The Blood Furnace is the second wing of the Hellfire Citadel and are generally referred to as the Furnace.  The citadel itself straddles the path of glory leading to the Dark Portal and contains 3 other instances.  The Citadel is the home of the Fel Orcs in Hellfire Peninsula and was built by Blackhand and Gul’dan and still houses the Kargath Bladefist.

The Blood Furnace instance takes place in a tower that overlooks the Ramparts. Once in the instance you find out that the Fel orcs are conducting experiments growing a new orc type using the blood of Magtheridon, who is trapped below the instance in his lair. You can even catch a glimpse of Magtheridon through the grid iron floor of Keli'dans room.

The other instances in Hellfire Citadel are as follows:

Instance
MOB Levels
# of Players
Hellfire Ramparts
60 - 62
5
The Blood Furnace
61 - 63
5
The Shattered Halls
70 - 72
5
Magtheridon's Lair
72+
25

As always, click any image in this article to see a bigger version of it.

Getting to Hellfire Citadel and finding a group

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

The first thing is to figure out how to get to the new instances. For that I headed over to our trusty map of the outlands. The Hellfire Citadel is located in the in the center of the Hellfire peninsula between the Horde city of Thrallmar and the Alliance city of Honor Hold. 

The instance itself can be done with almost any group as long as you have patience.  Gear is a bit of an issue since difficulty has been stepped up.  As long as you all have at least dungeon tier 1 items you should be ok in the instance.

Everyone should try using the meeting stones and LFM/LFG systems to find and summon their group.  The more players that use the system the better it will work.

Quests

There two quests available in the Blood Furnace.

Heart of Rage – Fully investigate the Blood Furnace and then report to Nazgrel at Thrallmar in Hellfire Peninsula. (Or the equivalent from Honor Hold)

The Blood is Life - Collect 10 Fel Orc Blood Vials and return them to Centurion Caza'rez at Thrallmar in Hellfire Peninsula. (Or the equivalent from Honor Hold)

Trash MOBs

There are many new mobs and several interesting trash MOBs in the Blood Furnace. While making your way through the instance you should be aware of at least the following:

Shadowmoon Technician –They through bombs that explode for an AOE damage and silence, and place land mines on the ground that explode for 2k damage to everyone around them. The mines can be deactivated by a rogue or you can just move carefully around them.

Nascent Fel Orc – The new type of Fel orc being built (grown?) in the labs in the Blood Furnace.

Laughing Skull Rogue – You can find these in several places in the instance. They pop out of stealth and poison their target. They can do severe damage to cloth wearers very quickly so it is important to always let the tank lead into a new area.

The Maker

This is what happens when the cloth wearers pull aggro against the Maker...

The first boss you come across is The Maker, a very large angry looking Orc that carries alot of equipment strapped to his arms and back. The room he is in is a torture type lab with prison cells along the side and he looks almost mechanical in nature, and a bit like a frankenstein creation. The whole scene works. Being pieced together from bits of others, he is an undead creature.

Knockback - Throws everyone that is in melee away from him about 10 yards, while also reducing aggro from those characters.

Mind Control - Takes over a random person with mind control for a short period of time (roughly 10-15 seconds). This can not be dispelled, although the person can me poly morphed.

Acid spray - He can hit everyone in his front arc within roughly 10 yards with an acid stray.

While he can hit fairly hard, the easiest way to fight him is a simple tank and spank. The tank gains control and then everyone else should DPS him down as fast as possible. If the tank gets mind controlled, things can go wrong quickly. The best way to handle this is to slow the tank and the Maker down and kite them until the mind control expires and then resume DPS.

Broggok

The second boss is a giant floating eye creature, essentially a beholder beaten with an ugly stick. While Broggok is the second boss, he isn't that hard in and of himself. The problem in dealing with him is the event that leads up to him. Surrounding the room you fight him in are four prison cells filled with Nascent Fel Orcs. When you flip the lever to let Broggok out, their cells open in sequence and you must deal with them first.

A face not even a mother could love

They start out simple, with a group of 4 non elites. However each of the cages adds another MOB and turns one of them elite. The next cage opens as soon as the last orc from the previous cage dies. It is basically an endurance test since you will not be out of combat at any point. When the last MOB of the last cage dies, Broggok is set free and you need to deal with him. He has only one real ability.

AOE Poison Cloud - He drops an AOE poison cloud under him that slowly grows for about 45 seconds. He drops a fresh cloud about every 15 seconds. They cause large damage per tick and persist after his death until they time out.

Poison Bolt - He can shoot a poison bolt that hits players in his front arc and does damage and places poison on the target. The DoT component can be cured.

The trick with this fight is to delay Broggok from coming out until the group is back to near full health and mana. This is done by not killing the last MOB of the last group until everyone regens. You can delay this by various ways: polymorph, stuns, fears, kiting, etc. If you are able to do this Broggok is very easy as he does not have much health.

Once released the tank just needs to hold aggro on Broggok and slowly lead him around the room so that he does not have to stand in a poison AOE cloud. Everyone else can DPS and heal as required and he goes down quickly. A word of caution though, the clouds do not disappear on his death, so you may need to wait to loot him or you can still die from it.

Keli'dan the Breaker

Keli'dan the Breaker

When you get to Keli'dans room you are greeted by 5 warlocks that are casting the pentagram around him. You must kill them before the fight with Keli'dan begins. They can each cast short range shadow bolts that hit for roughly 1000 damage. They can also put a debuff on you that increases all shadow damage by 1000.

The strategy in this phase is to keep the debuff removed from players as quickly as possible. If you can crowd control a few of them it will make your job easier as well. The goal is to go into the second phase will all the debuffs removed and as much mana and health as possible.

Keli'dan himself is not to difficult once you learn to deal with his abilities, which are:

AOE Fire Blast - Every so often in the fight Keli'dan will yell "Closer! Come Closer! And Burn!" and then send out 3 AOE fire blasts that hit for about 2k damage each. While doing this he is also immune to damage.

Shadow Bolt - He can hit everyone in his front arc with shadow bolts.

As soon as he rushes forward the tank should pick him up and everyone else gives him a few seconds to gain control and turn him away from the group. You can then hit him from the rear until he does his AOE call. At that point everyone including the tank needs to clear out at least 20 yards. As soon as the third AOE blast is done the tank moves in and reestablishes control, and every one else can start DPS again. Rinse and repeat until done.

Conclusions

Even with a few wipes while learning the instance it should take less than 90 minutes to complete the Blood Furnace. Later runs should get this down to less than an hour. As with the Hellfire Ramparts most players really like the instance because of its speed and accessibility. While not quite as fast as the Hellfire Ramparts it doesn't feel dragged out, and many players prefer it to the Ramparts due to the variety in it.

Again the loot is excellent and will make many players come back over and over again. Most of the MOBs in the Burning Crusade instances hit a lot harder than anything in 5 mans and in some cases even the old 20 man raids. There is a reason that stamina is on a lot of the new loot and that the numbers are so high. Health can drop insanely fast now when you are being hit by more than a single MOB. Several tanks were shocked at the damage being taken on many occasions. Several of the items are almost must haves for specific classes if you want to progress on to the Slave Pens and Underbog in Zangarmarsh.


I took many additional screen shots which are all available in our gallery here: TenTonHammer visits the Blood Furnace .

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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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