Posts with tag Queldelar

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week WoW.com brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm. Have suggestions for future KYL topics? Leave a comment below!

It's nigh-ubiquitous in Wrath of the Lich King. You can pull it out of the ground pretty much anywhere. It's crafted into armor and weapons from powerful epics to crafted items to increase our skills. It makes up the walls of Icecrown Citadel, and the bones of Malykriss, the Lich King's planned replacement for Acherus. It makes up the bulk of the Scourge's material for its mindless warriors as well as its fortifications and siege engines, and the Vrykul even presses the living into slavery in Icecrown in order to meet their master's demand for more and more of it. But this is no ordinary metal: the Tuskarr call it the "Black Blood of Yogg-Saron" and whisper in hushed tones that it may yet shake the pillars of Heaven. (Well, I assume they do. Fella named Jack Burton told me that.)

Unlike cobalt and titanium, the metals that seems to occur naturally in Northrend, saronite's presence is due to the presence of a trapped old god. As you no doubt deduced from the name, Saronite is nothing less than a creation of the terrible Yogg-Saron himself. The enslaved miners toiling for the Vrykul near Ymirheim eventually go mad, and even if freed, hurl themselves into the depths to seek communion with the god of death. In his hubris, the Lich KIng seeks to prove his mastery of death, his transcendance of the state by exploiting the products of Yogg-Saron's imprisonment.

But as Yogg-Saron himself says, "No king rules forever." And as we storm the very gates of Icecrown Citadel and make our way through the Forge of Souls, past the Pit of Saron where even deeper veins of Yogg-Saron's Black Blood are unearthed, and stalk the Halls of Reflection themselves it seems clear that the dependence of the Scourge on the death metal may be its undoing... if it isn't ours first.

In many ways Wrath of the Lich King can be considered the logical conclusion of one of WarCraft's major story lines. Arthas, the evil sovereign of the scourge, will meet his doom in Icecrown Citadel. Each Wrath patch up until now has lead to this defining moment -- the face off between Arthas and the players representing the next generation of heroes of Azeroth. Who will win? What happens after Arthas is defeated? Is Arthas defeated?

These questions lend themselves to a spectacular conclusion to a great tale. In The Lore of Patch 3.3, Michael Sacco, Alex Ziebart, and I will take a look at all the various plots, characters, and environments that lead up to this grand confrontation with the Lich King.

You'll want to know this story. You'll want to know this lore.

For when you finally face off against the wielder of the Frostmourne, you'll know why you're going toe-to-toe against him, and why your fate can make or break the very face of Azeroth.

This article, while containing essential lore, also contains heavy spoilers. Do not proceed if that bothers you.

Patch 3.3 is here! Rejoice! Be merry! There's new stuff to do! If you're not quite sure where to start, I strongly suggest checking out our patch 3.3 guide. There's many new activities to look forward to. This is the patch where we make Arthas pay for his crimes. The Argent Crusade, with the aid of the Alliance and Horde will be making their final push into Icecrown Citadel and they need your help.

So there's a few things you can start off with:

• Check out the new dungeon finder (and farm those Emblems)!
• Head into the new Icecrown 5-player dungeons
• Try and get the Quel'Delar
• Buy a new bag
• Start planning for the fishing tournament in Northrend
• Assault Icecrown Citadel itself
• Run a nerfed version of Oculus
• Send your Heirlooms to your toons of the opposite faction (on the same account).

For me personally, I'm locked and ready to break into Icecrown Citadel. What about you guys?

Welcome back to Know Your Lore, WoW.com's column about the story behind the game we all play.

A featured questline in Patch 3.3, the story of Quel'delar is available to any player who attains the Battered Hilt, which can drop from any mob in the Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons. But what's the story behind this ancient and powerful weapon?

Long ago, the night elves and the five Dragonflights worked together with great ceremony to forge a set of incredibly powerful prismatic swords, intended to be the first line of defense against any evil that would challenge the races of Azeroth: Quel'serrar, the High Blade, and Quel'delar, the Sister Blade.

