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Encrypted Text: Stabbing your way through Mogu'shan Vaults
Every week, WoW Insider brings you Encrypted Text for assassination, combat and subtlety rogues. Chase Christian will be your guide to the world of shadows every Wednesday. Feel free to email me with any questions or article suggestions you'd like to see covered here. The tier 14 raiding system is a new experiment by Blizzard. I actually see Mists' first batch of raid content as three sub-tiers underneath the tier 14 umbrella. Mogu'shan Vaults is the introductory raid that can be done in mostly blue gear. The Heart of Fear requires purple-equipped raiders and a skilled roster. Finally, the upcoming Terrace of Endless Spring will be a challenge even on normal difficulty. The early heroic bosses have already been toppled, while I expect it will be weeks before we see the difficult Terrace cleared on heroic. Everybody has to start somewhere, and chances are that you're starting in Mogu'shan Vaults. If you're equipped with a mix of heroic blues and an epic item here or there, you'll be fine in MV. Rogues are performing quite well in MV, in spite of being a melee class. We have several tricks that allow us to maximize our damage against the first six bosses that we face in Pandaria.
Know Your Lore: Who are the Mogu?
The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how -- but do you know the why? Each week, Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft. Warning - this entire post is going to be full of spoilers for Mists of Pandaria. They are the usurped rulers of Pandaria. Even the name of the land has been stolen from them, as their slaves rose up and dragged down the most perfect empire ever seen under heaven. The mandate was tramped upon by illiterate savages, unskilled even in the arts of war, who used numbers and trickery to throw down the kingdom of those destined to rule all they surveyed. And using stolen grandeur, the slaves built a mock kingdom on the ruins of the true empire, and installed their own like children playing at adult matters. But even after ten thousand years, the kings remember what they lost. Once, the Thunder King ruled. He saw the mantid, and drew from them inspiration. He saw the mogu, and brought to them unity through fear, and strength through unity. The Thunder King Lei Shen stretched out his hand and inspired his people to build a wonder, and the Serpent's Spine rose up. Such is the will of the Mogu. This land belonged to the Thunder King and his people once. And it will again. You will kneel to the true kings as they reclaim the mandate of destiny stolen from them by unworthy hands, or you will die. And when you die, your death will only be the beginning of your sorrow, for flesh is their plaything, and souls their tools.
Mists of Pandaria raids will have staggered release, none available at launch
There will be no raids available to players when Mists of Pandaria is released on Sept.25, 2012. Blizzard announced today that the first tier of raids in Mists of Pandaria will have a staggered release. A single raid will be released one week after the launch of the expansion, Mogu'shan Vaults, and the raid finder version of that raid won't be available for another week after that. Nothing will change regarding the release of heroic modes, which will be available for the following lockout after players complete the raid on normal mode. Tier 14's other two raids, Heart of Fear and Terrace of Endless Spring, will be released four weeks after the release of Mogu'shan Vaults. The full details of this announcement are outlined in the blue post below.
Blizzard Insider previews Mogu'shan Vaults raid
The most recent Blizzard Insider interviews Scott Mercer and Ion Hazzikostas, lead encounter designers, to discuss the Mogu'shan Vaults raid coming with the release of Mists of Pandaria. Quite a few details about the upcoming raid are to be had, including the following: It will launch with the raid finder, 10-man and 25-man normal, and 10-man and 25-man heroic modes, for a total of five different modes for the raid. "Observant players may even notice a certain 'titanic' influence in lair's defenses." Since the mogu (and most other Mists of Pandaria races and settings) are entirely new with this expansion, the design team had to design their "kits," the kinds of monsters and art you'd expect to see in dungeons featuring them. The mogu kit includes the terracotta warriors, the quilien statues, and certain Titan-based themes.
5 things you need to know about Mogu'shan Palace
So, the last time your friendly five things you need to know correspondent stopped by, it was to give you five pieces of useful information about the rollicking barrel of fun that is Stormstout Brewery and its emo sister dungeon Temple of the Jade Serpent. And now we're back, with the first of the level 87 dungeons: Mogu'shan Palace! Well, I say the "first"; you actually get Mogu'shan Palace at the same time as you get Shado-pan Monastery, but Mogu'shan is the easier of the two, in my book. I would argue that its also the more fun one of the pair. As ever, this is not intended as a walk-through. It's more a set of tips so that you can head on into the dungeon armed with just enough knowledge to be dangerous. My aim is to let you explore the dungeon for yourself without spoiling your fun while still alerting you to some useful bits of information. That's enough introducing -- let's get going! We've zoned in, and we're in a square room with some very fancy decoration. There are lots and lots of guys wandering around here. What do we do? 1. Look at your map! Um, yes. Most obvious advice ever? Well, sure, but the reason I'm saying it for this dungeon is that if you're there for a speed run, you can really skip a lot of trash. As long as you're careful about patrols, you really only need to take out about two packs of the seven-ish in the first room, for example. Navigation is a bit complicated in parts of this dungeon, and you can save yourself a lot of time and wiping by watching your map to see where your dungeon party are off to. Oh, and after the first boss, head to the western side of the room. There's a crescent-shaped secret staircase that appears after you've looted the chest. Run down it, and the mobs will most likely give up attacking you and go back to arguing about which clan is the greatest. You can thank me later.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: First look at the new raid instances
YouTube user WazopVids has dropped some of the Mists of Pandaria beta files into a model viewer and recorded the results -- our first look at the Mogu'shan Vaults and the Mantid raid zones. I must stress that these are works in progress and not running in WoW software, so take all of this with a grain of salt. However, what we have seen so far looks pretty damn promising. Check out the Mogu'shan Vaults up above and the Mantid zone after the jump.
