We were in the Outlands again. We were also down 40% of the team.

Earl was hosting some sort of Guitar Hero/Rock Band super play session at his new house (give a guy more that 250 square feet in which to live and suddenly he has stuff to do on a Saturday night) while Bung was off at an undisclosed location. (Or I missed what Skronk said, or I forgot.)

We could have just gone out and for a few group quests, ground some experience, and called it a night, but it was pointed out that we were the three people in the instance group who had played EverQuest II. And since the Living Legacy promotion was still active, our accounts were all live. And it was also a double experience weekend in post-cataclysm Norrath.

So we camped in Azeroth and woke up in Norrath.

Skronk and Ula had already been playing a bit in Norrath as part of the Living Legacy program, as noted, and had a couple of characters ready to go. I, as mentioned elsewhere, have a full set of alts and no room to roll anything new. So our group ended up being:

15 Iksar Coercer - Dentiliak (Skronk)
15 Arasai Necromancer - Xola (Ula)
62 Fae Swashbuckler - Blintz (Vikund)

A bit unbalanced, but cheers for mentoring in EverQuest II. Blintz could become a level 15 swashbuckler at need, once grouped and in the same zone.

Getting to that zone though.

Blintz was over in the Loping Plains while the other two were already questing in Darklight Wood. A bit of a trip for Blintz, but at least I knew the way, having been there once before. And Darklight would mean quests that he had not done before, so he could at least earn some experience towards AA points. Too bad it wasn't a double AA point experience weekend.

Anyway, travel. In to Kelethin then to Butcherblock, take the boat to Nektulos Forest, and then into Darklight.

I was amused to see that, after nearly four years, I get the same video error at the same spot in Nek Forest.

I was told at one point that it was my video card causing the problem. I have seen this now with five video cards, three nVidia and two ATi. I am starting to think my video card is not the issue. Ah well.

My trip was aided by fae glide and the fact that you can jump off the birds when you want. A nice feature if you're a fae. Maybe less so if you're a dwarf.

Once there, and mentored down, Blintz immediately ran afoul of the locals. Gone are the days when guards used to just throw you out of town. Now they kill you dead.

Not even my cheerful Frostfell outfit seemed to appease them.

Yes, it has been a while since I had Blintz out and about.

Unmentoring worked though, when I could manage it. Most of the guards were low enough level that I could just walk past them in my level 62 form, which was good, as a couple of the quest giver locations had guards at the door.

There was one guard who was not an attackable NPC like the others who did kill me twice. He ended up being an NPC I had to turn in a quest with. I found that there was a very small zone around him where I was could get close enough to hail him and interact, but where I was far enough away to keep him from one shotting my fae butt yet again.

As for what we did, there isn't much to tell. Quests in the usual vein of MMO quests. We got to take advantage of the fact that when you mentor down, you get to keep all of your current level skills, so I was the level 15 running around with both evac and smuggle. Always invite a Swashbuckler to your party.

Xola and Dentiliak both got levels. Blintz got some AA experience and some experience debt from getting jack by guards. And we all had fun, capping off the evening with a little lightning.

There are these little black clouds that wander the zone. If you get too close to them, they zap you with a bolt of lightning out of the sky.

If you are a fae, or an arasai, and you fly past them, that bolt of lightning zaps you out of the sky. Doing that about a dozen times was worth the trip to Darklight Wood.

Next week, back to Azeroth. In the mean time, we return you to your regularly scheduled propaganda from New Eden.

Unfortunately for us Earl had other plans for the night of my return to the group, so we went off questing. The group was:

67 Paladin - Vikund
68 Warlock - Bungholio
68 Mage - Ula
69 Priest - Skronk

Since I was behind, it meant a ride out to to Sylvanaar to grab the alliance flight point in the zone and to start picking up quests. And picking up quests meant first dumping a bunch of uncompleted quests from another zone. I had already cleared out all of Zangarmarsh, so the remains of Terokkar went.

Of course, the first thing I saw in Shattrath was some pally with my hat, only in a different color.

I wonder where that one comes from?

Anyway, we got out there, I collected the quests I could find, and then we started off, at which point I had to deal with my next big issue.

After our last outing with Exarch Maladaar, I began thinking that if only we had a little more damage we could have taken him down.  So I took Vikund back to the paladin trainer and re-spec'd him as a retribution Paladin.  It was something of a whim and, of course, I didn't do anything like reading up on the subject.  So I probably picked the wrong things into which to sink my points, but there it is.

Retro noob paladin.

And, in the spirit of that moment, Skronk went out and re-spec'd as a shadow priest.

Healing is overrated.  When you kill stuff dead, you don't need healing, right?

We will be putting that theory to the test some time soon.

But my issue with Vikund was figuring out how to play now that the skills I learned to work with over the last 55 levels were gone, replaced by new skills.

Skronk had the last few weeks to figure out the shadow priest thing, but I was starting from scratch.

By the end of the evening, I had worked out a pattern to get the most damage going for me.  Put up sanctity aura, cast then judge seal of the crusader, cast seal of vengeance, and then whack stuff with crusader's strike whenever possible.

Unfortunately I still don't have a damage parser for WoW (the last one somebody recommended is now unsupported, so who can recommend one?) so I cannot tell how effective I really was, plus we were fighting normal mobs, so they were dying too fast to get a feel for how much damage I was putting out.

But Vikund does seem to take a lot more damage and use a lot more mana.  That is a bit different.

The evening itself was enjoyable.  I held forth on my cruise adventures after accidently putting myself on mute, so the team was spared from my vacation tales for the most part.

The quests were, for the most part, the usual variety of kill a bunch of these, find a bunch of those, collect a bunch of drops, and so on.  Still, while Blizzard follows a pattern, they do manage to throw a curve ball once in a while.

And such were the quests with Tally Zapnabber and his Zephyrium Capacitoriun, a device that flings the users to various locations in the Blade's Edge Mountains.  And so we got launched all over.  Here is Vik coming down in some disturbingly sharp terrain.

Ula incoming!  Watch out for those spikes!

And some of the discovery messages were probably not what you'd want to see while hurtling through the air.

All fun and nobody died on impact.

We made some progress on levels.  I got to get warmed up again after a couple of weeks away from Azeroth and got a little more familiar with the retribution spec. (Advice welcome!) And Vikund is within striking distance of 68 now.

So next week, if we can all get on together, it might be time for a trip back the Auchenai Crypts to finish up our quest and settle our score with Exarch Maladaar.

However, because he spent the week moving, he did not get to advance much further towards level 70, so the evening lineup looked like this:

66 Warlock - Bungholio
67 Priest - Skronk
67 Mage - Ula
67 Paladin - Vikund
68 Warrior - Earlthecat

Our first goal was to roll up the quest line that leads in to Auchenai Crypts, as the loot promised at the end seemed worth having.

We started off in Shattrath with What Book? I Don't See Any Book, which required us to beat a few guys into submission over a book. Hell's own librarians we were. And it turns out that they didn't even have it.

They sent us off on another quest, The Master's Grand Design, which had us traveling to meet a guy who lives in an abandoned armory in Nagrand. That of course brought up the question, is it really abandoned if he lives there? The place certainly seemed quite lively when we arrived.

This guy, Nitrin or Nitwit or something, sent us off in the standard MMO fashion to collect the innards of some of the local fauna over by the camp of Hemet Nesignwary. Now there is a name that brings a chill to my gaming soul and about whom I will rant at a later date.

Innards successfully extracted, we were sent along to bump off Lavoris the Soul Train Conductor in the never ending "murder for hire" scheme that is World of Warcraft. He had the Book of the Dead and nobody in Azeroth ever thinks to say "please," so we killed him and took it.

Not that that the book was much use to us, being in some foreign language, but there was no requirement to read it, just to haul it off to Ramdor the Mad for the promised rewards.

All that made available two things, a quest with the suspiciously upbeat name Everthing Will Be Alright and the ability to see Horvon the Armorer just outside the Auchenai Crypts.

We all figured having access to somebody who could repair armor just outside the instance would be a good thing after last weeks performance.

And so, with some trepidation, we headed back into the crypts.

But when we got it, things went well. We blew through to Shirrak the Dead Watcher without a single death. I attribute this primarily to the fact that the NPCs chose to charm Vikund for the most part, and my changing sides did not seemed to hinder the bad guys more than us.

The there was Shirrak. It took us four tries to take him down, mostly because the paladin kept dying really early in the fight. Well, that, and Shirrak's habit of suddenly jerking all of the casters off the ground and sending them flying straight at him. It interrupts spells... especially healing spells being cast by or on certain paladins. (You might have to click on this picture and view it full size to see the casters in flight.)

