The pocket guide to Blackrock Depths

Blackrock Depths is an instance for level 52-60 players, located at the south end of the Searing Gorge. You can also enter it from the northwest end of the Burning Steppes. The nearest gryphon is at the massively convenient Thorium Point, at the north end of the Searing Gorge.

WoW wiki entry
small map
In-game map from Atlas

And here's a fantastic BRD guide that makes this one pretty superfluous!

Quests

These quests can be shared:

Hurley Blackbreath / Kharanos / Ragnar Thunderbrew
Ribbly Screwspigot / Burning Steppes / Yuka Screwspigot
Overmaster Pyron / Morgan's Vigil, Burning Steppes / Jalinda Sprag
The good stuff / Morgan's Vigil / Oralius
The heart of the mountain / Burning Steppes / Maxwort Uberglint
Attunement to the core / Blackrock Mountain / Lothos Riftwaker
You can't miss this guy—he's right next to the exit from the lava chamber tomb area. This quest gives you quick access to the Molten Core. Do not skip.

Quest chains

Dragonkin Menace / Morgan's Vigil, Burning Steppes / Helendis Riverhorn
This quest asks you to kill nearby dragonkin. Some of them are elite, so you'll want a group if you're doing this at the suggested level, 54. The quest then has you fedex to Lakeshire, to Stormwind, back to Lakeshire, and eventually back to Morgan's Vigil. Then you're sent to talk to an NPC at the north end of the zone, at the same place you found Yuka Screwspigot. This is the Onyxia key quest series! Do not skip it.

The Flawless Flame / Searing Gorge / Kalaran Windblade
This one requires a bunch of killing, collecting, and location-visiting in Searing Gorge before it finally sends you off to the Burning Steppes, and then on to Blackrock Depths. It should be easy to run through if you're doing it over-level just for the instance, though. Or you could plan ahead and start doing this series early, around level 48.

The smouldering ruins of Thaurissan / Ironforge / Royal Historian Archesonus
The first step is to read a bunch of lore about the Dark Iron Dwarves. The next step takes you to the Burning Steppes to explore some ruins. Then back to Ironforge to get the task that sends you into Blackrock Depths.

Dark Iron Legacy / Backrock Mountain / Franclorn Forgewright
Forgewright is in the center of the main mountain, outside the instance. You can only talk to him if you're dead. So... die. Then talk to him. This is an important quest because it rewards you with the Shadowforge Key. (Rogues can pick the lock on the gate instead.)

Walkthrough

Blackrock Depths is a very large instance with several sections. The quests send you in and out of the instance. Plan to visit it several times before you finish them all.

First visit: outside the instance

Plan a very short first visit to the mountain to move a couple of quests forward. You want to get the shadowforge key quest started. To do that, you must die and talk to Forgewright in his tomb. This isn't so bad if you plan it. Take off all your gear and let an Anvilrage mob beat on you. (You can also wait until a death in the instance gives you a chance to start the quest. But you're not the sort of person who dies in instances, right?) Overmaster Pyron is outside the instance, quite near the entrance. When you turn in this quest, Jalinda Sprag sends you off again, this time to kill a mob deep inside the instance.

Second visit: getting the key

Look at the map to locate the jail section. There are two loops connecting to that large entrance room. The right loop goes around the jail. The left loop goes around the arena.

For convenience, clear out all the mobs in the entrance area. Bloodhounds break stealth, so don't try to use sap pull on groups with doggies. Go around the jail area, clearing. If you have a rogue in your party, you can pick the locks on the cell doors to reach Marshal Windsor and Kharan Mighthammer. If not, continue around to the back side of the jail loop. High Interrogator Gerstahn drops a single key (unique, soulbound). Watch out for extra mobs tucked away in the corner of the room where she waits. You probably want to pull her out into the hallway.

Next is the Ring of Law, a gladiatorial arena. The entrance is in the loop arm straight across from the instance entrance. Above the arena are a whole lot of spectators. Later on you'll have to run through the spectator area. If you haven't done this Ring incident, they'll be unfriendly. If you win, they decide they like you. So, prepare yourselves, then have somebody in your party step on the grate in the center. A scripted event begins. 3 waves of mobs come at you: random melee mobs for the first two, and a boss on the last wave. Kill them all. Tactics vary depending on what the mobs are.

Go out the west gate. Kill a few mobs in the next room, then make a U-turn up the ramp. Go across the arena spectating area, grateful that none of those mobs hate you. Exit to the east. The momument to Forgewright is to your right. You can clear your way to it now if you like, though you can't get the key from it yet.

Head north, killing everything as you go. None of the fights are particularly interesting. Just use your usual tactics to handle groups, neutralize casters, and keep aggro on your tank. Go through the Domicile, down the ramp, and head north some more. You're now at one half of a loop overlooking a lot of lava. You can't yet reach the other half of the loop.

The vault room is here. Clear the pre-existing mobs. Opening the Dark Portrait summons some more. There are 12 coffers and four suspicious-looking statues. If your party has collected 12 relic coffer keys, you can do this encounter now. Unlock the coffers and loot them, leaving one still locked. Prepare for a fight, then have somebody unlock the last one. The four statues come to life and a named dwarf appears. We found this fight tricky if only because the statues are very large inside a small room. It was hard to see what was going on.

