Blackfathom Deep, Part I

I’m at a level where I could look for a BFD or a Deadmines group, so lately, I’ve been entering the LFG for both. Deadmines groups are pretty much a dead end every time, because there just isn’t enough interest Horde side on killing Van Cleef. Maybe it’s because there aren’t any Horde quests for the dungeon and I’m on a relatively low population server, so there’s not enough alliance alt spillover — I don’t know. (This one might get crossed off the list for this project. We’ll see.)

I must have chosen an especially bad LFG time last weekend, because after about 2 hours in the LFG for BFD and Deadmines, the only bite I got was for SFK. I said no thanks, but mentioned the other two instances I’d be up for. The other person said, “I’ll do Deadmines.” My heart sank.

We waited. And waited. And waited. No other takers. After about two hours, we switched and queued for BFD. And waited and waited and waited. I called this one a wash, and logged onto one of my main toons for a few hours.

Later in the evening, I decided to give it a second shot. I logged in, peeked into the LFG, and saw a group of four looking for one more. Woooo! I messaged the leader and they invited me, and then I scrolled over everyone’s portraits. We had…

• Level 25 Blood Elf Hunter (no guild)
• Level 25 Undead Priest (no guild)
• Level 23 Tauren Shaman (in a guild)
• Level 36 Orc Warrior…

Level 36? Well, that would take the sport out of it, but I suppose this is the way of the pug. It’s not as though this person could just walk us through it like a 50 or 60 could, so I decided to just go with it. Some pugs offer you someone far too low for the instance, and occasionally, you get someone above the level range.

I was in Camp Taurajo upon joining the group, and asked if I should fly or whether they could summon me, as I noted that the hunter and priest were both in Zoram’Gar. “We’ll summon,” they said. I wandered around, sifted through my inbox, and rearranged my inventory for 10 minutes before I finally decided to hop a flight. After about 2 minutes in the air, they finally summoned me.

The hunter was very hoppy. He exhibited the behaviors I typically see in rogues with all the running back and forth, jumping around, and circling every person and structure available repeatedly. Both the priest and the shaman were much more subdued, and both held still while I conjured water for them. I basically had to chase the hunter down and throw it at him.

Clearly, we weren’t going to be able to summon the warrior, so I sat down by the stone to wait for him. He wasn’t all that far off, and gauging his location changes, I figured he must be in flight. When his location said Zoram’Gar, I stood up. “Gunna go have a smoke,” he said. I sat down again. The hunter suggested we go inside without him — the warrior could easily catch up. I stood up again. Onward!

We started blasting our way through the areas before the instance, picking up the Sapphires of Aku’Mai, and by the time we got to the entrance, the warrior had caught up with us. We headed inside…

The first thing that struck me when we started fighting was that my DPS seemed a bit low, even compared to the priest. I mean, sure, I was a few levels below everyone else, but compared to our healer? And then I noted that the priest was letting the tank’s health get very low. I supposed that could explain it. If the priest was more focused on DPS than healing… but, at level 36, half of that warrior’s health was probably equal to my entire health bar (or more), so maybe it wasn’t such a big deal. It did make me a little nervous though. When I’m the healer, I do my best to keep folks topped off, just in case we get jumped by patrols. I try not to overheal, but I stay on my toes.

Within 10 minutes of getting inside, we’d killed the first boss, Lady Sarevess. She dropped the Darkwater Talwar, and everyone but me rolled greed. The priest won the roll and then immediately disenchanted it! There was no discussion and no shard roll. Hrm. If I’d been able to use the sword, I probably would have been irritated by this. He continued to roll greed on all the blues, in fact, and shard each one that he won. To his credit, only rolled need when he would wear the item, but sharding the blues right in front of us with no offer of a roll for the shard… I think that kind of stinks. I always offer to disenchant BoPs that nobody can use so we can roll for the (often much more valuable) shard.  Something in my upbringing, I guess, and I somehow expect it of others. But, I digress…

You know that bit in BFD where you have to jump across the platforms? What, you say you don’t have to jump across them, you can just swim diagonally underneath to the next area and approach it from the side? Yeah, I’d no idea. I’ve run that dungeon dozens of times, and every time, I’ve stood on the first platform, made a cautious alignment of my toon, taken a few steps back for a good running start to make sure I don’t fall in a crack, and hold my breath as I leap to the other side. And repeat. It’s kind of sad to know all this is unnecessary. I was getting pretty good at it.

We’d been in the instance not fifteen minutes when the hunter said, “Gotta go shower.” What? “I’ll catch up,” he said. Heh… so, we totally left him behind. He caught up with us about 20 minutes later, and jumped right into battle. Very strange.

The bad news? The rest of the instance was truly uneventful, even when we were down one party member. With a tank 10+ levels above the instance level, there’s a lot more room for error, I guess. We even lit more than one candle at a time in the chamber before the final boss, and we still had no troubles. Ridiculous! Kelris dropped the Gaze Dreamer Pants, and I won the need roll against the priest for them. Yay for upgrades! Aku’Mai dropped Strike of the Hydra, which was a nice upgrade for the shaman.

The good news? I have to run BFD again, because as soon as you return the first set of quests, you’re sent right back to harvest the head of Lorgus Jett (who only drops cloth and cheese, it seems). So, there will be another BFD pug soon…

Total time spent in the group: 1 hour 27 minutes

Total time spent in the instance: 1 hour 3 minutes

Hunter shower duration: 18 minutes.

