07-16-2004, 08:37 PM
Quote:Gnomeregan is not what you'd think of if all you've played are the Deadmines or Stockades instances. Gnomeregan is VAST - it dwarfs (pun intended) Van Cleef's hidey-hole. You do not approach Gnomeregan as a "one-time-through" instance. In fact, the quests there will force you to enter it more than once. At some point, you get a key that will allow you to enter a "back door" for the instance, skipping some of the initial way. Consider it a savepoint.
Yes, Gnomeregan is vast. However, it turns out that while the Workshop entrance ("back door") may be the shortest way to the end boss distancewise, but it's anything but the shortest way to get to the end boss timewise. The Workshop has large gangs of gnomes flanked by mechanostriders and other gnome machines every step of the way. It's a fun but tough experience to get through it all. However, there is another way using the regular first entrance to get to the end boss in a much quicker and easier manner. It involves jumping over a couple of ledges into the rooms below. It's difficult to describe it in words, but once you get an understanding of the geography of GM, you can probably figure it out for yourself. One hint is that the first jump has you jump onto an enormous screw in the middle of the room containing the oozes.
Quote:and we failed one of the in-instance quests (a brutal escort quest where your group is mobbed by 6-10 creatures at once with a tiny break in between).
Are you talking about the escort of the goblin quest? If so, it's fairly easy. The goblin "follows" one of the players, so you can go at your own pace and take whatever path you want. There aren't any special creatures who appear to attack him, so all you have to do is go back and kill the same mobs you did to get to him. If you get to him fast enough, you might not even have to do that, since the mobs might not have respawned. I'm guessing you had your bad experience because either a) Some of your groupmates moved too fast and woke up too many mobs (perhaps thinking that the goblin moved on his own like other escort quests) or B) you had respawns appear on top of you while you were fighting some other mobs.
Quote:I know that later on, it gets pretty insane though. The quest to defeat Gnomeregan's end-boss is still orange to my level 31 priest, and I bet it's a challenge to a solid group of 35's. Since Gnomeregan is so big, the level range is fairly large - the early stuff is level 27-28ish.
Yeah, it gets pretty insane later -- in a perfectly gnomishly insane way. Some suggestions I have are: Have at least one person in your party have the Gnomish Universal Remote to control one or more of the mechanicals that appear later. Have a lot of bombs prepared ahead of time and use them often. (It's nice that engineering items are so useful in Gnomeregan). For the final boss, have two people on "bomb duty." That is, they hit the red buttons on the conveyer belts when the heads open up to drop walking bombs. (The previous sentence will make more sense when you see the room). Also, having two or more rogues hitting Thermo with kidney shots (stun) really helps. Good luck!