But compared to the previous weeks effort, three wipes at Shirrak still put us on the good side of the death count.

Shirrak dropped the Hope Bearer Helm which was immediately declared a pally item. Not a bad reward for spending most of the fight dead. It does hang down in front of the eyes a bit, but it goes with Vikund's giant gauntlets.

Then it was skeleton time and even our inflated sense of ability could not defeat us. We cleared all before us until we stood again before Exarch Maladaar.

And that was about the end of our progress for the evening. Maladaar would not be defeated.

We took, I would guess, eight runs at him. Maybe more. We got to know Horvon pretty well, that is for sure.

On at least four fights he was down below 10% before we succumbed, but we just couldn't get past that point.

Last week's victory over him was something of a fluke I know, but I thought that we would be able manage it again, especially after the instance started off so well. But after the clock passed 1 am Pacific time, we called it a night. Spending all that time with the lead-in quests meant running late.

Earl said that he would have some time to play before our next instance night, so I rather suspect we will have a level 69 warrior to tank for us when we attempt the crypts once more.

Due to a late bath time for Bung, Jr. (or so I heard), Bung was running a bit late, so we amused ourselves around the meeting stone by dueling. It basically went:

Ula beat Skronk
Skronk beat Earl
Earl beat Ula
Vikund beat his sword into a plowshare, for all the good it did

The longest battle was between Skronk and Vikund. After several minutes of rude gestures and vague threats we actually tried to hit each other a bit in what Skronk described later as a "short bus slap fight."

The proposition put forth previously that perhaps we ought to respec gained a little credence when Skronk finally did Vikund in with his best DOT spell, which hits for 17 points of damage every time you reach the half-life of radioactive fel iron. We were both low on mana and hit points by that time.

Retribution paladins don't have problems like this. Retribution paladins get respect I hear.

Bung showed up after a bit and we all pretended we weren't dueling, lest we all have to get burned to cinders by the warlock.

The group changed a bit, at least in levels, from the previous week, as a couple of us took advantage of the level cap amnesty we instituted last week, freeing any of us to go off an get to level 70 in our free time if we so desired. Ula was very close to 67 last week, while I got on early and made it to 67 just before we started. Earl went above and beyond and went from 66 to 68 since last week. So our line up was:

66 Priest - Skronk
66 Warlock - Bungholio
67 Mage - Ula
67 Paladin - Vikund
68 Warrior - Earlthecat

We moved to the instance, which is on the west side of the circle that contains the instances in Auchindoun. (Mana Tombs is on the north side.) We checked on the quests we needed and found that we were a few steps short of being able to pick up the big quest for the instance, Everything Will Be Alright.

Not only could we not get the quest, I wasn't sure I believed the sentiment behind the name.

Faced with running down the quest chain until we could grab the quest or just going in to the instance as a trial run, we chose the instance. We might get slaughtered in the first room and then we could go do quests if we wanted.

So in we went.

We got off to a difficult start right away. Every mob in the first section summons a non-elite mob to help it when engaged, and even a non-elite that is level 65 or so can be a serious pain.

And then there are the mobs that mind control party members. Our little duels outside the instance turned out to be foreshadowing of some of the issues we would face. Again, Vikund did not kill any of the team, but others did.

With all that, we were soon dead.

We persisted though. We were having just enough success to move forward and, once learning which mobs were immune to crowd control measures (the monks) we were able to plan accordingly and make it through that first major stretch of the instance. I was a bit worried as the instance turns back on itself twice, so there were three sections of this length through which we would have to fight. It was beginning to look like a long evening.

And then we made it around the bend into the next stretch and found the first boss, Shirrak the Dead Watcher.

On the plus side, his stretch of the instance did not have much in the way of mobs in the way.

On the down side, he is a pretty tough. He got to watch most of us dead twice.

He has all sorts of badness, including an aura that slows down spell casting and a mean look like no other. You don't want to see your name display thus:

Especially if you are a caster and both plate wearing guys are dead.

The first fight with him ended in a wipe.

The second fight was a victory, but a close one. By the end of the fight, only Ula was left standing while Shirrak had only a tiny amount of hit points left. But Shirrak ended up dead, killed in the end by a damage over time spell from Bung. Once revived, we stood in victory.

Seven-eyed Shirrak nicely dropped the Collar of Command, which went to Skronk.

That was about the end of stretch two. A pair of monks and then we turned the corner to find skeletons.

Woot! Undead! Paladin Unleashed! Priestly crowd control!

While pairs of the Dranei in the instance were tough for us, we were pulling groups of five elite skeletons and chopping them up. And then we made it to the last stretch, the room of Exarch Maladaar.

He has masses of skeletons, non-elite this time, with the occasional elite Dranei to watch over them. We scythed through that lot like a very sharp scythe going through some grass that was just the right texture for scything. Soon the way was clear for the last battle.

And one of our toughest so far.

Maladaar's trick is that, every so often, he summons a shade of one of the party members to join him in fighting your group. If you are not careful, you can end up with a few of these dark versions of yourselves beating on yourselves. Here are a couple of shades beating on Earl.

We were not ready for this and wiped.

By this point, we had been through enough deaths to need the repair bot. Some equipment had gone red for people.

A second run at him ended up in a wipe as well, as our plan for dealing with the shades was not quite ripe. In the end, we all tried to stand together, save Earl who was off tanking Maladaar. Since a shade of a given person forms next to that person, having us all together let Vikund consecrate to grab aggro and then take out the shade.

This mostly worked, except for the fact that, near the end of the fight, Maladaar summons a shade of himself. We managed to slay Maladaar on this attempt, but then the shade of him finished us off.

Technically, with the boss down, we won the fight, with the shade remaining as an exercise for the student. Or some such.

We revived, ran back to the instance, being fresh out of soul stones, and defeated the shade of Maladaar, finishing off the instance.

Call it three and a half attempts to finish the last boss.

And that was our run. Our first run. We still have to run down that quest line, some experience to gain, and perhaps some more nice drops to get. And spirit shards. The alliance has had control of Terokkar when we have been doing our instance runs, so we have managed to harvest some spirit shards during these runs. We might be able to turn those in for some of those "welfare epics" that have been much discussed elsewhere.

Next week might be an off week though. Earl may finally be moving from his tiny apartment in Hell's Kitchen to a house out in the suburbs. No longer will we get a live feed of how noisy it is in Manhattan at 3am through his mic.

66 Warlock - Bungholio
66 Mage - Ula
66 Priest - Skronk
66 Paladin - Vikund
66 Warrior - Earlthecat

So familiar were the levels on that group list that I moved that the group rescind the "everybody stay around the same level" rule.

Since we are so close to level 70 now I felt it would not imbalance the group if some people got there sooner than others.

The motion was passed with three "yeas" and two abstentions. Despite the fact that I proposed it, I imagine that it will be Earl who ends up at level 70 first. Having the tank up at that level couldn't hurt.

But back to the instance.

Skronk did some research on the Mana Tombs over the previous week, but we were still not confident in the outcome. No miracle "I Win" button could be found, so we were going to have to go in and take our chances.

And when we stepped into the instance things immediately went awry with a bad pull on the first group that resulted in a dead priest and the rest of us standing outside of the instance.

You would think that, third time into the instance, we would at least be gliding through first part. But it isn't that sort of instance.

Revived and ready to go again, we pushed on to the first big room and the first named mob, our old friend Pandemonious.

During our previous two visits to the Mana Tombs, Pandy had been something of a walk over. Well, okay, we lost a gnome to him, but that happens in the real world of... well... make believe. The fights have never been big deals, some of the trash mob fights ending up more deadly than this guy.

So, of course, we wiped.

We wiped because rather than just running after him in the Leroy Jenkins fashion, as we have in the past, we decided to think about the fight, to approach it with a view to addressing past mistakes and gnome deaths.

Thinking failed us though, so for the second round we just ran at him and took him out. Sometimes having chicken is enough.

Pandemonius was nice enough to drop the Shield of the Void for Earl. A shield with both decent stats for a tank and a distinctive look.

It is too bad we couldn't do something with his shoulder pads.

I think Joan Rivers had some about that size back in the late 80s.

That out of the way, we continued to chop our way through the instance.

We slew Tavarok on the first go, having worked that fight out well enough. No pre-fight talk was needed, everybody did what they had to, including Vikund putting on his healing gear to keep Earl alive.

Tavarok rewarded us with a leather drop. I yearn for Tobold's idea about binding to an account versus a character. Some of us have alts that would benefit from some of these drops.

