Pages

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Not so random heroic: The Nexus

Winter Veil has started and one of the items required to complete the meta-achievement, namely the Red Winter Hat, drops from a holiday-only boss in The Nexus, called Grand Magus Telestra. This boss has an interesting mechanic whereupon she grabs a member and whirls them around in the air while dealing some continuous but low damage. She also creates clones of herself that you have to defeat. I don't know if I'm explaining this right but if you're interested, read more under the Wowhead link.

My group was competent and we finished the whole dungeon quickly. Unfortunately I didn't win the hat, another did. For that reason I queued again for another Nexus, this time on normal. I waited almost 15 minutes before the dungeon tool found a group and these guys were all 70-71. I felt out of place in that group but surprisingly they were very good and we finished the whole dungeon in about 40 minutes without a hitch. This was by far the coolest and friendliest PUG since patch 3.3.

To cut a long story short, I won the hat this time but I suspect the other guys had no idea what the hat did, though I told them I would Need on it.

Here are the achievements I got in the heroic version. I also made my first 25 Emblems of Triumph.

25 Dungeon and Raid Emblems
The Nexus
Heroic: The Nexus

11 comments:

Gyldenfeax said...

I wondered where you get the hat from. It's a pity it doesn't drop for everyone but it beats trying for the squashling.

Shannara said...

We chain ran Nexus, takes about 5 minutes maximum if you run straight to the boss and dps everything down.

I healed through several pugs on nexus just for hats for 1/2 the guild.

Congrats on the hat. Now try for the green hat :)

Shaakka said...

I also ran a PUG for heroic nexus to get that hat, but didn't win it. So afterwards I went there alone in normal mode. Not hard to solo at all, but enough of a challenge (for me, at least) to be fun. The hat has a drop rate of 100%, so for classes that can solo Telestra, the best bet is going solo. I am a survival hunter with a turtle, BTW ;)

Additional tip: the clones of Telestra can be cc'd.

Dave Cushley said...

A holiday only boss?

Is that some kind of joke? I don't know why youd asume she was holiday only since you've never been there, but she's not

Bowcephus said...

To elaborate on Mr. Cushley's comment (or rather to rephrase it a bit more politely):

While it is understandable (since it was your first time in there) that you would think that Grand Magus Telestra is a boss that only spawns during the Winter Veil holiday (like Coren Direbrew, Omen, Headless Horseman et al.), in fact she is always in the Nexus. The loot she drops during Winter Veil is holiday-specific, but she is a permanent fixture of the instance.

Keep up the great work, the blog is excellent (oh and keep plugging away, I bought my 2nd piece of Tier 9 last night)!

Narillan said...

The hats drop off of certain bosses that are there full time. It's just that they have an extra drop during the Winterveil holiday.

Darth Solo said...

@Gyldenfeax I think it drops in other places as well (not sure about this) because I've seen low level characters wearing it.

@Shannara I did it using the dungeon tool, you probably had your own guild/friends. I stuck through to the end of the dungeon because the other groupies were't there for the hat. At any rate, the heroic dungeon was my first time.

@Shaakka I didn't think about solo-ing her. It might have worked since I'm pretty well geared.

@Dave Cushley take it easy, I assumed she was holiday only from something I read in the Wowhead comments. Maybe I wasn't paying attention but that's the impression I got. Besides, she's wearing the damn hat, isn't she? I'm assuming that's only for the holidays.

@Bowcephus ty ty! Now I know better!

@Narillan interesting, I thought the hat only dropped during the holiday. That's what happens when I'm in a hurry. Usually I'm very thorough when I read up on these strategies.

Shadowcraft said...

What Narillan means is that the hat drops off bosses that are always there, but it only drops during Winterveil.

Also, I haven't looked so maybe this is a change, but last year I had just started playing the game and I got the hat from a random drop in Deadmines. I think if you look at the loot table for deadmines, and pretty much any instance with a humanoid, on WoWhead you will see the hats in there.

Again, this might be different this year but low levels with the hat would be explained by the fact that it dropped in lower dungeons in previous years.

Darth Solo said...

@Shadowcraft thanks for clearing this up. I'm too lazy to look up that damn hat on Wowhead but if I had, I might have been able to get it easier from Deadmines.

Shaakka said...

In fact, the hat is a world drop during winter veil. The three high-level bosses (Telestra, Jedoga in Ahn'kahet and one from Oculus) simply have a 100% chance of dropping it. After all, they are wearing it! (and that's probably why Darth Solo thought Telestra was a holiday boss).

By the way, Telestra and Jedoga drop red hats, and the one from Oculus drops the green hat. It doesn't matter for the achievement, though (you can do it with any color combination).

Darth Solo said...

@Shaakka got it! I wonder how good the world drop rate is...