Primordial Saronite is the item that’s required for the next level of crafting gear out of Icecrown. There’s all sorts of methods of picking up this stuff and our leadership’s been hard at work figuring out what our approach should be. There’s a few things that are high on the priority list.
Shadowmourne, for one, requires over 20 of these. While going for another Legendary isn’t required, it makes a statement about the guild (not one but TWO Legendaries after all).
Our tanks can get an early boost to their gear and not have to rely on random drops from the different bosses. The better those guys get, the easier time we’ll have moving forward.
As we’re packing a number of sharpshooters in the raid (4 hunters), they’re also going to need some heavy artillery. The recipes for bullets and arrows will cost one Primordial Saronite to learn.
There’s lots of different ways we can go about spending Primordial Saronite to maximize raider utility.
Our approach
In a recent thread on the WoW forums, Ghostcrawler was clarifying a question regarding Shadowmourne. At the same time, he wanted to know this:
We’re also interested to see how various groups handle the Primordial Saronite issue. We designed it so there isn’t necessarily a right way to handle the material and we don’t want to over-prescribe your social dynamics anyway.
I found out over the weekend that Blizzard devs do read this blog. Wyn and Lodur kept bugging me and insisting that they did, but I remained a disbeliever until one of their guys pinged me on Twitter about it. That was too cool!
So here’s our answer:
Prioritizing Saronite to the tanks – Our tanks will get first crack at the Primordial Saronite that they need. The better their gear gets earlier on, the easier time we’ll have heading into Icecrown. I think they’re shooting for the boots first, but I can’t be sure of that yet. I’ve created a queue list on the forums where the tanks put down what they need (not necessarily what they want). I’m not sure how the legs are. If they beat the tier legs, then I’ll devote more Saronite to it. Until then, the queue list is just for the tanks and once they have all that is requied, the list will be opened up to the rest of the guild.
Ammo recipes – This is another one for us but it won’t happen until later on. Not only do you need the Saronite, the engineers need the reputation to purchase the recipe. It’s Goblin and Gnomish right? One crafts bullets and the other does arrows? Once our engineers have the requisite reputation, we’ll send one their way as well.
Shadowmourne – The Shadowmourne quest line is fairly extensive. The last step involves taking down Sindragosa which isn’t going to be anytime soon. Not only that, you have to perform a variety of tasks at different bosses (like standing in fires while surviving for a prolonged period of time). This step can wait a little longer before we invest.
On the other hand, there is some speculation that you need to be on the opening quests before you get the Shadowfrost Shards from the bosses. We don’t know how often the drops are and there is no confirmation.
Getting saronite
To that end, we’ve decided to increase the chances we have of obtaining Saronite. Sundays have been opened up for a new alt raid. We’ve been doing this for a while now, but we’ve decided to lay down some ground rules for it.
Why an alt raid?
For one, there’s many players with nothing to do on Sunday nights. We could either jump on our alts and join a pug with a 50-50 shot of succeeding, or organize our own with a higher chance of it working out. We like having multiple geared characters!
Our alts are almost as geared as our mains and it gives us a nice “break” from our normal duties that we have to do on our main characters. It’s nice for me to randomly destroy stuff on my Ret Paladin or my Elemental Shaman.
As I said earlier, extra Primordial Saronite is a plus. We can channel the results of those into the main raid. Not only that, since they’re alts, the players that are comfortable with it can spend their Emblems of Frost that they have to purchase Saronite for their mains if they need to.
Our main raids are overstaffed. We do this in order to ensure that we have enough players to raid. This inevitably means that some players are going to sit out during the week. I don’t want them to fall too far behind us in gear. So any main raiders that don’t get to come in during the week are able to come in on Sunday in order to use up their lockout period. At the very least, they’ll get some Emblems.
We’re still working out loot systems for the time being. Last Sunday, when we walked into ToC 25, we had 23 alts in total. The other 2 were friends of the guild. The one thing that we’re lackingis another tank for our alt runs. If we can field a full crew for 25, then I can definitely apply loot council rules and prioritize main readers who need loot and balance it with the alts.
If you’re a tank out there with nothing to do on a Sunday night, come and check us out. Of course, anyone who feels that they are exceptional healers and DPS are welcome to apply regardless.
Let’s take down Arthas and move on to Deathwing already!