On we went.

Finally, only a couple of wipes later, we stood again before Nexus-Prince Shaffar.

And then the wipes began in earnest.

We came at Shaffar and his Ethereal Beacons from a couple of different directions, but always had the same problem. Either we could keep the beacons down, which is a chore, as Shaffar starts with three and new ones spawn pretty quickly with apparently no upper limit on how many can be assisting him, but manageable, or we could lay down the damage on Shaffer himself.

We just couldn't manage both.

We brought fear, polymorph, AOEs, and anything else we could come up with into play and still ended up dead.

After using the repair bot, we finally went with plan Z.

Skronk had read that sending an Eye of Kilrogg up to Shaffar and having it jump until he noticed it, which causes the three beacons to despawn, after which there is a short window of opportunity to engage Shaffar. If you get him in that window, you end up with the same fight, minus the initial three beacons.

Not exactly in the spirit of the game perhaps, but we were past our twelfth fight overall with this guy and we wanted him down at any price. Our gaming souls? Sure, take 'em, if it will get Shaffar dead!

So in went the Eye of Kilrogg.

It worked.

And it gave us just the extra edge we needed. It was still a tough fight as those beacons spawn in all over the place and Shaffar is a tough cookie. In fact, it was a near run thing at the end of the fight. But Shaffar went down and we found ourselves standing where he once stood.

Shaffar stuck his thumb in our eye one last time, dropping the Ethereal Warp-Bow, which none of us had any use for. But at least the quest to kill him, Undercutting the Competition, was complete. That got each of us a piece of socketed gear.

And so we called it a night and headed back to the Inn, leaving that damn escort quest behind. Another time.

Now, do we have enough in us to get through the Auchenai Crypts? Or have we just stepped a bit deeper in over our heads?

Level up Earl!

After spending the last two weekends focused on experience and equipment we were all up another level and much better equipped.

Well, maybe a little bit better equipped.

Okay, we found almost nothing that improved our equipment while question in Terokkar.

And, while we all levelled up, none of us appeared to get the "I win" button as part of our level 66 spells and skills, so we were going to have to face the Mana Tombs the old fashioned way. The group for the evening was:

66 Warlock - Bungholio
66 Mage - Ula
66 Priest - Skronk
66 Paladin - Vikund
66 Warrior - Earlthecat

Things started off very well. They certainly went better than last time, when we practically wiped on the first pull in the instance.

We blew through to the first boss, Pandemonius, and sent him packing without much drama. His big trick, fading to another dimension for a moment, which causes damage to be reflected back, was not fooling us.

Here we are sizing him up before the attack.

After that we advanced at a brisk pace to the next boss, Tavarok, losing a gnome now and again along the way. But that is the cost of doing business some nights. There were no wipes, however, something that continued through out battle with Tavarok. Last time it took us a few runs before we brought him down. This time we had his number and dispatched him on our first try.

Go team!

We continued to clear and ended up with one wipe on the way to the last boss. It was a group of four mobs and we lost control of the battle. Not a huge thing, our first wipe so far into the instance.

We revived, cleared that group on our second try (we got two down on the first run, so the outcome was not in question), turned the corner and entered the room of Nexus-Prince Shaffer, he of the witty dialog.

Clearing his room was no problem, and very quickly it was only the Prince and his three minions, the ethereal beacons, before us.

And then the wipes began.

A few runs at him and we were not even close on any of them. Once he was down to 25% of his health, but he constantly respawning ethereal pals were too much.

We looked up some strategies for the fight online, but couldn't come up with anything viable. We lacked the firepower to implement the suggestion we found at several sites, which was to kill the three beacons quickly, before they shifted into human form. Once they have that form, they get a bunch more hit points and do a lot of damage.

With Earl on the prince and the rest of us on the beacons, we could only slay one before they changed over and then the pain began as they ran amok on the casters.

It was getting late and at least one of us had a full dinner and a Broadway show as a lead-in for the evening, so we gave up on the prince and went back to do the escort quest in the instance, thinking to get at least one quest done.

At the first encounter of the escort quest, four elite mobs spawned and hit us from each corner of the room, resulting in a wipe and a failed quest. And that was it for the night.

We did not leave completely empty handed. Experience is always its own reward, plus Pandemonius dropped the Faith Bearer's Gauntlets for Vikund (everybody said, "Eeew, Pally gear!") and Tavarok coughed up the Staff of Polarities, which Ula won in a roll-off between her and Bung.

But we still have not defeated the Mana Tombs yet. It is time for some research into how to handle that last fight.

65 Warlock - Bungholio
65 Mage - Ula
65 Priest - Skronk
65 Paladin - Vikund
65 Warrior - Earlthecat

We ran around chasing quests in the orc strewn Bonechewer Ruins and blood elf outpost at Firewing Point, but the biggest battles we faced were in the Bone Wastes again.

We ended up in the Tomb of Lights a couple of times, the final run being for the group quest, The Vengeful Harbinger.

If you want all of the style of the Mana Tombs, but a lot less of the whole dying routine, the Tomb of Lights is the place to head. It has the same Tesla School of Interior Design theme without all the nasty, mana soaking elites.

The quest involves fighting our way to a point in the tombs and summoning tomb guardian, then defending him as a set of nasties tries to stop his work. The Lights part of the Tomb of Lights must refer to the light show you get when you summon the guardian.

The glowy thing at the top of the chamber.

The event itself was not too dramatic. A couple of waves of three mad, evil dranei, then the harbinger himself and it was done. Pretty quick.

So quick, in fact, that one of us missed the kick off and we ended up doing it twice, and it still didn't take very long.

That was the wrap-up for the evening for the group.

During that time, Ula, Skronk, and Vikund hit level 66. Earl was close and ground a little bit more and hit 66, while Bung was brought pretty close to level.
We are now, as a group, a level up and slightly better equipped than we were for our first run at the Mana Tombs. We will see if that, plus our experience from the first run, makes much of a difference.

65 Warlock - Bungholio
65 Mage - Ula
65 Priest - Skronk
65 Paladin - Vikund
65 Warrior - Earlthecat

But what to do?

After out defeat at the Mana Tombs a few weeks back we were not keen to jump into that again until we had either some better equipment or another level or two.

We could have gone back to either the Slave Pens or the Underbog, but did not feel that was really going to do much besides get us some experience.

In the end we decided to hit Terokkar Forest to do some quests and see if we could upgrade some of our equipment.

Fortunately Earl had already been out there with his level 70 alt, so knew the different points in the zone to gather up quests.

Gathering up quests, of course, started some drama on its own. Most of us had at least 20 quests hanging about in our quest logs, some of them dating back to Blackrock Spire and before. So, to pick up the 15 quests from the Bone Wastes end of Terokkar meant parting with a lot of quests.

After much "are we ever going here again?" and "but I already have 3 out of 10 of these!" we eventually all made enough room for the new quests and headed out.

We tried to stay on the "one kill updates everybody" quests, avoiding the quests that required everybody get a drop that only showed up once per mob. Eventually, running through the quests we hit on some group quests. The experience was okay, though there were not many equipment upgrades to be had when it came right down to it. It was not like the first dozen quests in Hellfire where you pretty much get a new wardrobe.

It was nice to be in an outside zone though, and one not as claustrophobic as Zangarmarsh. The group quests lead us to some pretty big mobs, like this spider.

"Go on, smoosh it!" says Skronk.

And then there was this skeletal beast. We had to go through a ritual to summon him, then didn't see him for a few seconds because he was so big he seemed to be part of the scenery. We had to look up to see him.

We did not end up getting any levels as we were all pretty much in the first third of level 65, but we made progress. Another round of quests and we'll be into 66 and might be ready for another go at the Mana Tombs.

Unfortunately, while our main group is fairly well coordinated when it comes to being able to work as a team, our alts are a little more chaotic. So this is who we had roving Hellfire Peninsula on Saturday night.

59 Warrior - Scscla
60 Hunter - Nodens
64 Hunter - Tistann
70 Warrior - Earlthecatwo

Tistann is my own hunter alt, while Nodens is Skronk's. Scscla (pronounced on Skype as "shizz-ill-uh" and not "scuzz-claw") is Ula's gnome warrior alter ego. And Earlthecatwo is Earlthecat's... well... level 70 warrior alt. Earl can be a binge player at time, so his alt hit 70 a while back, has a flying mount (which we got to see finally) and is doing the daily quests to grind cash for his epic flying mount.

Between us and out pets, we had lots of tanking, plenty of DPS, no healing unless you count pet healing, and not many other options.

