Monday saw the exploration of the Sunken Temple with Karthex, Zyrial, Myrial, and Some Shaman named Sinfulcrit. This was my first time in the Temple and I was vaguely impressed by the layout for the first thirty seconds. Afterward, it was all pretty much reduced to “staircase up, staircase down, staircase up, staircase down” as we went on a wild hunt for various scaly mini-bosses that were little more than reptilian speed bumps for our Ball o’ Hurt. I honestly can’t recollect any part where we were in any real danger.
The real fun of it came after we slew enough tiny draconian menaces and got to face down some proper dragons, complete with asparagus-shaped tails. The final boss was a transparent dragon a bit larger than the rest, but was a straightforward tank-and-spank kill. Given the complex boss fights I’m used to at this point, I left feeling a little disappointed.
Our second adventure saw the replacement of the shaman with the hunter Shotgut, played by our good friend Brian. We not-so-randomly selected the Black Rock Depths and teleported straight to the depths. After Strev’s adventures the previous week, I was fairly confident I knew how this should play out. I realized just after entering that none of us would have the Shadowforge Key quest, which makes deeper exploration much easier. Stepping back out would send us back to our origin point, so I silently hoped someone would die. As it turned out, within minutes I’d have just two wishes left.
BRD is a huge sprawling complex that I won’t describe again (see previous posts), but in the first room we somehow picked up a couple of extra packs of dwarves and ravenous dogs. Before we knew it, Zyrial had been reduced to kibble and his angel loomed over us, granting a few extra seconds of reprieve. Unfortunately, this meant that Zyrial was now at a graveyard halfway across a zone he’d probably never seen before and had no idea of how to navigate the mountain’s interior. Terrific.
I opted to play ‘Spirit Guide’ and told the party to wait as I led him back. I charged down a hallway and aggro’d most of it. As the critters happily nommed and seared Anyth, Zyrial calls out that “It’s cool—I’m following someone.” Terrific. I’m already committed to the plan, so I finish dying properly and jog back. I had asked Zyrial to pick up the Shadowforge quest on the way back and at some point he’s back and announces he’s sharing it. I don’t get a message pop, so I figured it was due to my “Dead Status”. I stopped along the way at the Tomb, started the quest, then took a lava bath to get back to the party quicker.
Once inside the tomb, things proceeded fairly well through the prison section. We clear the Ring of Law, wipe out a ton of hounds, and the party is a little confused on where to go next. Anyth to the rescue! I lead the party with mostly correct directions through the bowels of the dwarven city until we get to the Hall of Crafters. Until this point it was a pretty good run. A little dicey at times and we did lose Zyrial a second time, but otherwise the challenges were met and dealt with accordingly.
We killed the Key Boss and I instructed the party to loot Ironfel, needed for the key. The very next pull, it all went to hell. The tiny dwarves are hard to see under the large golems and we overpulled harshly. The golems are heavy hitters and took most of the party down before we could regain control of the fight. Party wipe!
At this point, there’s some dissension in the ranks. A couple note that we’ve “gone way too deep” for the Prison bosses. This was fine by me, since I was under the impression we were exploring what we could. After a minute or so of guiding Myrial back to the entrance (There was a lava incident), we delved into the depths again for the sole purpose of getting the Key.
Fortunately, there were no respawns and I quickly headed back to the short hallway with the key-dispenser at the end. We splattered the guardians and … found out that only Zyrial and I had the quest. D’OH! We got our keys and an insane amount of xp for doing so.
It’s a very rewarding dungeon and I’m hoping that we’ll be able to revisit it a couple more times and do the actual quests for the place. Time to do some research!
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