Back in the Vanilla we received not one, not two, but three items of legendary status. Crafting these items was arduous and rewarding to complete. They were very lore centric and having one was a big deal Lets look at the first three Legendary items.
Sulfuras, Hand of Ragnaros
The baby legendary of the initial bunch, this was crafted by combining a Sulfuron Hammer with the Eye of Ragnaros. The part list for the initial hammer was pretty steep I mean take a look at it here.
The Ingot’s only dropped from Golemagg in molten core and 50 arcanite bars was one hell of a tall order. But when you finally got the hammer made and then finally got Ragnaros to drop his eye, you had at the time THE best two hand dps weapon in the game and an item tied to the elemental lords of Azeroth’s birth, and it looked cool too!
Thunderfury, Blessed Blade of the Windseeker
The big brother to Sulfuras, Thunderfury was yet another item of the Elemental Lords that players could quest and construct. Ragnaros along with his two liuetenants had defeated Thunderaan, Prince of Air and being unable to destroy him completely, bound what was left of his essence into a talisman of elemental binding. A follower of Thunderaan unable to restore his master was instead able to craft a weapon to channel his lords fury and vengeance. To construct it you had to have both binding pieces that were drops from Molten Core bosses Baron Geddon and Garr, and had to gather the components necessary to craft the sword, not least of which required the following
10x [Elementium Bar]
In order to craft an elementium bar you needed to gather 1 [Elementium Ore] (from Blackwing Lair), 1 [Fiery Core], 10 [Arcanite Bar], and 3 [Elemental Flux].
When you finally got the pieces together you had to talk to Demitrian who summons the remaining essence of lord Thunderaan. An outdoor RAID boss fight in silithus later and you get your sword. This item was the best tanking weapon even up through The Burning Crusade. It’s proc alone making it invaluable to raids. Having one was truly amazing, difficult to get and offered a large benefit to any raid group that had one. If you had one you were pretty well set.
Atiesh, Greatstaff of the Guardian
If you’re looking for a lore weapon steeped in Azerothian history this staff delivers and in spades. When Naxxramas was released we got a chance to begin building the staff of the Guardian’s of Tristfall and ultimately Medivh himself. The staff was protected by the Kirin Tor after Medivh was assasinated and then was destroyed when Archimonde blew up Dalaran. The staff was shattered into Forty Two (42) pieces that were scattered to the far corners of Azeroth. Brann Bronzebeard himself held the base piece until he lost it to C’thun in AQ40. Kel’thuzad wanted the powerful focus for himself and when Naxx came to Azeroth the scourge began gathering pieces, eventually obtaining the head piece and the 40 shards of the shaft itself. Players could gather the shards for the frame from bosses in Naxx and the Head from Kel’thuzad himself. The base could be obtained by defeating C’thun in AQ. When all the pieces were assembled you could obtain one of four flavors of the staff. Priest, Druid, Lock and Mage were all able to wield a version of it with stats custom tailored for the PC. The staff also gave players the ability to teleport their entire group to Karazhan, the home of medivh himself.
Having one of these was truly epic and not many people managed to compelte it. It is a very lore centric item to the world of warcraft and if you had one, truly it was awe inspiring.
From here lets take a quick jaunt to The Burning Crusade. In BC endgame, technically three legendary items were introduced outside of the Kael’thas encounter. I wont spend too much time here because honestly while they are legendary quality, I felt truly let down by the items themselves.
The Twin Blades of Azzinoth
These items are the weapons of Illidan himself. Illidan obtained these weapons by slaying the doomguard commander Azzinoth nearly 10,000 years prior. They became the symbol of his office so to speak and all demon hunters since have wielded dual glaives such as these. These items were drops from Illidan himself, there was no quest to obtain them. While getting them was still an amazing task after having to defeat all of Black Temple and it’s challenges to even have a chance to obtain them, it didn’t quite have the feel of obtaining any of the previous three. I know someone who had obtained a Thunderfury after much hard work and then had received a set of blades and he said that it just didn’t feel like it had the same weight. While they are very lore centric, and they are wickedly cool. I think there should have been a bit more questing to get them. But that’s just one shaman’s opinion.
