Saturday (5 Dec) - Old School AQ40

Saturday (5 Dec) - Old School AQ40

Note - Yes, I'm going to cover the path 3.3 changes, but if I don't get this posted now I'm going to get too far behind.

The Temple of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ40) is an old school level 60 forty man raid. Opening the gates of this massive instance required a World Event quest series called "The Scepter of the Shifting Sands" that the entire server could participate in. There is a completely different and smaller 20 man raid that came into being along with AQ40 called the Ruins of Ahn'Qiraz (AQ20) that Wild and the guild spent literally months running. We were very successful in AQ20, but AQ40 was a titanic struggle. I'd have to go back to those old posts to be completely accurate, but I don't think the guild ever got much past the first boss, Skeram, and I know for sure that no AQ40 raid that Wild was in ever defeated Skeram (Back in the day when Wild's luck demanded that I never be present at a first boss kill :-) ). AQ40 was a rarity in that Blizz decided to make the first boss extraordinarily difficult, sort of a gatekeeper/gear check guarding the great goodies that awaited those who could get past him. Only the final boss, C'Thun, was tougher.

AQ40 was the end game raid dungeon when it was released, eclipsing Blackwing Lair as the best and most difficult raid in the game (until the original Naxxramas was opened). Mostly what Wild remembers of AQ40 was wipe after wipe. The only loot that Wild ever got from there were the bug mounts that could only be ridden inside AQ40, dropped by the very tough trash leading to Skeram. To give readers an idea of just how old this place is in WoW years, let me remind you that the newest dungeons reward Tier 9 and 9.5 gear. AQ40 offered five piece Tier 2.5 gear.

There were only three guildies signed up for the raid, which by design was being run on the birthday of the raid leader, who was also our Guild Leader. I didn't think I would be able to make it, but when the 4pm start time drew near the chores were done and Wild was available. Other guildies popped in, and when Wild got his Summons to the shifting sands of southern Silithus to the far south of the continent of Kalimdor, there were seven of us. "Do you want me healing or moonkin?" Wild asked as he arrived. "Only need one healer, at least at the beginning," the GL told Wild. H-priest was the other potential healer, so Wild immediately volunteered for DPS. "Cool, I'm already in moonkin spec."

Wild was in the middle of revamping his moonkin gear set when he decided to join the AQ40 raid, but he had to put that aside and went with his existing set. We had two tanks, one healer, and the rest of us were DPS. The 7th member of the raid was a last minute invitee who logged in with other plans in mind. Surveydrood was cajoled into joining us and decided to bring his moonkin. That gave Wild a great gauge to compare himself with. Surveydrood was probably the best moonkin in the guild.

Now think about this for a bit. AQ40 is a level 60 dungeon (with the elite bosses at the equivalent of level 63), granted, but tuned to be able to tear the heads off of a forty man raid. We were all level 80, most of us draped in Ulduar and ToC epic gear, but there were only seven of us. The GL figured it would be enough. Provided we could get by Skeram.

The entrance to AQ40 is through a sand swept archway, up a longer series of wide steps, a right turn, and then more steps. Sand is piled everywhere, half submerging the above ground areas. A long ride finally revealed the entrance, and we were in. We all had to break out our bug mounts. Wild has both a blue and a green one, and I went with the green. There are four types, the blue being the most common, followed by green and then yellow. The rarest color mount, red, is so hard to get there is a special achievement for finding one. They can only be ridden inside AQ40, however. None of us had red mounts to brag about, but we were all old codgers who had at least attempted AQ40 when we were still at level 60, and we all had at least one bug mount. Why mounts? Because AQ40 is HUGE, with many long, long, passages, tunnels, and caverns.

I'll tell you what, the seven of us looked very small, standing just inside the instance. The long hallway was at least thirty feet high, bounded by thick walls of stone. Mounted mobs and heavy footed giants patrolled the area. As level 60s we spent many a night wiping just on this trash, never even getting to the first boss. With maybe just the tiniest bit of apprehension, we engaged. At smashed through them with ease.

