Skruk has survived yet another challenge. This time he has helped the Druids of Thunder Bluff to cleanse the Wailing Caverns of the corruption set upon it from the evil Druids of the Fang. It wasn't at the price of nothing though, as a Warrior has to lose his life in the process. Rest in piece, Maewyn the level 21 Orc Warrior.
He will be remembered
Going into a dungeon in Hardcore World of Warcraft gives off a while other feeling than going into a dungeon in Softcore World of Warcraft. In Softcore if things go wrong you mostly run the risk of losing a bit of time, or someone raging and leaving the group meaning you have to find a new party member. If things go wrong in Hardcore your character might never come out of there. He will die there and his bones will lie there forever.
That turned out to be a true story for our tank as we headed into the Wailing Caverns. He ended up overpulling while the healer was low on mana, even when the healer called it out to him. I guess he just wasn't paying enough attention. He was also pulling quite aggressively and I wasn't having a good feeling about him at all. When the pull went wrong we were lucky that he was the only death. I hope he chose to go agane and learn from his mistakes.
This is the first death of another I've seen with my own eyes in Hardcore World of Warcraft.
Bear tank best tank
When we got a new tank it all went way better and much smoother. This guy clearly had more experience with tanking and he took us through the dungeon at a safe and steady pace. No more pulls went wrong and no one was even close to dropping low at any point. We didn't get any good drops throughout the dungeon, but most of us managed to complete our quests even if we had to do a bit of extra grinding outside of the dungeon.
The greatest reward for me was getting the Wingblade from the dungeons main quest. The Wingblade is one of the best swords at this level for a rogue, at least that's this easy to get. The other better options are chance based lucky drops and go for horrendous amounts of gold on the auction house. The Wingblade will increase my damage drastically and it will probably last me well into the level 30s before I need to swap it out.
Handing in the rest of the quests took me up to level 22. Starting at level 20 this is very decent progress from just doing one dungeon. A very good sword upgrade, two levels reached and some lesser rewards I haven't even mentioned. It's all good and I'm feeling good.
Now I just need to not feel overconfident and die to something stupid.
Next stop: Silverpine Forest, again.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.
It's a shame to see a player die in Hardcore mode and never see him again, because that character doesn't live anymore, but I could notice how hard it was to reach level 21, so dying in this mode is very painful.
Hopefully he will be bale to level up quicker this time now that he has more experience.