Crag Boar Rebellion and the Sunken Temple Video

Ula somehow found the time to produce a video of the instance group that pulls together our various runs in the Temple of Atal’Hakkar, the Sunken Temple.  She posted it over at her blog, but I want to post it here as well so I remember where to find it.

This is actually the third instance group video about that instance.  As we prepped for our 4 person runs she also put out a trailer to highlight our coming adventures in the swamp of sorrows, which included some of our first run.

And then there is the ancient video I did about the instance group and the Sunken Temple back after Blizzard had trimmed down the instance to meet the needs of the dungeon finder to deliver a boss fight in 30 minutes or less.

The post with that video contains extensive director’s commentary about making the video, the instance, and our group, written at a time when we thought we would never see if on anything but a pirate server ever again.

That is our Sunken Temple collection… so far.

Facing the Avatar of Hakkar

It was time for another trip to Sunken Temple.  It was time to try the Avatar of Hakkar, the one part of the instance we had yet to attempt.  We got on together and flew down to Nethergarde Keep once more to join up.  Our group was:

• Viniki – level 53 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 53 dwarf priest
• Moronae – level 53 night elf druid
• Ula – level 53 gnome mage

And we started running into problems pretty quickly.  As we were riding towards the Swamp of Sorrows and the instance, I noticed that Moronae had stopped following.  We circled back and found him riding in place, as one does in Classic, though apparently still online.  He was on Discord as well, and told us later that he could still hear us talking.  We could not hear him however.

Moronae was moving yet standing still

He texted to say that it was a Comcast Xfinity outage and that there was not yet an estimate as to when service should return.  What to do?

We decided to take some alts out for a spin while we waited, so for a bit our group was:

• Denogh – Level 42 Dwarf Hunter
• Scscla – Level 42 Gnome Warrior
• Wilhelm – Level 44 Human Paladin

We decided to hit Booty Bay as that seemed a likely spot for us to find some quests to do together.

Flying in to Booty Bay, there seemed to be something going on.  There were a lot of level 60s Alliance players hanging out around the flight point.

Crowd when I arrived

Down below there was a crowd of high level Horde players as well.  We stood to the side and shared quests and came up with a plan.  As we were headed out, we got a zone buff.

When the spirit hits you

We guessed that somebody must have finished up Zul’Gurub and was turning in the quest, which was why everybody was hanging around.  They knew the buff was coming.

We decided to head out to the beach where there were the quests for Captain Smott’s chest and the three pirate ship captains.  Gorlash, the holder of Smott’s chest was on the way, so we went after him first.  We were, perhaps, not an ideal group to take on a level 47 elite, but we managed it, though the ride was not exactly smooth.  I did not have to use Lay Hands though, so it wasn’t that bad either.

Gorlash down

From there we went after the first of the pirate captains, where we got in over our heads pretty quickly by rushing in too far too fast, with Wilhelm and Scscla going down.  Denogh was saved by feign death.  By the time we got back and were setting up for another run, Moronae was logging back in, his internet restored.  We camped on a nearby island to resume the main group.

Camping Out

Back together, we rode out from Nethergarde Keep once more for the instance.  We did not have the luck of last week, where somebody had cleared the path to the instance for us.

Trash to clear on the way in

But, by this point, we knew the way in and were more than capable of clearing a bit of trash.  Once into the instance, we took the stairs to the left and headed up to the fourth floor, or the main floor, of the instance.  There we only had to clear our way out and to the right to slip into the room where the Avatar of Hakkar would be found.

In the room where it happens

The Avatar of Hakkar is an event.  You have to click on the egg from the quest to kick it off, after which you are locked into the room by gates dropping at either end of the room and have to clear mobs, waiting for a Hakkari Bloodkeeper spawn.  You need four of those.  Each one drops Hakkari Blood, which may be used to extinguish one of the braziers in the corners.  Once all four have been put out, Hakkar shows up and the big fight begins.

