World of Warcraft Wednesday: The Deadmines
Lore:
After Stormwind was rebuilt, the nobles came back to town, said, “Hey, thanks guys!” and kicked the workers the hell out of town. Understandably, the craftsmen were pretty pissed off that they didn’t get any paid, so they all banded together and formed a union to fight this mistreatment legally.
Haha, just kidding. This is a fantasy epic! They all banded together and became theives and started beating the crap out of people. Edwin Van Cleef is the nominal leader of the Defias, and he’s holed up in Westfall, where he’s building a fortress in an abandoned mine and making a giant boat.
Why? Maybe so he can sing about being on a boat. Nobody really knows.
Degree of Difficulty: Easy
Honestly, this is “Instances 101: Intro to Your Party Role.” It does a way better job of preparing you for the rest of the game than Ragefire Chasm, and goes very quickly, which makes it an amazingly popular instance. Basically everybody in the Alliance has run this at least once.
The only level of added difficulty is the annoying respawning patrols in the first half of the instance, which can sneak up behind your group if you stand still too long. It’s kind of a dumb mechanic, and artificially extends the instance to the point of annoyance.
Bosses:
Rhahk’Zor: Just an ogre with a little more health than a normal elite and a brief stun.
Sneed: A two part fight. The first, a Shredder which has a fear, but is pretty easy. Then the goblin, himself, which can suprise you a bit if you’re not ready for it. He’s got a disarm, but other than that it’s not difficult.
Gilnid: He’s got a fire cast, but it’s nothing too difficult, even at earlier levels. The hardest thing is wending your way through the thousand mobs and their explosives and pets around him.
Mr. Smite: Baby’s First Boss Fight. While the other bosses are pretty much regular mobs with more health, Smite is an actual fight. He hits hard, has a couple different stunned (including scripted ones when the fight dynamics change) and is a great teaching tool for the bigger scripted boss fights later on in the game.
Captain Greenskin: A goblin, who again, isn’t much more than a normal mob who drops nicer loot. He does have cleave, I guess.
Edwin VanCleef: The main boss of the instance, but actually nothing special. He summons a few adds into the fight, which is good practice for fighting bosses with adds, but not difficult.
Special Features:
There’s an extra boss “Cookie” the ship’s murloc cook, on the ship after Van Cleef, and he drops a vanity pet. You have to kind of go out of your way to engage him, but he’s nothing special. Just an ammusing little side note.
Recommended for Levels: 16-22
The perfect starter instance, and one everybody should run at least once. They’re updating it to a level 80 instance some time in the near future, so it will be fun to see how things have changed since you did it a long time ago. But for your first time playing, especially for an Alliance character, you pretty much have to do this.