Magisters' Terrace Walkthrough

Yesterday I was able to get my warrior copied over to the PTR. I proceeded to head up to the new 5 man instance, Magisters' Terrace, and see what it was all about. Its a pretty cool place over all. It feels a lot like the Blood Elf city, and has a couple cool encounters. Including Kalecgos!

Of course to get to the Terrace you first have to have your character copied over to the PTR. For a little while, Blizzard was letting new people through. But lately it seems that the PTR character copy queue is again backed up.

Take a look after the break for lots of pictures of the place, a good walk through, and my first impressions of each boss fight.

First thing first, you need to find the entrance. You can see the entrance pictured above. It's located up the eastern ramp to the terrace, and you can see the map location on the right. Simple enough. One thing to watch out for is horrible lag. When I first got there about a hundred people or so were standing around. And of course, anyone that could spit off some AoE was doing so. Even with my newly updated Mac OS 10.5.2 graphics, it still was pretty bad. And God help you if you're on the PvP server.

Another important thing to note is that there is no summoning stone. I don't know if this is an oversight by Blizzard, intentional, or part of the "unlocking of the Sunwell Isle" that the server participates in by turning in all those daily quests. Either way, there is no stone there for us to use right now.

The first sight you're greeted with in the Terrace is a large statue of Kael'Thas, and some entrances like those found in Silvermoon City. Neat looking. Traveling around the entrance (bonus points to the person who leaves a comment telling me what this type of entrance is called... I know I've heard a name for it before) you'll find a few mobs waiting for you.

They can be taken care of easily enough. In fact, nothing in the instance was terribly difficult in normal mode. Of course, it might have been because the group was mostly T6 equipped. I was the least equipped with a full compliment of T5 on. However even then, it all was quite manageable.

Making our way through the trash, we reach the first boss: Selin Fireheart. He's a push over. Tank and spank him near the big crystals, and when he starts to beam the crystals, kill the crystals. Just like Warlord Kalithresh in Steamvaults.

Once you kill him a side door opens up into the next room, with....more trash!

The image above is what the trash looks like. It's a TON of little mana worms. We pulled the whole room in one quick swoop, and managed to get them down. I was a warrior, so I didn't have too many AoE tanking abilities at my disposal. A pally tank here will shine. When you finish the trash, the boss is in the back.

The second boss is named Vexallus. He has a lot of similarities to the Curator in Kara. He puts out a few adds, kill the adds, and then kill him. That's pretty much it.

After you've finished off Vexallus, you get a change of scenery and travel outside of the Terrace. The first thing you'll see is a scrying orb, pictured above.

Active it and you'll be treated to an animation of the Blue Dragon Kalecgos flying down, landing, and then morphing into his human form. Pretty cool.

You can talk to him, but I have yet to find anything he says or does that is useful. I suspect this could be part of a quest chain, however.

While you're outside, take a close look at the building off in the distance. That's the new 25 man raid instance, Sunwell Plateau. Much like Blood Furnace in Hellfire Peninsula where you could see Mags hanging out, so can you see Sunwell Plateau in Magisters' Terrace. But that's another instance, and for now, continue on around the outdoor garden and into the next door for more trash.

Clear the trash until you get to the bosses pictured above. A word of warning on the trash – there tends to be more mobs to deal with here then elsewhere. Be careful and make sure that the tank has at least a little agro on all the targets, and that things don't get out of hand. This boss fight is another one of those "cluster up and kill" fights. These fights have other names for them, but I'll leave that for your imagination. You're presented with several weak 70ish elite targets, and you have to kill them all. Again, a pally tank would shine here in their AoE tanking abilities, but I was able to pull it off just dandy on my warrior.

After you've finished with the boss roundup, move forward into the next room and wipe out the trash that's there. Not too challenging. But look at who's made an appearance. Kael'Thas himself. Albeit he's a tad broken.

This brings us to the final fight of the instance. You need to kill Kael'Thas. As I've talked about before, my guild is currently working on Kael. We're getting close to downing him. I know that at the end of the fight he really doesn't die, but still... I would have much preferred to defeat him for the first time in The Eye. Oh well.

The fight is actually rather interesting. He spawns eggs, and does a gravity lapse; just like he does in the 25 man raid instance. The whole encounter feels a like an easier version of the 25 man fight, and we were able to get it down in one shot. When the eggs spawn, kill the eggs. When he gravity lapses, get away from everyone and range him down. Of particular note is his gravity lapse. It would be a good idea for guilds currently working on him to go in and do this fight on the PTR, so they can get a feel for what flying around the room is like.

Over all Magisters' Terrace is a very cool instance. It has a lot of boss fights that have certain aspects to them the casual player has yet to see. This can only be good, and is another indicator that Blizzard wants to make content more accessible to all types of players.

I can't help but notice too that the instance feels very polished and well designed. It wasn't hard to one shot the place the first try, if only because there weren't any strange tricks or turns we had to make. Blizzard has been at designing instances for a long time now, and Magisters' Terrace really shows off that they know what they're doing.

If you have had the opportunity to walk about the terrace, what are your opinions? And if you haven't... get on the PTR and try it out!

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