Comments

Comment by Odinn

This is the scepter used to open the gates of Ahn'Qiraj, the "tier 2.5" 40-man raid dungeon from the original 1-60 World of Warcraft.

Comment by 45776

1) What Tomorrow Brings

NPC in Cenarion Hold says "Hey guys I hear there's a dragon who despawns at 20% and says something about it not being his time in Tanaris." You go see Anachronos at the Caverns of Time -- return to CH, tell the NPC.

(Everyone can do this.)

2) Only One May Rise

The Cenarion NPC is excited to hear of the return of the Bronze Dragonflight. Maybe ancient bonds can be reforged and they can again work together against their common enemy. He asks you to prove yourself by killing Broodlord Lashlayer. Bring an army, but because only one may rise, only one can loot the head.

(We did this on 1/3/06 -- I looted the head.)

3) The Path of the Righteous

The Cenarion NPC is impressed that we killed Broodlord. But in order to earn the trust of the Bronze Dragonflight, we must work tirelessly to purge their ancient enemies from Silithus. He sends me to Hive'Ashi, Hive'Zora, and Hive'Regal to kill silithids and return with 200 carapace fragments (quest drops, tradeable).

(I did this -- it took maybe 20-30 minutes of grinding with 8 people in Hive'Ashi. The elites drop 1-3 fragments, or up to 4 in Hive'Regal. Nonelites drop 0 or 1.)

4) The Hand of the Righteous

The reward for Step #3 is a one-use badge that lets me make someone else an Agent of Nozdormu. That gives them a soulbound item like an Argent Dawn Commission that allows them to collect fragments from killing Silithids as well. Deputized people don't have any quest themselves, but they can farm carapaces and give them to me. Every 200 carapaces I turn in lets me name another deputy.

This is a repeatable quest. Every turnin of 200 gives me 200 rep with the Brood of Nozdormu. I start, as we all do, at 0/36000 Hated. Over the course of roughly 60 hours, a small army was mobilized. At the end of the first night, I had 5500 of the needed 42000 reputation. My guild turned out in full force throughout the day on Wednesday to help me farm, and most were deputized in the process. By Wednesday afternoon/evening, I had enough carapaces to begin deputizing outside EJ. Generous people from Nocturn, Quarantine, VXIX, Aftermath, GS, and other guilds offered their time to assist in the effort. The farming continued throughout the day on Thursday, and Aeternus generously gave us their gathered carapaces. The end was near by Thursday afternoon, we cancelled our raid plans, and settled in for the final grind. Just before midnight on Thursday night, I reached Neutral with the Brood of Nozdormu.

5) Anachronos

I was sent to talk to Anachronos, at the Caverns of Time. When I got there, first off, he offered me one of three epic signet rings. Note that all players will automatically get these once they hit Neutral with Nozdormu by doing AQ, which will happen quickly. Next, he told me that since perhaps I was truly ready and able to aid them, I would need to learn the history of what I was about to get myself into. He sent me back to Silithus, to gaze into a fragment of a time crystal left in the sands by the wall. When I clicked it, dozens of spectral night-elves, anubisath, qiraji, and silithids phased in around me. I stepped back. We watched a battle unfold between them, with the dragons Caelastrasz, Merithra, and Arygos (red, green, blue) flying in to lend air support as the silithids were overcome. I then watched a conversation between Anachronos and the night-elf Fandral play out, the walls sealed, and the scepter shattered.

These events are depicted and described at great length here:
http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/underdev/1p9/shiftingsands.html

Comment by 45776

(Continued)

When I returned to Anachronos, he told me that the scepter had been shattered into four, and that four dragons held them. He has one of them. Azuregos, Eranikus, and Vaelastrasz held the other three, and I was to seek them out.

6) The Charge of the Dragonflights (three parallel paths, each which must be completed)

6a) The Blue Flight

I sought out Azuregos, who had, fortunately, happened to spawn right as I was shuttling between Tanaris and Silithus. I begged the assembled forces to wait until I got there to kill him, and they graciously did, and summoned me. (Thanks again, Nerd/Perdition's.) After an unfortunate misclick, I spoke to Azuregos and learned that he had entrusted his shard to a magical minnow. Yes, a fish. He told me of an arcanite buoy that would lure the fish, and gave me instructions on making one.

One problem: They're in draconic. He mentioned that Narain Soothfancy in Tanaris might be able to help me. So off I went.

