Holyssa Posted August 6, 2008 Share Posted August 6, 2008 (edited) Monday night, 5 Crushers took a glimpse into the future (Beta). Suddenly, a$$-whupping happened. We decided to take a gander at Utgarde Keep, a good starter instance within Howling Fjord for L70s looking to take a whack at 5-man content & get a taste of the new loot. Utgarde itself brought a sense of deja vu'. It was very similar to it's BC counterpart (The Ramparts), but much longer, somewhat less linear, and packed with hairy, smelly, sweaty Vrykul elites. The layout was far from confusing, however, and the detail put into every last wood etching & lantern glow that adorned the halls was breathtaking...it's like DaVinci had a soulstone the whole time & knew just the right time to use it. We pretty much zerg-rushed anyone that stood in our way...typical when a paladin tank leads the charge, plus a good deal of us were in the 75-ish range. Some encounters did give us a mini wakeup call, such as Ingvar the Plunderer (owwie @ Dark Smash), but the difficulty was just right for a team in T4-T6ish gear. Oh, if you decide to leave the dungeon via the curious tunnel across from the boss, watch it - that last step is a doozey... We were short one hamfist-swinging mage, but we still gathered our energy for something new to do on the other side of the continent: The Nexus. I felt as if I took a step into the Black Omen of Chrono Trigger fame...so many gorgeous glyphs, glows, and designs for what seemed to stretch on through every corner. The overall layout of the dungeon was a nice change from the norm: a massive spiral of hallways, each with it's own theme (humanoids, void beasts, and frozen treants) with an Azure Dragon thrown every few pulls for variety's sakes, plus a seemingly bottomless pit. In the middle was a frozen red dragon, whom we had to set free via climbing the spiral and defeating the Blue Flight's various goons. Blizz really did a good job at making bosses different than the standard tank & spank. We expected to go into a fight dealing with simple caster nonsense, but were caught by surprise. Miss Maube's moniker really holds true with two of said bosses: Stay outta bad ######! Keristrasza posed a bit of a challenge to us a first: this is one of those odd fights where everyone has to constantly move, even the tank. After two tries, we got the hang of things and sent this lizard to a much warmer place than Northrend. Overall, the night was a ton of fun, and we saw many fascinating things, and (beta) Kadi got a generous XP boost. Holy got to try her hand at tanking with all the wacky pally changes, which worked rather nicely once I grew used to my new shield bash & 51-point prot talent. Oh, deathknights are fun companions...Death & Decay makes chain-pulling much more fun, and you can really see the mobs reel from the hurt our black-clad buddies can dish out Other pics (click to view em): Utgarde: The Vrykul push on even when severely overpowered. A quest? For ME? Aww, you shouldn't have! The Ironhelms/spear tossers were the only real nuisance among the trash. Noooo, they cloned Gothik! This Proto-drake hits like a truck, but can be dealt with at the same time as it's master. Why do the Scourge get all the cool female NPCs? Nexus: Mana Surges Gone Wild, the sequel to Voidwalkers Gone Wild! Must be 70 or over to view. Silly human - there's no mage in this group! The Grand Magus will teach you the meaning of motion sickness. Kalea was one happy Beta mom that night. Shammy loot galore! Oh--oh--crap, he spotted me. Edited August 6, 2008 by Holyssa Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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