After this fight, the Heart of the Mountain (quest target) is available. There is a coffer at the back of the room that can have some nice blues in it.

Continue north. Oh, look, more golems. Kill them. In this next section, somewhere on the ramp down, you will find Fineous Darkvire. He holds Ironfel, the hammer you need to get the Shadowforge key. You know what to do: kill. You're just a killing machine, aren't you?

The ramps turn left and head you southeast, back toward that circular area. Move forward cautiously. Stepping onto the middle of the bridge triggers a small patrol from behind. In the center of the lava circle area is Lord Incendius, a quest target. Kill.

Now run back to the statue of Forgewright. Frob it to turn in Ironfel and get the key (and some cash). Run out to turn in your finished Burning Steppes quests. Jalinda says something dire about Ragnaros. Oh dear. Stone back to Ironforge to tell the king the bad news about his daughter. He gives you the next step in that quest.

Third visit

At least one of your party should bring the Shadowforge key on this trip.

Sometime during the previous trip or this one, a Crumpled Note will drop from a random mob. This item starts off the next steps in the Marshall quest series, which eventually ends up as the Onyxia key quest. If you find the note, start the quest and visit Marshal Windsor in his jail cell first thing. He will have you picking up two units of information, which are apparently represented by objects that drop from named mobs.

Go left from the instance entrance. Turn right at the first tunnel, then go left through the locked door. Give your rogue a few lockpicking points from the gates. In the next room, the domicile, you must clear the lower area and open the Shadowforge Portal. This requires the key. Once the portal is open, go up the ramp and around to the left. (You went straight last time to go through the spectators in the Ring of Law.) The upcoming series of rooms and corridors have groups of dwarves & flame elementals. Watch out for elemental patrols as well. Use crowd control to break up the fights. Take down elementals first. Watch out for medics that heal. These fights are tougher than the fights you experienced on your first visit.

General Angerforge is in the next room. He has the first piece of information for Marshal Windsor. Clear the room as far as possible before starting the fight. Most people drop down from the stairs to the left, and start the fight from the far corner of the room. Have your tank occupy the general while everybody else burns down his minions. The general will call for another group of minions late in the fight, but most have low health and are pretty easy to take out. The Medics are elite, and they heal. Take them out first.

Head back up the stairs and straight across to the manufactory. This area is full of gnomes gone bad. We saw a lot of engineering plans drop here. Clear everything, every last scrap. It's safest to clear by pulling mobs back. There are a lot of wanderers in this area. At end end of the area is the golem lord Argelmach. He has the second piece of information for Marshal Windsor, so I'm afraid he has to die. He's a hard fight, and he has 2 golem minions. You might try having your warrior occupy him while the group concentrates on taking down his minions one at a time. Use a freeze trap to take one of them out of the fight for a while if you can.

On the ground near here are the plans for the repair bot. Engineers at 300 skill will definitely want to loot these plans.

Next up is a bridge to the Grim Guzzler. The bridge is guarded by two groups of three fire elementals. Two identical tough fights! You should have a good idea by now of what your group can do. Freeze trap? Banish? Pet off-tanking? Pick your tactic from your group composition, and implement. Concentrate your DPS on one at a time, to take them down as fast as possible.

Ah, the Grim Guzzler, full of grim, guzzling, and hammered dark irons. They can turn on you fast, so be careful in here. Do not talk to Ribbly Screwspigot right away. First, go into the keg room to the left. Start destroying kegs. This will annoy Hurley Blackbreath and his cronies, who will charge in to fight you. Kill them, and loot the Thunderbrew recipe from Hurley. One more quest finished!

Now you're ready for Screwspigot. Stay in the keg room. Send your tank into the bar to talk to Ribbly, who will become annoyed and combative. Drag him and his buddies back to the keg room, and slaughter them as usual. Loot his head. Two quests finished!

Head upstairs. There's Plugger, the barman. He sells a nice alchemy recipe and some ale. There's also an NPC who has repeatable Thorium Brotherhood faction quests. And there's a succubus who has a quest for you, The Love Potion.

Now you need to get through a door to continue. The door is locked, however. And there's this suspicious golem loitering near it. What to do with the Grim Guzzler Ale? Hmm! Coincidentally, Private Rocknot is a green mob standing nearby. He's asking for ale. Have your warrior buy some ale and give it to him. Rocknot gets drunk and starts a bar fight. Phalanx turns aggressive and breaks the door. Kill Phalanx.

If you have a rogue with you whom you really really love, you can clear out the patrons and kill Plugger Spazzring for a chance at the Barman Shanker now. You must kill all the patrons first if you do this. If you don't they will all aggro on you the moment Plugger is dead. There are a lot of them. Rogues can easily solo Plugger, however, so this isn't necessary. If your local Rogue has been soloing Plugger already, he or she should know that the key to the bar door can be picked from Plugger's pocket, thus saving you all the fight with Phalanx.

