Horde Molten Core Guide

What/Where is MC?

Attunement

The quest Attunement to the Core is a requirement to join the Horde Molten Core raids. Completing it allows you to zone directly into the Molten Core from Blackraock Mountain without having to clear through to the actual entrance portal far into Blackrock Depths.

The quest is given by a high elf Lothos Riftwalker. He can be found inside Blackrock mountain, between the Burning Steppes and Searing Gorge. To reach him, walk across the chain into the pillar in the center of the lava in BRM and follow the path downwards. At the bottom you will cross another chain and he will be easily visible.

To complete the quest you have to collect a Core Fragment from just outside the green raid portal for Molten Core, between the Seven Dwarfs and the Lyceum. It is completable in a ten man raid, but can easily be done with five.

Once the quest is completed, you will be able to zone directly into Molten Core by jumping through the window to the left of the quest giver, Lothos Riftwalker. (Caution: this only works if you are in a raid! Yes, I do speak form experience...)

Signing Up

Sign up threads will be posted in the Tichondrius Scheduling Forum up to a week before the planned time of the raid. At the moment, Molten Core raids consist of two days; day 1 runs from Lucifron - Golemagg, including Lucifron, Magmadar, Gehennas, Garr, Baron Gedon, Shazzrah, Sulfuron and Golemagg. Our best time for this run is currently four and a half hours, but we haven't taken longer than five. Day 1 is the most friendly to new players to MC as it includes a lot of different boss fights which experienced players know very well. We don't wipe ever (well, not often anyway).

Day 2 includes Majordomo Executus and Ragnaros and will run for about 3-3.5 hours. Ragnaros is still a really tough fight for us. To kill him, we need everyone to have as much fire resist gear as possible and come prepared with appropriate consumables, including at least five greater fire protection potions. See Tin's fantastic post under the preparation section of this guide for other important consumables. the difficulty of the Rag fight and the need for appropriate gear and preparation is reflected in the invite rules, posted below.

The invite rules can be found in this stickied thread in the Tichondrius Scheduling Forum. Any additional requirements will be mentioned in the actual sign up thread.

Preparation

From Tin's excellent post in the Fighter Classes Strategy Boards.

Intro:

Welcome,

There has been a number of discussion going on both on the forums and in game these last few weeks to do with class performance in large raids like MC and Onyxia. Discussion so far has been very positive. With each class having its own raid channel in MC where advice has been offered by all, everyone who's come regularly on MC has had plenty of time to learn their role now that we've made it to Rag.

You may have noticed there are no dps threads up at the moment in the raid leader forum. This is because all the topics people could think to bring up were discussed. If you haven't yet looked at these threads, it may be worth a look if your running or plan to run in MC as they include lots of helpful advice.

With the focus on Ragnaros, there is going to be a lot more focus put on people reaching certain expectations in their class, as it's a difficult encounter. Not to say the focus will be efficiency over fun, on the contrary, people should play their character with the spec they want, and to their own style. What's going to be needed is for players to look at what others are doing to reach that next level, such as what buffs are used, what potions, what special items or trinkets.

So bellow is listed many of the items used on a regular basis by myself and others and which are really not difficult to gather for a once a week instance run. Also, strategies will be listed from my experiences that work to help keep you alive. Most of these will apply mainly to the melee classes, specifically Rogues, but I'm sure there something in here for everyone.

A last note, the following list of buffs are not expected to be used throughout the raid unless you want too. We know many people have limited play time and may only be able to get a few supplies, which is fine. The items are important mainly for Ragnaros fights.

Felwood

Here is a map of felwood spawns of items, and a legend.

These spawns work one of two ways. The spawns located on the map are on random timers, they will either 1. be there and corrupted; 2. Be there and cleansed; 3. Be there and already harvested; or 4. not there at all. It's completely random and changes every few hours.

You either do the quest shown called Cleansing Felwood which gives you a Cenarion Beacon that let's you gather a variety of Corrupted items from either killing felwood mobs, mining, or gathering herbs. You hand in the items for Cenarion plant salve which cleanses the Corrupted plants.

Or, you can just pop down there now and then to check if there are any cleansed spawns up or harvested ones. usually, the harvested ones come back cleansed in about 25 minutes. If you harvest a cleansed one, it will usually come back cleansed in 25 minutes. So I hunt in the northern satyrs' area which has a night dragons and a whipper root spawn, and two other whipper root spawns nearby, as you can see on the map.

Yellow squares: Wild Blossom Berries which are 10 stam for 10 minutes food. it's free, it's there. Red squares: Night dragon's breath 400 - 500 life and mana, usable every minute, on a separate timer to potions. Purple squares: Whipper root tuber 700 - 900 life, usable every minute, on a separate timer to potions.

Map of Fellwood

Also of note, are the Demonic Rune usable every 2 minutes, which can be collected from the Orcs in Jaedenar around the middle of the map. For Mana users, used in combination with Night dragon's breath can be a powerful engine of destruction. Darkfirenova kindly tested this for me in MC last week against Garr, and found a huge % increase in damage.

