Category: dungeon

Our Alliance crew finally finished off the BC dungeons recently. The general consensus was that they are fair-to-middling, a few good ones (The Hellfire Citadel sequence, Magister’s Terrace), a few bad (the entire Tempest Keep run), and a bunch in the middle.

Most suffered from having not a lot of story thread, certainly when compared to what is to come in WotLK. Even the Caverns of Times dungeons, which I remember enjoying at the time, seemed a bit nothing – not helped by our characters not having been ‘in’ the BC story for some time.

Magister’s Terrace was a good capstone, with plenty of tricky pulls, a Sunwell Plateau raid teaser mid-way, and much hilarity with Kael’thas Sunstrider’s gravity games. He even dropped the awesome Phoenix Hatchling for everyone who didn’t have one. Blizzard have either made it a 100% drop, or we were crazy lucky – I ran this dungeon many-a-time to get the Hatchling to drop back in the day.

Like the rest of the alt-fans, I took advantage of the 100% Winds of Wisdom experience buff to level a new character. I’d rolled up several Highmountain Tauren with the aim of earning their heritage armour, and the buff finally got me to commit. I chose a Hunter to be in easy and quick mode, and went to work.

The levelling was fun – I plopped on heirlooms and just queued for dungeons. Because of the buff, the queues popped pretty instantly all the way until Legion where things slowed down for some reason. That was fine as I just swapped to getting my Artefact weapon and doing the Highmountain quests. That was enough to get me to level 110.

I was taken by surprise by getting the Heritage of the Highmountain feat at 110 – I had been expecting it at 120. And as soon as I got it I instantly stopped playing the character. Funny how motivation can disappear when a goal is reached, especially when there is no driver to start a new one. I should also have read up on the armour – turns out it’s only available for Highmountain characters to transmog. Whoops.

It took almost exactly 36 hours to get there, though I think I could have been more efficient (especially in the last 10 or so) and made it in close to 24 hours flat. This sounds in stark contrast to what’s coming in Shadowlands, where a player in the Alpha levelled from 10-50 (the equivalent of 10-110 currently) in under four hours!

Knowing that kind of speed is coming makes the idea of starting a new alt now seem a little crazy. I would like to get a Dark Iron Dwarf, and even started a Night Elf Demon Hunter for the purpose, but I’ve struggled to continue past the (long) starter sequence. I might just have to wait for my sole Alliance character (see above) to get the Dark Iron one day – though I think I read Shadowlands gets rid of the rep requirements for Allied Races so maybe it will be a freebie. Which will probably mean I won’t be interested after all – being given stuff just isn’t the same as earning it.

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We put the Alliance crew on hold in order to spend some time finally seeing the BfA dungeons on our Horde characters.

We’ve cleared the Normals and have just started in on the couple of Heroic-only instances. Our Warlock is super-geared compared to the rest of us, so we cheesed every boss mechanic due to his enormous DPS – and that’s with his blueberry out instead of his imp. Rolf-stomping bosses is fun, but we’re all looking forward to having to work for our loot come Shadowlands.

The first heroic, Atal’Dazar, was slightly more testing – including a wipe due to way too much poison – and probably the best looking dungeon we’d seen in BfA (with the high-gothic Waycrest Manor a close second, particularly with our current DnD campaign being Curse of Strahd!). Not being a Gnome fan I’m not really looking forward to the two Mechagon wings, but they should at least be more of a challenge, being late game additions.

After finishing the dungeons we’ll check out the raids via LFR, and then maybe back to the Alliance run through WotLK. It’s nice to have a small group committed to seeing all the content – we can listen to cut-scenes and admire the dungeon designs which is a relaxing change of pace compared to regular levelling and gearing runs.

Of course we all dream of somehow doing ‘proper’ raiding in Shadowlands, but also realise it’s very unlikely. Maybe we’ll magically find another small one-night-a-week Oceanic guild to join forces with – stranger things have happened.

Having polished off all the Vanilla dungeons (I want to say Classic but that now means something entirely different), our motley Alliance crew ventured into the first Outland instance, Hellfire Ramparts.

I was super pleased to see our Hunter had already managed to piece together a classic Outland outfit, with some truly ridiculous ‘pants’, clashing gloves, topped off by a fantastically wrong helmet. His gormless face was icing on the cake.

