A Princess of Maraudon

Last time around we jumped into Maraudon without much forethought, choosing to take the experience in as fresh a way as we could.  That led to us taking a somewhat less than optimal route, as we had to double back after clearing the purple side to get a critical question from the orange side.

(Note to self: You can’t be OP is you don’t do orange before purple.)

For our follow up trip we were going to be more direct.  Our group for the run was:

• Moronae – level 51 night elf druid
• Viniki – level 51 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 51 dwarf priest
• Ula – level 50 gnome mage

We had a distinct series of tasks to accomplish, which started with some quest turn-ins on our way there.  We met up in Theramore to turn in a quest, then flew out to Nijel’s Point in Desolace and got another turn-in done along the way to the instance.  Then it was through the big doors to get started.

In we go

The next item on our list was Magra, the Third Khan, who held the final jewel we needed for another quest.  That meant going down the orange side of the entry area, as he hangs out in a side tunnel, up some stairs from the instance line over there.

Orange, this way…

It took a bit to find him.  The color/texture/lighting inside that area really messes with my ability to resolve the 2D image into a 3D environment in places, so we ended up taking a rather round about way to him because I was sure the direct route was a dead end.  Instead, it was just a sharp turn in the cave, which I discovered when we came back that way.  But we got him.

Then it was over to the purple side of things again, where we fought our way through to Lord Vyletongue.  He was all we really needed from the purple side.

This time around we pulled the guards outside of his lair first, then took him and the interior pair second, making the fight much more manageable.  He had the second item for the Celebras quest.  After that we just needed to get back to him.  The purple side of the instance does allow you to bypass some mobs, though we did have a mishap with the toxic bubbles.  After last week we knew to kite them as their AOE attack was hard on the melee.  Ula, who was trying to get in one last spell before pulling back sat too long in range and ended up being our first casualty of the run.

Mage down! Mage down!

It was about time to redo buffs anyway, so we rested a bit, then moved on.  Along the way we did get one of the better named drops of the run.

Imposing!

They came off a treant, so I guess he had a monkey living in his branches at some point.

Once out of the purple side and into the center of the instance, we found we could bypass quite a bit of the trash by jumping off into the brackish water and slaying the few mobs that wandered there.  We didn’t need any more drops of quest updates.

That brought us to Celebras again.  We fought him and his mininions and bested them, and this time Celebras had a quest turn-in for us and offered to teach us about the stone of something or other.

Celebras the instructor

That was a bit more of listen, turn-in, listen, watch, and so on.  We got out of sync, but once somebody is finished Celebras is willing to run the whole routine again for anybody who was left out.

Celebras and Ula

So we ended up with the Scepter of Celebras, which those of us who were just clicking through and not reading the quest text then asked, “So what? What  does it do? Can we use it right now?”

I had to go look it up, being one of those who clicked through without reading.  The scepter lets you skip the whole orange/purple parts of the instance and start at the stone, so you can farm the inner instance.  But we were not even sure what the inner instance was about, so we wandered off to see what we could find.

As with the the earlier parts, we found we could bypass quite a few mobs along the way.  We killed what we needed to, bypassed any mobs off the path, and made our way along.  Landslide, the primordial behemoth boss, dropped a helm upgrade for me.

Defense and Nature Resist

I also got a cloak upgrade that also had a nature resist stat, that being the theme of Maraudon gear I guess.

From there we fought our way down to Princess Theradras.  I actually didn’t take very may screen shots on this run.  I find that being the tank keeps me busy and I forget to take screen shots all the time.  But there was a nice vantage of the path leading down to the princess, with the behemoths in pairs spaced out along the route that I wish I had stopped to take a picture of.

But we made it down there to the island where Princess Theradras roams.

Princess Theradras is about

And we sat for a bit and discussed how we sort of remembered this fight and maybe some failed strategies and something about line of sight and being in the water and some other possibilities.  In the end I just looked it up.  I had been up past 3am the night before playing EVE Online and only got about 4 hours of sleep because I am old and seemingly incapable of staying asleep past 7am, so I wanted to get this done on the first try.

