Neriad: Schooling Scholomance

[MongoJerry]

THE ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part I

On Tuesday night, I was putzing around with Neriad doing some of the new quests in the Western Plaguelands, and I got the usual spams that priests get, asking if I'd like to join various instance groups. (Rogues, hunters, and pre-talent warlocks never seem to sympathize when I describe this burden of being a priest). I turned down most such invitations. Did I want to run BRD? Aw, come on, I farmed that place into the ground a couple patches ago. Did I want to run Stratholme? Maybe after I see some more of the newer content, but definitely not in the 10-15 person raid groups that most people want to run the place in. Did I want to run BRS? Not a chance. It's boring, I've done all the quests, and there aren't any drops in the entire instance that would interest a priest. (One person spent 10 minutes trying to convince me that BRS had good drops for priests by linking all the cloth drops he and his friends had found there. Every one of them were equaled or beat by BRD drops or by green items I had found elsewhere).

Ah, an invitation for a Scholomance group. Now that sounds interesting. I had run Scholomance in an 8-person party on the first evening of the patch, and it seemed like a fun instance. I had picked up a few Scholomance quests by this point, and I was itching to see what those quests were like and to see what kind of followup quests they had. Plus, the way our 8-person group had cut through Scholomance like a hot knife through butter, it looked like Scholomance was well balanced for a five-character party. Three times, however, I received invitations to Scholomance and had conversations like this one:

JoeSchmo: Want to run Scholomance?

Neriad: Maybe, how many people are going to be in the group?

JoeSchmo: We have 9 now, you'd be the 10th.

Neriad: Ah, no, sorry. I just want to do a 5-man run.

JoeSchmo: I just talked to our group, and they think you're nuts. No way can you run Scholomance with five people.

Neriad: I ran Scholomance in an 8-person party on the first night, and it was so easy that it looks like Scholomance could be done with a 5-person party.

JoeSchmo: We still think you're nuts.

Neriad: Possibly, but I don't like doing raiding parties if I don't have to. They're not as intense and you don't get as much loot from them anyway.

JoeSchmo: Just quest items. You still get boss loot.

Neriad: I want to do the quests. Besides, in raids, you have to split up loot you find more ways and end you end up with less.

JoeSchmo: Quests are lame. Boss loot rewls.

Neriad: This is a beta. I like items as much as anyone else, but there's no sense obsessing about items that are going to be deleted in the not too distant future when the game is released. Besides, how can we find out if the quests are "lame" if we don't do them in the first place? Some quests now lead to epic rewards, you know.

JoeSchmo: Nah, I just want boss lewt, and you can go faster in a big party.

Neriad: If you count all the time it takes to organize the party and all the extra downtime as people squabble over loot, go afk, buff extra people, etc., big groups only go a little bit faster than smaller groups. And then you have to divide what decent items do drop among a bigger group of people. Plus, each person gets a smaller share of "junk" vendor items to sell. When I come back from a 10-15 person raid on Stratholme or BRS, I usually find that after a several hour run I end up with no items and hardly any cash. They're just not worth it.

JoeSchmo: So, are you coming?

Neriad: No.

JoeSchmo: @$%$%^#*@R#%!


I sighed and kept on doing some quest stuff in Anderhol. (Most of the mobs in Anderhol have been changed to non-elites, by the way). Then, I got a message from Kronos, a level 60 warlock with whom I had done a lot of instance runs in the past.

Kronos: Want to join a Scholomance group?

Neriad: How many people in the group?

Kronos: We have eight now, you'd be the ninth.

I stopped and thought for a few moments. I had adventured with Kronos many times and have found him to be a great instance group member. He was only one of three regularly played PvP server level-capped alliance warlocks before warlocks got their talents. I respect a guy who's willing to buck the trend by sticking with a "gimped" character to a high level and is willing to experiment to find ways of getting the most out of his underpowered character. Now that warlocks have talents and are no longer so gimped, Kronos is even better for his experiences. He's also shown a willingness to take on challenges. He was in a 5-man Stratholme group with me that made it pretty far into the instance before wiping. I figured it might be worth it to join his group and then convince he and others in the raid to join a 5-person run later.

Neriad: Sure, I'll join. I'd like to do a 5-person group at some point, though. I did Scholomance with an 8-person party on the first day and it was really easy. I think a 5-person group is doable.

Kronos: Yeah, I agree. It's been hard finding people who want to run Scholomance with only five people. (pause) Hey, a paladin friend of mine wants to come. If we can get a warrior and a mage, want do a 5-person party now?

Neriad: Yeah!

Kronos: Got a mage!

Neriad: Got a warrior!


Scholomance: Take 1

The five of us got together and started running Scholomance. I'm not going to lie to you. We ran into many problems and wiped several times. The instance was still very new to us. Two people had never been inside Scholomance at all and the rest of the party had only been there a couple times each. However, each wipe or near wipe taught us something new about the instance, and each time we came up with new tactics to get past difficult challenges. This dynamic is another reason why I prefer smaller groups to larger ones. People who adventure in small groups seem more willing to take responsibility for their actions and are more willing to accept that they can improve their play. It's a lot harder for people to hide from their mistakes, and therefore there's a better chance that people will change their play and become better players. People who play in raids a lot, or as I diplomatically call them "raid lamers," rarely accept personal responsibility for a group wipe. The typical response of a raid lamer to a wipe is that the instance is badly designed, that there's "no way" it can be done with a small group, and that even more raid lamers need to be summoned in.

The final wipe of our first five-person group came in the "room from hell" that houses Jandice Barov. It's a room that requires a lot of skill to pull correctly, as you'll see later. The thing that pissed us off the most about this wipe was that we did everything right. Kupeludo, our warrior, did an excellent job of pulling, while the rest of the group waited patiently in the back corner to safely kill everything Kupe pulled to us. So, how did we wipe? Respawns, of course. That room, and indeed the whole first section of Scholomance has an incredibly fast respawn timer. I am one of those weird people who actually like the idea of respawns in instances as a "death penalty" on groups who wipe too much. But the respawn timers in the first section of Scholomance are too short even for my taste. I submitted a /suggest that Blizzard increase the respawn times by about 15 minutes. That would allow there to be a death penalty while not punishing groups who are careful as they move through the instance.

This wipe was the final straw. It probably didn't help that we realized afterward that we shouldn't have been down in that room in the first place. Jandice Barov is a quest related boss and therefore doesn't drop anything of value as a random drop, and none of us in the group were at the point in our quest series where we needed to kill her. Our paladin had to leave, and the rest of us needed a break. However, after talking things over, the remaining four decided that after a 15 minute break, we would be ready to start again. I decided that at this point, we had a special group and that we had learned enough along the way to be of interest to others who were adventuring in Scholomance. I decided that this time I would take screenshots and would write up the adventures.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/start.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part II, Beginning

After our first abortive attempt at clearing Scholomance with a 5-player party, we reassembled after a break. While many players might get discouraged by the failure of the first run, it was refreshing to see that confidence was quite high for our next run. Each time that we had wiped or had nearly wiped in the first run, we had found ways to handle the problem and continue forward. It was becoming clear that the instance was definitely doable with a 5-player party. All we needed was practice.

We found a replacement for our paladin, so our group ended up looking like this:

Kupeludo: lvl 60 Warrior
Kronos: lvl 60 Warlock
Lilisi: lvl 60 Paladin
Neth: lvl 60 Mage
Neriad: lvl 60 Priestess

It would be difficult to find a better combination of character classes for this instance.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/reliquary.jpg

Scholomance starts adventurers off on a wooden entryway with a railing that overlooks some of the later parts of the instance. It has four guards that can be pulled in pairs. Shackle one of the pair, kill the other, kill the shackled one, pull the other pair, shackle one mob, kill the other, kill the shackled one. No problems.

At this point, one is supposed to open the iron gate in front of you and continue. However, I'd like to point out again how this entrance area overlooks some of the later parts of the instance. If you jump down, you'll die almost instantly from mobs that will surround you. However, this ability to jump down is a nice little piece of instance design on Blizzard's part. If the party has already opened the door to the Viewing Room and then wipes at some later stage of the instance, the party can come back to the instance, jump down, run into the viewing room, and get back on its feet. (More details on this technique will be described later). If you're wondering what some of this stuff I've said means, don't worry. You'll see. The bottom line is that the entrance hallway seems to be designed to allow a party that wipes deep inside of Scholomance to recover without having to clear all of the massive number of respawns in the first portion of Scholomance.

Also, the design of the entrance hallway seems to allow for some tricks to "skip content" and get to the rich miniboss area of the Viewing Room quickly, making Scholomance the most farmable high-level instance for a 5-player party. But for now, let's pretend that we don't know this information and proceed the way the instance was designed.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/reliquary2.jpg

Through the iron gate is the first real room of the instance, The Reliquary. It has various bookshelves and tables, and the mobs are a mix of skeleton guards and humanoid spellcasters. I and others in my party consider this room to be the second most difficult room of the entire instance. (Second only to the room with Jandice Barov). It has two things that make it difficult. First, the spellcasters like to fear players into other mob groups. Second, the respawn timer is wickedly fast. The first problem can be handled fairly simply. Have the puller pull mobs back into the entrance hallway. That way, when people are feared, they won't run into other mob groups and wake them up.

The second problem, the respawn timer, is the more difficult one to deal with. The Respawn Monster is an ever present insidious mob that can mess groups up long before respawns actually start appearing. Knowing that the Respawn Monster exists causes so many groups to do stupid things like not waiting for roaming mobs to get out of the way to make pulls safer, not taking out patrols when they could have killed them easily, or trying stupid stuff like Mind Soothing or stealthing past stuff. Or non-pullers get anxious, move out of the entrance hallway into the Reliquary, and end up getting feared into extra mobs, wiping the whole party.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/reliquary3.jpg

The nice thing about the Reliquary, however, is that typically you don't have to deal with most of it. The door to get out of the room is right next to the entrance stairway, so one only has to pull 3-4 mob groups to move out of the room. Unfortunately, there is one not-so-minor item way in the back of the Reliquary: The Deed the Southshore, a quest item. One Scholomance quest is to get four deeds that are scattered throughout the instance, and this quest leads to a very fun followup quest that has a fun quest reward item (more on this later). If you still have to do that quest, you don't want to skip getting that deed.

So how does one handle this room? My advice: very carefully. Don't let the Respawn Monster psych you out. Remember this: If you do not wipe, you have enough time to carefully pull and kill enough mob groups in the entrance hallway to allow people to get to the Deed to Southshore. The problem isn't necessarily the Respawn Monster itself. The problem is that people get psyched out so much by the Respawn Monster that they end up doing stupid stuff.

However, there is a catch. If your group has just one full wipe or two partial wipes along the way, it's game over. Do not attempt to beat the Respawn Monster, because you will lose. After one wipe occurs, so many additional wipes get added on top of the first one because people try to "beat the respawns" and end up doing stupid stuff. My advice: accept the loss and reset the instance. You're right at the start of the instance. It'll cost you at most 10 minutes to recover. If you wipe once, it's better to just reset and start over carefully than experience another two or three more wipes as you battle the Respawn Monster.

Good luck on obtaining your Deed to Southshore. It's the most difficult of the deeds to get.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/summoning.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part III, The Chamber of Summoning and the "Safe Room"

After the Reliquary comes the Chamber of Summoning. I have been told outright that it the obvious place that demonstrates that Scholomance cannot be done with a 5-person party. Indeed, I would have to agree that if one has no clue about some of the specialty skills of some classes that this room would probably rank as the third most difficult room of the instance. If one does remember some of those specialty skills, however, then this room becomes a joke.

The first feature one sees in this room are the many roaming undead patrols made up of either skeleton warriors or "necrofiend" spiders. A poorly timed patrol add can cause problems, but the patrollers do wander around singly and can generally be pulled alone. In addition, if a solo patrol does add during a fight, the group's priest can shackle it and the group can keep right on doing what it's doing. So for the most part, the patrols aren't a major issue. The patrols in the Chamber of Summoning seem to have a fast respawn timer, though, so the group's priest should keep an extra eye out for the occasional patrol add.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/summoning2.jpg

The primary challenge in this room are six camps of mobs -- each of which consists of one Scholomance Dark Summoner and two Scholomance Necromancers. The Necromancers are merely distractions who cast shadowbolts. If the group's priest buffs everyone with shadow resistance, they can largely be ignored. The Dark Summoners, however, are nasty nasty nasty. Upon being aggroed, Dark Summoners will stand where they are and proceed to summon skeletons one after another in quick succession. This leads some groups to use some bad tactics:

Bad tactic #1: Charge the Summoner. Instead of pulling the summoner, the group charges forward to kill it. This means the fight is taking place right at the little camp which is near the other little camps. One mob runner or one player taking a bad angle to the camp can wake up other camps, and multiple patrols will add during the fight. This is a recipe for almost certain wipeage.

Bad tactic #2: Use only ranged attacks against the Summoner. Unfortunately, even spellcasters have limits on their dps and the Summoner will have plenty of time to summon lots and lots of skeletons before dying. What's more, one can't take advantage of the many stunning skills that melee classes have, so there's nothing to slow down the Summoner's rate of spawning. (Note: Curse of Tongues may help). This tactic could only work if one were in a large 10+ player raid with a battery of high dps ranged attackers. I suspect that this is why people think that one must have a raid party to get through this room.

So how should one deal with the Summoners?

Good tactic #1: Counterspell. After the tank aggros the camp, a mage should wait for the Summoner to go into its summoning animation (which looks like a warlock's summoning animation) and then cast Counterspell on it. Since the Summoner won't be able to summon for several seconds, it will charge the group and try to melee. The party can then safely focus all of its power on the Summoner, and use various stunning skills to make sure the Summoner can't summon any skeletons while it's being killed.

Good tactic #2: Shield Bash. If the party doesn't have a mage (such groups do exist), then the group's warrior tank can walk up to the mob camp, wait for the Dark Summoner to go into its summoning animation, Shield Bash it, and then walk back to the party. Again, the Dark Summoner will not be able to summon for several seconds and will follow the warrior in an attempt to melee him or her. The party can then take out the Summoner as before.

Good tactic #3: Miscellaneous. If the party strangely does not have a mage or warrior in it, then one can use a myriad of other special skills instead. A priest could Mind Control the Summoner, walk it over to the group, and then release it to be killed. Or, a rogue could sap the Dark Summoner. Then, the party could take out the necromancers and any nearby patrols and then kill the Dark Summoner last.

