Fury of the Wild

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

The One Where They All Turn Fourty

Level 40 is not as big a step as previously with mounts being learned 10 level earlier. But there still are some nice abilities that can be learned at that level. First of all, shaman are able to wear mail armor. Elemental gear is still hard to come by, so I got only a handful of mail items, namely boots and shoulders from Scarlet Monastery and a chestpiece from Razorfen Downs.

In addition to the availability of mail, shaman can learn Chain Heal. Right now it still feels a little weak but the spell should scale very well with more +healing gear at later levels.

Talent wise, Elemental Mastery becomes available in the elemental tree. In conjunction with Blood Fury it can provide very high burst damage and also helps to safe mana.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Razorfen Downs

The capital of all pigs in Azeroth which recently has been taken over by the Scourge.

It has very nice drops and if you want to, you can farm it over and over until your chars are geared nicely.

Except for the bosses, there also is a cooking trainer in one of those cages there. If you have at least 175 cooking skill you can learn to make, no, not Schnitzel, but Goldthorn Tea.

Tuten'kash

A giant spider that needs to be summoned by ringing a gong 3 times. Each time another wave of spiders will come. If you kill him fast enough you can avoid his nasty curse that reduces your casting speed and lasts for 15 minutes.

Plaguemaw the Rotting

This was by far the toughest fight I had experienced yet. I actually wiped during the escort that is needed to spawn this boss. After I killed wave after wave of attacking pigs, my shaman went out of mana and bit the dust. Strangely enough, the pigs didn't turn on Belnistrasz who was still performing the summoning ritual but instead decided to corpse camp me. Only by running from the graveyard was I able to resurrect my team and give that future ham some payback.

Plaguemaw also has some kind of silencing aura and drops absolute crap for elemental shaman. Absolutely not worth the effort.

One thing of note is that you can only summon him if you do the escort quest from Belnistrasz. It is not repeatable, so once you handed in the quest, you can never summon him again, even after resetting the instance.

Mordresh Fire Eye

Mordresh has nice caster drops. Beware of his adds, they can be lethal. Try to fry them with Fire Nova Totem.

His drops are quite nice for casters.

Glutton

A big pile of meat that hits like a truck. But no real match for the shaman team.

Ragglesnout (rare)

He drops a nice sword that shaman unfortunately are not able to wear.

Amnennar the Coldbringer

Ignore his adds and nuke. They will despawn once he is dead.

Most of the time, he drops two items. The gloves are nice to have and there are even two usable chest items: the robe and the mail armor. Stats wise, I would recommend the robe, but I didn't like the look of it and went with the mail armor.

Scarlet Monastery: Cathedral

The cathedral is very similar to the library and armory: pull carefully and stop runners.

There is one trash mob in particular that is really nasty: the Scarlet Wizard. He comes into melee range to cast Arcane Explosion. As with all AoE spells, grounding totem is useless. The Arcane Explosion will also cause casting pushback. Make them your priority target, even over melee.

One thing to remember is to clear out the whole cathedral as engaging Mograine will aggro any remaining mobs.

Drop wise, it's one of the best instances. You will get tons of good caster items in here, as well as mail items for level 40.

Fairbanks

A hidden boss in the left chamber on the right side of the cathedral. You can open the door by pulling on a torch on the wall. He only drops greens, but as mail will be available with level 40, the boots are quite nice. They have lots of armor and stamina which is lacking on the cloth caster stuff.

High Inquisitor Whitemane

Do not overnuke! If you accidently kill her, she will not resurrect Mograine and you will be missing out on half of the loot.

Her drops are awesome: caster necklace and hat, a healing mace and one design for jewelcrafters.

Scarlet Commander Mograine

Total wuss. Can be two-shotted with Elemental Mastery and Blood Fury.

I cannot stress enough how incredibly awesome his shield is. It gives 1548 armor. At level 40, with a mix of mail and cloth items, it more than doubled my armor when I equipped this shield. The next best shield that can be farmed effectively is the Battered Viking Shield from Olaf in Uldaman. It comes with considerably less armor. If you have an Alliance shaman team then even this is not an option as the three vikings can only be attacked by Horde.

Anyway, get it! With all 5 shaman. The other crap he drops can be safely sharded.

Scarlet Monastery: Armory

Take a look at the High Elf statue in the middle of the picture. That's what the Blood Elves looked like before they collectively joined the Village People. Since then they have evolved and nowadays each and every one of them looks like Son Goku.

Like in the library, be very careful with runners as they will aggro more mobs and things will be going south sooner as you might expect.

Herod

Another opportunity to practise that fine positioning strategy we learned in the Library. Just spread out a little behind him so that his cleave won't hit more than one. When he does his whirlwind he will be immune to all damage, so stop attacking then and heal the one that is tanking him.

After Herod is down, the fun part will start: the Scarlet Trainee zergfest. They are weak and don't have much life but they come in masses. You essentially have two choices:

Easy: fry them with Fire Nova Totem
Hard: kill them off one by one using Chain Lighning, Lightning Bolt and shocks

If you choose the easy path, you will not be able to loot them to get the ta

bard. To be able do it the hard way mainly depends on the amount of mana you got left from the Herod fight. In any case, distract them first with Stoneclaw Totem or else they will immediately kill off the Fire Nova Totems or do too much damage to your team.

During my first run, they clubbed my team into pieces as I totally underestimated them.

