quel-delar
Latest
The ups and downs of the Battered Hilt
Yesterday, Bornakk said clearly that the Battered Hilt drop that starts the Quel'delar questline was dropping at the right rate, which is much less than when the patch first hit. And then of course, in last night's fixes, they went ahead and increased the drop rate anyway. He also claimed there were no plans to make it BoP, but who knows what'll happen in the future? For now, however, you can still buy and sell the quest item for quite a bit of gold. We'll have to see where the price eventually ends up -- on the staff here, we've seen anything from 8,000g to over 23,000g, and Twitter tells us that people are paying an average of around 12k or so, going up to as high as 30k (or even shady real money offers in online classified ads). Our own Matt Low has actually seen the drop three different times, and lost every roll. It drops off of any of the mobs in the Heroic versions of the Frozen Halls 5-mans, and as Bornakk says, any class can use it to come up with a pretty solid weapon, so the competition will probably keep the price high, depending on where the drop rate ends up. The silver lining, if you really want one, have terrible luck, and don't ever expect to have all that money, is that the price will probably go down eventually. Bornakk says that as people move up into Icecrown and start picking up weapons that are even better than the sister blade, demand is likely to drop off a bit. But he also says that Blizzard does want this to be a special and relatively rare item, so you'll still have to probably either be lucky or ready to grind it out. Good luck -- I'm out there searching for one with you.
In-game fixes for December 15th
Another day, another round of in-game hotfixes. This time the most interesting one of the bunch is the increase in Battered Hilt drop rate (the Battered Hilt leads to the Quel'Delar). Of course it could mean that the hilt drop rate was increased from 0.001% to 0.01%, but hey, at least that's one whole decimal place! Please note however that we don't know what the actual drop rate was nor what it is now. All we know that it's very low. In actuality, one could surmise that the drop rate was increased to combat some of the outrageous prices that we're seeing on the AH. 20,000 gold or more for a weapon that will be outdated in less than a year is a bit much. Quel'Delar in now unique equip. Naxxramas can now be cleared in any order for the Immortal and Undying achievements. The drop rate for the Battered Hilt has been increased. The Skeletal Slave in the Pit of Saron has had the ability to drop the Battered Hilt and other random drop epics removed. The entire list of in-game hotfixes from the past seven days after the break.
Know Your Lore: Quel'delar, the Sister Blade
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.
Patch 3.3: Quel'delar caster mace hastened
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. 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.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Quel'delar weapons revealed [Updated]
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! 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.
The Queue: Tooth explosion
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?"
The Queue: Spider Pig
Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky be your host today. Today's listening music for the Queue is Spider Pig. Don't ask why. It just is. We answer a few good question today, so read on for the discussion. Also, don't forget to leave your questions in the comments or tweet them to @wowinsider. If we don't answer your question keep asking, we'll eventually get to it. Good times! On with the show... Psiwave asks... "Do you think Cataclysm is really just a sneaky way to release WoW2 without us noticing? A full talent rework for classes, a rebuild of the world for all levels of play and a reworking of stat allocation to name but a few changes. I get the feeling that Cataclysm will play more like a sequel than an expansion."
Blizzard posts Quel'delar preview
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. 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.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Behold Quel'Delar
If you remember back to our Quel'Delar post (I know it was a different world back then) here's the sword itself, according to World of Raids. The sword definitely appears to bear a certain kinship to Quel'Serrar in terms of its appearance. We've also had reports in the comments that the Quel'Delar quest chain involves the Sunwell in some way - picking up where patch 2.4 left off, perhaps? The more we learn about this sword, the more interesting it becomes. Is it a trick of the Lich King? The famous Runeblade left behind by the Sunstrider dynasty? As of yet, all we have are tantalizing glimpses. I personally hope to get to see more soon.
Patch 3.3 PTR: Quel'Delar and the new Icecrown instance
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.
