I’ve done a few of the WotLK 5 man instances for the first time in the last couple of weeks. I can’t say I’ve paid particular attention to any of them, so don’t really have enough to say about each one to make them their own posts. However I thought I’d share a couple of screenshot’s and the odd comment, and condense a few instances into each post.

Azjol Nerub

Think Starship Troopers Meets Starcraft, this is basically an insectoid themed instance, with a pleasant, if slightly predictable (AQ anyone?) “royal” feel to it. Thinking about it, Starcraft and Starship Troopers are really rather similar in this area, I’m really not sure how crossing them is going to satisfy my description rather than either singularly. Anyway I digress…

We actually 5 manned this one, which has been slightly unusual for me on my journey to 80, as it’s usually been 4 of us. We were joined in this instance (oh the puns!) by an Oomkin, motley crew pictures below.

I can’t remember much about this instance specifically, other than I stupidly grabbed agro a few times whilst not paying attention, nearly got everyone killed, and generally paid more attention to the tv than anything else. The bosses included a bunch of AQ style arachnids, a giant spider (see pictures of its butt below, I’m a wonderful cameraman) and a blood elf that was quite angry at us for reasons I am not aware. See random screenshot’s below.

Or maybe I’ll just have one instance per post then… we’ll see…

Another day another dollar. Or another zone in this case. Borean Tundra can now be crossed off my list of zones. As I’m already lvl 75 it’s pretty obvious I will be hitting 80 before I get through most of the WotLK zones. Still, that gives me plenty of quests to do to try and earn money for my epic flying when I’m 80.

I’d been told Borean Tundra (BT) was much better than Howling Fjord (HF) for questing, and whilst I found HF to be pretty fun, I have to say I’d definitely agree. BT just seems to bring so much new to questing in the way of variety and novelty. Below are some examples of the highlights for me. In reality though, the vast majority of the quests were very enjoyable to do.

1. Parachuting into the mist - All the quests around this area of the map were fun, based around a bunch of naughty ghost pirates, or something similar. I felt like I was in an episode of Scooby Doo. I think the screenshot below might have been when I was ejecting from a siege tank or something, but it was cool anyway.

2. Warsong Hold - The conversation between the two Orc guys. I think the screenshot says it all, I was most ammused. Also the Risk style floor map kicks ass.

3. Pet Murlocs - Now let me set something straight here, I hate murlocs. I don’t mean your run of the mill hatred either, I’m talking deep seething eternal hatred, forever! As you can imagine, I was a little less than pleased when I realised I was doing quests for scaly gangly legged freaks, as certain people on my friend list at the time are well aware. However when I was tasked with rescuing a flock (I assume a group of murlocs is called a flock) of baby ones I couldn’t help but “aww”. For at least 2 seconds anyway, until I started trying to work out whether it was possible to kill them.

4. Murloc Costume - Again, a bit of a bittersweet thing for me here. The way I jumped/ran whilst in this costume, coupled with the little white flag I was waving made it bearable.

5. Dragon Related Antics - Riding around on dragons is always cool, and some of the views whilst doing so were awe inspiring. At least as far as a 4 (5?) year old video game can be awe inspiring. This particular quest ended in me fighting a massive blue dragon.

6. Donkey Escorts - I hate escort quests, but this was brilliant. Guiding a pack mule back to camp without losing it’s baggage. Sort of like that old buckaroo game you used to play as a kid, except with less sharp plastic parts.

7. Giant Robot Gnomes - Just brilliant. I got to kill it too. Robot Wars gone bad.

8. Starship Troopers - Giant weird tentacle alien worm crawler thingies. I don’t think I had any quest or reason to kill these guys, but after being screwed over by them in Silithus I just had to slaughter everyone one I saw.