Follow one of the three "good tactics" described above and you'll find that one of the hardest rooms in the instance becomes very simple.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/saferoom.jpg

Beyond the Chamber of Summoning is the room with no official name but is the one that Kupeludo has dubbed "The Safe Room," because it has a long respawn timer and because the pulls are relatively simple. The first couple of mob groups can be pulled into and battled in the Chamber of Summoning, and after that, the party can move into The Safe Room and deal with mobs there.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/saferoom2.jpg

The only tricky part to the Safe Room are the ghostly Spectral Tutors who occasionally break up into multiple pieces for several seconds at a time. It's best to shackle the Tutors from the start and kill the other mobs first. You don't want to be dealing with multiple Spectral Tutor pieces while battling the other mobs.

The deed to Tarren Mill lies on a table in the Safe Room.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/saferoom3.jpg

Tarren Mill: pwned

There's a good reason why the Safe Room has a low respawn rate, and it indicates good instance design on the part of Blizzard. The Safe Room acts as a central hub to other portions of the instance. To the right is the "room from hell" that houses Jandice Barov. Ahead is the Great Ossuary through which one must go to get to the boss that holds the key to the Viewing Room. To the left is the room that has the locked door to the Viewing Room (and incidentally is also the room one can jump down into from the entrance hallway). So groups will be coming back through the Safe Room at least a couple of times during a run. It would be extremely annoying to have to fight respawns in this room every time you had to enter it.

Our party bypassed the "room from hell" on this trip, since none of us needed that quest at the time. We got to experience that room on the next run, however. For now, we're going to head into the Great Ossuary next to get to the boss who holds the key to the Viewing Room. Before you rogues ask, no, I'm afraid you can't pick the lock on the Viewing Room door. Nice try.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/ossuary2.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part IV, The Great Ossuary

Past the "Safe Room" is the Great Ossuary. Looking through my screenshots, I'm disappointed that I didn't get any good pictures to illustrate what the Great Ossuary is like in it's full glory. The main hall that you see in the screenshot above starts off with several dozen dragon whelps along with some humanoid dragon handlers. About half a dozen whelps seem to be linked to each dragon handler. The good news is that the whelps are non-elites and are therefore vulnerable to area-of-effect attacks. The bad news is that they don't like to get close enough together to make area-of-effect attacks effective and even though they're non-elite, their attacks still hurt like heck. In addition, the dragon handlers have a knock-back attack that can knock players into other groups of whelps, something that can cause wipes very quickly.

The easiest way to handle this room is to use line-of-sight pulls. The puller shoots a whelp and then runs back into the "Safe Room" and around the corner. Once the whelps lose line-of-sight on the puller, they'll fly through the door and bunch up at the entrance to the Safe Room. The party can then AoE attack them and then kill the dragon handler. Note that dragon handlers also have a nasty AoE attack, so even with this kind of pull, the fight isn't easy. As our party's priestess, I found myself casting Prayer of Healing a lot (PoH is a group heal).

I suggest using line-of-sight pulls for almost the entire room. It's tempting to move into the room after a good portion of the room has been cleared, but as you can see from the chaos in the screenshot above, which was taken after 2/3rds of the room had already been cleared, that's not a good idea. We should have continued to use LoS pulls. If you don't use LoS pulls, then the whelps will stay far apart, making them very difficult to kill using AoE attacks.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/rattlegore.jpg

At the far end of the hall is a stairway leading down to Rattlegore's lair. Along the way, you have to defeat a new mob type called a Risen Construct. These guys are tough mothers. They hit hard, have an area-of-effect swiping attack, and have a boatload of health. Just be glad that for the most part you get to fight them only one at a time, and if by some chance or mistake two of them get aggroed, one of them can be shackled. I wouldn't want to have to fight two of them at once in a 5-player party.

The first time I came through Scholomance, I and my partymates congratulated Blizzard on introducing a new mob model. Risen Constructs are pretty cool looking and are nasty to fight. But on a later run, my friend Lem spoiled the fun, as he likes to do. He observed, "They act like those trogg guys from Gnomeregan." Once he made that observation, the connection was obvious. The constructs have that same loping gate that troggs have, and when they stop or get stunned, they scratch their behinds like troggs do. Risen Constructs aren't a new mob model at all. They're just undead troggs. I guess trogg behinds get itchy even when they don't have any sweat glands, skin or hair on them.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/rattlegore2.jpg

Rattlegore himself waits in the middle of a large chamber with about a dozen of these Risen Constructs. Luckily, he doesn't call for help when he's aggroed, so you don't have the clear the chamber before you fight him. I think that with some patience one could actually pull him alone, but there often seems to be one construct who stays just a bit too close to him and gets aggroed along with Rattlegore. That's not a big issue if you have a priest in the party who can shackle the add. If you don't, I really don't know what a party should do. Maybe you could have someone kite the add around, perhaps back in the now cleared Great Ossuary main hall? I can't imagine a 5-player party trying to directly fight Rattlegore and a risen construct at the same time. Those guys are nasty enough alone.

Assuming one skips Jandice Barov, Rattlegore is the first miniboss parties will fight in the instance, and it's quite time consuming for a party to make its way to this first instance miniboss. Luckily, from this point on, the minibosses come fast and thick.

So what does Rattlegore drop? The answer is: a key. Rather, he drops a special key to the door of the Viewing Room through which one must go to meet all of the other minibosses in the instance. He also dropped some random vendor loot item of no consequence.

All that was left to do in this first stage of the instance was to make our way to the Viewing Room door.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastroom.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part V, The Final Room Before the Viewing Room

After getting the key to the Viewing Room off Rattlegore, we headed back to the Safe Room and proceeded to clear the room containing the Viewing Room door. Incidentally, this is also the same room one would land in if one were to jump off the platform at the beginning of the instance.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastroom2.jpg

Like the Great Ossuary, the easiest way to clear this room is to pull mob groups back to the Safe Room and dispatch them there. Mobs in this final room like to wander around at different speeds, so the puller has to be careful. It can be easy to pull too many mobs, if one isn't paying attention.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastroom3.jpg

The most difficult mobs in that final room are the diseased ghouls. When they die, they release a large poison cloud plume, much like the zombies in Diablo II. Unlike the poison clouds released by the zombies in Diablo II, this poison cloud plume hurts like crazy -- as in 700+ damage per tick crazy. The above screenshot illustrates the proper technique for dealing with the ghouls. When the ghoul is about to die, it should be stunned and the melee attackers should back off and let the spellcasters finish off the ghoul. Anyone who stays within range of the poison cloud after the ghoul dies should be summarily ridiculed for being a newbie. This whole problem with the poison cloud illustrates why ghouls should be shackled and saved for last when a mob group is pulled.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastroom4.jpg

This room before the Viewing Room is small and can be quickly cleared. There is one other feature of this room besides the Viewing Room door, however. An iron gate blocks the way to some sort of chest. Some people had heard that clearing that final room opens the gate, but that didn't work for us. Others speculated that one had to also clear the entire Safe Room, too. Since it was around 6am at this point, however, we weren't in the mood to experiment, so we left the chest alone. I have a feeling, though, that that chest could have something pretty valuable in it, like the chest in the Seven Dwarfs room in Blackrock Depths. If someone reading this has concrete information on what specifically opens the gate to that chest, I'd like to hear about it. My guess at this point is that it involves opening up the Viewing Room door and hitting a switch somewhere. If someone can give me concrete information about this, I'll post an update.

UP NEXT: The Viewing Room

[Hettar]

greath thread :thumbsup:
I haven't done an intance yet (WC soon though) and it looks really nice and hard !

[Chaosas]

Wow, great job. It was very interesting to read! Like a real journal. Not unlike most of these in worldofwar.com where you can read whole "journal" in 2 minutes. No details, no anything :rant:

[TykeMörbult]

One heck of a journal you've got there!! Keep up the good work, this was a really interesting read!

[The SilverDeath]

cool!

Hey I was part of The Pirates of Booty Bay! Could u tell Neth to say hi to Legopirate for me (Silverdeath)

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part VI, The Viewing Room and the Laboratory

Neriad and her party opened the door to the Viewing Room and walked inside.

Breaking away from the narrative for a moment, let's talk a bit about Scholomance's design. I would rank the three most difficult sections of Scholomance as follows:

1. "The Room from Hell," the room containing Jandice Barov
2. The Reliquary
3. The Great Ossuary

Notice something about this list. We've already finished them all! Or technically, we passed by "The Room from Hell," did only a small section of the Reliquary, and finished the Great Ossuary completely. Up until the two final boss challenges (which are really fun) the rest of the instance is a piece of cake. The instance is literally divided into two halves by the Viewing Room Door. Before the door is a grueling instance with few minibosses and little treasure of the kind players look for. After the door is a series of treasure rooms filled with easily killed minibosses that give players the items of their dreams. The difference between the two halves of the instance could not be more striking.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/viewingroom.jpg

The Viewing Room itself is eerie. It's a large schoolroom filled with yellow non-aggroed mobs, much like the bar in Blackrock Depths. At the front of the room is the headmaster, Vectus, who is supposed to be the final boss of this instance, and yet he is non-aggroed as well. You can talk to the students who respond with various comments about their studies or your dress, and you can even talk to Vectus who will tell you to get in your proper school uniform and open your books. The room is disorienting, because you know that at some point all these people are going to attack you, but you don't know when.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory.jpg

Opposite the Viewing Room Door is a stairwell leading down to the Laboratory. This room has mobs similar to those that were in the Safe Room. Here, like there, the mobs can be safely pulled. The only problem mobs are the Spectral Teachers which occasionally break up into multiple parts for a small amount of time. It's best to shackle the Spectral Teachers in each pull and deal with them last.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory2.jpg

The laboratory is run by the lich, Ras Frostwhisper. He moves around the sarcophagus at the front of the room, which is convenient, because when he's behind the sarcophagus, the skeleton guards in front of the sarcophagus can be pulled without pulling him. There's not too much more to say about fighting him. Hit him as hard as you can and keep your party members healed.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/bonechill.jpg

Frostwhisper dropped the Bonechill Hammer pictured above. In my first run, he dropped some robes that gave a bonus to frost damage spells and to frost resistance. Unfortunately, neither bonus was very big and the robes had no other peripheral stats. Not even a dedicated frost mage would want to wear them. That's a lukewarm item to drop from a cool boss (pardon the puns).

The laboratory itself is quite interesting. For one thing, a chemistry set on the counter can be clicked on to pick up "Frostwhisper's Embalming Fluid." No one in our party knew what it was used for, but we guessed that it's used in some sort of rare alchemy recipe. Note that this embalming fluid is classified as bind on pickup, so if it is indeed for an alchemy recipe, then make sure that only alchemist characters pick it up.

The room has a strange feel about it. For one thing, the laboratory is way off to the side of the other "treasure rooms" in the area. Kronos suggested that the laboratory could be the alchemist's equivalent of the anvil and forge in Blackrock Depths. That is, perhaps there are some rare alchemy potions that can only be made while standing in the Scholomance laboratory. It'd be neat if that were true.

One other thing: The laboratory also has the Deed to Brill.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory3.jpg

Brill: pwned

UP NEXT: The Six Treasure Rooms

[Teh Kurb]

GRRREAT posts ! :yep: :yep: :yep:

[Lamaros]

Great post, but I want MORE!
:) :wave:

[Bearcub]

Man I loved Mongo's journals from Diablo, now he is at it again in WOW

[Shaggy]

very, very cool. Keep it up man!

[Baredor]

Great post, but I want MORE!
:) :wave:

Indeed. :thumbsup:

[Pietoro]

One of the best journals I've read. ^_^

[niteshade6]

Definetely a great journal, although the stories of instance zerging do have me a bit worried. I hope that's something they get sorted out.

[blizad]

these are some awsome reads!! i have a slight feeling of actually playing the game just from reading those, really cool.

[aartamen]

Is Scholomance a "raid instance"? Because if it is not it should not be possible to raid.

[mogwai_rock]

Nice description, i have a few instances to do yet before i hit scholomance but it looks interesting and challenging.

[SirMoogie]

Frostwhisper's Embalming Fluid is part of a quest to make the "Leggings of Arcana". It's one of those crafting quests where an NPC requests hard to find parts from you to make an item.

[Harukaba]

This is one of the most interesting dungeon adventure journals I have read. You have given so many details that I could imagine myself being there with you. I look forward to the conclusion of the story and thank you for sharing it.

[Blackmoore]

Truly, Truly amazing. A great read, a great job and a great instance. Good Job!

[Lowk3y]

Is Scholomance a "raid instance"? Because if it is not it should not be possible to raid.


It's not a raid instance; To my knowledge none of those are in yet...You can still 'raid' normal instances, but you get no credit for any quests involving that instance, so it's purely zerging for loot, which as was pointed out in the very first post, doesn't even to all that a good job of it, when you factor in loot:time ratio.

[aartamen]

Zerging instances is the most dumb thing I've heard people do in WOW on any kind of scale.

[Squarebob Spongepants]

If I join a group to do a non-raid instance and they start recruiting a 6th, 7th, 8th and so on, I'm out of there.

_______________________________

The game is ready for lunch.

[Drunknmunkys]

arent you the guy that did the stories of the Pacafist necromancer and singing barb before the 1.10 patch for D2?

[Dalai]

Great writing MongoJerry, I'm glad to see you writing about WoW. You speak pure game.

[eric640]

WOW. GREAT REPORT.

Hopefully, if anything this raises the issue of skilless weenies zerging instances.
I hate games that encourage that.

[Mak]

Your Diablo articles were awesom :P Glad u write about WoW :D

[red.13]

Raid instances = pice of ****. Maybe not always, but I probably won't like them.

MongoJerry --- Vey nice quide/journal. Long, detailed, nice written - simply great :thumbsup:

[Minsterr]

Goodjob MongoJerry, by far one of the best if not the best instance journal, I have read so far, would be awesome with some more of these lengthy journals from other instances. :o)

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part VII, Old Business

Before continuing with the story, let's take care of a few bits of old business. First, Mugs from the official Blizzard forums reminded me that one of the mob types in the "Safe Room" also casts silence, which could be a troubling issue, if a party's healer gets silenced. Good point. Luckily, though, the silence spell is a short-ranged area-of-effect spell, so if the party's priest stands back from the fray, which most priests do anyway, they shouldn't be affected most of the time. If the priest does have the misfortune of being silenced, he or she should then step back, wait for the silence to wear off and continue. The nice thing about having one's priest not be silenced is that he or she can then cast Dispel Magic on his or her party members and get rid of their silence. Keep in mind that warriors cannot Taunt while silenced, so if it's early in the fight, the priest might want to dispel the silence off the warrior tank even before dispelling the silence on the party's spellcasters.

