Tuesday, April 7, 2015

Chapter III: The Foundry Falls

I'm sure anyone spending much time working on the Legendary quest chain is probably up to the point where they're getting elemental runes from bosses in Blackrock Foundry. However, upon finishing the collection, things get kicked into overdrive.

Runes and Tablets:

Upon capturing Garona, Khadgar tasks you with gathering a number of things from Blackrock Foundry. He needs a the Heart of the Heart of the Mountain - the Elemental Fury inside the Blast Furnace. He also needs the Flamebender's Tome off of Flamebender Ka'graz, the second boss in the Black Forge. The third piece is a Draenei Navigation Orb that is locked away in a chest that becomes available after defeating the Iron Maidens. Upon gathering these three items, he wants you to collect Blackhand's arm - the arm that was turned into elemental stone.

All of these things will be easy to get - just do the first three wings of BRF and you'll have them, and then you'll be able to get the quest for Blackhand. However, while you're working on this, you'll also need to collect Elemental Runes. You will need a total of 900 of these bastards. Every 300 you will then turn into an Elemental Tablet, as the quest is really just asking for three tablets.

Every boss in the instance is guaranteed to drop at least 9 runes, but if you're lucky, you'll get 27 off them instead. Blackhand, however, will always drop the full 27, meaning that a full clear each week will give you a minimum of 108, but a potential of 270 (expect it to be much closer to the 108 side.) Like the Abrogator Stones before them, you'll have a chance to get these in random work orders. Additionally, there's a weekly follower mission that will net you 18 runes, so if you have geared followers who can do it, that's a guaranteed 126 a week.

Point is: it'll still take you a long, long time, though I believe that subsequent characters will have a much higher chance for the 27-a-boss droprate.

Khadgar uses the tablets to upgrade your ring, and he kills you a little more thoroughly than usual (seriously, this is what, the third time he's killed us?) While dead-ish, you have a vision of Gul'dan pressing Grommash to drink the demon blood, pointing out that the Foundry has already fallen. Khadgar revives you with a set of goblin jumper cables.

Free Your Mind:

Using the tablets, Khadgar will upgrade your ring to 715. The ring also gains an upgraded version of the proc, now called Archmage's Greater Incandescence, which boosts your primary stat by 15% instead of 10%.

However, try as he might, Khadgar is unable to break Garona's mind control. Not to worry, though, as he sends you to a cave beneath Elodor (I'm not sure if there's a different area for Horde players.) Funny story: I actually stumbled upon this cave while leveling and one of the level 100 guards, rather than attacking level 91 me, just warned me that I should stay away. Anyway, you slaughter your way through the Shadow Council forces there (getting a kind of bonus quest to kill 15 of them) and get an Orb of Dominance off of an Ogre Warlock there.

Bringing it back to Zangarra, Khadgar uses the orb to break Garona's mind control. However, this involves "The Demon Within" breaking out, and you'll have to fight and kill it first. When it is dead, Garona thanks you and provides you with information on where Gul'dan is - at Bladefury's Command at the gates of Tanaan.

Iron Gear Solid:

You arrive at the gates of Tanaan and meet with Khadgar and Garona. You need to infiltrate the place without being seen with Garona's help.

This is the most challenging part of the chain outside the raids.

You get an extra action button that will call upon Garona to shadow step, assassinate a target, and then shadow step back. This is the only attack you'll be using, as anything else will raise the alarm.

The key here is that the rules of stealth are slightly different. The various guards are on "High Alert." What this means is that they've got a sort of cone of vision in front of them. If they see you or Garona (including when she's performing an assassination) they will cast "Raise the Alarm," which, if they finish, will alert everyone to your presence and you'll have to start from the beginning. Garona's ability has a six-second cool-down, and I believe that Raise the Alarm has a six-second cast time, meaning that if she's spotted while assassinating, you're almost guaranteed to fail and have to start over. If you set a guard off just by walking into the wrong place at the wrong time, however, there's a chance you can recover if you're quick.

So the key here is patience. Make sure you can single out guards that no one is currently looking at. After killing one guard, other nearby guards will look at the spot where that one died, which you can use to your advantage. You'll need to make your way up the nearest path and around a pit-arena to steal some Iron Horde intelligence. The initial path is actually the most guard-dense area, so until you get the hang of the mechanics, you'll be seeing that area a lot. Luckily, the blade master guards around the pit will be watching the fight, so you can eliminate them easily. They will turn if a nearby guard dies, though, so you'll want to take them out when there's a window.

Once you get the intel, you'll need to backtrack and head up the path up the hill. There are a few more tricky groups of guards, but you will likely have taken out some of them in the course of making your way to the intel. Once you get up the hill, there will be a box of crates you can hide behind, and that's when the biggest plot development in the expansion happens:

And this is finally non-spoiler, because I did this whole thing on LFR, meaning several wings delayed many weeks, so we can say that the "average" player should be able to get to this point by now.

Gul'dan comes to call on Grommash, asking once again for him to drink. Calling out Grommash's failure to make his people conquerors, he drops the bombshell that one of said followers was Grommash's own son. Grom's devastated, but he can't be turned. He charges Gul'dan, but the warlock counters with a powerful binding spell. The other orcs of the Iron Horde look around in confusion, but Kilrogg Deadeye sees an opportunity (or perhaps just his destiny) and walks forward to take the blood. Kilrogg drinks and is transformed, and with that Gul'dan has effectively taken over the Iron Horde.

Teleported back by Khadgar, you get the "wait for 6.2" quest, but you also get Garona as a legendary follower. Garona has standard rogue abilities, but she also has "Master Assassin," which greatly increases her effectiveness against all targets. This effectively gives her three abilities, the third being whichever threat might not have been countered yet. So yes, she's by far the best follower, which makes sense given that she's Legendary. I recommend quickly upgrading her to 675.

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