We briefly discussed our potential for doing Hellfire Ramparts, but decided we had best stick to group quests.

On the plus side, Earl and Tistann had not done any of the group quests in Hellfire Peninsula.

The downside was that Sccla and Nodens were not yet eligible for those quests.

I read the 10 Commandments of Altitis yesterday and thought perhaps an 11th ought to be something along the lines of "if you plan to do more than solo with your alt, you might try to plan alts with your friends."

Not that that is what alts are about, but here we were at the picnic and everybody ignored instructions and brought potato salad.

So we got together to just plow through some level 60-ish quests together.

At the time the experience for killing mobs did not seem to bad, running to 250-300 exp per.

However, when I thought about it, I realized that, solo, these guys were 1000-1200 exp. I think the fact that we were playing LOTRO the night before and were killing light blue and green mobs for a quest, 19-27 exp per kill, might have colored my perception.

There was much node harvesting as we quested and Tistann, who is a leatherworker, made out well skinning ravagers and boars.

And Scscla hit level 60. Always a landmark level.

We still have not decided our path for next week.

Little did I know how spot on that observation would be.

Looking for the instance. Yes.

What with time spent by some of us in LOTRO of late and my efforts in EVE Online, we did not do a whole lot of groundwork in advance of this run. I cannot speak for the others, but Vikund was still parked where I left him the previous Saturday night.

So when the time rolled around, we were a little vague on the whole location of the instance. Somewhere in the Terokkar Forest, right?

A couple of us got in the general vicinity of the Mana Tombs but then had to run around for a while, first to find the meeting stone to summon the other party member, and then to find the actual entrance to the instance.

After a Three Stooges level of effort, we finally got everybody together, picked up the two quests outside the instance, then went in. The group was:

64 Warlock - Bungholio
65 Mage - Ula
65 Priest - Skronk
65 Paladin - Vikund
65 Warrior - Earlthecat

We started off lost, then stepped into the instance, only to end up dead.

The first pull in the instance was nearly a wipe. Indeed, if it wasn't for the fact that we were all of three steps from the entrance, it would have been a wipe. Skronk and Bung went down quickly, then we decided to get out. However, Earl and Vikund were both hit with DOTs and managed to die outside of the instance. Ula was the only survivor.

That set the tone for the night.

We nearly wiped again a few yards further into the instance, Ula being the sole survivor again.

After that, we really buckled down and took care. We even managed to make it to the first boss, Pandemonious, the biggest voidwalker we ever did see.

We even defeated him on the first go! We seemed to be getting back in the groove.

Of course, he dropped a mail item, the Boots of the Outlander. Our luck in that department holds.

Then we moved onward, and managed to wipe on trash mobs again. There is Vikund, dead again.

He looks so peaceful, he could be sleeping.

More care went into getting to the next boss, Tavarok.

Oh, the pain. Here is a shot of us, all dead, with Tavarok in the background.

We were eager to go again though. (You can see the bones left from the last effort.)

And we wiped again.

It was declared "time for research" and WoWWiki came out.

It turns out that Tavarok has a 30 yard AOE attack that stuns and does quite a bit of damage to casters.

So we positioned the casters outside of a 30 yard radius of Tavarok and had at him again.

This time we won. It wasn't easy. Tavarok's crystal prison attack has a much greater range and knocks off half of your hitpoints as well as stunning you. This is why we lost Skronk and Ula in the fight.

And, as our streak dictates, Tavarok dropped a leather item, the Nethershade Boots. Bleh.

Still, onward we went, dying again on the way to the next event, which got some of the team, who were already showing paper doll to the red, durability to zero stage where equipment is simply no longer usable.

For the first time in a long time, we had to send somebody out for repairs. Ula put up a portal for Skronk, who went off and found a repairbot at the auction house and brought it back. Earl has his engineer skills high enough to deploy the bot, so we all stopped for a repair break.

Repaired and rested, we moved on. We managed to clear all the way to the last boss, Nexus-Prince Shaffar.

He actually has some witty dialog.

He also creamed us three times running. He didn't just beat us, he beat us into the ground. We were not even close to winning.

He beat us so rapidly I did not even get a screen shot of it.

And after the first defeat, even advice from WoWWiki wasn't any help to us. We were fighting way out of our weight.

Having run back to the instance after the third route, we decided to give up on Shaffar and just do the escort quest we passed up before calling it a night. The NPC made it sound easy!

All we had to do is follow him around while he emptied out his Ionic Breezes nether collectors.

And, in the first fight, we wiped.

That was it for the night. More than three hours in and many deaths later, we called it.

Two bosses down.

Two quests left hanging.

Too many deaths.

Now we have to regroup and figure out what went wrong.

While we were at the lower end of the level range (64-66) for the instance, we were not totally off base attempting it.

And while we were not, perhaps, in our finest form that night, we were still working together pretty well.

I am starting to wonder if the curse of the boss drops, the fact that we seem to get mostly leather and mail items that none of us can use, is beginning to work against us. Maybe our equipment just isn't up to par. After all, we have been doing mostly instances and very few quests. We might be behind in the department.

So next time around, we will have to decide what to do. Should we go back and farm an instance for blues, or go run some quests for levels and green upgrades?

The name alone inspired me to sing out on Skype:

Speed of lightning! Roar of thunder!
Fighting all who rob or plunder!

This generated something of a stunned silence from my fellow travelers who rebounded after a few moments in a silent agreement to simply ignore that outburst and move on as though it had never happened.

I guess I am the only Wally Cox fan. I'll just keep my copy of "The Bedford Incident" to myself then. Carry on, Seaman Queffle.

(And in getting the links to the above silliness, I also found out that Larry Storch was the voice of Phineas J. Whoopie. I had no idea! That so makes up for that horrible guest appearance on CHiPs with Larry Linville.)

But enough side tracking, on to the instance. And we moved on to it with the following group:

64 Warlock - Bungholio
64 Mage - Ula
64 Priest - Skronk
64 Paladin - Vikund
64 Warrior - Earlthecat

That was the same level line up as last week, though we were all getting close to 65.

The instance itself is down the drain in Coilfang Resivoir with the Slave Pens, off to the right of the meeting stone.

We went in, spelled up, and began the crawl, Earl's Goblin Rocket Launcher still pulling for the team.

That is never not funny.

At first things went well enough. We cleaned up the trash and found our way to the first boss, Hungarfen.

He actually has two minions standing with him, so we were ready for a big fight, but when Earl tagged one of the minions, only the pair of them came. Hundarfen remained behind.

So the pair went down easy enough and we went after the big guy.

That did not go as well.

By himself, Hungarfen isn't such a big deal, but as you fight him, these mushrooms start growing out of the ground in his area. Explosive mushrooms. And like some Super Mario nighmare scene, they exploded and did a lot of damage. Caster killing damage. Which turned into party killing damage pretty quickly. Wipe!

And so we regrouped and tried again.

This time Earl went out and kept Hungarfen in motion, moving him away from mushrooms while Skronk and Vikund worked on healing and Bung and Ula did the damage thing.

That went much better and Hungarfen was defeated.

From there we followed the obvious path up some ramps, through the usual trash mobs, and towards the next boss, Ghaz'an.

Ghaz'an lives in some sort of underground Sea World establishment and hangs out in the central tank. We did get into a bit of a scrape with the guards at the door and ended up in a battle with seven of them at once, which left both of our healers dead, yet somehow Earl hung on and all seven were slain.

We cleared the spectators until only Ghaz'an remained... and the fish. Ghaz'an shares his tank with a bunch of aggressive fish. You don't want to fall in that water. I know.

The fight with Ghaz'an was touch and go, with Vikund, who was trying to play backup healer again, standing in the wrong spot and getting knocked off the platform three times. This is how I know the fish are aggressive, as they came after Vik. Fortunately, this isn't EverQuest II and the fish stay in the water. (Okay, water creatures don't do that any more in EQ2, but I still remember being chased across the Thundering Steppes by a flying octopus.)

Anyway, when Vik wasn't running back up to the platform, he was trying to keep Earl healed, which turned out to be a tough job, as Ghaz'an's area attacks ended up taking down Ula and Skronk. Then Earl went down and Vik rushed in, forgetting that he hadn't bothered to heal himself at all.

Fortunately, Ghaz'an was about done as well and we prevailed on our first run at him.

He dropped our only nice loot piece of the night, a 2H mace called Hatebringer. And, being the only 2H mace wielder, Vikund got it. The rest of the bosses just taunted us by dropping leather pieces.

