Free WoW Guide: Dire Maul

Dire Maul isnt really a raid since its only for a single 5 man group but because it is balanced for level 60s, you still need to use solid raidesque tactics to win. There are 3 wings to DM each with a different plot/purpose.

North Wing

The north wing has one obvious plot and one seKreT plot. The obvious plot is that you go in, kill the ogres and eventually reach and kill the king. Its pretty straightforward and there is a lot of nice loot to be picked up along the way. Once you kill the king you can talk to the NPC that spawns and become king yourself and the instance turns green to you.

The less obvious plot is that if you keep all the named bosses alive (3 guards, the guard captain, the observer that tries to help the king and the drunk) then when you finally kill the king you will get a lot of Tribute in a chest. The more named you kept alive, the more and better tribute you get.

It is fairly simple to achieve this seKreT goal. The first guard is in the sunken area right after you zone in. Just go around that area the long way and you will avoid him. The second guard patrols back and forth across a chest. Wait until he paths off and loot the key from the chest. Then time his pathing and sneak by and open the door and advance deeper. The third guard can be trapped by fixing the ice trap but you can also just let him path off and run past him.

The real challenge comes when you reach the Captain who blocks your way. You can either complete the goblins quest down below and make an Ogre suit (and talk to him which sends him off running to fight Fengus) or you can train past him to the steps to the king, out of range of the pack of dogs, and die there. Resurrect with a shaman or a stoned priest and go on.

Finally, you engage the king. The Observer jumps in and will heal the king. So you need to offtank him or freeze trap him and keep him busy. Once the king is dead, the observer stops attacking and will apologize to you when you speak to him. At this point you can talk to the NPC that spawns, become king and gain tribute from them. All of the ogres will not attack you, and you cannot attack them, while you are king. You can run out of the zone (which causes you to lose the king buff) and come right back in and kill all of the named for even more loot. Since many of the monsters have not respawned yet you can make off with double the loot that way.

West Wing

The west wing has an entirely different plot and mobs. There are walking treants.. there are mana elementals.. there are undead.. It is a lot of fun. The overall basic plot here is to fight through and kill all the mana elementals around the 6 different mana nodes which causes the nodes to stop working. Ultimately you will reach The Prince and engage him. That is a challenging fight for a group so you need to be on your toes. It is a lot of fun. There are roaming invisible spirit guards that will pop out at different times and have fairly fast respawn times so be aware of those. There are also some roaming eyes similar to what you faced in Stratholme so kill them fast lest they call out and summon in reinforcements.

East Wing

The east wing is most often used for two things. First is to get the Crescent Key which lets you open the door to the North and West wing. The second is to farm misc bosses (as there are quite a few and they arent hard to get to) for their possible random book drops. All of the bosses across the wings can randomly drop different class books. Those books can be taken to the library in DM and turned in for a nice trinket for your class. The east wing is often used for major book farming.

The Arena

In the middle of Dire Maul is an old arena. When you drop down into the arena you are PvP+ but not only to the opposite faction but to EVERYONE. Your own faction can kill you. The only people that cant kill you is your own group. Everyone else can. Randomly spawning in the arena are some named. When killed they drop random world loot. In general its not uber stuff but they can drop the Orb of Deception so that is nice. When he is up shouts are made that can be heard in the instances. When he is being engaged shouts are made. There is no such thing as stealthly attacking him. When you attack, everyone will know.

Hint: Black Lotus (a bind on pickup rare herbalism ingredient for nice potions like Flash of Titans) can spawn in the area around the arena sometimes under other herb spawns. This is also a great spot for Purple Lotus.