Anyone experienced with the Dreadsteed quest chain?

[Damn Dirty Ape]

With the release of BC, I've finally been able to raise the funds through casual play to afford the components for my warlock's dreadsteed.  The Scholomance portion was a real bear to complete as my very casual guild is far from l33t and we wound up wiping several times due to hordes of undead aggroing on us.  And now we have the final Dire Maul expedition staring us in the face.

Can anyone who's participated in the chain give a comparision of the difficulty between the Scholomance and Dire Maul portions?  I've read up on the quest at wowwiki, but aside from the minute level range difference between the two dungeons and the fact that more boss types are involved in Dire Maul, I can't get a feel for it.

Help a noob out plz!!11! 

[lamaros]

Eh?

Scholo you just need to get to the lab, there was no fight there apart form the normal scholo fight...

Did you forget to clear the room or something?

DM is a proper fight. Easy with players over level 60. Though if you struggle in Scholo it might be fun.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Like I said, my guild is casual.  I was lucky to get five people together to do Scholomance, let alone build optimally for a dungeon that used to be a 10-person job.  The areas prior to the lab were packed full of elites plus roamers.  The boss in the lab was easy, however. 

[Driakos]

You'll just need a group that is capable of beating Immol'thar.  Once he's down, you can start the warlock quest.  The quest/fight itself is pretty entertaining, you'll have fun.  It's on the same platform as Immol'thar was.

[caladein]

One suggestion I have for the Dire Maul portion: bring a second Lock who has the quest item (non-Demonology preferred, but that's really so they don't lose so much from enslaving another demon). Really, it's quite easy (even with just you as the only Lock), just make sure to keep your three items up at all times, and keep the enemy Felguards away from your clothies.

If you aren't spec'd Felguard, I'd suggest enslaving the first Felguard that comes at you, he's a real beast. If you are Felguard spec, you probably lose too many bonuses from having your own out, so I would just stick with yours.

[Morfiend]

If your guild had trouble in scholo, my best advice is to try and pug DM. That wont be easy these days, since everyone is in Outland, but damn. Scholo is easy. The DM part is much harder.

Also, I second the bring another lock. At the end you get swarmed by demons. A bunch of imps and 3 felguards at a time. With two locks, you can each enslave a felguard and have them kill the imps. After that, just tank and spank the boss.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

PUGs look out of the question for the most part since Dire Maul doesn't show up as a selectable dungeon on my LFG interface despite my warlock having two quests for there.  Three dungeons in the Outlands show up but nothing in the old world.

A warlock was looking for a priest for the steed quest in DM earlier today in the trade channel on my server.  Unfortunately, I didn't have alot of time to play or I would have offered good money to have him summon me in after completing the quest.

[Phred]

PUGs look out of the question for the most part since Dire Maul doesn't show up as a selectable dungeon on my LFG interface despite my warlock having two quests for there.  Three dungeons in the Outlands show up but nothing in the old world.

A warlock was looking for a priest for the steed quest in DM earlier today in the trade channel on my server.  Unfortunately, I didn't have alot of time to play or I would have offered good money to have him summon me in after completing the quest.

They are really rediculous in removing dungeons they consider too low for you from the lfg list. Yet another stupid design choice.

[Jayce]

PUGs look out of the question for the most part since Dire Maul doesn't show up as a selectable dungeon on my LFG interface despite my warlock having two quests for there.  Three dungeons in the Outlands show up but nothing in the old world.

A warlock was looking for a priest for the steed quest in DM earlier today in the trade channel on my server.  Unfortunately, I didn't have alot of time to play or I would have offered good money to have him summon me in after completing the quest.

They are really rediculous in removing dungeons they consider too low for you from the lfg list. Yet another stupid design choice.

Agreed.  I have the quest to hit all three wings of the Scarlet Monastery, but I can't LFG the library.