9. Hilarious Minotaur guys - Everything from the pointy tusks to the shaggy blue fur just screams adorable. Warning: may trample you if you try to hug them. You don’t want to see what’s under that lion cloth. Speaking of which, all 4 legged animals have their private parts round the back, why is he wearing a loin cloth at the front!?!?

10. More Pretty Landscapes - Floating Necropolis type things, like with the whole scourge invasion event years ago. It’s nice to see one all snowy. As with HF this zone didn’t fail to impress with its scenery and landscapes, too much stuff to post here.

11. Winter Tripping - One of the quests involves you wearing some disguise so that you can sneak past the scourge. It turns the screen into this surreal inverted colours blue trip, which I’m sure reminds me of a film but I cant think which. Another example of Blizzard trying to do more than just make what you’re doing interesting, but to change what you’re seeing too. Maybe it’s just a bit of a gimmick, but hey, I’m shallow.

12. My New Best Friend - I used to love Dumbo when I was a kid, and escorting a baby mammoth around reminded me of it. He’s pink and everything! Even if it looks sort of like a disturbing old man…

13. Unlucky for some - Possibly unlucky for this full grown mammoth, who had the displeasure of me riding him around the Tundra. As far as I’m aware I didn’t have a quest for this, so I’m assuming anyone can just run up and mount these things before running around on them screaming like an excited child. If only I videoed my gaming sessions.

14. More Walrus Guys - I love ‘em, I seriously can’t get enough of them. I want a pet, one, I want to roll one, I want to marry one! Look how disgruntled he looks, prepared for battle, like he had a chance against the big naughty ghost pirates that were attacking them.

Ok, so that’s a pretty good selection of some of the highlights of BT. There’s seriously loads more I could pick out, but this post is big enough already. Onto Dragonblight!

I have no idea why, but whenever I see that word I think it must be a type of cheese. Probably not even very good cheese, a poor mans brie perhaps. Anyway, this post is not about cheese, but more a general update, and perhaps my musings on the cheese city itself.

Current level: 75
Spec: 51/15/0
Pwn rating: pwnalicious

Cut my life in to pieces, this is my {Last Resort}

So my Dark Knight Death Knight is currently 90% into 75, the levels are slowly ticking away. Upon dinging 74 I happened upon a quest to take me to Dalaran, awesome. I have to say I LOVE this city, just like pretty much everything else in WotLK so far. It’s like Blizzard finally pulled their collectives noses our of their arses after the abomination that was Shattarah (crappiest city ever) and decided to make a proper city. It has a flight point, portals to just about everywhere, banks, places to set your hearth, and locations for all professions. What makes this better though is that it’s all together. It feels like a city, you don’t have to ride for 30 seconds along empty pathway before you get to the place you need. The only thing it doesn’t have is an AH, but it seems Blizzard are keeping those to just the three main cities (neutral AH’s aside) so whatever.

Dalaran also looks beautiful. Its light, bright, has interesting architecture and flows nicely. I spent at least 20 mins just running round it checking out the sites. I’m sure I took loads of screenshots, but maybe I was too distracted to, as there’d none in the folder on my hard drive. Still, below there’s a couple of shots I did get. Also, there’s almost a mini city underground in  he sewers, I love it.

Onto DRK DK stuff…

Still loving blood spec, though I think I’m going to need to modify my existing spec soon. I need to get the points into Unholy to extend the lifetime of my diseases, as I seem to be spending a fair amount of time in instances at the moment. Having to reply apply them every 12 seconds can be a little tedious. I’m also tempted to try Unholy again. General consensus seems to be that the Unholy specs are the best for DPS (though I’m not sure how much there is in it) but I like Blood a lot, so I’m not sure right now.

Guillotine Rune Strike seems to be as powerful as ever. It currently critting for about 5,500, which is pretty nice on exp mobs with only 10,000 HP. Heart Strike is critting for about 3,800 I think, so I can pump out some pretty nice DPS at times.

