Thursday, March 18, 2010

Culling of Stratholme (Heroic Dungeon)

I have been doing a lot of Random Heroic Dungeons on Brieanna lately. I have gotten a couple nice pieces of gear from drops and some more gear with the Emblems of Triumph I get doing the random heroics along with the ones you get for each boss you kill in a heroic dungeon. You get 2 Emblem of Frost and 26g46s for the first random heroic dungeon you do each day, then you get 2 Emblem of Triumph and 13g23s for each one after that. You also get 2 Emblem of Triumph and 19g86s for the first random normal dungeon you do each day but after that you only get a gold reward for doing more random normal dungeons.

I started off picking the normal dungeons I would do from the list then queuing in the dungeon group finder, for that specific dungeon, to find the rest of my group. That find group function selects people that also want to do that dungeon from your realm and other realms. So the majority, if not all, of the groups you are in are with people you have never met before. Usually it is a good experience, sometimes it is not. There are people that quit if they don't like the way things are going. People who will only go as far as a certain boss because they are only interested in what they drop, then just leave group after that. That creates a problem as it leaves you short a person. You have to re-queue in the dungeon group finder to replace them. Sometimes, if you are on last boss, you can just go ahead without them if the rest of the group is good.

Anyway enough about that. One of the random heroic dungeons I did was Culling of Stratholme. I found this one to be very interesting as it brings you to Stratholme when it was in it's prime. The Stratholme I was used to was the one we used to do back before Burning Crusades came out. That place is a mess. In Culling of Stratholme you see how it was and learn why it is like it is now. I was leery of doing this one at first because I thought it was going to be the Strathlome I knew. Once I did it, it turned out to be one of, what I think is, the more interesting dungeons.

Culling of Stratholme is a 5 person, level 80 dungeon centered around helping Prince Arthas Menethil purge the city of Stratholme from the grain infected populace. At the end of the dungeon the players fight and defeat the Dreadlord Mal'Ganis.

There are other mobs you fight along the way, one of which is the Infinite Corruptor (Heroic only). The Infinite Corrputor drops the Reins of the Bronze Drake if you complete the timed part of this dungeon before the time is up. It is a static drop, meaning he drops it every time. I got this drop on my first run through. Everyone else in my group already had it and passed. I was pretty happy to get it, it is my first Drake mount. I have run this a few times now and it never gets old. It is a very simple and easy dungeon to run on heroic.