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A Norse is a Norse (of Course, of Course)

When last we left our intrepid spell-flinging hero (me), I had logged off in Vengeance Landing in the Howling Fiord to await out the all-likewise-patronize server crashes. Well, as it turns out, Blizzard's poor overworked waiter hamsters just bottom't keep releas for very recollective, and – leastwise for the moment – Northrend crashes are a simple fact of life story in the WotLK of import. Just something to do work through, y'know?

I decide to make the best of the fleeting uptime, poking around the quests available for me in Vengeance Landing. Thither weren't some – and at this point, I haven't actually done most of the available ones, so I don't know if this changes Oregon if the quests are fair spread out more around different hub areas – but it was worth giving some of them a shot, in good order?

The Vengeance Landing houndmaster asks me to help run his plaguehounds, wailing that since he's now a walk corpse, live dogs none longer rely him … and so these demon hounds are an acceptable substitute. It's an newsworthy sentiment and there was a moment or two for sympathy – but quest XP waits for no man!

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Plaguehounds apparently like to eat crow meat, so it's awfully convenient to have a stack of crows right outside the cantonment. Unlike other pursuit-limited pets (e.g., the Skyguard Nether Ray), the plaguehound can actually fight and assist you in killing said crows, and I have to let in I relished the feeling of having a trailer truck-proper combat pet while on the quest; information technology was a neat little touch. Despite the writ large divergence, though, I had taken for granted that the plaguehound would function similarly to the Hungry Chthonic Shaft for the Skyguard bespeak, and was puzzled when it wasn't active to feast connected the carcasses as the two of United States of America culled the Howling Fjord's burgeoning crow population.

Then, I discovered that apiece crow was dropping "crow meat," which was useable – I had to feed the rile-chase manually. OH, the perils of auto-scratch. Once that was done, I returned the hunt to his original, World Health Organization asked me to take it out again – only this time, it'd be searching for clues for something or other like a rotting, undead Scooby-Doo, and I'd have to follow information technology (ostensibly like a pajama-cowled, Mohawk-sporting Shaggy).

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Unlike certain separate hounds quest-givers ask you to follow that take all day to betray easygoing around the area and half the way to Darnassus in front indicatory that the spotlight they were looking for for was about ten feet from where they started (I'm looking at you, Fei-Fei, you blessed mutt), the plaguehound immediately takes forth track North on the land. I follow, and we essentially keep making a beeline Northwest before encountering a spelunk. Now this is no cut-and-dry undermine … well, okay, information technology is an ordinary spelunk, but IT's the only thing around As ALIR as I bum see and there's a map on the ground that I can flick and interact with, so this is plain our destination.

Unfortunately, clicking on the mapping spawns a big burly Viking who seems protective of these secret plans that they just left lying in a cave, and he tries to smash my head in with an axe. Which would be unfortunate, but we live in a world of Hit Points, so sucks to constitute him. After a thorough burning, I return to Vengeance Landing place (my plaguehound having scurried away initially foretoken of trouble – "Mage's Foremost Friend" my blue Troll hindquarters) and point out to the Peaky Executor that Retribution Landing is marked with a skull happening the mapping. Every bit we all know, skull means you kill it first – so this probably isn't a peachy thing. Evidently, we at Vengeance Landing place have made enemies of the section Vikings.

Just ilk the Jet Bay Packers!

…huh, tough crowd.

Thither's roughly other matter going happening with a battle with some Alliance forces finished yonder or whatsoever, but I decide I'll get thereto later, because I've been contacted by a Druid I'm familiar with from the Howler General Forums – goes by the name of Emuslayer here, but at that place he's Noobu. Howdy, Noobu! You father to be in a writeup! 😀

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Er, yes. I'm contacted, and we decide to endure run roughly of the new dungeons. Different the ragged, malnourished hamsters running the Northrend humankind server, the critters powering the beta instance servers are crisp, energetic, and ready to saltation. My sincere apologies if you now have the Hamster-Dance song running done your forefront, and I think I've overextended that metaphor anyway and so let's just toss it.

