Bastion Stair General Info & Maps

The Bastion Stair (public) dungeon is one of the high level dungeons, you'll probably spend some time in. The Bloodlord set, which can be obtained from the bosses, has (like the Annihilator set) lesser wards, that will help inside the city dungeons and in Fortress fights. You best reach the dungeon through the very NE corner in Praag, there is a portal which will take you towards Bastion Stair. The structure is actually located in the Chaos Wastes (far SE corner) where there is a portal as well, but access through Praag is faster from flight point.

The Bastion Stair has an entrace hall where you'll find a bunch of quest givers, a healer and the rally master that will grant rewards from Bastion Stair influence (you gain from doing PQs inside the dungeon). Like in Mount Gunbad you'll need enough influence to enter the private boss instances at the end of each wing - first inf bar for first boss, etc. The lockout (after you kill one of the final wing bosses) for Bastion is 1440 minutes. You can use /lockout to check how much time is left on the instances you got an active lockout. The whole dungeon got a Khorne/Beast/Demon theme.

The Bastion Stair consists of three wings:


# Trail of Carnage
(left portal - mobs 33+)
There are three Public Quests in this wing:
1. Rise of Carnage
2. Bloodherd Labryinth (nice typo Mythic)
3. Trail of Carnage (Arena Challenges)

The final boss in wing 1 is Thar'lgnan (drops Bloodlord boots).
Trail of Carnage MAP v1.0
(with connections and boss spawns)


# Path of Fury
(right portal - mobs 35+)
There are three Public Quests in this wing:
1. Fury's Ascent
2. Halls of Rage
3. Path of Fury

The final boss in wing 2 is Lord Slaurith (drops Bloodlord shoulders).
Path of Fury MAP v1.1
(with connections and boss spawns)



# Steps of Ruin
(stairs straight ahead up - mobs 37+)
There are three Public Quests in this wing:
1. Step of Anger
2. Step of Hatred
3. The Brass Legion

The final boss in wing 3 is Kaarn the Vanquisher (drops Bloodlord helmet).
Steps of Ruin MAP coming soon.

As of patch 1.1a the Bloodlord gloves drop from golden PQ bags inside the dungeon.

There is also a fourth area, called the Rift of Rage, located at the end of the third wing, where the last and fourth boss, Skull Lord Var'Ithrok (drops chest & gloves), can be found. To gain access to the portal to enter the last private instance, you'll need to finish a few quests inside Bastion. The ones you need to finish for attunement are
wing 1: Blood on the Steps (3 part quest), leads to Leashing the Bull (kill wing 1 boss).
wing 3: Infinite Patience (4 part quest), leads to Vanquishing the Skull Lord.

In each wing you can find skulls laying around on the floor, they are named after the wing you picked them up (Skull of Carnage, Skull of Fury and Skull of Ruin). Those skulls can either be placed on pikes found throughout the dungeon - then they might yield a short buff or a curse - or can be placed at the respective skull piles near the entrance hall to spawn another boss called The Collector. Apparently you need around 100 skulls from each wing or something along those lines to spawn him.

NOTE: This post is work in progress and will be completed/updated with maps of the other wings as well as more info. You won't find any spoilers how to kill bosses here tho. It's just to provide some orientation inside the dungeon. If you find any errors (some things i just wrote from memory) please let me know. If you can remember the exact names from the non PQ related boss spawns, leave a note as well.

Update 24/11: Added the rest of the PQs and the map for wing 2.
Update 29/11: Updated the non PQ hero name for wing 2.
Update 13/12: Updated the patch 1.1a info about gloves.

Flipping the Switch

During the last days i switched from cultivating to scavenging on Thulf and moved cultivating over to an alt. One of the best choices i made, it's possible to train scavenging to 200 in about a few hours. It's always hard to lose progress you made, but sometimes it has to be done. Luckily with my knowledge about cultivating i was able to bring my alt up to 120 culti already and the next time I'll watch some TV he'll get to 200 easily, as the hardest part is over. I had some funny encounters while i was running around in full armor grinding low level PQs. Some peeps were really happy i was there to help them finish the PQ and i got a lot of tells what i was doing there. I still think one day i should go back to the starting area and hand out my own quests to new players... would be fun.

Since Mythic finally fixed the last PQ in wing 3 of Bastion Stair we went back to the Skull Lord (final and fourth boss) these days to send him back into the Rift of Rage. It's a fun fight and be it only due to the size of that Lord (check the size of his axe compared to the players). ;) I should take some time and write up for you a few orientation pointers for Bastion Stair, we all can run around there with closed eyes meanwhile. If you do wing 3 first and people got used to the portal jumping its always fun to lead group members towards the exit portal (in the other wings) instead to the boss instance - sometimes they take the bait and use it. I know, it was late. :P During that run i was lucky and got the Bloodlord Sholdaplate, which gives me the two piece set bonus. They look nearly identical to rank 3 white Orc shoulders btw. I was also finally able to get my hands on the Bodyplate of the Bleakest Despair, which eluded me for quite a while due to unlucky PQ bag generation. In addition we visited Bloodwrought Enclave, but i have to say i was quite disappointed as Bastion Stair is more fun and feels more of a challenge - needless to say we could not use a single of the drops in there. One thing that really annoys me is the lackluster high rank dungeon quests. You get these awesome tasks and then the only reward is some XP (it's a rank 40 quest, hello?!?) and there are not even follow-ups. At least should have made those more atmospheric and if nothing else reward some good looking social clothing you can wear while hanging out in the city.

