SwagVault MMO Blog

The Complete Death Knight Starting Guide

November 14, 2008 – 4:42 am
Posted by: Arius

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:

• Syphon of Acherus: Gathers tactical information on the nearby Scarlet structure
• Summon Ghouls on the Scarlet Crusade: Calls on ghouls to attack the scarlet crusade aggressors, giving you time to get the Eye to safety.
• Shroud: Shrouds the Eye from sight. Combat and actions break the shroud.
• Recall Eye of Acherus: Returns the eye to Acherus.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: 

  • Salanar the Horseman gives the you “Grand Theft Palamino” – rewards a mount.
  • Olrun the Battlecaller gives you “Death’s Challenge” – rewards blue quality PvP Trinket.
  • Orithos the Sky Darkener gives you “Tonight We Dine in Havenshire” – Rewards blue quality cloak.

Down To Business

You can do all of the quests accept “Death’s Challenge” directly south of Death’s Breach, in the village of Havenshire. Death’s Challenge requires you to win 5 duels against fellow Death Knights. If you’re shy, or if there are no other Death Knights around, you can challenge NPC Death Knight Initiates. This is a great way to get to know your combat skills before you have to launch yourself into battle in the village below. Complete the quest, then hand in and collect your Trinket, first bit of cash and and your first Talent Point! Buy a stack of decent food from repairman Hargus the Gimp, this should last you until the end of the training. Then head down the slope to Havenshire.

Taking out the Scarlet Peasants for “If Chaos Drives, Let Suffering Hold the Reins” is easy, but the Crusaders are slightly more tricky to deal with. The Citizens for this quest are found further south, towards New Avalon and around the Pumpkin field. The arrows for the quest “Tonight We Dine in Havenshire” are also clearly visible here, glittering in and around the pumpkin field, Havenshire Farms.

Attacking peasants and citizens will sometimes make them cower and beg for their lives. When this happens, the Lich King whispers to you, ordering you to finish them off, showing that he is always present in your mind.

You will notice a quest marker next to a house in the area with the Scarlet Crusade soldiers, it’s actually a scroll on top of a mailbox. Taking the quest prompts you to check the mailbox, and inside you find a letter addressed to a member of the Scarlet Crusade, explaining how they witnessed Naxxramas leave the Eastern Plaguelands.

Once you’ve collected all the arrows, killed enough Scarlet Crusade and Citizens of Havenshire, head North East to the Havenshire Stables. You can take any horse there, just mouse-over one and you will see the symbol to hop on. Grab one and make your way back to Death’s Breach.

Note: Be careful to avoid the Elite Stable Master Kitrik, you’re no match for him yet.

Ride up to Salanar the Horseman and click the “Deliver” icon on your toolbar, then hand in the quest.

 

 

Salanar informs you the horse has been taken to the Realm of Shadows. You must retrieve your mount from the Dark Rider of Acherus, so accept the quest and you are taken to the land of shadows. Head south to the fields you were just in and find a Dark Rider of Acherus. Defeat him, them get on the horse and ride back to Death’s Breach. Click the Horseman’s Call icon. Salanar appears and returns you to the land of the living. Locate him again, hand in the quest and accept your Deathcharger and the “Sigil of the Drak Rider” Relic.

Hand in “If Chaos Drives, Let Suffering Hold the Reins” for a blue quality ring and “Tonight We Dine in Havenshire” for your choice of 3 blue quality cloaks, one with Nature resist, one with Frost resist and one with Shadow resist.
The Mines

Those quests will have rewarded you with a few talent points to spend; don’t forget to use them. Now is also a good time to sell any clutter and/or old gear from your bags, and repair if necessary. Then head back to Prince Valenar nearby, who will have a new quest for you. He sends you over to Gothik the Harvester, who gives you the quest “The Gift That Keeps on Giving”, which takes place in the Havenshire Mines. You are equipped with a “Gift of the Harvester”, a portable plague spreader, and you must infect enough miners to successfully convert five of them into ghouls. To get to the mine, go north west from Gothik, down the ramp and straight to the mine entrance.

 

 

 

Select the gift of the harvester and click an area around a miner. When the plague takes him, he will either transform into a ghoul or a ghost. A ghoul will become your minion and fight for you, a ghost attacks you. Continue this process until you have 5 ghouls, then head back to Gothik. When you reach him, the quest will complete and you can hand it in. You are rewarded with a blue trinket, and another talent point. Gothik sends you back to Valenar.

Valenar gives you a quest to hide in a mine cart. The cart is located beside an out house, just past the entrance to the mine. Click on it and you disappear inside.

