I've completed this 3 times this week with my level 43 priest (all shadow). The first group, we had a pally who helped with the healing. The last 2 groups, I was the only healer in the group. In addition to the already excellent comments regarding going PvP, etc, I think there are a couple of things you need to do to succeed.

Our last group had two level 50 warriors, a 49 hunter, a 47 lock and me.

1st - Gather everybody b4 you start to buff. Fort buff and shadow resist should be recast on everybody in the group. Everybody stay at or very near the TOP of the stairs UNTIL Bly and his crew start moving down. No need to move down until then. Let the mobs come to you. The main benefit to the priest is that everybody stays in your LOS (line of sight) so you can heal. I mention those 2 things in my groups. Stay at the TOP and in my LOS, that is, IF you wanna be healed, hehe.

2nd - Use your spells wisely. I primarily use Flash Heal, PW:S and Renew. Using that as a combo is enough to get a tank through for a few seconds while you help somebody else. Flash Heal is my primary healing spell. It heals enough without generating huge amounts of agro. (I've also started using Prayer of Healing more when you notice that everybody is down about the same amount of health. Works pretty well.) Also, bounce your heals around. Don't heal the same toon 5 times in a row unless absolutely necessary. Doing that will certainly bring the agro on you.

3rd - you have to take the opportunity in between waves to mana up. Let your mana build up completely before jumping back to your feet. Your tank(s) (hehe, had 2 warriors to heal in the last group), health can get down to 80-75% b4 you start to heal. In fact, I've found it's better to not start healing right away. It conserves mana AND doesn't start building up agro points against you right away. Let your tank take some damage. That's what he's made for. I think we may have even ended a couple of the waves with me almost out of mana and the tanks at 50-60% health. A great opportunity for 1st aid.

4th - you have to use your Fade as it was intended. At this point, I always let a mob HIT ME&nbsp b4 I activate Fade (of course, having Inner Fire active goes without saying). That may not be true in the future, but for now it works great. 95% of the time, when I use Fade, I LOSE the agro and don't get it back again until AFTER Fade has cooled down. If I don't lose the agro, I shield, call for help and cast renew on myself. Then, I keep healing and trust that help will come. It usually does. Remember, in the same measure that you want the tank to HAVE the agro, the tank wants you to be FREE of agro so you can continue to heal.

Lastly, and this should be understood, if you're a shadow priest, you can go into shadowform at certain points in the instance and do so effectively, BUT NOT HERE. Your shadow spells will not do enough damage for Vampiric Embrace to heal your crew and keep them alive. You need to be in healing mode here, casting only healing spells, no damage spells. You will need all of your mana to keep your group alive.

For me, this is one of the most fun quests in the game. It's not like it's a bad pull and you don't know what's coming and whether or not you will wipe. YOU KNOW it's a 'bad pull' and that it's gonna be chaos for the next 5 minutes without much let up. Just waiting for those words gets my blood flowing...

"Everybody ready?"

"K...here we go..."

I hope some of this helps you complete this great quest successfully and free of wipes. Have fun!

Janecke, Kargath

To start the quest event you have to kill the Sandfury Executioner at the top of the Temple and use the key he drops to free Sergeant Bly from his cage.

After freeing Bly several waves of level 42-45 trolls spawn at the bottom of the steps (some but not all elite). It is best to wait at the top of the steps and kill each wave of spawns as they come to you, because if you go down the steps you may agro additional trolls. If you toggle pvp on you will get heals from the orc npc priest, but they won't usually save you from dying. After fighting several waves of trolls Bly leads you down the steps and you fight the two bosses. Neither are particularly difficult, though you do fight both at once so make sure to off-tank one of them.

Once the bosses are killed you can talk to the goblin who will blow up the gates to Chief Ukorz Sandscalp. Do not talk to Bly until everybody is ready, because doing so causes Bly and his group to agro and attack you. Kill off the priest and lock first, then the rogue and finally Bly himself. Loot his body for the divino-matic rod and the quest is complete.

To do this quest your group needs to be slightly higher than it does for most of the instance. Most of the members should be around level 50. Good healing and Dps is probably more important on this encounter than healing.

You do NOT need to PvP flag for the NPC to heal you.&nbsp I know this from personal experience.

