Dungeon Bullet Points

Leaving all this newfangled raid stuff aside, one of my Classic endgame goals was to do all the max-level dungeons at least a couple of times and get a better feel for them than I had back in the day. (I've written about my uncomfortable relationship with vanilla endgame previously.) I wasn't sure how well that particular ambition was going to pan out in a raiding guild, but luckily for me it turned out that quite a few of the core raiders are actually quite fond of running five-man dungeons as well, so I've made some nice progress on my personal dungeon checklist.

Blackrock Depths

A Jail Break run in BRD was actually the first piece of group content I recall doing with guildies (not counting the bug/dragon farm). They were looking to get a couple of alts attuned for Onyxia and were LFM, and I figured that I might as well join in since I wasn't attuned either at the time. It was pretty fun!

Since then I've been back a number of times: to get attuned for MC, do some other quests and also help out other guildies. I still think it's too easy to get lost in there and just consider the dungeon too long, but I've found that it does help to let go of the notion of treating it like a regular dungeon that you "complete" every time and to simply accept that you have to pick and choose your targets based on what people want to do on any given night. Plus my guildies actually know their way around so there are fewer annoyances with getting lost.

Blackrock Spire

Now, this has been my biggest success story as it's the one place I don't think I ever went to back in Vanilla and which I only ever visited a couple of times afterwards as well. The only post on the blog that had the tag "Blackrock Spire" until now is this one from late Wrath in which I talk about a pug kicking me for specifically wanting to do LBRS instead of a random dungeon (lol).

Parts of it are still confusing to me, especially where people habitually skip some pulls by jumping off ledges and stuff, but through sheer repetition I've become much more comfortable with the place. I even ran LRBS often enough to collect all the gems for the UBRS key. (Yes, I'm a hunter with the UBRS key now. Every pug's dream!)

There've been fewer runs of UBRS itself, but still a few (and yes, I'm counting UBRS as a dungeon even though it's a ten-man). I've learned how to kite General Drakkisath, and I got Finkle's Skinner from the Beast. I also learned that there's a gnome hiding inside the belly of the Beast, which amused me to end.

Dire Maul

Dire Maul is not as popular a destination but I have visited all wings at least once. East was ticked off during an extremely late-night run with a group of guild regulars. West was done one afternoon when a guildie suddenly got it into his head that he really wanted the book needed to acquire Quel'Serrar - not that we got it in that run, considering the extremely low drop rate. On the final round of the instance to hand in our quests at the end, the druid healer and I must have found every single one of the invisible ghosts in the instance; it was quite ridiculous. Finally, I got to see Dire Maul North during my first ever tribute run, which someone started to get the buffs in time for a guild raid.

Scholomance

Scholomance is the one dungeon I still haven't done for some reason! Need to rectify that at some point...

Stratholme

I've done the living side once or twice and the undead side several more times. It's a place that seems to be quite popular with people for farming money (live side) or specific rare drops (undead side). I took it as a sign of how much times have changed that we easily completed the "Baron Run" (reaching and killing the last boss of the undead side within 45 minutes) several times without even trying. I also learned that there's an amulet you can gather in the living side that makes an NPC from the chapel at the back door help you in the fight against the Baron... even where I thought I knew the content, I keep learning new things.