The pocket guide to Upper Blackrock Spire

Upper Blackrock Spire is an instance in the Blackrock Mountain, which straddles the border between the Searing Gorge and the Burning Steppes. It is actually the same instance as Lower Blackrock Spire. However, UBRS is designed for a 10-man raid., and LBRS is designed for a single 5-man group. Quests marked as "raid" quests are intended to be completed in UBRS instead of LBRS.

To gain access to UBRS, at least one person in your party must complete the Seal of ascension quest in LBRS, and have the ring equipped. The door to UBRS will not open unless someone with the ring gets near it.

The nearest gryphon is at the massively convenient Thorium Point, at the north end of the Searing Gorge.

You will probably run UBRS many, many times as a level 60 player to gear yourself up for Molten Core and Onyxia. After you've defeated Drakk 20 times, you'll be running it in your sleep. When my guild first ran UBRS, it took us three hours and we'd wipe a few times. Now we're running it in an hour and half, and we're pretty sure we could go faster. This guide is intended to help you (and perhaps your guild) get through the instance those first few times, when you're inexperienced and underequipped.

Maps

big map
Atlas in-game map

Quests

Quest chains

Finkle Einhorn, at your service / Finkle Einhorn / UBRS
This quest is given in UBRS. Starts the epic armor quest for leather-wearers. See the walkthrough to find out how to get it.

General Drakkisath's Command / Overlord Wyrmthalak / LBRS
When you kill Overlord Wyrmthalak, the final boss of LBRS, you can loot an item from his body that starts this short quest series.

The matron protectorate / Awbee / UBRS
Given by Awbee in UBRS. Starts the epic armor quest for mail and plate wearers. See the text to find out more.

Blood of the black dragon champion / quest chain
This is the final step of the Onyxia key quest chain, which you should have started long ago in BRD. (See The pocket guide to Blackrock Depths.)

Egg freezing / Tinkee Steamboil / Burning Steppes (north)
Freeze rookery eggs. Eventually you will freeze & collect eggs for Tinkee. Not shareable because she gives you an object to use.

The demon forge / Lorax / Winterspring
Kill Gorak Anvilcrack.

Eye of the emberseer / Duke Hydraxis / Azshara
Part of an elemental-killing quest series given out by the Duke, who is a major pain to reach.

Blackwing Lair Attunement / Scarshield Quartermaster / Blackrock Mountain

Shareable quests

Doomrigger's Clasp / Mayara Brightwing / Burning Steppes

Walkthrough

It's hard to get lost in this instance. Mostly there is a single path through to the end.

At the start, sort out who's pulling, who's tanking, and who's your main assist. If you don't know what those roles are, stop and find out. You probably know what pulling is. A good puller can make your progress through this instance smooth, with all the fights controlled. The assist is an important concept for the first time in the game here in this instance. Many of these fights become easier if you concentrate your dps on a single target, well-chosen by a canny main assist.

Before you enter the instance, run straight along the hall to the Scarshield Quartermaster. Kill him and loot him. My, he's stupid stupid orc, isn't he? Accept the quest, and take note of the interesting orb just behind his idiot corpse.

In the first room, clear out the orcs and run up the ramp. At the left end, a door you might not have noticed before opens. Aha! Have a hunter or a warrior pull the dragonkin out of the room revealed. Clear them all, even the ones up at the back side of the room. It'll just make the next fights simpler not to worry about adds.

Move into the next area. You'll notice that there are many rooms opening onto it, each with a group of orcs surrounding a burning rune. Your job is to kill all of the orcs in each room to extinguish the runes. The groups are a mix of casters and meleers. The Veterans rush and knockback, which is an ability you'd do well to mark. The Dreadweavers are nothing special. The Summoners, on the other hand, are genuinely dangerous. If left alone, they'll summon a stream of elite Veterans & Dreadweavers. Don't let them. Kill them first.

A door opens to reveal stairs up to the next area. A group of orcs just like the previous groups lurks just around the corner. Kill them as usual.

Run into the next room. All those non-elite orcs are just ignoring you! Their attentions are otherwise occupied by the fire elemental in the center of the room, who doesn't appear to be entirely present yet. Group yourselves around the altar to the left. When you're ready, right-click on the altar. This interrupts the orcs from their concentration, which annoys them. (Have you ever seen an orc not annoyed?) It's AoE time! They should fall quickly.

