Our Last Quest in Blackrock Depths

When the weekend came around again and we got together in WoW Classic, I already had a plan for what we ought to do.  We had one remaining quest in Blackrock Depths.  We had to go retrieve the Heart of the Mountain from the vault in Shadowforge City.  That was the one thing left undone for us in the instance.

We had been to the vault twice in our many trips to the dungeon, but managed to wipe both times.  Now, with all of us at level 59, we seemed formidable enough, even as a group of four, to wrap this up.

Blackrock Depths map

We had a short quest to wrap up in Searing Gorge first.  Moronae, taking on the enchanting role in our group, was going to try and get himself up to honored with the Thorium Brotherhood, which would give him access to a couple of enchanting recipes.  But to get on that path you need to finish the quest What the Flux?, which requires taking down three elites.  And there was an Wanted poster quest for the named elite to do along the way.

I swapped out Viniki for my paladin, Wilhelm, because the former had already done the quests and the latter still needed them.  Even if Wilhelm wasn’t going for Thorium Brotherhood rep, it was still a tidy bit of xp for turning them in.

However, somebody got there just ahead of us, so while we could just grab the plans for the first quest, we had to wait around for a respawn… which takes a while for these mobs… before we could finish the second.

Waiting Around

Once they spawned it was a quick fight and then back to Thorium Point to turn in the quests.  Then I swapped back to Viniki and we headed off to the instance.  Our group was:

• Viniki – level 59 gnome warrior
• Moronae – level 59 night elf druid
• Ula – level 59 gnome mage
• Skronk – level 59 dwarf priest

We all have less than a level to hit the cap now.

We were into the instance and up around to the Ring of Law where we found one of the Lunar Festival elders.

Greetings Elder Morndeep

This time around we got the worms again for the starter course… the poison is annoying but we were good… followed by Gorosh the Dervish as the boss.

Gorosh the Dervish attacks

By this point a level 56 boss without any tricks is a quick fight.  But at least it was a change up from the Eviscerator, who I think we have drawn all but once on our previous ventures into the Ring of Law.

Then it was up through the audience and down the path to Shadowforge City and the location of the vault.

Gonna go down to Shadowforge City…

There, we put our learning from past mistakes to use.  We cleared out everybody out in front of the vault area, then grabbed the group inside, then Warder Stigliss and his dog Verek.  Then it was into the vault where only I opened up the first eleven vaults with my pile of relic coffer keys.  On reaching the last one, everybody got setup in the next room, then I opened it and ran back.  The constructs in the vault came to life and came to us in the other room for the fight.

The fight in the vault

After getting stomped by them when they surprised us the last time we were in the vault, this time we defeated them handily.

Then it was back into the vault to claim the Heart of the Mountain, the item for the final quest we had left for the instance.

Everybody got to grab their own heart

After that we were done with what we needed to do.  But there was still the dark coffer left unopened.  For that we needed to the key from one of the dark keepers.  WoW Head says there are six of them, and they can spawn all over the instance.  To spawn them you have to do the thing we regretted back in the day, you have to examine the portrait.  So we got ourselves buffed up and ready, and I went and looked at it.

Viewing the Portrait

And, nothing happened.  Last time we spawned the guy who walks right into the room.  This time, not so much.  So we set about looking for whoever spawned.

One of them was supposed to spawn down by Fineous Darkvire, down in the hall of crafting.  So we made our way down there.  We found old Fineous again.

We’ve killed you a few times now

Since we were there we went on and took low Lord Incendious, who was just up the way.

We were in the neighborhood, so why not?

After that we made our way the other direction.  The domicile, through which we had come to get to the vault, was a possible spawn point.  However, nothing was there.  So we continued on back to the Ring of Law, where the stands above the ring are another possible location.  And there, in the audience, we found Dark Keeper Zimrel.

