Schooling Scholomance

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XV, Kirtonos the Herald

After killing Jandice Barov, the party took a break. For one thing, Keimon had to leave, so we had to look for a replacement (and found one in another warlock, Orodruin). In addition, several party members wanted to turn in their bags containing the Blood of the Innocents to Eva Sarkhoff right away. Having two warlocks in the party made this easy. Players could hearth out (or /stuck and rez at the spirit healer), turn in the quest at Eva, and then get resummoned back to middle of the instance. As long as one warlock and at least two others stayed in the instance at all times, the party could rotate people in and out as much as it wanted to. Conveniently, there's a spot at the top of the stairwell leading to Jandice Barov's basement chamber where no mobs respawn. We stayed there during the break.

After gathering again, we fought our way back through respawns to the Chamber of Summoning, the second major room in the instance. We had seen a small balcony off to the side of the Chamber of Summoning with a curious looking brazier in it, but until this point we hadn't known what it was for. It turns out that we were supposed to place the Blood of the Innocents in the brazier to summon Kirtonos the Herald. We had no idea what to expect, so we cleared the Chamber of Summoning again just in case this Kirtonos fellow decided to fight in the middle of the chamber.

We walked out onto the balcony (or the "Porch" as the game calls it for some reason), and with no idea of what to expect, lit the brazier.



An orange text message appeared on the screen:

Kirtonos the Herald lets out a shrill cry

I looked around to try to locate Kirtonos, and it was only when he was just about on top of us that I saw that in fact he was a gargoyle, flying at us from the outside direction. (Note: The above screenshot was from a later run, when I knew where to look).



Kirtonos flew over our heads, landed behind us on the stairs leading to the Chamber of Summoning, and transformed into his humanoid form. As you can see, the gate leading to the Chamber of Summoning closed shut once the brazier was lit, so there was no chance of running and also no need to clear the Chamber of Summoning. This fight was going to end one way or another on the "Porch."



Several times during the fight, Kirtonos changed back into his gargoyle form. In this form, he would cast Curse of Tongues, which reduced casting speed by 50% -- a harsh penalty on casters.



Still, there weren't any special tactics that needed to be employed to kill him, and we flattened him pretty quickly.

What'd we get? What'd we get? You ask. Check out Kupeludo's brand new cool-looking two-handed axe that you can see him holding in the previous screenshot. It's stats are:



Not good enough, you say? Then, how about this belt that I got:



I was particularly happy to get this belt, because the only piece of treasure in Blackrock Spire that could possibly be useful to me was a belt that sometimes drops off one of the minibosses there. I didn't want to bother running Blackrock Spire over and over just to get that belt. Yet, here I was on the third day of the patch, and I already had a belt from Scholomance that was better than that BRS belt, so I didn't have to run BRS anymore. *Phew* It's purely personal preference, but I like Stratholme and Scholomance much better than BRS. (Note: Stat-wise, the belt in BRS and the Clutch of Andros are roughly equal. Which one you prefer depends on whether you like stamina or spirit more. I like spirit more than stamina for Neriad, so I prefer the Clutch).

After killing Kirtonos, the party continued on a standard Scholomance run much like what has already been described by these journals. When we were done, the party members were in a bind. We had been able to summon Kirtonos because of an item given to us by a quest giver, and Kirtonos had dropped two very nice items for our party. Who knew what other items he might drop? (Note: I've also seen him drop a 40.0 dps dagger that gives +8 to arcane spells). We could abandon our quests, get the quest again along with a another Blood of the Innocents from Eva, and farm Kirtonos repeatedly. Or, we could turn in our quests and see what we get.

It didn't help that the Kirtonos quest specifically says in its title "<Needs Reward>." Internal Blizzard notes like "<Needs Reward>," "<NYI>" (not yet implemented), and "<Needs Text>" are a common sight for beta testers. Unfortunately, many beta testers take such messages too literally, since I've seen some players not bother to accept quests that say "<NYI>" or "<Needs Reward>." The thing is that in most cases such quests are actually implemented or actually have some sort of reward. I suspect that such messages most of the time indicate that while there is some sort of implementation or reward for the quest, it hasn't gone through whatever quality assurance vetting process Blizzard has.

So it was a tough call. Abandon the quest and farm Kirtonos, or turn in the quest and see what was behind the proverbial curtain #2.



Well, I'm a curious SOB, so I turned in my quest and received an item called a Spectral Essence, which says it will allow me to "communicate with the other lost souls of Caer Darrow." What the heck did this mean? At this moment, a system message came on, saying that the servers were being taken down. I'd have to wait for a few hours to find out what this Spectral Essence thing was all about.

UP NEXT: Curtain #2