He explained to me that I needed to fetch for him three things: his book of draconic language, his lost pair of scrying goggles, and a 500-pound chicken. Three parallel quests.

THE GOGGLES -- Last entrusted to a former friend of his who may be in Silverpine near the Greymane wall. I found him, and just like our good friend Finkle, it seems he was casually strolling through Molten Core and lost them. Thanks, guy. I recently recovered them from an Ancient Core Hound.

THE CHICKEN -- series of miniquests to farm chimeraoks on the Isle of Dread for their meat, kill Lord Lakmaeran for his carcass, bring them all to Dirge Quickcleave in Gadgetzan, season them with deeprock salt and goblin rocket fuel, and then return the horrible product to Narain.

THE BOOK -- This is the big one. He said he buried it on an island south of Tanaris. It's on an island beyond fatigue waters, way off the map. Except that when I got there, I just found a ransom note with instructions on where to bring the money in exchange for his book. Ok, so Narain gives me a bag of rocks (fake gold) and a sweet Narain disguise, and a map to the dropoff point, which was at the SE edge of Winterspring at the cliffs looking down upon Azshara. This step was (Elite) so I brought four friends. I go there, wear the disguise, drop the bag, and Dr. Weavil comes puttering in on his flying machine. He lands, comes out, says he sees right through my disguise (hmm, maybe it was the Sulfuras I was holding), and then gets back into his machine, tells "Number Two" to take care of me, and flies off. A huge yeti-gorilla creature comes out. Kind of like a 5-man instance boss, nothing too bad. He dies. We go back to Narain, who tells me that Dr. Weavil lives on Alcaz Island (NE of Dustwallow). So off we go. We bring a small army to the evil doctor's hideout, and beat him to death. I recover from his corpse one chapter of the book, and a diary chronicling his emo rage as he ripped the book into eight pieces and threw seven of them all over the world. One in Tainted Scar, one in Darkwhisper Gorge, one in Onyxia's chimney, one in Molten Core, one in BWL, one in Undercity, and one in Stormwind (!).

After gathering the chapters and assembling the completed manual, I learned of the various precious materials required to craft the buoy. I presented them, and received the buoy.

We took the buoy to a maelstrom in the Bay of Storms in Azshara, and used it, and up swam Maws, a shark of gigantic proportions. Not too tough, but with 1mil hp, frenzies like Magmadar, and an AoE, so it took a little while. From its corpse I retrieved the Blue Scepter Shard. One down, two to go!

Continued...

Comment by 45776

(Continued)

6b) The Green Flight

This was cool. I went to see the sleeping shade of Eranikus in ST. As soon as I entered the room, Malfurion Stormrage phased in between me and the dragon. He told me that Eranikus has been corrupted by the Old Gods and that I needed to cleanse him in order to recover the scepter shard. He sends me to speak with an agent of his outside of Darnassus(!). I did that. The agent sent me to Keeper Remulos in Moonglade. Remulos told me of Eranikus's corruption, and how he wants nothing more than revenge upon Malfurion and upon the Moonglade. He might be lured into a trap, but it would require the recovery of four shards of the corrupted dream, from each of the four dragon portals around the world. Three of them are held by the dragonkin near the portals (raredrops from the dragonkin; they do not drop from the green dragons themselves). The fourth is in Duskwood, which has no trash, but where a demonic Twilight Corruptor awaited me, phasing in as I approached the moonwell there. He was tough (40-man raid mob), but we took him out. The drop rate on the other fragments is awful -- it took 3.5 hours of nonstop farming in Feralas to get that one, and 1.5+ at Hinterlands. Ashenvale has so few dragonkin that it also proved problematic with the new lengthened respawns, but at last we had all four shards.