The others keep clear of Dark Keeper Zimrel

The fight was short, and soon we were on our way back to the vault with the Dark Keeper Key.  In the Dark Coffer was was a green item that went to Moronae to disenchant and the Eye of Kajal, part of a quest for a helmet enchant.

We had now finished the vault and had done about all you can do in Blackrock Depths.

The vault fully open

Instance complete.  And nobody died on the run too, which I think might be a first.

Skronk suggested we go grab one more boss on the way out, Pyromance Loregrain, who was just off the path we took to get to the vault.  It was a quick fight, but the drop was the fiery enchant recipe for Moronae, our group enchanter.  Well worth the side trip.

A useful drop for once!

From there Ula opened a portal back to Ironforge and we took a flight to Morgan’s Vigil in the Burning Steppes, then rode on out to the encampment in the middle of the north end of the zone to turn in the final quest.

That done, it was time to recall back to Ironforge and call it a day.

Everybody hearthstone

That wraps up Blackrock Depths for us as an instance to run.  We might have to go back again for recipes at the Grim Guzzler, but we can put a check next to it on our list.

As before, on finishing an instance, here is a rerun of all the posts about the instance group doing Blackrock Depths over the years.

• Dec 2007 – Blackrock Depths – Round 1
• Dec 2007 – Blackrock Depths – Round 2
• Dec 2007 – Blackrock Depths – Round 3
• Dec 2007 – Marshal Windsor and Lady Prestor
• Sep 2009 – Drunken Pirates at Brewfest
• Apr 2010 – Passing the Time in Blackrock Depths
• Oct 2020 – Preparations in the Burning Steppes
• Nov 2020 – Heading to the Detention Block in Blackrock Depths
• Nov 2020 – Blackrock Depths and Shadowforge City
• Nov 2020 – Punching Sheep with Marshal Windsor
• Dec 2020 – Touring with Marshal Windsor
• Dec 2020 – A Two Boss Day in Blackrock Depths
• Dec 2020 – Bar Brawl in Blackrock Depths
• Dec 2020 – Bad Day at Blackrock Depths
• Jan 2020 – Blackrock Depths and Love Potion Run Number Nine
• Jan 2020 – Recipe Hunt in the Burning Steppes
• Feb 2020 – Another Plan for Blackrock Depths

The Instance Group in the Scarlet Monastery

With WoW Classic so far it has been my practice, at the end of a dungeon run post, to link to past runs of the same instance in various eras of WoW.  With Scarlet Monastery though, that was a little different.  To start with, it has four wings, so I felt I had to wait until I knew we were through there in order to inject those links.

Also, in looking back, I found that some of the posts had issues.  Early on in the history of the blog I hit a point where I was using up my image upload space more rapidly that I expected, so for a brief bit I went looking for alternatives to direct uploads to WordPress.com.

For whatever reason, I chose ImageShack.

I don’t know why.  It was sort of the Imgur of its time I guess.  I am sure it seemed like a reasonable choice when I made.

Back in 2007 they allowed free upload accounts.  Since then they have gone paid subscription only and it seems that they purged all the free accounts, so a range of old posts just have broken image icons where screen shots should have been.  Given how parsimonious I was with images at that point in the life of the blog, I felt I had better fix that.  Fortunately, I throw nothing away and had the screen shots from that era archived, so you can experience those posts in full color.

Also, we didn’t do an instance this past weekend, so at least I have something to post.

Vanilla Era

Basically, real “back in the day” stuff.

• Scarlet Monastery – Round 1 – Dec 12, 2006
• Scarlet Monastery – Round 2 – Dec 18, 2006
• Scarlet Monastery – Rounds 3 through 7 – Jan 6, 2007
• Scarlet Monastery – Round 8 – Jan 13, 2007
• Scarlet Monastery – Rounds 9 and 10 – Jan 15, 2007

While not as primitive as some of my earlier instance run posts, I had clearly yet to establish a regular pattern of posting after every run.  Also, I think over the holidays we were running a couple times a week… I seem to recall a series of Thursday and Saturday runs.  It was a different time.