Mugs also reminded me to mention that the key to the Viewing Room disappears after one use. I can't believe I forgot to mention this. I guess I was writing too late at night or something. Anyway, the key is a one-time use item, so there's no need to roll over who gets to pick up the key. Also, this one-time use feature means that one does indeed need to work one's way through the Great Ossuary and fight Rattlegore on each Scholomance visit.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory4.jpg

A group of us went on another Scholomance run last night, which gave me a chance to take some better screenshots and also remind myself of some of the smaller details of the instance. One of those "details" is that the primary reason we always shackled the Spectral Teachers in the Laboratory and saved them for last in any pull was that Spectral Teachers have the ability to banish players. One can imagine the nastiness of having one's tank banished in the middle of a large fight. Unfortunately, despite Banish being classified as a "magic" debuff, it can't be dispelled.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory5.jpg

I got this better screenshot of Ras Frostwhisper last night. When one follows one of the Scholomance quest lines, one finds out that Frostwhisper plays a far more significant role than that of a simple miniboss.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory6.jpg

We got these gloves off Frostwhisper last night. Not bad.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/laboratory7.jpg

The main reason why Kronos and I have this idea that the Laboratory might be the alchemist's version of the Blackrock Depths anvil and forge is this clickable "Alchemy Lab." It's the only furniture piece in the room that can be moused over or clicked on. It does make one wonder.

The secret to the iron gate guarding the chest has been revealed, thanks to Durn on the official Blizzard forums! Despite my willingness to bet my group 50s going in that Durn was pulling our legs, I can now verify that there is a torch switch near Jandice Barlov that opens the gate. I'll talk about what we got and how to get through the "Room That's Not Quite As Hellish As It Used To Be," when we get to that point in the narrative. However, I can say that I'm starting to warm up to the idea of hitting Jandice Barlov on farming runs now. I'm not 100% convinced, mind you, but I'm warming up to the idea.

With all of that out of the way, let's continue where the group left off. The group had just defeated Ras Frostwhisper and was heading toward the Headmaster's Quarters, or the section of the instance I affectionately call "The Six Treasure Rooms." Note: The narrative will continue to follow the original group's adventures. However, I might occasionally use a screenshot from last night's group to illustrate a point. If you see a screenshot with Minimus (mage) or Berilac (paladin) in it, I just ask that you suspend your sense of disbelief for a bit and imagine Neth or Lilisi, respectively, instead. My thanks to Minimus and Berilac for their help last night.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/headmasterschambers.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part VIII, Hall of Secrets and The Coven

After killing Raz Frostwhisper in the Laboratory (with a fireball), we went back upstairs to the Viewing Room and took followed a side passage to the Headmaster's Chambers (shown above). The chambers have a total of six side rooms -- three on each of two levels. In order to bring out the headmaster, Darkmaster Gandling, one must clear out all six of these side chambers. Luckily, each of these chambers has a miniboss in them, making this area a great place to find loot.

The central room has a few wandering skeleton guards that can be cleared prior to going into the side chambers. (You don't want them adding at the wrong time during a big fight). It seems that the lower rooms are easier than the upper rooms, so we now tend to do the lower ones first. However, we didn't know this at the time, so we started with the upper rooms. In the end it doesn't matter, of course, since one has to clear all six rooms anyway.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofsecrets.jpg

The side chamber we started with was the Hall of Secrets, which involves what our warrior, Kupeludo, describes as "the most difficult pull in the instance." It seems that no matter what you do, you're going to end up with a dozen mobs coming after you.

The bad news: You have about a dozen mobs chasing after you and they hit *hard*.

The good news: They're non-elite and they're slow.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofsecrets2.jpg

The best way to handle this pull is to start it off like any normal area-of-effect pull. The puller shoots the mobs, runs back through the door so that the mobs get in a nice tight bunch in the doorway and then the characters with area-of-effect spells start blasting away. Unfortunately, this has the effect of making the mobs chase after the aoe spellcasters, and the mobs have enough health to withstand the initial aoe barrage. This brings us to the second stage of the fight: kiting.

In our case, we used Kronos, our warlock, as our bait. He was the perfect choice, because he had almost as much health as our warrior (6k+ health!) and because the mobs were chasing after him anyway. Kronos proceeded to kite the mobs around the upper level of the central chamber. These mobs are slow, so one can actually run away from them. Meanwhile, the rest of the party picked out single targets and finished them off. I believe Kronos also added some extra aoe damage along the way as he could. Slowly but surely, the mob pack was whittled down.

After the initial mass pull, the rest of the mob groups in the room were pulled in smaller numbers and dispatched easily. Then came the big moment. The big bad daddy of them all: The Lorekeeper. We kill the Lorekeeper and get:

Nothing.

Well, ok, some cash and runecloth. I've heard that when he does drop a Scourgestone, the Lorekeeper drops a Minion Scourgestone. He seems to be the one named miniboss in the area whose loot table isn't that of a named miniboss. In fact, he doesn't even have the loot table of an elite mob. I don't know if this is a mistake or is intentional, but it was disappointing either way.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/coven.jpg

The next chamber we came to was the Coven. The mobs here are pretty tough with a mix of humanoid spellcasters (make sure to have shadow resistance buff on) and skeleton guards. I don't recall having to use any special tactics for these fights, though. Most pulls involve two humanoids and 1 skeleton, so it's a pretty standard shackle the skeleton, sheep one humanoid, kill the remaining humanoid kind of thing.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/coven2.jpg

The one cool part of this fight is that the spellcasters can turn into Dark Shades for a time and they hit like crazy when they do.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/coven3.jpg

Instructor Malicia is the named miniboss in this room and she fights like the earlier spellcasters. There doesn't seem to be any way to pull her separately from one of her minions, so we usually sheep the minion (seen on the right in the picture above) and focus on Malicia.

The biggest trick about this fight and indeed the entire room is that the spellcasters cast a nasty "timebomb" curse. After 60 seconds, the curse will explode for over 2k damage. This shouldn't be a problem. After all, mages and druids have the ability to remove curses and 60 seconds is plenty of time to work with. In fact, druids in general are great about removing such curses in plenty of time. However, there is a significant problem if you are in a group that is counting on a mage to remove curses. How do I say this diplomatically? Let's turn to the numbers. For several months I kept strict account of the number of times a mage in my party dispelled a curse without prompting. I would go so far as to wait for 15 seconds *after the fight was over* to give the mage the opportunity to remove a curse. The end result was an astonishing 50-to-1 ratio of mages who would not remove curses without prompting to those who would actually remove curses without prompting.

So if you are coming up to the Coven in a party that is depending on a mage to remove these nasty curses before they explode on you for 2k damage during the middle of a heated battle, I suggest that you politely mention that in the upcoming room there are mobs who cast a nasty curse that needs to be removed. This'll give your mage(s) a chance to perhaps place Remove Curse on one of their hotkey bars or even port to Ironforge to go get training in this spell that they've "never needed before" (this actually happened in one of my Sunken Temple groups). And if you're in one of my groups and you see me calling out "decurse," please don't take it personally. I'm just going by the numbers.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/coven4.jpg

Instructor Malicia dropped these set gauntlets, which look like excellent gauntlets for a shaman. (Read: useless to an alliance party). We'll see soon that such set item drops seem to be a theme for the minibosses in the Headmaster's Chambers.

[Darkshale]

Great journal, I am a huge fan of the crawl. I am very much going to enjoy the depth of stratagy that can be used in the endgame.

SOON?

Thanks for the hard work

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofdamned.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part IX, Hall of Damned and The Vault of Ravenian

The next chamber houses the Hall of the Damned, where Doctor Tholen Krastinov, a.k.a. "The Butcher," resides. Outside the entrance to Scholomance, two shadowy figures stand near a shack and greet characters who stop to listen to their tale. The woman, Eva Sarkhoff, explains that they were once servants in the house of Barov at the height of its wealth and power and witnessed the decline of Caer Darrow and the House of Barov as the noble family not only sought to enrich themselves but made plans to become immortal so that they could horde their riches forever. Eva tells of the gruesome treatment she and her husband, Lucien, received and their horrifying almost death. I say "almost death," because Krastinov keeps Eva's and Lucien's remains with just enough life in them so that their spirits remain trapped to this world. (Why can't we have an instance with fluffy bunnies who only want cuddle and do nice things for people?)

After telling her tale, Eva asks listeners to kill Krastinov and burn the remains of Eva and Lucien to free their souls. Note that many players pass Eva by without a glance, because she does not start with a big exclamation mark over her head. She only gives you her quest after you listen to her "gossip text" tale.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofdamned2.jpg

The Hall of the Damned contains mostly those diseased golems that explode with a nasty poison gas cloud upon their deaths. As before, the best tactic is to stun the golem as it nears death, have the melee characters back away, and have the spellcasters finish the job. The other mob type in the chamber are a type of skeleton that one would normally first experience in the room with Jandice Barov. They're non-elite, so they would seem to be easy pickings. However, they are immune to shadow, arcane, fire, and ice magic. They are not immune to physical or holy magic attacks, however, and I haven't gotten a definitive answer as to whether they are vulnerable to nature magic or not. My nature damage wand is able to damage them. However, I noticed that I was also able to damage them with my fire damage wand. Something strange may be going on with wands. Anyway, for the most part, you can use physical and holy damage attacks to kill them. They're not elite, so they still die quickly.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofdamned3.jpg

Krastinov (or as most players call him simply "The Butcher") dies easily. He doesn't have any special attacks other than a bunch of hard-hitting melee attacks. The remains of Eva and Lucien Sarkhoff are across from one another, and there's nothing special that you need to do with them. Simply right click the remains and they instantly combust.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofdamned4.jpg

Krastinov dropped this set pair of plate gauntlets. Hmmm... two set items dropping from two named minibosses (not counting the non-drop of the Lorekeeper). Perhaps this is the start of a trend?

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/hallofdamned5.jpg

At the back of the room is a clickable work bench. Is it merely a decoration or something that will be used later? One can only guess.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/ravenian.jpg

We next went downstairs to the Vault of the Ravenian. The normal mobs were pretty standard fare that could be pulled in small numbers. The ease with which the normal mobs were cleared belied what was to come.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/ravenian2.jpg

The Ravenian stands waiting at the back of the room for unsuspecting players to come wake him up. Indeed, at first glance, he looks easy. He's just standing there alone, hunched over, and without a sign of any high intelligence to indicate any special magical attacks.

But then one selects him and is in for a surprise as you can see above. I am level 60. The Ravenian's level is shown as a white skull on the upper picture and as a "??" in the information box in the lower right corner. It turns out that he is a level 100 elite mob and that buried deep in Scholomance in this most unlikely of locations is the second most powerful mob in the game.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/ravenian3.jpg

Or not. But it sure is fun telling Scholomance first-timers that baloney right before starting the fight. Say stuff like "I can't believe we're going to try this," "We should summon some people to help us," "I don't think anyone's beaten this guy," and "Let's just try it. What've we got to lose?" I've also found that it helps to say he's the second most powerful mob in the game. If you say he's the most powerful mob, then people will know that you're full of it. If you say fifth or something, then it sounds like you're picking a number out of a hat. But for some reason, if you say he's the second most powerful mob, there's that little seed of doubt that gets planted in the mind. I think "Get Smart" was onto something there. ("Get Smart" was the second best TV show I ever saw).

The truth is that I have no idea why the Ravenian shows up as a level ?? mob. He's killed readily. Perhaps he's been mistakenly assigned a non-integer level and the user interface can't handle that. I don't know. Anyway, he's the second easiest miniboss to kill in this instance.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/ravenian4.jpg

He dropped these set leather gloves. Looks like the Cadaverous set is some sort of rogue set. Three set items in three miniboss drops. The trend continues.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/familyvault.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part X, The Barov Family Vault and The Shadow Vault

The fifth chamber held the Barov Family Vault which starts off with three fixed skeleton guards and three patrolling skeleton guards. The normal mobs are taken out with ease.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/familyvault2.jpg

In the back stands Lord Alexi Barov and two guards. Barov has a damaging aura, but the only real issue in this fight are the two extra mobs who fight alongside him. If one has a priest, then one of the guards can be shackled of course. Other than that, it's a pretty straight-forward fight, where we usually concentrate on killing Barov first. The ranged attackers might want to stay back a little ways to keep out of the range of the aura.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/familyvault3.jpg

Barov dropped the leather Cadaverous set leggings.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/familyvault4.jpg

In addition to Lord Alexi Barov, the Barov Family Vault contains the fourth and final deed, the Deed to Caer Darrow.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/shadowvault.jpg

We then entered the sixth and final chamber, the Shadow Vault. Again, there wasn't anything tricky about the regular mobs other than the fact that they hit hard. The final miniboss of the instance, Lady Illucia Barov, waited for us at the back of the room.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/shadowvault2.jpg

Lady Barov can both Silence and Mind Control players. Perhaps it's a sign that one has played this game too long (and it hasn't been released yet!) that my reaction to this was, "Meh, so what else is new?" She's a spellcaster and therefore doesn't have a large health pool, so she can be taken down quickly. Perhaps Blizzard should have a couple of guards join her to make the fight more interesting.

http://www.thotbott.com/?i=23488

Lady Barov dropped the Cadaverous Belt (I didn't get a screenshot, so a thotbot link will have to suffice). Wow! We got the Cadaverous belt, gloves, and kilt -- three of the five possible Cadaverous items -- in one run! Too bad we didn't have a rogue with us.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/shadowvault3.jpg

Also, the Skin of Shadow, an ingredient in a couple of epic leather and mail recipes, can be found in this room.