Make a left turn at the end of the hallway and there is a set of low steps leading to another group of trash mobs. Behind those, Skeram stands in the center dias, flanked by empty raised dias's on his left and right. A long ledge above it all borders the area.

After clearing the area of mobs, we engaged head on against Skeram. The complicated strategy we used as level 60s was replaced with the Ghostbusters strat of "Get him!" We pounded Skeram down to 75% health, and he split into two additional images of himself. There were now three of him. The two images have less health than Skeram, but they all have the same abilities, so it is in effect fighting three bosses at the same time. The images have to be killed first, and we struggled to target the right ones, a difficult task. Wild took his queue from Surveydrood, assuming he would know which one to shoot at (and if he was wrong, at least we were hitting the same target). That plan took a detour when one of the Skeram's Mind Controlled Surveydrood. The deadly moonkin grew to three times his normal size and began blasting the raid. We survived that, and got Skeram (the real one) to 50% health, where he split into three again. We wiped.

Ok, maybe we'd better come up with a slightly more thorough strategy. We had gotten scattered about during the fight, with parts of the raid out of range of healing (ie, our one healer). They wanted to stay with one healer so that they could maximize DPS, so we needed to stay closer together.

It took us four tries, but in the end Wild got his first kill of The Prophet Skeram.

Skeram truly was as tough as we thought. After that fight, we fought through seemingly endless corridors and endless trash mobs, and on the way killed the bosses Battleguard Sartura, Fankriss the Unyielding, and Princess Huhuran.

The second to last of the mandatory bosses are the Twin Emperors, Vek'lor and Vek'nilesh. For that fight the raid needed two healers, so Wild switched to healing gear. The twins are fought across the room from each other. One twin is immune to all physical damage, so only ranged casters can harm him. The other twin is immune to all magical damage, so only melee (and hunters) can harm him. Wild was tapped to main heal the tank on the twin who would be meleed, while h-priest main healed the tank on the other twin. It took awhile to bring them both down, since our DPS was split up, but we were never in any serious trouble and both died.

On our way to the final boss we made a short detour and killed Ouro, one of three optional bosses in AQ40. We never did get to the other two optional encounters as we were a little limited on time.

C'thun is a very creative encounter. C'thun looks like a round, ridged jello mold gone bad. The tub of flesh has feet that circle his body and one very large eye that we were told to stay out of direct line of sight of. It was a small chamber, but even so worms would pop up all over the place that had to be destroyed in between banging on C'thun. Wild was back in moonkin gear for this fight, and h-priest had his hands full running in circles around C'thun trying to heal everyone.

The "piece de resistance" is C'thun's stomach. In Phase 2 C'thun grabs random raiders and swallows them. Yuk. Inside his stomach is a churning green mess of stomach acid that is murderous even for a level 80 because the amount of damage done by the acid stacks quickly. Small islands of flesh offer some respite, but they are defended by more of the worm things. Killing those stomach worms does more damage to C'thun than hitting his exterior body, and the strategy was to kill as many as you could before having to get out of his stomach. Wild must have missed the explanation that there was one island I could get on that would regurgitate me out of the stomach. Wild got swallowed. Wild fought worms. Wild had to drop out of moonkin to heal himself. Wild wondered what else he should be doing and how the heck was he supposed to get out of here? Wild died.

Surveydrood was swallowed a bit later. He rezzed Wild but then learned Wild's lesson, dying right next to me when Wild instantly died a second time, as I still had a massively stacked acid debuff on me.

We lost a third raider to C'thun's stomach, but after a protracted fight C'thun died. We got our Achievement for AQ40.

Of course, the gear in AQ40 was unusable for anything other than disenchanting or vendoring. However, Wild was the only enchanter in the group, and Wild was able to pick up two enchanting recipes that only drop in AQ40: Subtlety and Threat. Both are still valued enchants, and very rare.

After the battle, Wild revisited AQ40 with his video camera. When I get a chance I'll take ya'll on a tour.