Ogri’la and Sha’tari in Blades Edge

This is the second major Daily Quest hub. I lump them both together because they are actually sharing the same little camp, with the Ogri’la in the south half of the camp and the Sha’tari in the north. The Sha’tari camp is kind of like a little heli landing pad with three huts. The Ogri’la, on the other hand, have a full service station with vendors and quartermaster.

I’m covering the section on becoming Neutral with Ogri’la next in this sequence because there are many pre-requisite quests necessary before you can begin questing in the Blades Edge Plateau.

In our first section, the Sha’tari Skyguard in Terrokar Forest, all you had to do was run a simple “kill 20 ogres” quest to open the area up for your plundering.

Here, it takes a lot more dedication. But it is still doable solo, if you are patient and help a group out.

In simple terms, consider the Ogri’la and Sha’tari Skyguard in Blades Edge Plateau to be one group. While completing the quests here gives you reputation with BOTH factions, you must complete the quest pre-requisites to become Neutral with Ogri’la to open the entire area up.

Let me be clear about this; you cannot quest with either Ogri’la OR Sha’tari in Blades Edge Plateau until you become Neutral with Ogri’la.

This is a common stopping point for many unguilded or casual players. The quest chain to become Neutral with Ogri’la is a series of 5-man party mini-boss fights, requiring all members to have flying mounts or flight forms.

The good news is that IF you are patient and polite, you CAN get this done without being in a 5-man party. We’ll talk more about that later.

First, your qualifications. As in our previous section, you need to have Riding Skill of 225 and a means of flying, whether it be a Druid flying form or a Flying Mount. You also must be level 70. You do NOT need epic flying skill of 300.

There is a quest chain you must complete to become Neutral with Ogri’la. This chain starts with V’eru (57, 45) in Shattrath City. He directs you to speak to Grok (64, 69) in the Lower City portion of Shattrath.

As a side note, I find it hilarious that, in order to reach enlightenment with Ogri’la, first you need to ‘Grok’. Yes, yes, I know, I have a silly sense of humor and a passion for the works of Heinlein. It still cracks me up. Anyway…..

Grok will send you to speak to Mog’dorg the Wizened, the quest giver that will be sending you on all your tasks. Mog’dorg is located in Blades Edge Mountains at (55, 45), near the Circle of Blood, and is only reachable by flying up to his perch.

Mog’dorg will initially assign you three group tasks that require a good party of 5 to safely complete. All tasks that he assigns will have to be completed before you can continue. This part of the chain is usually referred to as the ‘Gruuls Sons’ quests.

Mog’dorg’s first challenge is for you to kill each of the three sons of Gruul, and loot an item in their possession. Each son has their own quest. All three quests must be completed before the last two group quests will be offered.

Important note! Many folks that I see doing these quests in Blades Edge make the mistake of accepting the three ‘Gruuls Sons’ quests, pulling together a 5 man PUG to complete them, and then disband the PUG before completing the turn in. These poor souls then find themselves faced with more group quests, and with their PUG scattered to the four winds. Don’t be like them. Be aware that it ain’t over until you are proclaimed the King or Queen of the Ogres!

So don’t let your group go. You’ve been warned!

Okay, now at this point you’re saying, “Crap, I really hate PUGs, and I run casual so I don’t know if I’m ever gonna have the time to get a group together and do all that.”

Well, I have good news for you.

The first thing is, the Gruuls Sons quests, in fact every step of this quest chain, do NOT require you to actually kill the target. All you have to do to fulfill the quest requirements is to loot an item that drops from the target.

“So what!” I hear you cry, “You have to be in the group that kills the target to loot it, so what’s the difference!”

Ah, NOT SO! Here is where they gave casuals a chance. The item you need to loot for each quest is NOT in the targets’ inventory. Instead, it appears next to the targets’ body, and is lootable not just by the group members that killed him, but also, for a short period of time, by anyone that happens to be nearby that runs over and loots it.

What this means is that you can have many more than 5 people doing this quest and working together to complete it. You can get two complete 5 man groups together, or a 25 man raid if you want, and everyone can get the reward from killing the targets just once.

Or, for example, you can find out exactly where the target you need to kill is located. You can then hang out near the target, and wait for a 5 man group to come along. You can then do the polite thing, which is wait for the group to engage the target, and then heal them or add your damage to the target, and when the group is done killing it and looting it, you can run in and ‘politely!’ loot your quest item also. The quest item does not disappear when looted, you will not be ninjaing anything. (If that is even a word).

