Last time around we jumped into Maraudon without much forethought, choosing to take the experience in as fresh a way as we could. That led to us taking a somewhat less than optimal route, as we had to double back after clearing the purple side to get a critical question from the orange side.
(Note to self: You can’t be OP is you don’t do orange before purple.)
For our follow up trip we were going to be more direct. Our group for the run was:
- Moronae – level 51 night elf druid
- Viniki – level 51 gnome warrior
- Skronk – level 51 dwarf priest
- Ula – level 50 gnome mage
We had a distinct series of tasks to accomplish, which started with some quest turn-ins on our way there. We met up in Theramore to turn in a quest, then flew out to Nijel’s Point in Desolace and got another turn-in done along the way to the instance. Then it was through the big doors to get started.
In we go
The next item on our list was Magra, the Third Khan, who held the final jewel we needed for another quest. That meant going down the orange side of the entry area, as he hangs out in a side tunnel, up some stairs from the instance line over there.
Orange, this way…
It took a bit to find him. The color/texture/lighting inside that area really messes with my ability to resolve the 2D image into a 3D environment in places, so we ended up taking a rather round about way to him because I was sure the direct route was a dead end. Instead, it was just a sharp turn in the cave, which I discovered when we came back that way. But we got him.
Then it was over to the purple side of things again, where we fought our way through to Lord Vyletongue. He was all we really needed from the purple side.
This time around we pulled the guards outside of his lair first, then took him and the interior pair second, making the fight much more manageable. He had the second item for the Celebras quest. After that we just needed to get back to him. The purple side of the instance does allow you to bypass some mobs, though we did have a mishap with the toxic bubbles. After last week we knew to kite them as their AOE attack was hard on the melee. Ula, who was trying to get in one last spell before pulling back sat too long in range and ended up being our first casualty of the run.
Mage down! Mage down!
It was about time to redo buffs anyway, so we rested a bit, then moved on. Along the way we did get one of the better named drops of the run.
Imposing!
They came off a treant, so I guess he had a monkey living in his branches at some point.
Once out of the purple side and into the center of the instance, we found we could bypass quite a bit of the trash by jumping off into the brackish water and slaying the few mobs that wandered there. We didn’t need any more drops of quest updates.
That brought us to Celebras again. We fought him and his mininions and bested them, and this time Celebras had a quest turn-in for us and offered to teach us about the stone of something or other.
Celebras the instructor
That was a bit more of listen, turn-in, listen, watch, and so on. We got out of sync, but once somebody is finished Celebras is willing to run the whole routine again for anybody who was left out.
Celebras and Ula
So we ended up with the Scepter of Celebras, which those of us who were just clicking through and not reading the quest text then asked, “So what? What does it do? Can we use it right now?”
I had to go look it up, being one of those who clicked through without reading. The scepter lets you skip the whole orange/purple parts of the instance and start at the stone, so you can farm the inner instance. But we were not even sure what the inner instance was about, so we wandered off to see what we could find.
As with the the earlier parts, we found we could bypass quite a few mobs along the way. We killed what we needed to, bypassed any mobs off the path, and made our way along. Landslide, the primordial behemoth boss, dropped a helm upgrade for me.
Defense and Nature Resist
I also got a cloak upgrade that also had a nature resist stat, that being the theme of Maraudon gear I guess.
From there we fought our way down to Princess Theradras. I actually didn’t take very may screen shots on this run. I find that being the tank keeps me busy and I forget to take screen shots all the time. But there was a nice vantage of the path leading down to the princess, with the behemoths in pairs spaced out along the route that I wish I had stopped to take a picture of.
But we made it down there to the island where Princess Theradras roams.
Princess Theradras is about
And we sat for a bit and discussed how we sort of remembered this fight and maybe some failed strategies and something about line of sight and being in the water and some other possibilities. In the end I just looked it up. I had been up past 3am the night before playing EVE Online and only got about 4 hours of sleep because I am old and seemingly incapable of staying asleep past 7am, so I wanted to get this done on the first try.
The basic info was she hits hard, so the tank needs to endure, and if she runs off after any of the casters the tank needs to grab her quick because she’ll smoosh the clothies.
In the end, we got her in one run. It went about as described, though I think the fact that, by the time we got to her, we were all level 51 (and I had just hit 52) gave us enough of a buffer to endure any rogue attacks. She dropped a nice caster item. We gathered up and took the traditional screen shot.
Down with the princess!
I didn’t tweak the saturation or anything on that screen shot, it is just bright green around there.
After that I was feeling done, but we needed to leave and couldn’t remember if there was an exit path out of the instance or if we had to stone out. I thought there might be something down in the water below the path to the princess, so we jumped off to check. While we were there we took down Rotgrip.
Rotgrip under water
That was worth the effort as Moronae ended up with a nice set of boots out of it.
with nature resist
We explored a bit more… there is a whole cave area down behind where Rotgrip lurks… but did not find any likely exits, so decided to just stone back to Ironforge.
Recall in the water
After that I called it a day. We still had a couple of quests to turn in. One was back in Desolace, which promised to reward me with a best in slot item for tanks, the Mark of the Chosen. The other was in Moonglade, which Moronae could just teleport to in order to turn it in. The rest of us were going to have to get there the hard way. But for 6,100 xp and a gold and a half I’ll make the run.
We missed at least one boss on our runs, and probably a few more things, but Maraudon isn’t anybody in the group’s special favorite instance, so we may be done there.
That makes the next instance on the list Sunken Temple. But before we venture into there we need to get our level 50 class quests ready, as they all seem to require something from that instance to complete.
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