[Phred]

PUGs look out of the question for the most part since Dire Maul doesn't show up as a selectable dungeon on my LFG interface despite my warlock having two quests for there.  Three dungeons in the Outlands show up but nothing in the old world.

A warlock was looking for a priest for the steed quest in DM earlier today in the trade channel on my server.  Unfortunately, I didn't have alot of time to play or I would have offered good money to have him summon me in after completing the quest.

They are really rediculous in removing dungeons they consider too low for you from the lfg list. Yet another stupid design choice.

Agreed.  I have the quest to hit all three wings of the Scarlet Monastery, but I can't LFG the library.

What's even stupider is if you have someone too high level joining you you can't summon them with the meeting stone either.

[Dren]

Yeah, we've been complaining about this more and more.  I'm not sure I understand the reasoning behind limiting the stones on lvl at all (high or low.)  If they are trying to limit people farming the instances, that won't do it.  It is just a major PITA for those using the dungeons as they are intended.  Elite quests being at the forefront.

I see even more issues coming as people come back to these instances for heroic level, etc.

They need to drop the limitation all together.

[Xanthippe]

I think they're trying to prevent people from gaming the meeting stones for other transportation usage, maybe.  Although who really cares, anyway?

Spending 10 minutes getting from point A to point B is stupid, no matter the reason.  Blizzard logic seems to be that running a dungeon when one is the "appropriate level" rewards free travel, but travel time penalty when one isn't.

Dumb dumb dumb.

[WayAbvPar]

They need to give mages teleport/portal abilities to anyplace with a flight path. Crank up the cost for both the spells and the reagents as a bit of a gold drain for the economy, and let's let the flight paths run mostly dormant.

The good news is the flight paths in the expansion area are far better thought out, and make traveling around very convenient.

[Triforcer]

They need to give mages teleport/portal abilities to anyplace with a flight path. Crank up the cost for both the spells and the reagents as a bit of a gold drain for the economy, and let's let the flight paths run mostly dormant.

The good news is the flight paths in the expansion area are far better thought out, and make traveling around very convenient.

Wow, that would be a massive, massive convenience advantage over every other class.  If you're going that route, just put in recall runes/portals for all and be UO.  Travel times is one of the things I think WoW has balanced well, they shouldn't mess with it (although in the interest of disclosure, my 60 mage (retired) tped around like a fiend, and my current druid has two engineering hearths, so I've never really felt full travel pain). 

[Shavnir]

I'm glad to report that I'm 800g away from never needing a flight path in Outlands ever again. :)

[Dren]

Travelling in Outland really isn't a problem.  They did a much better job there.  Once you get your rideable even more so.  I can't remember spending any one time travelling for more than 2 minutes.

Going back and travelling around the "Old World" is just really painful.  Getting to Dire Maul, for instance, is just nuts.  It wasn't so bad when I had a hearthstone at Menethil for easy continent ship boarding.  Theramore wasn't a bad trip at that point.  Now I have to go from Darnassus mainly due to my HP being in Shat now.  Flightpaths from Darn to anywhere of any importance is way way way too long.

Travelling without your own control for over 5 minutes is just not fun people.  It is great for getting a drink or getting a bio break, but when you come back to the computer 3 times and are still flying, it is just too much.

Travelling with control for more than 2 minutes is completely aggravating.  Thus my ire at boats.  I absolutely hate them.

[Triforcer]

Travelling in Outland really isn't a problem.  They did a much better job there.  Once you get your rideable even more so.  I can't remember spending any one time travelling for more than 2 minutes.

Going back and travelling around the "Old World" is just really painful.  Getting to Dire Maul, for instance, is just nuts.  It wasn't so bad when I had a hearthstone at Menethil for easy continent ship boarding.  Theramore wasn't a bad trip at that point.  Now I have to go from Darnassus mainly due to my HP being in Shat now.  Flightpaths from Darn to anywhere of any importance is way way way too long.

Travelling without your own control for over 5 minutes is just not fun people.  It is great for getting a drink or getting a bio break, but when you come back to the computer 3 times and are still flying, it is just too much.

