I recently retook the infamous Bartle Test, which categorizes gamers based on favorite in-game activities, and Ian totally nailed my personality type as “Explorer (100%), Achiever (60%)”. Regular readers of this blog (both of you) should find this of no surprise.
Continuing my exploration of older dungeons, I journeyed to the Eastern Plaguelands to see what Stratholme had to offer. A nice little city with plenty of lore, it was the site of a major plague outbreak as seen in the Warcraft 3 human campaign and you get to time travel and relive that experience during the Culling of Stratholme “dungeon”. Now I was finally getting to see it “in the now”. My previous experience with this dungeon was thirty seconds of pain months ago when I was trying to find a path to the blood elf starting area and found myself trapped alone in the city with no portal out and everything a dozen levels higher than I. Time to take revenge.
I blew through the thickly guarded city gates and started exploring the city. It looks exactly like what you’d expect in a hopeless city that’s been overrun with undead for years: Detroit. The monsters ranged from ghouls and skeletons to abominations and spider-like crypt-thingies. As I made my way through the city, I occasionally ran afoul of patrols or traps, but nothing that wasn’t overwhelming. It turns out the city itself is divided into two halves: “living” and “undead”, each with a number of bosses.
The western side is a bastion of the Scarlet Crusade and has a castle that must be conquered. It was also where my wandering led first. Once inside the castle, it’s a fairly straightforward path with a few side rooms with extra encounters, bosses, and books to read. That’s the one thing I’ll give the Crusaders: they support literacy. There were very few surprises overall and a nice little boss at the end with a couple of firable cannons for flavor. Presumably the cannons can be used to ward off the waves of additional crusaders that spawn after fighting down the boss, but I found it more expedient to simply blizzard my way to victory.
The eastern side was a bit more complex. The first part included a (presumably fairly elected) undead Magistrar who gave up the Key to the City which opened a backdoor to the “surface” as well as permitted deeper explorations. Once into the streets known as “the Gauntlet”, the undead leader, “Baron Somebody”, yells out he’s going to kill a prisoner in 45 minutes. This sounded like something I should probably care about, so it lent some urgency to my explorations.
A glance at a hastily procured map showed I had to fight my way to The Slaughterhouse, so I made my way through the city clearing the streets as I went. There were a lot more patrols on this side, so it was a bit slower going. One of the buildings looked more heavily guarded than the others and had a “Baroness” at the top of the stairs, so I figured I was on the right track. A few arcane blasts later the doors behind her opened to reveal…a tiny room with a few acolytes. I left them alone and continued on my merry way, annihilating street trash as I went.
By the side of the road I eventually encountered two more similarly guarded buildings and contented myself with nuking the bosses for a few extra blues to disenchant and the occasional auctionable piece of rare or epic gear. The whole place was a bit of a gold mine for that. I simply didn’t have the pack space to loot everything, even disenchanting things as I went. Eventually, I just left dozens of undead lying on the ground, their treasures undisturbed.
Finally I reached the Slaughterhouse—only to find the way blocked by a large, very immobile gate. I looked around for a switch, lever, boss I had missed, or anything, but to no avail. I was out of time (personal, not quest-related), so I’d just have to retry the undead section later in the evening.
An hour or so later I stepped back into Stratholme and began the run again. Unfortunately I had not had to opportunity to offload any of my treasures, so even more unlooted bodies were left by the wayside. As I cleansed the city, I wondered what I had not done. Then it hit me hard. This time when I faced the Baroness, I stepped inside and killed the Acolytes. Sure enough, I was rewarded with a script that said the defenses of the ziggurat were being compromised. Aha! I made my way back through and wiped out the other two dens of boss-defended evil priests to hear the sweet sound of the distant gates tumbling down.
I returned to the Slaughterhouse and it was a small stone building with a sealed door and surrounded by a large courtyard, populated with a couple dozen abominations. I faced them and began the endgame encounters. When all of the abominations were felled, many skeletons poured out of a side gate. When they were dispatched, the building opened and a number of elite undead blizzardbait emerged. When the last died, the Baron himself challenged me to enter and …DIE! I intended to do one of those.
Inside the baron sat upon a horse in the small room, because…I guess that’s just his thing. Smoked him like a salmon and rescued the fair maiden, who seemed content to stand around uselessly until I zoned out.
Next stop…Scholomance maybe?
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