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!