By the time you hit level 64 you should have explored all of the Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh and parts of Terokkar Forest. Once you start exploring the forest, you will come across the vast Bone Wastes in the south of the zone and spot the ruins that are Auchindoun in their center. Auchindoun is a huge structure that holds 4 different instance in it that are meant for levels 64 through 70.

Blizzard has the following to say about Auchindoun:

For thousands of years, the draenei have been interring their dead in Auchindoun, their most sacred temple. However, it was infiltrated by agents of the Shadow Council bent on summoning a horrifying creature of immense evil. Their vile act of magic resulted in a massive explosion that blew the temple apart and reduced the surrounding area into a charred wasteland. The blast also caused a rift in the Nether itself, drawing the otherworldly Ethereals into Outland. The interred draenei now walk the ruins as restless spirits. Meanwhile, the horrific entity summoned by the Shadow Council threatens to overwhelm their efforts to contain it. You must prevent this evil from being unleashed upon an unsuspecting world. Auchindoun is divided into four wings, and is designed for a party of five characters levels 64-70.

The Mana Tombs themselves are a wing for players level 64-66 that mainly house energy mummy type creatures called ethereals. Outside the Mana Tombs you will find more of these creatures, but they are an opposing faction called the Consortium. The Consortium is an organization of ethereal traders, smugglers or thieves (depending who you ask), that would like you to enter the tombs and gain them access to it, since the other ethereals have set up a blocking field to them of some sort. In doing so you can start building reputation with the consortium to gain access to some very nice rewards.

The 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 two quests that are available to players at the start of the instance, you need to be level 64 to access them though. They are:

Undercutting the Competition - Kill Nexus-Prince Shaffar

Fight through the instance and destroy Shaffer. Not as easy as it sound the first time through.

Safety's Job is Done - Kill several different mobs in the instance and them access the control panel prior to allow the Consortium into the Mana Tombs.

Simply kill the various MOBs along the way through the instance, and then touch the floating access panel just before reaching Shaffers room. It looks like a floating version of the Hellraiser puzzle box and is located next to a gateway.

There is a third quest that you can gain access to once you complete Safety's Job is Done, which is:

Someone Else's Hard Work Pays off - Escort the head engineer back to entrance.

This quest is activated as soon as you talk to the summoned engineer upon completing "Safety", and it is best to wait until Shaffer is dead first.

Trash MOBs

There are several types of Ethereals in the Mana tombs and many need to be watched for or things can go wrong quickly.

Ethereal Priest – These ethereals have a very nasty AoE blast, so it is critical to keep them at a distance from the rest of the group.

Ethereal Darkcaster - These casters can hit for a ton of shadow damage and need to be dropped quickly.

Mana Leech – These flying leech like energy fish suck up the mana from anyone around them and explode when they die causing big damage in an AoE blast. Ensure that all casters are as far away as possible from these, especially the healer, or your tank will go down from lack of heals.

Nexus Terror - These are large shadow elementals that look similar to void walkers. They can cause lots of damage and have a fair amount of health. They attacks are shadow based and have a very nasty DoT that needs to be dispelled quickly. Lastly, they can do an AoE fear, so be ready for it and do not tank him near other remaining MOBs, always pull back.

Pandemonius

Pandemonius

First boss is Pandemonius a huge armored Mana Fiend, and you come to him very quickly in the instance. You get to fight him after maybe half a dozen pulls, which is really fun. He can be a difficult fight and most groups have some issues with him at first. Once you understand the fight though, it isn't that hard and is a pretty fun and challenging encounter.

Void Blast - This attack hits everyone within 30 yards for about 1500 damage and knocks them back. He does this attack in waves of 5, 1 every second for 5 seconds. As long as you are in range you will keep getting hit.

Shadow Shield - Periodically Pandemonius will glow with a green/yellow shield. This shield reflects all spells cast on him and deals 1000 damage back to all melee attackers. All spells cast while the shied is up are reflected, but DoTs cast before the shield come up are not, so it is safe to DoT him. Also ranged attacks are not reflected, so hunters can continue to attack.