So, after killing six minibosses in the Headmaster's Study, we ended up with five set items. After having run Scholomance a few more times, I can confidently say that this is a theme for the chambers in the Headmaster's Study. That is, every run the Lorekeeper drops nothing of significance, and the other five minibosses drop a set time. There are four sets in all -- one cloth, one leather, one mail, and one plate. I'm curious to find out what all of the full-set bonuses are for each of the sets. The one set I do know about is the cloth set, the Necropile set. The full set bonus is:

+5 Int
+5 Defense
+15 All resist
+12 To all magic and healing effects

So there's nothing that turns you into a vampire and lets you cast fireballs and firewalls. I'm quite disappointed. The bonuses aren't all that much to write home about, and since most of the base items in the Necropile set seem to emphasize stamina, the set seems to be geared mostly toward warlocks. This won't stop me from rolling on them for my priestess, though. You never know how the item stats will change in the next patch, and it's not like there aren't a lot of better items out there for warlocks, either.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling.jpg

So with the six side chambers of the Headmaster's Study cleared away, Darkmaster Gandling himself appeared in the center of the lower level of the central room. Looking at him, he doesn't seem like such a bad guy. Maybe we can go down there, get to know one another, find some common ground, and come up with a diplomatic solution to our differences.

[GreenFaun]

Great stuff, MongoJerry. Why can't you work for a gaming site or something, your reports are better than practically all of the "preview" articles and whatnot out there.

Anyway, thanks for your work, it's a great read.

[Blackmoore]

IMO, you should /bug Ravenian.

[GreenArmadillo]

IMO, you should /bug Ravenian.

Well, he's farming the poor bird for set items. I know *I* would be bugged under the circumstances. :-p

[MongoJerry]

IMO, you should /bug Ravenian.

Of course, I sent in a /bug report on him. I send one in for nearly all the bugs I come across.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling2.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XI, Darkmaster Gandling

Darkmaster Gandling was the silent type who resisted our attempts at negotiation. ("Give us all your belongings and nobody gets hurt!") We switched to plan B: killing him.

A battle with Darkmaster Gandling is a challenge match, and I give all the Blizzard team who worked on it props for fun and creativity. Here's how it works:

1. Darkmaster Gandling on his own is a pretty tough mob. His spells hit hard, he casts some harsh curses, and he can take a pounding himself.

2. At random times, he will teleport random players into one of the six now cleared side chambers. (At least, I haven't found any pattern to when it happens or who it happens to). The gate to the appropriate side chamber then closes and three skeletons spawn in middle of the chamber.

3. The teleported character must kill those three skeletons to open the gate and return to the main battle. Luckily, the three skeletons are merely delaying forces. They all have low health and can be killed very easily. (I'm estimate they have on the order of 700ish health each). It is imperative that teleported characters kill the three skeletons and return to the main battle as quickly as possible.

4. If Darkmaster Gandling loses aggro on the entire party, then he will return to his starting point, regenerate health and mana quickly, and reset himself. Basically, he's won the round, and you have to start over. When players are teleported, Gandling loses aggro on them, so Gandling can win the round even if the party hasn't wiped. For example, if three characters have been teleported away and the other two members of the party get killed by Gandling, then Gandling will have lost aggro on all of the members of the party and the round will be over. This is a major reason among everything else that a teleported player should fight his or her way back as quickly as possible to rejoin the main battle. You want to make sure Gandling maintains aggro on at least someone in the party at all times or else all of your previous efforts will be lost.

Having discussed this in our party and buffed ourselves to the fullest extent, we commenced the attack on Darkmaster Gandling. Now, please keep something in mind. Recall from the first post that this run was conducted on the second day of the patch. Two people were running Scholomance for the first time, and the rest of us had only been there once or twice before -- and always in larger parties. So if what I'm about to describe seems noobish to you who might now be a veteran Scholomance runner, keep in mind that we were all, well, noobs at the time.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling3.jpg

We charged forward, employing the usual tactic of the warrior taunting the mob, the priestess healing the warrior, and the other three people trying to deliver as much damage as possible. In short order, I was teleported into the Hall of Secrets and met Larry, Curly, and Moe. I fought to get back into the main battle as quickly as I could while still having something of a mana reserve with which to fight once I got there.

Frankly, I'm not exactly sure what happened during that first round of fighting, since I didn't see much of it or take many screenshots during it. To the best of my memory, I got teleported a couple of times and never even saw the main battle after the first charge. From the chat log, I gather that Gandling had teleported some other people and had killed one or two others. Then, to seal the deal, Kupeludo had fought through and killed the skeletons in his chamber but just as he was about to run out to join the fray, Gandling ran by (getting aggro on Kupeludo) and teleported Neth into the same room. So the door to the chamber closed again, three new skeletons spawned, and Gandling passed through the closed door and killed both Kupeludo and Neth inside the chamber. So, two players were down inside a closed room where they could not be rezed during the fight. The next screenshot I have shows us at the instance entrance, getting ready to jump off the entrance platform and run inside the Viewing Room. Round 1 goes to Darkmaster Gandling.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling4.jpg

We gathered again and discussed ways to better handle the encounter. Kupeludo mentioned that Gandling casts a lot of spells, so perhaps our paladin should use a resistance aura. That gave me idea to try using Mana Burn. I have Improved Mana Burn, which reduces its cast time from 3 seconds to 2 seconds, so I can cast Mana Burn pretty frequently. We charged forward and after burning Gandling's mana supply down below half, I was summarily teleported into the Coven.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling5.jpg

I fought my way out of the Coven and got teleported almost instantly to the Shadow Vault.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling6.jpg

I killed Larry, Curly, and Moe again and just as I was about to leave the room, Kronos also got teleported into the Shadow Vault, an action that caused the gate to close in front of me and three new skeletons to appear. Kronos had to deal with the loading screen, so I had to fight this new group of skeletons alone. I was starting to feel like Sisyphus, the mythological hero doomed to rolling a boulder to the top of a mountain in Hades only to watch the boulder roll back of its own weight upon nearing the summit. (The Myth of Sisyphus (http://stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/sisyphus.html)). It was during this time that Gandling lost aggro on everyone else as well. I don't know if it was via teleport or deaths, but I do know we had to start over. Luckily, we were able to rez or summon everyone, so no corpse runs were required this time. Round 2 goes to Darkmaster Gandling.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling7.jpg

We gathered again and discussed ways to improve our play. We had done a lot better this time, since three-fouths of Gandling's life had been taken down. But he had still won, so there had to be something that we were missing. It was then that the significance of a seemingly innocuous comment made by Neth during the battle sank in.

Neth: theres no way im going to get past 59/59/61 mobs guarding me

Days later, rested, showered, well fed, and in a good mood, I can say without a doubt that Neth is one of the best teammates out there. Putting up with all the false starts and backtracking we had to do along the way shows a lot of character on her part, and I would love to run many more instances with her. But at the time, it being eight in the morning after having stayed up all night, I was ready to find out how Krastinov's Work Bench (a.k.a. The Butcher's Work Bench) could be used on a certain mage.

Kronos and I proceeded to tell Neth and any other group members who had possibly thought the same thing but hadn't mentioned it that the skeletons are merely there to delay players from returning to the main battle. They have reduced health and they don't hit very hard. (Admittedly, they do cast some wacky magic debuffs and curses on you). Anyone, especially a mage, can quickly kill the skeletons and get back to the main battle. It being eight in the morning, Kronos and I said this about six different ways, which was probably five more ways than was necessary. I don't think any of us wanted the fight extended to a fourth round.

Now that that was settled, we were pretty optimistic about the upcoming battle. Also, I was happy to report to the group that Mana Burning really seemed to work, so Kronos said he'd join in with some Mana Siphoning.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling8.jpg

Draining Darkmaster Gandling's mana worked beautifully. He was still able to teleport people away, so he probably doesn't need much if any mana to do that. However, with no mana, he couldn't cast his powerful attack spells and instead had to resort to using his comparatively feeble melee attack. He also uses a couple of nasty curses, one of which turns you into a skeleton and reduces your strength, agility, and stamina by a significant amount. Still, while Gandling was at little or no mana, even I as a cursed skeleton priest was able to tank him for quite a while.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling9.jpg

Right at the end, Gandling had managed to regen just enough mana to cast a barrage of arcane missles at me while simultaneously teleporting me out of the room. Dang! If only I had Mana Burned him just that one more time. Still, the rest of the party was able to finish him off. Kronos, our warlock, was rezed by Lilisi, our paladin, and I was summoned to the central room. It's a good thing we could do that, because Gandling was my loot, and I doubt his body would've lasted while I made a corpse run back. What did he drop?

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling10.jpg
http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling11.jpg
http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling12.jpg

Eh, not too great, but not bad for the right kind of character classes, I suppose. Gandling has a large loot table, and I understand he can drop a really good wand and staff. Plus, he dropped this baby on another run:

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling13.jpg

Which gives Neriad that classic "ninja priestess" look:

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/darkmastergandling14.jpg

Interesting. The shroud is called the "Dreadmaster's Shroud" while the game calls Gandling the "Darkmaster." Looks like the dungeon designers and the item designers need to get their stories straight.

(Note: On a run a couple days ago, we ran into a nasty design flaw with this encounter. Kronos was again our warlock and he had died inside one of the side chambers. When Gandling died, it was Kronos's loot. The problem? None of the four of us could get into the chamber to rez Kronos. One can't cast spells or blink through the closed gates and the skeletons were too far into the chamber to get aggro on any of us. Normally in this kind of situation, we would have our warlock summon the dead person to us, but it was our warlock who was dead! Kronos tried to do a corpse run, but the body of Gandling disappeared before he could make it back. After Gandling's body disappeared, the iron gates raised. I suggest that the designers fix this problem by making the gates rise the moment Gandling dies rather than when his body disappears. For that matter, perhaps the gates should rise whenever Gandling loses aggro on the party and resets himself).

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/vectus.jpg

Whew! What a rush! I give full props to Blizzard's dungeon designers for creating a fun and exciting event. All that remained for this run was to take on a couple dozen students and two named bosses simultaneously. After all that our party of five had accomplished, we were confident that we could take on this challenge.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/dawnsgambit.jpg

Say cheese!

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XII, Dawn's Gambit

In the Burning Steppes, there begins a little known, or at least little completed, quest series called "Dawn's Gambit." It starts off in the Burning Steppes, takes you into Blackrock Spire, then over to the other side of the world to Winterspring, and then to Scholomance. Kronos was one of the few people to have taken the trouble to complete the quest series up to this point. Heck, I'm a quest hound, and I have yet to finish the series myself.

At the point of our story, Kronos had received a box called Dawn's Gambit from an NPC who claims that the box will "react with the undead found and, with a little luck, destroy them." None of us had any clue as to what was going to happen, but we figured it was a device that would somehow clear the room of students so that we could fight the two named bosses at the front of the room unimpeded.

Before continuing, I'd like to clear up a strange misconception about the Viewing Room.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/dawnsgambit2.jpg

I've been in two pickup Scholomance groups now where, upon entering the Viewing Room, people have admonished the group in capital letters, "DO NOT TALK TO THE MOBS HERE!" One day, I want to study how such rumors and superstitions start and spread. In this case, I imagine this superstition began with the almost equally absurd superstition that one shouldn't talk to the patrons in the bar in Blackrock Depths. At least in that room, there is indeed one named quest goblin with his four clearly delineated henchmen surrounding him who will attack you if you talk to him.

However, other than him, it was and is perfectly safe to talk to the bar patrons, contrary to popular belief. What's even more amazing is that not only would people accept something like that without question but that they would go so far as to forcefully spread the superstition without at least testing it out themselves. One time I asked in a pickup group why we shouldn't talk to the patrons, and a guy said that the patrons you talk to would aggro when the Phalanx event started, an idea that was completely absurd. I proceeded to talk to every patron in the bar (except the named goblin and his henchmen) much to the horror of my groupmate. We started the Phalanx event, and of course, no bar patrons aggroed us.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/dawnsgambit3.jpg

Coming back to Scholomance, I can assure you that you can safely talk to all of the mobs in the Viewing Room -- even the two nameds. Some of the comments you'll read are quite funny, in fact.

So there our group was standing in the middle of the Viewing Room, surrounded by a couple dozen students and with two mean-looking named bosses staring at us. All we had going for us was a mysterious box that Kronos had received from an NPC. We buffed ourselves up, shrugged, and waited for Kronos to right-click the box.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/dawnsgambit4.jpg

The moment Kronos hit the box, so many things happened at once, I didn't know where to turn. Looking at the screenshots I managed to get during the first few moments of the battle reveals this conversation:

[I]Vectus yells: Ah, so my minions from the Burning Steppes have brought the dragons...
Vectus yells: Marduk, gather the box and place it before me!
Marduk Blackpool says: Master Vectus, I sense something strange within this container...
Vectus yells: What is this?! How dare you!
Marduk Blackpool says: We are betrayed!

At this point, the students, who I think had gathered at the front to look at the "box," all turned into skeletons and charged the party. By turning the students into skeletons, the box made it easier to kill them, because they had far less health. Kronos and Neth were able to use area-of-effect attacks to kill them all.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/dawnsgambit5.jpg

Marduk Blackpool had charged the party along with the students and had promptly killed Neth. But once the students had been killed and once we had a chance to get over the initial shock and surprise, our party sprang into action. Lilisi rezed Neth, while I healed Kupeludo who tanked Marduk. Marduk hit *hard* and used some special multi-target attacks like "Shadow Bolt Volley." Incidentally, that debuff aura you see on all of us (the purple claw-like thing) is a -100 to shadow resistance aura. If we hadn't had our shadow resistance buffs or paladin resistance aura up, we would've been dead meat. It was touch and go there for a while, but in the end, we were victorious.

What about Vectus? Luckily, he hadn't charged us along with the rest of the mobs in the room, so we were able to take a breather and med up, before tackling him. If we would have had to have fought Vectus and Marduk simultaneously, that would've been an ugly fight.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/dawnsgambit6.jpg

After we medded for a bit, we charged Vectus, and it turned out that he was very easy to kill when he was by himself. After Marduk, he seemed almost too easy, but after all we had gone through, we didn't care. Kronos had completed his quest, and I could yell out:

Neriad: FIVE PLAYERS BABY!!

What'd Vectus and Marduk drop? I didn't care. It was 8:30ish in the morning. Vectus just dropped a Scourgestone while Marduk dropped a thorium lockbox. I understand that Vectus usually drops very little but that Marduk frequently drops blues. I just checked thotbott to see if I could give you a better idea of the kinds of items he drops, but it's an indication of how few people have actually completed Dawn's Gambit that it knows of only two times that Marduk has been killed. One should take that precise figure with a grain of salt, of course, because all that means is that only two people who have installed Cosmos and who choose to contribute data to thotbott have killed Marduk. Many players, and in fact the vast majority of players, do not. Still, the fact that thotbott only has two reports of Marduk's death does indicate how rare the event is, and I'm glad Kronos had that box with him so I could see it (and write about it). That reminds me. I should go finish Dawn's Gambit myself!