 

 

A scarlet miner spots the cart and quickly drags you down to the ships. Once behind enemy lines, you are to take control of one of the cannons on a ship to blast away the scarlet soldiers on the beach.

The Canons

I found this to be the hardest part of the whole Death Knight quest line. There were literally piles of skeletons under these canons where dozens of Death Knights had come to a sticky end while trying to complete this quest. You are lucky if you manage to take out 30 or 40 Scarlet soldiers before you die, and you must kill 200 to complete the quest. I died about seven or eight times on my first attempt, before finally managing to finish it, but by the end, I had learnt one or two things that make it easier:

• Concentrate on killing the mobs on the beach that are attacking you.
• Try to destroy the cannons on the beach first. They really hurt.
• Use the Scarlet Cannon attack for mobs on the beach. When the soldiers come running up the ramps to kill you, use the Electro-Magnetic Pulse – it blasts them away if they are close to you, but it doesn’t do as much damage as the cannon attack.
• Jump on a cannon that has full HP! You won’t last long if it’s nearly destroyed from the last person who used it when you hop on.
• If your HP gets down to around 1000, use the Skeletal Gryphon Escape option to avoid dying. It’s the only way to lose agro once you’ve started attacking the mobs. You can regenerate your HP in the safety of Death’s Breach, then take the cart down to the beach again. If your HP is too low, you’ll die on the Gryphon, as the mobs still hit you for a few seconds once you’re mounted.
• Join a party if you can, this speeds things up.

 

 

When you’re finally done, hand in the quest to receive some blue bracers. You are given orders to return to Acherus to deliver the report to Morgraine. Use the teleporter and hand in the quest.

Phase 3

Handing in the quest starts phase three of the Death Knight prequel. You receive blue legs, and more talent points to spend straight away. Baron Rivendare leaves to carry on his tasks elsewhere, and Mograine gives you a quest to return to Death’s Breach to speak with Prince Valenar again. You may notice that trainers have now appeared on the lower level here with Mograine. If you have reached level 56 already, you can train with the Blood, Unholy and Frost trainers here now.

Proceed down to Death’s Breach. You will see that things have changed down here. There are many Death Knights lined up in front of Valenar. Speak to him and accept the next quest “The Crypt of Remembrance”. You may also want to sell up and repair again with the nearby Hargus the Gimp before moving on.

Head south to the Pumpkin field. You will see a quest giver, Noth the Plaguebringer. He wants you to help him build a cauldron, using various parts that can be gathered from the Scarlet town, New Avalon, and some scarlet crusader skulls! Accept the quest and continue south to the Crypt.

Prince Keleseth orders you to kill Mayor Quimby and recover the New Avalon Registry for the quest “Nowhere To Run And Nowhere To Hide. When you accept this, Baron Rivendare, now down here in the crypt, offers you the quest “Lambs To The Slaughter” in which you have to kill 10 Scarlet Crusade Soldiers and 15 Citizens of New Avalon. Accept this and go back up to the entrance of the Crypt.

Cauldron Parts and Killing the Mayor

Turn south into the Scarlet town of New Avalon to collect the parts for “The Plaguebringer’s Request”: As you enter the town, on your left is the Inn. You can collect the Cauldron from the cellar. There are usually a few citizens inside too, so kill them for Baron Rivendare’s quest. By clearing out the Inn of all the citizens found inside, including upstairs, you can probably collect all of the Crusader skulls you need, and most of the Citizens required for the quest.

 

 

Exit the Inn and turn left. Head North to the Forge and collect the Chain from inside, killing any Scarlets you see on the way. Then go south west across town to the Town Hall, notable by its clock tower. Go inside and find Mayor Quimby next to the register. Kill him, collect the register, then kill any remaining scarlet crusaders or citizens outside. All three of your quests should now be completed, so go and hand them in. You will receive a new blue belt and greaves. Keleseth gives you the next quest in the chain, “How To Win Friends And Influence Enemies”.

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:

• Syphon of Acherus: Gathers tactical information on the nearby Scarlet structure
• Summon Ghouls on the Scarlet Crusade: Calls on ghouls to attack the scarlet crusade aggressors, giving you time to get the Eye to safety.
• Shroud: Shrouds the Eye from sight. Combat and actions break the shroud.
• Recall Eye of Acherus: Returns the eye to Acherus.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: 

  • Salanar the Horseman gives the you “Grand Theft Palamino” – rewards a mount.
  • Olrun the Battlecaller gives you “Death’s Challenge” – rewards blue quality PvP Trinket.
  • Orithos the Sky Darkener gives you “Tonight We Dine in Havenshire” – Rewards blue quality cloak.