<3 Stratholme

[WindupAtheist]

I got the Baron mount on my second kill and hit exalted with Argent Dawn a long time ago, but I still plow my ret pally through Stratholme every now and then. I just like it, for some reason. I did a full clear of the undead side and came out with 50g vendoring junk, runecloth probably worth another 50g once it sells on the AH, and a BOE epic sword that sold instantly for 150g. Some guy probably bought it for his DK. It has intellect on it, so whatever.

I wouldn't say it's a highly efficient way of making money, but it's enough cash that I don't feel like an idiot doing it.

What else is out there that's soloable, halfway fun, and turns a decent profit?

[Hindenburg]

Scholo and LBRS.
DM has always been a favorite of mine, especially the king one, think it was West.
Mind you, LBRS is painfully boring.

[Merusk]

Move to the BC dungeons.  At the least Slave pens and earlier are also soloable (I did them on my DK with no tank gear) but the greys sell for more and the mobs drop more loot.  I tried the Arakkoa dungeon in Anurachdownalownmadingong on heroic and that didn't work out so well.  (I was going for rep.)  I haven't been back to try it on normal, but I know my prot pally was able to do a good portion of it at 70 after the dps changes.

  I keep running Strath for the mount and rep. I hate you.

[skolor]

As a ret pally you may be able to solo Kara, at least to Attumen for his mount.

[Selby]

The old-world dungeons are decent in that aspect of gear and AH items as there aren't that many people running them anymore so you can crash the Runecloth market with just a few runs worth of material should you choose to.  I probably made over 500G running it to get my rep up and finish Loremaster.  Still no mount though, you bastard.

I felt Scholo's drops were completely subpar compared to Strat and LBRS\UBRS, so it wasn't worth the time and effort to go there.  Same with BRD.  I would think that with more people in Outlands, the cloth market would be hard to turn a nice profit on from the Outlands dungeons...

[Merusk]

Well if you REALLY want to bank the cloth market, you need to farm for Mageweave and Wool.  Those two cloths have the narrowest range of mobs that drop it and they're both early so while I've seen Runecloth sell for 5g a stack (people trying for exalted rep w/ cities) I've seen half a stack of Mageweave sell for just as much.

[Fabricated]

Stratholme is just an awesome instance in terms of atmosphere and feel. Looking back on it though, what a fucking ridiculous trash-fest that place was. Rapid-Respawn roaming gargoyles, invisible ghosts that call down mobs, the most obnoxious disease debuffs in the game spammed by groups of ghouls, AoE silence mobs, and flat out the longest gauntlet in a WoW 5-man (15+ abominations you need to handle as a single pull apiece at 60, a Boss, a horde of AOE bait, then a group of 5 pretty strong meleers). I'm amazed I ran that place so much considering how shitty the equipment was in Vanilla WoW.

[Merusk]

It was even worse if you consider they pulled out a lot of trash and removed the requirement that you clear the crystals within a time frame.

[Arinon]

The original 10 man raid instance!

[dusematic]

Baron is played out yo.

[Sjofn]

Stratholme is just an awesome instance in terms of atmosphere and feel. Looking back on it though, what a fucking ridiculous trash-fest that place was. Rapid-Respawn roaming gargoyles, invisible ghosts that call down mobs, the most obnoxious disease debuffs in the game spammed by groups of ghouls, AoE silence mobs, and flat out the longest gauntlet in a WoW 5-man (15+ abominations you need to handle as a single pull apiece at 60, a Boss, a horde of AOE bait, then a group of 5 pretty strong meleers). I'm amazed I ran that place so much considering how shitty the equipment was in Vanilla WoW.

Haha, yeah, I went in there for the first time in months and the first thing I said was, "Jesus, that's a lot of trash." It felt like wall to wall undead in there. Which is good if you want the reps. But man, why did we run that so much BACK IN THE DAY?

Oh yeah, there was fuck all else for our casual asses to do, that's why. ><

[Zetor]

Yeah, looking back at the tier0.5 questline (except for the 45min baron run, the BRD fight and valthalak), all I can think is "... why?!" Then I remember that was ALL we could do as a non-raiding guild, and all is clear again. Sort of. 


-- Z.

[Fordel]

The Trash is super fucking annoying too. FEAR FEAR SILENCE FEAR

[Hindenburg]

But man, why did we run that so much BACK IN THE DAY?

/

There was also Dire Maul, which gave equal, and often better loot, and yet almost no one would run it. Never quite understood that.

[K9]

But man, why did we run that so much BACK IN THE DAY?

/

There was also Dire Maul, which gave equal, and often better loot, and yet almost no one would run it. Never quite understood that.

Probably because getting to Dire Maul involved a 20+minute trip, whereas any level 60 could get to Stratholme or Scholomance quickly and easily. I'd guess that the associated rep helped too, AD had some nice rewards for the time.