Also: Gnome DK’s are cute…

I recently picked up Empower Rune Weapon which I’m yet to really find a good time to use. To be completely honest I’ve been using it before pulls or boss fights in order to make sure Horn of Winter is up so I don’t need to spend Runic Power on it at the start of a fight. I also got Dancing Rune Weapon back, which I had previously but then lost for a few levels as a re-distributed my talent points. It seems to have little practical use in solo fights, as I kill everything in 4 hits anyway, but when soloing Elites and 2 man quests it helps up my DPS a little. I’ve also been using it on large pulls and boss fights in instances too, when I want to pump out a little more damage and I don’t think its duration is going to be wasted. I think I read somewhere that it’s only useful if you use it at 100 Runic Power and get the full duration out of it, but I can’t say I’ve really tested it.

Lastly, how disturbing is THIS!?

Baby Tauren in a basket, DO NOT WANT!

What can I say about this instance, other than it’s a feast for the eyes…

har har… see what I did there? no? well, I said feast for the eyes and then posted a picture of me and my band of merry raiders having a feast. That’s what we in the business call humour, and I can assure you it was very funny. You should laugh now.

However, ironically, I can actually say some other things about this too, making my first sentence even more hilarious.

The place really is beautiful though. There’s all these glowy white trees, crystals, elaborate passageways, floating platforms, pretty much everything you might want from an instance. The mobs are a mixture of dragonkins, elementals, vortex’s and probably some other things. Oh, there’s people too, naughty people. I can’t say I enjoyed the stupid vortex’s too much, or the boss that spawns them. The other bosses were wicked-bad though. There’s one mage lady that sort of ping-pongs you back and forth on these magic leash type things. I especially enjoyed trying to spam abilities when bouncing back and forth to the ceiling. There’s also a dragon to kill, which requires you to constantly be in the move or you get a debuff. You also get flung back to the back of the room. In fact, maybe he flings you to the back of the room when you don’t keep moving, I really don’t pay enough attention to these things.

The final guy is a giant. I don’t recall the mechanics of his fight to be honest, but he looks awesome, in keeping with the rest of the instance. Overall I have to say I really liked this instance.

I’m still part-way through the quests in Borean Tundra, so you can expect a post on the zone itself soon enough.

Ah, the sight of my body lying lifeless on the floor. Surely this signifies my grand entrance to the world of WotLK instances, hold onto your hats folks.

I promised myself when installing WotLK that I’d try all the instances this time, probably not the raids, but at least the 5 mans. I started playing WoW again about 6 months after TBC was released, so I managed to rack up about a years worth of play in between then and now. In all that time, and with having 2 level 70s and a few in the 60s, I’ve probably done less than 50% of the TBC 5 man instances, and never a single heroic. This is not going to happen in Northrend.

So this past weekend a friend asks if I’d like to come do a few of the instances, we were all around 72-74 so I figured why not. We tried two; Utgarde Keep and the Nexus. This post will briefly address the former.

Utgarde keep we did a couple of times, with the last set-up being Death Knight (that’s me, DPS), Paladin (tank), Paladin (DPS) and Priest (healing). Having 4 people didn’t seem to put us at any significant disadvantage at all, though I suppose maybe the instance is made for 70-71 rather than 72-74. Either way, this was my first experience with Death Knight in a group environment.

I have to say, it all went very smoothly, at least once we all knew what we were supposed to be doing (or not doing in some peoples cases!) on the bosses. The instance is fairly short, has a decent mix of mobs, fairly interesting geography, and a couple of cool bosses. I got my first piece of loot too: Ingvar’s Monolithic Clever.

As far as DPS goes, I was quite pleased. According to my meter I found myself at the top of the meters each time (only just in some cases). Though I suppose with the party set-up and the current state of Death Knights, that doesn’t really say anything about my skills especially. Still, with my limited grouping experience in recent years I was happy to not let myself down at least.

All in all, we ran it a couple of times and it was good fun, then off we went to the Nexus!