Winterspring

A couple of great buffs here, one of which is quest related. The NPC for this is in the little Troll area in Orgrimmar where you end up after taking a mage portal, where the firstaid trainer is. She's on one of the stones in the water. the quest is Winterfall E'ko. You recieve a necklace you keep in your inventory like the Cenarion Beacon from felwood. When you kill certain mobs, Eko will drop. Different Eko is traded to her for different buffs. If you do this in a party, one eko will drop per partied person in the area, much increasing efficiency. Take a friend!

The Winterall Furbolgs drop Winterfall Eko. Trading 3 of these in gives you 3x JuJu Power.

As a bonus, these Furbolgs also drop Winterfall Firewater

Blasted Lands

When you enter Blasted Lands from Swamp of Sorrows, there is a line of NPCs to your right not far into the zone. Two of them will have a number of quests for you to gather different bodyparts from different creatures in blasted lands.

It's a very simple grind to collect them and hand them in. You will get a reward of one different buff for each quest, and a new quest will be available to you now which is a repeatable quest to get that buff again.

The buffs are linked bellow. You can only own one of each type of buff, so you can't get a stack of 5 R.O.I.D.s for example. You can only have one buff active at one time, the others will go on a one hour timer when you apply one.

R.O.I.D.s Ground Scorpok Assay Lung Juice

Potions of note

Elixer of the mongoose

Combat Healing Potion Greater Healing Potion Superior Healing Potion Major Healing Potion

Fire Protection Potion Greater Fire Protection

Things you can apply to your weapons

In these, I think Dense sharpening stones are the best value for trash mobs. Dense stone is cheap and easy to get, and they can't be resisted like poison, but the choice is up to the rogue. For Bosses like Rag I think the Elemental sharpening stones will be a good investment.

Instant Poison VI Made by rogues, and only used by rogues. Elemental Sharpening Stones Farm Elemental earth from low level rock elementals in Bad lands and Dense stone is from thorium viens and can be crafted by Asta or Champain of the Basin. Dense Sharpening Stones Dense stone is from Thorium viens and is crafted by blacksmiths.

Try to collect some, have a play around with them in MC and get a feel for using them a little. Build up a supply for Ragnaros. I'll add a strat section to this later, just wanted to get this information out as quick as I could.

Thanks

- Tin

General Tips

If in doubt, ask questions

Lots of players have been to MC many times, and have most likely asked the same questions you want to ask. Ask in party chat, ask in your class channel (Basinwarr, basinpriest, basinshaman, etc), ask in raid chat, ask on teamspeak in that order.

Be aware of your surroundings

A major source of annoyance for the raid is people walking backwards into pulls they don't need to make. It wastes time and can end up wiping the raid. Pay attention to where you are standing. If you need to back up, back up to where you came from, not into some new area.

Listen to Teamspeak

Most important instructions will be given on TeamSpeak. Listen attentively at all times (unless Hasta sings, then you'll be forgiven for setting the headset down!).

Be ontime

If you are late, someone will be pulled from the waitlist into your spot. Tough cookies!

Read up on strategy before the raid

There are many many guides to boss strategy all over the net, and you'll find some if you scroll down. Reading up before the raid will save explanation time and save you from being confuzzled.

Repair

Repair and stock up on reagents before the run!

Trash Mobs

Molten Giants and Destroyers

These are fairly straightforward mobs to clear. They are big and made of lava, as the name suggests. (Screenshots)

A pair of Molten Giants are the very first pull in MC. They come in pairs, or with a Molten Destroyer. The giants hit fairly hard and fairly fast but like all MC trash mobs, they aren't a problem to heal through. They do however have an aoe attack to people in melee range, so spot healing is required. Molten Giants also have a knockback which they will use on the tank, reducing the tanks aggro and most often chasing after one of the damage characters. For tanking these mobs it helps to position yourself between the giant and the casters. When knocked back, you will be able to easily intercept the giant on its way to the casters.

Molten Destroyers are easier to deal with. They are larger in size, hit harder and take significantly longer to kill. But again, they really aren't a problem to heal through. They have an aoe knockdown, stunning for a couple of seconds, but it doesn't have the aggro reducing component of the giants' knockback so it is not a threat to the raid, though as with giants spot healing is needed.

Lava Annihilators

Lava Annihilators look like very large rock elementals, first encountered in Ragefire Chasm. They have a fairly strong melee attack and a random target charge. They seem to wipe aggro everytime they charge and attack a random target, so they are not really tankable. The random target charge really makes them a pain to attack for melee if everyone is spread out all over the place. To keep them in one spot we have everyone, rogues to hunters to priests, everyone, stand in melee range. "Hug the Annihilator!!"

Lava Surgers

Lava surgers look just like annhilators, but they are always patrolling and are different to fight. Surgers charge a random target, like annihilators, but they don't wipe aggro. They will come straight back to the tank. When they charge they do a 1000 damage aoe knockback to everyone in a small area around their original postition and a knockback for a similar amount of damage to the random target they charge. It is important that casters and anyone who can attack from range do so to avoid the aoe knockback damage. Melee should also take care to ensure that their backs are not facing the lava to avoid an unpleasantly hot bath. Healers will need to be vigilant with spot heals particularly on the rogues.