So if you are casual, and have no friends in the world (which would be sad in an MMO), you can still accomplish the entire quest chain by being patient and camping your target. Eventually, there will be more folks that need the Ogri’la chain that will be by. I think my friend Daak completed the chain in this way, and it only took him one night of following a particularly good group.

Ok, let’s get back on track. The quests themselves are;

Grulloc Has Two Skulls

Maggoc’s Treasure Chest

Even Gronn Have Standards

Grulloc Has Two Skulls requires you to loot the Dragon Skull from Grulloc. Grulloc is located at (61, 47) in Blades Edge Mountains. He is very close to the quest giver Mog’dorg, kind of at the end of the little valley just to the south. Again, when Grulloc is dead, the Dragon Skull drops at his feet.

Maggoc’s Treasure Chest requires you to loot the Treasure Chest from Maggoc. Maggoc is in Blades Edge Mountains, and paths around the Razor Ridge from (68, 74) in a loop to the North and then around to the Northwest, terminating at about (58, 61), kind of circling around the Razor Ridge area that encircles Deaths Door in a fishhook pattern. Again, when Maggoc is killed, the Treasure Chest drops at his feet.

Even Gronn Have Standards requires you to loot Slaags Standard from Slaag. Slaag is located at (19.7, 15.3) on the Terrokar Forest map, in a stone building on the Barrier Hills overlooking Shattrath City. Remember those Gordunni Ogres you killed for Sha’tari? Yeah, he’s up there. Again, Slaags Standard drops at his feet.

Once you have completed all three of these quests, and turn them in, Mog’dorg will have a new 5 man group quest available.

Grim(oire) Business requires you to loot Vim’gols Vile Grimoire from Vim’gol the Vile. When Vim’gol is dead, the Vile Grimoire will be at his feet. Vim’gols’ summon location is at (77, 31) in Blades Edge Mountains.

Grim(oire) Business is a little more difficult, in that it is not a typical tank and spank. Most of these can be completed by various types of groups, including ones that consist of 4 or less members. This one requires you to have 5 members, because each of you must stand at one of 5 points around the center raised dais, in order to summon Vim’gol before you can fight him. Like all the other targets though, he drops the Vile Grimoire at his feet when dead, so have no fear. If you find him challenging, just recruit a few more support types to hang out and help your group take him down.

Turning in Grim(oire) Business takes you to your last step. When you turn in the Vile Grimoire, Mog’dorg gives you your last group quest in the chain;

Into The Soulgrinder requires you to loot Skulloc’s Soul. This is the last quest, and it is a big event. And fun!

You must take Vim’gols Vile Grimoire to a summon altar at (60, 24) in Blades Edge Mountains. There, you use the grimoire on the altar, and Skulloc begins to be summoned.

As Skulloc is summoned, and begins to form, the multiple ghosts of Skullocs’ victims begin to spawn, and will attack the altar to try and stop the summoning. You must fight them off and destroy them or they will halt the event. This gets fun as there are lots of spawns, and no one can sit back in support, there is always a bunch of scurrying around to stay on top of the ghosts as they spawn all over the place. Great fun for the whole family!

Once Skulloc is summoned, it is a typical tank and spank. The victims disappear and you can focus on taking down Skulloc. When he dies, Skulloc’s Soul appears at his feet for the taking.

Turning this in completes the quest chain, makes you Neutral with ALL Ogres in Blades Edge Mountains, allows you access to the quests in Ogri’la, and gives you the joy of having your name proclaimed as the King (or Queen) of the Ogres!

As a side note, once you are proclaimed King (or Queen) and are Neutral with Ogri’la, you are now Neutral to ALL ogres in Blades Edge. They are no longer hostile to you, and will not attack on sight. You can still attack them, and you will NOT lose rep by doing so, but they will say funny (and sad!) things while you’re killing them. They will also now respond to your emotes, such as /fart and /dance. Honestly, I find it fun as can be.

All in all, it’s pretty damn cool.

Your work with Mog’dorg is done. He will give you one last quest, to speak with Chu’a’lor in Ogre Heaven… which is of course actually Ogri’la at (29, 57) up on the western Blades Edge Plateau.

This concludes the section on how to reach Neutral with Ogri’la. Our next section will be about the actual Daily Quests that you can do in your newfound stomping grounds.

Enjoy!