Done with Ghaz'an, we were somewhat lost. We didn't see a way out of the tank room other than the way we came, so we doubled back and went looking for anything we might have missed.

After much searching we ended up back at the tank room. We decided we had better search the water.

It appears that when Ghaz'an goes down, he takes his fish friends with him, so the water was safe.

While we found nothing in the water, Earl noticed a crack in the side of the tank that, from some angles, just looked like a change in color. We swam over, climbed through, and finally found our way forward.

With the 45 minute wandering over, it was back to fighting. There was no losing the trail now though, as it was one long cavern that lead to the third boss, Swamplord Musel'ek.

The swamplord has a companion, Windcaller Claw, a druid who has been charmed by the swamplord and who fights for him in bear form.

We went with the basic plan, assumed that Claw would come to our side once his master was down, so concentrated on the swamplord. And we died for our trouble. Claw has some bad attacks.

Skronk died a little too close to Swamplord Musel'ek and ended up getting killed again quickly. Short a soul stone and had to run all the way back from the graveyard for round two.

The second time around Vikund went after Claw and pulled him away from the main fight while everybody else hammered Swamplord Musel'ek.

This turned out well, the swamplord going down readily. Then we turned on Claw who, at 20% health, restores to his normal form and becomes the last mob you need for the quest Lost in Action.

With our lost wanderings and wipes, it was getting a bit late for us. We are now used to nice, two hour or less runs, and we were well past three hours gone at that point.

But there is not much left after the swamplord. A couple of mobs, then the Black Stalker, the biggest marsh walker in the swamp.

The fight with him was short but violent. The Black Stalker has an effect that lifts a party member up and out of battle until it is dispelled. For some reason, Vikund was the main recipient of the attack, and spent a good deal of time airborne.

While waiting for a dispel, I just pretended to be asteroid mining in EVE Online.

Flighty paladin or not, we beat him down quickly and were done.

And that rounded up our first run at the Underbog.

While the next instance on the list is the Mana Tombs, we actually went into the Underbog without all of the quests for the instance. That will probably mean at least one return trip. We could probably use the experience too. Looking at the instance guide, the level recommendations for upcoming instances ramp up rather quickly to level 70. Everybody except Bung hit 65 on this run, but it might be nice to get closer to 66 before we move on.

We're thinking about level 66? We might hit level cap before Wrath of the Lich King hits the shelves!

That would be a new experience for me!

Last time around, missing Bung, we had Nerral, a level 70 druid join our group. That lets us do the instance, but did leave us wondering how different it would be without level 70 muscle behind us. So in we went with the usual group.

64 Warlock - Bungholio
64 Mage - Ula
64 Priest - Skronk
64 Paladin - Vikund
64 Warrior - Earlthecat

The short answer is that things weren't drastically different than last week.

Once in we had not real problems with the yard trash mobs, except once when we pulled a group of five, forgetting that Bung was AFK. Taking on five elite with you damage guy and off tank pet out of the picture turned out to be more than we could handle and there was a wipe.

Earl got to add a new tool to his arsenal, the Goblin Rocket Launcher, which he used to pull mobs with great comedic effect. Each shot throws the shoot on his back.

The rocket puts out enough damage to ensure that the targeted mob heads straight for Earl. The only drawback is that the rocket also has a stun effect on the mob it hits, so the main target often ends up lagging behind the rest his pals when you're pulling a group.

Still, the rocket launcher effect never got old.

As for the rest of the run, well, the bosses are always key.

With Mennu the Betrayer we did about the same as last week.

He is a shaman and he pops off healing totems like my grandfather used to drain scotch and sodas, which is to say early and often. We had the usual totem destruction mix-up, as Mennu seems to know who has been pegged for totem patrol and his totems end up on the far side of the battle from the designated totem popper. So it was slow going for a bit until I just started whacking totems with my big old mallet.

And so Mennu went down.

Then we battled our way to Rokmar the Crackler.

I did stop and take some pictures of the scenery along the way.

Last time around Rockmar gave us fits, causing a wipe on our first attempt and leaving three of us down before he died on the second attempt.

Taking some of the advice offered on last week's post, this time around Vikund stay out of the melee and helped with the healing instead.

This worked out well and Rokmar went down with all of us still standing. We did give up healing a bit soon though, as the Grievous Wound attack was still on Earl, killing him not long after the fight ended. Still, Rokmar went down first this time.

He also coughed up a nice, new hammer for Vikund, the Coilfang Hammer of Renewal. It isn't so hot for damage, but it looks really cool and it buffs up Vik's healing a lot, so it is worth holding on to just to give him the extra healing edge when we need it.

That just left Helen Quagmirren for us to take on. Last week he wasn't much of a match for us, but then we had Nerral the nature boy along to help out. This time around we were somewhat lacking in the nature resist department and Quagmirren stomped us good the first time out.

Ah well, so it goes.

The next time around we finished him off, and thus finished off our second run through the Slave Pens.

Next time we will be looking into The Underbog!

Our plan had been to hit the Slave Pens in Zangarmarsh, the next on our list of 5 person instances.

With no other plan, we thought we might as well scout it out for the following week. Skronk swam down the drain (literally) in the Coilfang Reservoir first.

Then Vikund showed up and tried to figure out where to go. Since we were grouped up, Vikund swam to the point on the surface of the lake that showed Skronk's dot on the map. Vikund was attacked by a mass of swarmfish while there and, while Skronk was far below him, still he managed to get experience for each swarmfish Vik slew.

Eventually Vik got some directions on where to head and swam down the drain as well and met up with Skronk at the meeting stone. From there we summoned Ula and Earl.

As we were sitting there, grabbing snacks and otherwise getting ready, Gaff logged in with his druid, Nerral. We asked if he wanted to come along and, despite the late hour for him, he agreed. So our party this week ended up being:

64 Mage - Ula
64 Priest - Skronk
64 Paladin - Vikund
64 Warrior - Earlthecat
70 Druid - Nerral

I think we were all a bit interested to see if a level 70 character would unbalance the group or make the instance a walk-over, while Nerral seemed happy to be along for the ride.

We headed in and began to tuck into the usual array of instance mobs.

We did run into a little bit of a hang up early on.

Some of the mobs, most notably the Coilfang Champions, cast fear during fights.

This lead to one "I could see it coming" wipe, when we tried to bypass one group, then in the next fight Vikund was feared and ran right into the bypassed group. Fortunately, Vik got off a divine intervention on Skronk with literally his dying breath, so we did not have to run all the way back to the instance from the grave yard.

From that point forward, we gave up the idea of bypassing anything and just cleared all before us.

The first boss on the menu was Mennu the Betrayer. This started off as a bit of a challenging fight. Mennu is a shaman and drops totems constantly, healing being the most common flavor. Because of this, and because nobody was on totem patrol, the fight didn't get anywhere for a bit. Then Skronk and Vik took over alternating totem smiting and we were finally able to overcome Mennu.

And, as is our usual luck, he dropped a bind on pickup mail item. Even with a leather wearing druid in the group, we still get the stuff nobody can use.

We made our way through some fine scenery.

And we lived through a "Butch Cassidy" jump off of a broken bridge into a body of water far below to finally arrive at the next big boss, Rokmar the Crackler.

Rokmar is trouble... and probably the biggest crawdad that ever threatened a son of New Orleans. (Or a great grand--nephew of New Orleans in my own case.) Behold his majesty. There he is behind some mobs that are about dwarf height in stature:

He is big, and he has some nasty surprises.

Specifically, he has a bleed debuff called Grievous Wound that keeps on hitting like no other and a frost AOE that makes things tough as well.

You can see how well we fared.

So our first run at him lead to a rather quick wipe. You just don't expect that kind of fight from an overgrown crustacean. I'd hate to see him in the heroic version of the instance.

After a run back, we tried to plan and at least got Vik to put up his frost resistance aura. But the second fight was a near run thing as well. We had three of us down before Nerral, who took over tanking, finally finish Rokmar off. So we stood over him in victory.

It was getting late at that point for those not on the west coast. Nerral stealthed and scouted ahead to see how much more we had to do to finish the instance. After Rokmar there are only a few mobs in the way before you get to the last boss, Quagmirran.

Quagmirran appears to live at the bottom of somebody's swimming pool.

I'd hate to find him caught in the filter.

As far as fights go, this one was not nearly as tough as Rokmar. There was no doubt we were going to win shortly after the fight began. Not that it was going quickly, but it went steady.

And so we stood before Quagmirran, the instance complete and our quests updated.

