Protection Paladin guide to Karazhan: knowing the instance

Posted by Tepisor in Uncategorized | 0 comments

This post is part of the Com­plete idiot’s guide to Karazhan for Pro­tec­tion Pal­adins and skims through bosses, lay­out and lore to get your Pro­tec­tion Pal­adin started with tank­ing Karazhan. Be sure to read my other guides for your Tankadin on the Guides page. Inter­est­ing reads indeed!

---

I don’t know about you, but when I go to and tank new con­tent, I first try and find as much as I can about 3 main things: bosses, lay­out and lore. Let’s see what Karazhan has to offer, shall we?

Bosses

Karazhan is huge, scripted, and non-winged, con­tain­ing twelve boss encoun­ters, with 22 dif­fer­ent NPCs. To get inside the instance, you need to get past the door right after the instance gate. In order to open this door, at least one per­son in the raid must have The Master’s Key which is obtained through an attunement process. The door is also able to be lock picked by rogues.

Getting attuned

Even though now it’s not necessary for you to get attuned to be able to enter Karazhan (this attunement was required for all raid members a while back), I strongly recommend you to do it because you will get a lot of Keepers of Time reputation in the process which will save you many BM runs for getting Revered. Getting attuned requires you to complete these steps:

1. Complete the quests Restless Activity and Arcane Disturbances given by Archmage Alturus outside Karazhan.
2. You must then visit Dalaran and talk to Archmage Cedric who will send you to Khadgar in Shattrath City.
3. Khadgar will give you a quest to retrieve the First Key Fragment from a Arcane Container in Shadow Labyrinth. It is located in the room of the last boss Murmur.
4. Next you need to retrieve two more key fragments from The Steamvault and The Arcatraz. The Steamvaults fragment is found just before the first boss in the water. The Arcatraz fragment is found in the corner of the blue room after the first boss.
5. Khadgar will now ask you to visit Medivh in The Black Morass and give him the key. You will need to complete the encounter before Medivh will talk to you.
6. Return to Khadgar in Shattrath and he will give you The Master's Key.

As I was saying earlier, Karazhan is the home of 12 bosses (yes, twelve, yielding 22 Badges if you do a full clear). Five of them are required (Moroes, Opera Event — one of three random encounters: Wizard of Oz, Big Bad Wolf or Romulo and Julianne, The Curator, Chess Event and Prince Malchezaar), seven optional (Attumen the Huntsman & Midnight, Maiden of Virtue, Shade of Aran, Terestian Illhoof, Netherspite, Nightbane and 1 random animal boss which nobody does because he drops crap loot).

Layout

Karazhan is not very friendly to new comers. First of all, it’s very big and has at least 2 ways to get to a point. This makes it hard for new players to get around. Hell, I even know a few people that despite doing it many times before they still get lost.

Back to the layout. The best method I found to get around is to take each boss and learn the ways to get to him. Study the maps, read guides and when you first go and face the situation, it will be much easier.

Don’t get discouraged if it all seems overwhelming at first. Be patient, things will fall into place after some time. Wowwiki is a great place to read about Karazhan, so if you have the patience, please do so.

Shortcuts

• Killing the Shade of Aran makes a teleport to his room available from Berthold the Doorman.
• Karazhan has a side entrance. When climbing the tower to the right of the main entrance (across the small creek), the stairs lead to a bridge and to a door which unlocks after the Opera Event has been cleared. Some trash can be bypassed by using the side entrance right after the Opera Event.

Vendors and Repairs

• Koren <The Blacksmith>, next to Attumen the Huntsman, will repair gear for players who are Honored with Violet Eye. He also sells some epic Blacksmithing recipes (frost resistance gear). Near him is Calliard who wanders around, babbling how evil Midnight and her owner are.
• Outside of the Gamesman's Hall (before the Chess Event) is Ythyar, a reagent and The Consortium rep reward vendor, who can repair gear (however it is worthy to note that Ythyar has no faction attached to him, so no rep discounts are available — whether this is a bug or intentional is unclear).

