Tuesday (15 Sep) - At Last, Ulduar Ten Man (maybe)

Tuesday (15 Sep) - At Last, Ulduar Ten Man (maybe)

Wild happened to catch in game a good friend and enchanter who I had been looking for. Wild called her Lady Rogue when she was running with us, but she moved on some time ago, and now she is leaving the server all together. I thought she'd already gone, but she told me her last day would be this coming Sunday. I hoped she could do one last favor for Wild - check her enchants to see if she had either of the pre-BC weapon enchants the twinks wanted: +30 spellpower or +22 intellect. Sad to say, she had neither enchant. The search continues.

Along the same lines Wild decided he wanted to get the +16 spellpower to gloves recipe, another pre-BC enchant. The recipe could be bought once Wild attained Revered rep with the Argent Dawn. Wild is at Honored with 5275 rep, and needed to get to 12000 rep to reach Revered. After taking a look at what things Wild could do to gain rep, Wild settled on Scholomance as his best choice.

Scholomance is a pre-BC 5 man dungeon for level 60s. Scholo requires a skeleton key to gain entry, something Wild started to get long ago through a quest series but never finished. Wild never made it into Scholo when Wild was a 60, either, and without a key Wild never tried to solo it.

Many Argent Dawn quests begin in the Bulwarks, a small encampment on the border of Tirisfal Glades and the Western Plaguelands. Once Wild got his bearings (as his time time in this area started coming back to him) he figured out that he had stopped questing here after getting four of the six quests required to get the key. Most likely that was because the 5th quest required killing a heavily protected elite in the dangerous town of Andorhal. Well, there was nothing that could give Wild pause in Andorhal now. There was another piece of history that needed to be corrected as well before Wild could start grinding rep. A significant part of increasing faction with Argent Dawn is the turn in of scourgestones of various types. These stones drop off of the undead mobs throughout the region, but only if you are carrying an Argent Dawn Commission trinket. Wild had long ago destroyed that trinket to make room for other (probably just as useless) items. It was an easy fix as there was an npc near Andorhal that would give Wild another one.

With a new trinket and the skeleton key, Wild went in search of Scholomance. If you look at a map of the Eastern Plaguelands (EPL), located to the east of the Western Plaguelands (duh!), you will not see Scholomance. It took a few minutes for Wild to ferret out the fact that Scholo was on the island of Caer Darrow, which was in the middle of a large lake in EPL.

There was no road to the island. Wild could find the lake's shoreline and swim across to the island, or he could take a shorter shoreline swim and then follow a ridge of land to a land bridge that connected to the island (but otherwise went no where). Wild took the land bridge.

I'd browsed through the information about Scholo, including descriptions of several ways to work through the dungeon. Having never seen the inside of the place, it was very confusing. Since the idea was to kill everything inside for the faction rep, Wild decided it didn't much matter which way he went or what path he followed.

Wild trotted through an open archway and up a semi-circular road to the entrance.

Wild's first look at the exterior of Scholomance


The swirling entrance beckoned, and Wild went in. There was a short wood floored ramp from the entrance to a closed wrought iron door. Two level 59 elites guarded it. Wild one shot them both.

Wild moved further inside. What he found was a darkly lit mansion full of large, exquisitely furnished rooms packed with groups of mobs busy with whatever it is mobs do. Wild imagined a group of level 60s entering here, knowing that they would face endless trash mobs before ever seeing their first boss. And there are plenty of bosses - 13 of them, in fact. Groups could spend a very long time in here.

Here's a sample of what different areas looked like as Wild worked his way through the trash.

The Chamber of Summoning

The Great Ossuary

A room full of neutral npcs

Wild was pleased that the trash mobs were in convenient clumps of 3-4. Wild simply walked into their midst and cast Hurricane. A few seconds later the group was dead. Wild moved from room to room, each time having to use his key to open the door to a new area. Bodies mounted and Wild's bags began to bulge with the loot he was collecting.

This process went smoothly until Wild made his way down to the basement and discovered a door that opened by itself. After having to unlock every previous door, seeing one open by itself was a bit eery, as I'm sure it was meant to be. The smallish room on the other side of the door was packed with mobs, both undead types and skeleton mobs. On the far side of the room was a closed wooden door, another oddity since every other door has been the wrought iron type.

Ok, no biggy. Wild calmly walked through the right half of the room, making his way to the wooden door in the opposite corner, bringing with him the couple of dozen mobs he was aggroing on the way. Once they were packed in banging away on Wild in his chicken suit, Wild cast Hurricane. It was funny watching the bodies start to fall. All of the undead mobs died. The skeletons, called "risen aberrations", didn't. Hmm. Interesting. Wild cast another hurricane. The skeletons still didn't die. Matter of fact, they didn't seem fazed at all by Wild's best AoE spell. Wild tried all of his spells - they had no effect on them. Wild then noticed that elite mobs twenty levels below Wild can still start to hurt if there are enough of them. Wild hotted himself up with heals, but he was down to 50% health and this wasn't funny anymore. Wild popped his Nature's Swiftness spell to get a bigger gulp of health. The action was attracting more mobs from the rest of the room and Wild figured he should find a safer place to deal with this little problem.

Wild moved out of the room, bringing a large cadre of skeletons and a few other undead with him. Wild's instant heals were not going to be enough to keep Wild alive, and longer cast healing spells were taking forever to cast due to constant interruption by the tons of skeletons surrounding Wild. Wild was down to 32% health. Come on, a bunch of level 60s is NOT going to kill me!

All the time Wild was trying all of his tricks, he was of course auto-attacking with his staff. And that seemed to be doing damage. Ok, some positive news, plain vanilla melee attacks work, but it would take forever to kill them all that way, and Wild wasn't sure that he had forever to do it. But he had friends who could speed that up. Wild cast Force of Nature, bringing three trees to life, and my leetle friends dispatched the whole lot of them in about ten seconds. So caster classes beware - as I learned by going and reading up on these risen aberrations, only physical attacks and holy spell attacks work - they are immune to everything else.

Wild avoided the remaining mobs in the room and opened the wooden door. Force of Nature has a long cooldown and Wild wasn't messing with more skeletons while it was not available. The next room was full of more skeletons - no, I'm just kidding. It was full of neutral npcs who did not bother Wild. What a nice change of pace.

Wild spent well over an hour in Scholo, and found only two bosses, Rattlegore and Ras Frostwhisper. Both were easy to dispatch, and gave up extra rep. This is one huge place. Bosses give 50 rep, while each mob gives 10 rep. Wild was completely out of bag space and out of time.

Wild got a lot of green gear and several blues to disenchant. I even got a BOE drop of a Magister's set piece that Wild sent along to Philly. Wild also got two drops of what used to be a very desired weapon enchant called Lifestealing that can only be gotten in Scholo. Wild learned the spell and then sent the other one to Happy to sell.

Wild started the day with 5275 rep with Argent Dawn. After Scholo and the turn in of the scourgestones he'd collected, Wild was at 9223. Since some of that was quest turn ins that Wild can't get again, I think it will take two more trips to get to Revered.

In Part 2 I'll let you know how Ulduar went - or IF Ulduar went, given the problems with attendance that we've been having.