We had a bit of trouble with the event, largely because it involves a bunch of non-elite mobs roaming the room, so keeping aggro off the casters is a chore.  This is one of the pains of having just a four person group.  One more person would take a lot of pressure off.  But with four we dance around a lot.  I hold aggro on elites and sometimes we try to freeze and burn the non-elites, but they don’t die quickly enough and end up chasing Ula around as we try to save her.

Still, we muddled through.  We got the fourth Hakkari Bloodkeeper down and Ula, the designated collector, looted it and extinguished the final brazier.  The Avatar of Hakkar spawned.

And then the power went out at my house.

This was perhaps not unexpected.  It was a hot day all along the west coast and power draw was very high, straining the power grid.

Local temp while we were playing

Fortunately it was just a blip.  I had hooked up a UPS to my computer, so it stayed up, and the power came back on in about 20 seconds, so everything else was coming back up in the house pretty quickly.  I thought I could get back in for the fight.  However, I had not plugged the cable modem into the UPS, and it took several minutes for it to come back up and establish a connection to Comcast Xfinity internet.  (Like a lot of places in the US, there is only one high speed internet service provider in our area, so we are at their mercy.)

Eventually though the connection was re-established and I got connected back to Discord and WoW, where I found myself still in the group and in the instance, but at the instance zone line.  I ran back to where the Avatar of Hakkar was as the group told me how they had just managed to squeak out a win without me, with a combat ress and some luck.

When I got back to them… no respawns thankfully… I found that the corpse was not sparkling for me.

The Avatar of Hakkar down

I had missed the fight.  I did not get credit so could not loot.  My quest was incomplete still and, to add some sting, the Avatar of Hakkar dropped the one plate item he can carry.

The plate chest was not for me

That would have been a nice upgrade for me, but I couldn’t have it.  Such is life in Azeroth.

However, since the whole thing hadn’t taken that long, everybody agreed to go back and do it again so I could at least get my quest update.  We ran back to the instance line, stepped out, and reset the instance.

Restart the whole thing

We made our way back in short order.  Some of the groups change up with every run, others are fixtures with the same mix every time.  We got into the room and I kicked off the event once more, being the only one in possession of an egg still.

Round Two begins

This time around we tried to single target, if only to keep mobs from chasing the casters as much, but to keep up with the pace we ended up having to do some freeze and burn all the same.  We managed, extinguished the braziers, and summoned the Avatar of Hakkar again, then slew him in rather short order.

Naturally, the plate chest piece did not drop again.  So it goes.  We took our victory shot.

The winning team

From there we wanted to turn in the last quest for the instance.  That mean going back to Steamwheedle in Tanaris.  We asked Ula to open a portal to Ironforge, but it turns out she forgot to buy that spell, so we took a portal to Stormwind and flew up to Menethil Harbor from there.

Next stop Stormwind

Then there was a boat ride, another flight, and some more riding before Steamwheedle was in sight.

Quest turn-in ahead

There we turned in the quest.  Done with that.

Now the question is what to do next.  We did not defeat the Shade or Eranikus, but a quick glance at the guide and it seems that we have to do the whole mini-boss routine on the fifth floor again and kill Jamal’an the Prophet before we can take another run at the fight.  We could do that, but I am not sure there is a lot of enthusiasm for that.

Or we can move on to Blackrock Depths, which will open up a new multi-week effort.  We shall see how the group feels, but I’ll probably go look into what we ought to get lined up before we go into BRD.

So this might be it for Sunken Temple in 2020.  Our history with the instance:

• Sunken Temple – Round 1 – Nov 2007
• Sunken Temple – Round 2 -Nov 2007
• Embracing the Dungeon Finder – Mar 2010
• Preparing for Sunken Temple – Mar 2010
• Sunken Temple Completely Completed – Mar 2010
• Visions of a Sunken Temple (the music video) – Feb 2012
• Class Quest Prep for Sunken Temple – Aug 2020
• The Long Road to Sunken Temple – Aug 2020
• Down Stairs at the Sunken Temple – Aug 2020
• Upstairs at the Sunken Temple – Sep 2020

Upstairs at the Sunken Temple

It was time for our second run into Sunken Temple.  We did the downstairs bit last time, so it was time to move upward I suppose.

