Blackfathom Deeps

This weekend we ventured into Blackfathom Deeps. It was my first time as a tank as Salthier, and Lal's first instance ever. With the assistance of some guild member alts, we pulled together a solid group to venture in to the caves and watery passage ways of this ancient Temple of Elune, now filled with evil Naga and Twilight Cultists.

Prior to entering the dungeon, we were able to get ourselves to level 23 on quests in Ashenvale and the Stonetalon Mountains. Saturday we spent a great deal of time doing one lousy drop quest. Tasked with collecting 12 venom sacs EACH from the Pridewing Wyverns in the Stonetalon Mountains, we spent well over an hour, and probably two, collecting them. It nearly made me swear off drop quests altogether.

Sunday we prepared ourselves for the instance. Lal was nervous, but our group consisted of another Priest, a Shaman, and a Paladin, so we had back up for both tank and healer. We decided that Lal would concentrate on healing me and our other priest would DPS and heal the others. This worked out very well in all but one circumstance.

As we entered the dungeon we began taking down Naga and Murlocs and various crustaceans of differing sizes with ease. We entered into Ghamoo-ra's cavern and dispatched the evil tortoise. Lal was reward with Ghamoor-ra's Bind. An instant upgrade for a job well done. We gathered some quest objectives and made our way to the next boss, Lady Sarevess who also succumbed to our onslaught. So far, this was easy, and everyone was doing great. I was enjoying tanking, and Lal was healing me just fine. I doubt I ever went below half health.

As we made our way to the next boss, the murloc Gelihast, a bit of personal drama ensued that involved a loot drop. Why is it always with the loot? And it wasn't really anyone's fault, just a bit of confusion. Before hand, I had tried to explain to Lal about greed and need and when each was appropriate. We would greed all green items and need on blue items only if you could use it. Long story short, Lal ended up hitting need on an enchant pattern because of a miscommunication between us in real life. She felt bad about the mistake and was a little ruffled, but since it was Bind on Equip, it was easily remedied and the pattern given away to an enchanter.

Moving on we were taking out murlocs and Gelihast somehow jumped on us before we were ready. We managed to pull through though and kill his fishy butt. After fighting through a gauntlet of Twilight Cultists I convinced the rest of the group to follow me underwater and find Old Serra'kis, a thresher Boss who is sort of hidden. I missed the underwater passage at first and we swam all the way around the room before I found him. He was also a straight forward kill and he dropped a nice cape. Since everyone could use it, I thought we might all need, but people were passing, so Lal and I passed too. Before I could ask if anyone could use it, someone had looted and sharded the cape. So we rolled on the shard. Here again is another place where loot etiquette confuses me. Should we have rolled need even though others passed? Did they want it too, but didn't want to need? I didn't press the matter and we headed to the next encounter of the dungeon.

We continued to fight Twilight Cultists where we experienced our one and only death of a member. And I am sad to report that it was Lal. When we were entering Lord Kelris' room, I inadvertently ran into a group of Twilight warlocks and we had about 4 different mobs with void walker pets fighting us. I tried to taunt as many as I could and our paladin also off tanked some, but the hits were coming heavy and fast. Lal was doing so much to keep my health up that she neglected to watch her own and I didn't notice anything attacking her until it was too late. Our other healer was also busy with the off tank. Lal perished and we continued fighting until we finally had control of the situation and killed all of the cultists. I had to pop a health potion to stay afloat.

The pally rezzed Lal, she shook it off, and we continued to lay the beat down on Lord Kelris. I have to say I am a bit surprised at how the bosses of this place really didn't seem all that hard. Then again it is an entry level dungeon, so maybe it was just about right. After Kelris, we carefully lit each pyre one at a time and fought off the group of monsters each spawned, opening the passage way to the old god, Aku'mai.

Aku'mai must have lost a lot of his powers. We killed him and took a sword from him which no one could use. Sharded it, and everyone cheered for what was a pretty good run. Some dwarf lost in the place offered to port us to Darnassus, but we took the long road out to finish one of the quests. Our instance run then turned into a zombie movie as we hungrily search for brains.

We had a good time. It was fairly long, a few hours, but we gained a whole level and completed some quests with good rewards. I didn't actually get any nice drops but Lal got that belt and also some pants. One of the quests involved getting pendants from the Twilight Cultists. I finished the run with 9/10 pendants. Argh! Lal managed all 10, so she was able to turn the quest in. I don't really want to run the dungeon again just to get one pendant, but I've decided I might try out my prowl in cat form and see if I can sneak in and grab a pendant off of someone.

All in all it was a good, albeit long, time in Blackfathom Deeps. I'm looking forward to our next dungeon, though I don't know for sure where it will be. In the mean time, we have plenty to do in Ashenvale and the Stonetalon Mountains.