Ravencrest's Legacy

Ravencrest's Legacy

Ravencrest's Legacy is the final part of a long quest thread that leads into a seven stage scenario. The entire event takes place at Black Rock Hold in Val'sharah. Keya had planned to do some fishing in the area around the Hold, but one thing led to another and she found herself taking the bridge and entering the fortress. She killed a few hanger's on and did a little looking around. There are a number of named bad guys hanging around and Keya killed a couple just to see how tough they were. Fairly easy prey. She did some more investigating, and  that's when she first set eyes on the ramparts where things were about to get a lot more interesting.

Keya discovered that she was no longer Keya. Instead, the person on the ramparts was Illidan Stormrage. He was leading a dangerous thrust into the heart of the Hold. Illidan first canvassed the Hold until he found a deactivated moon guard portal. He activated the portal, which gave him a constant source of power so long as he stayed close to it. He was also able to summon five soldiers to help him.

At the other end of the rampart was another figure well known to Illidan. The wizard Xalian Flelblaze opposed Illidan, denying him access to the deeper reaches of the Hold. They fought. And Illidan failed. It wasn't all his fault, though. Illidan is not given much to work with, just his staff. Other weapons he would have to earn. The entire scene is badly bugged, as are most of the elements of this scenario. Death by buggy code is the most deadly part.

After dying many times (which is pointed out annoyingly in cut scenes after each bloody massacre) Illidan starts to acquire some spells to combat Xalian, and after more failures Illidan finally kills Xalian.

Keya took break and came back to the scene of the crime later that day. Fortunately, Xalian had stayed dead. Illidan moved on to another rampart packed with bad guys stacked like sardines. Named mobs also met Illidan's staff, tough but not at Xalian's level of evil. Illidan gained a nasty weapon of his own, named Arcane Syphon, that literally syphons the life out of his merry men. Seriously ghoulish. For that grisly deed Illidan was granted Stormrage, aother spell specializing in blowing gobs of mobs into bloody pieces. That part was actually fun. And it mostly worked. Mostly. The slaughter gave Illidan time to locate a second portal, refresh his health, and order up a new set of five bodyguards.

This is where it turned really ugly. There seemed to be an endless stream of killer monsters to wade through, Illidan couldn't keep up, falling behind on his use of Stormrage, so his posse all died, and we all waited through another cut scene telling us we were all dead. Which we already knew.

From that point it became a gauntlet and a pel mel rush to reach the third portal where healing was possible. That frantic charge got a replay at least half a dozen times, each time trying something else to get Illidan close enough to attack Nilihan, a level 3 elite blob of green fel surrounded on all sides by it's minions. Illidan and his cohorts were all vomiting green in failure after failure. Finally, Illidan was able to launch Fury of the Cosmos, destroying the portal held open by Nilihan. At this point I wasn't sure if Nilihin was defeated in battle or if the monster was blown to bits when the portal was blown. Dead is dead, though.

Of course, there was still more. Filling the spot vacated by Nilihin is Balaadur, who makes all the rest of the monster museum look like toys. There were furious explosions. Illidan bolted through the last portal and jumped down into the arena. Illidan earned his last and best weapon, Collapsing Star, and Baaladur died on the first attempt.

Overall it took me three trips to Black Rock Hold and many hours of repeated attempts, but Keya ultimately finished the scenario. That victory got her to gear level i810.

Oh yea, then she went fishing.