Shadowfang Keep

I always think of SFK as a higher level dungeon than it actually is. Before the 2.3 patch level adjustments, I remember someone inviting me to heal SFK as a level 22 priest, and I said, “I don’t think I’m high enough level, but thanks anyway.” They reassured me that 22 was plenty high, so I went, and of course I was fine. Since that patch, and I’ve been accidently exceeding the level recommendations for lots of instances, so I decided I’d better hustle and get my 22 mage into SFK there before she missed her LFG window. Curiously, all the quests were orange or red, but hey, it wasn’t like I was going to solo the thing, right?

I entered the LFG and a level 23 paladin (in a guild) invited me to join his group almost immediately. Sweet! I refreshed the LFG window, and noted another group of two had already appeared, a level 22 Blood Elf mage and a 22 Undead warlock (both from the same guild). The paladin seemed to be on top of things — within a few moments, our groups had merged. So, looked like we had plenty of DPS. I asked the paladin if he would be tanking or healing. “I tank.”

The paladin was in the area right next to the instance, but everyone else was scattered about. I was killing harpies in the northwest part of the Barrens, but since nobody else seemed to be heading to the stone, I decided to make my way there while we waited for a healer. I hoofed it back to the Crossroads and hopped a flight to to Orgrimmar. During all this time, the paladin didn’t seem to be making much of an effort to recruit a healer. He wasn’t posting in the LFG channel or anywhere else. Instead, he was busy linking us all the blue items he’d picked up in a previous SFK run. Ah, a budding Loot Linker. He informed us of other drops that could happen while we were in there, and lets us know which ones he would like. (Annoying as this was, he didn’t carry it to the next behavior that often accompanies this, the “If [this] drops, can I have it?” No, if that drops you can roll for it, kiddo.)

After about 10 minutes of waiting, the other mage said, “This isn’t working. Bye.” He left the group. Crap. I decided I’d better take recruiting into my own hands if we were going to get this run going. (I know, here I go interfering again…) I posted in the LFG that we needed 2 more, including a healer. Someone whispered me and asked if we cared about getting experience. They were a level 56 something or another. I said yes we were, but thanked them. “That’s cool,” they said, and added that they really loved SFK and were always looking for an opportunity to run through it.

A few minutes later, I advertised again, and got another whisper, this time from a level 40ish person who said they could bring in a level 22 warlock. I told them that would be great! “I know finding people for low level instances is rough these days,” they said. I don’t know that I necessarily agree, but what the heck. “Indeed,” I said. They switched characters and were added to our party.

Still no healer, so I took a more aggressive approach to finding one by messaging people who were questing in the area. (Cold invites? What is this project turning me into?! I’m going native… the horror…) “Sorry to bother you, but we’re looking for a healer for SFK. Would you be interested in joining us?” I asked a few priests in the level range and each turned me down. Questing with a friend, logging off soon… all the same reasons I usually give when my priest gets random invites. (Sometimes I do accept these invites, but when I really want to run an instance, I’ll put myself in the LFG.) I also started posting in the General channel. “LF1M for SFK, need healer please.”

“I’ll go,” whispered a level 28 paladin. Woo! 28 seemed a little high, but I really wanted to get the run going, so I asked the tank (who was still our leader) to invite him. “Hes 28,” said the tank. “That’s fine,” said the warlock. Good good. Turns out we couldn’t summon him because 28 was too high for the stone, but he was already in the area, so was able to join us shortly. Buffs were exchanged and away we went!

The tank was pretty much a charge in and start swinging kind of guy. No discussion, no marking. This was fine because we had plenty of DPS and people seemed to improvise pretty well, but for healers, SFK has a lot of line of sight issues. With all the multi-level rooms and winding stairs, just standing out of the fray means you’re not always in a good position to heal everyone. The healer was standing a bit far behind us at times, but when he did actually get a heal in, it was a big one, so it didn’t seem we were in danger. I hoped that after a few close calls, he’d come closer to the group.

We got to the bit where the guy unlocked the door for us, revealing a staircase leading down into a large courtyard filled with mobs. The tank charged down the stairs into the first group and we followed. I watched the tanks health get lower and lower and … I looked at the healer’s health, and it too was plummeting. I checked the map, and it turns out that the healer had gotten attacked before he managed to get through the door. Uh-oh. I don’t know if he hit patrols or whether he grabbed aggro off a group we skipped, but he was getting totally nailed by something back there. My inner priest felt completely helpless. “HEAL” said the tank. Well, that’s helpful.

I figured that just as long as one of paladins survived, they could resurrect the other, so I stayed and helped the tank finish off the mobs he was killing. He must have had a healing potion or healed himself, because he managed to survive, and we all ran up the stairs to help the healer. The healer survived, but just barely. The tank said, “Y NO HEAL????” The healer actually said nothing in his defense, so I spoke up. “He was getting attacked back here, and had no line of sight on you.” “Yep,” said the healer. The tank was not apologetic at all, and in my notes about the run at this point, I scrawled the word “obnoxious” in capital letters, but I forgot to take a screenshot of what was said next, so you can fill in the blank there.