The Temple of Atal’Hakkar

We got ourselves online and on our way to the temple.  Our group for the week was:

• Viniki – level 53 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 53 dwarf priest
• Moronae – level 52 night elf druid
• Ula – level 52 gnome mage

From Nethergarde Keep we rode on out and started our second descent into the actual instance… so I guess we had to go down stairs first.

Back at the start

This time around we did not get lost on the way to the instance line, remembering the whole “follow the masks” thing and having a bit of luck.  We also barely had to fight anything.  It seemed that another group must have passed through just ahead of us.

We also managed to pick up some of the tablets you need to collect for one of the quests.

I call them pizza boxes because that is what they look like to me

Sunken Temple is very much a multiple visit dungeon, so I was looking at the map and suggested that Jammal’an the Prophet ought to be our target for the week.  To get him you have to go up to the fifth floor, do the ring of mini-bosses to open up the forcefield protecting him, then go down to the fourth floor and fight your way to him.

Fortunately, I had the map because it helped keep things clear.

The Old Sunken Temple map

Once I orientated myself and figured out which path to take, we were pretty quickly up on the fifth floor, another ring like the second floor, with balconies to clear.  And the ring to clear as well.  There is always something between you and your destination.

The ring itself did not go too badly.  There were groups of 1-3 elites, often with a mix of non-elite adds which we tried to take as groups.  There are also a couple of elites that wander around the ring, which led to a surprise and our first death of the run, when Moronae went down.

It was actually the non-elites that were most of the problem.  With 3-5 of them adding in, keeping their aggro focused on me was a chore, and they tended to end up chasing Skronk or Ula now and then.  But we carried on and managed to get to each balcony, one after another.

Resting on a balcony

Some of them are connected directly to the ring, others you have to go downstairs, under the ring, and then back up to find.  But there are only six, so it wasn’t too long before we were fighting the last mini-boss.

Huku was last on the list

From there it was down and around to the fourth floor, which I tend to think of as the main floor, as it has the big open area where you find a lot of mobs.

Into the fourth floor… lots of welps and dragonkin

You can also see the balconies that we had just visited, including the one with the great big gong that doesn’t do anything.  It is the same one from Zul’Farrak.

The map indicated where we needed to go, so we cleared out just enough of the main floor to get into the side gallery that led to Jammal’an.

Jammal’an ahead

He and his co-boss are up at an altar at the end of the room.  However, draw distances in WoW Classic are a bit wonky.  I knew he was there, we all heard him shout when the forcefield went down.  But he does not draw until you get well into his chamber… though you can see the altar, tablets, candles, and everything else around and behind him.

Still, we trusted in him being there and started to clear the room, which reminded us of a couple of things.  First, some of the mobs there cast fear, so you can end up running into another group, which happened to Moronae on the first fight, so he died again.  Oddly, he died so quickly that the mobs reset and didn’t come after the rest of us, so we were able to ress him and carry on.

Second, some of the mobs become ghosts when they are slain, and in this form they are invulnerable but can hit for a lot of damage.  Fortunately, they are also very slow and have a timer, after which they expire, so you just have to dance out of the way and let them drop.

Dodging the ghosts

We were able to clear the room and soon it was just Jammal’an and his buddy Ogom waiting for us.  Not remembering anything specific about the fight, we decided to slay Jammal’an first with a “there he is, get him” level of planning.

There he is, get him!

We had forgotten that he takes control of a party member now and then and turns them against the rest of the group.  So I ended up so charmed and ran back and killed Ula before the spell broke.  Fortunately the druid combat ress was available and Ula was back up again.  But things were still kind of crazy.  More of us were mind controlled and Moronae ended up dying for the third time that run.