Daily Quests Part One - Sha’tari Skyguard

Blackwind Landing

The starting quest to unlock Blackwind Landing quests requires speaking to a quest giver standing next to the flight master in Shattrath City. He will give you a quest called Threat From Above. You must fly to the Barrier Hills overlooking the northern part of Shattrath City, and slay 20 Gordunni Ogres. These are easily soloable for most classes.

Once you have completed and turned in Threat From Above, you will be given a quest to deliver an Explosives Package to Sky Sergeant Doryn at Blackwind Landing. Blackwind Landing is located at (64,66) in Terrokar Forest, in the Skethyl Mountains. The Landing is just outside a bowl shaped area surrounded by high mountains called Skettis, home of the Skettis Arakkoa.

Once you deliver the Explosives Package, you will be able to take quests from the Sha’tari Skyguard here. The first Daily Quest is immediately available from Sky Sergeant Doryn, called “Fires Over Skettis”.

Daily Quest: Fires Over Skettis
Reward – 11 gold, 99 silver
Sha’tari Skyguard Reputation +350

A few notes on Fires Over Skettis;

You can do this quest in Druidic Bird Form. The explosives DO work.

The Monstrous Kaliri have a dismount attack that unseats riders, usually plummeting them to their death. You are immune to this in bird form. They can hamstring you, but they cannot shift you back to human.

When you inevitably aggro a Monstrous Kaliri, you have two choices – outrun their aggro range or land and fight. If you immediately ascend straight up, the Monstrous Kaliri cannot attack you while ascending to match your altitude. This works best when you are in normal flight form.

Epic flight form (or mount) simply moves too fast. On an epic, you will reach the ceiling cap and stop before the Monstrous Kaliri loses aggro, giving them the opportunity to hit you. I have found that if using an epic form/mount, it works better to scend and move forward simultaneously, and at the apex of your climb, mouseview without moving to look behind you, and then instantly use the mouse to change your direction to move right back where you had come from. For some reason the Monstrous Kaliri don’t respond fast enough to hit you during the brief altitude change when you are moving away from their direction of travel. Your mileage, however, may vary.

The second daily Quest is now also available, but does not come from a Blackwind Landing quest giver. Instead, it is an escort quest that is activated by finding the Skyguard Prisoner, an NPC that spawns in one of three locations in Skettis.

Daily Quest: Escape From Skettis
Reward – 11 gold, 99 silver and choice of EITHER 2 Volatile healing Potions OR 2 Unstable Mana Potions.
Sha’tari Skyguard Reputation +350

A few notes on Escape From Skettis;

The Skyguard Prisoner gives the quest, and spawns in one of three locations (see below).

He is always on the upper level (but under a roof) of an Arakkoa platform, in a bamboo cage, with a gold exclamation point overhead. The platform he is on will always connect to another platform via a bridge, and that connected platform will have a walkway leading to the ground.

The escort quest consists of you guarding the Skyguard Prisoner as he walks from one platform, across the bridge to the other platform, and then down the walkway to the ground. Aside from any normal mobs on the platforms or Monstrous Kaliri that may aggro, there will always be two Skettis mobs that spawn to attack you.

There is only one Skygaurd Prisoner at a time. If someone else is doing the quest, everyone else must wait for it to be completed or failed for the Skyguard Prisoner to respawn.

The quest can be shared amongst an existing party. If there are other people already camping a spawn of the same faction (Alliance or Horde), ask for a party invite for the quest prior to the Skyguard Prisoner appearing. Most folks will be glad of the help.

The instant the quest is completed by anyone, the Skyguard Prisoner spawns in one of the three locations; it can be the same location as the last spawn.

· (60, 75)
· (75, 86)
· (68, 74)

Finally, it can help to quickly discover if the Skyguard Prisoner is at one of the three locations while flying by creating a Macro that looks like this;

/target Skyguard

Spam it when approaching a spawn point to give a fast idea if he is there or not. If not, you can wheel around to one of the others.

Daily Quests – Introduction

Minimum requirements – all daily quests require level 70 and a standard flying mount minimum.

The Netherwing Daily Quests hav the additional requirement of 300 Riding Skill (epic flight). You do not have to have the epic flying mount yet. The achievement of Netherwing - Exalted reputation grants you the choice of a free Nether Drake Mount.

There are three Factions that have Daily Quests available.

Sha’tari Skyguard
Ogri’la
Netherwing

Each faction also has normal quest chains associated with them. The purpose of this post is not to go into all quests available in detail. This is to help you identify, prepare for, and unlock repeatable Daily Quests for reputation and Gold grinding.

