Five Player Running Lower Blackrock Spire

[MongoJerry]

Once through the archway, we still had a couple more guard groups to kill, and one of the random unnamed trolls dropped this little thing:



Saito, our rogue, was ecstatic when he won the roll for the Krol Blade, one of the best swords a rogue can have in the game. We had a big celebration when he equipped it and showed it off. There's a theory that better loot drops in 5-man groups than in raid groups. I doubt that that's true, but that Krol Blade drop sure made me wonder if there's something to the idea.



After killing the guards, it was time to take on War Master Voone. There aren't any special tactics to this fight. He just hits hard. The fight is a matter of hoping the group can kill Voone before the priest's mana runs out from spamming Flash Heals on the tank. Incidentally, in the screenshot above, Neriad is standing on the Important Blackrock Documents, which are necessary to obtain for the Warlord's Command quest. The documents can spawn on the ground near any of the three major bosses -- Omokk, Voone, or Wyrmthalak. If someone picks up the documents, they will respawn, but they might not respawn in the same place. For example, if a partymember picked up these documents by Voone, the documents could respawn again right there or back in Omokk's chamber or up ahead in Wyrmthalak's chamber. Most groups typically /random to decide who gets to pick up a certain set of documents just in case the group doesn't pass by another set later on.

Voone doesn't usually drop very much lootwise (the blue throwing axes he frequently drops are a kind of running joke), but he does sometimes drop the Gemstone of Smolderthorn which is used to make the key to UBRS and he can also drop the Beaststalker's Gloves.



After killing Voone, we proceeded to wander the ground floor of Tazz'Alaor, laying waste to any troll groups with Shadow Priests in them. No belt dropped. In the process, we cleared our way to a locked mithril bound chest, but our rogue's lockpicking skill wasn't high enough to pick the lock. What is it with rogues who don't have their lockpicking skilled up? I mean, why do they think we take them into instances? Sheesh.



Upstairs, killed a couple of mob groups in the lounge, and hung a left up a ramp into the side room where Shadow Hunter Vosh'gajin resides. The four trolls in front are linked, so we sapped and sheeped the right side trolls and pulled the two on the left side.



And in the middle of the battle, Vosh'gajin and her two shadow priest bodyguards aggroed and quickly wiped the party. No one in the party saw what happened, although we were pretty sure that it wasn't a wandering sheep, as the sheep wasn't nearly close enough to have caused the aggro. Our best guess was that one of the sapped or sheeped mobs was an axethrower, who after breaking from control, proceeded to back away to start throwing his throwing axes. Whatever the cause, we learned our lesson: Pull that group of four trolls far back to the ramp at the entrance to the room. Eon, our shaman, self rezed and resurrected the party.



Currently, when shamans self-rez, they experience resurrection sickness for ten minutes (this will thankfully be removed in the next patch). We didn't want to take on Vosh'gajin shorthanded, so we went back to the lounge area and proceeded to kill all the groups there with Shadow Priests in them. No Devout Belt dropped. Only two more shadow priests were left: Vosh'gajin's bodyguards.



After Eon's resurrection sickness wore off, we went back into Vosh'gajin's chambers, pulled the surviving forward troll guards back to the room's entrance ramp, and killed them. We then sapped and sheeped the two shadow priest bodyguards and focused on killing Vosh'gajin herself. The biggest thing to watch out for when fighting Vosh'gajin is that she has an area-of-effect frog polymorph ability (I want that spell). She can turn everyone within a certain radius into a frog, and she can attack you while you're a frog without breaking the polymorph. Incidentally, the normal troll shadow priests can also frog individual players, so if you don't crowd control those two bodyguards, you're going to have people being frogged left and right.

Countering Vosh'gajin's frogging spell is easy, though, because the spell's area-of-effect has a limited range -- I'm guessing something on the order of 10-15 yards. As long as the party's priest stands well back in the fight, he or she can quickly dispel the polymorph on the other party members, and Vosh'gajin can be defeated easily. On the first two runs, Vosh'gajin dropped a nice bow and crossbow, respectively, and on the final run, Saito finally got his Shadowcraft Gloves.



We finished off the two shadow priest bodyguards, the only remaining shadow priests in the instance, and I waited with baited breath for the results of their drops.

No belt. No Devout Belt dropped during the other two runs, either. I got my Devout robes on my first UBRS run, so I guess this is the universe's way of evening things out. Oh, well. I'll get the belt eventually. And if you're on Tichondrius, want to do a 5-player run of LBRS, and are willing to kill all the troll shadow priests in the instance, look me up.



Inside Vosh'Gajin's room, Eon pointed out an ominous sight. An open window overlooks the spider lair, and our group was fast approaching it. Just outside the lounge area of Tazz'Alaor, we jumped from a ledge to a safe spot where the Firebrand orcs hang out. Doing this let us skip about ten troll and orc groups, and after spending all that time killing trolls, I think we all felt it was time to push ahead a bit.

UP NEXT: Firebrand Orcs and the Epic Mage Drop