We hearthed to Ironforge, hooted and hollered, and made complete fools of ourselves in the general chat. Then, after taking care of some business in town, Kronos whispered me to ask if I was going to turn in the quest involving the four deeds. He didn't want to turn in the quest unless he knew there was a good reward or a followup quest, just in case a later patch added a big reward. I told him that I had no problem with turning in the quest now, because all of our items and characters are going to be deleted in the not too distant future anyway.

So, we both rode up to Chillwind Point, and I gave the four deeds to Weldon Barov. It turned out that there was a followup quest, so I told Kronos to go ahead and turn his deeds in, too.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov.jpg

A PvP quest? What the...?

The adventure has just begun!

[Scipio]

Props to the Blizz designers for Scholomance and everything that's got to do with it.
And MongoJerry, I love these journals. Keep it up!

[Chaosas]

Awsome work, like all of them.
What I really like is the feel of questing in game. Quest chains! Many many quests leading to more quests etc :lol: Sounds like so much fun! :thumbsup:

[red.13]

MongoJerry thank you for such an excellent journal, or should I call it a guide? Doesn't matter - great story.

[aartamen]

Exceptional. Both the effort and the retelling of it. However, does it mean that the last quest mentioned is not available for Horde?

[ColdSauce]

Wow thanks a lot for all the effort you put into this journal. I looked forward to reading this thing every day. Great work on the detail and I salute you and your group members on the task you guys/girls accomplished. Three Cheers!

[Jawelik]

Great Journal about a clearly great instance. Sounds like Blizzard have put a lot of work into making their game tremendously fun. How long must my torment of not being able to play continue? :hanky:

[Vaeth]

Awesome proof that great things can be done in smaller groups.

[SpAm_BuStA]

dude, you are the rulest, i have just grown more attracted to WoW, that looks like an awesome instance

[Darkshale]

That was a great journal Ive tuned in everyday for the update. Cant wait for the final on the 4 deeds quest

[Bebles Kioto]

Thank you so much for this journal. You have absolutely sold this game for me. Blizzard needs you on their marketing team. :thumbsup:

[SpAm_BuStA]

i feel the same way, my trolll hunter will eat instances like this for breaakfast! twice!

[SpAm_BuStA]

cant wait for more...hint hint

[Wars]

Oh man I love you, if you don't mind I'd like to put an abbreviated version of this on my guild site. the adress is http://soldier.guildwizard.com thanks a ton man, you rock.

[Wars]

Oh yeah, the reason is so that the guide won't get lost when the boards get wiped, we want this guide to stick around forever! :)

[Erica Marceau]

:thumbsup:

Thank you for writing this fantastic guide. I've wondered about how instants are really played out and now I'm finally getting a glimpse into what I can look forward to. The interaction between the party members and the variety of tactics is much more interesting than just going into a room and spamming the most powerful skill at whatever moves and the involvement between quests and instances is very good to hear.

I am wondering about Hunters and if you think they will be able to get involved in trips like the one you took. I'm thinking of playing one as one of my main characters but I don't want to be stuck always soloing. What do you think?

[Jawelik]

Actually something I thought was really cool, was how that one boss would teleport your party members into a random room, where s/he was attacked by skeletons. I really hadn't expected boss battles to be so involved and interesting. I have to give Blizzard their props, I didn't think they could make me want their game even more. But lo and behold, they actually pulled it off! Go Blizzard! :clap:

[Wars]

Having a boss teleport you and raise 3 mobs is nothing compared to what blizzard has in store for us based on that raid update, I think the raid mobs are going to do something crazy like bake cookies while kicking your ***. Blizzard is working hard to keep us amazed!

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov2.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XIII, The Last Barov

After Kronos and I returned the four deeds to Weldon Barov in the Alliance camp at Chillwind Point, Barov asked us to go to the Bulwark, a Horde camp, and assassinate his brother, Alexi Barov, so that Weldon will never have to "worry about an unscrupulous gang of mercenaries seeking [his] head." There was one piece of information Kronos and I needed before setting off on this mission, however.

Kronos: Where's the Bulwark?

After a long night of Scholomance running, the gears in my head turned slowly, but they managed to bring up images of my days of playing an undead priestess named Ariadne for the couple of months ending with the patch that introduced the PvP server. (I and some friends like to switch factions from time to time to see more of the world and to observe the changes are made in the game over time. I may switch back to the Horde side when the Open Beta starts, if the announced overhauls of Ashenvale, Stonetalen, and Desolace are implemented by then). At the time, the Scarlet Monastery was the highest level instance in the game, and far less of the world was developed.

My memory dredged up pictures of a mysterious spot on the edge of Tirisfal Glades, the undead starting zone, called the Bulwark. It consisted of a makeshift wooden wall with an open gate and stacks of player corpses all around it. If one did not recognize the significance of the piles of dead bodies or if one simply had an insatiable and suicidal curiosity, one could pass the gate as much as a few steps before getting "death touched" by a stealthed spider. This was Blizzard's gentle way of saying, "Hey noob! We haven't finished the Western Plaguelands, yet. Move along!" It was because of such memories that I could confidently tell Kronos...

Neriad: Border of tirisfal glades

...as if I were a great and knowledgeable player who knew all things great and small about the game. Truthfully, I had no clue what to expect, since there hadn't been a working town with NPC's at The Bulwark back when I was playing my Horde characters.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov3.jpg

Players on the PvE server often express relief that they get to miss out on all the ganking and griefing that is a fact of life on the PvP server. But they sometimes forget that they also miss out on the extra camaraderie among players of your own faction as well as some of the extra thrill that the PvP server provides. Consider a quest given by the night elves in Ashenvale to assassinate a wizard in the Barrens who has been plaguing a lake in Ashenvale with his water elementals. On the PvE server, this is a simple jog down the road and an easy mob boss kill. On the PvP server, completing this quest is a major cat-and-mouse game as one tries to avoid detection by Horde players, while making one's way to the top of a mountain that stands next to the Crossroads, a major Horde town. (This reminds me. I have a great idea for a trilogy. It's about two gnomes who find a bracelet of power...). Similarly, this quest to assassinate Alexi Barov, a mostly trivial affair on the PvE server, becomes a far more intense assignment on the PvP server.

Kronos and I avoided detection on the way to The Bulwark by staying away from the road. I had an elaborate plan to lure potential ganking Horde into thinking that our goal was to complete some of the quests involving the western farms in the Western Plaguelands. The last thing I wanted was for Horde players to know that our target was really the Bulwark itself and end up camping us there. Luckily, no such plan needed to be implemented, and Kronos and I found a nook in the hills near the Bulwark that was out of sight from both the road and the outpost. Kronos summoned an Eye of Kilrogg, a warlock minion designed to let warlocks scout nearby locations, and on it I cast Mind Vision, a priest spell that lets the priest see through the eyes of another mob or player. This way, I could see what Kronos saw through his Eye of Kilrogg, and both of us could remain out of sight while we scouted.

It's a good thing we scouted the place before charging into town. A party of high level Horde was across the road from where Alexi Barov, our target, stood. Luckily, they were already mounted and were acting like they were grouped. They would likely be moving out of the way soon. We took the opportunity to scout further. (Incidentally, if you're wondering why that group of Horde didn't see a bright green ball near them and suspect that something was up, an Eye of Kilrogg is naturally stealthed, so while there is a small chance of detection if the person happens to be looking in the direction of the Eye, most of the time an enemy player or mob won't see it).

Kronos pointed out the yellow "!" floating over an NPC's head. An alliance quest given in the middle of a Horde town? That seemed bizarre. But then we figured out what it really was -- a group of Argent Dawn camped out at the Bulwark. The Argent Dawn is made up of both horde and alliance elements united by a common hatred of the Scourge who infest the Western and Eastern Plaguelands. There are some Argent Dawn reputation quests that ask you to collect different kinds of "scourgestones" off dead Scourge mobs. Every time you turn in sets of these scourgestones, your reputation with the Argent Dawn increases. When your reputation is high enough, you can then purchase items from the Argent Dawn quartermaster. Currently, one can only purchase a limited supply of Major Health and Major Mana potions, which is still actually a pretty good reward in it's own right. However, the quartermaster's text description seems to imply that additional items may come up for sale in future patches, if one's reputation with the Argent Dawn is high enough. An Argent Dawn NPC to whom you turn in your scourgestones and an Argent Dawn quartermaster stay at the alliance camp of Chillwind Point. Apparently, the Horde has its equivalent Argent Dawn NPC's at the Bulwark.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov4.jpg

After the Horde party left the area, we waited a few beats to make certain that they weren't returning and then jumped out of our nook in the hills to charge Alexi Barov. There weren't any NPC guards nearby, so we had a straight shot at Barov. But when we closed on him, we realized our first mistake. We'd spent so much time scouting the outpost for Horde players and NPC guards that we'd forgotten to scout out our target. It was only when I started blasting away at Barov that the realization came to me, "Oh, c***! He's elite!" As you can see in the screenshot above, Barov was able to crit me for 976 health, more than a third of my health, in one hit. He tore through my cloth armor like it was rice paper. The first assault was a complete disaster. No way was I going to be able to tank Barov for any length of time -- at least not in the equipment and talent configuration I use for instances.

Neriad: We need a tank.
Kronos: Breaking out the VW (e.d. voidwalker)
Neriad: Good idea

On the first assault, Kronos had used his imp for the extra buffs and firepower. From now on, we'd use his Voidwalker as our tank. Unfortunately, even with a voidwalker, it would take several tries to achieve a partial success.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov5.jpg

Luckily, the Bulwark provided plenty of trees, hills, and man-made structures that we could hide behind while medding. The first assault with the voidwalker was a disaster from the start as Kronos sent the voidwalker directly from our hiding spot to Barov, a path that took it through an NPC named Shadow Priestess Vandis. We had no chance with a second mob joining the fray. (I realize now that I could've Mind Controled Vandis and softened Barov up a bit. It's stuff like that you forget when you've gone thirty hours without sleep). The second assault went better, but I pulled aggro off the voidwalker and got summarily pummeled. The third assault went even better until a *!@$% horde rogue rode by and stabbed us from behind. It was at this point that I was glad that this quest was not well known, because after helping Barov kill us, he left. He probably thought we were just out getting jollies killing random Horde NPC's or something. If he'd known that alliance players had to kill Barov for a quest, he might have stuck around, knowing we'd be back.

The fourth assault with the voidwalker, however, achieved a partial success. This time, I was very careful not to pull aggro off the voidwalker. I let the VW get several torments in before doing anything. I then avoided using Mind Blast or any other such skills that cause extra aggro. I mostly used Renew to heal the voidwalker and held my dps in check. It worked for a while, but in the end I still ended up pulling aggro off the VW. This was very frustrating. A voidwalker is supposed to be a warlock's tank pet, and yet they can't hold aggro worth a darn. Whenever my hunter and an equal level warlock friend group together, my hunter's pet can consistently grab and hold aggro far better than my friend's voidwalker. Voidwalkers need their Torment boosted significantly.

Barov came and chopped Neriad to bits when he was below half health. It was then that I did the next dumb thing. Somewhere in my sleepy consciousness, I thought that I could run from the graveyard at Faol's Rest back to the Bulwark in time to provide some help. So, I released. About halfway back, Kronos announced that he'd finished Barov off (nerf warlocks!). Of course, since I had released my spirit, I was nowhere near Barov when he died, and therefore I couldn't loot his head off the body. Grrrr...

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov6.jpg

That's OK, we thought. At least we knew that we could kill Barov without calling for reinforcements. All we had to do was wait for Barov to respawn. So we waited. And waited. And waited some more. I got a target lock on Shadow Priestess Vandis, and since trees and shacks apparently don't count as obstacles as far as line-of-sight is concerned, I could Mind Vision her and scout the place without leaving the relative safety of our hiding place. (Incidentally, occasionally people will make lists of the most "useless" priest spells on the priest board and Mind Vision nearly always makes the list. Morons). We waited some more.

Finally, it took so long (and did I mention that we'd been awake more than 30 hours?) that both Kronos and I submitted Game Master requests to find out if a GM could possibly cause Barov to respawn. After a while, Kronos got a response from a GM who told him that Alexi Barov isn't respawning at all and that we'd have to wait for the next server reset to try again. Argh!

So I said, "farewell!" to Kronos and told him I'd log off right there in our hiding spot in the Bulwark, take an afternoon nap, and then log back on later to see if Barov had respawned. Kronos offered to help if he happened to be on, and I figured I would also be able to grab one or two more people to help out when the time came. We parted ways, and I logged off to get a little sleep.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov7.jpg

Several hours later, I logged back on to find that Alexi Barov had indeed respawned. Woohoo! Kronos wasn't online, but Kupeludo, the warrior in our earlier Scholomance party, was. Perfect. Since he had collected the four deeds along with the rest of the party, he would be just as interested in getting the head of Alexi Barov as I was. In addition, I knew I could recruit a lvl 60 rogue friend, lem, to help. Not only is he a good friend and likely to be just as curious about this strange quest as I, but I also keep him well bribed with stacks of fadeleaf. (Rogues use fadeleaf to create blinding powder, a hot commodity on the PvP server as you can imagine).

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov8.jpg

Kupeludo and lem came over to the Bulwark and proceeded to rip Alexi Barov a new one, while Neriad stood there looking pretty. (She does that very well). Remember that 976 crit that Neriad received from Barov? Here are the hits that Kupeludo received according to the screenshots I took of the battle:

Alexi Barov's Rupture is absorbed by Kupeludo.
Alexi Barov's Rupture is absorbed by Kupeludo.
Alexi Barov hits Kupeludo for 64 (48 blocked).
Alexi Barov's Sinister Strike was parried by Kupeludo.
Alexi Barov hits Kupeludo for 158.
Alexi Barov crits Kupeludo for 216.
Alexi Barov's Kick parried by Kupeludo.
(At this point Neriad casts Renew on Kupeludo. Glad I could be of help!)
Kupeludo suffers 107 Physical damage from Alexi Barov's Rupture.

Disgusting.