Soh! What with their improved constancy, instances are bad nice to check unconscious arsenic far Eastern Samoa the beta goes; information technology's far less likely you'll find everything going kaput than you will outside. Of course, the downside is that when the waiter does crash, everything's respawned. Merriment multiplication.

We quickly baffle a grouping unneurotic and realise our way to Utgarde Hold back, a stronghold looming over the center of Fantastic Fjord. I have a amazingly hard fourth dimension figuring impermissible how to start out to the entrance, and in time decide to fair cheat and Laggard Fall – simply I'm sure as shootin there's likely a more proper way that I simply unmarked.

Oh, ace thing I'd forgotten to mention: the Druid They Call Emuslayer tips Maine forth to a new console mastery players can see forward to in WotLK: /console extShadowQuality [#]. This command enables a brand-new graphical feature film in the expansion: Dynamic Shadowing. When activated (0 is hors de combat, while 4 is the intended maximum), objects and players … actually cast shadows. I wear't mean the little black blobs that we call shadows currently in the game, but real shadows. Shadows that calculate connected the angle of ignition, shadows that reflect what your character looks like and what they'Re wearing, shadows that reflect what you actually do – if your character waves, and then does your shadow.

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Dynamic Shadowing is hardly a trade name-inexperient construct, of course, but it adds a visible depth to Scream that is in truth hard to explain without really seeing IT first hand – personally, I'm incredibly glad that I'm no longer playing the game connected an underpowered and ill-powered laptop, but finally have a PC capable of gushing IT on max settings (degree 4 Dynamic Shadowing does require to a higher degree a bit of graphical mightiness). Even so, like almost everything else in Lich Martin Luther King, full following looks really, really good. Even if it is a bit buggy at the moment. But that's what genus Beta's for, eh?

Sorry, tangent. Anyway: IT's keep time!

Utgarde Stay fresh

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I suppose the official name for the level 70 annexe is really Utgarde Catacombs, but for now we'll just go with Utgarde Keep (and refer to the level 80 keep as the Pinnacle, whenever that gets implemented). Though I haven't done much of the story as of yet, the arrival of outsiders from some the Alliance and Horde has ticked off the local population of Vikings. Sanction, yes, they're actually called "Vrykul," only rattling, Blizzard, WHO dress you think you'Ra kidding?

To be fair, the Forsaken aren't precisely the worldwide's virtually pleasant neighbors, and having a bunch of plague-ridden Abominations running or so is bound to drive market prices down, thus I can see why they'd live annoyed with the Horde. As for the Coalition? I dunno, I guess they just don't like Gnomes.

Some the reason, though, these Vikings are eeeeevil and not way-out and awesome like Blizzard's earlier trio of Mislaid Norsemen. Plus, I think they're still in Uldaman. So to stop the Viki-sorry, "Vrykul"-from destroying and pillaging as they're use to do, it's upward to adventurers similar us to stop them! As many times as it takes to commence the drops we want, anyway.

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Zoning into the Catacombs of Utgarde Keep, in that location's a questgiver immediately at heart the instance portal. Apparently, this Blood Elf (well, Dark Ranger, thus… Undead ELF?) was part of a reconnaissance group, but since they weren't awesome like we are, they all got killed except for her. According to her, since the Vrykul are so continual and fearless in combat, the one way to disrupt them is to fail for their leader, Ingvar the Plunderer, and kill him.

Hey, works for me.

Perhaps this isn't quite working As intended, but for being such "relentless fighters" with "untamed tactics," the Vrykul aren't very quick to notice and/or react when their near drinking buddy gets revolved into a sheep. We mercilessly slaughter our way finished Utgarde Keep, identical cursorily coming to the "furnace room" faced in promo screenshots and videos. Yes, it looks pretty. This is not much of a surprise. The fire does hurt if you stand in it, only as you kill the groups around the forge, same by one the jets of flame go out until you can safely make your way around. I'm not quite an sure why the furnace's operation is apparently tied to the really lives of those around it, only let's non look a giving Dreadsteed in the mouth, far-right?

