TenTonHammer's First Look at "The Burning Crusade: Sethekk Halls "

Not being able to resist yet another of the new instances in the upcoming Burning Crusade, I headed to what is my third instance in Auchindoun. That instance is the Sethekk Halls which is the wing in Auchindoun that has been taken over by the odd bird like creatures that remind me very much of the puppets from the Dark Crystal movie.

The instances in Auchindoun are as follows:

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Getting to Auchindoun and finding a group

Getting to the Auchindoun is fairly easy unless you are too low a level, as the MOBS around it range up to level 65 and 66. 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.

Once again (as per my previous instance guides) I was able to find a solid group almost immediately using the LFG and LFM system. Again I hope this continues to work as well in the released version. It will take some getting used to not spamming for group though.

Sethekk Halls

I have been through this instance several times over the past two weeks, with many different groups. While the instance continues with the standard trend of not NEEDING something specific to get through. While it seems you can likely do the whole instance with almost any group you want, the instance does have several tricky pulls if you do not have solid crowd control. Also the bosses can be difficult without certain things in the group, as described further below.

The Sethekk Halls are the third instance in Auchindoun . It is meant for level 67 - 69 characters, however many player attempt it below this and can have success if geared and grouped properly. Just outside the instance is an NPC's who will give you quests if you have completed the prerequisites. The rewards for the quests are very good and should be done as soon as possible. There is also a release quest in the instance that can be done on the first trip through.

The MOBs in the instance are mainly the bird type creatures, however there are several types ranging in difficulty and abilities. Sentries are melee based, Oracle drop mind control totems, Prophets fear and lords do massive physical damage. There are also many smaller birds that can hit for up to 1k damage each and come in large groups.

You will very quickly learn that you need to pull the groups back to cleared areas so that you can deal with them without the threat of adds. Each group near the beginning has 3 MOBs in it, which is very hard when learning them. By the end of the instance they are harder MOBs and 5 in a group, meaning you must learn their abilities and practice your tactics if you want a chance to beat the instance.

The most annoying of the MOBs are the Sethekk Oracles as the drop a mind control totem. It seems random which person it targets, but once hit that person becomes mind controlled until the totem is destroyed. The totem itself has very little health (in the area of 1000-1500) so can generally be killed with just one or to hits. Just make sure everyone knows that as soon as a totem comes up, it is priority 1 to take it down fast.

The first boss is an elemental wizard named Dark weaver Syth that hits with almost entirely shadow damage. His main ability though is to summon 4 elementals at three different times in the battle. It corresponds to roughly 75%, 50% and 25% of his life. When the elementals come up you must kill them quickly as they can hit for up to 2.5k a hit on criticals. First boss can be extremely difficult until you learn a relatively simple trick, slow and steady wins the race, until the last summon.

On several early attempts to beat him we tried to power through him and the elementals. By doing so we kept damage on him and never had a break from the elementals. While this is possible it makes for a very hectic fight. What works better is to get him down to a point where he summons and then get all dps off him and onto the elementals. Once they are dead, have the tank alone dps him while everyone else recovers. Once they are, then take him down to the next summon point and repeat. On the third summon, ignore the adds and burn him down quickly as the adds will disappear when he dies. Once we figured this out, the fight became far easier.

In between the first and second boss there are many difficult pulls where the groups get harder and harder. Basically getting you warmed up for the last pull and boss. The last pull before the boss is a huge 6 MOB group that can be quite difficult if you don't have your tactics down.

The last boss, Talon King Ikiss is another caster based boss. He has some very nasty abilities right now, although they have been being played with in the last few updates to balance him properly. Initially he was too easy, and now he is too difficult even for groups of mainly level 70's. Have no fear though, feedback from many players has gone in and Blizzard has stated they are working on him.

His abilities are a teleport, elemental missiles and an arcane explosion. As stated previously none of them did much damage and therefore he was a trivial fight. Currently though his missiles which can hit everyone within LOS do roughly 2000 damage, and his explosion does enough to know a tank to about 1/2 life and kill almost anyone else. From what I've seen its about 6k of damage. It isn't that easy to avoid either as he will do it after a teleport, so he is in the middle of your group and then casts it, dropping everyone to less than 2k health and then missiles to kill the group.

I did manage to get through him the first fight (before they buffed him) so was able to complete the quest and get some very nice rewards. On release he is well worth fighting as you get a good reward from the quest and he drops some awesome loot.

Once you have killed the Talon King, a door opens up out of the other exit to his room, which provides a quick way to exit the instance. Upon exiting, make sure you turn in your quests and collect your rewards. This instance is definitely a step up in difficulty from the other two that I have done in Auchindoun. You really start to see the progression and how the game will become very difficult unless you gear up to the proper levels. I am sitting with more def and armor than I ever dreamed of having and still get taken down quickly from some groups. Without competent healers and DPS to drop things in order and quickly, this instance can cause real issues.

I took many additional screen shots which are all available in our gallery here: TenTonHammer visits Sethekk Halls .

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