Posts with tag Dungeon-Sets

For the longest time in vanilla World of Warcraft, players were content with collecting the dungeon set 1 pieces from Stratholme, Scholomance and Blackrock Spire. A purple item was a incredibly rare thing to see in the early days of WoW. It was a status symbol, a badge of pride for raiders who managed to band together to defeat Onyxia or brave the depths of Molten Core. With epic items soon came epic discontent, largely from casual players who either didn't have the time or the inclination to raid. As time went on and more raid dungeons were released, the complaining continued; players who were unable to dedicate the time needed to successfully complete a 40-man raid dungeon felt it was unfair that they could not obtain epic gear.

It was a valid complaint, but it took well over two years before Blizzard finally did something about it. About four months after the release of Ahn'Quiraj, Blizzard implemented Patch 1.10, "Storms of Azeroth." Among the fun changes like the introduction of weather in Azeroth and quest-experience-to-gold conversion at level 60, casual players finally received what they'd been asking for: a quest line that didn't require raiding and would allow them to upgrade their dungeon sets one into new ones that included epic gear. This set is called, appropriately enough, dungeon set 2.

Set collecting is one of those things that you either love or hate -- either the thought of running around in old gear is curiously nostalgic, or you simply don't care to fill your bank with a lot of useless junk. With the introduction of Cataclysm, a lot of these old dungeon sets appear to be changing or disappearing entirely, making them a hot commodity for set collectors. Since a lot of players these days picked up the game in the BC or Wrath eras, not everyone knows where these pieces come from and how to get them.

The first of these sets is the Dungeon Set One. Obtained through various level 60 instances, these blue armor sets were the top of the top before the days of Molten Core and purples everywhere. Originally, these sets had very boring graphics, until a patch was implemented in which all sets got a shiny new graphics update. In the early days of vanilla, these sets were pretty much all players needed to farm for, and the +8 to all resistances that served as a set bonus for each was handy in places like Molten Core, which was nothing but a fun fire factory in which you wanted to stack as much fire resistance as possible. There are nine sets to collect, and each set is class-specific. All set pieces can be found in Stratholme, Scholomance and Blackrock Spire (both lower and upper).

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

We have another appearance from Allison Robert today for you Druid players, so that's fun! Guest answers tend to be a lot more fun, no? I certainly think so, because it means less work for me to do! I'm kidding, I'm kidding, but it's definitely fun to spread the love around a little.

Chas asked...

Has there ever been any lore surrounding Thane Korth'azz and Lady Blaumeux from Naxxramas? The other horsemen seem to have back-stories but I can't find anything on them.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

Andrew asked...

For those of us who won't be able to play Wrath for a while still, what would be the best route to catch up with everyone and get into raiding as quickly as possible?

Just quest, really. Finding a good place to grind out mobs can technically be better XP per hour, but really, that's a horrible way to experience the expansion your first time through. Most of the people that did it that way (such as Nymh) did it after they'd already seen all of the leveling content in the Wrath beta. Just quest. The order I did zones in is this: Howling Fjord, Dragonblight, Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, Sholazar Basin until you hit 77, then get Cold Weather Flying and move on to Storm Peaks or Icecrown until 80. Exchange Howling Fjord for Borean Tundra if you want. I just went with the Fjord personally because it had fewer people.

Totem Talk is the column for Shamans. Matthew Rossi has played two shamans to 70 and is working on a third, his main problem being he can't decide whether to level another Horde or Alliance shaman. Yes, he's technically working on two elemental shamans at once. Once again, we at Totem Talk hasten to point out that no one has ever said that he was very bright.

Okay. You've hit 70. Now what?

Now you begin working towards what they call endgame. How does one go about doing that? Well, hopefully you're in a guild that can run at least the five man instances. If not, you'll have to PuG them, but while doing that look towards getting into a good guild. By good, I don't just mean sharding Bulwarks of Azzinoth here... a fully progressed guild may not actually need you all that much, and even if they're looking for a shaman with your spec, sometimes it's more fun to find a guild with which you can progress rather than one that's already done everything. Look for a guild you can get along with first and foremost, because you're going to be spending a lot of time with these folks inside unpleasant places packed with horrible things you'll be trying to kill to crack them open for their nice shiny loot.

Either way, you first need to run instances. In a perfect world, you'd go from instances to heroic instances, then 10 man raids, then up to the 25 man raids if your guild has the numbers. This may or may not be the case: some of the best players I know are in smaller guilds and run just the 10 mans. But you will have to dedicate some of your time to getting gear, it's the nature of the beast, so to speak. You can't step into Karazhan in greens and expect to do well unless you're being carried, or you really are Chuck Norris. If that's the case, thank you for reading my column, sir.