I brought them back to Keeper Remulos in the Moonglade, and he used them to lay a trap for Eranikus. Eranikus has been in the corrupted Emerald Dream, twisted by the will of the Old Gods, brooding and yearning for revenge against Malfurion and the Cenarion Circle. The fragments were used to open a portal into the heart of the Dream, and Eranikus emerged over the Moonglade lake. With hundreds of people gathered to defend Moonglade (and to watch), an epic battle was waged against dozens of Nightmare Phantasms that emerged from the portal, as Eranikus hovered menacingly in the skies. Aeternus, Aftermath, Advent, LoH, Exordium, and countless others, all turned out to assist us, and I thank them. As the phantasms were defeated, Eranikus landed to do the job himself. He was controlled, and we began to wear him down. As the fight went on, Tyrande arrived from Darnassus (the point of my trip to Darnassus had been to covertly notify her) with a half-dozen Priestesses of the Moon riding white tigers. They healed the army as we continued to rain blows on Eranikus, and Tyrande and Remulos fought against him side-by-side. As he weakened further, Tyrande channelled the powers of Elune in a prayer to redeem the cursed dragon. He thrashed and resisted, but ultimately the light of Elune overcame him. He suddenly ceased fighting. The dragon vanished, and in its place lay a crumpled night-elf on the ground. He stood up and haltingly apologized for all the harm he had wrought, and left to attempt to begin to make amends for his actions. Before leaving, however, he entrusted me with the green scepter shard that Anachronos had given him long ago. I returned it to Anachronos.

Anachronos now holds the blue and green shards, in addition to the bronze one he has kept. Only one remains:

6c) The Red Flight
Vaelastrasz was entrusted with the red shard. Unfortunately, he ran into a bit of trouble. He lay injured and defeated inside Blackwing Lair, having been overpowered and injured by Nefarian. Talking to him, before the fight, he told me that Nefarian had taken the shard, and was seeking to corrupt its power and destroy it. If I wanted it, I was going to have to reach Nefarian and get it back... before it was destroyed.

Comment by drivehappy

For those of you wishing to still open the gates on a newer server, I wrote this short guide. The player level is assumed to be 70, raid experience of half the people in most raids I formed was non-existant. I did the quest line between patch 2.0 and 2.1. This covers the meat of the quests, there are a bunch of 5-10 man quests parallel with these.

If you intend to do this and set everything up yourself these are absolutely neccesary to obtain: UBRS Key, 10+ keyed for Onyxia, MC attunement, BWL attunement, Honored with Hydraxian Waterlords, 8-10 people you can really depend on that will help you out in most of the quests.

Retrieving the Head of Broodlord, half of the BWL group I put together had very little experience with the bosses. We had about 20 for Razorgore, although I've heard you can do it with 9 competant people. For Vael we had 25 with 3 tank rotations as our dps wasn't upto par. The 2 trash pulls afterwards is easy, have 2 druid sleep and tanks can easily grab 2 if they need to. We killed Broodlord with 15, everyone stayed behind the MT on threat, kept the MT alive and it went well. Note: The head apparently drops for everyone that has the quest after 2.1.

Farming reputation with BoN took nearly 12 days of consistent farming with 2-4 in Silithus. You received 500 rep each turnin of 200 carapace fragments. You will need to gain 42,000, or 84 turnins, or 16,800 carapaces. Hive Regal bugs drop an additional carapace (perhaps they are tougher to kill?), they drop 2-3 on average, so you're looking at killing about 7,000 of these.

You then reach the point of doing the 3 Scepter Shard quest lines. For the green line, it took about 5+ of us to effectively farm dragonkin at the 3 dream portals. The Twilight Corrupter at Duskwood was easy to kill with 20, I would assume you could use 10 or even less.

For Eranikus the Tyrant of the Dream in Moonglade I gathered about 25 people. I would suggest you get the same, took us a minute or 2 to kill shades, had a tank pick up Eranikus when he landed - eventually Romulos started tanking and you need to move your heals to him.

Red Scepter Shard, perhaps the hardest part with a pug. You're going to need to farm at least 4 Onyxia Cloaks to clear through BWL. I gathered 35-40 for a full run, a fair number were good players from top guilds, although I still had to fill out the rest of the 10-15 spots with pugs. I had someone prematurely talk to Vael before I started the Red Scepter quest, however, if you are quick enough you can still talk to Vael while he's doing his dialog and accept the quest. We equipped 2 tanks, a druid and a priest with our 4 cloaks. Firemaw is tricky, my OT and I pretty much relied on Paladin FR auras, fire debuffs were stacking around 50. If you have 2 other warriors or druids that are out of los and don't mind taking a shadowflame for the team, have them pick it up if your tanks go down. Ebonroc was a bit tricky with 2 tanks as we had to time taunts around Shadow of Ebonroc and Wing Buffet, if your dps takes it slow and doesn't pull aggro it's easy. Same goes for Flamegor, we got away with 1 hunter on Frenzy.