When they're all dead, arrange yourselves around the Pyroguard Emberseer on the podium. If you have fire resist gear, you might want to put it on. After a few seconds of warning in the chat log, the elemental comes to life and tries to kill you. We can't have that!

Now, if you wish, pause for a moment and shout "LEEEEROY mmmJENKINS!" a lot. It will be refreshingly original.

The rookery is next. The rookery floor is covered with eggs. If you step on the eggs, they break and spawn non-elite dragon whelps, who can spawn more dragon whelps. Try to avoid breaking eggs. If you do, have your mages and warlocks ready to AoE them. For the first part of this fight, it's better to stay out of the rookery entirely and have your puller the only one inside.

Send your puller in and have him or her clear the room of dragonkin. Hunters with their long range and Feign are useful here. When the room is clear, have everybody move inside and park themselves in the egg-free area just inside the entrance. Warn them all yet again not to touch eggs. Your puller, or some careful person, then runs to the far left of the room where a pillar is. Loot the pillar, and take the object inside, Father Flame. Then run back to the main group. This triggers an event: a stream of pairs of dragonkin, culiminating in Solakar Flamewreath. The Hatchers are the most dangerous of the mobs, because they will run away from the fight to break eggs and release whelps. Kill them first if they appear with a Guardian. (Now that you understand the fight, the Leroy video is even funnier, isn't it?)

When the event is over, you can do quests. Egg freezing and collecting happens here. There is a chance that these quests will disturb the eggs and release whelps, so be on the alert. The Doomrigger clasp can also be found in the rookery. It's in a casket near where the pillar. It will respawn after each person loots it. You might have to deliberately break eggs to reach the casket.

When all this is over, run up and to the right (carefully!) to the ramp. Clear out the dragonkin at the top, and all the way along the ledge to the right corner. Some of the dragonkin are casters with a fire AoE. (Flamescales and Firetongues. They are smaller than the melee dragonkin.) Kill them first. Park your meleers in this corner, with their backs to the wall, facing the doorway closest to the corner. Have your hunters arrange themselves on the other side of that door, so they can use their bows and guns. After each pull, have your hunters slap down ice traps in the doorway to slow down the pace of the mobs approaching you.

Now the pressure is all on your puller. His or her job is to run through the doorway into the next large room & pull a few mobs back. The Orc Veterans have a knockback. Why is this important? If you look down from the ledge, you'll see why. The eggs are right below you. What would happen if you got punted off into the eggs? Mass whelp spawn. So keep your back to the wall. Never let yourself get between an orc Veteran and the edge of the ledge. If you do screw up and get punted into the eggs, just die where you are. There's no sense wiping your whole raid.

When most of the room is clear, except for mobs at the far left end, advance into it. Goraluk Anvilcrack is at the far left end. He's a quest target and he drops some very nice smithing patterns. A canny puller can get him separately from the group in the far right corner, but he isn't a particularly hard fight. Tank him, dps down his minions, then take him down.

Now turn around and clear your way up the ramps. There are dragonkin and orcs. As before, Summoners are particularly dangerous, as are the caster dragons.

Run up the ramp to the stadium. Pause at the top. Regroup. Rebuff. Dismiss all pets. Repeat that instruction. You don't want to see the train of aggro you attract if somebody fails to follow it. When you're ready, jump down into the stadium and move to the far right corner. You've just triggered the Rend Event. Waves of chromatic dragonspawn and some orc handlers will come at you, gradually growing in difficulty. Through this, Nefarion will taunt you and become increasingly upset by your survival. "Inconceivable!" he'll say. I don't think that word means what he thinks it means.

At the end of the waves, Warchief Rend Blackhand will appear to dispatch you himself. He's riding a dragon named Gyth. You fight them as a single unit until Gyth is low on health, then Rend dismounts and joins the fight directly. Gyth has some breath attacks. Have your tank establish aggro with him and keep him pointed away from the group. Other meleers should stand behind the dragon to avoid the breath attacks. When Gyth is at 20% health, the person with the Seal of Ascension should use the Seal. A fun thing happens. Rend will dismount shortly after that, and you'll be fighting two bosses at once.

