The last instance in Auchindoun is the Shadow Labyrinth, and is meant for players of at least level 69. The instance is the commonly referred to as the shadow labs and is home of the Shadow Council. The instance is locked off and until you obtain the key or a high enough lock picking skill you can not enter. The key is relatively easy to get though as it drops from the last boss in Sethekk Halls (Talon King Ikiss).

The Shadow Labyrinth is an excellent place to get rep with the Shattrath Lower City as every kill provides rep through honored.

The other instances in the Auchindoun are as follows:

Instance
MOB Levels
# of Players
Mana Tombs
64-66
5
Auchenai Crypts
65-67
5
Sethekk Halls
67-69
5
Shadow Labyrinth
70-72
5

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Getting to the Auchindoun

The Outlands! A complete map of the world and where everything is in it

Getting to the Auchindoun is fairly easy unless you are too low a level, as the MOBS around it range up to level 65. It can be found in the large blasted bone waste area of Terokkar forest to the south of Shattrath City. You can also get access to it from the Alliance or Horde towns to the east and north east. They are the Allerian Stronghold and Stonebreaker Hold respectively. Auchindoun is the large ruins in the center of the bone wastes. When you reach there you have to head down through various tunnels to reach the bottom of the ruins, which is a circular plaza area. In the center is a meeting stone to summon other players and the instances can be found in tunnels around the outskirts of the central area. Another way to get to it is taking any of the stair ways around it up, and then finding a place to jump down through the ruins. There are several places where the ruins form long steps down, sure, you'll take some fall damage, but taken in steps, its fine.

Quests

There are many quests in the instance, however for most of them you need to be level 70. The quests are:

The Lexicon Demonica - Obtain the Lexicon Demonica from Grandmaster Vorpil and bring it to David Wayne at Wayne's Refuge.

The Lexicon is the glowing book floating in the room where you fight Grandmaster Vorpil, once he is dead you can read it.

The Book of Fel Names  -Venture inside the Shadow Labyrinth in Auchindoun and obtain the Book of Fel Names from Blackheart the Inciter. Return to Altruis in Nagrand once you've completed this task.

The book drops from Bleakheart the Inciter (the second boss).

The Soul Devices - Steal 5 Soul Devices and deliver them to Spymistress Mehlisah Highcrown at the Terrace of the Light in Shattrath City.

The soul devices are found in the tents throughout the instance, however there are many more around the second and forth boss than anywhere else.

Entry Into Karazhan - Khadgar wants you to enter the Shadow Labyrinth at Auchindoun and retrieve the First Key Fragment from an Arcane Container hidden there.

This is part of a quest chain to get your key for Karazhan, it is only the first part of the key though. The key can be found in a container around the last boss (Murmur).

Trash MOBs

This instance is where things really start to ramp up in difficulty and as such there are MANY different MOBs that need to be watched out for, they include:

Cabal Acolyte – A healing MOB, must be taken out early or CC'ed (crowd controlled), or they will heal the other MOBs in the group.

Cabal Assassin - Rogues that spawn while clearing the second bosses room. They do insane damage and usually spawn while in the middle of a fight. They must be dropped or crowd controlled quickly or they will kill the casters. They hit hard enough and fast enough to drop a cloth wearer in just a few seconds.

Cabal Fanatic – These MOBs his hard and fast, in addition they are immune to normal aggro tables, and can just select a target and attack it until taunted off. Very important for them to see and select the tank first.

Cabal Spellbinder – Can mind control players

Cabal Summoner- These MOBs summon additional MOBs and are therefore a high priority to CC or kill first.

Cabal Zealot -These casters throw shadow bolts until low health and then shape change into a small magmadarr type demon dog that does TONS of melee damage. A Mage can spell steal the buff though and turn the tables on them.

Fel Overseer - These large demons are seen in the first bosses room. They hit very hard and have an AOE fear so must be pulled away from other things still up in the room. They also have a ton of health so the fights with them are not always easy.

Ambassador Hellmaw

The first boss is Ambassador Hellmaw who is a huge demon creature. He is a fairly simple fight, but does take some effort to get right the first few times, especially if players are not all 70. He has a two special attacks and two special abilities to content with:

Ambassador Hellmaw

Charge - He does a warrior charge and stun for 3 seconds.

Backhand - This is his high damage melee attack.

AoE fear - This fear is on a roughly 25 second timer and catches everyone within 40 yards.

Acid Spray - He can hit everyone in his front arc with an acid spray that lowers everyone's armor and places a very high damage DOT debuff on them. It is not dispellable.

The fight plan should be to have the tank hold him facing away from the group so that no one other than the tank gets hit by the acid spray. Every time the fear goes off, wait for the tank to regain aggro and then resume damage. Even though you could avoid the fear with the healers and casters it is best not to as you will then be on the top of the aggro list.

The real trouble point in the fight is at anytime when a caster resists the fear and is left as the only person on the aggro list. Try to kite him around until the tank is no longer feared and let him pick him back up.

Blackheart the Inciter

The second boss is Blackheart the Inciter, who is a two headed ogre with a wicked sense of humor. This is one of the most difficult fights in the level 70 non-heroic instances, but also one of the most fun. He has the following abilities to deal with:

Blackheart

AOE Knockback - This attack hits everyone in about 30 yards and thows them backwards, while clearing the aggro table.

