I is Legend

Welcome to my guide to the Shadowmourne quest chain. We will begin with an overview of the entire quest chain along with the relevant rewards. Afterward I will talk about each step in the chain, as well as how best to accomplish these tasks as quickly as possible.

The Quest for Shadowmourne
+ 1. The Sacred and the Corrupt
+ 2. Shadow’s Edge [ Reward: Shadow's Edge ]
+ 3. A Feast of Souls
+ 4. Unholy Infusion
+ 5. Blood Infusion
+ 6. Frost Infusion
+ 7. The Splintered Throne
+ 8. Shadowmourne! [ Reward: Shadowmourne ]
+ 9. The Lich King’s Last Stand

The Extras
On April 05, 2010 it was confirmed that a new item was dropping from the Lich King when one of the attending raiders has Shadowmourne equipped. The item [ Sealed Chest ] when taken to Highlord Darion Mograine is opened, and the player receives five quest items, each item when turned into their respective quest NPC rewards the player with a cosmetic item.

The Rewards:
+ Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger
+ Muradin’s Favor
+ Jaina’s Locket
+ Tabard of the Lightbringer
+ Sylvanas’ Music Box

Step 1. The Sacred and the Corrupt
The first objective when working on this thing is to reach Friendly with the Ashen Verdict. At which point you can go just inside Icecrown Citadel, and speak to the appropriate NPC to claim your ring. You may also notice a blue ! off to the left, over the head of Highlord Darion Mograine. Speak to him and accept the quest The Sacred and the Corrupt.

From here, you begin collecting the first pieces necessary to craft Shadow’s Edge, the epic weapon that forms the base of Shadowmourne.

This is the cave where Arthas infamously throws down his mace and took up the cursed blade Frostmourne at the end of the human campaign in Warcraft III. You will see the mace laying in the snow with light surrounding it, when you move to take it the Lich King will appear, and freeze you and throw his mace across the cave.

After a brief scripted encounter with Arthas, a massive horde of level 80 Ghouls will spawn all over the cave, and an elite will spawn on the mound in the middle where the mace once was…

Clear your way through the ghouls to the mace’s new location, once there the mace will fly above your head and begin nuking everything undead in the cave.

Once all are dead, the Vyrkul will respawn and you must fight him. He doesn’t hit hard at all, but he’s got a lot of HP.

Once you’ve killed the Vyrkul claim your new quest item Light’s Vengeance (can’t equip the mace QQ) and begin collecting the rest of the pieces.

Primordial Saronite can be collected several ways: buy them on the AH (or from other players), get these from running Icecrown Citadel, or turn in Emblems of Frost for them (23 Emblems per Saronite). You may get the nod from your guild to keep all of the Primordials until you finish this part of the chain, if you’re not so lucky then you’ll have to decide between new armor/gear or Primordials for your quest.

Finishing the Sacred and the Corrupt
With the opening of the Plagueworks it’s now possible to finish this part of the quest chain, obtaining your bloods is quite simple: kill Rotface and Festergut in 25 man ICC. The bloods are a 100% drop rate, and can only be looted by someone who has the quest.

Killing the Abominations

After you killing the pair of Aboms take the portal back to the entrance and go to the runeforge next to Highlord Darion Mograine on the left (as you enter the instance). Darion will show up, there’s more lightning, smoke, and fire thrown around than at a KISS concert… slowly a form appears hovering in the air between you and Darion, which becomes: Shadow’s Edge.

Step 2. Shadow’s Edge
At this point, Darion gets a quest icon over his head and it’s time to accept the quest Shadow’s Edge, he tries to talk you out of taking the weapon (for fear of your immortal soul). Of course you accept, and claim your new axe.

Step 3. A Feast of Souls
Now we begin the quest in earnest. Feast of Souls requires you to kill 1000 of the Lich Kings minions in ICC 10 or 25. Originally, it was thought these had to be undead, but not so. First, summoned adds count, such as those lovely Essences called by the Harbingers in Plague. Also, the opposite faction NPCs on the ledge before the Gunship count, as well as all of the adds on the opposing gunship. Even the zombies summoned by Precious count. After doing a run through 10m to Putricide, I found that there were about 200 kills that gave credit. So, don’t sweat this one too much. Tuesday when everything opens up again, you can even do a few rep runs before raids to bump it up (and hopefully) finish it off, before you hit the instance for real.