I have strong memories of this dungeon being somewhat difficult, especially the tricky early trash pulls which can easily go horribly wrong, and the final boss, the netherdrake Nazan. Those memories were confirmed when I looked up the Ramps blog entry from our old guild, Midnight’s Children – it sounds like a nightmare, even bringing a rare rallying cry from our Guild Leader:

Midnight Children do not believe in rank or status. As such their guild leader has never issued an order. But I do now.

This Dragon must die. All the forces of this Mighty Guild will be bent to this end. No sacrifice is too much, no labour too strenuous. One Horde. One Guild. One Victory.

So it was with some trepidation that we entered, especially as we were reduced to four players. How could we get through this alive, let alone short handed?

Incredibly easily, as it turned out.

Blizzard either nerfed the living daylights out of Ramps at some point, or else our years of playing meant that it was a walk in the park. Somehow I suspect the former. We had no trouble with any trash or bosses, with Nazan falling with barely a whimper.

He also dropped a super nice looking weapon called Hellreaver for our DK.

Our biggest challenge ended up being trying to tame one of the excellent Shattered Hand Warhounds for our Hunter. We accidentally killed just about every single one via my Consecration Aura, our Death Knight’s Death and Decay, an accidental auto attack, etc., before our veteran Priest designed a strategy that allowed our Hunter to pull a solo wolf while we distracted its companions. It was silly but also great fun, a reminder of how the best gaming moments tend to be unscripted and spontaneous.

Last night our Alliance guild finished off the final Dungeon in the original ‘Vanilla’ (aka Classic!) set, Lower Blackrock Spire, a dungeon crawl par excellence.

When I used to tank pug, I was always glad when LBRS popped – though often I had to queue for it specifically as once you hit 58 the game decides it’s BC dungeons or bust. It’s a far more linear run than Blackrock Depths which makes it much easier with a PUG, but more importantly it’s full of interesting bosses, bonus quests, pet drops, and stunning multi-level design that absolutely nails the underground fortress feel.

Much like BRD, there are many spots in the dungeon where you can see where you will be going later, or where you’ve been previously, and plenty of tricks for backtracking and short-cutting if you want to. The bonus boss Urok Doomhowl is a great example, requiring you to have looted the head of a prior boss but also to have collected an unmarked pike to stick that head on. The designers obviously realised people might miss the pike, and cleverly allow you to jump down to a lower level path that leads you directly back to the pile of pikes… followed by a long jog back to your party. At least one way was fast!

LBRS is basically a dark Horde stronghold, which makes it strange to run as actual Horde, even if the minions and bosses are Horde traitors. Killing Orcs and Trolls doesn’t sit quite right. On the other hand, doing it as Alliance feels exactly right.

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One thing that became a problem late in this sequence of runs was Blizzard’s 8.2 change to group XP, where having a level-locked person in the group meant no-one earned XP for the events during the Dungeon nor the quest hand-ins at the end. Apparently the change was made to foil people charging for level 110-120 boosting, but surely Blizzard could have made that only apply to the high level boosting.

Several of our members were using each run to level up, which worked perfectly with keeping pace on the dungeon level requirements, and that stopped abruptly with the policy change. We did work out you could disband the group, wait for a 5 minute cooldown, and hand in the quests for full credit, but that is a pretty dull thing to have to do and doesn’t help with the missing XP from all the dungeon mob and boss killing. It’s a pretty punishing change for groups like us who are working systematically through content.

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The level nerf didn’t spoil our fun however. We finished the journey that started way back in Deadmines over a year ago, and earned our Classic Dungeonmaster achievement. The Blackrock dungeon duo are a fabulous end to an epic 60 levels of dungeoneering – our newest player commenting on how he was exhausted but exhilarated by the end of LBRS, with the achievement being all the sweeter for the tribulations Blackrock Mountain had put us through.

Now it’s time to unlock XP again and venture into the wilds of Outland and the many good Dungeons – and colourful outfits – to be found there.

Our Alliance Guild ran Blackrock Depths this evening – or at least the first 7 bosses: it has 20 in total. I suspect this is the largest 5 man dungeon in Warcraft.

Doing some research for the run, I was amazed to read that when it was originally released in Patch 1.3.0 in 2005 it would take 4-6 hours to run. That’s remarkable, and remarkable that people would have the stamina to do such a lengthy run. Especially given how much harder it would have been on release with mobs at level and no min-maxxing possible as this Dungeon would have been dropping the best gear in game.