Random Charge - He will randomly charge players and hit for roughly 1500 damage and stunning them briefly. Once he has attacked them he will return to the top person on the aggro list.

Group Mind Control - When he casts this everyone in the group losses control of their character for 15 seconds and randomly attacks other player. He casts this roughly once per minute. It seems like 45 seconds between castings and then 15 seconds under mind control. He also completely clears his aggro table when he casts this ability.

One note before you start this fight, ensure you clear the entire room. If you do not they will add into the fight and cause a wipe.

Blackheart does very little damage himself which is good because the rest of the fight can be so difficult. The main difficulty in this fight is surviving and recovering from the mind controls. Players should ensure that they have used every big cool down ability before the first mind control if at all possible. Also, player may want to be equipped for longevity instead of max damage in this fight, so that they do not 2 shot the cloth wearers in the MC portion.

As soon as a MC portion of the fight has ended, the tank must regain aggro and the healer must get everyone back to full health for the next MC casting. If you can manage that the fight should go well.

Take everything in the fight with a grain of salt, and take the time to laugh at what is going on in the fight. It really is entertaining! Even if that damn rogue in your group just took you out for the 3rd time!

Grandmaster Vorpil

The third boss is Grandmaster Vorpil, the Grandmaster and leader of the Shadow Council. The fight is a split DPS fight where some players need to focus on him, while others need to focus on the Adds. In addition he has to following abilities:

Grandmaster Vorpil

Shadow Bolts - He can hit everyone in the group with a shadow bolt that does about 1500 damage.

Summon Players - He can teleport himself and summon everyone else with him to the central platform. As soon as he does this he will cast another ability...

Rain of Fire - This is a small AOE spell that does roughly 1000 damage a second, so you need to escape fast.

Void Rift - As soon as the fight starts, Vorpil will open 4 void rifts that start bringing voidwalkers into the fight. When they appear they start moving towards Vorpil slowly at first and faster as the fight progresses. If they reach Vorpil they explode doing an arcane explosion that causes roughly 1500 damage to everyone within 10 yards and heal Vorpil for 5% of his life.

The fight involves having the tank hold Vorpil in the center of room as far as possible from the four void rifts. Players then need to split damage between Vorpil and the adds coming in. One solid rogue can take out all the adds before they reach him if he stays on them as they only have about 2500 life each.

When Vorpil summons everyone to the center platform, just jump off and return to your previous position and allow the tank to gain aggro again. After each teleport the voidwalkers come faster, so it is best to try to down him before a second teleport, however he is still manageable until a third teleport, at which point the void walkers will be moving too fast to handle.

Murmur

The last boss in the instance is Murmur a very powerful elemental that looks like an air version of Ragnaros. When you start the fight he starts at only 40% health, which is more than enough to cause issues. Though the fight becomes easy once everyone knows how it works, it can be incredibly frustrating to learn.

Murmur

Touch of Murmur - This is a debuff that Murmur puts on a random target that causes an explosion after 10 seconds. It is not dispellable. The explosion causes roughly 4000 damage to the target and anyone within 10 yards. In addition it throws the target into the air and silence you for 5 seconds.

Sonic Boom - This ability sets off a sonic boom that hits everyone within about 35 yards for 70% of their total health. It also places a debuff on all players hit that does 12% of their total health in damage over the next 6 seconds and reduces their movement by 90%.

Resonance - This ability is used whenever there is no one in melee range of Murmur. It is a debuff that increases nature damage (almost all the damage Murmur does in nature based) by 2000. It also does an initial blast of 2000 nature damage. He will keep using this ability as long as no one is in melee range.

The Murmur fight is one of timing and endurance. The tank needs to tank Murmur right in the center of the ring, which he will not move from anyway. Murmur hits most tanks for roughly 1500 damage per hit so they will require constant healing while fighting. The rest of the players can engage Murmur as soon as the tank has established aggro. Ranged should space our around the edge of the circle and away from each other, while dps can move into the ring to engage.

Timing comes into play with watching for the sonic boom to be cast and getting everyone out of the circle in time. Blizzard was kind enough to mark the area on the ground that will be affected by the sonic boom. As soon as Murmur emotes and starts to cast, everyone in the group needs to run out of the raised ring on the ground. As soon as the blast is set off though, the tank needs to get into the ring and reengage before Murmur starts firing off his resonance attacks.

Coordination is involved by ensuring that when you are touched by Murmur you get away from everyone else in the group so that they are not affected by the blast damage.

Once you get the timing and spacing issues down, the fight becomes easy, with the only exception being when the healer is the constant target of the touch of Murmur, which happens occasionally.

Conclusions

The instance is yet another example of how much Blizzard learned from the initial release of WoW and the release of the BC. The bosses in this instance are all very different and very fun, with Blackheart being one of my favorite encounters in the game! Sure, he messes you up, and it's pretty random in the fact that you can't prepare all that much for it because you are fighting your own group, but it's still a blast.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Byron has been playing and writing about World of Warcraft for the past ten years. He also plays pretty much ever other Blizzard game, currently focusing on Heroes of the Storm and Hearthstone, while still finding time to jump into Diablo III with his son.

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