Not having a summoning service was seriously inconvenient.
Players who had never experienced one had no idea how addictive it was. Once you got used to being summoned straight to a dungeon, running there on your own two legs felt miserable.
Gabryell was suffering from summon-service withdrawal. At the moment, he was probably the only player in the game who genuinely wished those services already existed.
Of course, at this stage of World of Warcraft, trying to run a proper summon network would be a losing business. Since Gabryell was not short on gold, he gave up on the idea of starting one this early. No summoning service was fine too. It let everyone experience the most authentic version of World of Warcraft.
Without one, he could only travel by himself.
He took a gryphon to Nijel's Point, did not stop there, mounted up, and headed straight for Maraudon.
"I formally protest," Gabryell thought. "Give Shadowprey Village to the Alliance and Nijel's Point to the Horde."
Unfortunately, Blizzard would never hear his complaint.
In Vanilla, Horde travel was more convenient than Alliance travel. That was simply a fact, and there was no changing it.
He avoided the leveling players along the way and arrived at Maraudon. Fortunately, most people were busy questing right now, so the dungeon entrance was not crowded. Fewer players meant fewer Horde, and he safely entered without dying once, making it all the way to the purple entrance.
At this stage, players running Maraudon mostly preferred the orange entrance. The purple side was deserted, without a single person in sight.
Perfect.
No one around meant no trouble.
Gabryell entered the dungeon and began his first solo Maraudon run since his rebirth.
The purple entrance plus waterfall route had around 160 to 165 mobs, with roughly 630,000 total health between them. At level 48, Gabryell was not ready to farm the combined route yet. For now, he could only solo the purple entrance.
The purple entrance alone had around eighty to ninety mobs, mostly imps, so the experience was much lower than the full purple entrance plus waterfall route.
Even so, for a level 48 character, it was still better than the Zul'Farrak graveyard. Each run gave more than 20,000 experience at minimum. As long as he did not wipe, he could gain a level in a little over two hours.
The purple entrance route was different from the full route. He had to start the pull from the entrance, then move to the platform near the Poison Falls cave entrance in front of Lord Vyletongue, jump down, and pull the mobs back. After that, the kill method was basically the same as the purple entrance plus waterfall route.
"Starting from the entrance looks harder," Gabryell thought, "but it really isn't. The purple entrance has fewer mobs than the full route, and there are fewer places where the pull can go wrong. Once you're familiar with it, the difficulty is only about half."
In the later Classic era, he had also started by practicing the purple entrance route. It was the entry-level version of Maraudon solo farming. Only after mastering it could a Mage challenge the purple entrance plus waterfall route.
He went around the four patrolling imps at the entrance and reached the left-side corner where he could jump down, then waited for the patrolling treant below to come over.
Gabryell drank a Nature Protection Potion and a Shadow Protection Potion.
At level 48, his Dampen Magic and resistances were not enough. Without those two potions, wiping would be far too easy.
A level 48 Mage could put three points into Magic Absorption. It was not as strong as maxing the talent, but combined with Mana Jade, Mana Citrine, a Superior Mana Potion, and Evocation, it was enough to AoE the entire pull down at the end.
After casting Ice Barrier, he tagged the patrolling treant below with Rank 1 Frostbolt, then dropped Rank 1 Blizzard on the nearby satyr-and-imp pack, pulling them all toward him.
He turned around and cast another Rank 1 Blizzard at max range, just barely clipping the pack at the top of the slope. Then he turned his camera back toward the direction the mobs would come from and waited.
The mobs on the other side of the bridge would be pulled along by the first pack, so he did not need to worry about them. He only needed to cast Rank 1 Blizzard when the first mob crossed the bridge and reached the two satyrs ahead, slowing everything together.
As the mobs came up the slope toward him, he placed the next Blizzard at the corner in front of him, slowing their approach and forcing them to clump as tightly as possible. That cast also pulled the four patrolling imps near the entrance into combat.
Blizzard without the later delay felt incredible.
The spell responded cleanly. The timing was smooth. The whole pull became at least thirty percent easier.
"Mages in later Classic would cry if they saw Blizzard working like this."