Head down and around to Ambassador Flamelash, killing as you go. Flamelash has lots of little minions that feed him. Ignore them and concentrate on killing him as fast as possible.

The next area has seven oddly-named dwarves. Talk to Doom'rel to start a scripted event. The dwarves will come at you one at a time. They're on a timer, so take them down as fast as possible. This is an endurance fight. Pace yourselves. Hold some tricks in reserve. Defeating the dwarves opens the door to the next section.

Once you've killed them you can exit the room to the right and visit the entrance to the Molten Core. Ooh! Ah! Make sure you grab the core fragment sitting to the left of the portal entrance. This is the item you need to finish Attunment to the Core, so that you'll never have to go through all this just to enter the core so Ragnaros can toast you.

Your third trip is almost finished. Head on out again, retracing your steps. There shouldn't be much respawn. Visit Marshal Windsor in his cell on the way out to turn in the information. Exit the instance and talk to the Lorewaker person to finish the atunement quest. Don't jump through the window as he invites you to. If you're not in a raid group, you'll just fall into the lava and die.

Jail Break! the Onyxia key quest

Instead of leaving after talking to Marshal Windsor, you could instead accept his next quest, Jailbreak. Or you could come back for a fourth trip especially to do this step. This is an escort quest. Preparing for this quest makes it a lot easier.

The first step is to clear the areas he'll be walking through. These areas are the ring around the jail area, and the ring around the arena. You should be an expert by now on how to handle the pulls in these areas. Make sure you open each cell door and clear out any mobs in them. In particular, clear out the supply closet in the jail area.

Return to Windsor in his jail cell. Wait for all members of your party to turn in the lost information quest. Everyone should be at the stage where he has a ! over his head and is offering "Jail Break". When you are all ready, have one of your party accept the quest. Everyone else will be offered the chance to accept or decline the quest.

Follow Windsor around the jail area. Periodically he will direct you to open jail cells and free the people inside. Triggered spawns, harder than the usual jail area mobs, will periodically appear. Windsor will help you fight. He'll also waste your time by going to cells around the ring of law and settling old scores with other prisoners. The weasel!

After this, he'll head to the instance exit. Congratulations! You've finished the escort quest. Windsor sends you off to Morgan's Vigil to talk to one of the other Marshals, who then sends you on to the Stormwind raid step of the key quest. (That's a fun step. It usually attracts a crowd of onlookers.)

Bael'Gar

You can do this on a separate trip, or as a prelude to a trip deeper in. It's harder than the jail sections.

You might have noticed that there's a section of the instance you haven't been to yet, although you've spent a lot of time running around inside. This is the section directly to the left of the entrance, behind a gate. On your minimap it's labeled the Highway. Bael'Gar lurks here.

The patrol groups are a problem. Every so often one of them will peel out from its position along the highway, march up near Bael'Gar, do a few weapon flourishes, and march back. Sometimes more than one patrol marches at once. You need to clear out enough of them that you can reach Bael'Gar and fight him without getting adds.

Stealth-sniffing dogs are singles and duos and not linked to the dwarf patrols. Pull those from range and kill them so your rogue can use sap on the patrols. And you will want to use what crowd control options you have to reduce the mob count during these patrol fights.

Bael'Gar has some fire attacks. If you have Fire Resist gear collected from your earlier trips, put it on and see how well it does at reducing the damage. When he's down, select the corpse, stand inside it, and use the Altered Dragon Molt to complete that quest.

Last trip

Before you go, collect the items for the Love Potion quest from Azshara and Un'goro.

Fight through to the bar again. Turn in the love potion quest to the succubus. If you talk to her now, she'll open the door to the next section for you—no need to fight Phalanx unless you want that nice helm he drops! Fight through to the Seven Dwarfs again, and repeat the fight against them. This time exit straight, to the Lyceum. If you have a Hunter with you tracking humanoids, the Hunter will probably start having heart attacks right now.

The Lyceum is full of low-hitpoint, fast-respawning mob groups. You have two targets in this room: a flamekeeper on each side, who drops a torch. The person who loots the torch must use it to light a brazier on one side. When the two braziers are lit, the door to the next area opens. Stay together. Move fast. If you have AoE, use it. Fight constantly, always moving forward, until you reach each brazier. (The flamekeeper is to the west of each brazier.)

Move to the next room and rest up. Rebuff. Now you have Magmar to face. Those suspicious-looking golems on the side do come alive, but they don't move. They just start spouting flame. Pull Magmar forward to you. You do not want to stand in the flamejets to fight him. When he's down the flamejets will continue spouting. They alternate sides, so it's fairly easy to run through them to the other side of the room.

The Emperor's chamber! You're nearly at the final fight. Clear out the chamber completely before you face the emperor. Most of these mobs are non-elite, so the fights shouldn't be too bad. Make sure you have them all. The emperor will conveniently announce to you when you've actually got them. Then fight the emperor. The princess is mind-controlled while he's alive, and will assist him. Don't kill her, because you need to talk to her afterward.

Oh, look at that, you're done with Blackrock Depths.

Phaedo : Mon, 16 May 2005 01:58:46 PDT

ceej : Mon, 16 May 2005 07:51:11 PDT