Lore

Nobody knows lore like wowwiki so here’s a quote straight from there:

Karazhan is located in Deadwind Pass on the sub-continent of Azeroth in the Eastern Kingdoms. Existing long before Medivh inhabited it, it is unknown who originally built Karazhan or who now resides within its walls. The land it sits on "was similar in shape to a human skull. Many had noted it over the years, though only a few had been sufficiently brave, or powerful, or tactless to mention it to the property's owner".^{LG 2}

Karazhan's history begins with an explosion that carved out Deadwind Pass and weakened the fabric of reality in the region.^{LG 89} Some­one then built the tower, prob­a­bly to take advan­tage of this weak­ened real­ity and height­ened magic. Medivh even­tu­ally took up res­i­dence there, but mused that the explo­sion and the con­struc­tion only hap­pened because he would even­tu­ally arrive.^{LG 91, 92}

Dur­ing the First War, the tower was inhab­ited by Medivh, his stew­ard Moroes, his cook Cook, and his then-apprentice Khadgar. Garona also resided here as an emis­sary in the same time of Khadgar’s appren­tice­ship. Sarg­eras allowed Medivh to freely explore Karazhan. As a result of the region’s weak­ened real­ity, many strange and dis­turb­ing visions lurked within the tower, and Moroes was known for wear­ing blind­ers to avoid see­ing them. The visions were ulti­mately ended when most of Karazhan’s ambi­ent mag­i­cal power was absorbed by the res­ur­rected Medivh, reduc­ing it to “a pile of stone in the remote reaches”, its power taken to serve the Prophet.^{LG 306–308}

Much of the story from this era is pre­sented in the novel The Last Guardian.

Recently, despite Medivh’s absence and the drain­ing of magic, a new power seems to have made its home in Karazhan. The Black Rid­ers of Dead­wind Pass, though rarely seen, have a con­nec­tion to Karazhan. How­ever, no one knows who their mas­ter is. One recent sight­ing is cause for con­cern — the Black Rid­ers seek the Scythe of Elune, a pow­er­ful arti­fact with the abil­ity to sum­mon the vile Wor­gen into this world.

It is believed that all ley lines on Aze­roth lead to a loca­tion under Karazhan.

Worldofwarcraft.com says the fol­low­ing about Karazhan:

The decrepit tower of Karazhan once housed one of the great­est pow­ers Aze­roth has ever known: the sor­cerer Medivh. Since his death, a ter­ri­ble curse has per­vaded the tower and the sur­round­ing lands. The spir­its of nobles from nearby Dark­shire report­edly walk its halls, suf­fer­ing a fate worse than death for their curios­ity. More dan­ger­ous spir­its wait within Medivh’s study, for it was there that he sum­moned demonic enti­ties to do his bid­ding. How­ever, the brave and fool­ish are still relent­lessly drawn to Karazhan, tempted by rumors of unspeak­able secrets and pow­er­ful trea­sures. Forge a group of ten stal­wart heroes, and jour­ney to the tower in Dead­wind Pass — but be warned that only those who have achieved level 70 should dare enter.

This con­cludes today’s part of the Com­plete idiot’s guide to Karazhan for Pro­tec­tion Pal­adins. Stay tuned for the next part, when we cover the spoils of war, aka the sweet loot.

Sim­i­lar Posts of Interest:

• The Com­plete idiot’s guide to Karazhan for Pro­tec­tion Paladins
• Pro­tec­tion Pal­adin guide to Karazhan: a few words of introduction
• Pro­tec­tion Pal­adin guide for Karazhan: gear guide and drops
• Mini guide to tank­ing Night­bane for Pro­tec­tion Paladins
• Pro­tec­tion Pal­adin solo­ing Stratholme Undead side — live blogging