Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire

[MongoJerry]

NERIAD AND THE QUEST FOR THE HOLY BELT

After killing Highlord Omokk, the party left his chamber, returned to the area where we had previously defeated most of the blackrock orc guards, and jumped down into a crevice in the center of the room. It's not strictly necessary to do this, since there's a nice gentle ramp off to the side that leads to Tazz'Alaor, the troll section of LBRS. However, if you're not planning to clear most of Tazz'Alaor, you can skip some mob groups this way. Plus, it involves jumping, which is fun (always a plus). Our party planned to clear most of Tazz'Alaor in a search for the elusive Devout Belt, but we jumped into the crevice out of habit.

In the crevice hides Bijou, a goblin NPC working both as a spy for the Horde and an operative for Kibler's Exotic Pets. She tells adventurers that she had been doing some reconnaissance the previous night but had stumbled on a trip wire that set off an alarm. She had to stash her recon gear, along with her notes, and run for it. Now, she asks adventurers to find her belongings, so she can make a full report to the Horde of what she has found and also, I imagine, get information back to Kibler's Exotic Pets incorporated.



A small entryway in the wall of the crevice opens to a ramp that leads down into the heart of Tazz'Alaor. Most of the trolls come in clusters of four, although a few groups have five members. Fights are generally straightforward here, but adventurers should be wary of wandering patrols who can turn a straightforward fight into a party wipe very quickly. The screenshot above was obviously taken during the second run, when there was a warlock in the party. I thought it was a nice illustration of three crowd control skills -- sap, polymorph, and seduce -- working together.

There are two troll bosses in Tazz'Alaor. Up the ramp across from the party in the screenshot above is a kind of lounge or bar area, and in a side room there stands Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin, who is involved in a weaponsmith quest but for most people is considered a loot boss who drops good items for hunters and rogues. Down the ramp and through the archway you can see in the upper left part of the screenshot is War Master Voone, who is one of the objectives of the Horde quest, Warlord's Command, and who also sometimes drops one of the gems for the key to UBRS. Like most groups, we decided to do the downstairs area first.



As you go down the ramp, you'll come to a "T" intersection. If you turn right to face the archway to War Master Voone, you'll see a scene similar to the one shown above. A cluster of four trolls waits for you at the bottom of the ramp, and several berserker wanderers pass by the cluster far too closely. If you pull at the wrong time, you can end up pulling a wanderer, and even if you pull well, when sap or sheep breaks, the mob can end up pulling a wanderer then as well. That's what happened to our first party, and while we didn't wipe, we had a much tougher fight than we had to and experienced a couple of deaths. The second and third groups did something that was much smarter. We killed the patrols first.



Instead of going down the right ramp at the "T" intersection, we went down the left ramp, which is free of trolls. We could then pull the patrollers from this safe location without any fear of pulling any large mob clusters.



All of the wanderers and patrollers could be single or duo pulled, and we made short work of them.



This technique didn't cost us much time, since we would have had to have killed the patrols eventually anyway. With all of the wanderers and patrols taken out, the fights with the larger clusters reverted to being straightforward again.