Sha’tari Skyguard has two quest hubs, each of which has Daily Quests.
Blackwind Landing, located in Terrokar Forest. (64,66)
Skyguard Outpost, located in western Blades Edge Mountains. (28, 51)

Ogri’la has one quest hub.
Ogri’la, located in western Blades Edge Mountains adjacent to the Skyguard Outpost. (28, 57)

Netherwing has one quest hub.
Netherwing Ledge, located off the southern edge of Shadowmoon Valley. (66, 87)

Well, today was another day of not much time…. had to make up all the yard work I got out of by sleeping in yesterday.

I knew I’d only have about 30 minutes online, so I chose to spend the time doing dailies to farm alt money.

On that topic, I think tomorrow I’ll spend some time working on a request I had back during the Gold and Epic Mounts post for a detailed list of what daily quests there are, where to find them and how to qualify to do them.

I research so you don’t have to!

Have fun clawing faces, and I’ll see you online!

So, we’ve talked about gaming and family. Let’s give a fine example of trying to balance the two.

My friend James, who has just celebrated the baptism of his youngest, Joey (congrats again, buddy), also plays WoW.

He has a dwarf Rogue named Melpo, which has been his only real character for about 1.5 years. He’s level 70, and trying to finish his Kara attunement.

So last night we had a bunch of friends on, some in the Singapore time zone and just starting their day all bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and some of us here in the central time zone staring 10 PM in the face.

Our respective children are in bed… nothing stopping us from playing for a bit. Of course, we know we have to get up early in the morning, what with the baptism and party, etc. But no reason we can’t run the next stage of his Kara attunement…. Old Hillsbrad.

Well, at least in theory there is no reason. In the real world, we have what I call ‘too much infantry, not enough support’.

Among the 4 of us on and ready to go, we have two mages, a rogue, and myself as the tank.

Hmm…. not a single person that can take over tanking from me so I can do heals… and not a single other class that is a hybrid that can heal either.

Ironically, most of us have started leveling priest alts cause we’re getting tired of this, and want to melt faces. That’s quite beside the point, which is, at this present time…. no healers.

Now, it’s a 66-68 instance. I’ve run it many times before. The perversity of a warrior always being on the runs where the tanking ring drops from Lieutenant Drake, and also of course winning the roll, is beside the point. There will be no warrior on this run, so I know the ring won’t drop. We’re gonna run it for Jamie.

The question is… can we find a healer amongst our friends, one from our guilds, or a PUG healer to fill out the group, or will we have to run without a healer and DPS our butts off?

Well, by the time we all assemble in the Caverns of Time, get buffed, and everyone is all set and the respective children are ALL accounted for, it has gone from 10 to 11. I consider Old Hillsbrad a 1.5 hour run. In the group, I am the only one that has run it, so I’m figuring if we get going, I’m looking at 1 AM. That is doable. Sleep, phooey. Time enough to sleep when I’m dead.

The rest of the group decides to make a concerted effort to find a healer. One good friend comes online, that has specced her druid to resto, but she has a work assignment scheduled for early the next morning. She just CAN’T do it. Calls go out to the guilds we are a part of, but no healers are to be found. Trolling the LFG channel nets nada. Zero. Zilch. Zed.

And then lo and behold, Kemangi, the wife of our wondrous mage Tikky, comes online with her Warlock. “I can help” she announces. Outstanding, we’re gonna try and DPS our way through. Hah

Of course, we then run into the wonderful time sink that is the quest “The Caverns of Time“, an escort quest that is mandatory for every player to do, to be able to enter the Old Hillsbrad instance. Guess what? It is about 15 minutes of wandering around following a blathering idiot. And since this is the first trip for some of us, it has to be done. Twice. And one of our group has the bug come up where you can’t get the quest to start if you are mounted when you accept it. So we waste even more time trying to figure out why it won’t work.

By the time we bite the bullet, and everyone is ready to go, it’s midnight. We have no healer. But what the hey, what’s the worse that’ll happen? I’m used to getting up on 4 to 5 hours sleep, so I’m not too worried. Jamie, on the other hand, is going to have one crazy busy day. We do a gut check, he says he’s fine, he really wants to get this done. I’m not so sure, but he’s a big boy, and I figure if he thinks it’s ok, well, we’re doing it for him, so let’s get cracking.

