It’s a fact: the first thing most people will do once they get their hands on the expansion is create a Death Knight. We’ve all seen the screen shots, that huge Gothic-looking armor, all those new skills to try out and new areas to see. And everyone’s got questions: What will it be like starting at level 55, will Death Knights be over-powered, will there be 200 Death Knights in the starting area, will I have to fight over quest mobs with the opposing faction? With all this in mind, I checked out World of Warcraft’s very first Hero Class for myself.
Spoiler Alert! The following article is a complete and comprehensive description of the entire Death Knight “prequel”. If you want to leave yourself any surprises for the actual release, you’d be advised to skim the article, if not give it a miss completely!…
When the Death Knight creation page came up, I noticed one thing immediately - the Death Knight didn’t look like he did on the Alpha. Gone is the hulking spiked armor I’d seen at Blizzard back in May and at the WWI a month ago, and in its place are dark robes and a cowl covering the face. Determined not to be disappointed about something so trivial (!), I logged in.
Phase One
The starting introduction, like the ones we all get when we start new characters, explained that you gave your life to protect your people against the scourge, but you were killed and taken by the Lich King to serve him for eternity. When the short fly-over is done, you find your newly-created character on the highest level of the huge floating necropolis known as Acherus: The Ebon Hold, which is now hovering over the hills behind Light’s Hope Chapel. The first thing you see as a Death Knight is The Lich King, flanked by two ghostly Val’kyr Battle-Maidens. He informs you that as part of the scourge, you will wipe out the Scarlet Crusade and destroy the Argent Dawn at Light’s Hope Chapel. You must begin training immediately, so you are instructed to take a teleporter down to the 2nd floor of Acherus, and find Instructor Razuvious.
Blizzard have handled the Death Knight levelling area in a unique way; they have instanced sections of the progress through the campaign, so all the Death Knights on a particular phase are on the same level of progress. In this phase, everyone you see will have also just created their characters, and will be going through the same quests as you. However, Blizzard have clearly taken care to avoid the situation that arose in Hellfire Peninsula, where dozens of us had quests to kill the same mobs or named NPCs, creating queues of players waiting for their chance to collect their quest item. Horde and Alliance are also on seperate instance servers, on the beta anyway, so there is no trouble with PvP, although Archerus is a sanctuary zone like Shattrath anyway.
One nice touch about the Death Knight prequel is the buff that stays on you for the duration of the training before you hit the regular servers:
“Undying Resolve - Watched over and protected by the Lich King. Can only occur once every ten minutes.”
This means that if you die, you will be resurrected by one of the Lich King’s Val’kyr Battle-Maidens. As long as you don’t die again within 10 mins, you will be ressed on the spot, which is very handy when you’re starting out with a character.
Getting Your First Runeblade
Despite the appearance of your armor on the character selection screen, it is indeed all plate. The set you begin with is all green quality, including 2 rings and a necklace. All your weapon skills are 270/300 and so is your First Aid. You have no weapon yet, but Instructor Razuvious sets out to remedy that straight away. You are instructed to go and pick up a battle-worn sword from a nearby weapon rack, then take it to a runeforge. Using the blade there will transform it into a runebladed sword. Take this back to Instructor Razuvious, and he rewards you with your first weapon, a blue quality 2 handed sword, the Runed Soulblade. Razuvious also teaches you the art of runeforging when you hand this quest in, so take your new weapon straight back to the runeforge and chose a Rune “enchantment” to apply to it. You don’t need any reagents at this point, but that might change in the future. When handing this in, you are told to fight an NPC in the center of the room. This gives you a chance to try combat for the first time.
You have no talent points to spend yet, but that is about to change. As you complete certain quests in the Death Knight prequel, you are awarded talent points along with armor, weapons and experience.
The next quests you get allow you to see more of Archerus. Use the stairs and find Master Siegesmith Corvus, to obtain his Status Report. He is located on the North West side of the upper level. He sends to you Scourge Commander Thalanor, who is on the South East side. Once that’s been handed in, Thalanor orders you to go and speak to the Lich King again, at the top of Archerus. Get there by using one of the yellow transporters, located in each of the stairwells.
Keep An Eye Out!
On arrival at the top of Archerus, speak to the Lich King. He grants you the power to use the Eye of Archerus, which you must guide around the Scarlet Crusade’s town beneath the floating necropolis, to spy on four main places of interest; the Scarlet Hold, the Forge, Town Hall and the Chapel. Click the glowing portal near the Lich King, and you find yourself seeing the world from the eye’s point of view. You are taken down to the town below, and given control of the floating Eye of Archerus.
The places you need to gather information on are marked with the same hovering red arrow that the Hunter’s Mark uses. When you approach one of these arrows, the Scarlet Crusade gathered nearby begin ranged attack on you. You have four options when using the Eye:
The eye doesn’t have much health, so don’t hang around. Fly in above the building you need to analyse, summon ghouls, analyse quickly and be on your way, making sure to pause in between buildings to regenerate any lost HP if necessary. As soon as you’ve gathered data on all four buildings, use the recall option and you find yourself back on top on Acherus. Hand in the quest with the Lich King, nearby. He then gives you a quest to report to Darion Mograine. Reach him by using the central (purple) teleporter on the second level (the Runeforge room).
You arrive at the bottom level of Acherus, and behind you, overlooking the town below, is Darion Mograine and Baron Rivendare. When you hand in the quest with Mograine, you gain the buff “Dominion Over Acherus: While in Acherus the Death Knight is able to move 75% faster.”. This applies to every Death Knight when they are inside the Acherus, and is very useful because you may not use your mount inside the building.
Once you have completed this quest, you are permitted to use the lower central teleporter to continue the quest line, and go to speak with Prince Valanar at Death’s Breach, the Scourge’s base on land directly below the necropolis.
Note: Going through this teleporter moves you on to stage two of the Death Knight prequel, and once done, you can not go back to an earlier stage. However, the game will not permit you to go through the teleporter until you have completed all you need to do in that area, so don’t worry, you can’t miss anything important. If you have friends you wish to level alongside, you might want to wait until you are all at the same stage, because you will not be able to meet up otherwise.
Phase Two
Down at Death’s Breach, you are met with the sight of a battle staging area. Hand in your quest with the vampiric Prince Valanar and accept the next quest “If Chaos Drives, Let Suffering Hold the Reins”. For this quest, you must kill 10 Scarlet Crusaders and 10 Citizens of Havenshire. There are three other quests to collect here too:
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