I have been leveling up quietly fast at a pace of a level per day … yea, don’t need to remind me … got no life. At level 66, I ventured into Ulduar, the Halls of Stone dungeon-wing. Group composition: A Druid tank, a shadow priest, retribution paladin, holy paladin (myself) and a Warlock. At the Hall of Stones you will find Iron Dwarves and their air elemental pets, Runed Stone Golems, Runed Stone Giants, and Crystalline Shardlings. The dungeon run may take about an hour or less. The dungeon is well distributed in shape of a cross. You simply run back to the center to choose either side of the cross for the next boss. In our case, we started fighting the Maiden of Grief.
She is like Maiden of Virtue in Karazhan, except she opens voids on the ground like the first boss of Arcatraz. There is no Holy Fire. Every 30 seconds her hands will glow purple and affect all party members with shadow damage. She seems to do the same to a single target randomly. The tank was stunned every 25 seconds, which means everyone should spread out as she will go loose on other players until the tank gets back to the action. The tank would charge her right away to get aggro back.
After approximately 50% health or less, she will start stunning all party members. The stun lasts 10 seconds. She will repeat this type of stun every 25 seconds afterwards until she dies. The fight lasted under three minutes.
In this video you will see the built-in Threat Meter in action which pops number percents of the amount of threat you generate toward each mob. Blizzard introduced this new feature in beta patch build 8719.
Note: I need to clarify a few things you will find in the video. The flat teal walls you will see between each room by the doorways are a graphical video card bug. I have a Nvida GeForce 6800GT. It may be fixed in upcoming builds. The human statues that resemble those in Scarlet Monastery are most likely placeholders until the new statues are added. The camera usually shakes oddly when you zoom in to close up. It is a common bug in closed beta.
The second boss we faced was named Krystallus, which strangely resembles the Shadowmoon Valley Giants in Outland. This was a simple tank and spank boss, except sometimes he would go after the person with highest aggro. Nothing special about the boss. Just burn him down. He died in 1:20.
After killing Krystallus, we went to the Tribunal Chest run. It is not a boss event, but after killing many waves of Runed Iron Dwarves, and Runed Stone Golems you get to open a chest that spawns on the center of the Tribunal chamber. To initiate the event you must talk to Prospector Brann Bronzebeard. He is in Ulduar to explore and find out the origin of the Dwarves race. He thinks in this Tribunal chamber he will find the answer. Well, I don’t know if he got his answer, but we got a nasty firework show of laser beams. We never thought we would get invited to a BBQ. Except, we were the meat on the grill. You will know what I mean. It’s helpful (if you got a paladin player) to enable Concentration Aura. The laser beams start shooting random players at barely any damage. However, as the wave-phases intensify, a single player will get toasted by all the laser beams focusing exclusively on that person. And it is quiet a show to enjoy, or to hate.
The final boss in Ulduar, Halls of Stone is named Sjonnir the Ironshaper. It seems Humans in World of Warcraft mythology do have Titan ancestry of some extent. The Vykrul look like Human vikings. From the Howling Fjord quests we find out they had recently been awakened by the Cult of the Damned from Gjalerbron fortress. What we didn’t know is how they looked like before their eons awakening. Sjonnir the Ironshaper fills in the gap. He looks like a runed stone Vykrul. Warcraft lore scholars have theorized the Azotha race had descended from the Vykrul and migrated south to Arathi Highlands. Enough of speculation until some quests shed some light. The battle against Sjonnir the Ironshaper lasts barely 1:15. He is another tank and spank boss, except he likes his dinner well cooked … electric shock galore.