Kupeludo and I looted our heads of Alexi Barov (who knew that he was actually a hydra?), and the three of us headed back to Chillwind Point. It was at about this time that a GM responded to my still open help request ticket. I suppose I should have abandoned my ticket, when Kronos received his answer, but sometimes you get different answers from different GM's, and I wanted to get the full scoop on this whole Alexi Barov respawn situation. It's a good thing I did, because I ended up talking to a more knowledgeable GM.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov9.jpg

This GM (Xilven or something close to that) told me that Alexi Barov does in fact respawn, but he's on a long respawn timer by design as a punishment on the Horde for letting him die. He's the quest NPC who gives Horde players the same "get the four deeds" quest that Weldon Barov gives alliance players, you see. It was then it hit me. The Bulwark and Chillwind Point are not only similar to one another, they are mirror images of one another. Consider:

1. Both camps lie on the border of the Western Plaguelands and are where quests for the Western Plaguelands are given.

2. Both camps have Argent Dawn stationed in them, including Argent Dawn quartermasters.

3. Each camp has only one faction NPC guard -- High Executor Derrington (pictured above) at the Bulwark and Commander Ashlam Valorfist at Chillwind Point. Both commanders protect the main body of their camps from players of the other faction, but both are stationed far enough away from their respective Barov brothers that they won't interfere with any attacks on them. The commanders aren't elite, by the way, so they can be killed easily.

4. Each camp has a Barov brother who is murderously competitive with the other. At Chillwind Point, Weldon Barov asks Alliance adventurers to retrieve the four family deeds and then kill his brother Alexi. At the Bulwark, Alexi Barov asks Horde adventurers to retrieve the four family deeds and then kill his brother Weldon.

So by killing Alexi Barov, who has a long respawn timer (some have mentioned the figure of five hours, but I can neither confirm nor deny this number), alliance players are indeed fulfilling Weldon's wish about not needing to "worry about an unscrupulous gang of mercenaries seeking [his] head." In this case, the "unscrupulous gang of mercenaries" is a group of Horde questers. If Alexi is dead, then Horde players can't get the quest to kill Weldon, so Weldon is safe, relatively speaking. Considering the symmetry of the outposts and quests, I suspect it works the same way on the Horde side. Alexi asks Horde players to kill Weldon so that he doesn't have to worry about being killed by alliance players. This is a neat concept.

In the heat of the moment, after dealing with the irritation of having to wait several hours to get another chance at Alexi's head, I told the GM that the long respawn timer was also a punishment on alliance players who would not be able to complete their quests in a timely manner. Now that I understand the logic of the story and mirror image nature of the two brothers, however, I'm leaning toward liking the long respawn time. Of course, I already have my head of Alexi Barov. If I didn't, I might not feel the same way.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov10.jpg

One of the fun things about visiting the Bulwark as an alliance player is that even though it is technically a Horde outpost, the Argent Dawn is a neutral organization that will treat horde and alliance players equally. Alliance players can turn in scourgestones to Argent Officer Garush as you can see above.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov11.jpg

In addition, alliance players may purchase potions from Argent Quartermaster Hasana. It turns out that Hasana is right on the edge of where a level 60 player would aggro High Executor Derrington, so if the player comes from the north and doesn't get too close, he or she can purchase potions without needing to fight Derrington. So an Alliance player could spend all day buying out potions from the Bulwark's Argent Dawn quartermaster and prevent their purchase by members of the Horde. There are some great spots in the hills to the north of the outpost to hide in while waiting for potions to respawn at the shop. This would be an awfully boring and tedious way to grief members of the another faction, but I've heard of other more boring and tedious methods of griefing being employed.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov12.jpg

So we got our heads of Alexi Barov and returned them to Welden. What reward did we get? A trinket that calls forth three "servants of the House of Barov to fight, cook, and clean for you." This is the funniest and best trinket ever.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/lastbarov13.jpg

The servants last for 15 seconds and the cooldown time is only 10 minutes. Unlike, say, the Mithril Mechanical Dragonling or the ever popular Gnomish Battle Chicken, these servants of Barov are level 59-60 and therefore actually hit their targets from time to time. (Why can't the mechanical dragonlings and chickens have the same level as the summoning character so that they can be somewhat useful at higher levels?) Plus, most importantly, they're hysterically funny. They even had a somewhat practical moment in a PvP situation. While taking the above screenshots of the Argent Dawn in the Bulwark today, a level 52 shadow priest jumped me from behind and started blasting away. I recovered somewhat (it helped to be level 60), but being jumped while equipped and spec'd for instance running, I was still at a disadvantage. Partway through the battle, he got a Silence off on me and probably had me dead to rights, so out of desperation, I hit the button for the Servants of Barov trinket (apparently you can still activate trinkets while silenced). On a practical level, they acted like a poor man's curse of tongues as they hit and stuttered the shadow priest. But the biggest effect they had, I think, was the, "What the h*** are those things?!" effect. I swear I could almost see the other player's confused look through the computer screen. Those extra seconds they bought me let the silence wear off and let me finish off the attacking priest. It felt good.

(Incidentally, any chance of a truce to allow Neriad to travel to places and get screenshots and all? I'm trying to benefit everyone here. Yes? No? Worth a shot...).

This "PvP" quest to kill an NPC in an outpost of the opposing faction is very fun, and I hope more such quests are implemented at some point. These kinds of quests would be especially fun on the PvP server, where players can intentionally make it more difficult for members of the other faction to fulfill those quests. For example, some of the ganker/PvP guilds of both factions could post a guard or two near their respective Barov brother around the clock to jump any members of the opposing faction who try to complete the "Last Barov" quest. I highly recommend that they do so. The fact that such a system would leave I and a few friends as being some of the few to own this nifty trinket is by no means my motivation for this recommendation.

Well, that was a fun and unexpected excursion, and it made us wonder if turning in the quest to kill "The Butcher" would lead to further quests.

UP NEXT: The Blood of the Innocents

[Scipio]

I WANT that trinket.. my.. precious... *Drool*

[Minsterr]

Absolutely an awesome journal of "the Schooling Scholomance", great job Neriad.
Journals like these make me wanna play even more :clap:

[Shaggy]

the Last Barlov stuff is very Quality too, that trinket sounds like a blast for some unsuspecting schmuck.

[Rein88]

Forget Kerry or Bush ... MongoJerry for President!!

[dreadlord]

can't wait for your next journal! :thumbsup:

[Vorda]

amazing.. very nice journal!!

[Vectom]

Man, this was an awesome read! Thx a ton :thumbsup:

[Wryan]

These are truly excellent reads. You're a gifted writer of action and detail, Mongo, you take great pictures, and you're a superb resource on high-level content.

I hope to hear more from you! :D

[Jawelik]

Reading your journals is an absolute blast! Not only do you entertain, you make me want to play WoW more and more! Blizzard should definitely offer you a job on their marketing staff, man, you rock! :yep:

[MarkusAurelius]

what a nifty trinket, i always wanted servants i could summon to cook for me...

[oper]

outstanding reading, thank you very much for giving this kind of detailed insight to us non beta's. It is really really apreciated keep it up.

[Takura]

Wow. I cant beleive ive been missin out on these!!!!! :cheesy: :cheesy: :cheesy:

[lordrolo]

do Horde Argent Dawn NPC's speak common?

[An evil person]

They apparently can,but i guess it makes sense,since they are an organisation made of pretty much every notable race,they've got to understand each other,and thus,learn the other race's languages.Hey...maybe,come retail,we'll find the language trainers in Argent Dawn camps!

[Revic]

Awesome Neriad. I can't wait for the open beta, school is going to be left behind! When I read posts like yours it gets me pumped. Keep it up!

[theseus]

Awesome Posts, keep it up! :)

[Darkshale]

Thanks for the great journal.
I cant wait for this game to go live. These instances and quests look great.

[Ishtar]

Thanks so much for doing this journal/walkthrough. I loved reading through it. I really can't wait to school scholomance for myself with 4 friends! Great read.

[RoadRageOJ]

Can't wait to start a priest of my own. Mind Vision sounds extremely useful and fun. What an awesome post. I love you.
Umm...awkward moment? *backs out of room slowly* :creep:

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice1.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XIV, Jandice Barov

Today, I received a lovely note from the folks at Blizzard that said (paraphrasing), "Thank-you for your assistance in testing World of Warcraft, but you have been having far too much fun playing your hunter. We are therefore going to take down the servers for several days to make sure that you sit down and finish your dang Scholomance journals." At least, that's how I interpreted the letter. I don't want to disappoint the folks at Blizzard, so let's get cracking.

The story so far is that on the second day of the patch that introduced the Scholomance instance, a group of players set out to see if Scholomance could be beaten with a group composed only of five players. (At the time, it was common to run Scholomance with raid groups of around ten players). Having accomplished that, some members of the party turned in one of the quests and ended up getting a surprise "PvP" quest to assassinate an NPC in the middle of a Horde outpost. Having then completed that task and having each received a nice trinket as a reward for their efforts, several members of the party went to turn in another quest to see if they would get another quest series continuation. Those members returned to Eva Sarkhoff, who stands just outside the Scholomance entrance, to let her know that they had killed Doctor Tholen Krastinov and burned the remains of her and her husband as she had requested. Indeed, there was a followup quest. It turns out that Krastinov was merely a servant of the even more cruel master, Kirtonos the Herald. To summon him, the group first had to obtain a bag containing the Blood of the Innocents, which could only be obtained by killing Jandice Barov in the depths of Scholomance.

I groaned when I saw the quest continuation. I knew at some point I would get a quest to kill Jandice Barov, but that didn't mean that I had to like it when I got it. I had already had several bad experiences in the basement room leading to her and had begun dubbing the chamber, "The Room from Hell." Weeks later, having been through that room a few more times, I don't find it as scary or as frustrating as it use to be. But, it's still the most challenging and time consuming room of the instance to get through.

Soon after Kupeludo (warrior) and Lem (rogue) helped me kill Alexi Barov, the NPC who stands in the middle of the Bulwark that we needed to assassinate to complete that PvP quest, Kronos (warlock) came on-line. I asked him if he'd like to join us in continuing the assault on Scholomance by going after Jandice Barov.

Kronos: Who do you have so far?

Neriad: Kupeludo and Lem

Kronos: Ew, a rogue!

Neriad: Yeah, I know. What can you do?

We then picked up Keimon, a second warlock, and set off.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice2.jpg

Jandice's room is a large basement hall with three wall segments in the middle that divide the room into four rows. One can choose to go along the left or right walls, and for some reason, going along the right wall seems to be the easier path.

There are three kinds of mobs here. First, there are the elite diseased ghouls whose bodies erupt in poison gas clouds when they die. Then there are the slow non-elite scooby-doo mobs (at least they look like what scooby-doo ghouls always seem to look like) who like to pop back to life after being killed the first time. And then finally, there are the non-elite Risen Aberrations which are skeletons who hit hard. So, every pull is composed of one or two elites combined with several non-elite mobs. This screams for the tactic whereby the elites are shackled and the non-elites are killed with area-of-effect attacks. The only trouble is that the Risen Aberrations are immune to fire, cold, arcane, and shadow damage (and nature damage?). So, other than paladin holy attacks, they're immune to all AoE attacks. You have to kill them one at a time.

The most critical issue in handling this room is pulling it correctly. The mobs constantly shift and move around at different speeds. Pull them correctly, and you can get one elite and 3-4 non-elites, a fairly easy pull to dispatch. Pull them incorrectly, and you'll get two elites with about eight non-elites and likely get wiped. In addition, the room has a fast respawn time, so one has to move forward at a steady pace. In fact, the respawn rate is fast enough that I suggest that if a group ends up having a partial wipe, involving multiple resurrections and buffing, that it might as well move back to entrance stairwell and start the room over. You don't want respawns appearing on top of you while fighting a pulled group of mobs. Luckily, Blizzard developers have said that they have tweaked the respawn rate in the front area of Scholomance because of the many complaints about its current setting, so hopefully this won't be as much of an issue after the upcoming patch.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice3.jpg

Once we finally got to the end of the room, we fought Jandice Barov herself. She's a tough one, but I don't recall having any major problems fighting her. (The screenshot above shows the Servants of Barov trinket at work. It summons three servants of the house of Barov to come Cook, Clean, and Fight for you. It's so much fun).

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice4.jpg

The only particularly special attack Jandice Barov has is that she can split into multiple illusions of herself, but the illusions can be destroyed quickly with area-of-effect attacks.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice5.jpg

Jandice dropped this sword for us, which many players goggle over. In addition, she dropped a green Hyperion Helm of the Boar. Hmmm... both a green and a blue item in addition to the quest bag. Well, it wasn't worth the time or effort of working one's way through the basement room just for that, but at least we got a couple of things other than the quest item from killing her. But wait! There's more!

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice6.jpg

Along the wall near Jandice is a torch switch that opens a gate in a room upstairs that contains a special chest that for us contained two more top of the line green items. Before you say, "Bah, how junky!" Keep in mind that some green items are better than many blue items, and for some equipment slots (especially for rogues), green items can be the best items in the game. Plus, those green items from the chest are bind on equip, so if no one in the party can use them, they can be given to alts or sold at the auction house. One of the items we found, for example, was a set of Nightmare Armguards of Agility -- +15 agility leather bracers. None of us could use those bracers, so I asked for them to give to my hunter alt. After I had asked for items for my hunter a few times, however, I started getting teased by the party that "hunter" was really a codeword for "Auction House." For example, we might find some green cloth gloves with +int and +spirit on them, and they'd start saying, "Uh, yeah, my hunter could use those." My hunter's lvl 46 and named Pandarus. Look him up! Grrrrrr...

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/jandice7.jpg

Keimon had to leave after we killed Jandice, so we summoned in Orodruin, another warlock, to replace her. One of the nice things about having two warlocks in the party was we were able to take turns porting out (or /stucking and rezing at the spirit healer) and talking to Eva Sarkhoff to get the next part of the quest series. As expected, the next quest asked us to use the Blood of the Innocents to summon Kirtonos the Herald, the big boss man himself.

UP NEXT: Kirtonos the Herald

[Rycan]

Why didn't you show the Quest Rewards for killing Kirtonos lol!!

[MongoJerry]

Why didn't you show the Quest Rewards for killing Kirtonos lol!!

We haven't killed Kirtonos, yet, in the story.

[Vorda]

question for you: can you put all the parts in one big nice webpage once you are done with it? :D makes it easier to read :)

very nice work btw

[hound]

excellent read... looking forward to the rest. :worship:

[Minsterr]

MongoJerry I got one question for you

(im not in the beta)

what did kronos mean with this ?
ohh no not a rogue in group or was it ironic :) ?, just wondering if rogue's wasnt accepted among high end instances, because im gonna play a rogue and I really love grouping.