What is interesting is how parallel the experiences were to more recent posts.  We hit things at about the same level.  We were doing it as groups of five most of the time, though there were some short groups in there.  We did the the “In the Name of the Light” quest.  Arcanist Doan was just as generous with the Illusionary Rod back then as he was recently.

I even distinctly mention how easy it was to avoid Herod’s spin attack in the armory, making me wonder if SynCaine’s theory about modern performance levels making things easier is as straightforward as I might have seemed at first glance. (Ula took a poke at that idea on her blog as well.)  Maybe this stuff was never really that hard and we were not as bad as I recall.

Celebrating in the Cathedral back in 2007

Pre-Cataclysm

After we wrapped the initial instances in Wrath of the Lich King we decided to re-roll the group in as different a way as possible, so we went Horde and did so on an RP-PvP server.  We did go back to our old characters now and again, but we were focused on the new group a lot.

• Making Merry – Dec 24, 2009
• Under Age in the Scarlet Monastery – Jan 7, 2010

The first post is the original characters going back to the monastery to get Santa hats.  It is the second post that gives a sense about how things had changed.  We showed up with a level 32 group and pressed through to do the graveyard, library, and the armory in one evening.

Granted, this was after the instance levels had been re-factored.  Herod, for example, was level 37 there, as opposed to being the level 40 boss we fought recently.  But still, we managed it, though we passed on the cathedral I guess.

Victory in the Armory

Interestingly, while I do not mention respawn rates in the vanilla era, the fast respawn of the armory comes up in that post.  We wiped on the way out then as well.

Post-Cataclysm

With the coming of the Cataclysm expansion we re-rolled again, this time going with four worgen and a gnome.  Ula only plays gnomes.

• Traveling to the Scarlet Monastery – Mar 10, 2011

With a group of four level 30s we decide to eschew the Dungeon Finder and run to Scarlet Monastery.   We finish the library, slaying Doan successfully.  Sure, we wiped a few times, but we were a group of four level 30s FFS.

At the end of the library

You can see that the Illusionary Rod dropped again.  I think it must always drop.

We were not too far from disillusionment with Cataclysm at that point, though for us re-rolling was the wrong play.  If we had gone back to WotLK and finished off the instances they added after the group took a break (though Earl and I kept playing the whole expansion) and had then gone into the Cataclysm instances, we would have been better disposed to the expansion.

The Neverwinter Heresy

Adrift after growing tired of Cataclysm, we tried other MMOs.  There was the horrible EverQuest II experiment, some time spent in LOTRO after it went free to play, and a diversion into Neverwinter.  There we found that somebody had used the dungeon creation tools to create approximations of several World of Warcraft instances, including the Scarlet Monastery.

I might have forgotten about that, except for the fact that I tagged the post “Scarlet Monastery,” so it is on the canon list.

• The Dreadmines and the Scarlet Something or Other – Sep 26, 2013

We went through two Scarlet Monastery recreations, one of the library and the other of the cathedral.

It does have that Scarlet Monastery vibe to it I guess

They were pretty impressive, given the tools.  There was also an attempt at the Deadmines, which was less convincing.

Hallow’s End

We ran out and did the graveyard quite a few times as part of the Hallow’s End celebration, so one could technically count that as a visit to the Scarlet Monastery.  Way back in the day you actually had to run there.  However, I didn’t tag these with “Scarlet Monastery,” but I did find a couple pre-Dungeon Finder run to include just for flavor.

• Hunting the Headless Horseman – Nov 6, 2008
• The Ringless Horseman – Nov 5, 2009

The 2008 post was just a week before Wrath of the Lich King hit, while the 2009 post was just about a month before patch 3.3.0 hit, bringing with it the Dungeon Finder interface, which made running the Headless Horseman a lot more routine.

Headless Horseman Down in Flames

WoW Classic

That brings us to the more recent adventures.