I have soloed the event numerous times with my lvl 60 hunter.&nbsp At this point my success rate is about 80%.&nbsp Key to survival is protecting the weaker NPCs.&nbsp They deal significant DPS.&nbsp I discovered it's suicidal to use AOE except at the very end of attack waves.&nbsp Another lesson: its inefficient to rely on ranged weapons, due to recurring line of sight issues.&nbsp Best bet is to assume aspect of the monkey, and just dive right in, backing off occasionally if you need to bandage.

NPCs in order of priority

1) Orc Warlock
He is usually the first NPC to die.&nbsp If you protect him he will continue to cast rain of fire and put DOTs on incoming trolls.&nbsp He is an aggro magnet.&nbsp Melee attacks disrupt his rain of fire and seriously reduce his dps.&nbsp If you keep him aggro free, the trolls die quickly and your odds improve greatly.&nbsp Toward the end of each wave he will run out of mana, and jump into melee combat.&nbsp

2) Dwarf Priest
She is the only NPC who heals, making her very important.&nbsp Mostly she struggles to keep the rogue NPC alive.&nbsp But she will also shield or heal you, if she has the mana.&nbsp Healing causes her to draw aggro from every loose mob running up the stairs.&nbsp She is more robust than the warlock, presumably because she can shield herself.&nbsp When she runs out of mana she will jump into melee.&nbsp If you keep her alive, the rogue's odds improve as well.

3) Rogue
She stands in the front row and takes a severe beating.&nbsp But she deals lots of damage and is important to protect.&nbsp If the warlock and priest are free of mobs, go help the rogue.

4) Goblin Engineer
This guy is surprisingly tough.&nbsp He deals area damage using land mines and bombs.&nbsp This brings him aggro, but he can usually handle it.&nbsp Unless you wipe, the goblin will most likely survive.&nbsp Which is fortunate because he is needed afterward, to blast a nearby gate.

5) Bligh
He is a very durable warrior, able to look out for himself.&nbsp

At some point Bligh will suggest that you move forward.&nbsp This is a good idea.&nbsp Trolls are continuously spawning at the base of the pyramid.&nbsp Your best bet is to take out the two named elites and stop the spawning.&nbsp Start with the caster because she generates heals and is probably the one spawning the adds.&nbsp She is a boss but not particularly hard to kill.&nbsp

After completing the event you can pick a fight with Bligh.&nbsp This allows you to kill Bligh for a quest, but in the meantime it triggers the goblin to run off and blast the nearby gate.&nbsp Behind that gate is another boss who minds his own business until you are ready.&nbsp If you don't have a quest involving Bligh, you can just ignore him and ask the goblin to blast the gates.

There is an easy way to take out Bly and his crew after you've finished off all the spawns.
(after you have the Demolition guy blow up the door to the last boss that is)
Wait for them to begin to Hearthstone (yes if you wait long enough Bly and his gang will begin to hearth away).
Then talk to Bly at the last second and his teammates will continue to hearth and leave.... leaving only Bly to kill.

You get this AFTER the fight with Sergeant Bly. Make sure you don't talk to him until your group is full on mana and health. He and the rest of the group you saved (except the Goblin) will attack you.

Once he's dead, you can loot the Divine-o-Matic Rod off of him.

You can completely bypass the troll fight easily.

After you kill executioner, dont open the cages, intead talk to the goblin, let him out to blow up the door. Then talk to Bly, talk about the Divine-O-Matic Rod. He will become angry, and when you finally let him out he will fight you immediatly, along with the other prisoners so let them out one at a time.

Once you kill him you get the Rod.. not a single troll attacks, all of this takes place at the top of the stairs. Although if you want to fight the Shadow Priest to get the Big Bad Vodoo Mask or whatever then let him out without talking to him, but talk to the Goblin first so he won't disapear at the bottom.

EDIT: Bah... This is the most buggy quest.. Ok apparntly this works some of the times. I did two more ZF runs since I last did this trick. The first time it did not work at all and we fought the trolls. The second time it did work, fought Bly, and got the Div Rod. But the trolls were still released... Thankfully with no NPCS at the top of the stairs, all we had to do was jump off the side and run around the mass of trolls.

Anyway, I can not guarantee what will happen if you do this trick, but I still recomend giving it a shot, makes it a lot easier then having to kill 100 trolls.

Edited, Wed Jan 19 13:26:32 2005

I completed this at level 52 and got 6300 XP my Gadgetzan reputation greatly increased.

just out of interest, i followed the goblin out after he blew the door up.

Not a good idea.

The guy is suicidal. chain puller at heart.