Some Enchanted Evening

Once again the group was off on a side task.

During a past run when we were talking about trade skill coverage it was pointed out that we have nobody on the team who does enchanting.  We have a number of trade skills covered, but nobody had really picked up enchanting.  Obama had said he was going to try it, but then stopped playing with us, leaving us without an enchanter.

I don’t think enchanting is necessarily critical, but it can be a nice to have addition to the group.  Also, some part of me wants a glowing weapon.

I had initially asked if Ula was interested in going with enchanting.  She has been doing tailoring and I brought this up while we were out looking for the mooncloth bag recipe. (Since obtained for 20g at the auction house.)  Tailoring is something of a natural to go with enchanting as it does not require a dedicated harvesting skill the way many of the professions do.  I have the tailor/enchanter mix on a character in retail WoW.  We could just run her through some lower level dungeons to collect gear to disenchant to kick start her progress.

So we picked up the discussion the past weekend.  The first proposal was to have somebody’s alt pick it up, but I argued that we ought to have somebody in the dungeon group itself pick up the profession, as having them around to disenchant the inevitable bind on pickup drops that we get every run.  Those could turn into materials for useful enchants.

Eventually Moronae volunteered for the position.  He had been running with just gathering professions, herbalism and skinning, in order to make some money.  But skinning is pretty common and not a huge money maker.  So he said he would drop that and pick up enchanting.

With that decided we went of to do a few low level dungeon runs just to get him started.  For whatever reason… I can’t really recall now… the rest of us opted to bring out some slightly lower level alts for this run.  They were not low enough level to get xp or find any good drop, so I suspect we would have been fine with our mains, but at least we got them out for some exercise.  So our group was:

• Moronae – 59 feral druid
• Scsla – 43 gnome warrior
• Fergorin – 40 dwarf paladin
• Alioto – 36 resto druid

We decided that the Deadmines would be a good start, so flew out to Westfall and ran off to that.

Into the Deadmines

I will admit that it is actually kind of fun to go into a lower level instance and slay with near impunity.  This is my major gripe about level scaling all content, you never get a chance to do this sort of thing.  My druid, being level 36 and dressed to heal, did manage to get in a little bit over his head now and then… enough elite gray mobs can still be a hazard… but we kept on plowing through.

The drops were good and Moronae was able to start disenchanting stuff pretty quickly.  He kind of had to as we were letting him loot most of the corpses and his inventory was filling up fast.  I ended up taking some of the wool from him as I still needed to make heavy wool bandages to advance my first aid.

We arrive at the boat

Up on the ship we roamed around the back and got Cookie and the siamese cat drop.  Then we were back around front and up the ramps to knock out Captain Greenskin and then Van Cleef.

Skonk was quick to point out that one of the ramps had a corner cut off and that this no doubt explained why he fell off the ramp and into the water back when we were doing the Deadmines at level.

You can see if at the lower left

We went up and faced VanCleef, who gave us his usual routine.

Yes, yes, tell us some more

That did not take us much time at all and was distracting enough that we decided to do another instance.  This time we flew on up to run through Shadowfang Keep.  Another quick tour through a dungeon.

Hate to break up the dinner party…

Again we were on a rampage and Archmage Arugal didn’t stand much of a chance against us.

Arugal is down

That was a sight bit quicker than our run through the first time in classic.

After that it seemed like we might take a break, but I was in Stormwind and the Stockades were close by and a quick run, so we ran in and did that just to pile on some more gear to disenchant.

The slaughter of the Defias

After that Moronae was able to get himself up to 90 enchanting.  Viniki made him his silver and golden enchanting rods to cover his ongoing requirements and he was able to do a few practice enchants on us.  I think we all got +5 health on our bracers.

Anyway, we got him off to a good start I think and hopefully we can get him up to where he can disenchant the inevitable mail bind on pick up drops that inevitable are our reward when doing runs.  And maybe someday I will have a glowing enchanted weapon.

Clearing the Stormwind Stockade

I do not imagine that the Stormwind Stockade is on anybody’s list of epic, memorable classic WoW instances.  It might even be one of the instances that was made better by the Cataclysm revamp.  At least it got Hogger as a boss then.

But there it is, in the middle of Stormwind, easy to get to and easy to run.  It was also right in our level range and about right for our level of commitment.  I was still ill and had family in town, so a short window of time on Saturday afternoon was about it for me.

Skronk and I got over to the Stockade early just to get quests and what not in order… and to listen to the NPCs talk about their troubles.

Hanging out

Sitting around there for a bit was another reminder of how much detail work Blizz put into the game.  The NPCs go on about the troubles in the Stockade and every once in a while a group of Defias prisoners surges out of the entrance to the dungeon to fight with the Stormwind guards.  You can jump in and help, but the guards subdue them in short order, then go back to moaning about their current situation.

The Stormwind Stockade is a small instance, but it does seem to try to make up for that with quests.  As we sat around waiting for people to get online and over to Stormwind, Skonk and I were able to put together five quests for the instance, and checking later, I was missing a sixth according to the list over at Icy Veins.  Somehow I didn’t get the one from the Wetlands.

My quest list for the Stockade

I think for the full run you need to walk out of the instance with three heads, a hand, ten bandanas, and a checked off shopping list of various prisoner types slain.

As everybody got online, we ended up with this as our group.

