Here's what I've found out so far:

Short Version: Get a million keys, summon 5 man outdoor bosses for drop, use drop to summon new Mana-Tombs boss

Long Version:

Requires Honored (or Revered?)

1. Ethereal guy sends you off to find a prison key. The key is a fairly rare drop from any ethereal near Manaforge Ultris. This item can be looted by everyone in the party
2. Ethereal guy sends you off to get another key and open a prison. Opening the prison will spawn a 70 non-elite that drops a green and an ID card. The ID card is required to complete the quest, but only drops for 1 person (so you have to do this 5 times).
2.5. You can continue turning in ID cards for more rep, but this requires more keys.
3. Ethereal guy sends you off to get 5 keys. It took at least an 1.5 hours of actual played time (not counting the frequent server crashes) just to get 5 for myself. To key an entire group would take substantially longer (there aren't enough mobs in the area to support 5 people anyway). These keys also drop from the Bash'ir Ethereals in Blade's Edge, where there are far more mobs to kill, but the drop rate is still pretty bad.
4. The keys combine to form another key that opens a prison in the upper portions of Blade's Edge Mountains. Opening this prison unleashes a Gronn lord. The quest recommends 5 people, but this guy can be snared, feared, everything, and you can easily 2-man kite him. He occasionally uses a ranged daze and "knock-up", so you probably can't solo him unless you're a warlock chain fearing.
5. Turning in the quest item that drops off the gronn lord unlocks the ability to get an additional 5 keys to summon more "bosses." It also unlocks a quest to obtain a Mark of the Nexus-King, which is supposedly a non-guaranteed drop off of any of the "bosses."
6. Quest text says the mark will allow you to open a statis cell in Mana-Tombs, probably resulting in a new boss in Heroic mode and new loot, haven't gotten this far due to the sheer number of keys this would require.

The Gronn lord "boss" did not drop any loot other than his quest item, but it's possible further summoned "bosses" will drop guaranteed greens/blues.

In addition, there is an altar in the Bash'ir landing area where you can trade Apexis Shards for flasks. The Apexis Shards are a fairly common drop off any of the Ethereals in the area.




Apparently there are more flask types for different "of the..." item types.

The description sounds awfully similar to the Abyssal Council stuff in Silithus, which was actually pretty well designed casual content once they retuned the Abyssal Lords.

I like the "Gruul's Lair" bit of that unstable flask description. I like that a lot.

For some reason I enjoyed the silithus quest when I was doing it with 2-3 other guildies. Killing stuff getting pages and the items to summon elites. Sure the rewards were very interesting but it was still a fun thing to do for awhile.

This time it looks like you can get flasks that will help you in raiding content.

I enjyoed silithus also, it felt like you were doing a lot of goals at the same time grinding/questing in there, they had a high drop rate of runecloth for bandages, good drop rate on hp/mana pots, texts which sold for 1g when I was exalted + green set parts which summoned templars. I would love a similar area with good rewards

Sounds fun.

Copied this from MMO-Champion:

Unstable Flask of the Bandit +20 Agi +40 AP +30 Sta
Unstable Flask of the Beasts +20 Agi +20 Str +30 Sta
Unstable Flask of the Elder +20 Int +8 MP5 +30 Sta
Unstable Flask of the Physician +20 Int +44 Healing +30 Sta
Unstable Flask of the Soldier +20 Crit Rating +20 Str +30 Sta
Unstable Flask of the Sorcerer +20 Int +23 Spl Dmg +30 Sta

I'm not sure how to get the other types, but I assume it's the same, just a different altar.

Those flasks are quite underwhelming, but hopefully the SSC/TK ones are a bit better. Anyone have stats?

The flasks are *meant* to be underwhelming. Flasks are no longer gamebreakingly powerful.

I think you've missed the point of the Flask renovation. It's nice to see that they tailored them towards the Gruul encounter a bit by adding the extra HP.

I thought it was pretty neat in a relative sense.

Crazy idea, but perhaps the thread titled "new flask stats" would be a good read for a few of the posters here

New Flask Stats

I've been poking at this a bit more.

I apologize in advance if I miss any steps required along the way, as far as reputation goes. I am exalted, and I'm not sure if there are certain repeatable quests I didn't notice.

So, a few things.

1) The keys that drop from the Ethereals in Netherstorm have a very low drop rate.

2) Every Ethereal Spawn point, except for the guards surrounding the Nexus Prince, and possibly the other stationary ones in the proving grounds, have a chance to spawn an "Ethereal Jailor" instead. The Jailors have a 100% drop rate of the keys. Considering you need 5 to summon the baddies in BEM, they are amazing for saving time.

3) The bosses summoned in Bash'ir, after the Gronn one, are all equally CC-able. I've fought an Eredar-Lord so far, and a Pit-Lord


4) I'm not so good at eyeing the blues, as far as iLvl evaluation goes, but they seem to be close to ilvl100 or so. I'm probably completely wrong, and would appreciate it if somone smarter than me could math it out A few examples:



5) Killed 4 of the Bash'ir mobs, no quest drop yet /sigh

That shield is rather broken in +healing Oo

Based on the armor, they're ilvl 115, which is the same as the majority of lvl 70 5 man blues.

(Updating as I go, so apologies for the odd format)

Well, after killing a Maulgar lookalike, King Dorfbruiser (seriously), finally got the Mark of the Nexus Kings, or whatever it was. It's a Green drop, that can be looted by anyone in the group. So, not a 'quest item', per se.

Anyways, there had better be more to the follow-up than this:



Alright, that was simple. Just stealthed in. It's directly to the left, in the room after Pandemonius, and an Ambassador pops out, and says, 'There's a being of immense power within these tombs'.

So, you go back to BEM, to the quest giver, and he says "Yay, here's some gold, and some badges, I don't want to put you in harms way, and you used the key, so you should probably just stop now" (more or less)

After completing the quest, for me he had 3 quests. One was the repeatable quest to turn in 5 keys, to summon a Bash'ir boss. The second was for "The second stasis chamber, should you choose to do so!", and it required another Mark of the Nexus-Kings (boo). Then the 3rd one, and I'm assuming this is for being exalted, was a simple reward quest, no objectives. And it gave me this:



You can stealth to the end, where the Stasis capsule thingie is, and I needed to Soothe Beast the Mana Feeders that path right on top of it, and you get put into combat the instant you unlock the Stasis Globe, but, here's the new boss! Yor, <Void Hound of Shaffar>



He hit really weak, 1k or so on me in caster form in kitty gear, but the mana feeders swarmed me before I could see any specials. I'll try and get a crack-team in there tonight, take him out.

Thanks for reading! Looks like fun stuff for casual 5-man play, and for those sitting outside of TK25, waiting for an invite

A 2 headed dog for BC, this patch will indeed complete the expansion. Quality posts Hakle. Curious about that stasis key though, anything more about it, or just some simple quests? :o

So are you saying that if you're already exalted, you can skip a bunch of the gathering quest and get the cell key right away? Looks like that rep grind was useful after all. Now if they could just fix the gem mailings.

Oh if he frenzies it will be oh so sweet

If you are on the PvE Test realm send Fiziil a tell for Heroic Mana Tombs, I am totally up for trying that new boss

I looted these from a mob on Bash'irs landing just now. Looks interesting to say the least!

Whoah, from a regular mob, or from a summoned one?

And WTF @ that 'socket bonus'? More info on the Use: effect when you get it please!