Comment by drivehappy

(Continued)

Chrommaggus we were lucky and didn't get Time Lapse, we tanked him where Ebonroc is usually faced in the cubby, although we faced him towards the stairs. Had MT healers at the stairs, and dps and other healers/cleansers behind the wall just behind him. Have everyone move out for breaths and HoTs will keep your MT up fairly well. Nefarian we improvised a strat, split the raid into 2 groups as usual, Drakanoids will go down fairly quickly. Around 30 drakanoids down we collapased behind his throne, had the MT, OT, priest and druid with cloaks get ready to pick up Nef. Have paladins and mages ice block in case they get hit by shadowflame, however if you stand behind the throne you will not get hit by it (yes, confirmed to still work as of 2.1). Nearly everyone should be alive for Phase 2 and 3. It's the same strat for Nefarian from here on out. We dropped him with about 20 minutes to spare. Obviously this is a pug and messing up on Vael, the Drakes and Nef can easily kill even level 70's.

Blue Scepter Shard, another pain because of the fact that you need to clear past Firemaw, farm 10 elementium ore, and kill Ragnaros. I would suggest you start clearing MC for reputation with the Hydraxian Waterlords as soon as you can. You only need Honored for Aqual Quitessence, and it's preferrable over Eternal if you only have 1 person with it. This is because Eternal has a 1 hour cooldown, we used 2 summoning groups at Azshara and outside MC to bounce myself back and forth after we cleared the bosses to douse the flames. Domo is straight forward, bring at least 3 mages. We dropped Ragnaros with 20 people just before sons, I don't know if Blizzard changed how the Draconic drops, however I would suggest you place it on Free for All loot with Ragnaros to insure you can loot the draconic. As you clear MC you should find Narain's Scrying Goggles (I would suggest putting it on FFA loot until you receive these). Dr. Weavil is a pain if you don't have 3 tanks, we initially tried it with 12 people and he would always MC the MT or OT. I would suggest for the cleanest kill just gather 20 people and a 3rd tank. You should pickup Onyxia's Draconic while farming scales. From here you need to kill Maws, which I have yet to do, but it should only take 20.

Notes on setting instanced raids up: You will probably need to find pugs for MC and BWL. I would suggest you get at least 8 or so core people you can really depend on that will show up and know exactly what they're doing. You will get people each and everytime that will not be attuned to either. MC attunement is quite easy, I would have one of the guys you know form a seperate party (attunement can no longer be done in a raid), make sure he has the key to the door and run everyone to the core. You can lava hop there and no aggro anything. BWL groups take more time, an hour before a scheduled run I would setup an attunement run in UBRS (you yourself should really get the UBRS key). Clear through Drakk and keep the instance open, and start inviting. Those that aren't attuned can grab the note quest outside, and easily run into the cleared UBRS and complete it.

Comment by drivehappy

(Continued)

Blackwing Technicians will not drop Elementium Ore after they've been killed a first time, we confirmed this over a 2 hour period of multiple pack resets. With a soft reset the goblins don't appear when you come back in until you reset the partial pack again. This appears to confirm that the instance does save the goblins separately and will only drop loot for the first clear. I would suggest you put several runs together before you're on the quest to obtain these beforehand. You can clear the packs in Firemaw's room with at the very minimum 8 people. On average I received 2-3 ores per instance (per week).

Maws was incredibly easy with 14, I imagine you could do it with 5, although it would take quite awhile, nothing to worry about really, maybe keep hunter on frenzy.

As far as the AQ Event is concerned, you can ring the gong once the war effort is complete and 5 days have past from when it has finished, there is no delay on using the Scepter if the war effort has been completed for more than 5 days. You receive the bug mount when you complete Bang a Gong!, which will also open the gates at the same time. This will put a server message stating the invasion has begun, to spur those not there to help.

There will be 3 Hive Lords that you can kill for 2 boe epics and blues. They can punt your entire raid halfway across Silithus, an easy way to kill them is to kite them just inside a tunnel. There are also two minibosses that spawn in Silthus, Pax-lish will drop a blue and is extremely easy to kill. Nokhor, who drops a boe epic, will take at least 4 people. Although you can kite them to CH we had loot issues when the NPCs killed them. Pax-lish will also spawn in Tanaris, they appear to spawn in place of the generals. Nokhor will spawn where the Supreme Anubisaths are, Pax-lish where Greater Anubisaths are. They're on a 15 minute respawn timer, although we saw Nokhor spawn much sooner a few times.