[Hindenburg]

Camp Taraujo is, like, 2 minutes away from the instance. Quick flight from Orgri too. 

Alliance, I can see avoiding it, but horde?  I loved going there just to get the fuck away from the undead.

[Shrike]

The Trash is super fucking annoying too. FEAR FEAR SILENCE FEAR

This.

I ran my 69 prot pally through Strat the other day, since she needed some offball drop off the Baron's posse for the master swordsmithing chop. It was friggin' painful. Started off well, then it was the Gauntlet and I swear she had to drink an ocean of conjured water from all the mana drain, silences, fears, and resultant beatings...despite 15k armor and health. Very frustrating.

In contrast, my 80 protection warrior visited Strat and it was a whole 'nother tune. One sung in the key of pain major. She went through both sides of Strat like the Nazis through Poland. I mean, 10 levels aren't a small thing (nor the 25k hps and 23k armor), but all that fear, mana burn crap, and whathaveyou was just not an issue.  The only thing that ever gave her any problem was one run I took a friend on (80 ret pally) to show him where the mount deal was (new player at the end of TBC). The one boss priestess mob (name escapes me) MC'd my warrior, who promptly wiped the floor with the pally, despite his best efforts to the contrary. I found this really amusing. Recalling him swearing on chat still gives me a warm and fuzzy.

[Sjofn]

Camp Taraujo is, like, 2 minutes away from the instance. Quick flight from Orgri too. 

Alliance, I can see avoiding it, but horde?  I loved going there just to get the fuck away from the undead.

a) In the middle of fucking nowhere (we're alliance)
b) Alliance had paladins, who fucking LOVED fighting undead

[Hindenburg]

The one boss priestess mob (name escapes me) MC'd my warrior, who promptly wiped the floor with the pally, despite his best efforts to the contrary. I found this really amusing. Recalling him swearing on chat still gives me a warm and fuzzy.

When we ran Strat back in the day, there was a bit of a competition to kill the MC'ed player. Good times. 

[Fordel]

Diremaul didn't have any of the set pieces for class sets either. That stuff mattered to people, especially once Tier 0.5 quests came out.

Diremaul was also "complicated".

[Chimpy]

Diremaul was also "complicated".

It was also much more difficult. Until you overgeared by wearing BWL level gear, DM West needed a group of people on the ball.

[SurfD]

The one boss priestess mob (name escapes me) MC'd my warrior, who promptly wiped the floor with the pally, despite his best efforts to the contrary. I found this really amusing. Recalling him swearing on chat still gives me a warm and fuzzy.

When we ran Strat back in the day, there was a bit of a competition to kill the MC'ed player. Good times. 

I remember back in the day, that there were some very odd glitches with that boss and what abilities she had access to very early on.  For one, some people report she could actually use talent only abilities, even if your particular character did not have the talent.  Another one i actually saw happen which was also pretty amusing, was that she could apparently use ANY spell or ability that you had learned.  Nothing funnier then watching her teleport a MCd druid to moonglade......no one managed to interupt her before she got the cast off and poof, he was gone.

[Ironwood]

 

[Hindenburg]

Diremaul didn't have any of the set pieces for class sets either. That stuff mattered to people, especially once Tier 0.5 quests came out.

Diremaul was also "complicated".

It's precisely because it didn't have the dungeon set that I loved it. They were absolute shit for most classes, and in DM you could get good gear without having to pay 20g and kill 10 scorpions for a pair of shitty bracers, or run 45min baron runs. Advanges of late itemization.

What do you mean by complicated?

It was also much more difficult. Until you overgeared by wearing BWL level gear, DM West needed a group of people on the ball.

lolwut?

[Fabricated]

Diremaul was also "complicated".

It was also much more difficult. Until you overgeared by wearing BWL level gear, DM West needed a group of people on the ball.

Dire Maul North was way more difficult than Dire Maul West IMO, at least for blue'd groups since most of the melee mobs there would smash the fucking face off a blue geared tank back then. Even doing a tribute run was rough since the King hit like a freight train and you had to ignore/OT the caster that came with him. Non-Tribute runs I did for the tank chest off of Kromcrush were even harder since Kromcrush was exceedingly irritating due to him and his two adds all using fears (and this was with old school fear mechanics where mobs attacked whoever they wanted when the top of the threat list was feared) and practically 2 shotting cloth wearers.

Back to Strat.

No one wanted to kill half the bosses in the place. You'd occasionally get the OCD priest or mage wanting to complete the postmaster set, but outside of that no one wanted to bother summoning the postman. No one wanted to kill The Unforgiven either since that required clearing a lot of trash. If Skul spawned there were typically arguments about clearing to him.

...of course there were never any objections to clearing the whole fucking place if needed to get to Hearthsinger Forresten since he dropped a trinket that forced people to dance.