As a Mage, Gabryell had every right to say that. The delayed Blizzard in later Classic had been one of the biggest nerfs to Mage solo farming.
Once the mobs got close, he immediately jumped down.
Maraudon's satyrs could root, and the treants could knock players down. If he misjudged the distance and got clipped, even Ice Block might not save him from a wipe.
Next came the standard procedure for solo farming Maraudon's purple entrance.
After jumping down, he passed under the bridge, reached the first fork, and went left.
He ran all the way to the end, used Rank 1 Frostbolt to tag the treants on both sides, then used Rank 1 Arcane Explosion to grab the two in the middle. After that, he ran back out, slowing the satyr pack along the way.
When he returned to the fork, the mobs he had pulled earlier were arriving right on time.
He did not stop.
He kept running forward.
For mobs that were too far away, he used Rank 1 Fire Blast and Counterspell to tag them. For mobs blocking his path at close range, he used Rank 1 Cone of Cold to slow them.
"Hold up. Are you actually soloing Maraudon?"
Carlos glanced back and froze when he saw Gabryell's screen.
Gabryell had already pulled all the mobs near Lord Vyletongue and was running back. When he reached the hollowed tree halfway along the route, he used Frostbolt and Blizzard to pull the mobs inside as well.
Because he had started the pull from the entrance, the path ahead was already clear. He reached the platform, calmly turned around, dropped Blizzard to slow everything, gathered the mobs tighter, and then jumped down.
"That many mobs?" Igor was drawn over by the commotion, took one look, and stopped dead. "How are you supposed to AoE all of that?"
Hugo could never sit still. He leaned over too and nearly bit his tongue.
"Dude, that has to be almost a hundred mobs. Are you just going to kite in circles until they die?"
Gabryell kept moving without missing a beat and laughed.
"Of course not. If I did that, who knows how long this would take?"
"Then how are you killing them?"
Carlos really could not imagine it. This was not the Zul'Farrak graveyard. There were too many ranged imps here. Regular Blizzard kiting should not work.
"You'll see in a second."
Gabryell smiled mysteriously.
"Terrain bug. Found it by accident. I'm testing whether it works here."
Of course, he could not admit he already knew it worked. Keeping it vague made the whole thing sound like an experiment.
"What if it doesn't work?" Carlos asked.
"Then I corpse run," Gabryell said. "What else?"
Carlos thought about it and realized he was right.
Dying did not make your gear drop. At most, he would just have to run back to his corpse.
Gabryell reached the pillar safe spot for solo farming Maraudon and waited for the main pack to arrive.
The mobs came.
He dropped Blizzard at the corner to slow them, while Carlos, Igor, and Hugo stared at the screen, waiting to see how he planned to kill the entire pull.
Gabryell opened with Rank 1 Blizzard.
Then another Rank 1 Blizzard.
He tried to let every cast run its full duration.
"I really miss the 5-piece Tier 2 bonus," he thought. "With that, you wouldn't even need to hop the platform to AoE all of this down."
The Mage Tier 2 set, Netherwind Regalia, increased Blizzard's radius by 25%. With that bonus, Blizzard could cover the full circle. It was a must-have set for serious solo-farming Mages.
Gabryell stepped slightly inward to break line of sight and force the imps to move up, then continued casting Blizzard, AoEing them together with the rest of the pack.
"You're dead," Hugo said, barely able to keep watching.
In his eyes, Gabryell was about to get flattened in the next second.
The corner of Gabryell's mouth lifted.
He calmly moved onto the pillar on the right.
Then something miraculous happened.
The mobs that had been closing in on him all turned around and started walking back.
"Wait, that works?"
"What the hell is this pathing?"
"Bro, you're insane."
The three of them stared at the screen, completely speechless, as Gabryell started casting Blizzard again.
By abusing the pillar's pathing, he dragged the entire pack back and forth without letting them touch him.
"Damn," Carlos muttered. "You can actually play the game like this?"
That was the only thought running through all three of their minds.
Watching Gabryell break the dungeon open in front of them, they had no choice but to admit it.
His understanding of the game was on another level.