Chaos on the altar by Moronae’s corpse

However, we managed to get Jammal’an down, then it was a very near run thing to get Ogom. Though he doesn’t hit very hard I was running under 10% health and had used a health potion already, so I was pulling out all the defense skills I could to stay up.  I outlasted him and he went down.

We got everybody back together and went to loot.  Jammal’an had the Vestments of the Atal’ai Prohpet.

The vestments

Those went to Skronk to replace the robes he had been wearing for a few instances at that point.  Mission accomplished, we went to take our usual screen shot on the altar.

Victory over Jammal’an

However, we still had some time left, so we went back out into the main area again, to find Dreamscythe and The Weaver, two dragons who spawn only after Jammal’an has been slain, circling the area.

Those two are not connected, so we were able to pull them one at a time and take them down.

From there we worked our way around, clearing a bit, to the side path that led to Morphaz and Hazzas, who we needed to kill to complete the class quests for Skonk and Ula.  They come as a pair, for a bit more of a challenge.

Morphand and Hazzas flying around

Fortunately we were up to the task.  We focused on one, then the other, and had them down without any further deaths.

Both dragons down

At that point everybody had their class quest items in hand, Viniki having gotten his from the mini-bosses on the fifth floor.  We still had a bit of time and just around the corner lay the Shade or Eranikus, so why not one more boss?

I seemed to recall that he would summon the local dragonkin to help him, so we went back out in the central area and cleared that out, then returned to take our shot.

Eranikus had his own plan however.  His think is to sleep his main target, which was me three out of five times.

Slept by the shade

Things started to fall apart pretty quickly.  Moronae went down first… it just wasn’t his day…. followed by Ula.  Skronk and I danced around for a bit, but once I was asleep again Eranikus killed him and then turned back to me.  Soon we had a full wipe.

Down as Eranikus returns to his slumber

With nobody left to ress, we all released.  There was some thought about running back to the instance, but we figured we were about done for the day, so just had the angel revive us, taking the equipment damage hit.

Reviving at the graveyard

We all recalled back to Ironforge and called it a day.

Later I came back and flew back down to the Swamp of Sorrows to turn in my class quest.

The Fallen Hero has something for me

When you turn in the quest you have some choices.  Fortunately, the class quest guide is very clear on what a warrior should choose.  It says:

You will be able to choose 3 items, as a Warrior it is very important that you choose Diamond Flask.

So I took the Diamond Flask.

Some health on demand

I now have two trinkets that I likely won’t replace.

So all we have left is the Avatar of Hakkar event to run and we’ll have done the full tour of the instance.

Down Stairs in the Sunken Temple

After a week of getting class quests together and another wrapping up the lead-in quests for the instance, we were finally ready to step foot into the Temple of Atal’Hakkar, the Sunken Temple.

The Temple Awaits

We actually ended up heading in on Saturday, on very short notice, when it became clear we were all around and had the time.  It turned out to be a good thing too, as during our usual time frame on Sunday the power went out five times at our house due to the heatwave hitting the west coast.  At least after the third time it blipped out and back on I took the time to plug my computer into the UPS that I had sitting, charged up, under my desk.

We got on and all flew down to Nethergarde Keep, the closest flight point to the instance.

In the Blasted Lands again

Our group for the run was:

• Viniki – level 53 gnome warrior
• Skronk – level 52 dwarf priest
• Moronae – level 52 night elf druid
• Ula – level 52 gnome mage

We had managed to gain some xp as part of the preliminaries at least.  It had been suggested that we ought to be level 54 as a group to finish the whole thing off, but we figured we could get started and level up as we went.

We rode out through the Swamp of Sorrows, then swam out to the temple itself, heading up the stairs on the east side that lead into the depths.

Looking down into the temple

That isn’t where the instance begins however.  Sunken Temple is like some of the other dungeons from vanilla where there is a series of paths between the meeting stone and the instance line, only one of which will get you where you want to be.