After we were all healed and buffed again, we proceeded down the stairs together and took on a few more groups. We talked to the dude laying on the floor to complete the Deathstalkers in Shadowfang quest, and as we were waiting for folks to get their mana back, the healer disconnected. “WTF” said the tank. Frankly, I don’t blame the guy. He wasn’t getting any experience for the run. He was there just to help us out and the tank was a jerkface to him. “He just disconnected,” said the warlock. “Maybe he’ll come back.”

So, we waited. And waited. And we did all the things that groups usually do while they wait. We danced and told jokes. The Undead warlock flirted with me a bit, and I actually hadn’t heard most of those lines before, so I thought it was pretty amusing. (I’m better acquainted with the male Blood Elf flirts.) The warlock must have felt he was on a roll, because he decided to whip out (so to speak) this joke for us, which although possibly safe for where you work will be hidden behind a link here, because it is kind of inappropriate. Classy! As you can see, the tank thought it was pretty funny.

Five minutes went by, then five more. It was pretty clear that the healer wasn’t coming back. If the cat stepped on his power strip, he’d have come back by now. So, the leader removed him from the group and re-entered the LFG. (Oh great, everything sounds mildly dirty now. Thanks, warlock.) We ran out of the instance to the stone, so we could summon as soon as we got somebody. Again, I recruited aggressively, advertising in both the LFG and the general chat, and within five minutes or so, got us another healer, a level 18 priest. While we were buffing up, the warlock took the opportunity to repeat his joke from above, not once, but twice. Once was for the party, and the other was out loud for the other folks around the summoning stone. He must have a macro for that.

There weren’t any respawns yet, so we were able to run straight back to where we were before and continue. The new healer kept up with the tank pretty well, and the warlocks and I managed to keep ourselves out of aggro trouble. We handily squished Baron Silverlaine, who dropped the Baron’s Sceptor. After this, we ran up the stairs to get to the next area, but the healer stayed behind by the body for some reason. I thought maybe they were getting their mana back, so I asked folks to please wait for him. Of course the tank didn’t, but he was able to handle the one or two mobs he engaged. And then, we saw the healer’s health bar plummeting. Erm…

We ran down the stairs and killed the patrols standing by the priest’s corpse. “Awesome,” said the healer. “Use ss,” said the tank. “Wait, why don’t you resurrect him and save the soulstone for later?” I said. “Cant rez,” said our paladin tank. What??? Turns out he didn’t do the quest to get that skill, so he was going to have to wait another level to train it. Now that, to me, is just irresponsible. Good thing we had some warlocks with us.
We cleared the next hallway, and when we got to the end, the tank said, “u guys stay” while he went ahead to pull the mobs out for us. That was a nice surprise, given how he’d been charging in before, but knowing he’d been in the instance recently, maybe he had some sense of which parts were the most dangerous. He still got us totally jumped by Commander Springvale, however. It was a classic “ok, guys, coast is clear!” followed by “Raaar!” as the Commander attacked us. Our mana pools weren’t full, but thankfully we had plenty of DPS to take him down. He dropped the Night Watch Shortsword, which one of the warlocks won in a greed roll. I’m sure that will come in handy.

At this point, the tank started giving us frequent updates on how close he was to leveling. Maybe it was the reminder of how close he was to getting that resurrection skill that made him notice his XP bar, I don’t know. Or maybe he thought we’d think the countdown was exciting? “3000 more xp til 24.” “2000 til 24.” “1000 til 24.” One of the warlocks finally said, “Is this your first character?” “Yes,” said the tank. Ah-ha. “500 more,” he said. “200 more until ding!” And then…

Hee hee hee.

Odo dropped the Girdle of the Blindwatcher, which was kind of disappointing. (I’ve seen him drop his Ley Staff almost every time, and think it’s nice to see the priest of the party walk away with it for their troubles.) We got the rare spawn Deathsworn Captain, which was pretty cool because I’d never had a chance to kill him before. The tank immediately linked the Captain’s loot for us: “He drops [Haunting Blade].” Sure enough, that’s what he dropped. “See,” said the tank.

Fenrus the Devourer dropped his hide for us, which I won on a greed roll. I’d passed on every other BoP roll, and since I could potentially use this, I rolled. I should have taken an extra second to look at it though, since it turns out I really didn’t need it. (I got the Feyscale Cloak in Wailing Caverns, and like that better for my mageness.) I felt so bad about this ninja-esque maneuver that I equipped the new cloak for the rest of the run.

Finally, Archmage Arugal. We killed the stuff down on the floor below him, and then the tank arranged us all at the top of the stairs by the entrance and asked us to stay there during the fight. He ran up the stairs across the room, initiated the battle, and the DPS swiftly dropped Arugal to the floor. He only had a chance to port across the room once before he died. I was really hoping for his robes to drop with so many clothies on the run, but he dropped the next best thing for us, his belt. The warlocks, priest, and I rolled need, and I won the roll. Huzzah!

So, three instances down, and how many to go? I don’t think I’ll be able to get to Stormwind Stockade, but if I include Deadmines and Gnomeregan, it looks like I have 37 left!

Total time spent in the group:  1 hour 15 minutes

Total time spent in the instance: 1 hour 10 minutes

Wipes: 0

Factlet: I ran into the Warrior from the second RFC run when I was in the Undercity after this run, and he was level 49. Wow! I guess that was back in December, and this character isn’t exactly my main focus, but still… time to pick up the pace.

Wailing Caverns

…or, how I ushered in the New Year.