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You know, as good enough-superficial as Lich King is, other than the indefinite furnace room, Utgarde Keep is surprisingly visually uninteresting. Don't get me wrong, information technology certainly doesn't tone corky, and is pretty cursed part … but for the most partially, it's almost wholly just nighttime, boxed-in hallways mixed with large woody stairways. They've done better (and DO better, equally I'll get to), thus it's sort of a let-land from me.

Continued done the instance, we encounter Proto-Drakes, which look up like a cross between … well, a regular Tartar crossed with the bipedal Drakonids crossed with … wellspring, I don't know, only it ain't pretty. They give an cockeyed amount of experience, though – this might fitting be a beta thing, but who's to say? – patc lively, one kill gave me more than five thousand XP. There are a few of them, too, so leveling in instances is fairly quick.

Aft more indiscriminate butcher, we follow to the dungeon's showtime boss, Prince Keleseth – I haven't done it for myself yet, but I'm told atomic number 2's mired in the Death Knight starting request, so it looks like the Vrykul are buddying up with the Scourge. Probably non a good thing. There's a four-take out of guards before him so some CC is nice to have, but non necessary. At the time I first gear ran this, they weren't coupled – but this has been denatured American Samoa of writing, and Keleseth will aggro directly later on the fourth Vrykul is killed. Consider yourselves warned.

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Keleseth himself is an … newsworthy fight. He'll occasionally muster a group of skeleton guards, and so my "2" Key got a workout as I spammed Arcane Detonation. The strange thing he does is freeze a random party extremity in a deflect of ice where they take equipment casualty over time. The ice can be targeted by your allies, much like the Ogre Irons in the Illhoof press in reply in Karazhan. It doesn't have untold wellness, but IT's important to react quickly when he freezes someone.

Anyway, we killed him – and lo and behold, he dropped a bad damn nice unmatchable-handed dagger with a hefty amount of spell power on it (considerably more than the Ring of Blood staff I was currently using), so I rolled for it. Unfortunately, IT was an elevate for our Priest equally well, and He rolling too – and won. Blast it all. I'm rather wary about the totally "Spell Power" change that they're implementing in this expansion, and fully intend to bear on it later … but this is already going to be a long one sol let's just move on. Meanwhile, I'll sporty say that it's slightly silly that they outcry something that big a "dagger," so a Priest potty somehow wield it when they don't have the ability to use, say, the much smaller Discoverer's Focal Brand.

Bah, humbug.

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We went on, and I had fun computation out that I could Spellsteal the Runes that the Vrykul casters usage on themselves, because some of them give within reason overnice buffs (100% increased damage or auto-Fireball, for instance). Furthermore, the spell graphic was actually very cool – unlike the current shield bubbles in the game that are real just flat images rotated to match the viewing angle, these are actual, 3-D bubbles. A nice hint.

After a minute of stair-climbing, we met the Keep's 2nd boss – or rather, bosses – Skarvald the Constructor and his Necromancer pal, Dalronn the Controller. This is a very simple and straightforward crusade: Skarvald will Rush random targets, and Dalronn will, uh, cast magic of extraordinary screen. We killed the Wizard opening, but later on he drops his shade sticks around, continuing to spam magic until Skarvald dies likewise.

And… that's pretty practically the scrap. Really nothing special at all, unless there's something I was nonexistent. They born a pretty nice leather chestpiece, though.

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Some Thomas More putting to death and to a greater extent climbing stairs finally brought us back outside, so we could once again appreciate everything being actually, really pretty. Information technology was interesting to note that when fighting a Proto-Drake Rider, you can target either the rider or his mount, though I'm not sure if humorous either first makes much of a difference. Quiet, from what I know, that's a mechanic we'll see Thomas More of in the future so I'll let you know how it turns out.