The EU finally got a beta (!) version of the Realm War pages online. I used this fact to create a new info frame for the right navigation with a direct link to my profile. The EURW is still buggy tho... some weird localization errors and other bugs leave room for improvement. It's nice to see Thirst is one of the top three ranked destruction guilds on our server tho. Looking at the sheer amount of members other guilds have, I think we're doing really well. I think they squeezed in some kind of server status page into the leaderboards... but i dunno, overall the realm war pages seem ok, but there is still way to go. I hope we'll see some fixes soon and not in the same time span it took GOA to bring them online.

Tip of the Day: Despite a recent hotfix for the data.myp issue (every crash increased the file size), it seems that one did not fix an already existing large data.myp file. So it might be a good idea to go into your WAR folder and check the size of that file. If it's several gigabyte large (it's supposed to be around 50MB), delete it and tick the "full file check" in the patcher next startup.

Rippa of the Patient One

Due to some group PQ farming and further questing Thulf is rank 34 meanwhile. So finally I'm getting close to being able to play around with all those different tome jewelry sets and their boni, which i can use at 35. If you want to max. out greenskin chapter 18 influence and you're solo, here is a tip for you: Go to Cinderfall and do the Da Drakk Cult PQ. When you kill the Drakk cultists there, they drop keys to the cages. When you open a cage it will yield 300 influence. This speeds up solo grinding quite much... as the drop rate is rather high. If you're alone stage one will yield you around 17k inf quickly.

We manage to run Bastion Stair groups every other day with our guild, so chances are high to get some pieces of the Bloodlord set. I won a blue loot bag from the juggernaut PQ in there and it had a nice tanking shield in it: Gore Flecked Blocka. Unfortunately the bag was bugged and i could not retrieve it, but got coin instead. I know this happened to others getting either nothing or coin while definately selecting the item they want. Annoying. First time something like this happened to me tho. From the influence rewards inside Bastion Stair i gained Rippa of the Patient One, which looks awesome - like a huge butcher blade. The elite influence rewards are, while epic, utterly crap: Willpower & Initiative? Please... I also won my first Defender's Signs from a PQ in wing 3, so now only we need a purpose again for them. Maybe some new good looking trophies? Trophies for my mount! Talking about dungeons, some guildies went to Bloodwrought Enclave recently and one of the tanks got the Sentinel Eadplate, looks cool.

I also managed to obtain the Man Tactic II (Manly Strategy) from the tome tactics. I'd go for the next one, but i hear it's bugged and does not work. And I'm still of the opinion the 50% closer part is bugged as well. Part of this was to get an unlock from an order PQ, which was really funny as i could not see the stage/goal of the PQ, but was able to advance it myself by figuring out what one could do with gunpowder. This was really funny to be in the dark and try to find out what had to be done. ;)
Skill development after rank 33 feels still ok, you have one or another rank when you don't gain anything useful but there is still progress and the mastery tree enables some nice skills as well. My rank 4 morale ability Cant' Touch Us is great for longer boss fights or PQs as it will nearly refill the AP for your group and absorb damage as well. We did put it to good use when we gathered four 32-34 guys and went to do a chapter 20 PQ with mobs around 38 - the last stage was rather hard, but we made it. Challenging fights like that are good fun.

Sneak a Peek from Bastion Stair

I still want to go back to Mount Gunbad and do wing 3 once more. I'm still thinking about if i should create a map from Mount Gunbad as people tend to get lost in there or have no clue which wing they have to go to finish certain tasks. But then again you move on so quickly, is it worth the time invested? Our guild started to run the Bastion Stair dungeon some time ago. Since Thulf is rank 31 now, i was able to tag along...



Like MG the Bastion Stair is a three wing dungeon and mobs rank from 33-40 in there. The dungeon got an influence bar with rewards as well - all suck for my Black Orc tank btw. The whole dungeon got a Khorne/Beast theme and while i think the atmosphere inside Mount Gunbad is more fun - i think Bastion Stair looks "to clean", the devs should have used more different floor/wall tiles - Bastion Stair is good fun nontheless. Some really evil and fun boss fights. The dungeon is the first PvE one that yields item sets with wards on them. I've been inside Bastion Stair two times so far (in wing one and two) and will post more in detail about the dungeon and its rewards etc. when i find the time during the next days.



On a sidenote, Stunty Stomper has been mentioned in the latest LagWAR #13 podcast. I don't listen to podcasts that much, but like to do it every now and then while doing some boring grinding stuff to spice it up. LagWAR is a fun podcast hosted by Brilen (c'mon say pip again!) & Ziss (thanks for the kind words about the blog), check them out at their lagwar.com website.

Tip of the Day: Did you know you do not need to stand right next to a PQ loot chest to grab the bag you won? As long as you can see and interact with the chest you can be far away and use it.