Note: I’ve been informed that several of the mobs that counted when I did this have been hotfixed, and no longer give credit for this quest. This still should not prove to be much of an issue as the entire instance is now available, along with a ton of mobs that definitely DO count. And if you can’t get far enough into the instance to kill these… you’re not likely to finish anyways.

Step 4. Unholy Infusion

Step four brings us to the infusions, these are likely to be the most challenging part of your quest. Before we get into the infusion quests, it’s recommended that you run these encounters in ten man first to become accustomed to the fight mechanics of each encounter. This is particularly important on the Unholy Infusion portion, as this is essentially a vehicle gimmick that takes a little getting used to, and you probably don’t want to bone it for twenty five people (if you can avoid it).

As the quester you will be on Abomination duty, that means that as the tank runs in you will go and click the alchemy table just behind the Professor (Note: you will see “Drink Me” in the tooltip when hovering over the appropriate area). Your primary job during the course of this fight is to “Eat Slime” and slow Oozes.

The slimes are the green puddles that spawn at random on the floor, two spawn at a time. As you eat these, the slime pools get smaller and eventually disappear. If you do not eat them, they continue to get larger until the entire room is covered in slime (the slime does periodic damage to anyone standing in it). Additionally, you gain 4 energy each time you use the Eat Ooze ability on the slime pools. This is vital, as the energy is used to activate your other abilities. Your first priority here should be to eat the first pool immediately, afterward you can eat the second slime a little at a time till it’s small enough that one more little drink will cause the pool to disappear, wait a few seconds and the pool will increase in size slightly. When the pool grows, you can take another little drink by doing this you’ll ensure that you can maintain maximum energy which will be very important once you’re ready to use Shadow Infusion. Otherwise, it’s also a good idea to maximize your energy so as to be ready in case of a bad transition, in which you have to slow the Ooze twice.

The Oozes, there are two. The Orange and the Green. As the Abomination, it’s your job to ensure both of these are slowed to ensure people don’t get hit (and die) this is where Regurgitated Ooze comes in.

So, when should you use Shadow Infusion? Putricide has an enrage timer, keep tabs on this. The buff you receive from Infusing the axe lasts for 6 minutes, so if you wait until there is six minutes or less on the enrage timer you’ll be fine. The exception to this would be with high DPS groups, if DPS is that high then be sure to get the infusion off before Phase 3 or you will miss your opportunity for and will either have to wipe it or wait another week. The other consideration for the imbue is this: only imbue when a Green Ooze is about to spawn, when the green spawns it pauses momentarily before picking a target and moving. This gives you a little bit of a breather before you absolutely have to slow.

Note: All infusion quests require that you survive until the boss dies, if you die you lose your buff and will either have to wipe or wait a week to complete that step in the chain.

Mutated Abomination Abilities
1. Eat Ooze [ 40 yd range ] – Eats nearby Mutated Slime decreasing the size of the pool, giving you 4 Ooze energy! Instant
2. Regurgitated Ooze [ 50 yd range ] – The Regurgitated Ooze has a surprising effect on the target, slowing its movement speed by 50% and dealing 6,338 to 6,662 damage every 2 seconds for 20 seconds. Instant
3. Mutated Slash [ Melee Range ] – Inflicts 100% weapon damage instantly!
4. Shadow Infusion [ Must be standing in Mutated Slime ] – Siphons malignant Ooze to infuse Shadow’s Edge with Unholy power.

Note: Abilities are listed in the order they appear on the action bar (1, 2, 3, 4).

Step 4. Blood Infusion

Note: For this fight you will probably want to DPS, it is possible to finish the quest as an Off Tank however, it needlessly complicates the encounter. For this quest you will need to be hit with the Blood Mirror debuff, then bite three separate people without succumbing to Uncontrollable Frenzy. Below I’ll cover each of the abilities you need to be aware of for the quest.