Loot Rend and enjoy the many fine items he drops. Take a break to stretch and get another soda. It gets a bit harder from here on. Your warlocks might want to take out their succubi right now to help with crowd control.

Your puller is again on the spot. There's a small network of rooms ahead. Your puller should clear each room of dragonkin & orcs before he or she allows you to move forward. They're higher level than the last set was.

In the first room, you'll find Awbee on the floor, being bullied. Kill the big meanies bothering him, and talk to him for the plate & mail epic quest start.

In the second room, you can look left and see the entrance to Blackwing Lair. Don't yield to temptation just yet, not unless you've been farming Molten Core for a while.

Your puller should gradually clear out the big room beyond where you are, the Furnace, until only the group of 5 mobs in the far right corner remains. They will give you a challenging fight. How challenging it is depends on how much crowd control you have, and how good your meleers are at respecting it. Here's one way to run this fight safely:

• Your main tank is on the Captain.
• You have two of the following: a rogue with sap, a mage with sheep, and a warlock with a succubus out to seduce. These two will take out the two orcs.
• Your hunters place ice traps.
• All your DPS pre-selects the dragonkin caster on the left. (Or right, doesn't matter.)
• Your puller tickles the other of the two caster dragons and puts it neatly into the ice trap.
• Kill the first caster. Kill the second caster. Kill the captain. Kill whichever orc has broken CC first. Kill the other. Congratulate yourselves.

Your healers will love you if you can do something like this. And again, as you run the instance over and over and get more skillful & better equipped, you'll find you have to be less careful about this fight.

Captains have a knockback.

Now you're ready for The Beast, past the campfires to the left. This is a big boss with a lot of hitpoints. He does an AoE fear. He also does a knockback that hurts a bunch. Try to have your tank establish aggro, so everybody else can whack on him from behind. It can be a chaotic fight, though. Just keep up the DPS on him and keep people healed. And when he's dead, loot him and hope for Finkle's Skinner. This item should only go to skinners. It is wasted on other players. Your skinner should equip it and skin the Beast. Finkle Einhorn will be revealed, and will offer a quest that all leather-wearers will want. The Beast also has a tiny tiny chance of being skinned for Pristine Hide of the Beast, which is required for these epic leather armor quests.

Head back through the furnace to the bridge. Drakkisath is just ahead!

You do not want to fight on the bridge. Being knocked down into LBRS wouldn't be fun! The fall would probably kill you, for one thing. Have your puller steadily pull groups back to you in the room. Your CCers should be ready to help reduce whatever comes your way. Hunters should have ice traps down for every pull. Your survival here depends on respecting your crowd control and on concentrating your fire. Practice. It can be tough at first to get 15 people coordinating, but eventually your group will figure out how much better the fights go when they don't cowboy around.

We've found it best to clear Drakk's room almost entirely before moving forward into it. You should experiment and find what works best for you. If you're in doubt, have your puller clear the whole thing except for a couple scattered orcs & Drakk's group itself.

And now the big guy, General Drakkisath himself. He has two guards. He also has some nasty abilities, mainly Conflagrate. He usually uses Conflagrate on the nearest person to him who is not #1 on his aggro list. That means you, poor rogue, if you've been diligent about your feinting. If you have fire resist gear, put it on. Buff up. Drink potions. There are several tactics you can use with this fight. Here's one that works for a lot of people:

• Your warlock gets ready to chain fear the right guard.
• Your main tank gets ready to tank Drakk.
• Hunters and warlocks get ready to put their pets on Drakk.
• Everybody else gets ready to pile on the left guard.
• Kill the left guard, then kill Drakk, then kill the chain-feared guard.

The pet technique seems to occupy Drakk & attract his attention for conflagrates a bit. We're not sure it's really working, mind you, but you might try experimenting with it.

When Drakk dies, congratulate yourselves! You just defeated a hard boss. Loot him and give a shiny new chest piece to some lucky player. Drakk drops 2 or 3 units of blood for the Onyxia key quest. Distribute those to players who are at that step of the quest. Then go talk to the Orb right behind where Drakk was standing. Wow, you're now keyed for Blackwing Lair. Since this was your first visit to UBRS, BWL is a long way away. It's something to look forward to.