Sunken Temple is also multi-level, so the mini-map is often less than helpful.  So we wandered a bit and took a few wrong turns before Skronk recalled that there was some legend about following the masks to get to the instance.

There is a mask, so this way maybe?

I am still not sure this is true, since it only came up after we had about exhausted the false paths, but we did end up at the instance line shortly thereafter.

Into the instance at last

Once in, there was the question of where to go.

I had an old map that I had put in a post about Sunken Temple back in 2012, after Blizzard had shrunk the instance down to a “30 minutes or your pizza is free” level of effort.

The Old Sunken Temple

I included the map as something of a historical artifact showing what the place used to be like, back when the idea of Blizzard doing anything like WoW Classic was just a pipe dream of an old school underground.

But here we are in 2020 and the dream is real… and that map is useful again.

Looking at it, uncertain where to even begin, I suggested we head to down as that looked to be less… complicated for a first run.  Also, the boss down there has the drop for Moronae’s class quest, which would be good to finish.

We headed down, clearing the way as we went.  There was the central pool at the bottom of everything, but no boss there.  Instead, there was an altar with a quest update and some instructions.

When selected, the altar highlights the balconies on the floor above, each of which has a statue.  You have to activate the statues in the order indicated.

On the altar for the order

I jotted down the clock positions as they were lit up in turn; 12, 6, 2, 10, 5, 7.

Then I realized I was facing south, not north, so that my orientation did not match the mini-map.  So I tried to transpose them in my head… failed… then simply faced the other way and ran the sequence again and jotted the correct list.

From there it was back up to where we started, then down to the second floor… the map names the floors bottom, second, entrance, fourth, and fifth… to clear out the balconies in the order given.

There are, of course, a bunch of mobs in the circle that connects the balconies, plus mobs on the balconies themselves, so it took some time to get around.  Also, part way into this I recieved a text from my wife asking me to call in an order for dinner for her to pick up since it was over 100 degrees out so nobody was in the mood to cook anything in the house.

Some statues already lit up

Part way through this I realized that the map had the order printed on it, meaning that it doesn’t change, and that I need not have spent my time trying to make an ordered list of my own… though at least I got it right on my last try, so we didn’t get out of order.

When we activated the last statue Atal’Alarion, the boss we wanted, appeared down in the pool.

There he is below us

In hindsight, we could have just jumped down into the pool and grabbed him right then.  We had, on our initial run down there, cleared all the trash from the room.  Instead, we ran back the way we came and ended up having to clear again.

One of the things in the back of my head about Sunken Temple was a recollection that it had a brutally fast respawn rate.  None of this two or three hours on the timer.  So we ended up having to fight our way back down to the pool, where we found that the trash around the pool had just started to respawn.  In order to be safe, we started clearing that, with it respawning about two spawns from where we were clearing as we went around the circle.

The kicker was that the three mobs that we cleared down in the pool also respawned, so the boss would have some help.

Looking down at the coming fight

We decided to crowd control two of the mobs and kill the boss first, then work on the trash.  Ula could polymorph one, Moronae could hibernate another, and then we would all focus on Atal’Alarion until he was down.  Sounded easy enough, so in I went.

Onto Atal’Alarion

Things mostly went to plan.  It turns out he likes to punt players into the air, which inflicts quite a bit of damage when you land.  At least once I was below half health and flying up in the air expecting that I might die on impact.  But we managed to muddle through and brought him down.

Atal’Alarion defeated

That was about when my wife got home with the dinner she had picked up while she was out, so it seemed like a good time to close out our first venture into Sunken Temple.  We took one last screen shot on the altar.

Everybody recalling home

Sunken Temple was always going to require multiple visits.  I am just glad we managed to find a route that had a conclusion we could manage in the time we had… we started a bit later than usual and there were interruptions at my end… and even wrap up a class quest.

That is one boss down… many more to go.

The bosses of classic Sunken Temple

There will be at least a couple more trips in before we’re done.

Addendum:  Ula has made a trailer for our return to Sunken Temple featuring video from our first visit.