2008-02-25 Dun Garok

Philly was back in the saddle once again sunday morning for the regular Grunt Foundation outing. For the first time in three meetings we had our full five back together again. The missing days had gotten us a bit spread out in level, with two at level 28, one at 29, and Philly and one other at level 30. Philly was just barely level 30, though.

I had some RL visiting to do so Philly was under a pretty strict time limit. We decided to spend the morning questing to get better prepared for our next dungeon adventure and because some of the dungeon quests we wanted required players to be at least level 30.

We had as our main target the dwarven underground fortress of Dun Garok in the Hillsbrad Foothills. But we had some pre-quest work to do first. As usual we moved fast through the quests, but there was a lot of killing to be done, and it took some time. There was more murloc killing, too (see why those beasties get such attention? They're everywhere!). This time they were along the bank of a river in Southshore, which is an alliance stronghold and defended by alliance mobs that will set the pvp flag if attacked. In our usual rush we didn't bother slipping past the alliance mobs, just waded in and killed them along with the murlocs. The pally died during that initial fight as he got out of range of Philly's heals. Philly rezzed him for the next round of murloc killings. With all of us flagged for pvp, we might have made an enticing target for alliance players, but there was only one level 40 something around. There was also some comfort in that there were five of us to deal with. If someone or someone's wanted a piece of us, have at it.

Philly was down to her last 45 minutes of game time when we finally were ready for Dun Garok. The fortress has several levels with small, cramped passages and rooms fit for dwarves. The smaller undead Philly was a little more comfortable than big Wild was when he did this place, but it is still tough to get around and keep everyone visible for healing. There are three quests to do, as well, one of them a random sword drop that can be irritatingly hard to get, and another a random spawn of barrels that can also take time for all five of us to get. Not to mention the boss dwarf which has a long spawn time.

We pounded through the place in record time, clearing every dwarf with no deaths. We are really working well together. But the boss hadn't spawned and the sword didn't drop. So we went to the cozy room (cozy now because it was empty save for dwarf corpses) where the boss spawns. We sat in chairs around the fire and chatted while we waited.

When respawns started to appear, and still no boss, we swept through the place again and cleared it out a second time. The sword dropped this time. When Wild did this quest only one person could loot the sword, so it had to drop five times. But they changed that, and all of us were able to loot the sword. Back to the boss room, and this time he was there. It was a quick kill. Philly had picked up a barrel during the second clearing, and everyone else had gotten theirs as well. It took us 35 minutes to complete all three quests and clear the place twice. Not bad at all.

I was out of time and had to leave, so I've still to sort through Philly's bags and to turn in the quests. Philly made level 31, though, even without the quest turn ins, and should be well on her way to 32.