Travelling with control for more than 2 minutes is completely aggravating.  Thus my ire at boats.  I absolutely hate them.

Er, I've never played alliance, but why do you have to skip from Outland to darnassus?  Couldn't you portal from shat to a more central alliance city?  Maybe there is something here I'm not getting.

[Jayce]

Travelling in Outland really isn't a problem.  They did a much better job there.  Once you get your rideable even more so.  I can't remember spending any one time travelling for more than 2 minutes.

Going back and travelling around the "Old World" is just really painful.  Getting to Dire Maul, for instance, is just nuts.  It wasn't so bad when I had a hearthstone at Menethil for easy continent ship boarding.  Theramore wasn't a bad trip at that point.  Now I have to go from Darnassus mainly due to my HP being in Shat now.  Flightpaths from Darn to anywhere of any importance is way way way too long.

Travelling without your own control for over 5 minutes is just not fun people.  It is great for getting a drink or getting a bio break, but when you come back to the computer 3 times and are still flying, it is just too much.

Travelling with control for more than 2 minutes is completely aggravating.  Thus my ire at boats.  I absolutely hate them.

Er, I've never played alliance, but why do you have to skip from Outland to darnassus?  Couldn't you portal from shat to a more central alliance city?  Maybe there is something here I'm not getting.

Darnassus is the only Alliance capital city on Kalimdor.

edit: capital city

[Xanthippe]

Er, I've never played alliance, but why do you have to skip from Outland to darnassus?  Couldn't you portal from shat to a more central alliance city?  Maybe there is something here I'm not getting.

Darnassus is the only Alliance capital city on Kalimdor.

edit: capital city

Exodar is also on Kalimdor but not helpful, since there are no flight paths that connect anywhere outside the new zones.

[Triforcer]

Travelling in Outland really isn't a problem.  They did a much better job there.  Once you get your rideable even more so.  I can't remember spending any one time travelling for more than 2 minutes.

Going back and travelling around the "Old World" is just really painful.  Getting to Dire Maul, for instance, is just nuts.  It wasn't so bad when I had a hearthstone at Menethil for easy continent ship boarding.  Theramore wasn't a bad trip at that point.  Now I have to go from Darnassus mainly due to my HP being in Shat now.  Flightpaths from Darn to anywhere of any importance is way way way too long.

Travelling without your own control for over 5 minutes is just not fun people.  It is great for getting a drink or getting a bio break, but when you come back to the computer 3 times and are still flying, it is just too much.

Travelling with control for more than 2 minutes is completely aggravating.  Thus my ire at boats.  I absolutely hate them.

Er, I've never played alliance, but why do you have to skip from Outland to darnassus?  Couldn't you portal from shat to a more central alliance city?  Maybe there is something here I'm not getting.

Darnassus is the only Alliance capital city on Kalimdor.

edit: capital city

Play around with travel times.  It is very possible that there is a capital city in the East where you can airship to many Kalimdor locations faster than starting in Darnassus itself. 

[Jayce]

Er, I've never played alliance, but why do you have to skip from Outland to darnassus?  Couldn't you portal from shat to a more central alliance city?  Maybe there is something here I'm not getting.

Darnassus is the only Alliance capital city on Kalimdor.

edit: capital city

Exodar is also on Kalimdor but not helpful, since there are no flight paths that connect anywhere outside the new zones.

True!  I haven't been alliance since the expansion :)

It might be faster to go Ironforge -> Menethil -> Theramore -> Thalanaar, but that involves a lot of manual connections.  It's a lot easier to get on the bird at Rut'theran village and go catch a quick nap.  Or hit the bar for a few hours.

[Lantyssa]

Play around with travel times.  It is very possible that there is a capital city in the East where you can airship to many Kalimdor locations faster than starting in Darnassus itself. 

