Wednesday (Part 2) - A Most Unintentionally Helpful Alliance

Wednesday (Part 2) - A Most Unintentionally Helpful Alliance

JB has been working quests in Zul'Drak. In particular, there is a nine quest chain that started with "An Invitation of Sorts . . ." which JB has been going back to over and over during the course of the past several days. For the latter half of the chain JB has been disguising herself as a scourge. The disguise gives her access to Voltarus, a floating fortress commanded by Overlord Drakuru. JB must win her way into Drakuru's confidence by completing a series of tasks he sets for her. JB's accomplice in this is Stefan Vadu, who JB can call on to get new instructions from and complete tasking. For each quest JB gets a task from Vadu and a task from Drakuru. It gets a little complicated sometimes because Vadu's tasks aren't complete until both his task, and the one Drakuru gives JB, are done. In effect, there are two sets of quests, one from Vadu and one from Drakuru, that must be done in parallel with each other.

To further complicate things, the start of both chains begin with a drop - in Grizzly Hills, called "Unliving Choker." That opens the quest chain that starts with "Truce?" also in Grizzly Hills. Later, Drakuru winds up in Zul'Drak - after you've freed him.

JB became "stuck" in this chain at Vadu's "Hazardous Materials," not because of that quest, but because that quest also required that JB complete the Drakuru task of "Zero Tolerance." This is the quest to defeat the level 77 elite Darmuk by enslaving a servant of Drakuru and using the servant to fight him.

Ok, so after all that "setting the stage" stuff, JB found herself back at Darmuk's location. They were the only two quests she had in Zul'Drak, and was hoping that by getting these done it would open up others.

JB landed her flying mount at a safe spot, buffed up, and then donned her scourge disguise. She approached Darmuk from the opposite side of where she had approached before, just to be different - and sometimes location did change things. There was high wall to scale, but it slanted enough to be climbed. JB could just see the top of Darmuk's head as she enslaved her servant and then guided him up the wall to the top.

Darmuk was already in combat, fighting a servant controlled by an alliance player. JB sent in her own servant, since it looked like the allie could use the help. With two servants beating on Darmuk, he went down. And both the allie and JB got credit for the kill.

JB blessed the good fortune of not having to face Darmuk solo again, and turned in her two quests, the one for Drakuru and the one for Vadu.

But of course, she wasn't done. Vadu had another quest, and of course that meant there would be another quest waiting for her with Drakuru. "Sabotage" required running around the area below Voltarus, called the Reliquary of Pain, by the way, and blowing things up. JB and the allie competed with each other in finding targets and blowing them up. Drakuru's task was even more fun. JB had to enslave abominations and then use them as living bombs to destroy a troll village. It was relatively easy but time consuming as more than sixty trolls had to be killed. Again, JB and the allie did them side by side, each trying to outdo the other.

The final piece of the chain is called "Betrayal." The back and forth JB was doing between Vadu and Drakuru had an extra hoop to it that JB missed the first time, which required JB to go to the second level of Voltarus. JB had to backtrack to do that in order to go back to Drakuru a second time, where JB is invited to join him on the open platform at the top of Voltarus. Up on this platform, surrounded by his Blightblood guards, is where JB must betray Drakuru, revealing himself by removing his disquise.

Like the Darmuk, fight, though, Vadu has given JB the means to enslave a Blightblood guard help JB in the fight.

Drakuru teleported JB to the top level platform, but because JB had been slowed down, the allie was already there and already in combat with Drakuru.

JB had read the guidance on this fight, and it has a number of bugs. Of course, Drakuru being in two places at once would be one of them, but that didn't seem to effect the battle in progress. What the guidance did say, though, was that interfering with the fight - such as JB enslaving and sending in her own Blightguard - would bug the fight and reset the event. So there was nothing JB could do to help the allie.

Spectator JB watched as the allie circled the outer edge of the platform, staying out of range of the bombs that Drakuru regularly tossed at him while the elite fought the blightguard. Drakuru was winning that fight, but as soon as that blightguard went down, the allie enslaved another, taking damage in the process but living through it. It was a great fight, which the allie won. Drakuru wasn't killed, however. The fight was interrupted by none other than the Lich King himself.

From a lore perspective this is pretty cool, and some players even expressed regret that they had to betray Drakuru, who was only looking out for "us scourge." JB had no such qualms, given Drakuru's sordid past in Grizzly Hills and that he was part of the enemy scourge.

The Lich King finished the job, killing Drakaru, and then spared the allie, as "potentially worthy."

When it was over, the allie looted Drakuru's skull for the quest. JB sent him a /cheer! for his success, surprising him. I guess he was so into the fight he didn't see JB turn up on the platform. Surprising us both was that JB discovered that she, too, could loot the skull, and got credit for the kill.

Now that's how one uses and abuses the alliance. :-)

One more little thing. There was no way to get down off the top of the platform, far above the ground. The warlock allie decided to jump off. After watching him fall, and noting the tiny plume of dirt, guts, and blood that resulted, JB called on her flying mount and flew down, saluting the allie's corpse on her way to collect her quest reward.

JB is 74% of the way to level 80.