Hayword’s Fashion Farming Gauntlet, and tricks for optimizing raids
You can obviously go in any order you want, and this is by no means an exhaustive guide for maximizing your efficiency. But, I have learned some stuff along the way that is very helpful to know. I have only been running most of my “gauntlet” as Horde, so your mileage may vary.
Eastern Kingdoms – Vanilla & Cataclysm
Go to faction capital city (Orgrimmar/Stormwind) and take Cataclysm portal to Twilight Highlands. Fly to Bastion of Twilight (BoT) and complete raid. If on Normal difficulty, you can run out and fly from Bastion of Twilight to Blackrock Mountain and complete its three raids. If on Heroic difficulty, you have to hearth out after killing Sinestra. As horde, just go back to Twilight Highlands and fly to the mountain. As alliance, just fly directly from Stormwind.
Blackrock Mountain
Start with Blackwing Lair (BWL) and Molten Core (MC), then run Blackwing Depths (BWD) because you have to teleport out of the end of the instance. There’s no challenging fight mechanic issues here. Everything should die by your breathing on them. As a shaman, I sometimes just auto attack from ghost wolf so I don’t lose my speed buff.
Kalimdor – Vanilla, Cataclysm, and maybe Battle for Azeroth
Go to your faction capital city (Orgrimmar/Stormwind) and take the Cataclysm portal to Mount Hyjal. Run both Normal and Heroic difficulties for Firelands (FL). Horde players go back to Orgrimmar and fly to Dustwallow Marsh to run Onyxia’s Lair (OL). Alliance players should probably fly from Mount Hyjal to Dustwallow Marsh via dragon riding. After you run OL, fly to Tanaris to Caverns of Time. There’s also a portal to Caverns of Time in your capital city if you skip OL.
Caverns of Time
Run Dragon Soul (DS) first, followed by Battle for Mount Hyjal (BMH). The only challenge in Dragon Soul is the Spine of Deathwing. You have to pop 3 of the tentacles and kill all but one Hideous Amalgamation. As Corrupted Blood comes out, kill it with single target and then run the Amalgamation over the puddle to collect 9 stacks of a debuff. When it’s ready to detonate, kill the Amalgamation right next to an armor plate to reveal and kill the Armor Breach. Make sure to turn off an reflective damage for this fight (ex: Lightning Shield).
To exit Battle for Mount Hyjal, you can teleport or jump off the nearby cliff repeatedly until you die. I prefer teleporting and getting back to my capital city to just take the portal to Uldum for the next phase of Kalimdor farming.
Uldum
Uldum has Throne of the Four Winds (TOFW) and every other week has Ny’alotha (NYL). I like running NYL only every other week because I can’t be bothered to fix my phasing in Pandaria. It’s also really fast to unlock BFA appearances, so you can quickly unlock a lot of it. After Uldum raids are complete, head to Silithus to run the Ahn’Qiraj raids. I have not tested these raids because I think the armor is a tad outdated.
Outlands – The Burning Crusade
Technically, you already started farming Burning Crusade (TBC) in Battle for Mount Hyjal in Kalimdor as part of your Caverns of Time farm. But once you are in Outlands via the Shattrath portal in your main faction city, I like to start in Black Temple (BT).
Black Temple
BT is pretty linear for the first three bosses, but then you have some choice. I just like to turn right, killing in the following order: Shade of Akama, Teron Gorefiend, Reliquary of Souls, and then Gurtogg Bloodboil. Then it goes back to linear for the last three bosses. Don’t forget to talk to Akama once after the Illidari Council and another time to start Illidan. I literally forget every time and have to turn around halfway up the ramp after council. I recommend teleporting out of BT. While it might not be the absolute fastest, if you utilize the faction city teleport cloak, it’s really easy to go there and then take the Shattrath portal.
Magtheridon’s Lair and Serpentshrine Cavern
From Shattrath, I knock out Magtheridon’s Lair (ML) and then head to Serpentshrine Cavern (SSC). SSC is very straightforward. You can fish up The Lurker Below with any level of fishing, but the lower your level the more casts it might take (it took me about 10-15 in a recent try). A class that can quickly traverse water (shaman, death knight, DH) can actually exit SSC very quickly via this pipe. You will need to slow fall from the top, so make sure you have a parasol ready.
Gruul’s Lair, The Eye (Tempest Keep), Sunwell Plateau
After finishing SSC, it’s on to Gruul’s Lair and The Eye (Tempest Keep – TK) and you’re all done with Outlands. To wrap up Burning Crusade, you can make your way back to Shattrath and grab the portal to Isle of Quel’Dalas to run Sunwell Plateau (SP). I haven’t been farming SP because I’m not a big fan of the items there.
