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A couple of things lately:

First, we did the Battle of Darrowshire last Tuesday. This is an outdoor Raid event, so we got all available 60s (7), and went in with not a little trepidation. As it turns out, it isn’t so bad. We got through it with five deaths, three by Noxlux, me once, and Lance once. It keeps you running around a bit, but it’s not too hard to keep on top of. Actually it could make good training for handling adds in a fight. Anyway, Noxlux didn’t actually have the quest, so we’re all set to do it again tonight.

A few of us tried a bit of Scholomance for the second time this weekend. The first time we went in with a five-man group and had major problems with the second room. This time, we only had four, but we stuck to the first room (which we skipped the first time).

Mostly we did okay, but there’s a group of four in one corner, and a group of five in another that we couldn’t handle at all. We did get to a quest item and grab that, but for now Scholomance just doesn’t seem to want to happen for us.

This last Sunday marked our first run into Stratholme. We had the the usual team of Blanc, Dunain, Jariedthe, Blondiewood and Brunev. We did ‘live’ side, or part of it. Which was surprising with the amount of undead we saw for most of it. The evening got off to a bad start, with a couple of delays, me dying to a Scarlet Courier ambush (the bridge was clear before I went across – I swear!), and then the Scarlet Courier group spawned on top of us while waiting in front of the instance (safety tip: don’t camp in the middle of the bridge), which netted a couple more deaths (including Brunev, who was rebooting his system).

Once inside, things were much better. Progress was a bit slow, but I’m sure it’ll pick up once we get used to the instance. At the least, we finished off two quests, made some progress on a couple more. We got into the cathedral itself up to where there was a large group to fight at once. They wiped us, we called it an evening. We would have liked to go further, but it was already getting late on a Sunday.

So this next weekend has a BRD run scheduled for Thermidor, and a second try at Stratholme. Busy, busy, busy.

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….

Dire Maul East that is.

Not the guild’s best outing ever, but we’re still at about level for DM-East with our current equipment, and there was only four of us in the party (Dunain, Blanc, Brunev and Blondiewood). Given that, we did quite well indeed.

This was actually our second visit to Dire Maul. Our first involved sneaking in, having Dejek pick the door for DM-West, going in while the player switched from Dejek to Brunev so we could visit the library and Brunev could pick up his quest for better conjured water. We got caught in a couple of fights we didn’t want in the courtyard, and therefore some deaths (darn elite ogres…).

This weekend’s visit was smoother in that part as Blanc and I had a much better idea what to expect. Once inside… well it was a lot different from what I was expecting. Lots of plants (elementals). Big ones. Little ones. Annoying ones. Patrolling ones. And generally close together enough for us to need to take some time pulling them away from each other.

And during all this, we get to try to run down an imp who seemed to think he was the Gingerbread Man. In the end, he didn’t do any better.

We continued through until the first truly nasty boss: Zevrim Thornhoof. He’ll occasionally teleport a party member onto an altar, which will do a lot of damage while the character can’t do anything. Meanwhile, Zevrim’s still beating up on the rest of the party. Actually, occasionally isn’t a good term. He does it pretty often, once he gets warmed up. This is bad enough (it hurt Blanc pretty bad when he got picked), but he put Blondiewood (Druid and main healer) on the altar twice in a row. After that, the fight went slowly downhill until he and Blanc were all that was left, and neither had much health.

I’ve seen Blanc come back and win some pretty tough fights that really looked like he shouldn’t be able to win. I’ve seen him scrape through on no health and no help. Of course, I’m probably just remembering the exceptional times. But it was still disappointing when Blanc didn’t pull it off.

Worse, when we got back in the instance, the monsters at the front were just starting to respawn. So we had to quickly fight our way through and race ahead of the wave of monsters tracking our previous progress. It wasn’t that hard, but is was a couple of tense minutes, since we could have ended up with an uninvited guest in the middle of of fight.

The second fight went much better. So we were off to the courtyard that we’d been above and circling around at the beginning. It’s effectively an overgrown open area with a lot of groups of monsters/plants wandering around (which had been driving the Hunter-dar crazy earlier). Blondie stealthed her way up to the center and talked to the one uncorrupted ‘ent’ in the place, who took off and tore down the door we needed. Getting across the room ourselves took a little more doing. Not that it that difficult, but it looked difficult.

Once there, it was on to the final boss, and possibly the most tragic loss of the run. All along the way are little seed pods, they do random, possibly nasty, things (like rooting you in place, not helpful if you trip it during a fight) – though it looks as if once a character has interacted with them a few times, he starts getting the better results (items for a good cooking recipe). Anyway, one of the last ones rooted – and killed – Blanc’s warbunny. Certainly the silliest death of the run.

The actual final boss fight went well enough. After that, we climbed out the back door and headed back in. Into DM-West that is, and the turn-in for Brunev’s quest, and a very handy high-level ability. After that is was off to turn in the other, less important quests.

Took us about 5 hours, 3-4 wipes, plus one almost-wipe (single surviving member). Not at all bad for a four-man group.