Reconnaissance of VC

12/10/07
Woohoo! I finally got a character thru the Deadmines! A guildy offered to run me thru, and I accepted happily. My level 26 Shaman Tsuris and his lvl 48 Shadow Priest had no problems with the instance, with me taking a lot of them down by myself. My bombs and target dummies really helped out, distracting and stunning the elites so I could channel some high damage spells on them. When we finally got out into the cavern, I was struck by how much it reminded me of the movie“The Goonies.” The pirate ship in a cave brought back memories of growing up. I used a Goblin Land Mine on the boss fight with Van Cleef, which helped to take him and his friends down quickly.
We had missed the Wilder Thistlenettle quests that involve killing the undead miners outside the instance, so I went back in by myself after the run to do them. No problems doing it, so I also knocked those out with my priest Preyonyou. Prey also went into the instance to try to knock out the Red Silk Bandana quest, and to see how far I could get. I got stopped cold by the first named boss that you encounter. My DOT’s weren’t doing anything to him, and wanding him wasn’t doing much either. Since she wasn’t an engineer, and didn’t have much physical damage, she got killed right there. I rezzed at the spirit healer back at the camp, and turned in those 3 quests to knock them off my quest log.
I honestly think my hunter or warlock could probably solo that instance at level 25-30. Since they’re both engineers, they have extra damage sources, and the target dummies will give them a way to distract the enemies when they get swarmed. Not to mention their pets/demons keep a lot of the damage off of them. Now that I know the instance, I’m going to try it with my different characters to see how far I get. Maybe now I’ll be brave enough to try Gnomeregan/Black Fathom Depths/Shadowfang Keep at a level where the mobs will actually give me XP, and items that I can use.
So with Doomslinger, I can do 3 of the 5 quests, and be able to get the Tunic of Westfall before level 20. The Wilder Thistlenettle quests are only available after level 20.