THE FINAL TASK

Neriad: We meet again, Frostwhisper, and this time I am the lich!

Ras Frostwhisper: You are?

Neriad:  Not really.  It just seemed like the thing to say.

Ras Frostwhisper: Oh, well, you can't win, Neriad.  If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.

Neriad:  Oh, yeah?  Well, I have THIS!

Neriad:  Um, give me a few seconds will you?  It's this whole channeling thing.  I'm sure you understand.  These soulbound keepsakes are so complicated.

Ras Frostwhisper:  NO!  THIS CANNOT BE!

And in a straight-forward almost anticlimactic battle, Ras Frostwhisper was vanquished.

So, what'd we get?  The quest reward is the Crest of Caer Darrow plus the choice of either the Crown of Caer Darrow, the Darrowspike, or the Cerulean Blade of Caer Darrow.  As you can see above, these are some very nice items, and I particularly drooled over the prospect of wearing the Crown of Caer Darrow.  However, there were two problems.

First, as you can see, the level requirements on all of those items are level 70 and are therefore impossible for any player to wear.  An item can have a level 70 requirement for one of two reasons.  First, it can mean that it's a proposed quest reward item that hasn't yet gone through the vetting process to make sure that it is in balance with other items in the game.  Second, it can also means that the Blizzard quest and item design team are sadists who like to taunt beta testers with powerful items they can't wear and then beat the items with a nerf stick when the next patch comes out.

But even before we got to the point of trying to turn in the quest, we ran into another problem.  We are supposed to pick up Ras Frostwhisper's head and deliver it to Magistrate Marduke to complete the quest.  But you see, Ras Frostwhisper dropped nothing... at all.  I understand that what happens is that if you turn Frostwhisper into his human form, his shifts over to a different drop table when he dies.  That makes sense, since he is supposed to drop his head when he dies in human form.  Unfortunately, the new drop table is empty.  As I've told myself hundreds of times since I first started playing WoW, "Welcome to beta!"

I hope you all enjoyed these Schooling Scholomance journals.  I've appreciated all of the encouragement and great feedback I've received along the way.  Look for more Adventures of Neriad soon.