The event will last exactly 10 hours. 9 hours from ringing the gong a server message will go out that the armies are preparing to attack the Silithid. At 9:15 hours they will begin moving south. Around 9:30 hours the battle will begin between the NPCs and Colossal Anubisath Warbringers that will continue to spawn. After 10 hours an NPC will spawn near the gong and you can receive your final epic weapon.

A note if you're going to ring the gong: I would suggest you inform everyone on your server a day or two ahead of time, and try to land it on a day when most can see it. Everyone enjoys it and it really is a lot of fun for everyone across the southern zones on Kalimdor.

Comment by 57001

i would like to know: what epic weapon do u receive from the end NPC? just curious on this because you are the only person anywhere to post about how to do this thing lol. belated gratz on wahtever you got.

Comment by Richiewolk

It is very possible to obtain the Scepter of the Shifting Sands on an older server, and take it to a server where the gates are still closed. At least 4 people did so on december 14th on the Maiev server.

Comment by Arrannin

What is the current state of the AQ Gates?

The official Blizzard pages seem to be not up to date. Are there any EU servers left with open AQ gate?

Comment by 152802

When lich king comes out and they release more servers, will those servers already be released with the gates opened? Or will the gates be closed when the server opens?

Comment by manicdude

who owns this on greymane? just wondering cause my main is in greymane

Comment by adamb10

Shockingly the sceptor has no feat of strength.

Comment by 248538

Agree - I am 4 parts away from my sceptor, it really should be a feat of strength the running about it demands and persistance to finish this.

Comment by 342798

A quick question, if you bang the gong on a server which has the AQ gates already opened, what happens? I know you wont get the mount, but do you get the feat of strength and title? and if not does your scepter disappear?

Comment by 178494

When I have started this chain at level 80 I did plan to transfer to other server to receive title and mount, but due to slow progression at the start I wasn't able to get far enough in the chain to consider moving to other server. Now it's impossible to acquire title and mount, since Blizzard has assured players that all new servers will be with the gates already opened.

Anyway, those people who think that holding the scepter now does acquire for something, get real, please. For non-raid part of the chain, it can be soloed. I've killed Doctor Weavil with a hunter and Twilight Corrupter was soloed by a protection warrior (I was just standing behind the pillar and waiting till the boss is low enough). Onyxia can be killed either in solo or 2 man mode. Ragnaros is soloable, if you're able to kill sons, but with a 2-3 man group whole Molten Core is a walk in the park. BWL is somewhat harder, as you need 3-5 people for Vaelastrasz, but with a warlock and a couple of good geared DKs it's not hard too. Eranikus arriving to Moonglade was 2 manned by protection warrior and me (believe I was discipline then).

All in all, if you have mats for quests beforehand, you can finish the whole chain in 12 hours or so. It doesn't feel epic now, since it requires no effort. Those who have acquired mount and title at level 60, when AQ was introduced into game, sure deserve the achievement. New Scarab Lords have no value in my opinion. You were fast/smart enough to get the title and mount easily, pat yourself on the back. After doing all those quests I see why Blizzard doesn't want new players to get the mount and title.

Comment by 254037

I got the scepter of the shifting sands today, and for me it's epic and worth an achievement.

I love the old Lore, and I'm definatly gonna get Exalted with Brood of Nozdormu on my next run <3

This questline can't be done after patch 3.2.2, when Onyxia will be revamped. It depends if you done the Dragonic Book-parts. If not then you're hopelessly trying to do a quest which is not benefiting you anything

Comment by 272081

Draconic for Dummies dropped for me after doing new Onyxia 10-man. It still drops.

But does anyone know for a fact of any gates being closed on any servers atm?

Comment by wibby50

There IS NOT any server with the gates closed and WILL NOT be any server created with the gates closed.

Comment by outstanding

I wrote to a GM in game and he confirmed that the quest "Bang a gong!" has been removed from the game also.

Comment by 118565

Upon completing this quest chain you now receive a letter in the mail from Narain Soothfancy containing 100 gold.
I'll post the contents of the letter later for those of you who are lore nerds :p

Comment by 345381

Got Scepter of the Shifting Sands on my hunter some days ago. Soloed all parts, except BWL and Onyxia raids. Has spent ~6k gold for Elementium Ores and a lot of time for farming.
I know, I'll never get Scarab Lord title and mount, but I'm happy, because I completed the most epic quest chain in the game.