• Six for the Scarlet Monastery Graveyard – Dec 3, 2019
• Arcanist Doan, in the Library, with the Illusionary Rod – Dec 24, 2019
• The Library and the Armory – Jan 15, 2020
• The Armory and the Library – Jan 28, 2020
• Scarlet Monastery Cathedral – Feb 4, 2020

There is a gap between the graveyard and the other wings largely because we went back and did Gnomer again.  Twice.  Go figure.

At the upper fountain last week

There was also a substantial change in the group. Obama has officially dropped out, so he won’t be playing with us any more, and Earl hasn’t been able to get on to play, leaving us with the current group of four.  Still, we persist.

PlanetSide Arena Delayed Until Summer for a Simultaneous PS4 Launch

The launch date for PlanetSide Arena keeps moving further away, and at an accelerating rate.

The game, aimed to be a combination of Battle Royale and classic shooter scenarios, was announced back in back in December with a January 29th launch target.  I mean, it was just PlanetSide 2 recycled into an arena game.  It isn’t as though Daybreak hadn’t already built an arena shooter in H1Z1 already… and H1Z1 was built off of PlanetSide 2.  Seemed like a reasonable target or a low bar, depending on how you looked at it.

Meet the Promised Battle Modes

Then, just days before the promised launch, Daybreak came out and said it wouldn’t go live until March 26th, though if you had pre-ordered on Steam… because of course there was a pre-order offer… you would be invited to the Founder’s Season on February 20th.

Then, five days before that Founder’s Season, Daybreak has announced that the whole thing is being pushed out until Summer.  At least that was the correct usage of the Friday afternoon press release.  But here I am on Monday morning dredging it all up again.

The ostensible reasons given were related to feedback received during the closed beta as well as a desire to launch the game on across both the PC and PlayStation 4 platforms simultaneously.  We’ll see if a cross-platform launch includes cross-platform play, something Sony says it wants but acts like it is keen to avoid.

Maybe the reasons behind the push for a summer date even true.  But there are some other factors in the wind here.

One might be the recent launch of EA’s free to play entry into the Battle Royale arena, Apex Legends.  The title launched at the beginning of the month on Windows, PlayStation 4, and XBox One and is reported to have had more than 25 million downloads and 2 million players going at it concurrently.  Launching into the teeth of that with a pay to play title might be a big ask.

And then there is the refunds for those who pre-ordered.  Per the announcement:

In light of our revised launch plan, we are refunding all Planetside Arena pre-orders.

My guess is that while Fortnite alone didn’t scare them off the selling the box, the emergence of Apex Legends might have.  I expect, at a minimum, that this will mean PlanetSide Arena will be moving to a free to play model while Daybreak watches the market and starts building up a cosmetics cash shop.  They’re going to need to work hard on that, because I’ve never thought PlanetSide 2 was a pretty game.

Meanwhile, the pessimist in me thinks that this might be their Infinite Cisis, Turbine’s attempt to get in on the MOBA market that was too little and too late and which pretty much broke the company. (We got some dirty laundry aired after that.)

Not that Daybreak is down to just two aging fantasy MMORPGs the way Turbine was at that point.  No, Daybreak has two aging fantasy MMORPGs, an aging superhero MMORPG, an aging MMOFPS, and that Battle Royale game, though that last seems to be part of NantWorks at this point.  Also unlike Turbine, they don’t have a big company like Warner backing them.

We’ll see when the next bit of news about this hits I suppose.

A Bad Show asks What is EVE Online

A Bad Show (For Bad People) explores the ins and outs of EVE Online.

The presentation, done with dry sarcasm, is pretty spot on when it comes to the nature of the game in New Eden.  Some of it digs up the usual conflicts about the game like pay to win, balance, null sec being the main point of the game, and the eventual ISK death of the New Eden universe, but it is worth a watch if you’re thinking about finally trying EVE Online.