Of course, we will have to go back and do this again when Bung is available again, but now we know some of the ins and outs of the place.

The biggest surprise of the evening was that having a level 70 in the party did not make the instance a walk over. It helped, especially at the Rokmar fight (hopefully when Bung is back, the damage output will go up enough for us to take down Rokmar the first time around) but it wasn't unbalancing. The instance was still a challenge.

I am just bummed that one of my old, favorite addons, Damage Meters, has not made the jump to patch 2.4, so I could not get a nice parse summary of how we did. Hopefully somebody will pick up the Damage Meters code that is part of Cosmos UI package and get it working with 2.4.

Next week it will probably be the Slave Pens again.

After a couple of weeks off just questing and farming we had beefed ourselves up a bit when it came to levels:

63 Warlock - Bungholio
63 Mage - Ula
63 Priest - Skronk
64 Paladin - Vikund
64 Warrior - Earlthecat

Once we all assembled in Hellfire Peninsula, the first order of business was to... well... find the instance.

Yes, we had that same problem with Hellfire Ramparts.

For the first time since we started the instance group, we are into instanced content that none of has even glimpsed yet. So even answer simple questions, such as, "Are we there yet?" can take on a new level of challenge.

Fortunately there were not a lot of places for us to look that answered the description. We ended up finding it at one of the locations we had previously visited in our search for the Ramparts entrance. And so we stepped in:

As usual, we began to work our way through the yard trash to get to the fun bits. But at least we had some new scenery, including a set of stairs that Busby Berkeley could work magic with.

I shouldn't be too dismissive of the yard trash. Their quantity proved a challenge now and again, and bad pulls doubled up with the roving stealthed rogues that wander about were the reason for our two wipes during the run.

The first happened at the top of the stairs pictured above.

Still, with care, teamwork, and a soul stone, we moved on to the first boss: The Maker.

Once the local minions were taken care of, we took a look at him. He rather resembles an upright fiddler crab wearing a welder's mask and holding a flame thrower. This is not a sight to inspire confidence, but we weren't there to make friends.

We hesitated a bit before starting the fight. Around The Maker's room there is a series of cells with several mobs in each. We were a bit worried that they might open up and unleash some nastiness on us mid fight. Still, we had to move along, so we started the fight.

It went well enough, The Maker went down, and no additional followers joined in. We figured that must be a feature for the heroic version of the instance.

On we moved, clearing groups until we caught a glimpse of the next boss in line, Broggok.

We then proceeded to get a bad pull with the patrols and wipe. Too many bomb throwing technicians and pet summoning warlocks chewed us up pretty quickly. And there was no soul stone handy this time.

Still, the whole place is very close to Honor Hold and the grave yard, so the run back was quick.

Speaking the "careful" mantra again, we successfully cleared the room.

This left us with a great big lever, a gate between us and Broggok, and, like The Maker's room, a series of cells around the room we were in.

What can you do but pull the level at that point, so we did.

And thus began the event, the big fight of the night.

This time around, the cells did play into things. After you pull the lever, the doors you entered through close, then the first cell opens up, sending a small group of elite orcs after you. Once you defeat them, the next cell opens and another group comes, and then another, and then another. So you go through four progressively harder battles without rest, at the end of which, you get to fight the boss!

Once you're to Broggok, you are in danger of having been worn down. Broggok himself isn't too fearsome as long as you keep moving. As he floats over you, he rains down a green acid that has a pretty harsh DOT effect as long as you're standing in it. It also lingers for a while, so you have to steer clear of his green snail trail during the fight. Bung strayed into the trail at the very end of the fight and died.

But we prevailed and took the victory picture. You can see some of the orc that came at us off to the right.

It was a long encounter over all, with Earl and I using potions twice during the fight and Skronk hitting the bottle three times.

Earl picked up the Legion Blunderbuss from the drop.

We then moved on to through to the next group, situated in a big circular room down a ramp, where there sat a set of five warlocks maintaining a pentagram of power, in the middle of which stood Keli'dan the Breaker.

Visible through the floor was a very big dragon-bodied demon which we assumed the pentagram of power was holding in place. We figured he must be Magtheridon, whom we could hear shouting every once in a while in the instance.

Well, the first order of business was, as always, kill the guys in front of us. So we ran in and chopped up the warlocks and Keli'dan without breaking a sweat. This opened up a door at the back of the chamber.

My own thought was, "Cool, now we get the big guy, he must be the final boss!" I did not even snap a screen shot of the warlocks, thinking that they were just trash.

So we ran through the door and found ourselves back at the base of the stairs.

Keli'dan was the last boss. Magtheridon's Lair is a raid. We just got a glimpse of him as a teaser.

So we were done. Elapsed time was a little under two hours, even with two wipes.

We wrapped up the instance at about the same time the scrapbook party ended at my place, so my wife and I actually went to bed at the same time on a Saturday night.

Next time we move on to Zangarmarsh and the Slave Pens.

We have managed to do a few things though.

We actually got together as a full group last Thursday and ran through Hellfire Ramparts for a second time with this group:

63 Warlock - Bungholio
63 Mage - Ula
63 Priest - Skronk
63 Paladin - Vikund
64 Warrior - Earlthecat

Thursday is our non-mandatory "off night" where we try to prep for upcoming instances and such, but since East Coast Earl was up for it, we did an instance farming run. We even managed to only wipe once at the big fight with Vazruden and Nazan, which happened primarily because Vikund switched from healing to melee too soon after Nazan joined the fray.

We won in the end though, and at a pretty fast clip. Earl got his second Mok'Nathal Clan Ring which, both taken together, add 28 to his resilience, something that, according to a comment thread over at Tobold's Blog, reduced his chance to be crit'd by 7%. Not bad.

We also did some questing as a smaller group on Saturday night just to pick up some gear, experience, and standing, which I guess is why anybody does quests when it comes down to it.

But the primary focus for most of the instance group over the last week or so seems to have been alts.

Earl, in a marathon WoW Saturday, pushed his alt, also a warrior, over the top to level 70, making him the first of the five of us in the instance group to hit level 70.

Skronk (aka Potshot) pushed one of his alts to level 60.

Ula has an alt closing in on level 60 as well.

And I, after mucking about in Alterac Valley for a week, went back to the Outlands and pushed Tistann to level 62.

Add to that the fact that Gaff is back in WoW and has a couple of characters over level 60 on our server and, on the face of it, we might be able to run an instance with alts at some point.

Granted, it would not, perhaps, be the most well rounded group ever, as it would consist of two warriors, two hunter, and a druid. But since one the druid and one of the warriors is level 70, we might be able to get away with something. We will have to see what becomes of the idea.

So there the instance group stands, waiting for another Saturday night when we can all get together for another run.

But this Saturday night we were down one, our tank. So it was just four of us:

62 Warlock - Bungholio
62 Mage - Ula
62 Priest - Skronk
63 Paladin - Vikund

We decided to do some quests around the Hellfire Peninsula. As I said last week, we have moved our main characters into the Outlands for now.

We ran around and filled up our quest logs with quest for the zone, finding a couple of them recommended for groups, then set out to finish some off.

We did well enough. Everybody ended up at level 63. I actually ran out after the run the week before and finished off the 8% experience Vikund had left before level 63, making him my highest level MMO character ever. But I was only a bit ahead of everybody else.

Of course, we did have our moments out there questing. We had a nice wipe when Fulgorge, a named burrower popped up in the middle of us during a fight. We were smacking stuff down well enough that we though we could just take him in stride. Instead, he took us in stride with his mid-fight burrowing and such.

And then Vikund had his own run in with a Fel Reaver, one of those giant, transformer looking. level 70 elites that stomp around the zone. We were hunting Colossuses for a quest when just after a battle, the ground was still shaking. I looked around and there was a Fel Reaver about on top of me. I couldn't quite get away.

But I lasted four hits. Not bad.

The last thing I saw was it walking away, completely unscathed.

Meanwhile, the Colossuses were annoying me as well. After the fall, you can mine them, if your skill is up to 315.

My skill: 314.

Ah well, we found a fel iron deposit not too far into the quest, so I was able to bump my skill up that one critical notch. Of course, then they didn't yield much when I mined them. Bleh.

After running around for a couple of hours, we were about ready to call it a night. I figured we needed to do at least one more thing though: Get to Shattrath City.

Shattrath City is the main hub in the Outlands. It has a bank, many vendors, and even portals back to Azeroth. I figured that the flight point there was a must.

So we headed out, picking up a flight point in Zangarmarsh on the way, then heading south to the Terokkar Forest where Shattrath lies.