Not really.  The connecting points are Theramore, Auberdine (Darnassus), and Ratchet.  The first two can be reached from Menethil, and Ratchet only through a decently long path to Booty Bay then a boat ride.  Ratchet's flight paths are nearly worthless.  Theramore is closer to some places, but unless you're heading to Gadgetzan the difference isn't that much.

[Zetor]

About getting to the caverns of time:  (it's a similar problem)
Porting to ironforge, taking a griff to menethil, crossing over to theramore and flying to gadgetzan is marginally faster than porting to darnassus and flying to gadgetzan if you don't miss the boat. OTOH, it requires you to be staring at the screen for a lot of boring downtime, and you also need to get lucky with the boat schedule. The Darnassus->Gadgetzan flight is a good 10-15 minutes, btw. The other option is to port to Stormwind and fly to Booty Bay, then take the boat to Ratchet; but that's even slower (never bothered to time it, but just the sw->bb flight is about 10min).

If you want to get to Dire Maul, the difference is even less, since Darnassus->Feathermoon isn't that much worse than Ironforge->Menethil->Theramore->Thalanaar (again, depends on boat schedules, both the feathermoon ferry and the menethil boat).

Alliance flightpaths in general are pretty clunky. The only saving grace used to be the quick thorium point flightpath providing easy access to BRM -- and that was only patched in early 2006, iirc. Who cares about BRM anymore, anyway? :P


-- Z.

[MrHat]

hehe.

Me: /1 LFG - Resto Shaman - Black Morass
Them: /w Are you resto?
Me: /r Can't you read?
Them: /w Ready for invite?
Me: /r Are you guys about to start?
Them: /w Not yet, still need 1 more
Me: /r invite me last and summons when you get there
Them: /w ok!

Meeting stone ftw.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

For those playing along at home, I finally got my warlock's dreadsteed tonight.  It took periodically checking a /who dire maul with an eye on a warlock along with several other characters listed at the same time to find a dreadsteed party already in progress *and* one which would entertain my presence.  Kinda lame but such is life.  At least my toon is quite a bit more diabolical now.

[Azazel]

They need to give mages teleport/portal abilities to anyplace with a flight path. Crank up the cost for both the spells and the reagents as a bit of a gold drain for the economy, and let's let the flight paths run mostly dormant.

The good news is the flight paths in the expansion area are far better thought out, and make traveling around very convenient.

Wow, that would be a massive, massive convenience advantage over every other class.  If you're going that route, just put in recall runes/portals for all and be UO.  Travel times is one of the things I think WoW has balanced well, they shouldn't mess with it (although in the interest of disclosure, my 60 mage (retired) tped around like a fiend, and my current druid has two engineering hearths, so I've never really felt full travel pain). 

Feh, just add portal points to the three Goblin cities for mages for both factions and it's gravy for everyone. Maybe add an extra one for a particularly badly-served area for each faction and we're sweet. Say, Theramore for Alliance and That Place in Swamp of Sorrows for Horde.

And grats on your steed.

[Calantus]

For those playing along at home, I finally got my warlock's dreadsteed tonight.  It took periodically checking a /who dire maul with an eye on a warlock along with several other characters listed at the same time to find a dreadsteed party already in progress *and* one which would entertain my presence.  Kinda lame but such is life.  At least my toon is quite a bit more diabolical now.

Haha nice. I used to sell the use of my summoning components so I would do the run all the time and I've only ever had another warlock try that once before. I'm surprised more people don't do it, it's brilliant.

[Damn Dirty Ape]

Haha nice. I used to sell the use of my summoning components so I would do the run all the time and I've only ever had another warlock try that once before. I'm surprised more people don't do it, it's brilliant.

I had a couple of dreadsteed-seeking warlocks tell me it wouldn't work.  But it did.  All it takes is joining the party, running into the library (no crescent key needed), and being summoned to the dreadsteed spirit.

I hate missing the final battle, but there'll be others seeking it and my components could possibly save others 250 gold.