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!