The ride there did not take too long and the flight point was right out in front of where we arrived.

Skronk had described Shattrath as more confusing than Exodar and Undercity combined, but I think he was exaggerating. It seemed to me to be a bit easier to navigate... and just to look at... than Exodar at least.

One of the first things I saw appeared to be a practice session for the Dr. Seuss birthday parade, but just turned out to be the local militia drilling.

The portals back to the main alliance cities were easy enough to find, and marked with the Poke ball symbol.

Wandering around, I also found what appeared to be the main Draenei shrine to Pokemon.

Seeing the portals back to the main alliance cities, I figured that setting my home in Shattrath would be a safe bet. I can now use my hearth stone to get there, and the portals to jump back to Azeroth when I need.

And I will be heading back to Azeroth regularly. Shattrath has no auction house. Azeroth is still the home of commerce.

Last weekend, returned and refreshed, I rejoined the group as we decided to head someplace new.

We decided to step through the portal as a group and begin the Burning Crusade instances.

As a group we were all heading into the back stretch of level 62 and were starting to worry that we might be out levelling the new content while we mucked about in the old world. So, as a group, we moved on. We went in as:

62 Warrior - Earlthecat
62 Warlock - Bungholio
62 Mage - Ula
62 Priest - Skronk
62 Paladin - Vikund

We got on Saturday night and, once to Honor Hold, the first thing we had to do was actually find the instance.

Not noticing exactly how close it was to Honor Hold, we ran right past it and to the Southern Rampart.

We climbed up on that and ran around for a bit until we spotted a dungeon meeting stone far below us.

Looking for a short cut to get to it, Skronk hit Bung with power word shield and Bung jumped over the edge of the rampart... and went splat.

Undeterred, and seeing a ledge part way down that I thought might save me from a similar fate, Skronk hit Vikund with power word shield (even though we were pretty sure it wasn't going to help by that point) and over the edge I went.

And splat I went as well.

Ula floated down past our corpses using slow fall and looking like a gnome in a glass elevator while Skronk found a safe way down for himself.

And once they got to the meeting stone, they found out it wasn't the one we were looking for. We were too low level to even use it.

Eventually, after more running around, but no more dying, we found the right location.

Once in, things went reasonably smoothly. The instance is very linear. There are only three boss fights. They were:

• Watchkeeper Gargolmar
• Omor the Unscarred
• Vazruden the Herald and his mount, a dragon named Nazan

We just happened to need to slay all three of these for the quest Weaken the Ramparts.

Getting to these fights was work, but not a huge challenge. There are lots of closely arrayed groups in the instance, with patrols wandering through, so we were kept on our toes. It wasn't as hairy as Stratholme was for us, but we had to be careful. Here we are, a few fights in, sizing up the next set of groups:

And our care paid off, as we knocked off one group after another without much in the way of drama or sudden intakes of breath.

First we made our way to Gargolmar, who walks a patrol with two minions not far inside the instance. We cleared out all the groups along his beat, then pulled his little group over. Earl tanked Gargolmar while the Ula sheeped... pigged... polymorphed one of the minions, then we all piled the other minion. He went down fast, then we cleared up the other one, then went in with Earl and finished of Gargolmar.

One down.

There was more clearing of mobs until we got to a choice of directions. One way lead to Omor, the other to Vazruden. For no particular reason, we chose to go with Omor first. I guess he seemed a bit closer. We could certainly see him from where we were standing.

Like Gargolmar, he has two minions, so we did the exact same routine. We were not quite as successful this time around. Here we are in the fight. You can see some additional minions in with us, Omor summons those throughout the fight.

A bad hit killed Earl late in the fight and Ula went down as well, but we won in the end.

Two down.

That just left us with Vazruden. Here was the challenge.

There is a bridge to him, with a pair of guards at either end. The pair at the near end went down easy. The pair at the far end though trigger the battle event with Vazruden and him mount.

His mount proved to be the trick.

We went straight in and killed the two guards. That gets Vazruden, who is just flying around in a lazy circle on his dragon, to come in low, dismount, and attack. Here he is coming for us:

Earl and I went in and things were going well until we got him down to about 30% of his health. At that point, his dragon mount joins in the fight, and he has a killer breath weapon.

We managed to kill Vazruden, but Nazan did in Earl and Vikund almost immediately, then rounded up the rest of the team.

We felt we were close. Skronk used the soul stone and ressed us up. Fortunately, the encounter resets itself if you fail, so we got another run at it.

The second time around we did not even kill Vazruden. And we did not have a soul stone.

Fortunately, as I wrote above, the instance is very close to Honor Hold and the graveyard therein. Also going our way was the fact that nothing in the instance had respawned yet, so we had a clear run back to the encounter.

The third try also went awry. We had learned to stay clear of Nazan's breath weapon, but the transition between Vazruden and Nazan was putting so much damage on Earl that he died again, and the battle with Nazan needed all five of us.

After running back for a fourth try, we started in again. As we approached the point when Nazan joins in, I decided to pull Vikund back and use up his mana helping Skronk heal while Earl was enduring the high damage phase of the battle.

This turned out to be just enough. Vazruden went down and Earl was still well stocked with hit points. After running down my mana, I ran in to melee with Earl and Nazan went down at last. Here we are in our hard earned victory shot.

Three down.

You can see skeletons from our previous attempts in the picture.

We nearly missed the chest that sits on the far side of the area that Vazruden and Nazan patrol, which had a couple of very nice items, the Ironsole Clompers, which Vikund won on the roll, and the Mok'Nathal Clan Ring, which Earl won.

After that, all we had to do was run back and turn in the quest. Now, from the instance, it looks like you can just hop off the rampart and run to Honor Hold.

It is, however, an illusion. You have to run back through the instance, which still had not respawned for us, exit, then run to Honor Hold.

After the quest turn in, we were all closing in on level 63.

I had read at some point that the five person instances in the Outlands were going to move away from the giant monstrosities, like Wailing Caverns and become doable in a more reasonable time frame. We started in on Hellfire Ramparts at 9pm and were done by midnight Pacific time, which is pretty reasonable indeed.

Next week we should be looking into Blood Furnace.

61 Warrior - Earlthecat
62 Warlock - Bungholio
62 Mage - Ula
62 Priest - Skronk
62 Paladin - Vikund

Of course, you cannot just stroll into Upper Blackrock Spire, or UBRS, without a key. And this key, it is actually The Seal of Ascension, requires a series of quests be completed before you are set posses it and can enter UBRS.

Fortunately last week we completed the first segment of the quest line, which required us to collect the unadorned seal of ascension, a random drop throughout Lower Blackrock Spire (I think we all ended up with one) and three gems which drop off of three bosses in LBRS, Omokk, Voone, and Wyrmthalak. Earl looted all of the gems, so he was to be the key master.

But before we continued on with getting access to UBRS, we though we might as well lay down the groundwork for other things, like Onyxia's lair. So, just in case we blew through UBRS and killed Drakkisath, we thought we had better have that lined up. Plan for success!

That quest line requires a visit to Haleh in Winterspring. Haleh lives up on top of a snowy peak. You can get to her by fighting through a bunch of mobs in a cave, or you can climb the mountain.

We chose the mountain. Up to a point it is easy. We could see her from here:

Then there was just a little issue of getting across the valley between us and her and we were set. You cannot quite jump it.

So we had to scramble up a narrow gap, which too some Mario-like jumping around to accomplish.

We were advised not to step in the blue circle. That is the teleport back to the cave of nastiness, through which you are supposed to travel to meet up with her. The cave we had avoided.

Once set on that quest, we took a portal back to Ironforge and headed out to Blackrock Spire. We had to get in to LBRS and find the quest mob, Vaelan, to continue the access quest for UBRS.

We fought our way into LBRS and right past Vaelan. He is off in a pretty well hidden side passage. We did find one of the Lunar Festival elders, Elder Stonefort, there in LBRS. He probably isn't getting very many visits.

We fought our way to Stonefort, then past him before we figured we had gone too far. In the picture above, Vaelan is behind us, to the left, and up on a platform.

We managed to get to him after some running around.

He gave Earl a couple of items and sent us off to find Emberstrife out in the Wyrmbog district of Dustwallow Marsh.

The task for us was to beat down Emberstrife until we got an emote from him that his will had weakened. Then Earl had to use one of the items Vaelan gave him, the Orb of Draconic Energy, to take control of Emberstrife. Then, he had to use one of Emberstrife's flame attacks to forge the Seal of Ascension.

Sounds easy, right?

Well, it took us a while.

The first time out, in our zeal, we just killed Emberstrife. Oops.