So at midnight we go in, when we had 4 people ready to go at 10 PM, for a run that should take 1.5 hours. Welcome to casual land.

Let me tell you something though, having two mages on a humanoid only instance is highly amusing. Each pull in the barracks, and in Durnholde, we mark for two sheep, I take one or two to tank, and everyone DPSes anything else down first. James the rogue is tanking the targets that are the first to down as the DPS pours in, and the pulls go smooth as silk.

I rarely have any health problems, and even on the Thrall Death March, culminating in Thrall tanking one of the two healers supporting Captain Skarloc, and preventing us from sheeping both healers and burning Skarloc down first, we are able to do the whole thing with excellent results. A couple of times in there we have someone die, but the first time I have a rez, and the second it’s not that far a run.

All this changes with the last event, the Epoch Hunter. Everyone say it with me, class….. Dragonkin can’t be sheeped.

Damn it.

We burn through the first two waves of Dragonkin, but the third wave is just too much. I lose aggro on one that gets loose amongst the casters, I can’t keep my health up that long even with popping out and spot healing between waves, and the only reason we don’t all wipe is that Thrall dies and the Dragonkin fade out. Only two were left alive, Jay the mage and James the rogue.

So we regroup. I look at the time. We have reached 1 AM. I am dog tired. And I don’t see a way for us to handle all three waves and still be in good shape for the Epoch Hunter. So I call it. And I am really upset because we kicked butt all the way, but just couldn’t do it without a healer of some sort, or crowd control on Dragonkin.

Ah, I hear you scream “Wait!” as I say that. “But Big Butt”, you scream, “Druids can hibernate Dragonkin!”

You are absolutely correct. All I can say is that except for the first wave where we were ready and waiting, I did not find a moment during the succeeding two waves where I could safely pop out to hibernate one without having two mobs being tanked on top of me. I am sure a better tank could have done so. Maybe I could have if I wasn’t so tired. I dunno.

But I announce that I am too tired and I don’t see us finishing it this time, when at that moment James says that he has a paladin from his guild that is willing to come get the last boss done. At 1 AM server time.

Hallelujah.

Of course, now we need to decide who is leaving the group to make room, we have to run out of the instance to summon him, etc. Jay the mage decides he can bail since of the 4 of us he was the only one not 70, his mage is level 67. Not that we noticed, he does the DPS of a 70, I kid you not.

Well, we get ready to go… and the paladin can’t get in the instance.

He needs to do the escort quest first.

Everyone types “pizza break” and splits for 15 minutes.

When we come back, he is still on the escort quest.

When all was said and done, and the paladin was in and ready to go, it was about 1:45 AM server time.

We kicked off the fight…and about 5 minutes later it was done and successful. It was ludicrous how easy it was with a paladin providing healing support.

Yeah, yeah, I know, a well balanced group of 70s in Old Hillsbrad. It should be easy. At 2 AM it feels like a pretty hard earned victory if you ask me. And I am trying VERY hard not to ask myself if the results are worth the lost sleep and potential wife aggro.

So we get it done, James gets his next part of the chain complete, James is happy, everyone is happy, I thank everyone and bail for bed. I am grateful that I ahve managed to ahve a good instance run with my freinds this week. I know it’ll be at least another week before I see everyone online again together at the same time.

Bless my wife, she lets me sleep in until 9 AM without asking, letting me out of breakfast duties, AND letting me out of mowing the lawn for the day. I don’t think she knows just how late I was up, but she also knows I will be watching our son so she gets to sleep in Sunday, and I’ll be making the breakfast then, so it’ll balance out a teeny bit. But she makes real good waffles and bacon, so I’m still gettting the best part of this deal.

We head down the state for the baptism, and I see my friend. I was wondering how he would be doing, since he seemed intent on continuing on when I logged out. He’s doing good, he’s showing no signs of stress. He’s handing the guests and keeping track of his three little menaces with panache.

But at the end of the evening, his wife and my wife get their heads together and compare notes. And his wife tells my wife that James didn’t come to bed until 2:30 AM because of ‘that damn game’, and she looks square at me and asks me why I made him stay up so late! And my wife then looks at me and says, “Wait a minute, you didn’t come to bed until 2:30?”

Argh!

All I can say is… if everyone was asleep when the playing was going on, and I wasn’t out drinking at a sports bar and risking a DUI, was it so bad? I promise I’ll get up early Sunday. Sweetie? Honey? It’s okay, right?

Uh oh….