins and warlocks need to visit Scholo and Dire Maul West for their mount quests, just not in the same order. We were there to move Beanpole’s quest along and finish the quests for Fergorin and Wilhelm.
We flew up to Chillwind Point and ran over to the instance only to discover it was locked. You need a key, something that had slipped our mind since we last did this instance back in early 2008. It has been a while.
For the key we had to go back to Chillwind Point to get a quest which required you to be honored with the Argent Dawn to pick up. Fortunately both Fergorin and Wilhelm were at Honored because you have to be so for a couple steps in the quest before Scholo. So we ran around, did our quest, got the key, then got into the instance.
Into the instance
We had some problems early on. We needed some warmup and there were only four of us, though we were all also level 62 at this point and mostly geared up from Outland, so I suppose I should be happy we didn’t try this before Burning Crusade Classic dropped.
Still, we managed to get into the groove after a wipe and a few close calls (and one of the best threading the needling moves I’ve ever managed), fighting our way to the lab first in order to grab the update for Beanpole’s quest. We killed the boss too, but we didn’t really need to.
We were there already, so why not
Then it was down into the basement where you must slay Rattlegore, then drop an item to start an event. Fergorin went first, dropped his relic, and the event kicked off. We managed to wipe on the third round of the event because they mobs all spawn together right where I was standing, but once again the soul stone let us revive and carry on.
Wipe in the basement
We got back up, fought the final guy, and Fergorin was able to claim his mount.
The charger redeemed
We didn’t get a two-fer on that one, the way we did the ancient equine spirit, so I dropped my relic to start the event… and nothing happened. You cannot do it twice in one run I guess.
Ula opened a portal back to Stormwind and I went back to the quest giver, abandoned the quest, got the quest again with a new relic, then we all went back to Scholo to do it just one more time.
Fortunately we had things kind of figured out for the second run and no wipes occurred and I got my summon charger spell as well.
We didn’t have enough time left for Beanpole’s final run, but we went to Ironforge and collected together enough gold so Ula could head down the hill and buy the riding skill and a Swift Yellow Mechanostrider.
Down at the mechanostrider dealership
That was week two.
Week three had a very clear goal, to finish up Beanpole’s quest. Having now done the Scholo part of it, we were headed back to Dire Maul West to slay Immol’thar, who we found fairly quickly.
There he is
What took time was bringing down the forcefield surrounding him. We had to clear all around his pen to turn off two pylons, which were protected by a lot of wandering mobs. Then, when we did that and nothing changed, we looked up the instance and found that we had to turn off three additional pylons elsewhere in the instance. So there was some backtracking and and run in with another boss Illyanna Ravenoak to go get that squared away.
The last pylon on our list
Fortunately being level 62 reduced our aggro radius enough that we were able to slip by quite a few groups.
Once that was done we were back down to Immol’thar, who we brought down handily. Then it was time to setup for the event. Beanpole had to keep three items active while waves of non-elites, with occasional elites, came at us. Unfortunately things got out of hand. We didn’t really have a plan, mobs were being pulled this way and that, and the corpse of Immol’thar was blocking the view of one of the items Beanpole needed to watch. The wheels came off and we wiped.
That corpse is really in the way, we should have pulled him elsewhere
Late in the first run I had actually settled into a pattern that seemed sustainable. I had seal of wisdom up, which feeds me mana on each hit, with wisdom judged on my current target, more mana, which gave me enough regen to keep consecrate going pretty much non-stop which, in turn, kept all the mobs who ran in focused on me so we could take them down.
So for round two the plan was to bring everything to me while I kept the consecrate times flowing.
Consecrate for the win!
That was enough to get us through… and get me top damage, hahaha… to the end of the event where we slew the final guy and Beanpole was able to claim his new mount.
The fight done
Beanpole had his new summon mount spell, but you cannot mount up in the instance, so Ula once again opened a portal for us and we hopped through to Ironforge and got out all our shiny new mounts for a screen shot.
The group, only faster now
Now, after a few weeks of distraction we might need to turn our attention to Outland again. We still have a boss to kill in Hellfire Ramparts.
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