[Hindenburg]

Dire Maul North was way more difficult than Dire Maul West IMO, at least for blue'd groups since most of the melee mobs there would smash the fucking face off a blue geared tank back then. Even doing a tribute run was rough since the King hit like a freight train and you had to ignore/OT the caster that came with him. Non-Tribute runs I did for the tank chest off of Kromcrush were even harder since Kromcrush was exceedingly irritating due to him and his two adds all using fears (and this was with old school fear mechanics where mobs attacked whoever they wanted when the top of the threat list was feared) and practically 2 shotting cloth wearers.

... my pet tanked the caster while we killed the king. Kromcrush's adds weren't immune to CC, so freeze trap, FD, retrap one, pet tanked the other away from kromcrush, which is the only one that could fear. We ran it with an  undead tank in valor, which was, obviously, shit gear, and a pre-earth shield resto shaman.

You guys, you crazy 

Seems that we ran that thing enough times to learn all the tricks of the place. In retrospect, it makes sense. Pugged DM's tended to require the blood of 2 to 3 wipes.

[Zetor]

The worst thing about dm north was needing all that crap [frost oil, etc] for a tribute run. I much preferred west, even before they nerfed the "lol, you just got RNG wiped" banshees.


-- Z.

[kildorn]

DM tribute was easy and boring (few boss fights, lot of trash and waiting on the bosses to go where you needed them to for whatnot.

DM west was brutal for lesser geared tanks, because half the damned instance are elementals. It was notorious for oneshotting warriors who didn't vastly overgear the instance.

DM east wasn't even level 60, so whatever.

[Fordel]

Things like the tribute runs, needs all the items for the traps and the ogre suit. I think you needed a lock picker of some sort too?

The other end you had to clear out all the pylons, but you also had to clear out all the specific tree trash, then you had to backtrack into the library for the final boss.

The zone itself was also ridiculously huge, though it was at least split into 'wings' for the most part. There was that one quest that required you to do a Tribute run, THEN go do the Pylon/Prince clear. 4 Hours later... 

Compared that to Strath's boss, boss, boss, gate event, boss. Like it was already mentioned, no one did shit like the postmaster spawning. DM was nothing *but* postmaster spawning.


Now add in the fact DM was about as far away as possible from Ironforge and people wanted the Baron to drop their pants. It was often like pulling teeth to convince folks to go to DM.

[kildorn]

DM loot was absolutely amazing for a lot of specs, however. A lot of it rivaled MC gear for "non idiotic stat distribution", the tier 0.5 pieces caused that to be less of a huge deal however by having good stat layouts as well.

[Ingmar]

Now add in the fact DM was about as far away as possible from Ironforge and people wanted the Baron to drop their pants. It was often like pulling teeth to convince folks to go to DM.

The distance/time issue was really the biggest one. It took nearly as long to get a DM group up and running and inside the instance as it did to finish a dead Strat run sometimes.

FWIW I am in the DM West was harder than DM North camp, as long as we're including Prince Tortheldleleleleleldrin in the West box. Dude bitchslapped us HARD the first time we went there.

[Vash]

On my old server back in the day DM was quite the happening place even for alliance (which I played back then).  I personally did it waaaay more than Strat. 

The loot was good, especially tribute runs.  Then you have to factor in all the raiding related stuff in the days of MC.  You had the class specific trinkets that came from the books which had to be turned in at the Library for a nice fire resist trinket, which was an essential part of every fire resist gear set.  The trinkets were close to best in slot for a lot of classes too, pre 40 man loot, only competing with things like the quest trinket from UBRS.

Then you add in every hardcore tank in the game trying to run the place till their eyes bled for a chance at the Quel'Serrar book since 99% of the populus couldn't afford to buy it off the AH.

Add in the runs for Warlocks to get their epic mount, and even Paladins needed a quest item from West for theirs I think, and you have one busy place.

For added extra awesome the Elite Ogre that spawned in the Arena in the middle usually dropped several BoE blues that sold well back in the day, which lead to some very interesting battles for him, even between your own faction.

I really loved DM, but I may be biased cause I played a mage back then and around the time AQ came out I would go solo trash in West for elemental life and other things which I can't remember specifically.

[Morfiend]

I never liked DM. It just wasnt interesting to me. Also, people forget it wasnt a release dungeon. Anyone remember 20 manning Strat way back in the day?

[Hindenburg]

No one's forgetting that. It's precisely because it wasn't a release dungeon that it's loot wasn't utter shit.

[fuser]

I never liked DM. It just wasnt interesting to me. Also, people forget it wasnt a release dungeon. Anyone remember 20 manning Strat way back in the day?

The crazyness of 20 man strat was almost as good as the cat herding of a full raid across BRD to get to MC.

Btw: Strat got a lot of love with the gray mobs giving rep, I see a lot of people now around in strat working on rep for the argent dawn.