Around 2pm on New Year’s Day, I joined the LFG channel to look for a Wailing Caverns pug, and noted a group of two looking for more. The leader was a druid (level 16, in a guild) and he’d recruited a Troll hunter (18, guild). Sounded like a pretty good start, so I messaged the druid and asked if he’d like a mage along for the ride. He invited me, and within ten minutes or so, we became a group of 4, as another Troll hunter (16, no guild) joined us. I was immediately suspicious of the new hunter, as his name was a pair of words, one of them a misspelled hunter skill. This could be interesting. I wandered around the Oasis just south of the instance and hassled the centaurs. At 2:30, a level 23 priest (guild) joined us, and with the group ready to go, I headed to the summoning stone.

The druid joined me at the stone and we summoned everyone. Both hunters immediately ran off to get quests. I explained a few times that if they needed the ones above the instance, I could share them, but they ran off anyway.

2:47. Finally, everyone arrived inside the instance. I still ended up sharing quests with those folks that ran off, so I’ve no idea where they went.

2:52. Wipe. Yeah, already. Sheesh. We got to that first doorway where you choose left, right, or down the ramp, and we pulled every mob in the whole room somehow. Ok, that’s an exaggeration, but that’s what it looked like from my point of view. I was all the way in the back, and all I saw was a whole load of raptors run in and stomp everyone’s face into the ground. As we were doing our corpse run, the priest offered to start pulling for us since running in blindly wasn’t working so hot. (I also noted at this point that all did the corpse run except the 16 hunter, who stayed behind and waited for resurrection.)

No pulling happened, but the group did proceed more cautiously. We successfully cleared the raptors from around the doorway, and started around the ridge, killing druids and more raptors. We didn’t even have a full side cleared before the level 18 hunter said he had to leave and logged off. Grr. The priest took the lead, and back into the LFG we went. Within a few minutes, the druid logged off, too. There went our tank!

At this point the level 16 hunter started wandering and acting around like an ass, and went down in the area below the ridge, where the water is. Someone asked what he was doing, and he said he was “claring the area.” He was just killing the alligators (not elite), so I guessed he couldn’t get into too much trouble. Then he said, “well heal my pet.” I don’t know why, but the priest actually went down there. Either say please or heal your own damn pet. (Or sit still.)

I thought we were going to have a long wait ahead, but within five or ten minutes our party was full again. We added a Troll priest and a Tauren Warrior (both level 20). I ran out to help summon them.

By 3:30, everyone was summoned and back inside. We started clearing to the left of the place where we wiped. The idiotic hunter pulled aggro and died during a fairly simple pull, while the rest of us finished the fight in no personal danger. Idiot Hunter complained about it nonstop for the next few minutes, even though the priest apologized for not being able to heal him quickly enough (because he was healing the tank and the hunter was not in his line of sight). The priest was able to resurrect him immediately after the fight, so I don’t see what the big deal was. The complaints were like this (direct quote): “r preist ND I STILL DIED.” “I HVE ALT PREIST ITS NOT HARD.” The priest just said, “w/e.” Nice.

Somewhere in here, we had a bad raptor pull and got a ton of mobs on us plus Lady Anacondra. It is somewhat miraculous we didn’t wipe, given that she was pulled by accident when some of the raptors we were fighting shrieked and called the ones next to her. She dropped the Belt of the Fang, and being the only leather wearer, the Idiot Hunter won it.

The Idiot Hunter continued to annoy in other ways as well. When someone in the party died, he laughed at them, if someone went afk, he mooned them. He started mooning the mobs in fights as well. Very charming. For posterity (har har?) I started logging the number of times he dropped his virtual pants, but it ended up being less than five. Guess he got bored because nobody was acknowledging it.

After the first boss, leadership was passed to the new tank so he could mark mobs as the pulls got bigger. He did start marking the pulls, though sometimes he marked the first kill a bit too far back, so we ended up pulling stuff we didn’t need to. Still, I always appreciate the marks to help focus fire. It meant that some of my sheep were actually remaining sheep, too!

Around 4pm, the level 20 priest (the newer arrival to the party) disconnected. Doh! We entered the LFG yet again, but decided to continue a bit since we’d started doing pretty well.

The healer had been doing great at managing his aggro so we got used to not having to protect him much. Unfortunately, he unexpectedly got squished during a fight, and we all missed the chance to help him, I guess. I didn’t even notice what happened — wasn’t that big of a pull. Turns out he got a crit or two, lagged, and after the slide show of all our casting animations was over, he found that he was dead. Ouch! The rest of us survived, but nobody else had resurrection capabilities, so we all had to wait while he ran. He peeked into the LFG while running, and noted a warlock looking for a group, so we invited them and I agreed to come out and help him summon. By 4:30, our group was again complete, now with a level 20ish warlock.

Our new group of five made short work of Cobrahn. I noted that the warlock seemed to be meshing well with the party, and seemed to know how to play her class pretty well. She was doing massive amounts of damage, but not distracting the mobs from the tank too much. She was also a warlock of few words. Few letters even. She only said things like, “Srry. Nvm. ?. Hs.” K.

Cobrahn, of course, dropped another leather item, the Leggings of the Fang. Gah. Another blue for the Idiot Hunter. Again, we all passed and let him have it. And then he complained because he couldn’t wear it yet. He kept saying, “I NEED LVL 19.” Yeah, we heard you. Shut. Up. We all want to level, right? Oh, sorry, you need to level. Sheesh.