Abilities of Interest
+ Blood Mirror You gain this debuff by standing in front of the Blood Queen when she’s in combat, this debuff is normally taken by the off tank during the course of the fight. This debuff turns into Gushing Wound (more info below) and you need to get this debuff before biting anyone.
+ Gushing Wound This debuff stacks three times (the stacks increase every time you bite someone, the third bite infuses Shadow’s Edge) and deals periodic damage to the quester during the encounter. Over the course of the Blood Queen fight you will take 200-300K damage from this buff. However once you have the Essence of the Blood Queen buff you’ll be healing any damage that you take from the debuff (provided you are actually doing damage). This means heals will need to keep an eye on you only during air phase, or when you move to bite someone.
+ Essence of the Blood Queen Since you need to bite three people you need to be bitten either first or second. The buff increases your damage and makes you heal yourself every time you deal damage.
+ Vampiric Bite Sixty seconds after getting the Essence of the Blood Queen you will have the ability to use this ability on another player, you need to do this three times for the quest. You need to be very close to your target, my advice target them and get inside their hitbox (the circle on the ground at their feet). When next bites announced, I also recommend focusing your target to allow for quick switching/biting. You’ll also obviously want to start figuring out where your intended target actually is at this time. Remember, the most important thing is to bite someone, so if your target is not safely reachable it’s more important you bite anyone (even a healer) to avoid Uncontrollable Frenzy.
+ Uncontrollable Frenzy You lose control of your character and start attacking the raid. This usually results in a wipe, but even if you managed to fulfill all other conditions of the quest and were MCd by this ability and STILL managed to kill BQ, it will not complete your quest.

The fight is a DPS race, there’s a bit of movement and certainly a heavy RNG element to it (I got the flames twice in a row when I completed the quest) but the main thing to understand is the abilities listed above. Health Pots/Healthstones are advisable to keep you alive when chasing down a bite or during the air phase, similarly do NOT forget your defensive cooldowns. Death Knights especially have no excuse for not using Icebound Fortitude, Anti Magic Shell, etc during the air phase to keep themselves alive.

Step 6. Frost Infusion

This is the final infusion quest, Sindragosa is a tough fight thankfully this quest is relatively straight forward. You need to be hit by Sindragosa’s Frost Breath attack four times, after which you receive a buff called Frost-Imbued Blade. You’ll have six minutes from the time of receiving the Frost-Imbued Blade buff to kill Sindragosa or the buff falls off and you have to start taking Breaths again.

For a tank, this proves to be much simpler than it does for DPS. I don’t really have to do anything different than what I normally do on this fight. For DPS however, there are some concerns.

First, her breath does do a significant amount of damage. It’s possible you may want to get a little bit of resist gear for the fight (I wouldn’t go overboard though) the helm from Onyxia 25 is a good option, as well as the tanking rings (if you can snag them) similarly be sure to get any enchants (such as the FR/Sta Helm enchant from Sons of Hodir). You’ll need to keep up with the timing on the thing, I would say probably run in and get a breath attack early then run out to DPS for a while, then go back in periodically. Be sure to coordinate with your healers to ensure you stay alive through the breaths. Staggering breaths this way should keep you from running the healers OOM as well as ensuring you’re doing some damage to the boss. Congratulations, time to grind again!

Step 7. The Splintered Throne
It’s time to start farming shards. This quest is very straight forward, much like a Feast of Souls it’s all about grinding. This time however, we’re grinding bosses in Icecrown Citadel. Every boss has a chance to drop a Shadowfrost Shard (25%-50% on normal bosses, 51%-100% on hard mode bosses according to wowarmory.com) You will need to collect fifty shards before turning in this quest and claiming…

Step 8. Shadowmourne!
Time to harvest the fruits of your labor, bring your Shadow’s Edge to Darion in exchange for Shadowmourne!

Step 9. The Lich King’s Last Stand
Though the quest for the legendary is complete, there is still one quest in this chain remaining. Simply put, kill the Lich King and claim a gold reward.

Additionally, killing the Lich King while a raid member has Shadowmourne equipped results in a 100% drop quest item, that turns into 5 quests with vanity rewards.

Thank you for reading, hopefully this guide has proven helpful. And congratulations to all of those who’ve gotten their legendary axes.

For more, you can also visit the official page on the Blizzard website found at the following link

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