Quel'serrar was gifted to the night elves, but ultimately nearly destroyed. For thousands of years it remained partially intact with the Shen'dralar of Eldre'thalas, who anticipated that one day it'd be possible to reforge the blade. Only recently did this occur, with heroes reforging the blade in the flames and black heart of Onyxia, broodmother of the Black Dragonflight. The blade's triumphant return to its full glory brought great joy to the night elves, who thought the blade lost forever.

Its sister blade, however, followed a different path.

This writeup contains spoilers from the Quel'delar questline and should be avoided if you want to be surprised when Patch 3.3 launches.

Ah, Quel'delar -- the Patch 3.3 questline with rewards for everybody. Well, everybody except tanks. And elemental shamans. And shadow priests, and moonkin, and mutilate rogues, and you get the idea. While the caster sword is itemized very well for DPS casters -- and can be used by two of them -- the mace version is loaded with MP5, which is patently useless for them. A lot of healers don't even really need it on their weapon.

Well, Blizzard may not have caved to tanks or rogues, but they certainly caved to DPS casters, as Bornakk indicates that the MP5 on the Hammer of Purified Flame is being converted to haste to better match Quel'delar, Lens of the Mind. As an elemental shaman in dire need of replacing his Aesuga, I appreciate that!

Then again, this makes it even more odd that sword-and-board tanks are still left out in the cold in this questline. I suppose there's still time before the patch for Blizzard to make the change, but it looks like they're not going that route. Oh well, tanks. There's always dual-spec.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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We've been waiting to see the end rewards for Patch 3.3's Quel'delar questline, purported to be capable weapons, and it looks like this latest build revealed the stats for all of the weapon's incarnations.

Swords:

• Quel'Delar, Ferocity of the Scorned
• Quel'Delar, Cunning of the Shadows
• Quel'Delar, Lens of the Mind
• Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful

And if you can't use swords, you can turn Quel'delar in for:

Maces:

• Cudgel of Furious Justice
• Hammer of Purified Flame
• Lightborn Spire

The stats are pretty good, actually! Not a bad reward at all. No tanking sword, though. Weird!

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's (almost) daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Today's edition of The Queue is gifted to you by my horrifying toothache that has kept me awake at ridiculous times of the day for the past week. You can thank the toothache for this article, because otherwise I may have done something healthy instead, such as sleep.

Mordockk asked...

"Is Quel'Delar going to be a Legendary weapon? If so, does that mean there is going to be two Legendary weapons next patch?"

Blizzard has posted a preview of the upcoming Quel'delar storyline that we'll be observing in Icecrown. Quel'delar, you'll remember, is the twin of the old Quel'serrar blade that we put together way back in the days of vanilla WoW.

For those of you who are spoiler-sensitive, details are behind the break.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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What, pray tell, is Quel'Delar?

That's a good question, and as of Patch 3.3, we're about to become far more intimate with it. At present all we know about Quel'Delar is the area near the Argent Tournament called Quel'Delar's Rest (as seen above), where a massive dragon skull seems impaled on a sword half buried in the ice. Speculation on the sword, the thing it is impaling, and whether or not we'd get to pull it out of the ice (as well as to links to Quel'Serrar/Quel'Zaram, famous swords with the Quel prefix meaning High in Thalassian/Darnassian) look to be on the verge of being solved.

It seems that MMO-Champion has found a whole series of spells related to Quel'Delar and the new Icecrown instances in the latest PTR build. You apparently need to bring the blade into the Forge of Souls and temper it, then bring the tempered blade to someone, possibly Krasus, which then possibly phases you into a battle to cleanse an evil form of the sword. Please keep in mind this is all speculation based on spell descriptions, but at the very least we know that there's more to that patch of barren ice near the Tournament than we'd been led to believe. It's apparent from the descriptive text on this spell that Quel'Delar is deeply connected to Icecrown Citadel.

Is Quel'Delar eventually going to be a player item? Is it connected to Quel'Serrar, as was speculated? Does it want to help or hinder the Lich King, or is it connected to some other denizen of Icecrown? We don't know yet, but the time till we find out seems fast approaching.