By 10 after 5, Pythas was dead. You’ll never guess what he dropped! Yes, that’s right. Oh, the pain!

In working our way toward the last of the Leaders of the Fang, we came to a room at the end of a corridor that took a turn and went up a hill into another corridor. There were mobs low, high, and patrolling along the slope. The tank again marked a mob that probably wouldn’t have been pulled if he’d chosen a closer one, but I crossed my fingers and hoped for the best. Instead, all hell broke loose. In addition to the extra mobs drawn, we got hit by patrolling slimes from two directions, plus the druids near the top of the room were engaged when someone took a few steps too many up the hill. Everyone fought as best they could. The warrior, priest, and Idiot Hunter were picked off one by one, leaving just me and the warlock plus three mobs to kill. She was focused on one, and I was focused on the other two, killing one and sheeping the other. It definitely would have been best to focus our efforts at this point, but there was no time for communication, and my instinct was to keep juggling the two, given how much aggro I had with each. I decided once I killed the one, I’d continue to keep the other sheeped and help her kill hers. Unfortunately, after I killed the one, the other resisted my polymorph, turned into a serpent, and ran over to eat my face. The warlock downed her mob and came over to help, but I just didn’t have the hit points to survive. Squish! The warlock killed the mob right next to my dead body. Whew.

I was bummed I didn’t survive, though it ended up not mattering because 1) neither the warlock nor I could resurrect anyone, and 2) sufficient stuff had respawned in the front of the instance by this time that the folks who had to do the corpse run really needed as much help as they could get, lest this turn into another treadmillia pug. I met the priest and the Idiot Hunter in the front of the instance and we ran in together. The warlock stayed back at the site of our slaughter and the tank never released his spirit this time. Huh.

So, the priest, the Idiot Hunter, and I re-entered the instance to try to get back to the warlock.  There were loads of raptors around in the front halls again, and the Idiot Hunter had the bright idea that if his pet could just tank them all, we could run right by. The priest bubbled us all and we ran, but …

Corpse run.

It was about 5:30 by the time we were back inside again, battling through the raptors and slime in the front hall of the instance. It was taking quite a while for the three of us to kill stuff because it was hard for any one person to hold aggro and nobody was really sturdy enough to withstand that much damage. I tried to work as though the hunter’s pet was our tank, but then the hunter would pull aggro, and … yeah, it was a bit of a mess. The Idiot Hunter then said, “sory g2g.”

The priest noticed that the nice hunter that was originally in our group many hours before was back in the LFG for Wailling Caverns! Yesss! The priest and I went out and summoned him, and back into the instance we went to deal with the respawns.

The warlock began making comments about being bored while waiting for us. “Well, get your ass over here and help!” I said aloud to my monitor. She must have heard me because she said, “Coming now.” I hoped the tank would come, too, but he must have been afk for all this conversation. The warlock died within minutes of trying to rejoin us, so that sped things up a bit. Then the tank then reappeared and asked where everybody was. When we told him, he said that if the whole instance had respawned, he wasn’t going to have time to do it again. Yeah, no kiddin’, buddy. I said that it probably wasn’t the whole thing, and we’d catch up much faster with five if he could join us, so he finally released and ran…

At 10 ’til 6, finally, the band was back together! There was lots of cheering when we reunited. We steamrolled the remaining raptors blocking our progress and got back to the area where we wiped. Hurrah!

Everything went very smoothly after this (and no, I am not just being lazy about the write-up — it really did!). By 6:20, Skum was dead. Serpentis bought the farm at 6:30 (and I won the roll for the Serpent Gloves), and by 6:38 we were starting the escort quest. We killed the giant murloc and finished off the instance and said our goodbyes at 6:53. WHEW. The only one in the party that died during the final battle? Me! Bah!

This one was an ordeal. Thankfully, I completed all the quests, so I won’t have to go back in there again any time soon!

Total time spent in the group (once we had 5 members): 4 hours, 23 minutes

Total time spent in the instance: 4 hours, 8 minutes

Wipes: 3

Other novelties: A total of 8 different players shuffled through during this one!

Ragefire Chasm (Take 2)

“LF2M for RFC, have tank.”

I sent a message to the person saying that I’d like to join them, and they invited me to the group. It consisted of…

• Level 13 Troll Mage (leader)
• Level 19 Tauren Warrior (guild)
• Level 16 Troll Mage
• Level 14 Undead Mage (me)

I ran down and met the other two mages by the summoning stone, and started to summon the warrior. “He’s close,” the leader said. Glancing at my minimap, I saw the warrior running down one of the ramps into the Cleft of Shadows. “I never noticed those stones,” the leader added. “That’s neat.” The Tauren arrived and said, “they’re by every instance.” Indeed. This gave me the impression the leader might be pretty new to all this.

The leader advertised a few times for a healer while we all buffed each other, took bio breaks, and got settled. When we were all ready, the leader suggested that we go ahead and kill some stuff in the front of the instance while we waited for a healer. Three mages and a warrior — sounded like fun to me!