Even just navigating it must have been a challenge, with multiple levels and an dizzying array of routes and obstacles. These days it’s much easier with Dwarven mole machines allowing fast travel to various spots throughout the maze.

It has unique attributes like The Black Forge which is the only place in game where you can smelt Dark Iron Ore, and The Black Anvil which allows those bars to be crafted into items. And those two locations are deep within the dungeon, so you can’t just traipse down there to do a bit of crafting. It’s lovely that the gear you forged was largely fire-resistance, which set you up for the yet to be released Molten Core, the first Warcraft raid. The Forge is even located just before the entrance to the Raid as a hint and teaser. That kind of precise logical progression is sorely missing from the ‘retail’ game.

Places like Blackrock Spire are another reason Classic is going to be fascinating. When even the Dungeons are challenging marathons, it will be a real test of the capacity of the modern MMO player. Assuming it’s successful enough to move off Patch 1.12, which it surely will be given the current level of interest.

#Blaugust15

Our Alliance adventures have continued apace, and we’re now down to the final seven before we can advance to the BC suite.

We finished off the Scarlet sequence by cleansing Scarlet Monastery, another lovely piece of dungeon design, with the appearance of Lillian Voss being a highlight – and also a highlight of BfA as it turns out. One of Blizzard’s great strengths is allowing secondary characters to grow and feature through the course of many expansions, and Lillian’s story is one of the best. It’s not too spoilery to say her role as a shepherd for fresh Undead in BfA is superbly done.

Next up were the Razorfen pair, not as interesting but still good romps.

Last week was the twists and turns of Maraudon. A strange mix of dinosaurs, centaurs, and noxious slime, and a very handsome elemental queen – and apparently the mother of the Centaur? My Tauren self was pleased to finish her off in that case.

During the Maraudon run I suddenly realised I was gaining XP, despite having switched if off at level 60 to allow us to continue queuing for the lower level instances. Somehow patch 8.1.5 had switched XP back on. I promptly forgot about it and then was horrified to ding 61 after killing Theradras. One of our party cleverly suggested a cursed DK could take the place of my Dwarf, and that seemed like the only way to continue, but I was very sad to have to abandon my Paladin. I raised a pleading ticket to Blizzard to reverse the level, not expecting it to be possible, but was amazed to find it was! They promptly downlevelled me to 60, and even froze the XP too. All praise to support rep Sehtovkt for the assistance, and Blizz for being flexible.

And finally, this week we ventured into Scholomance, another beautiful instance. There are so many great design elements in there, from the Flesh Horrors to the Bored Students, and the Gothic nature of the ruins themselves. After the Mists redesign, it’s also one of the few early dungeons that requires watching mechanics, not just tank & spanking – our returning friend Lillian Voss, cursed by Darkmaster Gandling, even managed to wipe our party. Our revenge on Gandling was all the sweeter as a result.

Tonight’s Alliance guild expedition took us to the centre of Horde territory, into the catacombs below Orgrimmar: Ragefire Chasm.

Ragefire Chasm extends deep below the city of Orgrimmar. Barbaric troggs and devious Searing Blade cultists once plagued the volcanic caves, but now a new threat has emerged: Dark Shaman. Although Warchief Garrosh Hellscream recently called on a number of shaman to use the elements as weapons against the Alliance, the chasm’s current inhabitants appear to be renegades. Reports have surfaced that these shadowy figures are amassing a blistering army that could wreak havoc if unleashed upon Orgrimmar.

From an Alliance perspective that last report doesn’t sound entirely bad, but then unleashing uncontrolled shamanic magic is probably bad idea, so in we went to clean up the mess the Horde have made.

Compared to Deadmines, RFC is a quick and relatively unpopulated affair, with far fewer mobs and only tank & spank bosses – and the lava boss which I fell into fighting Slagmaw. Ahem.

We made short work of everyone, rescued our trapped operatives, and cleared the dungeon to allow our investigators start unravelling what foul magic the Horde had managed to stir up and subsequently lose control of.

The Alliance continue to be upright and relatively dull – the Horde quests want you to basically just kill all of the things, the Alliance ones want to do some research – but we’re in this for the long haul and I’m warming to our Hordebreaking role.

As we finished I copped some deserved ribbing for our guild tabard, which was dark red with a dark logo – my Horde bias clearly on show. So now we have a fetching new Alliance-blue number, with a clearly visible logo. Unless you’re a Dwarf.