Few pulls later, and we were unadulterated at the net boss of Utgarde Keep, our blackwash target – Ingvar the Pillager.

Ingvar is a significantly more complex fight than the early two bosses in the representativ; He's also a lot more fun. In that location are two phases to the combat, some of which cause two (correspondent) abilities meriting mentioning. During the total first stage, He will sporadically use Staggering Roar, which does a fair amount of damage (all but 3k) to everyone inside range, interrupting spellcasting for six seconds. IT is possible to avoid this aside using the pillars around where Ingvar stands, much in the same way as you would in Sethekk Halls against Talon-Lord Ikiss, or in a high-rated Sphere match. The other power is Smash, which does a grand amount of physical legal injury (more than 20k before armor extenuation) to anybody in a cone in social movement of him. It's possible to outrange the strobile, just probably much safer if the tank keeps him faced off from the rest of the group.

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Since Nail stool hurt even a beefy, well-armored tank, it is possible with proper orientating to duck behind one of the pillars as he casts it – it may also be possible to try and run out of the cone area, but I'm not surely how well that works. Either way, good healing is indispensable.

After a good amount of money of harmful, burning, and each that unusual stuff, the Vrykul commander dropped … and I admit to being momently perplexed, because there weren't any sunny happy ransack sparkles on his body. After few seconds, though, there was a purple-black Broadcast of Evil hitting the corpse from the toss – a Valkryie-ish thing by the name of Annhylde the Caller. She yells something about him serving the Lich King, and that's … credibly not a well behaved thing.

She raises Ingvar and past flies off for some … unexplained reason (you'd call back she'd help him against U.S.A, seeing how we, uh, just killed him once already) going away us to square off with the Zombie-Viking for round 2. Er, Stage 2. …you know what I mean.

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His abilities are similar thereto of his life avatar, though naturally more all-powerful. His AoE is now a much faster cast (altogether but impossible to avoid through LoS), does some a thousand more damage, and increases all shadow damage taken aside 5% – so in effect, this becomes a bit of a DPS raceway, because it keeps stacking every time he does it. I'm not alone sure what Dark Smash does that's different from the not-atomic number 3-Dark version, just whatever it was, IT killed our tank beautiful damn exsanguine.

In the end, information technology came down to our Rogue and healer, but since the Rogue had a Warglaive helium was clearly entirely too overpowered and we North Korean won. Hooray!

There is a shortcut back down to the start of the instance, though there's a tur of a bug with it at the minute. Ideally, players skip pop a shaft and fall into weewe like in Wailing Caverns … however, as it presently stands, you fall through the floor right before the die shaft, and alternatively of safely landing in irrigate painfully land on a outsize woody rafter. If you're at full health, you should be fine, merely it's still something I'd hope they fix before IT goes live. Unless, of run, the injurious Vikings committed for it to be this way atomic number 3 a trap – I guess they're just "Thor losers."

I think that … may well be the worst pun I've made in these journals yet.

After turning in our call for, we distinct to continue along and check out some of the other dungeons in our level range … just, since this is erst again longer than anticipated, I'll leave those tales for another day.

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So, Utgarde Keep. It's got extraordinary cool things, and it's certainly by no means bad in any sense of the word, simply it's definitely non the best donjon they've done. Largely, it's just not all that noble, with the exception of the final boss fight (which I found pretty damned fun). I suppose the first boss, Keleseth, is a sport encounter also, but all-told at that place are better instances in the game.

Thankfully, however … there's engorge that more makes up for the lackluster Catacombs of Utgarde Keep, two of which we'll get to very shortly – Azjol-Nerub and The Nexus are advent risen future, then stay tuned!

See you next time!

-TMTCJ(z)

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If you're one of the lucky few to grow into the Wrath of the Lich King Closed Beta Test – and stay tuned since we might have something on it advance soon – come join Jayne(z), the Awesome Brigade, and the <Harmful League of Evil> on the Northrend (PvE) server! We'd love to have you!