As you can imagine, we had ample DPS. The warrior did a pretty good job of holding aggro despite all the fireballs being lobbed. The level 16 mage drew it a few times with some massive opening attacks (the level 13 mage seemed to be delaying his first strike to let the tank get a few hits in, as I was), and I got a little worried about the frost novas that he was tossing out whenever he got attacked. When we approached the first set of mobs where we’d definitely be pulling groups, I made sure I knew exactly where my potion and bandage hotkeys were, fearing it could get ugly any second, particularly without a healer. Then, to my surprise:

“Kill order is skull, star, circle, then diamond. Please sheep the star, circle, and diamond only if they’re pulled,” and then there were instructions about which symbol matched each mage. WOOHOOOOO!

This is where the fun really began, and let me tell you… everything went pretty much as you would hope. Fire was focused on the tank’s target. A few sheep were accidently hit but then quickly sheeped again. There were no panicked frost novas, and a few resists on the second and third rounds of sheeping meant that the tank took a few extra hits, but everybody did a really great job in following the leader’s instructions. Sometimes, if it was unclear what we were going to pull, the leader marked things slightly differently and we’d toss up a test sheep to see what would come to us.

This is what I really love about doing instances. You have a limited set of resources based on the classes and specs of those in the party. The pulls are like puzzles where you need to determine what will be most efficient (or least damaging!) for your party, and then execute the plan. In this case, for example, we had no healer but lots of crowd control. The strategy was to polymorph as many mobs as possible on each pull. We used small waits between breaking the sheep to take turns bandaging the tank. Teamwork!

It was going great, but the tank expressed some doubt about our being able to take on the bosses without him getting killed. The leader advertised again in the LFG channel, but kept saying, “already have uber group… looking for healer.” They said it over and over the same way. “Already have uber group” was making it sound like we didn’t need any help, frankly, but I didn’t say anything. I was having fun.

We got to the first boss, Oggleflint. The leader expressed some hesitation and suggested that we wait for a healer. “I think we can do it,” I said. There were just two mobs aside from the boss, and we’d taken on bigger pulls earlier. From recent experience, I also knew that you could pull the mobs in front and the boss would stay behind, but I stayed quiet when the leader marked Oggleflint with a skull. No matter — we killed Oggleflint pretty handily, and then squished the other two mobs one by one. No problem. The leader updated the LFG with the progress of our uber group.

It was pretty clear to everyone how well we were doing, and there was a lot of cheering and encouraging comments all around. We did have to stop and eat and drink quite often, but we went on to kill Taragaman, Jergosh, and Bazzalan, all without a single death. Someone commented that it would be fun to create a guild that was all mages, “and a warrior,” our tank added. Heh… At the end, we all ran out of the instance together, exchanged more congratulations and thank yous (and I even got hugged a few times), and a few noted that all were being added to their friends lists. Nice.

I whispered to the leader and told him what a great job he did leading the group. “About a year ago I led raids,” he said. Oh! After he started marking mobs, I had tossed out the idea that he was new, but … I now remember hearing on a WoW Insider podcast a while back that the summoning stones didn’t always function like they do now (they were just meeting stones, and weren’t useful in any way, really), so maybe this was someone who’d been away from the game for a long time and was coming back to it. That could be why he was surprised we could summon folks.

Another thing I noted that was kind of amusing — the leader kept referring to me as a “he.” I suppose with the undead sizes/statures, it isn’t all that easy to tell the males from the females, and my mage does have a short sticky-uppy hairdo. It didn’t bother me, but given that I chose this appearance to ward off flirtations, I think it’s funny that in this case, it resulted in gender confusion.

Now that was a good pug!

Total time spent in the group: 1 hour, 40 minutes

Total time spent in the instance:  1 hour, 30 minutes

Ragefire Chasm (Take 1)

I finished collecting all the RFC quests last night, including Hidden Enemies, which requires collecting a Lieutenant’s Insignia from the Burning Blade cultists in the cave east of Orgrimmar. The drop rate is terrible, so I always save this one for last, and ordinarily I’m so far above the level of the cultists that I don’t get any experience for the kills. I was getting a little bit of experience this time, so of course the Insignia dropped on the sixth cultist I killed. Heh… so, I made my way back to Orgrimmar to turn in the quest and hop in the LFG channel.

There were two groups in LFG looking for more, one with three people and one with four, and then a handful of other people waiting separately. I started clearing out my inventory to get ready to go, when one of the group leaders invited me to their group. I accepted, and said hello to the group, which consisted of…

• Level 17 Undead Warlock (guild) — leader
• Level 18 Troll Shaman (guild)
• Level 15 Blood Elf Paladin
• Level 18 Blood Elf Priest
• Level 13 Undead Mage (me!)

They were all already in Orgrimmar, and offered to summon me before realizing I was in Orgrimmar, too. I said I could be there in a minute, but it would be quicker if they summoned me. “We’ll meet you inside,” one of them said, so I ran. I didn’t see anyone taking any damage, so I figured they were waiting for me to get started.

I ran down into the Cleft of Shadow and joined them inside the instance. After the greetings, I offered everyone conjured food and water, and just one person, the shaman, accepted some water. The average level of the party was pretty high for the instance, so we could probably make quick work of it without stopping for food and drink.

We ran down the first path in the instance, and … no mobs. Hm. We got all the way to the first place where the path forks and hadn’t killed a thing. I asked if they’d already finished part of the instance, and was feeling rather disappointed because it was pretty clear that they had and … you know, I wanted to blog about the whole thing, and really didn’t want to have to do this instance twice if I could help it. Nobody answered the question. I guess it wasn’t a huge deal as long as they hadn’t killed any bosses yet. A few minutes later, I tried asking again in case folks had missed my query. Nothing.

