Schooling Scholomance

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part X, The Barov Family Vault and The Shadow Vault

The fifth chamber held the Barov Family Vault which starts off with three fixed skeleton guards and three patrolling skeleton guards. The normal mobs are taken out with ease.



In the back stands Lord Alexi Barov and two guards. Barov has a damaging aura, but the only real issue in this fight are the two extra mobs who fight alongside him. If one has a priest, then one of the guards can be shackled of course. Other than that, it's a pretty straight-forward fight, where we usually concentrate on killing Barov first. The ranged attackers might want to stay back a little ways to keep out of the range of the aura.



Barov dropped the leather Cadaverous set leggings.



In addition to Lord Alexi Barov, the Barov Family Vault contains the fourth and final deed, the Deed to Caer Darrow.



We then entered the sixth and final chamber, the Shadow Vault. Again, there wasn't anything tricky about the regular mobs other than the fact that they hit hard. The final miniboss of the instance, Lady Illucia Barov, waited for us at the back of the room.



Lady Barov can both Silence and Mind Control players. Perhaps it's a sign that one has played this game too long (and it hasn't been released yet!) that my reaction to this was, "Meh, so what else is new?" She's a spellcaster and therefore doesn't have a large health pool, so she can be taken down quickly. Perhaps Blizzard should have a couple of guards join her to make the fight more interesting.

http://www.thotbott.com/?i=23488

Lady Barov dropped the Cadaverous Belt (I didn't get a screenshot, so a thotbot link will have to suffice). Wow! We got the Cadaverous belt, boots, and kilt -- three of the five possible Cadaverous items -- in one run! Too bad we didn't have a rogue with us.



Also, the Skin of Shadow, an ingredient in a couple of epic leather and mail recipes, can be found in this room.

So, after killing six minibosses in the Headmaster's Study, we ended up with five set items. After having run Scholomance a few more times, I can confidently say that this is a theme for the chambers in the Headmaster's Study. That is, every run the Lorekeeper drops nothing of significance, and the other five minibosses drop a set time. There are four sets in all -- one cloth, one leather, one mail, and one plate. I'm curious to find out what all of the full-set bonuses are for each of the sets. The one set I do know about is the cloth set, the Necropile set. The full set bonus is:

+5 Int
+5 Defense
+15 All resist
+12 To all magic and healing effects

So there's nothing that turns you into a vampire and lets you cast fireballs and firewalls. I'm quite disappointed. The bonuses aren't all that much to write home about, and since most of the base items in the Necropile set seem to emphasize stamina, the set seems to be geared mostly toward warlocks. This won't stop me from rolling on them for my priestess, though. You never know how the item stats will change in the next patch, and it's not like there aren't a lot of better items out there for warlocks, either.



So with the six side chambers of the Headmaster's Study cleared away, Darkmaster Gandling himself appeared in the center of the lower level of the central room. Looking at him, he doesn't seem like such a bad guy. Maybe we can go down there, get to know one another, find some common ground, and come up with a diplomatic solution to our differences.