Schooling Scholomance

[MongoJerry]

Say cheese!

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XII, Dawn's Gambit

In the Burning Steppes, there begins a little known, or at least little completed, quest series called "Dawn's Gambit." It starts off in the Burning Steppes, takes you into Blackrock Spire, then over to the other side of the world to Winterspring, and then to Scholomance. Kronos was one of the few people to have taken the trouble to complete the quest series up to this point. Heck, I'm a quest hound, and I have yet to finish the series myself.

At the point of our story, Kronos had received a box called Dawn's Gambit from an NPC who claims that the box will "react with the undead found [in the Viewing Room] and, with a little luck, destroy them." None of us had any clue as to what was going to happen, but we figured it was a device that would somehow clear the room of students so that we could fight the two named bosses at the front of the room unimpeded.

Before continuing, I'd like to clear up a strange misconception about the Viewing Room.



I've been in two pickup Scholomance groups now where, upon entering the Viewing Room, people have admonished the group in capital letters, "DO NOT TALK TO THE MOBS HERE!" One day, I want to study how such rumors and superstitions start and spread. In this case, I imagine this superstition began with the almost equally absurd superstition that one shouldn't talk to the patrons in the bar in Blackrock Depths. At least in that room, there is indeed one named quest goblin with his four clearly delineated henchmen surrounding him who will attack you if you talk to him.

However, other than him, it was and is perfectly safe to talk to the bar patrons, contrary to popular belief. What's even more amazing is that not only would people accept something like that without question but that they would go so far as to forcefully spread the superstition without at least testing it out themselves. One time I asked in a pickup group why we shouldn't talk to the patrons, and a guy said that the patrons you talk to would aggro when the Phalanx event started, an idea that was completely absurd. I proceeded to talk to every patron in the bar (except the named goblin and his henchmen) much to the horror of my groupmate. We started the Phalanx event, and of course, no bar patrons aggroed us.



Coming back to Scholomance, I can assure you that you can safely talk to all of the mobs in the Viewing Room -- even the two nameds. Some of the comments you'll read are quite funny, in fact.

So there our group was standing in the middle of the Viewing Room, surrounded by a couple dozen students and with two mean-looking named bosses staring at us. All we had going for us was a mysterious box that Kronos had received from an NPC. We buffed ourselves up, shrugged, and waited for Kronos to right-click the box.



The moment Kronos hit the box, so many things happened at once, I didn't know where to turn. Looking at the screenshots I managed to get during the first few moments of the battle reveals this conversation:

Vectus yells: Ah, so my minions from the Burning Steppes have brought the dragons...
Vectus yells: Marduk, gather the box and place it before me!
Marduk Blackpool says: Master Vectus, I sense something strange within this container...
Vectus yells: What is this?! How dare you!
Marduk Blackpool says: We are betrayed!

At this point, the students, who I think had gathered at the front to look at the "box," all turned into skeletons and charged the party. By turning the students into skeletons, the box made it easier to kill them, because they had far less health. Kronos and Neth were able to use area-of-effect attacks to kill them all.



Marduk Blackpool had charged the party along with the students and had promptly killed Neth. But once the students had been killed and once we had a chance to get over the initial shock and surprise, our party sprang into action. Lilisi rezed Neth, while I healed Kupeludo who tanked Marduk. Marduk hit *hard* and used some special multi-target attacks like "Shadow Bolt Volley." Incidentally, that debuff aura you see on all of us (the purple claw-like thing) is a -100 to shadow resistance aura. If we hadn't had our shadow resistance buffs or paladin resistance aura up, we would've been dead meat. It was touch and go there for a while, but in the end, we were victorious.

What about Vectus? Luckily, he hadn't charged us along with the rest of the mobs in the room, so we were able to take a breather and med up, before tackling him. If we would have had to have fought Vectus and Marduk simultaneously, that would've been an ugly fight.



After we medded for a bit, we charged Vectus, and it turned out that he was very easy to kill when he was by himself. After Marduk, he seemed almost too easy, but after all we had gone through, we didn't care. Kronos had completed his quest, and I could yell out:

Neriad: FIVE PLAYERS BABY!!

What'd Vectus and Marduk drop? I didn't care. It was 8:30ish in the morning. Vectus just dropped a Scourgestone while Marduk dropped a thorium lockbox. I understand that Vectus usually drops very little but that Marduk frequently drops blues. I just checked thotbott to see if I could give you a better idea of the kinds of items he drops, but it's an indication of how few people have actually completed Dawn's Gambit that it knows of only two times that Marduk has been killed. One should take that precise figure with a grain of salt, of course, because all that means is that only two people who have installed Cosmos and who choose to contribute data to thotbott have killed Marduk. Many players, and in fact the vast majority of players, do not. Still, the fact that thotbott only has two reports of Marduk's death does indicate how rare the event is, and I'm glad Kronos had that box with him so I could see it (and write about it). That reminds me. I should go finish Dawn's Gambit myself!

We hearthed to Ironforge, hooted and hollered, and made complete fools of ourselves in the general chat. Then, after taking care of some business in town, Kronos whispered me to ask if I was going to turn in the quest involving the four deeds. He didn't want to turn in the quest unless he knew there was a good reward or a followup quest, just in case a later patch added a big reward. I told him that I had no problem with turning in the quest now, because all of our items and characters are going to be deleted in the not too distant future anyway.

So, we both rode up to Chillwind Point, and I gave the four deeds to Weldon Barov. It turned out that there was a followup quest, so I told Kronos to go ahead and turn his deeds in, too.



A PvP quest? What the...?

The adventure has just begun!