The basic info was she hits hard, so the tank needs to endure, and if she runs off after any of the casters the tank needs to grab her quick because she’ll smoosh the clothies.

In the end, we got her in one run.  It went about as described, though I think the fact that, by the time we got to her, we were all level 51 (and I had just hit 52) gave us enough of a buffer to endure any rogue attacks.  She dropped a nice caster item.  We gathered up and took the traditional screen shot.

Down with the princess!

I didn’t tweak the saturation or anything on that screen shot, it is just bright green around there.

After that I was feeling done, but we needed to leave and couldn’t remember if there was an exit path out of the instance or if we had to stone out.  I thought there might be something down in the water below the path to the princess, so we jumped off to check.  While we were there we took down Rotgrip.

Rotgrip under water

That was worth the effort as Moronae ended up with a nice set of boots out of it.

with nature resist

We explored a bit more… there is a whole cave area down behind where Rotgrip lurks… but did not find any likely exits, so decided to just stone back to Ironforge.

Recall in the water

After that I called it a day.  We still had a couple of quests to turn in.  One was back in Desolace, which promised to reward me with a best in slot item for tanks, the Mark of the Chosen.  The other was in Moonglade, which Moronae could just teleport to in order to turn it in.  The rest of us were going to have to get there the hard way.  But for 6,100 xp and a gold and a half I’ll make the run.

We missed at least one boss on our runs, and probably a few more things, but Maraudon isn’t anybody in the group’s special favorite instance, so we may be done there.

That makes the next instance on the list Sunken Temple.  But before we venture into there we need to get our level 50 class quests ready, as they all seem to require something from that instance to complete.

Meandering in Maraudon

Having finished up Zul’Farrak we ended up skipping a couple of weeks due to the real life, but got back together this past weekend.  The next instance on the list was Maraudon.

I know I always say something about hazy memories and having forgotten places, but for Maraudon that was especially true for me.  I remember there being an orange side, a purple side, and the final boss… not the fight, just the boss herself.  Aside from it being in Desolace, that was about it.

Add into this the fact that we do very little research before we head into an instance, preferring to learn on the go, and we sometimes set ourselves up.  The only thing we really look into is the quests, just to make sure we have them all going in.  There were three we needed to grab on the way in, one in Theramore and two more out in Desolace.  Everything else was said to be in the instance, so when we got on, we didn’t know much more than that.  Our group for the evening was:

• Moronae – level 50 night elf druid
• Viniki – level 50 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 50 dwarf priest
• Ula – level 50 gnome mage

Everybody was 50 at last, and I think we all have our class quests.  We’ll get to that later, since that involved the next instance.

We picked up our quests, riding across Desolace from the flight point.

Out in the aptly named Desolace

I had scouted the locations up front.  It was a matter of going to out outpost, then finding a wandering NPC in the south of the zone, then turning to the Valley of Spears and Maraudon.

Our path across Desolace

Also, as a side note, I am thinking of doing a series of short weekend posts featuring the in game map of each zone, completely explored, as finding maps for anything classic on Google has been problematic at times.  Just the map and a few notes about the zone, just so I can find them later.

Anyway, once to the Valley of Spears there is a big door, which we found straight away. There is no key or anything required, you just click on it and in you go,  you are in the foyer of the dungeon.  We stopped for a bit there to get ourselves buffed up and ready.

Setting up inside

Inside we ran into the Nameless Prophet, killed him, got his drop, and then ignored it while we went wandering around in the caves.  Unlike some other instances, the “outside the instance but part of the experience” area was not all elite mobs.  Maraudon was a post-launch addition, so maybe that changed their minds.  There was also at least one collect drops quest where we all got to loot a drop rather than only one of us getting the update.  Modern times.

We came to a point where things were clearly split into the orange and purple sides.  We looked at the orange side.

Orange, this way…

And the promptly went off towards the purple side of the caves, finding our way to the instance.

