World of Warcraft at Ten Ton Hammer

Over the last little while I have been working on and collecting quests all over, that all seem to lead to one place: The Deadmines in Westfall. At this point I had collected the following quests: Underground Assault, Collecting Memories, Oh Brother, and the Final Defias Brotherhood mission - Van Cleef. With so many quests, rewards and experience waiting to be collected I made my way to Westfall to sign up with a group to head into the mines.

It did not take long to find a group going in, and in fact my character fit in nicely to the group. There were two rogues for damage ability, a priest for healing and a mage for spells. They were only missing someone to soak up the damage. Well, who better than a little dwarven tank! We all felt pretty good about our chances and the group as a whole. A few of us had even played with each other previously on different quests at different points in time. So off we went to the Deadmines.

When we got to the entrance of the mines we moved along slowly to ensure that we could handle what we were getting into as all of the mobs in the mines are elites and generally closely packed together. Being close allows them to team up on you when you attack and cause some serious issues if you are not prepared for them. Even though at this point we could have stormed through without many issues, we used the entrance area to practice our team techniques for the more difficult parts to come.

We formed up very well and had a very effective plan on dealing with mobs right away. We would stop short and send in a rogue in to sap one of the mob. Once he did the other mob members would go aggressive and he would run back to the party. The mage would polymorph one into a sheep and we would generally be left with only 1 to deal with; the one chasing one of our rogue. I would step in the way and smack him, forcing him to attack me instead. The party would then quickly dispatch him. The sapped enemy would then be on his way, and I would intercept him as well and the mage would 're-sheep' the other one. In this manner we could relatively easily deal with 3-4 enemies at once. Things were looking good!

The first two quests that we went after in the mines were "Collecting Memories" and "Oh Brother", both given out from the dwarven area in Stormwind. Collecting memories is a collection quest, while Oh Brother is a search based quest. Both occur in a wing of the Deadmines full of undead. The undead proved a lot more difficult than the entry mobs. They were all 18+ elites and it turned out to be a VERY good thing that we had planned out strategies early on. It took a little while and we had a few deaths but we made it through without any serious issues and had completed the two quests in about 30 minutes. Not bad! So, off we went to the "instance" portion of the Deadmines to do the rest of the quests.

For those not aware of what an "instance" is, it is in essence a private dungeon. When you or your group enter (through the big fancy stargate looking portal) you cause another copy or "instance" of that dungeon to be spawned on the servers. Only you and your group have access to that "instance" of that dungeon. Other people can be working on the same quests, but in a separate version of the dungeon. It is a very cool way to allow private areas of the world where just you and your group exist. It gets rid of camping issues and waiting for respawns of bosses to complete quests. One other effect in an instance is that in general mobs do not respawn. Once you kill them they are gone. The only exception to this is patrol mobs do respawn, but do so on a long timer.

We entered the instance area and immediately went to work clearing areas. The early areas in the instance were very similar to the quest areas in the pre-instance Deadmines. We worked from area to area without too many issues. All the time practicing and perfecting our technique.

The first mini-boss we met in the Deadmines was a HUGE ogre with two henchmen body guards. The bodyguards were quickly sapped and 'sheeped', and we went about killing the ogre. We had two deaths while doing it, but managed to complete him and still be alive as a group. The priest and I healed everyone and we continued further down into the mines.

The next area we came to was an assembly / construction area manned by goblins and the Goblin Shredder that would carry the quest item for the "Underground Assault" quest. The goblins proved to be very tough despite their small size. We worked our way through all of them slowly and carefully before tackling the very scary looking Goblin Shredder. The shredder turned out to be VERY hard to kill, does a lot of damage, and has great armour so takes very little damage. After finally killing him, we find out the driver hops out and attacks. At this point we were very weak and again a party member died. A quick resurrection and we were back on our way. At this point we had been together and in the mines (instance and pre-instance) for about 2 hours. Three quests down, one to go.

The next area to work through was a giant smelting room, full of goblins with guns and robots! What was going on down here? Humans and goblins working together? We worked our way through the room with relative ease since most of us had levelled at this point. Note: Almost everyone has found that even one level makes a HUGE difference in quests and areas. If you find an area too hard, go and level someplace and come back a level or two higher, and it will likely be fairly easy. When we exited the smelting room, we entered into a vast underground cavern called "Ironclad Cove" with a lake, dock and a ship in it!

We advanced down the dock clearing more of the Defias gang. At the end of the dock just before boarding the ship, there were two stealthed Defias gang members. Our rouge spotted them and we cleared them out without issue, but be warned that they are there, as they are very dangerous. Once they were gone, the ships first mate Mr. Smite came out to welcome us aboard, well not quite. Mr. Smite is a very large, very angry Tauren. He came out and stomped the ground and stunned the whole party. When he did he managed to almost kill 2 of us before we recovered. It took several very tense minutes and lots of healing to deal with Mr. Smite. He was able to stun most of the party 3 times with his stop attacks. In the end though we took him down without losing any party members.

We worked our way up the ships decks towards the boss, Van Cleef at the top. It took us about 40 minutes to clear the ship and reach him. We had heard how strong he was, so we approached with caution. We healed, restored mana and ensured everyone was ready before attacking. Our biggest issue was that he had two bodyguards that we could not sneak up on, so we were going to have to deal with him and one other right off the bat. The decision was made to try to take him out first and then deal with the minions. We went in...

Two good things came about from the attack. We learned we were not completely over matched, and my paladin became a hero in our group. The attack started well, our mage polymorphed one of the guards and we started dealing with Van Cleef. The issues started when the other guard attacked our mage and would not leave him alone. We tried to get him to attack someone else but nothing worked. Our mage went down FAST! The guard then picked another target, our Priest who was almost out of mana trying to heal us from Van Cleefs attacks. The priest went down fast as well. The other guard returned to human form. Now we were in serious trouble!!!

Both rogues were almost dead and started running, carrying both guards away with them. I quickly flipped to healer mode and started a resurrection on our priest. Van Cleef was pounding away on me, being the only available target. Damage was racking up fast! The two rogues were caught and cut down by the body guards! Everyone was yelling, “Run!” At the last second I finished the resurrection spell, and then died to Van Cleef's attacks!

The spell worked though, and the priest was resurrected and Van Cleef returned to his cabin without going aggressive on him! The party was saved! There were mass cheers and promise of much reward for the paladins selfless act! It was a very good moment for my character and I really enjoyed it. The priest quickly resurrected everyone and we healed and prepared to try again.

On the second attempt, everything went smoothly. I attacked the guards first and they spent the whole time attacking my paladin, while the two rogues finished off Van Cleef. The priest spent the whole time madly healing the rogues and myself. Once Van Cleef was dead, we killed the body guards with ease.

Wow, the last quest done and we were still alive! We divided up the treasure, and hearth stoned back to town to claim the rewards. Almost everyone went up another level once all the rewards had been claimed. At this point we had been playing for about 4 hours and it was really late. We all added each other to our friends list and said goodnight.

All in all it was the best time I had had in World of Warcraft to that point. The group was great! No one was greedy, we gave items to those that needed them, we shared quests and we worked exceptionally well together. It was also my first instance adventure in WoW. I had found what WoW was all about.

More than anything this game is more than a game. What it really is about is co-operation, social interaction, community and friendship. Even if you start off as just party members for one night, you inevitably form bonds with people. I still find myself talking to these players when I am online.

Well, that’s it for the fourth instalment of my beta journal. I hope you have enjoyed them so far. I will be back next week with the next instalment of my character’s adventures.