Brewfest is back up in classic, with the Cataclysm level 85 rewards now part of the mix, so when the group got online on Sunday the thought was that we might pay a visit to our old friend Coren Direbrew for a bit of gearing up. Gearing up, as I mentioned in the previous post this week, was on our agenda.
Camping the Horde trying to earn honor
So we got all grouped up and I went to the dungeon finder and selected Coren Direbrew, who is in there as his own entry and… got told that Ula needed a level.
Ula is not high enough level
Looking at the group comp, she was not yet level 85 and still had a good six chiclets, 30% of a level, to go. We were not going to get that done quickly.
The group this week
Everything I saw online said you should be able to queue for Coren at level 84, but the DF was saying 85 was the minimum, and it makes the rules. So we went to Plan B and decided to just GO TO Blackrock Depths, where the Grim Guzzler is located, to visit Coren Direbrew in person.
A couple of flew out to Blackrock Mountain, got to the summoning stone, then summoned the remainder, and then the group began the trot down to Blackrock Depths, a location we visited no fewer than a dozen times during vanilla.
Once we got in, we had to figure out how to get to the Grim Guzzler. There was a Dark Iron transport, a “screw house” in the vernacular of our group, which offered a couple of options which corresponded to the new, broken into nice bite sized adventures, that is the reality of BRD in the era of Cataclsym, neither of which got us where we needed to go. One was just past the Grim Guzzler, but the door was locked and nobody had the key, and the other was down a different path that wouldn’t help us. So we just went old school and ran to the bar.
And when we got there, no Coren Direbrew was there to be seen. I mean, the Tauren Chieften’s band kit was still there, the kegs were still there, we were in the right location within BRD, just not where Coren was.
Potshot remembered that last time around we got a little device that would summon a screw house and send us to Coren. I had one back in the bank, so UIa put up a portal to Ironforge so I could go get it, then there was a ritual of summoning by Liftkit to return me to the instance. I activated the control, a screw house appeared, and it deposited us about ten feet across the room.
Such a distance!
It seems that Coren now exists in his own instance than can only be reached via the Dungeon Finder and we were not going to get to him. His upgrades would have to wait.
So we said screw it and I queued us up for the Halls or Origination, which was the next instance on our Cataclysm list. Off we went.
Kids in the Hall!
Seven bosses! It was going to be an event! But at least the in-game dungeon guide gives you a scorecard so you can be sure to collect them all.
Today’s boss lineup
Into the instance the map only showed two bosses, so we were clearly going to be moving around.
The opening map of the instance
Fortunately, the path was pretty clear to the first boss. We struggled a little bit with the trash mob groups after two weeks away, but that was sufficient warm up to get us to Temple Guardian Anhuur.
Anhuur, the first boss on the list
The in-game guide was good enough to give us some useful tips on the fight mechanics… specifically, that twice during the fight Anhuur will put up a barrier that will make him invulnerable and to get past that somebody has to run downstairs and trip two switches before the fight can resume.
The switches, to left and right, marked by Potshot
There are some snakes down there… non-elite… that we tried to clear, but somebody thought about that dodge and they respawn quickly. Still, it seemed doable. Ula took one switch, Liftkit the other, and off we went.
And it seemed to work. When Anhuur is invulnerable he also doesn’t deal out much damage, so we had time. The fight went by quickly enough and soon it was one boss down.
Anhuur down in 2 minutes and 52 seconds
Among other things, the Deadly Boss Mods addon gives you a fight timer. I don’t know that we set any records, but I’ll record the times for posterity. As for drops, he had a nice mail item, and nobody in our group wears mail, so one for Ula to disenchant.
Past Anhuur we hit that big round room on the map, which is an elevator. However, it wasn’t letting us go anywhere, so we went to the left towards the Vault of Lights on the map where we ran into Bann Bronzebeard at the door to the area.
Oh, hey Brann… you going to open that for us?
He did oblige and open it and gave us a song and dance about getting to the door at the far side, which meant eliminating a mini boss in each of the four along the way, while fending off roving groups or quickly respawning troggs.
The troggs turned out to be, if not soap bubbles, then at least not really as elite as their designations otherwise indicated. And the mini bosses were not so bad either. On eliminating the last one the door at the far end opened and Anraphet stepped out, banished the troggs, and then waited for us to make out move.
