Ok, I’ve put this off long enough. Today we delve inside Blackrock Caverns (BRC), which is so pleasantly oldschool I thought it was a revamped classic dungeon I’d missed somehow. The dungeon itself is a new wing of Blackrock Mountain and is conveniently located near the northern entrance. For those of you who just wiped, Googled, and found this: from the spirit go up, across the chain, hop down just before you get to the end, run a little east, take the north passage by the summon stone and it’s the first passage to the east. Inside is a network of caves and tunnels mixing with dwarven architecture, lending the whole a very ‘dungeon dive’ atmosphere.
The population is mostly orcs, ogres, twilight hammer, with elementals thrown in for flavor. Mages: nearly everything here has at least one sheepable target in a trash pull and there are plenty of corners to duck around if you need to save that invis cooldown.
Very close to the entrance you’ll find the first boss—a huge ass ogre named Rom’ogg Bonecrusher, who has been responsible for more wipes for me in this dungeon than any other (so far). He’s a tank and spank that summons a constant stream of adds that must be gunned down and he has two “gotchas”. The first is a ‘quake’ attack that does massive damage to people who don’t get out of the fire fast enough. The second is the one that wipes groups: he pulls the entire group next to him with “chains of woe” as he begins casting a point-blank-area-of-effect “I kill you” spell. You must target the chains, kill them, and get the hell out of dodge before the spell completes. This can be very difficult with a large number of adds still up and I highly recommend having people make targeting macros (/target chain) beforehand.
The next boss is Corla, some evil twilight sorceress chick, who would probably die for her master a thousand times. Fortunately, once is enough for me. This one requires a little team coordination. In front of her are three servants being smacked with beams of EVIL energy. The three beams must be blocked (usually by your DPS group) while the tank tanks. Players standing in the beam get a fast and constantly ticking counter. If it reaches 100, you get mind-controlled and the party wipes. If you don’t stand in the beam, the servants evolve into OMGITSKILLINGME nightmares from beyond and the party wipes. Also, Corla will cast a number of spells that should be countered at every opportunity. The proper way to handle the beams is to block them until your debuff stack reaches “80”, step out of the beam until the debuff expires, then hustle back into the beam to repeat the cycle. With her spells countered and nothing evolving this becomes an easy encounter.
Karsh Steelbender is a fairly interesting fight with a golemy-elementally-type thing. It takes place on a large bullseye with a pillar of flame in the middle, a “safe” ring, a grated ring that can spout giant gouts of flame, and the rest of the room. After clearing all of the trash in the room, the tank will run in to engage the construct. Karsh starts out practically immune to damage but as he’s dragged through the pillar in the middle he gains a stackable large buff to damage and debuff to defense. In a way, this fight isn’t so much a DPS race as it is a balancing act for the tank.
The next boss is entirely optional: it’s a huge ass corehound named “Beauty” and has three miniboss pups that join the fight. Do not under any circumstances kill ‘Runty’ as it will send Beauty into an enrage frenzy. Otherwise, treat this like a dragon fight: tank should turn things away from the party and everyone should stay out of the fire. Kill the adds first.
Finally, there’s Lord Obsidius. This fight is vaguely reminiscent of the Blood Council in ICC. The boss has two ‘shadows’ that can’t be killed or CC’d (except slowing effects), but can certainly dish out damage. They must be kited away from the tank by two DPSers while working on the boss. Periodically the boss will ‘trade places’ with one of the shadows and that shadow’s kiter needs to pick up the tank’s previous target.
All in all, it’s a great dungeon to cut teeth on. The non-heroic version targets levels 78-82 or so and drops level 308 (I think) blue gear—a nice way to start upgrading from LK purples.
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