Kara - Chess Event

Last time I blogged a bit about Kara bosses I touched on the Chess Event and I mentioned I’d cover the that and perhaps Prince Malchezzar. Well here ya go.

Chess is easy peasy. After you leave the Shade’s room you go down the ramp then up to the left. Your locks need to pop Detect Invis on everyone (locks, get in the habit of doing so without being asked – you’ll find it’s a huge time saver) and your tank will mark up the first of two, 4-mob pulls. These are ghosts, without DI you’ll risk losing LOS on them in the middle of combat unless they are hitting you.

Clear these mobs, then the ones that follow them – pick up the books lying around and move on up the next ramp at the far end of the room. More ghosts here, and once cleared you’re gonna see a new mob – they look like the dudes up in Netherstorm and they are linked to Netherspite, who is actually very close to you now.

These guys can be taken one at a time – there aren’t too many here and they have an agil debuff, but they go down easy enough.

Moving through this room and down the right side ramp (up the left side one leads to Nether) and you’ll have one final room to clear before heading down into a room with a repair guy. You need friendly rep with the Violet Eye to use him, and he also sells reagents – so get em while you can!

After topping off you go through the double doors and down a small ramp into the Gamesman’s Hall – where you see a large chess board and two sets of chess pieces – horde and alliance.

Your side is whatever faction you are aligned with – makes sense eh? Since I’m an alliance player I head to the right side and pick a piece to stand behind. You get the option here of Elemental (rook), Horse (knight) Healer (bishop), Mage (queen), King Lane (King) or one of the pawns. The pieces move as one would expect with some slight cheating as compared to real chess. Once someone talks to the King all players can then talk to their piece and you ‘enter’ them as a player. This means you are now controlling a chess piece on the board and you have a ‘pet bar’ your action bar icons should now reflect a few new choices (check the lower left side of the screen where your attack button and your hot bar items 1-4 are located).

Knights can move I think 3 spaces, everything else is limited to 1 at a time. You’ll want someone to move the pawn in front of the king so he can get out on the board – everyone else should be able to make their own way.The way to win is to kill the king on the opposing team, some folks try to take down the casters or healers first – I’ve done both and have never lost at chess. Seriously, if you lose at chess then you need to rework your strategy because it’s simply the easiest epics you’ll ever get.

Once you win DO NOT, under any circumstances, talk to anyone in the room – not Medivh or the chess pieces. If you do you’ll place a silence debuff on the raid that lasts a very long time. You can let your raid leader or loot master open the chest at the end of the hall, let them dish the goods then everyone takes a turn opening it for their badges – Free Lootz.

Once done gather on the center of the chess board. I’ll take you up to Prince then we’ll halt for the day – but in reality – you’d want to drive on to Prince and clear that fight, if you can.

At the far end of the hall is a double stair similar to the one you entered through, there are a total of 5 mobs in there, have your MT pull the single pat back to the board – you all DPS him down – MT and OT get the next two, same drill, then you all move on up and into the room they were in to pull the last two from what should be the right side, as you entered the room.

Once cleared there’s a spiral stairs leading up – your choice here – the raid goes all the way up, hugging the inside of the stairs to avoid the hidden mob that’s near the door on one of the landings OR

To be completely safe you can have your tank run up the stairs a bit and get that mob and bring him all the way down into the main room so you can work with some space.

If you elected to pull the odd add, you can stand at the top of the stairs and let your tank take the guy at the very top while you do stand-off attacks, or you can have the tank take him in the top central room and the raid can bum-rush him. Your call, if you didn’t kill the extra add then you have to bring the entire raid into the top room or you’ll pull the loner from below.

Once they are down/bypassed go out the next hall and stop by the door. Your opponent is now Prince Malchezzar – and he’s tied with Nightbane as the hardest boss in Kara.