"Kronos: Ew, a rogue!"

[DarkFury]

I believe it was a sarcastic remark, particularly since Kronos had played with that Rogue before. Anyway, MongoJerry, this is really incredible, I can't wait for the next part(s). Props :D

[MongoJerry]

MongoJerry I got one question for you

(im not in the beta)

what did kronos mean with this ?
ohh no not a rogue in group or was it ironic :) ?, just wondering if rogue's wasnt accepted among high end instances, because im gonna play a rogue and I really love grouping.

"Kronos: Ew, a rogue!"
It's half-joke half-serious. Rogues are useful players in groups. In particular, their single-target dps is fantastic. The trouble is that the single target dps of mages and warlocks are also excelent. In addition, mages and warlocks have area-of-effect attacks and other skills useful to a group like mage's polymorph and warlock's buffs and debuffs. It's not that a rogue is "useless" to a group. They can be made quite useful with their sap and stunning abilities. However, if given a choice between a mage, a warlock, or a rogue, I can't come up with a good reason why one would choose a rogue. The ability to pick locks on chests? Or perhaps you might choose a rogue if you are a cloth wearer and didn't want the extra competition for loot. That's about the only thing I can think of. I hope that Blizzard can come up with some more skills for rogues that would make them more desirable to parties.

[Erica Marceau]

What would you give Rogues that would make them more desireable to parties?

Thanks for continuing your adventure. I am really enjoying reading it and it's making me look forward to my own adventures. I only hope I can participate in them as a hunter because right now that's one of the classes that seems to be in the second tier.

[inatey]

what do all the deads do?? the one you got at the early parts??

[Hydro]

What would you give Rogues that would make them more desireable to parties?

Thanks for continuing your adventure. I am really enjoying reading it and it's making me look forward to my own adventures. I only hope I can participate in them as a hunter because right now that's one of the classes that seems to be in the second tier.

Make sap work on a few other types of monsters.
Make more chests and doors locked.

Thats all they would need to do IMHO.

[1have2much3time]

I don't believe i didn't start reading this earlier. This thread alone, hands down, beats all the other WoW hype i've read in terms of getting me excited for the game for two reasons:

1) There actually are some people who wanna play the same way i want to. Only taking 5 people is more fun and means more loot per person, plus the game is more challenging.

2) All the set items and stuff... now, i wasn't in CB so i don't have a clue what any of them do but i just know that feeling when cool things start dropping in high level dungeons!

Argh, gimme the game now i'm ready to play.

Awesome journal.

~1have2much3time

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XV, Kirtonos the Herald

After killing Jandice Barov, the party took a break. For one thing, Keimon had to leave, so we had to look for a replacement (and found one in another warlock, Orodruin). In addition, several party members wanted to turn in their bags containing the Blood of the Innocents to Eva Sarkhoff right away. Having two warlocks in the party made this easy. Players could hearth out (or /stuck and rez at the spirit healer), turn in the quest at Eva, and then get resummoned back to middle of the instance. As long as one warlock and at least two others stayed in the instance at all times, the party could rotate people in and out as much as it wanted to. Conveniently, there's a spot at the top of the stairwell leading to Jandice Barov's basement chamber where no mobs respawn. We stayed there during the break.

After gathering again, we fought our way back through respawns to the Chamber of Summoning, the second major room in the instance. We had seen a small balcony off to the side of the Chamber of Summoning with a curious looking brazier in it, but until this point we hadn't known what it was for. It turns out that we were supposed to place the Blood of the Innocents in the brazier to summon Kirtonos the Herald. We had no idea what to expect, so we cleared the Chamber of Summoning again just in case this Kirtonos fellow decided to fight in the middle of the chamber.

We walked out onto the balcony (or the "Porch" as the game calls it for some reason), and with no idea of what to expect, lit the brazier.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos1.jpg

An orange text message appeared on the screen:

Kirtonos the Herald lets out a shrill cry

I looked around to try to locate Kirtonos, and it was only when he was just about on top of us that I saw that in fact he was a gargoyle, flying at us from the outside direction. (Note: The above screenshot was from a later run, when I knew where to look).

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos2.jpg

Kirtonos flew over our heads, landed behind us on the stairs leading to the Chamber of Summoning, and transformed into his humanoid form. As you can see, the gate leading to the Chamber of Summoning closed shut once the brazier was lit, so there was no chance of running and also no need to clear the Chamber of Summoning. This fight was going to end one way or another on the "Porch."

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos3.jpg

Several times during the fight, Kirtonos changed back into his gargoyle form. In this form, he would cast Curse of Tongues, which reduced casting speed by 50% -- a harsh penalty on casters.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos4.jpg

Still, there weren't any special tactics that needed to be employed to kill him, and we flattened him pretty quickly.

What'd we get? What'd we get? You ask. Check out Kupeludo's brand new cool-looking two-handed axe that you can see him holding in the previous screenshot. It's stats are:

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos5.jpg

Not good enough, you say? Then, how about this belt that I got:

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos6.jpg

I was particularly happy to get this belt, because the only piece of treasure in Blackrock Spire that could possibly be useful to me was a belt that sometimes drops off one of the minibosses there. I didn't want to bother running Blackrock Spire over and over just to get that belt. Yet, here I was on the third day of the patch, and I already had a belt from Scholomance that was better than that BRS belt, so I didn't have to run BRS anymore. *Phew* It's purely personal preference, but I like Stratholme and Scholomance much better than BRS. (Note: Stat-wise, the belt in BRS and the Clutch of Andros are roughly equal. Which one you prefer depends on whether you like stamina or spirit more. I like spirit more than stamina for Neriad, so I prefer the Clutch).

After killing Kirtonos, the party continued on a standard Scholomance run much like what has already been described by these journals. When we were done, the party members were in a bind. We had been able to summon Kirtonos because of an item given to us by a quest giver, and Kirtonos had dropped two very nice items for our party. Who knew what other items he might drop? (Note: I've also seen him drop a 40.0 dps dagger that gives +8 to arcane spells). We could abandon our quests, get the quest again along with a another Blood of the Innocents from Eva, and farm Kirtonos repeatedly. Or, we could turn in our quests and see what we get.

It didn't help that the Kirtonos quest specifically says in its title "<Needs Reward>." Internal Blizzard notes like "<Needs Reward>," "<NYI>" (not yet implemented), and "<Needs Text>" are a common sight for beta testers. Unfortunately, many beta testers take such messages too literally, since I've seen some players not bother to accept quests that say "<NYI>" or "<Needs Reward>." The thing is that in most cases such quests are actually implemented or actually have some sort of reward. I suspect that such messages most of the time indicate that while there is some sort of implementation or reward for the quest, it hasn't gone through whatever quality assurance vetting process Blizzard has.

So it was a tough call. Abandon the quest and farm Kirtonos, or turn in the quest and see what was behind the proverbial curtain #2.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/kirtonos7.jpg

Well, I'm a curious SOB, so I turned in my quest and received an item called a Spectral Essence, which says it will allow me to "communicate with the other lost souls of Caer Darrow." What the heck did this mean? At this moment, a system message came on, saying that the servers were being taken down. I'd have to wait for a few hours to find out what this Spectral Essence thing was all about.

UP NEXT: Curtain #2

[Phal]

And that's why he's called 'Cliff Hanger'!!!!

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XVI, Caer Darrow

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow.jpg

A few hours later, I logged on and headed back to Caer Darrow, the ruined island town surrounding Scholomance. Caer Darrow appears deserted, except for the spirits of Eva and Lucien Sarkhoff, whom we've met several times before. But every once in a while, if you stand in certain places, you'll overhear the disembodied conversations of unseen inhabitants.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow2.jpg

Whoever these inhabitants are, they can't be seen while your character is a ghost and detect invisibility items won't reveal them.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow3.jpg

But when a player equips the Spectral Essence given by Eva Sarkhoff, an entire town population is revealed. (Can you find all nine spirits in this image? Compare your answers with this image (http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow4.jpg)).

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow5.jpg

It turns out that Sammy and Melia, whose conversation snippet we saw above, are two young girls perpetually racing each other around the town's central fountain. In addition, the man in the shack to the left is a bread vendor, something that could be very handy, considering the shortage of vendors of any sort in the Plaguelands.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow6.jpg

But the real find in this town is the blacksmith vendor who sells four rare blacksmithing recipes and one rare alchemy recipe.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow7.jpg

When I first saw these recipe scrolls, dollar signs floated in front of my eyes. Remember that this was on the third day of the patch, and few people had completed the quest series up to this point. In fact, as far as I knew Kronos and I were the first people on the PvP server to have gotten this far. Imagine being able to buy a bunch of these recipes, especially the Major Mana Potion recipe, and sell them at the auction house. We could've made a fortune.

Unfortunately, as you no doubt picked up quickly, four of the five recipes available for sale are bind-on-pickup, so it would be impossible to sell them at the auction house. In addition, the one recipe that isn't bind-on-pickup, the Storm Gauntlets, are really shaman gauntlets that are essentially worthless to alliance players. I considered buying a few of those recipes to sell anyway, since some people like to collect recipes no matter how useless they are, but at 4g a pop, I doubted I could make much of a profit.

However, I did have to give the Blizzard developers props for the idea of this hidden vendor who sells bind-on-pickup recipes. The Major Mana Potion recipe, in particular, is the real prize. The problem with alchemy as it is currently implemented is that it's really easy for someone to create a level 35 alchemist alt who can manufacture any potions a player desires. (If you know your way around the game, getting a character to level 35 doesn't take long). In fact, I expect that nearly all miner players will create alchemist alts so that they can transmute all the archanite they want. But placing this bind-on-pickup Major Mana Potion recipe on a hidden vendor that can only be accessed after completing a high level quest makes it much harder for someone to create a simple alchemist alt capable of manufacturing these potions. I wish Blizzard would move the archanite transmutation recipe to this hidden vendor or another like him. It should be a much more difficult skill to obtain.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow8.jpg

Another character one finds in Caer Darrow is an NPC named Joseph Dirte, who proudly tells all comers, "My title is Waste Management Specialist." I guess that this is a reference to the movie Joe Dirt, but since I haven't seen the movie, the precise reference is lost on me.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/caerdarrow9.jpg

Finally, if one goes to the top of the main building in Caer Darrow, the same building that contains Scholomance itself, one finds Magistrate Marduke who explains to players what the Cult of the Damned is in grizzly detail. In short, the Cult of the Damned is made up of non-undead who nonetheless sympathize and worship the Lich King and is loyal the Scourge. One cult member was a mage of Stromgarde whose abilities caught the attention of the Lich King. The Lich King granted immortality to this mage by turning him into a lich as well. The mage's name? Ras Frostwhisper, the overseer of Scholomance. It turns out that even though our party had defeated Ras Frostwhisper several times already, that didn't do any lasting good. Ras Frostwhisper is already dead, so killing him again serves no purpose. To truly defeat him, the Magistrate tells us, we must return Frostwhisper "to his mortal form and then slay him, once and for all." Apparently, this Magistrate has an idea of how to do this, although it involves a bit of traveling.

UP NEXT: To Stromgarde and Beyond

[Ishtar]

Thank you so much for doing this. I am totaly living vicariously through your journals for a while until I can school scholomacne for myself! This is one of the coolest quest strings I've heard of so far!!!

[DarkFury]

It truly is the best read I have had in a while. I have been very excited for this game for years now, and, particularly lately, have been trolling the forums a lot. Now I find myself checking the forums for updates to this thread and get very excited every time I see any. This journal has kept me enthralled in WoW more than anything else thus far.

[ArcaneSorceror]

Excellent read, one of the most best journals ive ever read.
It combines humor with nice lore and it's very good written.
Gj

[SpAm_BuStA]

in the find nine spirits pic, on the right, below the tree with leaves, if you look closely there is a tenth one =P

[aartamen]

On the one hand this is a whole novel worth of questing, very exciting. On the other it is soo unbelievably time-consuming. I'll go whine in the corner.

Thanks for the tale so far. Exceptional.

[izrafel]

thx for the great read :) look forward to doing this quest and quests like these in ob/retail

[Vorda]

again, very nice one :D

these quests are possible for both the horde and alliance I hope? (I dont really get the high lvl instance system tbh..)

[Baredor]

Cliff hangers kill me! :cheesy:

Must... know... more....

:thumbsup:

[Ifrit18]

Need more info.... :drool:

I like the way Eastern/Western Plaguelands are turning out. Reminds me of Duskwood.

[MongoJerry]

these quests are possible for both the horde and alliance I hope? (I dont really get the high lvl instance system tbh..)

Yes, all of the mid-to-high level instances are available for both factions, and with only a few exceptions both sides have the same quests available to them. There are many more factions in WoW than just Horde and Alliance, and from the story, you get that there's an uneasy cease-fire between the two groups as they try to deal with the other entities. One of the major third-party factions is the Scourge, which are hated passionately by both sides. Two of the highest level instances, Scholomance and Stratholme, are in Scourge-controled territory, and therefore both sides get similar quests to defeat the Scourge badies in there. Other third parties include the Scarlet Crusade, Blackrock orcs, dragonkin (I'm confused atm if all of the dragonkin are united or if there are factions within the dragonkin), Blood elves, and the ominous insectoid alien Silithids.

[SpAm_BuStA]

am i the only one that sees the tenth spirit below the tree on the right??????

[Tevush Kasht]

I'm sorry but I only see nine. This journal is very painful to read, it's like looking at gorgeous women that are unavailable.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XVII, The Keepsake of Remembrance

Magistrate Marduke informed Neriad that to truly destroy the lich, Ras Frostwhisper, she must first cause Frostwhisper to return to his mortal form and then kill him. Marduke knew how to cause the transformation to take place, but the one thing he was missing was an object from Ras Frostwhisper's former life. That is, a "keepsake of remembrance." Obtaining one would be no small task, for undead sentient beings such as Frostwhisper typically attempt to destroy all remnants of his or her previous life in order to prevent such a transformation from taking place, according to Marduke.

So, Magistrate Marduke asked Neriad to go to Ras Frostwhisper's former home city of Stromgarde and find an item that might in some way be linked to Ras Frostwhisper's former life. He does not say what such an item might be or where in the city such an item might be found. It was up to Neriad and any other adventurers doing the quest to find the item themselves.

