Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Exercises in Creative Design - Epic Gnome Mage Quest Chain

Yes. I'm not talking about any mage. It has to be a gnomish mage. For this idea, somewhat sparked by BigBearButt's challenge, I wanted to think of an "Epic Quest Chain" that would fit my character, or a quest chain that I would like to see myself doing.

Firstly, the quest is started by a token drop from sort of boss, I would like to think maybe Sartharion or perhaps Archavon. Not Malygos, though. We can save that for later.

Actually, yes. Sartharion. He'll drop a mage token called Scale of the Ancient Aspects.

Start the quest, give it to Rhonin in Dalaran, and he'll be marvelled by such a piece. Unfortunately, he doesn't know much about the ancients as much as his good friend Krassus. So off you go to the Wyrmrest temple in Dragonblight to talk to the big bad motherhubber.

"By the Old Gods!" Krassus says. Apparently, it's the original scale of the aspects, the piece of mortal flesh from which all the ancients were crafted. Think Genesis and Adam's Left Rib, that type of business. Krassus, in his awe, gives you a quest item called "Scale of the Kirin Tor." In certain parts of the quest, you will be able to use it to summon him to assist you.

First, since the original scale came from the black flight, it only makes sense to go back to Sartharion's Lair, the Obsidian Sanctum to investigate the matter. There will be a tiny shrine standing near one of the Drakes. When you kill it, you can summon a miniboss. A level 80 Elite Black Dragon that you will have to kill. By yourself. Apparently, since you went in with a raid, the Black Dragon (let's arbitrarily call him Necrofarion) will bind the other raid members except you. Oh shiz, what will you do now, little one?

Summon Krassus, the dragon mage, of course. He swoops down from wherever and starts tanking the crap out of him. Infinite threat, so you don't have to worry about getting aggro. His health is not infinite, however, so you will have to DPS Necrofarion by yourself. Thankfully, he's a squirt compared to most dragons, so you'll only have to sustain 2500 DPS for 5 minutes to take him down. Not too demanding, in my opinion.

Once Necrofarion is defeated, you will have a chance to interrogate him. He drops the big bombshell that the Black and Blue dragonflight have made a temporary truce! The exchange of the scale was supposed to take place between Sartharion and Malygos himself.

Now that you have the scale, obviously Malygos is going to send all his worst henchmen at you, so it's up to the Bronze Dragonflight to hide you where he can't touch you. In the past.

"Ah, Bashertin! How could you get into such trouble?" Asks Chromie, the amber dragon-gnome. "Oh well, since I'm charged with hiding you from Malygos, you might as well go home to your people."

And boom. You're in Old Gnomeregan. During Third War. During the Troggs.

Wandering around, you run into a quest hub in a little house of the gnomish arcane. The wizardmaster will charge you with random dumb quests like "collect 8 of these for the troops" and whatnot. But at the end, Chromie will whisper you.

"Mage, our plan didn't work out as well as we thought! It would seem that the Infinite Dragonflight have gotten hold of some information regarding the Scale. You must watch out!"

And then BAM. Troggs and Black Dragonflight everywhere.

And there's nobody to help you now. Except for a billion gnomes.

In an instanced quest, you have to stave off 7 waves of 7 Dragonflight mobs. None of them are casters or ranged, nor are the elite. So you know what to do here. AoE them all. Successfully. By yourself. Troggs appear here and there, but they're joke waves, and are way below your level.

At the end of that quest, you return to the present. Appearing before Alextrasza, you speak to her and Krassus, and suggest that the only way to deal with the situation is to destroy the Scale of the Ancient Aspects. Manually. The only way to do so is to use it AGAINST Malygos.

The Scale of the Ancient Aspects becomes an equippable trinket, and you have to use it in a fight against malygos with a group of 10 or 25 people.

So now we go to the Eye of Eternity. When Malygos sees you with the scale, you get automatic aggro. And you get much more threat from your spells. Thus you will have to mage-tank him. When Malygos sees you with the scale, he will enrage and gain a damage reducing buff. Spellsteal it, and you can take buttloads of damage, and you can use your trinket to put up shields from time to time.

During the flying phase, you don't ride on the disks that drop. Use the scale that krasus gives you, and he will appear and turn into Korialstrasz. And you ride him and dragon-tank the boss during the flight phase. Wonderful!

When it is all said and done, you finish this awesome mage quest chain, and the reward is none other than a blue dragon epic flyer. Wicked.

Oh crap, gotta get to school now. Second Semester, yay!

3 comments:

Drazmor said...

Wouldn't it be awesome if Blizz would accept player quest ideas for testing?

krizzlybear said...

Not sure about actual testing, but it would be awesome if WoW had an equivalent to steam's GMOD (player-customized modelmaker for characters, arenas, etc.) I'm sure that there probably is, and that it's huge in machinima circles, but I don't know of it yet.

Anonymous said...

Wow, that was epic!

I'd love to see something like that in-game. :D