Comment by GrumpyRook

I just got my Scepter today, and I was happy to finally finish that chain. After months of working on it, even after doing Loremaster, I can say that it was the most difficult thing I've worked on thus far in WoW. I just wish they'd let us ring the gong. It doesn't bother me that we don't get the rewards anymore, but atleast let us hit the gong once :-P

Comment by Anathelia

All arguments of mounts and titles aside...

They should make this an equippable, and enchantable, weapon. That is all.

Comment by Noctemus

The scepter is still obtanaible?

Comment by Lindentree

The Scepter is still obtainable in WotLK, but with the goblin revamp to Azshara, the quest line will most likely be removed in Cataclysm - at least the Blue fragment line, which is necessary for the completion of the Scepter itself. Naturally, this is also the most complicated and expensive part of the line, requiring multiple raid bosses as well as 10 elementium ore (and assorted less-rare mats).

Tl;dr: If you want the scepter, you'd best get it now!

Comment by Moleculor

For anyone curious, when you do the Treasure of the Timeless One quest, it does NOT remove the scepter from your inventory.

No idea about Bang a Gong! though.

It's nice to know that after all that work, the scepter doesn't just vanish into the ether.

Comment by 178494

Some classes might be able to "equip" the scepter by obtaining Hammer of Grief from Maiden of Grief in heroic Halls of Stone. Not only both items share the icon, but they probably share the model too. Still it would be nice to be able to equip the actual reward if only just for showing off in Dalaran. Though quest line is pretty easy now, it was really worth doing it for lore alone. Too bad Atiesh was long gone by the time I've started doing the chain.

Comment by brionl

The whole quest line has been removed in Cataclysm. People on the Beta-test have confirmed that you can't start the chain, and every intermediate quest that has been checked has been removed.

I checked on the 4.0.1 PTR, and the step I was on (The Only Prescription) was still available, so you should be OK until Cataclysm itself goes live.

Act now, while supplies last!

Comment by 667471

As of September 20, 2010 this quest is still doable by a level 60 on a classic account. I did have issues getting the Draconic for Dummies : Chapter VI because it drops off Onyxia which is now a level 80 instance. I opened 3 different tickets and sent an email to the Game Master Department. After only 1 day of waiting, I was awarded Chapter VI. I simply said that it seems a little strange that I have to purchase two expansions and level to 80 in order to complete a level 60 quest.

This is the second time I have done this quest on a level 60. I cheated this time because I ran AQ40 for the rep with Brood; Run in on a level and kill 3 of the first 4 mobs, then run out and you don't have to wait for a reset. Had 5 red crystals drop on my way to 2999/3000 neutral. When I did this back in classic it took forever. I did it this time in less than 2 weeks from start to finish. Hurry up and get your scepter before one of the most memorable questlines is removed forever.

Edit: After getting my Draconic for Dummies: Chapter VI from a GM, I turned the quest in and received the Feat of Strength "Onyxia's Lair (Level 60)".

Comment by 675284

After a couple days you recieve a letter did not see anyone post the contents so here it is

Champion,

The Blue Dragonflight believes that you are fated for greater things than even I could predict.

Despite what some would have you believe our world needs heroes. In your darkest hour, when you face the blight of Kalimdor, recall the epic journies, trails, and tribulations that you undertook for an old gnome and let those memories lift your spirits

Humbly,

Narian Soothfancy

P.S. Sorry about the repair costs

IMO this is one of the best written quest lines in the game. It is a shame it is being removed and a shame that no other quests lines come close to this.

Comment by 579589

the last realm to have closed gates was Borean Tundra. They were opened last year, and now nobody will ever get the scarab lord, or be able to do the scepter quest chains, or enjoy any of this old content ever again.
this sucks Blizzard, and u know it. :(

Comment by Lindentree

Good news everyone! When 4.0.3 hits, anyone who has obtained The Scepter of the Shifting Sands will receive a feat of strength!

Comment by 609114

I just got my sceptre today, some parts of the questline are rather buggy but it's still doable.

I followed in the footsteps of people who did this years ago, when it took a small army of players to complete and the epic item rewards were truly epic. I didn't know about the feat of strength when I started and I knew I wouldn't ever get the title or the mount. I already had Loremaster, but didn't feel like I had really achieved it without completing this. It's a truly great questline.