And then we came to the dead body of Taragaman the Hungerer. Dammit. I pointed to the corpse. “Already killed a boss, eh?” “Yes,” someone finally said. I asked how much further they’d gotten, and … no answer.

So, at this point, I’ll add to my list of instance etiquette — if you are inviting someone mid-instance, it’s a nice thing to tell them how far you’ve already gotten to make sure they still want to join you. I know some instances need multiple run throughs because of quests and such, but RFC isn’t one of these. One really should be able to do it in one shot. I asked several times here what the status of the instance was, and I was getting nothing. If they had told me, I may have joined them anyway and helped them, but it’s annoying to think that I may have been able to join the other partial group and actually get the whole thing done instead.

We made our way toward Jergosh over all the little bridges, and finally came to some groups of cultists. There were a lot of skeletons on the ground. “This is where we wiped,” the shaman said. At last, an answer! I waited for a moment to see if any strategy would be discussed, but there was none. The warlock pulled a mob, and everyone else ran in in Ghostbusters fashion. “Get her!”

I sheeped a caster that was standing off to the side, and the paladin ran over and hit the sheep almost immediately. Oh-kay. So, I just tried to focus fire on whatever the shaman was hitting, because he seemed to be doing the most damage. We survived the fight, and continued along up the path. Every pull seemed to go the same way, just charge right in. For this instance, that’s fine, I guess, though it’s not really teaching anyone technique. I was pleased that I managed not to steal aggro at all. (Nobody else appeared to be running Omen.) Of course I wasn’t doing nearly the damage that everyone else was doing, but I still could have drawn aggro had I targeted the wrong mobs. Thinking back to my first RFC runs, I’m sure I did that. Understanding the concepts of aggro and threat are key to clothie survival in group situations.

We approached the area adjacent to where Jergosh is, and someone said, “Why way?” “Left,” said the warlock, and led us up the path away from the boss. Hmm… going to get him later? I decided to just wait and see what happened. We ended up at a dead end, and all stood around for about a minute before someone said, “Are we done?” Oh lord. “We missed boss,” someone said, and started running back toward the area we’d passed up before. Good good.

Knowing that they’d previously wiped, I got a little worried as we approached Jergosh, but we ended up doing fine. We didn’t pull too many mobs at once, and Jergosh was downed with little drama. He dropped the Robe of Evocation, and the warlock rolled need. So, I rolled need as well, and the warlock won. That’s cool. Someone else looted a corpse, and a green cape turned up — all rolled greed except the warlock who rolled need again. Would have been an upgrade for me, too, but no big deal. (I’d probably see it again on my next RFC run anyway, right?)

But then the need rolling continued. The warlock rolled need on a bow. Wha? Now this is a situation where I normally wouldn’t stir up trouble unless it was something I really, really wanted, but I couldn’t help it. “Need that, eh?” I said, adding a smiley. The shaman said, “What do you mean?” and then a few seconds later, “Oh.” All eyes on the ninja. But, no other comments. The warlock didn’t address my comment directly, but did pass on a few of the other greens that dropped after that, but then rolled need again on a mace. They seemed to either roll need or pass, and never greed. Huh. Maybe they were just clueless. (Or, that’s what they’d have me think.)

I led the group to Bazzalan (I know, I said I wasn’t going to lead or interfere, but he is a little hard to find the first time you go into RFC) and we killed him. Curiously, he didn’t drop any blue items, but I see now looking at thottbot that there are no blues associated with him. (Kind of disappointing.) “Is that all?” someone said. Earlier, I saw the yellow question mark on the map for the satchel quest, so I knew that hadn’t been done yet. I mentioned the quest and the shaman said, “I need that, too.” The priest said, “Oh good! I’m glad there’s more.” The paladin said, “sry gtg” and hearthed out. The warlock said nothing.

We headed toward the beginning of the instance and the path leading up to the lost satchel and Oggleflint and all his trogg friends. I lingered way in the back. We were down one person, and I could totally see someone pulling more than one group of these guys and wiping us. We did have a bad pull, but the priest managed to keep all of us alive. After that, killing the troggs surrounding the body with the satchel was pretty easy, and when everyone went into the cave to complete the quest, they were such a high level they didn’t even grab aggro on Oggleflint! Of course I walked in there (now level 14) and battle commenced. Again, one mob, no problem. We crushed him. We all completed the quest. The warlock said she had to leave (inventory was probably full?), and hearthed out. I said that there was nothing left to do in there anyhow, and that I’d be running back to the beginning of the instance if anyone wanted to join me. The shaman and the priest followed me out. We said our thank yous and goodbyes and I left the party to turn in the Orgrimmar quests that I could.

I confess I am a little disappointed that I can’t press forward and ready myself for Wailing Caverns, but I would like a complete run of Ragefire to be on record for this project. (I still have two quests to complete, too, since I need Taragaman’s heart and a few more troggs.) So, next chance I get (hopefully before vacation), I’ll pop myself back in the LFG and try to get a group together to do Ragefire Chasm again, this time in its entirety.

Total time spent in the group: 45 minutes.

Total time spent inside the instance: 42 minutes.

