Bloodbath

Not a typical post on my account. This time I will talk, or rather rant about one particular quest which took me over 45 minutes to complete.

The quest name is Boiling Blood or Boiled Blood and the description seems fairly simple; kill some Bleeding Hollows (yet another type of redskins), collect their blood and boil it at the cauldron. The quest is recommended as a solo type, which I gladly accepted, since my guildmates are not present in Burning Crusade Beta and in such case I much more prefer one-on-one encounters...

...only that this quest definitely was not one-on-one, but instead more of a me-versus-the-world.

Bloody Bleeding Hollow Blood to Boil

First, a bit about the wording... Bleeding Hollow Blood??? Come on, you must be Bloody kidding me! Combined with my survival skills based on Bloodthirst skill... Too much blood for me. This is not Doom! It's The Bloody Crusade!... excuse me, BURNING one. You see where I'm getting at.

Anyhooooow, the fight takes place next to the encampment of Bleeding Hollow orcs, filled with patrols. All mobs are in level range of 60-61, with a few level 59'ers thrown in for a good measure. Patrols can be divided into two types: redskins on foot and redskins on a mount. And there are tons of them.

I believe it was dwarves that keep saying "Watch your back!" - hell of a good advice for this quest. You need to constantly turn your camera around (while fighting not-so-easy mobs) in order to avoid adds. One mob can easily take the health bar down to around 25% - two is a headache... and many, many times I had to deal with 3 or 4.

This peon was pulled just in time, before the patrol arrived

How you ask me?

First of all, there are so many patrols. Second, the patrols intersect their routes frequently, so while you are pulling your mob away from one it is very easy to move into another. Third, while the redskins on foot are pretty straightforward, the mounted ones will unmount and both the redkin orc and his mount (generally, a tough level 60 wolf) will start fighting with you.

Blood does not drop very often, either (bloodless mobs?), so it is good family fun for the entire evening. Or at least something in the range of 30 minutes, including good dozen of corpse runs.

The cauldron and its hosts

Once you are done with collecting 12 pieces of blood it is time to head to the cauldron. It is being guarded by a level 61 Necrolyte and its two level 61 skeleton minions. Fortunately the minions are quite manageable, although they can be pain in the ass, considering the fact big daddy is constantly hurling fireballs at you.

The cauldron has no less (and possibly more) than 5 different patrols passing by. Main problem here is the aggro radius level 60 character has. It is huge! You may think you're in a safe zone, and wham! here comes a patrol... and another one... and another one.

Needless to say, I didn't make it that time.

Had enough? Hell, no! There is also a green blob patrolling the area, named Eye of Grillok. If it sees you, you have few seconds to kill it (which is easy, provided you are not already engaged with tons of other mobs, who keep on dazing you and slowing you down). If not killed, it's owner, another nearby necrolyte, and his two skeleton minions are sure to join the party!

Once you eliminate all the patrols and guards you need to hurry. Respawn rate is pretty high and usually you will have around a minute to boil the blood.

Not that easy!

You boil the blood one at the time (12 vials needed total). It is a channeled action, taking approximately 2 or 3 seconds. Once you produce a vial of boiled blood, tons of little scarabs will spawn around the cauldron. They will all be yellow at first, and then randomly turn red and start attacking you.

Typical scene: 21 scarabs, 3 patrols and some extras, so you don't get bored.

Scarabs, although level 61, are not very tough and don't hit for much, but once they gang up on you, it becomes quite a challenge to stay alive.

After countless corpse runs, cleaning the area again and again I managed to finish the quest. All that for mere 89 silver and a follow-up quest.

Meanwhile, other simpler quests ask you to kill 20 mobs and reward 2 gold... Imbalanced? Definitely. I hope they will fix it before TBC comes out... Or actually, hell no! I went through this, why shouldn't the others?

On a lighter note, I noticed a very nice little addon to the interface. Apart from the fact (which I think I did not post) that the map by default displays coordinates now, the quest window reports how many people would it take to complete a quest.

Quest window recommends 3 players for the task

Of course, as you can guess from this rant, the recommendations don't always reflect the reality of some quests, but once polished up, this could be a really good one.