Good luck if you're still trying to complete it.

Comment by Keiser

Note that after getting your Scepter from Anachronos you're not yet done! Fly over to Silithus and talk to Jonathan the Revelator to complete Treasure of the Timeless One.

Comment by 236839

I just got mine so it is still doable as of right now.

Comment by ElliotHunts

Just obtained my scepter at last a couple of hours before 4.0.3a is set to hit. I'm glad to have been able to complete such a meaningful questline and I congratulate all those who were able to do so til now.

Comment by valarua

There were some rumours about possible removing of the scepter from those, who already owns it.
As for 4.0.3a scepter is still in the pack, even after zoning, moving etc.

Comment by aggr1103

Wasn't there supposed to be a feat of strength for obtaining this?

As of 4.0.3a - still haven't gotten a feat of strength for it.

Edit - sent message to gm and after the reset on 11/30/10, I have the feat of strength!

Comment by 579589

yeah i tried my damnedest to get the whole scepter chain done before cataclysm dropped. i only managed 2 out of 3 shards. i couldnt get enough of the hardened elem together to get it done. so no scepter. /sigh.
this long and epic quest chain will be missed.
it'd be nice if they had some vanilla, or even progressive realms available to those of us that would love to do it that way. do vanilla, open the gates, open the portal, do BC, finish that out, move onto wrath. and never allow ANY transfers to the realm(s). Ever. if only. it would be Epic.

Comment by Gulanga

*Updated*
For those that are interested in the questline but did not get the chance to experience it before Cataclysm took it away, I documented my experience and I'm slowly turning it into a feature video.

~~The Rise of a Champion: The Scepter of the Shifting Sands - Part 1~~
I just barely managed to make it in time before the shattering hit in 4.0.3

The movie is now complete!
Playlist

Comment by Crazyflames

Sucks that it went away, just needed elementium, every raid I went to get it the leader would ninja the elementium. I looked at Blizz's official statement on ninjaing items and found out the way they took the elementium was reportable. I tried reporting them but nothing was done about it of course. WoW seems so much worse now that vanilla is gone, now that this is a feat of strength I really with Blizz would have done something about the ninja looters.

Comment by Bianconeri

Why oh why? IMO they should have kept this chain as something for both Old-schoolers and newer players who wants to experience this majestic quest line and the related lore. I started playing WoW in the fall of 2009 and not doing this quest chain is one of my biggest regrets.

Comment by Mantrhax

Yeah Blizz is replacing the great chain quests of the past with the no brain quest line of the future.

capitalism is a !@#$%

Comment by Hairband

I'm standing here on my lvl 56 looking at this gong. I have at the moment 5 lvl 85 characters and before that I had 6 lvl 80's and 1 lvl 70. I never knew what this gong was for and decided to look it up.

Now after reading all this ^^, I am now thinking how disappointed many players are, with good reason, that Blizzard never stepped up to reclaim this glory from the big patch. I bet most of you people are thinking that nothing as good exists to date as this "opening the gates of AQ40" and now it's gone, what a bunch of fluff has landed in its place.

Kinda sad, I never did it and can't do it now, but all this cutesy meaningless stuff remains. /sigh

Comment by shadowlmd

This item does still exist in the game. Description should be changed from "not available" to "not obtainable", I believe.

Comment by sebas1979

The Scepter of the Shifting Sands still exists in the game of 5.3 but only for the people who completed the quest chain and have it put away in their bank to get alot of dust on it. (like me).

It doesn't do anything it's just an unique item.

They should make it into a white vanity item which you can wear for transmog maybe.

Comment by Palisis

I still have this in bank, hoping one day it becomes transmoggable or a toy. A druid can dream...

Comment by wisedada

If you want to transmog this item, you can find an exact lookalike (it shares the same model, despite Wowhead not saying it).

The weapon you are looking for is Hammer of Grief, dropped by Maiden of Grief in Heroic Halls of Stone.

Sadly, this Hammer being a two-handed mace, not every class-spec will be able to mog it.

Comment by Tamashi

I still have this beauty in my bags, after all those years. :)

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The Scepter of the Shifting Sands

Item Level 25
Binds when picked up
Unique

This item's source is no longer available/removed.

The Scepter of the Shifting Sands

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