Then, when he finally repopped, we managed to hold back on killing him and let Earl get control, but then the dynamic of which of Emberstrife's abilities to use and when to use it on the unforged seal of ascension became the trick. You only get five shots at it. Here Earl has him under his control:

Due to a computer crash and just plain bad luck, we blew our first five and had to go all the way back to Vaelan to refresh the quest for another five shots. Of course, by that point, some of the stuff in LBRS had respawned.

So we killed a few things, got back to Vaelan, got restarted the quest, the headed back out to Dustwallow.

This time we got it in three tries.

And then we had to head back to LBRS, clear out a few more respawns, and speak with Vaelan. This time we were set. He gave Earl the Seal of Ascension. We were cleared for UBRS.

Unfortunately, all this running around took a bit longer than we thought, so we decided not to try to conquer LBRS just then.

Still, we had to at least check if the seal worked.

Once you're in LBRS, the door either is open or not. So the instance had to be reset and we had to clear our way to the door to LBRS, but once there, it opened right up.

We decided to test the first room.

The patrols were easy enough, but inside there are several side rooms that need to be cleared, each with five or so elites. Here we managed to wipe.

LBRS will not be a push-over, certainly. It will take all of our skill and discipline to vanquish it.

But we are all set to try now!

Plus, the experience rewards for pre-level 60 quests are pretty huge as I mentioned yesterday.

So in we went with the following lineup:

61 Warrior - Earlthecat
61 Warlock - Bungholio
61 Mage - Ula
61 Priest - Skronk
62 Paladin - Vikund

After last week Vikund was close enough to 62 that I had to run out and grab that level.

When accused of being a factionalist splitter and violating the principles of democratic centralism, I pointed out that I got Crusader Aura at 62, which gives a 20% speed boost to mounted travel for the whole group. Deemed an appropriate collectivist goal, we rode quickly together to Blackrock Spire.

Blackrock Spire itself? Very 3D, with some interesting decor choices.

Most instances tend to be, if not on a single plane, then at least on a fairly regular set of levels. Scholomance has stairs and such all over, but it is nice and regular, so you are unlikely to get lost.

Blackrock Spire is all sorts of platforms, stairs, ramps, and gaping holes in the floor. Seriously, it is like a Super Mario Brothers level at some points.

Not that being complex is bad, but it made for some "how do we get there?" moments.

And how did we do?

Sloppy.

We were very sloppy. As Ula pointed out early on in the evening, it is very hard to put on your best game when so many fights are walk-overs.

With our levels and equipment, we were a bit over powered for the zone.

Unlike Stratholme, where we were a tight, disciplined group, here were, sometimes literally, all over the map.

We were taking groups of four or five elites and AOE'ing them like they were normal mobs. We were rushing ahead without much care. We set off quest events without thinking. And, at one point I swear we were all running around looking for a ramp we could not find, and managed to get completely out of sight of one another.

And we got away with it. There were no full wipes

We started off by making sure we all had the full boat load of quests for Blackrock Spire. Then, once inside the instance, we picked up a few more. For some of us, this meant having to delete a quest every time there was a new one to share or pick up.

But once in, we ended up in the hunt for Urok Doomhowl. It was actually trying to find a ramp to get to him that got us all split up at one point. But we found it, fought our way through to the right location and, without thinking about it, kicked off the quest event that summons him.

And we nearly wiped.

We were there, with Highlord Omokk's head and a pole to stick it on, and unsure as to what would happen when we stuck it Urok's pathetic tribute pile. (Seriously, I thought it was his trash pile.)

Doing this sent wave after wave of ogre guards after us, which we went after in a very haphazard way. We were holding out for a while, then Urok finally showed up. Earl went down, then Skronk, then Bung.

The fight ended up being just Vikund and Ula at the end, though I did not even see Ula amongst all the ogre corpses on the floor. I thought for a moment that Vikund was just doing awesome DPS until the battle was over and I had to start ressing.

After cleaning up that mess, we had we had to plow through spiders, which was not so bad, except that we had to linger to finish off a quest. The spiders have an annoying AOE attack that sticks everybody in the group in place, no matter how far away from the group you are. (And, as usual for this instance, we got spread out again.)

Then we managed to set off another quest event, the wolves, without planning. Only a quick reminder from Skronk allowed most of us to finish off the Worg Pup quest. Ula missed out, which is a shame, because she is the pet collector in our group. We might have to go back for that. But we won, even after facing Gizrul, possibly the biggest wolf I've seen in WoW. The greenest too, in this picture.

The wolf fight was also a bit galling because my hunter, Tistann, who has a wolf pet, needs to tame one of the worgs in LBRS to learn furious howl 4. However, to get in to this point and tame a wolf he has to find a group that will take him, sans pet, this far into the instance. An unlikely scenario. But the only alternative is to wait until he is at least level 62, when he can find a wolf with furious howl in the Outlands. At least I now know where they live in Blackrock Spire.

After a few more encounters, we managed to work out way around to the end fight, the encounter with Overlord Wyrmthalak, the big boss. Given our carelessness with events, we did this fight in a manner more in our usual mode. Of course, it is mostly a stand-up fight, with a couple of minions coming in mid-battle, so there was not much to mess up. We just ran in and started beating on him.

Wyrmthalak's only special ability is a knock-back that sends you flying surprisingly high. You can see Vikund sailing through the air:

It is a good thing that the place has high ceilings. While aloft, I was reminded of a verse from the song "Drill Ye Tarriers Drill," a railroad song my grandfather used to sing:

And when next payday came around
Jim Gough a dollar short was found
When he asked, "What for?" came this reply
"You were docked for the time you were up in the sky"

Scenes from "A Hard Days Night" also came to mind.

You can see, down below Vik, one of Wyrmthalak's minions coming to try to rescue him.

In the end though, Wyrmthalak was no match for us and we stood in his spot for our victory picture.

And so we were through Lower Blackrock Spire. We had Ula open a portal to Ironforge and we all flew out to Morgan's Vigil in the Burning Steppes to turn in some of the quests, then road across the zone to turn in the rest.

Among the things that most of us ended up with were a pet spider from the quest En-Ay-Es-Tee-Why and a pet worg from Kibler's Exotic Pets.

Still, some Blackrock Spire mysteries remain, such as what this inscription means:

And now we again have to decide what to do next. As overpowered as we were for LBRS, I do not think we can just blaze our way into the 10 man raid that is UBRS. With that off the list, the only instances we have not been in yet are Dire Maul East and North. Those may be our next target.

But after that, I think we are cleared for the Hellfire Ramparts in the Outlands.

Unless we have to go get Ula her Worg pup.

60 Warrior - Earlthecat
61 Warlock - Bungholio
61 Mage - Ula
61 Paladin - Vikund
61 Priest - Skronk

Before we went in I had to abandon the quest "Judgement and Redemption," the last stage of the paladin epic mount quest. It appears if you fail the last battle, as we did on our first try, you have to do this to reset yourself for the battle. Unfortunately, I flew out the the Western Plaguelands before we figured this out, so I had to recall Vikund back to Stormwind, abandon the quest, then accept it again from the quest giver, Lord Grayson Shadowbreaker.

That out of the way, we got ourselves out to Scholomance.

We got in and did not have to fight our way through too many rooms before we got to Kirtonos' side chamber. We all had the "blood of innocents," the item that let's you summon Kirtonos, so Earl ran in and when everybody said they were ready, he used the blood to summon.

That is when we found out about a twist to the whole encounter.

At the entrance to the chamber where you summon Kirtonos is a portcullis. When Kirtonos shows up, the portcullis comes down, cutting the room off from the rest of the instance. Anybody on the wrong side of it is out of the fight completely.

Most of us were in the room when the portcullis went down, but Skronk happened to be just outside, so he could not participate in the battle at all, not with damage nor with healing.

Paladin healing powers to the rescue.

It was a tough fight without Skronk in there healing, especially since Vikund is spec'd protection, so is more geared to being a backup or off tank than a healer. But we managed it, though I did have to use Vik's lay hands to finish up the fight.

While Kirtonos only dropped the Clutch of Andros, which nobody wanted except as vendor trash, the quest to kill Kirtonos yielded the Spectral Essence, a very important item to Skronk. The Essence lets you see the ghosts in Caer Darrow, the town around Scholomance. Several of them are vendors, and one of them sells the recipe for the major mana potion recipe, something that otherwise only drops once in a while from Darkmaster Gandling in Scholomance itself.

Skronk, being our alchemist, wanted that recipe, naturally enough. And now he had t