Almost time to begin

My fire mage is almost ready to look for her first pug. She’s at 11 now, and has left her humble home in Brill to start picking up the Ragefire Chasm quests around Kalimdor. In the next day or so, she’ll make the long walk to Thunder Bluff to get the last of them, and enter the LFG.

If I had to sum up the experience of leveling her so far in just one word, the word would be “quiet.” There were only about 10 or so other people in Deathknell when I started her. (When I created my most recent Blood Elf, there were more than 20 others around.) I appeared about the same time as a few other folks, so it was kind of fun to run around together, casting our baby buffs on one another. I didn’t group with anyone (no point at that point), but a few of us did end up watching each others’ backs in the cave with the spiders. (Taking on more than one of those bugs when all you’re wearing is a frayed robe can make for a close fight.) I pondered the names people had chosen, and wondered about the futures of the characters. Some had the words “heal,” “tank,” and “melt” in them, so clearly the player had a path in mind for them. For the record, mine does not have “pug” as a syllable.

I had chosen the scary black-strappy-things-across-the-face look because I hadn’t seen them on many of the Forsaken that I’d grouped with before. Most players seemed to choose the slightly more attractive looking faces. Looking around at the other players just starting out, it seemed like more than half of them, male and female, had chosen the same feature! But maybe it always seems like that. Like when you decide you’re going to start a shaman, for example, because there don’t seem to be many shamans in your guild/server, but then everyone in your starting area is also a shaman.

Anyway, it’s been so quiet, I’ve actually found myself getting a little lonely and looking for interaction. I’m on an RP server, but I usually mind my own business and don’t strike up conversations with others unless they start talking with me first. Without guild conversation to keep me company, I’ve found myself emoting more when encountering other players. I cackle wildly as I run through the town, I bow to the higher level characters on the zeppelins, and sometimes I even salute the NPCs after I accept a quest. I also bought a pet cockroach from the guy under the stairs in the Undercity. *Looks around self-consciously*

I’m sure I’ll have plenty of company once I start looking for groups, as I will be in the General, Trade, and Local Defense channels again. I don’t particularly enjoy the thought of this. I can’t stand the chatter there, so for all my other characters, I’ve left those channels as soon as possible, and relied solely on the official LFG channel for finding pugs. I know some view LFG as a n00btastic approach to finding a group, but I view the ability to use it as a sign of at least a minimal amount of intelligence. I hear that it’s sometimes much faster getting a group in those other channels, since that’s how it was apparently done before LFG, so I’ll just have to tough it out.

Next post: Ragefire Chasm!

The Year of the PuG

I’ve noticed that in writing in my main WoW blog, the entries I enjoy putting together the most are the ones about the pick-up groups I run instances with. Sure, a lot of it is complaining and venting, but every now and again the group really comes together and works well all the way through an instance, and it’s very rewarding. I think the dynamics of pick-up groups are interesting, and when I’m not so hell-bent on the getting the particular tasks out of my quest log, I like observing how people interact with each other. I often re-run instances with different groups, just to see how things go.

So, I’ve been thinking that a fun writing project independent of my main blog would be to pug my way through as much of WoW as I can over the next year. I’ll become a regular in LFG, and even stick it out in the other chat channels to help myself find groups. I’ll be staying horde side for this experiment, of course. Also…

- I’ve created a new alt for the project and have not connected them to my guild. If anyone asks if I have an alt, for the time being I’m going to say no, that this is my main. Being associated with a guild means that you represent the guild, and so I often hold back in these group situations (especially when someone does something ridiculous). I also want to resist the temptation to run instances with guild folks also starting new alts. I want to fly totally solo for this experiment.

- I’ve chosen a DPS role so that I can pay more attention to what happens during the run. I’m not much into tanking, and I’ve noticed that when I’m the healer, 90% of the time, I’m just watching the health bars of those in the party. I’ll be a fire mage, stand in the back by the healer, and blast things.

- I opted for a race other than Blood Elf to minimize the “u r hawt” crap. I decided to go with a rather disturbing looking Forsaken. The skin on her face is pulled back to bare her teeth and gums in a grisly smile, she has straps across her face to hold her skull together, and she has a really wicked case of bedhead. I think she looks awesome.

- I don’t plan to take on a leadership role in any of the groups. Instead, I’ll see how leadership emerges amongst the other four, and keep my suggestions to a minimum. (If I know a good strategy to get us through a fight though, I won’t withhold it.)

- I won’t focus my play time on this character. This is a side project, and really meant as a writing project as much as another fun thing to do in WoW. I’m thinking I’ll run no more than one or two instances a week at first, and it will probably be more time in between later, as I’ll have to level more and gather more quests. Even so, a year should be more than enough time, I think.

In this blog, I’ll also be tallying:

- Total # instances run.

- Total # wipes.

- Total time spent with each pug.

- Total time spent with each pug actually inside the instance (my prediction is that it will be about half the previous number in the beginning of the project)

- Anything else I think of before I enter Ragefire Chasm.

For each group, for my personal notes, I’ll probably keep track of the names of the other folks in the group, but for the blog, I’ll just note the classes that participated. (I’ll need this for the narrative anyway.) If there are particular things that you think would be interesting to note, I’m open to suggestions.

So! The scary little fire mage has been created, and she is currently lurking around Tirisfal Glades. She’s level 7 now, and as soon as she gets to 13-14, she will start collecting the RFC quests, and begin this journey.