• Ula – level 26 gnome mage
• Viniki – level 26 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 26 dwarf priest
• Obama – level 27 human warlock
• Moronae – level 27 night elf druid

We formed up outside the instance, some potions were passed out, quests shared, and then we headed in.

Looking into the Stockade

The challenge of the Stockade, such that there is, is mob management.  The instance is small, but fairly crowded with Defias prisoners, so it is easy for a pull to bring more mobs than you thought and accidentally pulling by proximity will happen if you are not careful.  The mobs also all run when they get low on hit points which can lead to more pulls if you’re not careful.

And, at the start of the instance, they can also run past the zone entrance far enough that you cannot loot them.

No Stockade run is complete without this situation

Other than that, the whole thing is a short north/south-ish corridor which is crossed by and east/west corridor, each with cells on either side and at the ends.

Map of the Stormwind Stockade

That map, which I swiped from the web, is from later in the life of the game, when instances got in-game maps, but before the Cataclysm rework, which put bosses on the maps, which I guess would make it from somewhere in the WotLK time frame.  Maybe?

Anyway, you move through the instance clearing the hallway, then each cell as you move past.  Each cell has three or four mobs.

Fighting in one of the cells

The cells have their quirks.  At one point I ran up to the broken bars to proximity pull a Defias standing behind them, but he just sat there until I moved to the open door section in the middle.  Then he came to get me.  They may have wrecked their cage, but they remain locked up in their hearts I guess.

As for the bosses… they aren’t really bosses the way they are in other instances.  A couple of them show up in random cells along the way.  Down at the west end, where we headed first, we found Dextren Ward in the furthest west cell.  We cleared the the north and south cells first, mostly out of habit, then realized we had done it right because Ward’s special attack is to fear people, which sends you running into those rooms.  If you haven’t cleared them, it is all about the adds.

Down at the eastern end there was Hamhock, the ogre, and then Bazil Thredd, neither of whom were particularly tough.  They also drop no loot, no doubt because it would be way too easy to farm.  There is a rare spawn boss who does have a couple items, but we didn’t get him.  So we collected the various body parts, as each of the mobs were generously supplied with five heads or hands or whatever.  By that time we were also done with our shopping list of kills.

Group picture time… not even sure which boss now

The one thing we were not done with was bandanas.  Everybody in the group needed to collect ten, they drop off of maybe one in four Defias mobs, and unlike heads or limbs, no Defias line member ever seems to carry a backup bandana or three on their person.  So even when we had slain the last named mob we were well short on bandanas.

But the Stormwind Stockade provides.  Another oddity of the instance is that it respawns the trash mobs pretty quickly.  Before we were done with the west end of the long corridor Defias mobs had begun respawning around the entrance.  We had to clear a walker as we crossed to the east end, so when we were done there we just turned around and went back to clear the rapidly returning Defias to collect bandanas.

Slaying respawns

We had to carry on with this for a while, but eventually people started finishing up their collection.  As that happens others are more likely to get bandanas, so our full quota was reached pretty quickly once we were down to two people.

Ula once again did a video of some of our time in the Stormwind Stockade, so you can get a sense of what it is like in there.

The soundtrack is better on the video I think.  The video also shows one of the trials of being the tank, which is people hitting mobs other than the one you’re hitting.  You can see me turning around and taunting mobs off of people.  Fortunately the warrior taunt is very effective, so it isn’t a huge deal and gives me something else to do now and again.  We would be in trouble if I had gone with my pally tank idea though.

The video is also available over on Ula’s new blog, which you can follow to keep up to date on her video releases.

After that it was time to exit and begin the great turn-in of quests.  Most of them offered up just experience and a bit of silver as rewards.  Not that I mind a bit of silver.  My characters are all still pretty poor.  But The Stockade Riots quest is part of a chain which began with a drop at the end of the Deadmines which brings you around to the garden in the castle for an event that has you talking to a gnome named Tyrion and then slaying a pair of plotters.

Finding Tryion

There is a bit of a hang up in this quest as Tyrion is required for two stages of the quest, and when he is involved with one you cannot turn in the other.  Skronk and Ula got hung up for a while waiting on this.  I came back later and was able to get some help from a stranger to finish it.  It is worth the wait as after you have completed The Attack you unwind back through the people you spoke to, ending up at the king in Stormwind castle.

And her, but we’ll get to her later won’t we?

Once there, your reward is a pretty decent ring, with stats for everybody.

The seal of Wrynn

I will no doubt be hanging on to that one for a while.  And so ended our Stormwind Stockade run.  In its WoW Classic form it is a bit forgettable, though the one quest reward was worth it  If you look through past group encounters with the Stormwind Stockade you’ll see I don’t have much to say about them either, though I do mention that ring after the first run, so I must have done that quest before. (Though I don’t remember it at all.)

• Stormwind Stockades – Round 1 – Nov 19, 2006 – Our first run
• Our First Guild Achievement – Jan 3, 2011 – A mixed guild group runs it for the achievement
• Three Instances – One Night – Jan 21, 2011 – Our Cataclysm group does the Stockade

As for the next destination, we head straight to Gnomeregan.  We’re pretty far into the level range for Razrofen Kraul, as our side run into it indicates, so it may get bypassed and left for an alt group to conquer.  We shall see.