The Blood Furnace: Cake

The Blood Furnace is the second wing found in Hellfire Citadel. It's labeled as a 61-63 level instance, which places it second on the TBC instance list, right after it's little brother, Hellfire Ramparts.

After I stormed through the Ramparts (minus the last boss), I wondered just how far I could go. So I naturally headed into the Blood Furnace to see what kind of damage I could cause.

I was once again amazed at how effected 5 DPS focused toons (with mail armor and shields) are in 5 man instances. And this time, I was sporting my new Water Shield, which adds a ton of mana regen, even in combat.

I found myself quickly chain pulling the place, and the first boss (The Maker) fell quickly to nothing more than focused DPS. It wasn't until the second boss that I had a problem. Broggok, as it turns out, is a big softy... it's his friends who suck. All sixteen of them.

When you first clear the room before Broggok, you'll find him floating on the other side of a gate, with a huge leaver in the ground in front of it. Hmmm... this seems easy. Pull leaver, let Broggok out, kill Broggok. Nope.

An observant eye will notice four cells around the room, each gated up and holding 4 Fel Orcs who look like they're missing their prom. When you pull that huge leaver in front of Broggok, the gate in front of him stays closed. The gates holding back the orcs however, open. One at a time, but still.

You'll suddenly find yourself scrambling to manage 4 elite mobs. This means repositioning the group, and fast. Something I don't yet pride myself on being able to do. As soon as the last of the four is down, the second cell opens and releases another 4, who come from yet another direction. /ugh

I of course had forgotten about this fight, so I didn't setup a strategy ahead of time. Instead I did what most DPS people do when they panic... NUKE!

While I managed to barely keep my group up, and take down all four teams of orcs, it left me with exactly no mana as the previously mentioned gate, in front of Broggok, opened. Broggok found 5 Shaman, with no mana, and oddly dressed in identical clown gear, standing over the bodies of this 12 favorite buddies.k Not good.

He floated in while I was frantically standing perfectly still, and thinking good thoughts. (I've heard this helps you regen mana faster... not true.) It was this point where I finally admitted to myself that setting up a button to drink water might just pay off.

We got smooshed.

Luckily this 16 buddies didn't respawn. We came back in, dropped twenty, and blew him away. The next time I went in, I managed to focus fire 3 of the 4 orcs in each group, and tank the 4th while my boys regen'd mana. It worked great.

The rest of the instance was even easier. The mobs didn't last long, and the final boss dropped almost immediately.

Blood Furnace was actually alot of fun. I enjoyed figuring out how to take down Broggok. But it was still a bit easy at 63. So what does this mean... can I do Slave Pens already? What about the Underbog? This has real possibilities. I'm getting cool blue loot, and the xp is nothing short of spectacular.

I know I need gold. And instances are not the way to get it. Quests are. But I'm trying to think ahead... If I wait and quest when I'm 70, the gold more than doubles for each quest turn in... and when I'm 70, I'll need 5k just to get BASIC flying mounts... not to mention the 25k for epics. ^.^ So maybe instances are where it's at.

We'll see.


Speaking of mounts... my ground mounts are feeling really slow... We'll have to fix that next.