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So, after last week’s adventure, we decided to go into BRD again this Saturday.

Well, we did. We also went in spur-of-the-moment on Friday.

Crew was Blanc, Dunain, Blondiewood, Jariedthe, and Thermidor. Blanc has been wanting to get the plans for Black Dragonscale Leggings for a while, and we headed over to the likely area, the Highway for some farming only to realize what we were looking for wasn’t there. There’s various Anvilrage troops there, but further research shows that that Anvilrage Captains (the only thing that drops them) appear twice while doing the Jailbreak quest, and there’s three in the Throne Room. So there’s a max of 5 possible people each with a 2% chance. Great.

So, we decided to do Jailbreak. Lots of clearing later, I realize that I left my evidence in the bank, so only Blanc and Jariedthe got to complete it. There was one room we forgot to clear, that also generated new guys for the quest. That fight got exciting, but in the end we handled it very well. Anvilrage Captain count: 2. Plans: 0

Thence to the Bar. I’d finally bumped up my reputation to Honored, so I bought the next Blacksmithing plan, and stared at the demand for 10 Dark Iron Ore for more rep. They’ll take other things… but it’s all rare Molten Core stuff (generally worth 90 gold on the Muradin Auction House vs somewhere around 10 gold for 10 ore). On to the Summoner’s Tomb, and successfully do my turn-in with Gloom’rel. I can now smelt Dark Iron Ore into Bars (at an 8-to-1 ratio!). We go on, kill a few fire elementals, get Thermi Attuned to the Core, and I actually use the Dark Forge (the only place to smelt Dark Iron – not just any fire will do)… just ’cause I can.

And then into the Lyceum again. And we fail again. This time, it’s from a lack of being able to find a torchbearer. Whenever we got to where one was, he wasn’t there. However, we do survive in the environment of lots of hostile dwarves and quick respawns for quite a while. It’s late, so that’s it. But we know it’s possible now. We can survive, we just have to get the torches and get the doors open.

Oh, sorry, one more thing that night. Fickle Muse’s triumphant entry into Stormwind next to Marshal Windsor to confront Onyxia!

And the next night we did it all again. Well, mostly. Brunev instead of Thermidor. We decided to drag out Jailbreak until we can get the plans, so Brunev turned it in, but not me. Visited the Bar, I actually handed in some Dark Iron Ore. Judging off of the results, I’ll need 2400 ore to hit Exalted. Still might happen someday. Got Brunev Attuned. Smelted some more ore (and later visited the Dark Anvil to create Dark Iron Shoulders for Blanc, who’s starting to get serious about a fire-resist set). So all that effort has at least *some* practical payoff. Went to the Lyceum.

And died.

Well, okay, we did fairly well. We got a torch (and now know what those Torchbearers look like). Got to the door, then figured out about the platforms with the braziers we needed to light. Armed with this knowledge, we went back, did it again, and this time we got it right.

We finally got to the end of the instance: the Throne Room.

We cleared that, challenged the Emperor, and kept Princess Bronzebeard up while we got him. She turned friendly, ran back to the throne, and turned hostile. Blondie got too close, and she charged us. We had to kill her. T_T

King Bronzebeard in Ironforge wouldn’t talk to us.

It seems since the latest patch, the quest’s been bugged. We’re supposed to talk to the Princess, and we have the official ‘Compete’ mark on the quest, but we need a non-violent Princess to talk to. So we’ll have to do the fight again one it’s fixed. Well, its not as if we aren’t coming back here anyway.

Anvilrage Captain count: 7. Plans: 0.

And we confronted Onyxia again.

Thinking back to the initial BRD run, we’ve obviously come a long ways. The front areas that challenged us so are now more time consuming than anything else. Some of it is knowing the instance. Some of it is certainly better teamwork. It doesn’t feel like our equipment has changed much, but I’m sure that’s part of it too. We’re actually starting to go through the long progression of level 60 equipment. Blanc and I have yet to deal with the Dungeon Sets, but we’ve still got a slow trickle of new equipment.

I wonder how we’d do against Scryer now….