Phase 3 is now in full swing on many servers, including mine, and this time, we're working on taking the Sun's Reach Harbor as well as opening up the long awaited badge loot vendor. How do the quests stack up this time around? Does the near flawless run for great dailies from Quel'danas continue? I've had a few days to try out the runs, and I have to say that there's a few rough spots, but you can continue to grow your list of dailies with confidence as the new phases come on.

Taking the Harbor

If there's an alternate name you can give to phase 3, it's probably "the Elf-killing phase." You can even claim you're killing Elves when you kill the Naga for Smith Hauthaa - heavily mutated Elves, yes, but Elves all the same. To start with, there's the plain old straight up Blood Elf-killing quest Taking the Harbor. The nice thing about this quest that, while the Harbor is generally camped, very few people consider heading over to Dawnstar village (to the west of the first quest area) and ripping things up there.

Heading over there, I not only generally find more than enough Elves, and I can attune to the Bloodcrystal for the Know Your Ley Lines quest while I'm at it. The Elves themselves aren't too hard to kill. The Blood Knights don't hit too hard, and while they do have a heal, it's Holy Light, so it takes a while to cast, enough time for you to either interrupt it or kill them. The Summoners' Incinerate hits like a ton of bricks, but they have very little mana, so if you can drain that, they're forced to resort to melee, which is far from their strong suit. They have Imps with them, and I generally kill those first, since those fireballs can bring you down fast. All in all, This is an easy quest that gives you the joy of killing Blood Elves and the chance for a handful of Sunfury Signets. What's not to like?

Intercept the Reinforcements

Next up is Intercept the Reinforcements, which puts you back on a dragonhawk courtesy of Ayren. I generally take the opportunity to bomb the Dead Scar while I'm here too. But before that, the Blood Elves. Bombing the ships isn't too hard, as long as you throw your Flame Oil somewhere on the deck, it seems to give you credit. The cooldown is non-existent, so you can do it quickly and easy before landing on the Sin'loren. That's when things get a bit dicey.

It looks like everyone lands on the Sin'loren, so if you're looking for reservists there, the deck is generally pretty bare. In better news, I found that the other two ships were usually much less camped. On the other hand, swimming over to them can be a pain, and only the Sin'loren has the Unrestrained Dragonhawk that flies you back to the Island. So, yeah, better hope you like swimming, or hope Blizzard decides to randomize where you land and put an unrestrained dragonhawk on every ship.

Making Ready

The most frustrating quest this time, and possibly the most frustrating quest on the entire island thus far, is the very quest that you can't really afford to skip if you want the sweet badge gear: Making Ready. You may need to kill Myrmidons, but chances are you're going to get caught up in Frostbolts courtesy of the Sirens way more than you'd like. Also, finding a live Myrmidon at all was often a challenge, as it seemed a few times when I came down to do the quest, every single inch of the coastline was camped. I did get around that to some extent by swimming out from the coast a bit. There's a few Myrmidons swimming around underwater, and very few people seem to realize they're there. However, even then, when you actually manage to kill a Myrmidon, there seems to be a better than average chance they won't even drop a key. A few times, I need to kill about 20 of the buggers before my first key even dropped.

Luckily, once you have the keys, it's at least a bit easier, as all you have to do is open one of the many chests dotting the shore - the nearby murlocs won't even bother you (for once), as they're level 60 and neutral con - which also makes them perfect for letting out your frustrations with a bit of Hellfire, by the way. I do wonder why we don't see any scattered nodes for the ore though. Previous ore quests generally always let you get the ore from nodes, and since one of my characters is a miner, I was looking forward to being able to have an alternate path to do this quest. I mean, come on, the naga have to get the ore from somewhere, right?

Admittedly, it's not an outright bad quest, and it's a good excuse go get the shrine for Know Your Ley Lines... plus, you know, it unlocks the badge loot. But it either needs fewer crowds, faster Myrmidon respawn rates, higher drop rates on the keys, or possibly all of the above.

Final thoughts

I found that the demon killing quest got noticeably more difficult this phase, if only because the demons in and around the armory building are now gone. You're pretty much limited to the demons right inside the Dawning Square, and they're tapped nearly immediately after they've spawned. I did find that there's a few demons near the entrance to the Sunwell Plateau 25-man that everyone seems to forget about though, so if you're lucky, you can finish up your demon killing there.

So there's a few rough spots, and I may end up dropping Making Ready once the badge vendor is up, but the other two quests are probably worth adding to your daily rotation even aside from the progression. A chance to collect Sunfury Signets is always good, whether for your own use or to put up on the AH, and if you can keep them mana drained or interrupted, none of the Blood Elves are that hard to kill.

As of my last check of us.gorgonnash.info, it looks like around 55 servers have broken through to Phase 3. The rest of you, good luck and keep working on it, and be sure to check out our phase 2 guides to power yourself through to all that good badge gear and - finally - a repair vendor on the Isle.

Tags: badge-loot, badge-of-justice, bloodcrystal, bloodoath, darkspine-chest-key, darkspine-iron-ore, darkspine-myrmidon, darkspine-sirens, dawnblade-blood-knight, dawnblade-marksman, dawnblade-reservist, dawnblade-summoner, dawning-square, dawnstar-village, dead-scar, dragonhawk, flame-oil, frostbolt, hellfire, holy-light, incinerate, intercept-the-reinforcements, isle-of-queldanas, know-your-ley-lines, murloc, Naga, patch-24, queldanas, sinloren, smith-hauthaa, sunfury-signet, suns-reach-armory, suns-reach-harbor, taking-the-harbor, unrestrained-dragonhawk

Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, Quests, Blood Elves, Factions, Making money