Drop wise, the only interesting item from Herod are his shoulders which are mail and have a decent amount of stamina.

Scarlet Monastery: Library

Things are getting a little bit tougher within the library wing of the Monastery. The mobs are hitting harder and tend to flee. So, make sure to stop them or they will come back with a bunch of angry friends.

Houndmaster Loksey

Nothing special here, just make sure to have enough mana before engaging the boss and kill off his hounds with chain lightning.

I got the dog whistle off him for 3 of my chars. Now I just have to decide whom to scare off with my new pack...

Arcanist Doan

This is the first fight that requires something different than the usual nuke strategy. He only casts AoE spells, so grounding totem is useless here. Additionally, he is able to silence and has an invulnerability bubble (that one alone prevents nuking if you don't happen to oneshot him). Just going in and standing in one place is a safe way to meet your ancestors.

A strategy that works would be to place one shaman each into every corner of th

e room before and pull him out with the main. That way it will take a little time for him to run towards the one who has aggro and also will prevent him to cast silence on your whole team. At some point during the fight he will bubble and immediately begin to cast his Detonation spell which does massive damage. He might even kill one of your chars if it was not on full health. But don't worry, just throw out a group heal and continue burning him down.

His cloth drops are not really interesting, they are ok if you don't have anything else, but the chest from Razorfen Kraul and shoulders from the Graveyard are better in my opinion due to the amount of spell crit.

His weapon drops, on the other hand, are really, really nice. I farmed both the staff for normal questing and the dagger for instance runs.

He has a low chance of dropping the first epic item (level wise) in the game. A ring that is mostly suited for twink pvp. Unfortunately, I didn't see it drop on any of my runs.

Also, don't forget to loot the Scarlet key from the chest in his room. It's needed to enter the Armory, Cathedral and, at later levels, also the living part of Stratholme.

Scarlet Monastery: Graveyard

The graveyard can be done as early as level 30, probably sooner and is not very challenging. Just make sure to pull carefully in the torture chamber.

One thing that makes the graveyard special is the diversity of bosses. In addition to the 2 normal ones, there are 3 rares and 1 special boss that only appears during the Scourge event. Also, there is the Headless Horseman which I will not list here as it's a level 70 encounter and deserves it's own article.

Interrogator Vishas

Seriously, this guy gives me the creeps. His favorite pastime it to torture fellow Forsaken for the greater good.

Ironspine (rare)

Bony guy with horns. No interesting drops.

Fallen Champion (rare)

Unfortunately, the Fallen Champion was too shy and didn't show himself on the numerous runs that I did.

Azshir the Sleepless (rare)

He can drop a caster necklace and pants, but not worth the effort to farm it.

Bloodmage Thalmos

He drops a nice shoulder piece with spell crit that is more suited for Elemental shaman than the shoulder piece off Doan in the library. You can wear them until mail becomes available at level 40.

Gnomeregan

Gnomes! You either love them or hate them. Horde players tend to fit into the latter category, so I might be the exception here, cause I love those cute little guys. Many players, even Alliance, tend to skip Gnomeregan, maybe because they don't like the instance design or because of their animosity towards Gnomes. Probably both. But I enjoy helping them in their endeavour to retake their city.

Gnomeregan is the first instance that can be a little tougher at times. First of all, make sure to kill those alarm bots as they can pull half of the instance if they are not stopped in time. Also, make sure to pull carefully.

Techbot

Techbot is outside of the instance and has therefore been nerfed, he is no longer elite. For Horde there is no point in killing him really, but I decided to give him a visit anyway as he has some of the coolest quotes in the game. He comes second only to Cro Threadstrong in Shattrath.

Grubbis

This boss is only available at the end of an escort event where you help a cute little Gnome in blowing up the caves to prevent further invasion of Troggs.

Grubbis Paws

Fallout

My favorite boss of the instance. Fallout drops one of a few evergreen items in the game. While many will be replaced by better gear, his Hydrocane is still of use to high level characters. Even if you are playing a class with underwater breathing like druid, it can still be better to equip this staff when you run out of air than to switch to waterform. It doesn't use mana and you can continue casting (or use melee attacks if you are feral). The only downside is that it will take up 1 slot in your inventory.

At level 70, it's very easy to farm Fallout. Just jump down right after you enter the instance, kill Fallout and reset.

Electrocutioner 6000

Killing the Electrocutioner will complete the first Dungeon attunement in the game, by looting the Workshop Key. It will open a shortcut to the last bosses in Gnomeregan, Crowd Pummeler 9-60 and Mekgineer Thermaplugg.

Crowd Pummeler 9-60

If you want to make a level 29 twink that can use maces, I suggest you farm this boss over and over. He drops a mace with an insane amount of haste rating. Unfortunately, the effect is on use and only has 3 charges, so it's kinda limited. But the mace is not unique, so you can have many of them in your bags.

Dark Iron Ambassador

A rare boss in the instance. I was unlucky in my run, so no screenshot.

Mekgineer Thermaplugg

The final boss of the instance. Usually you need a strategy for him with one member pushing the buttons to prevent bombs from dropping, but that's not necessary with 5x dps. Just nuke him. He deserved it.

Besides the usual blue items, he sometimes drops Engineering recipes, including the one for Flame Deflector that can not be obtained any other way. It's not bind on pickup though, so you might be lucky and see it on the auction house.