Into the purple zone

Once in, we began our advance, facing off against multiple groups of four or five.  But at level 50 we were well above the level of most of the elite mobs early on, and some of the mobs in groups were non-elite, so we were able to clear and move pretty well.  And well all had a “collect 25 items” quest that was of the old school, with only one person getting the drop, but everything seemed to drop them, so we were happy enough to slaughter everything as we went.  100 drops is a big ask, but we seemed to make decent progress.

We made out way to Lord Vyletongue, the first boss encounter.  We were not fooled by the two minions in stealth at the entrance to his chamber.  However, rushing in to grab him, we were surprised to find two additional stealthed guards in with him.  That could have gone more smoothly, but we managed to muddle through on an innervate from Moronea to get Skronk back his mana.

Lord Vyletongue down, dealing with his minions

Somewhere along there Moronae asked about the drop we got from the Nameless Prophet, a gem that we needed to use somewhere along the way.

The amulet in the bag

After trying to use it in a few likely spots, we happened upon one of the spirit Khans, so used it on him.  That does indeed manifest them in to the physical world… and they are aggro and attack right away.  Fortunately we were prepared.

We carried on into the center of the instance, where the purple and orange sides join and started in on that.

The middle of Maraudon is icky

The mobs started getting up to our level, but we kept on, clearing our way until we found Celebras the Cursed.

Celebras and his droogs

We got ourselves buffed back up, then Moronae and I waded into the green water to start the attack.  We decided to kill Celebras first.  He summons more minions as the fight goes on, but we were able to power though, drop him, and then clear his help.

That left us talking to the ghost Celebras, which something in the back of my head knew was the result, but something was missing.

Celebras, post fight

I believe Skronk asked aloud, “Aren’t we supposed to get a staff or something?”

Yeah, that was the ticket.  But no staff here.  So we started looking up the instance and the quests and found that we had gone the wrong way.  There is an NPC early on in the orange side that sets you up with the quest you need.  Then you need to kill a boss on the orange side and a boss on the purple side to get yourself set for Celebras.

We did not have that quest.  We should have done the orange side first.  Plus, we had already killed the purple side boss, Lord Vyletongue.  We were in a “what do we do now?” situation.

We decided to just go back the way we came, go over to the orange side, get the quest, then see if we could make it to the boss there to at least move the quest along.

Fortunately, not much had respawned behind us, just the first few mobs in the instance.  Unfortunately, getting back was a bit of a maze of bridges and paths, though in our wandering we did wrap up another quest.

We found another khan along the way.  We ended up with four of the five gems from them, and I think the last one we need is right at the start when you come in, so we should be able to finish this up next time.

Eventually we unwound the maze and made it into the orange side and found the quest giver, Cavindra.

Quest obtained

That done, we decided we had time for one more objective, to take down the boss on the orange side for the quest.  On the mini map that boss, Noxxion, looked like he was pretty close by.  But the mini map lies, Maraudon is twisting caves and ramps.  We had a ways to go.  But we managed to move fairly quickly.

The one test on the way was in a room with a bunch of non-elite larvae.  I grabbed a bunch of them so we could do freeze and burn, and in the middle of them an elite showed up.  I hadn’t seen an elite before, but grabbed aggro and focused on him.  Then another showed up, seemingly out of nowhere.  Something was amiss.

I looked up and around the room and saw a large pulsing tube that ran from ceiling to floor, and when I moused over it I got a cog wheel cursor.  With that a little light went on in my head, the tube was the source of the elites.

Moronae worked his way over there as another elite appeared from the tube to prove my point.  He clicked on it, we finished off the last elite, and were set to move forward again.

The deflated larvae launcher in the background

From there it wasn’t much farther to Noxxion.  The fight with him had a mechanic where he divides into multiple versions of himself that you have to burn down, then he reappears to resume the fight.  We had enough power to burn through that and bring him down.  That accomplished our goal for the night.  We lined up for a picture then stoned back to Ironforge.

Maraudon very orange

For next time we have a couple of quests to turn in, the third khan to find, Lord Vyletongue to slay once more, and then a return date with Celebras.  Then we can move on into the end of the instance and maybe wrap it up.