Anraphet awaits
Having done well reading up on the first boss we got a little deep into trying to decipher how to do every fight going forward… though, in the end, save for an odd mechanic here and there, the solution tended to be “more DPS” to just finish things.
And so went Anraphet, who at least dropped something useful.
Modest breastplate upgrade for Fergorin
We then followed Brann into the room where… he didn’t do much.
So Brann… you brought us all here…
With no buttons to press or further dialog to deal with, we went back the way we came, back to the elevator. However, I looked at the boss list and it seemed like we skipped somebody. So we went down the hallway that kind of fades on the map and found Earthrager Ptah.
Ptah was waiting for us
There are some camels you can ride to get to him, however when you dismount them they die, which was a bit disturbing.
Ptah’s guide said that mid-fight he would summon some adds that we would need to defeat before the fight could resume… so we did. We managed to wrap him up in just under two minutes.
Ptah done in 1 minute and 59 seconds
Ptah did a nice staff that our two casters did a need-off to get.
Ptah’s parting gift
Ula won the roll and walked away with a shiny new staff.
That done it was back to the elevator which now offered us an option to go to the second floor, which offered us a selection of bosses.
Second floor, four ways
Now, if I had been paying close attention to the boss list in the guide we would have gone magic, life, destruction, then radiance. But we happened to be facing north so we went to the first boss we saw, Rajh the Construct of the Sun, which I guess applies to “radiance” but also it would be nice if they would use the same terminology across the board.
Anyway, him.
Welcome to the sun… or Radiance… or Rajh
He had several ominous sounding attacks and a whole portion of the fight where he would deliver unavoidable AOE but also take double damage and we were working out how to heal through it and making sure everybody had potions and such. And then the fight happened, he got to that part and I started just shouting “More DPS!” (DOTs being irrelevant) and then he was dead.
Rajh laid out before us
That also triggered the achievement for the instance because we did the last boss first.
Are we there yet?
That done, we went after the other three. Eschewing any order, we went for destruction next, facing Setesh.
Setesh has a nice style
The trash before him caused us to wipe. It turns out that they lay down gunk that heals them and damages you, so you need to kite them around. Instead I just sat there as we burned through all of Fergorin’s mana, all my cool downs, and whatever else we had before we were all dead. Ula, last alive, started to kite them and made some progress, which was the lightbulb moment.
Once revived and restored… that guild perk ress is very handy… Liftkit banished one of the trash mobs and I kited the other around and they were dead in about a minute. It helps to do the right thing.
Setesh himself had a whole routine where you can’t tank him, he just summons adds and you’re supposed to take them down, and crystals the DPS are supposed to stand in to boost their damage, and probably something else I am forgetting. It was all a distraction. We got deep into the fight and the adds were getting out of control and I called to just kill him while I tried to collect all the adds… and that did it.
Setech also dropped a nice healer mace for Fergorin.
Scepter for Fergorin
Two down.
Magic was up next, with Isiset. We had a bit of trouble with her trash too, but I managed to step out of the beam of death that was killing me before I caused another wipe.
Isiset and the house of magic
Isiset has a mechanic where twice during the fight she splits up into her three abilities the first time, and the ability you kill is removed from the fight while the other two get a buff. When that hit I chose the ability where she summons adds, which seemed like the best call. So no adds to worry about. I don’t even remember which ability I chose on the second round I was so happy to not deal with adds. And, we finished her off.
That left us with Ammunae, the construct of life.
Ammunae awaits us
Another fight with another gimmick, this time pods you needed to kill lest they become elite adds. More adds. Why does it always have to be adds? Anyway, we did Ammunae like the Tide pod challenge and that was that. We had finished it off
The group post instance
I later went back and looked at the blog post from our run at the instance back in 2014 and… we did almost exactly the same thing. We even wiped on the same trash mobs and did the last boss first. I guess we are predictable.
Done with the instance we asked Ula for a portal to Stormwind, so she wound up and… disappeared.
Ula now missing from the scene
Out of practice for a couple of weeks, she mixed up the left click, right click thing for portals versus teleports.
Liftkit then used the Dungeon Finder to leave the instance… and ended up back in Blackrock Depths which is where we were when we queued for the dungeon.
Fergorin, Kharageenan, and I decided to just hearthstone back to Dalaran… because of course our stones are still set there.
Time to hearth on out
That leaves us with just the Lost City of Tol’vir on the list of normal mode dungeons to complete. Of course, there is still Coren Direbrew. Ula should be 85 by the next time we get together.
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