Scholomance & Stratholme (part 2)

This guide to the Plaguelands and their associated instances has been split:

• PART 1: Summary of Quests and Reputation Gains
• PART 2: Guide to Quest Chains
• PART 3: Guide to Instances
  

As with Outland zones, many of the quest chains available in the Plaguelands lead to local instances. The Horde effort begins at The Bulwark in Tirisfal Glades, just east of the Undercity; you may be directed there from Orgrimmar by the Call to Arms. It is here you will meet the Forsaken’s front line soldiers, and those members of the Argent Dawn with whom they are collaborating.

There are three key chains on offer here: Scholomance, The Scourge Cauldrons and Argent Dawn Commission. This latter quest is most useful, as it grants you a trinket with which you can collect Scourge insignia; the other two quests see you working for the Forsaken in order to unlock the Scholomance and disrupt the Scourge plague cauldrons.

The Scourge Cauldrons chain has no direct bearing upon the instances, but allows you to earn repeatable reputation bonuses with the Argent Dawn once complete. It may be in your interests to complete this alongside Skeletal Fragments a little way into your Plaguelands campaign, for reasons I’ll explain shortly.

Events start with Scholomance, in which High Executor Derrington tasks you with crafting a key to this, the Scourge’s necromantic academy.

“Scholomance” Chain

Derrington wants you to disrupt a nearby Scarlet Crusade camp, in Scarlet Diversions. This is a surprisingly tough quest for melee attackers, and you may benefit from bring someone into a joint effort if you’re attacking with characters in the low 50s (the quest is available to you at level 50). A mob of ranged combatants and healers plays havoc with your own crowd control abilities, and you will usually have to slaughter all those guarding the camp in order to get close to the tent. One common mistake is to do all this and forget to pick Derrington’s incendiaries up; you will need these items, found loose at the Bulwark, in order to set the camp alight.

The next phase in Undercity’s assault upon the Scourge is an attack on Andorhal. All Along the Watchtowers tasks you with marking locations for an aerial assault, right in the heart of a Scourge-infested city. Chromie of the bronze dragonflight may be found in an inn to the north-east of Andorhal; you may wish to carry her quests out alongside this one, as she offers useful items for battling a future foe.

Once the beacon marker quest is completed you will unlock two new quests. Both culminate in a fight with Araj the Summoner, an outdoor raid boss in Andorhal’s centre. It’s worth knowing this beforehand so you won’t have to fight him twice: Alas, Andorhal asks you to attack him immediately, but Scholomance starts a chain leading to the same objective.

Dithers wishes you to collect Skeletal Fragments in order to craft the [Skeleton Key] to the Scholomance. The door may be unlocked by anyone bearing this key, or by lock-breaking rogues, blacksmiths and engineers. The fragments for this key may be gathered inside Andorhal or from the skeletons guarding Scourge cauldrons. With 15 of these in hand your journey shifts to Gadgetzan.

You will need to gather at least 15 gold, and two [Thorium Bar]s from a miner. Luckily Gadgetzan provides you with bank, vault and Blackwater auction house access, as well as a forge at which you may smelt any [Thorium Ore].

Krinkle Goodsteel, found next to Trenton Lighthammer of the Mithril Order, is happy to sell you a key mould for 15 gold, instructing you to craft the key at Fire Plume Ridge in Un’Goro Crater. You’re sent to a hotbed of quest activity; those working in Un’Goro will find low-level sorties from Ratchet (Volcanic Ash), Marshall’s Refuge (Lost!) and the Golakka Hot Springs (Finding the Source), while those who began the Linken’s Memory chain earlier may wish their key-forging visit to coincide with slaying Blazerunner, the fire elemental who overlooks your forge site.

Once the key is forged you return to Dithers, not Krinkle Goodsteel. The final phase involves slaying Araj the Summoner, which is where Alas, Andorhal and Chromie’s [Attuned Dampener]s come into play.

Araj is a level 60-61 elite with tricky shadow spells and a fair bit of health; it is likely that you will have to 3-man him, although it’s rare that the group will need a dedicated healer. Each player can use one [Attunded Dampener] during the fight to disrupt Araj’s damage and take chunks off his health. Since the Scholomance is quite nearby, it makes good sense for your party to gather quests up to this point and simply attack the lich, grab the keys and move on to the Scholomance proper. Once slain, his phylactery drops offering you the two quest items for Alas, Andorhal and Araj’s Scarab.

Plagued Dragonflight Chain

This most intriguing chain ties Scourge efforts in the Scholomance to all manner of conspiracies, leading adventurers from the Burning Steppes to Winterspring and the Blackrock Spire. It is a hefty investment however, and requires passage through a 10-man raid attuned to characters in the upper 50s.

The adventure begins at Flame Crest in the Burning Steppes, as Tinkee Steamboil asks you to gather Broodling Essence from the black dragonflight’s young. Her goal is to conduct tests on the eggs laid inside Blackrock Spire, but she needs some engineering components from a colleague at Everlook. Gather the Chillwind Horns and you can Return to Tinkee, ready to begin experiments inside the spire.

Egg Freezing requires a 10-man group at level 60, but a lesser number if you can find some much higher-level escorts. Tinkee wishes you to enter the Rookery, famous site of the Leeroy Jenkins débâcle, and conduct tests upon the eggs there. Her task comes in two parts, so theoretically could be conducted in one instance by using a [Hearthstone] once Egg Freezing is complete. Egg Collection tasks you with collecting eight of these eggs upon a return visit.

As suggested, this can be done quite easily with a much smaller number of level 80 escorts, and may be particularly efficient if you can recruit warlocks with which to summon members back into the instance from Flame Crest. The Rookery is found halfway through the raid, suggesting that the group need not necessarily fight all the bosses within. Both of Tinkee’s quests are believed to be soloable too, since you are merely interacting with the environment. You should be prepared to deal with non-elite swarms of the broodlings just in case, but the option is there to carry this quest out after your raid group has moved on.

Completing Tinkee’s tasks will eventually refer you to Bettina Bigglezink of the Argent Dawn, whose life work is the research of the mysterious plagued dragonflight. She offers the Plagued Hatchlings quest to anyone bound for the Scholomance, but the Dawn’s Gambit quest granted at the end of this chain will shed new light on her studies there.

Nathanos Blightcaller Chain

Forsaken players will find Sylvanas directing you to Nathanos for work of importance in the Eastern Plaguelands, however his quests, open to all members of the Horde, appear chore-like at first glance.

• To Kill with Purpose sees you gathering Scourge items from Corin’s Crossing nearby;
• Un-Life’s Little Annoyances tasks you with slaying plaguebats in the area;
• and The Ranger-Lord’s Behest sends you to the highborne lodge on the Ghostlands border in order to slay rangers and retrieve valuable documents.

Completing this chain unlocks two more quests, in which Nathanos wishes you to hunt a named plaguebat and carrion maggot. Finally, once these are done he reveals his anguish at having faced Ramstein of Stratholme. Your task then is to slay this abomination; he is found in the latter part of Stratholme, within Baron Rivendare’s courtyard.