In addition to his abilities, it is important to know that Pandemonius hits hard, however it is all shadow based. This means that you can greatly reduce the fights difficulty with shadow protection buffs and gear. If the tank has a lot of shadow protection gear, this fight can become very easy. Secondly, because of the way his knock back attacks work, the tank should keep him in the center of the room instead of the normal tactic of backing against a wall. If you do this the fight becomes more difficult because of the extra damage the tank will be taking.

Everyone else in the group should stay spread out around him and be ready to back off once he starts void blasting. Healers can stay at max distances and avoid being hit by it entirely. Once he blasts, everyone should wait for the 5th blast to finish and then run back in. The main thing to watch for in this fight though is his shadow shield, as party members can end up killing themselves very quickly (especially rogues or the tank) by continuing to hit him while it is up. As soon as it appears, back off and stop attacking, including the tank, until it the shield goes down. At that point allow the tank a hit or two to ensure aggro and then start attacking.

Tavarok

Tavarok

The second boss is Tavarok, who is a giant rock elemental. While he is a giant, he does not hit that hard, and most of the fight is just keeping aggro on the tank. Tavarok ends up hitting most tanks for only 300-400 damage per hit. Don't let this fool you though, if he ends up hitting a rogue, you can still go squish with out all that plate on. He only has two main abilities, which are:

Earthquake - He can stomp his feet and cause a localized earthquake (much like a Tauren Stomp) that hits for about 900 damage and stuns. The range is the issue on this one though at over 30 yards, so healers need to be at maximum distance to not be affected.

Crystal Prison - This ability hits one random player and imprisons them in a crystal block for five seconds. While in the block you suffer 10% of your life in damage every second, for a total of 50% damage.

This fight is a very easy tank and spank fight. Almost no one has issues with him, unless they are very unlucky. After Pandemonius he is kind of a let down. The loot he drops is good though and if you have a miner in your group with at least 330 mining ability you should be happy as you can mine his corpse for ore and gems.

Nexus-Prince Shaffer

Nexas-Prince Shaffer

The third and final boss is Nexus-Prince Shaffer, who is an energy ethereal that is vying against the consortium. While fighting against him, you will also be fighting against several other MOBs that he will summon. The biggest part of the fight is to control the adds and deal with Shaffers abilities. The abilities he uses are as follows:

Elemental Bolts - This attack can hit players for up to 1500 damage of either shadow, frost or fire based damage. He will attack the person with aggro.

Ethereal Beacons - Shaffer starts with three ethereal beacons and can then summons another roughly every 10 seconds. The beacons attack with an arcane based attack, and turn into an ethereal caster if not killed in roughly 15 seconds.

The fight starts with Shaffer and 3 beacons. The trick early is to drop the beacons as quickly as possible, if you don't before they spawn into casters you will be in serious trouble for the remainder of the fight. The best way to do this is assigning the other players to one of the beacons and as the tank is charging in to engage Shaffer they need to start killing the beacons. They do not have that much health and can be taken down quickly when focused on. Once they are down, DPS players should make sure they switch between Shaffer and further adds as they appear.

Shaffer has lots of health and the fight can be a lengthy one, so be prepared. Fortunately Shaffer does not hit all that hard for a boss, and much of his damage is elemental based damage so can be resisted. Basically, if you can keep the adds down, it is an endurance test for the healer and tank.

The fight can be difficult for players the first few times around, or if you are light on DPS. However once you get the hang of it, the fight is a fun event.

Escort Quest

An escort quest with a few sweet rewards

After you have downed Shaffer you can go back and complete the escort quest to protect Cryo-Engineed Sha'heen through the instance back to the beginning. While you can do this before downing Shaffer, it would then mean you need to go back through the whole instance again to get back to him, so most players choose to do the escort last.

On the escort Sha'heen will stop at each collector on the way back to collect the energy, at which point you will be attacked. The attacks are no more difficulty that the larger pulls in the instance though and should be managed easily. Once you reach the beginning a named MOB spawns to attack you. He does not have any particularity difficult abilities and should be a simple tank and dps event.

Conclusions

The instance is another example of how much Blizzard learned from the initial release of WoW and the release of the BC. Pandemonius and Shaffer are very entertaining and challenging fights, which make the instance all that much more fun to run. The only down side for me is how simple the second boss is, they could have done better. The instance itself is stunning as well, and the ethereals are amazing! Oh, if only we could have had them as the Horde playable race instead of the Blood Elves, they are just that cool.


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

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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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