Kronos and Neriad flew over to the Arathi Highlands and entered the city of Stromgarde. It is a city in the midst of a brutal three faction war. The Alliance, the ogres, and the Syndicate each control approximately one-third of the city. The inhabitants are all elite mobs, so it's a kind of "outdoor dungeon" that normally requires sizeable party to venture into. This is especially true on the PvP server, since both Horde and Alliance adventurers enter the city to complete quests. Since the city is not an instance, it can be a madhouse free-for-all as everyone runs into each other while trying to complete their quests. (This can be both a fun and frustrating aspect of questing in Stromgarde).

But luckily for us, both the mobs in the city and the majority of players who typically quest there are in the mid-to-high level 30's. So Kronos and I (and Berilac who joined us later), as level 60 characters, could walk around the city pretty much unmolested.

Hmmm... where should we start looking? We weren't told what the keepsake looked like or where in the city it was. Thinking like a game developer, I reasoned that that probably meant that whatever the keepsake was, it was probably in some obvious landmark location. I suggested that we try looking in the central keep first, but Kronos said that he was going to check the ogre tower first.

Kronos: FOUND IT!!!!
Kronos: top of the ogre tower

In hindsight, it was a good guess. After all, Ras Frostwhisper was a mage in his former life, and the ogre tower has that "mage tower" architecture that can be seen in many locations throughout the world.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde2.jpg

I raced to the top of the ogre tower, and found... nothing.

Neriad: Is the keepsake a mob drop?
Kronos: no, it's a book
Kronos: appears right here
Kronos: gm says it's spawning

I waited a bit longer, but the book didn't respawn. I left to check a couple other places but returned to the top of the ogre tower every few minutes only to find that the book hadn't respawned there. Kronos and Berilac posted some messages on the Blizzard forums, asking for clues on where the keepsake spawns, but since so few people had actually followed the quest series to this point, we only got a couple of non-specific responses. The one thing we did get out of the responses, though, was the confirmation that the keepsake can spawn in multiple locations, so camping one location (like the top of the ogre tower) wasn't going to do any good.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde3.jpg

I still clung to my belief that the keepsake had to spawn in landmark locations, though, and the fact that it had spawned that one time at the top of the ogre tower only reinforced that belief. I thoroughly checked the central keep, which is in Syndicate hands, three times, and I also checked the chapel and mausoleum in the Alliance area several times. I then started checking some of the second tier landmark buildings (inns and other such buildings that hadn't been burned to the ground).

Finally, in desperation, I embarked on a systematic search of every square inch of the sprawling city, starting with the Alliance area where I was at the time and then moving on to the Syndicate sector. As I was completing my search of the Syndicate section of the city, Kronos called out that he'd found the keepsake in a chimney in a ruined building in the ogre section of the city -- naturally, the last place I was going to look.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde4.jpg

It took me two hours of searching to find the keepsake, far too long for such a quest, but that's not really the fault of the game designers. It took me that long, because I kept holding onto my belief that the keepsake had to be in some landmark location. If I had known that it could be found in a chimney in the middle of a ruined house, I would've started my systematic search of the city earlier and found the keepsake much quicker. So far, the only reports on the location of the keepsake seem to be in ogre and Syndicate areas, so if you're looking for the keepsake yourself, try those areas first. (I gather that the chimney of an inn in the Syndicate section of the city is another popular spawn location).

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde5.jpg

Having finally found our Keepsake of Remembrances, we returned to Magistrate Marduke who then told us to take it to Leonid Barthalomew the Revered, an undead dissenter of the Scourge, who is now loyal to the cause of the Argent Dawn. Barthalonmew then told us to take our keepsakes to the location where Ras Frostwhisper cut his own throat and where the Lich King turned Frostwhisper into a lich. (Really, I think Blizzard should look into creating an instance populated by fluffy bunnies who just want to cuddle and do nice things for people). This spot was called Menethil's Gift, a pentagram located deep within the Scourge city of Stratholme.

Easy enough. But, uh, there's one problem. Where the heck was this pentagram? Kronos, Berilac, and I scratched our heads trying to remember where the thing was. We had each done many Stratholme runs, so we figured we had to have seen it. Kronos thought that it might be somewhere in the section of the city with the ziggurats. I thought there might have been a pentagram on the floor of the main boss's chamber in the Scarlet Crusade section of the city. (The Scarlet Crusade boss turns out to be a demon in disguise, so it wasn't a crazy idea). We asked around, but no one had a definitive answer on where the pentagram might be. Gee, one would think demonic runes would stand out more in a game like this.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde6.jpg

Berilac had joined us originally to do a Scholomance run with us, so it would have been rude to delay that any further. We recruited some more people, headed off, and put the search for Menethil's Gift on hold. However, we did finally get a response from some friends who were running Stratholme that there definitely was not a pentagram in the Scarlet Crusade's boss's chambers, so that idea was scratched.

I kept asking around later, however, and I finally got a definitive response that there were some strange markings in the Baron's chamber in Stratholme. I hitched a ride with a group raiding Stratholme to check it out. One of the nice things about being a priest is that one never has a shortage of opportunities to go on instance runs.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde7.jpg

We killed the Baron (a.k.a. the Death Knight), and sure enough, right in the middle of his chamber was Menethil's Gift. I don't know about you, but that sure doesn't look like a pentagram to me. However, it does say "[PH]" (placeholder), so maybe the art team is still working on it.

I placed the keepsake on Menethil's Gift, and the Keepsake of Remembrance turned into a Soulbound Keepsake. (The text reads: "The soul of the fallen clings to that which represents its former life and transforms the item into a soulbound keepsake.") A new quest appeared that asked me to return the keepsake to Barthalomew the Revered who then told me to take it to Magistrate Marduke. Great, why couldn't I have cut out the middle man and just gone to Magistrate Marduke in the first place?

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/stromgarde8.jpg

Anyway, Magistrate Marduke then told me that there was one task remaining. I had to enter Scholomance, find Ras Frostwhisper, use the soulbound keepsake to return him to his human form, and then kill him once and for all.

UP NEXT: The Final Task

[Minsterr]

Damn it just keep on getting better and better this journal, this quest really remind me of playing Baldurs Gate 2, and thats a _good_ thing :)

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/frostwhisper.jpg

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XVIII, The Final Task

Neriad: We meet again, Frostwhisper, and this time I am the lich!

Ras Frostwhisper: You are?

Neriad: Not really. It just seemed like the thing to say.

Ras Frostwhisper: Oh, well, you can't win, Neriad. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Neriad: Oh, yeah? Well, I have THIS!

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/frostwhisper2.jpg

Neriad: Um, give me a few seconds will you? It's this whole channeling thing. I'm sure you understand. These soulbound keepsakes are so complicated.

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/frostwhisper3.jpg

Ras Frostwhisper: NO! THIS CANNOT BE!

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/frostwhisper4.jpg

And in a straight-forward almost anticlimactic battle, Ras Frostwhisper was vanquished.

[MongoJerry]

http://www.gmonsen.com/wow/Scholomance/frostwhisper5.jpg

So, what'd we get? The quest reward is the Crest of Caer Darrow plus the choice of either the Crown of Caer Darrow, the Darrowspike, or the Cerulean Blade of Caer Darrow. As you can see above, these are some very nice items, and I particularly drooled over the prospect of wearing the Crown of Caer Darrow. However, there were two problems.

First, as you can see, the level requirements on all of those items are level 70 and are therefore impossible for any player to wear. An item can have a level 70 requirement for one of two reasons. First, it can mean that it's a proposed quest reward item that hasn't yet gone through the vetting process to make sure that it is in balance with other items in the game. Second, it can also means that the Blizzard quest and item design team are sadists who like to taunt beta testers with powerful items they can't wear and then beat the items with a nerf stick when the next patch comes out.

But even before we got to the point of trying to turn in the quest, we ran into another problem. We are supposed to pick up Ras Frostwhisper's head and deliver it to Magistrate Marduke to complete the quest. But you see, Ras Frostwhisper dropped nothing... at all. I understand that what happens is that if you turn Frostwhisper into his human form, his shifts over to a different drop table when he dies. That makes sense, since he is supposed to drop his head when he dies in human form. Unfortunately, the new drop table is empty. As I've told myself hundreds of times since I first started playing WoW, "Welcome to beta!"

I hope you all enjoyed these Schooling Scholomance journals. I've appreciated all of the encouragement and great feedback I've received along the way. Look for more Adventures of Neriad soon.

[DarkFury]

Woot woot! Awesome read, thank you for providing us with such enjoyment. I hope you keep this up when the game goes live.

[Shaggy]

awwwwwww. its the conclusion. great work. i'll be looking forword to your next adventure.

[barbarian_bob]

Your Schooling Scholomance, part XVIII was the funniest part in your whole series Jerry. It made me laugh soo hard that I almost fell out of my chair. You ripped off Star Wars so bad...

[blizad]

Been a big fan of your stories....good job. Not your fault the ending was lame and unfinished heh.
So what classification do you give these string of quests? They seem long, but not epic....would you say together they are the longest kind of quest short of epic? (not any epic ones in the game yet right?)
thnx

[Davux]

Great journal MongoJerry, thank you. :clap:

[Vorda]

very nice :D

[QBall]

Stories this good torture me! And on top of having to either wait another week for the open beta or pay a little now for the stress test. ARGH!! These journals have been great and I can't wait to get in an instance... I just wish parties liked hunters more :-(

Good work on the stories and maybe I'll see you in retail.

[izrafel]

awwwwwww so sad i cant believe it finishes there... guess we will have to wait for retail
very informative/entertaining MongoJerry, props 2 u

[MongoJerry]

I just wish parties liked hunters more :-(

I've been having a ball playing my hunter. Ignore all the petty grumbling about hunters right now, because hunters were the last class to be added and therefore have been the least finished to this point. Once we get our talents in a few days, look out!

[Zovarim]

Cheers Mongojerry, Schooling Scholomance has without a doubt been the best read on World of Warcraft I´ve encountered in a long while. Come to think of it, it might be the best read I´ve seen. Cheers for bloody great work.

[Clink]

Cheers Mongojerry, Schooling Scholomance has without a doubt been the best read on World of Warcraft I´ve encountered in a long while. Come to think of it, it might be the best read I´ve seen. Cheers for bloody great work.

Agrees :winner:

Can't wait for Scholomance part 25, where ya school some Hordies with your servents of death :P

[Than-Tan]

Really, really (really) great read MongoJerry! :thumbsup:

:xtree:

[Semidi]

Best
Thread
EVER

thank you so much!

[Erica Marceau]

I have greatly enjoyed all of the reports you have written for us and I look forward to seeing more of them if you (hopefully) continue them when World of Warcraft goes live. Your way of writing gives a sense of adventure and being there to everything you have written.

Bravo for a job well done! :winner:

[Jawelik]

I have greatly enjoyed all of the reports you have written for us and I look forward to seeing more of them if you (hopefully) continue them when World of Warcraft goes live. Your way of writing gives a sense of adventure and being there to everything you have written.

Bravo for a job well done! :winner:

I agree, it would be a crime if you stopped writing these great journals after the game goes live. I will be certain to read all of them, so keep it up. Your journals rock!! :yep:

[zkajan]

That crown that comes with a frost resistance aura is just awsome

[Squarebob Spongepants]

I have to concur. Awesome journal :thumbsup:

First, as you can see, the level requirements on all of those items are level 70 and are therefore impossible for any player to wear. An item can have a level 70 requirement for one of two reasons. First, it can mean that it's a proposed quest reward item that hasn't yet gone through the vetting process to make sure that it is in balance with other items in the game. Second, it can also means that the Blizzard quest and item design team are sadists who like to taunt beta testers with powerful items they can't wear and then beat the items with a nerf stick when the next patch comes out.
One of the devs explained that phenomenon. Items that are 'still in development' are given a level 70 requirement. "This item is not finished so we don't want people using it yet." As soon as the devs think the item is ready to be fully implemented they adjust the level requirement.

_______________________________

The game is ready for lunch.

[degnar]

This has been an amazing thread!! I hope someone stickies it, or that you write it up as a journal/story (like the ones you did for your d2 chars).

[Boogie]

The images don't work in most of your journals MongoJerry.

[Psylenced]

So we went into scholomance today, not having known about this journal for out last several forays into the instance. We have thus far managed to kill everything but Alexei Barov.

Our group consists of
2x 60 Warlocks
1x 60 Priest
2x 60 Warriors

You dont go into much detail on the Lord Alexei Barov encounter, but something has been changed between live and beta versions I believe according to your representation.

When we pull him, we have the priest shackle one guard, one warrior offtank the other guard, while the rest of us focus on dropping Barov himself. The problems arise during the healing of the tanks. Our priests flash heals were only landing for 200ish, where they normally land for 1k+ Because of this we could not keep the tanks up long enough to drop Barov, at best getting him to 50% before wiping.

After some testing we confirmed that barov's unholy aura doesnt effect healing potency, so what then could be causing it? we attempted him at least 5 times, every time the results were the same, the healing power was handicapped and we wiped eventually as a result. Has anyone got any info on this? We've attempted various mob placements from pinning him in a corner, to using the banister on the railing to block the AE as the priest healed. Unfortunately the healing range is so short that the priest cannot avoid being hit with the aura just by standing at max casting range, any input would be appreciated, hes guarding that final deed for Caer Darrow.

[CronusFateweaver]

I never did Scholomance in beta, so I can't speak to any changes, but I can answer to the Barov fight as it currently is in live. As the priest and only healer for my group, and being shadow spec'd, I knew I wouldn't really have the mana for the endurance run against the three mobs in the Lord Barov pull. So instead we had our mage kite the two skeletons are the top rim while we fought Barov. This worked great, except that it turned out we needed the mage in the fight, as Barov casts the curse "Veil of Shadow" which reduces healing effectiveness by 75%. This is what you were seeing that causes your heals to be far less effective. We managed to down him without ever having the curse cured, but it was a close thing, as I was mashing prayer of healing most ineffectively against the power of his unholy aura combined with Veil of Shadow. Anyway, your best bet is to have a mage to cure the curse, or some means of distracting the adds so you can handle Barov alone. Most mobs that cast Veil have a long recast or AI not geared to cast it nonstop, so healers can time heals to land between pulses of it. Not so with Barov, as his recast is shorter than the curses' duration, and it never once faded during the fight. Good luck!

[Xinhuan]

It's worth noting that Druids can cure curses too.