Schooling Scholomance

[MongoJerry]

ADVENTURES OF NERIAD: Schooling Scholomance, part XVII, The Keepsake of Remembrance

Magistrate Marduke informed Neriad that to truly destroy the lich, Ras Frostwhisper, she must first cause Frostwhisper to return to his mortal form and then kill him. Marduke knew how to cause the transformation to take place, but the one thing he was missing was an object from Ras Frostwhisper's former life. That is, a "keepsake of remembrance." Obtaining one would be no small task, for undead sentient beings such as Frostwhisper typically attempt to destroy all remnants of his or her previous life in order to prevent such a transformation from taking place, according to Marduke.

So, Magistrate Marduke asked Neriad to go to Ras Frostwhisper's former home city of Stromgarde and find an item that might in some way be linked to Ras Frostwhisper's former life. He does not say what such an item might be or where in the city such an item might be found. It was up to Neriad and any other adventurers doing the quest to find the item themselves.

Kronos and Neriad flew over to the Arathi Highlands and entered the city of Stromgarde. It is a city in the midst of a brutal three faction war. The Alliance, the ogres, and the Syndicate each control approximately one-third of the city. The inhabitants are all elite mobs, so it's a kind of "outdoor dungeon" that normally requires sizeable party to venture into. This is especially true on the PvP server, since both Horde and Alliance adventurers enter the city to complete quests. Since the city is not an instance, it can be a madhouse free-for-all as everyone runs into each other while trying to complete their quests. (This can be both a fun and frustrating aspect of questing in Stromgarde).

But luckily for us, both the mobs in the city and the majority of players who typically quest there are in the mid-to-high level 30's. So Kronos and I (and Berilac who joined us later), as level 60 characters, could walk around the city pretty much unmolested.

Hmmm... where should we start looking? We weren't told what the keepsake looked like or where in the city it was. Thinking like a game developer, I reasoned that that probably meant that whatever the keepsake was, it was probably in some obvious landmark location. I suggested that we try looking in the central keep first, but Kronos said that he was going to check the ogre tower first.

Kronos: FOUND IT!!!!
Kronos: top of the ogre tower

In hindsight, it was a good guess. After all, Ras Frostwhisper was a mage in his former life, and the ogre tower has that "mage tower" architecture that can be seen in many locations throughout the world.



I raced to the top of the ogre tower, and found... nothing.

Neriad: Is the keepsake a mob drop?
Kronos: no, it's a book
Kronos: appears right here
Kronos: gm says it's spawning

I waited a bit longer, but the book didn't respawn. I left to check a couple other places but returned to the top of the ogre tower every few minutes only to find that the book hadn't respawned there. Kronos and Berilac posted some messages on the Blizzard forums, asking for clues on where the keepsake spawns, but since so few people had actually followed the quest series to this point, we only got a couple of non-specific responses. The one thing we did get out of the responses, though, was the confirmation that the keepsake can spawn in multiple locations, so camping one location (like the top of the ogre tower) wasn't going to do any good.



I still clung to my belief that the keepsake had to spawn in landmark locations, though, and the fact that it had spawned that one time at the top of the ogre tower only reinforced that belief. I thoroughly checked the central keep, which is in Syndicate hands, three times, and I also checked the chapel and mausoleum in the Alliance area several times. I then started checking some of the second tier landmark buildings (inns and other such buildings that hadn't been burned to the ground).

Finally, in desperation, I embarked on a systematic search of every square inch of the sprawling city, starting with the Alliance area where I was at the time and then moving on to the Syndicate sector. As I was completing my search of the Syndicate section of the city, Kronos called out that he'd found the keepsake in a chimney in a ruined building in the ogre section of the city -- naturally, the last place I was going to look.



It took me two hours of searching to find the keepsake, far too long for such a quest, but that's not really the fault of the game designers. It took me that long, because I kept holding onto my belief that the keepsake had to be in some landmark location. If I had known that it could be found in a chimney in the middle of a ruined house, I would've started my systematic search of the city earlier and found the keepsake much quicker. So far, the only reports on the location of the keepsake seem to be in ogre and Syndicate areas, so if you're looking for the keepsake yourself, try those areas first. (I gather that the chimney of an inn in the Syndicate section of the city is another popular spawn location).



Having finally found our Keepsake of Remembrances, we returned to Magistrate Marduke who then told us to take it to Leonid Barthalomew the Revered, an undead dissenter of the Scourge, who is now loyal to the cause of the Argent Dawn. Barthalonmew then told us to take our keepsakes to the location where Ras Frostwhisper cut his own throat and where the Lich King turned Frostwhisper into a lich. (Really, I think Blizzard should look into creating an instance populated by fluffy bunnies who just want to cuddle and do nice things for people). This spot was called Menethil's Gift, a pentagram located deep within the Scourge city of Stratholme.

Easy enough. But, uh, there's one problem. Where the heck was this pentagram? Kronos, Berilac, and I scratched our heads trying to remember where the thing was. We had each done many Stratholme runs, so we figured we had to have seen it. Kronos thought that it might be somewhere in the section of the city with the ziggurats. I thought there might have been a pentagram on the floor of the main boss's chamber in the Scarlet Crusade section of the city. (The Scarlet Crusade boss turns out to be a demon in disguise, so it wasn't a crazy idea). We asked around, but no one had a definitive answer on where the pentagram might be. Gee, one would think demonic runes would stand out more in a game like this.



Berilac had joined us originally to do a Scholomance run with us, so it would have been rude to delay that any further. We recruited some more people, headed off, and put the search for Menethil's Gift on hold. However, we did finally get a response from some friends who were running Stratholme that there definitely was not a pentagram in the Scarlet Crusade's boss's chambers, so that idea was scratched.

I kept asking around later, however, and I finally got a definitive response that there were some strange markings in the Baron's chamber in Stratholme. I hitched a ride with a group raiding Stratholme to check it out. One of the nice things about being a priest is that one never has a shortage of opportunities to go on instance runs.



We killed the Baron (a.k.a. the Death Knight), and sure enough, right in the middle of his chamber was Menethil's Gift. I don't know about you, but that sure doesn't look like a pentagram to me. However, it does say "[PH]" (placeholder), so maybe the art team is still working on it.

I placed the keepsake on Menethil's Gift, and the Keepsake of Remembrance turned into a Soulbound Keepsake. (The text reads: "The soul of the fallen clings to that which represents its former life and transforms the item into a soulbound keepsake.") A new quest appeared that asked me to return the keepsake to Barthalomew the Revered who then told me to take it to Magistrate Marduke. Great, why couldn't I have cut out the middle man and just gone to Magistrate Marduke in the first place?



Anyway, Magistrate Marduke then told me that there was one task remaining. I had to enter Scholomance, find Ras Frostwhisper, use the soulbound keepsake to return him to his human form, and then kill him once and for all.

UP NEXT: The Final Task