TenTonHammer's Guide to The Auchenai Crypts

The other instances in the Auchindoun are as follows:

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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.

There are two quests that are available to players, one at the start of the instance and the other from A'dal in Shattrath. They are:

Everything will be Alright - Greatfather Aldrimus standing outside the Auchenai Crypts of Auchindoun has asked that you enter the Auchenai Crypts and destroy Exarch Maladaar.

Fight through the instance and destroy Exarch Maladaar who is the last boss in the instance.

Auchindoun... - Travel to the Auchenai Crypts in the Bone Wastes of Terokkar Forest and slay Exarch Maladaar to free the spirit of D'ore.

This quest is to once again fight to the end of the instance and slay Maladaar. This is part of a long quest chain that starts with "A Visit with the Greatmother".

There are several types of Draenei and Undead that you must be aware of in the Auchenai Crypts. Many have the ability to summon 2 additional ghost like MOBs from thin air before the fight begins, and there are several that patrol areas that pop in and out of reality, so always be prepared for more than you can see. The ones with other special abilities that you need to be aware of are:

Draenei Monks – These Draenei are immune to polymorph and sapping.

Draenei Possessors - These casters can mind control one of the group members. The mind control will not end when the possessor dies however, you must drop the player to 50% health to remove the mind control, at that time they will be healed to full heath and returned to the players control.

Raging Souls – These spirit creatures appear around you and live for about 5 seconds, after which they throw everyone away from them in an explosion. They normally appear on the bridge to the first boss and can throw you off if you are not careful.

The first boss is an extremely difficult fight due to his abilities and having to be especially careful on healing. Expect a few wipes while the group learns the fight. The boss is a beholder type boss (big floating eye) called Shirrak the Dead Watcher, who has two main abilities abilities and a nasty bleed attack. His abilities are as follows:

Carnivorous Bite - This is a bleed attack that hits everyone in melee range.

Focused Attack - Everyone once in a while (roughly 15 - 20 seconds) Shirrak will call out "Shirrak the Dead Watcher focuses his energy" and a marker will appear near a player. A few seconds after he will attack that spot with 3 AoE blasts that his for roughly 2000 damage per blast! Its range is roughly 15 yards.

Magic Debuff - Shirrak places this debuff on all players and it increases casting times by 50% per effect. It will stack up to 4 times for a maximum +200% to casting times. The range is something over 40 yards (seems like 45 - 50) and it is very hard to avoid having it.

The first difficult in this fight is getting people to pay attention to where they are standing, not to group up and to immediately scatter when a focused attack is coming. If everyone is spread out, when the focused attack marker appears only one person will need to move. That person has to get out of range of the blast or they will likely die. Because of the announcement and a marker appearing though, it is easy to avoid if you are watching for it.

The main difficulty in the fight is the magic debuff. It means that healer will take an insane amount of time to cast. The debuff however does not effect instants so healers with instance and HoTs will be especially useful in this fight. If the group has two healers with instants and HoTs the fight can be very easy. Another way to heal is to stay out of the 45 - 50 yard range of the debuff as much as possible only coming in to cast a big heal and then backing out. Depending on your ability to do this, it can be a very effective method, if you miss a heal though, it will mean a wipe. Healers should only concentrate on themselves and the tank to have best success in the fight. Only heal others if you are sure there is time, the rest of the group should use bandages and pots to heal, and if they watch for the markers and avoid gaining aggro, they will not need much healing anyway.

For damage casters the best way to minimize the effect of the debuff is to cast instant and channeled spells, as they are unaffected.

Once the group learns to deal with the above two issues, the fight becomes a fun and challenging event. Much more entertaining than most simple tank and spank fights. Until then though, it can be very frustrating.

The second and last boss is Exarch Maladaar a 67 elite boss. He is a large humanoid Draenei that has a big health pool and several abilities that need to be watched closely. The fight is a fairly long one due to the amount of health he has and a nasty surprise at 15% health. His abilities are:

Summon Dark Side - This attack creates a shadow version of the player being targeted (IE: non elite shadow priest, warrior, etc). The shadow is immune to most crowd control measures and has an affinity for attacking healers. While a shadow version of a player is alive, that player also receives a debuff that reduces all damage and healing done by them by 50%

Shadow Bolt - He has a shadow based magic attack that hits a random group member for roughly 1200 shadow damage.

AoE fear - He can fear everyone that is near him (5-10 years) and cause them to flee. It has a short acting time though, just 2 or 3 seconds

Summon Avatar - At roughly 15% health remaining, Maladaar will summon an Avatar of the Martyred that is essentially a copy of himself. The Avatar has a similar amount of health and base attacks for over 1500 per hit, he does not however have any of Maladaar's special abilities.

To defeat Maladaar, the tank needs to ensure that he is held as much as possible (between fears), while DPS only works on him while there are no dark side copies of players up. If a copy is up and running around, it is generally attacking the healer. This means as soon as a copy is summoned, all DPS must switch to take it down as fast as possible. Once the shadow copy is dead, DPS can switch back to Maladaar.

The fear is also critical depending on the groups makeup. When the group is feared Maladaar will attack anyone who is not feared. This means that in an all melee group it is important for the healer to be in fear range as well, or Maladaar will make a bee-line for them as soon as he casts the AoE fear, and kill them. In any other group, it's important that one of the ranged DPS stay above the healer on the aggro list.

When Maladaar reaches 15% he will summon an Avatar that you also need to fight. At this point DPS should go max out to drop Maladaar (as he is already down to 15%) while the Tank picks up the Avatar to tank. If you have an off tank, the off tank can pick up the Avatar instead. Either way, drop Maladaar first and then work on the Avatar. He does not have as much health as Maladaar did, and far fewer abilities. He should be a very simple tanking fight as soon as Maladaar is down. The only difficult part is that your group will already be weakened and low on mana and health.

After just the two bosses you are done. The instance is very quick to move through and stays very fast paces and interesting with all the wandering MOBs. It can be challenging at points if not everyone is on their A game, or up to the proper level. The one thing I did not like about the instance is that there was no easy way out at the end to reset and go again if you wanted.

I took many additional screen shots which are all available in our gallery here: TenTonHammer visits the The Auchenai Crypts.

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