Thori’dal, the Stars’ Fury
Every hunter I know wanted this item. It was THE best dps bow in the game, and until recently held that same title. It drops from Kil’jaden in Sunwell Plateau and it generates it’s own magical arrows. Before the removal of the need for quivers and ammo pouches this was HUGE. Research doesn’t show a tie to any lore specific character for this item and honestly there’s not a lot of info on it other then it’s awesome stats. It is speculated that it is a manifestation of the sunwell’s power because of it’s ability to create magical burning arrows, but blizzard has never released any official lore about the item itself.
From there we move on to the absolute return of the TRULY legendary items. In Wrath of The Lich King these items are lore centric and as we can see the reward for the time put into obtaining them is there.
First up my personal favorite (for obvious reasons)
Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings
This item is obtained by defeating bosses in the instance of Ulduar 25. You obtain 30 [Fragment of Val’anyr], and then fuse them together into the shattered fragments. The quest leads you to a computer console of the titans that explains the history of the mace and how to reforge it. Let me share with you the history of this item. Created by the Titans themselves, Val’anyr was given to the first Earthen king, Urel Stoneheart. With it, he was to create and give life to the rest of his brethren. Urel Stoneheart used Val’anyr during the first war between the Earthen and the Iron Dwarves. The weapon was shattered and its remnants were believed lost in the conflict.
So here you have an item gifted by the titans, the shapers of all life on Azeroth even the Dragon Flights themselves, given to the First Earthen king, and well honestly the first earthen. They GAVE him the power to create life. This item is an old item of power and is tied intricately with the creation of the Dwarves. Having one means you’ve collected the fragments, defeated Yogg on hard mode and have put the time into getting the item. It just feel awesome to hold something with such heavy lore weight and think “wow, this item created an entire race. And here I’ve only unlocked a small portion of it!” Having one truly you can feel the reward for the work put in and it feels truly legendary.
Shadowmourne
This is probably the most talked about and watched legendary to date. Everyone and their mother is talking about it and it’s uses. This item is also steeped in insane amounts of lore. well… let me just get right too it
Shadowmourne… A great two-handed axe fit for a giant, born of sacred and corrupt powers, host of a thousand dead souls and able to be wielded only by the most stalwart armsmasters of Azeroth. Its creation seems nearly impossible; and yet, the rumors do not cease.
Darion Mograine believes that only the hammer of Arthas himself will provide a worthy model – but such absurd ambition is just the beginning of Shadowmourne’s creation. To contain the energies that dance across its cold edges, Shadowmourne would be hewn from piles of impure Saronite: the hardened blood of the Old God, Yogg-Saron. To fuel its power to kill, it should be drenched in the souls of the most potent servants of the Scourge as they are slain, one by one, with the unfinished blade. To help break through the Lich King’s armor, it is to be adorned with fragments of the Frozen Throne, originally crafted by Kil’Jaeden out of ice from the Twisting Nether
Only with these mighty components, it is said, can Shadowmourne be finished. And, yet, even if the axe could be completed, questions and fears remain. Is forging the souls of the deceased into a weapon treated with blood and the essence of the Twisting Nether truly any different from the crafting of the Scourge’s runeblades? And who will be bold enough to try to wield such a weapon? Might Shadowmourne bring the same doom and misery to the living as its sister blade did?
Um… yes pls. so far in order to obtain the item of such legendary proportions there is a long quest line in place. the quests, as far as is known is as such.
This ranges from obtaining Artha’s mace, to killing specific NPC’s and bathing the blade in their blood up to defeating the Lich King himself. It is an outstanding amount of work to obtain and from what we can see, it’s well worth it. Obtaining one of these will be hard work, but in the end the return for the time invested will be amazing. And just fitting with the epicness of the weapons we received a plethora of sound files with the new voice of Arthas. Does this mean that Arthas’ soul will be the final one to occupy the blade? It is at this time unknown, but I for one look forward to finding out. In case you missed it here’s a short video of the weapon.
BC didn’t feel like obtaining the legendary items was very significant in the world, no where near as much as Vanilla WoW’s items did. In Wrath though it feels like obtaining the items has weight in the story, and truly feels awesome to hold. Now there are non legendary quality items that have this feel to them, that truly feel epic and story impacting, but that my friends is a post for another time.
What do you think of the legendary items? Do you think the way they are obtained now is good or bad? Do you like the lore of the items?
Until next time
Article main image courtesy of Lucasfilm Ltd. Images throughout courtesy of wowhead, mmo-champion and wow.com
