6-6: Lord of Outland

With the dimensional gates shut, the raid on the Black Citadel can begin.

I feel like Kael'thas (and presumably, the other blood elves) are becoming gradually more fanatical throughout this campaign. Must be that magic addiction.

Those poor Spellbreakers.

The Draenei slip past the citadel defenses...

...and destroy the generator powering them.

Our first task is to kill the Master of Pain and Mistress of Torment. They hold the keys to Magtheridon's chamber.

The Draenei are a key part of this mission. All Draenei units we get to use here are permanently invisible when not attacking, allowing us to use them for infiltration and sabotage.

Elder Sage: Cunning Draenei hero. Has a collection of abilities we've seen before: Chain Lightning, Feral Spirit, Shadow Strike, and Reincarnation. Not playable in multiplayer because a hero with permanent invisibility would be kinda broken. Also the only melee hero with Intelligence as their primary stat.

Draenei Elite Assasin: Invisible Draenei melee warrior. Can use Critical Strike and Howl of Terror.

Draenei Saboteur: Invisible Draenei saboteur who attacks by throwing explosive flasks. Deals a lot of damage to buildings quickly.

Liquid Fire: Each attack sets enemy buildings aflame, dealing damage over time and preventing them from being repaired.

I mainly used these guys for scouting and infiltration, and tried to keep them away from direct combat.

Over on the other side of the map, Lady Vashj and her naga are infiltrating the Citadel through the waterways. While we have a base in this mission, we have no source of income and can only use gold coins found in the Citadel to bolster our forces.

I decided to use the naga to make the first move. Here we have to deal with a few Fel Orc ships. The Orc Juggernaughts were one of the most powerful and distinctive naval units in Warcraft II, and now we have to sink them with our naga warriors. We start with two Royal Guards, which are quite handy.

Securing a Fountain of Health gives our naga warriors a chance to patch up.

That's a good point to switch to Kael's side. These towers here will easily destroy any intruders, but can't detect invisible units.

We can just slip past the Fel Orc base on the opposite side too.

There's the generator powering the defenses.

Breaking it destroys them instantly.

I was going to head straight for the Fel Orc base next, but then I got distracted by this shiny Fountain of Mana.

This guy's a big ol' Diablo reference. He even greets you with the exact line the Butcher in Diablo 1 uses: "Ahh, fresh meat!"

Defeating him grants Wirt's Other Leg, a reference to the peg-legged boy from Diablo 1. Its description is a reference to the Secret Cow Level from Diablo 2... I think.

Now we can bust through that base.

Some siege weapons would be pretty handy right about now.

That was easy.

These Fel Orc Demolishers work the same way as the Demolishers we've seen before.

Well, except they have a new upgrade unlocked.

Burning Oil: The Demolisher's projectiles are coated in burning oil, causing them to start fires where they land.

Back on the naga side, we've still got more ships to break through. There was another Fel Orc base here that swiftly fell.

A Shard of Summoning? What's this thing do?

Whoa. This guy should be a big help.

Ooo, shiny.

Pressing the switch raises half of a bridge. When Kael's forces reach the other switch, both armies will be able to join each other.

There's another set of overpowered defense towers here. It might be a good idea to wait until we can get the Draenei over to it.

The bridge is raised, and now both sides can fight together.

And we can get the Draenei over to that generator.

Kaboom.

The Mistress of Torment is a powerful demoness accompanied by some other demons. I had Illidan and my Spellbreakers focus on burning down her mana, preventing her from casting any spells.

She dropped a second Mask of Death as she died. There's a nice find for Kael.

Now it's time to sneak past another bastion of towers blocking the way to the Master of Pain. The Draenei took out the generator the same as before.

We've got another Fel Orc base to punch through too.

The Master of Pain is less powerful than the Mistress of Torment, but he does have Reincarnation, forcing us to kill him twice.

The reward for defeating him is an Orb of Venom that adds poison to a hero's attacks. It's not as nice as the Mask of Death, but I'll take it all the same.

The gate leading to Magtheridon is open.

Target acquired.

There's one last generator to get rid of before we can face him.

Let the battle begin. Magtheridon has a lot of HP and is accompanied by a level 10 Fel Orc Blademaster, plus some other demons.

I focused mainly on sapping his mana and keeping my heroes alive. It was a pretty chaotic battle.

The beast is down.

Illidan lets out a cruel laugh as he greets Magtheridon.

Well, Illidan has established himself as supreme ruler of Outland for life. Surely nothing could go wrong now, right?

...Oh. Okay then.

Kil'jaeden disappears in a flash of smoke.

The Scourge campaign is a return to Arthas' side of things, and the conclusion of the Frozen Throne storyline. It's also the most difficult campaign, but I digress. Look forward to that next time.

7-2: The Flight from Lordaeron

The Dreadlords have invited Sylvanas to a secret meeting.

Sylvie storms off.

Elsewhere, Arthas and Kel'Thuzad make plans for Arthas' upcoming voyage.

Time to break out of here. Arthas starts at level 8.

Most undead in the city have fallen to the dreadlords, but there are a few still loyal to us that we can find.

Skeletal Mastery: An upgrade for Necromancers' Raise Dead that allows it to raise one Skeleton Warrior and one Skeletal Mage instead of two Warriors.

Skeletal Mage: A ranged attacking skeleton that launches bolts of magic. Weirdly, it doesn't count as a magic attack in gameplay terms.

Since the enemies are also undead, we can't use Death Coil to deal damage to them. It's still good for healing, though.

We can pick up a few coins scattered around the city, but there doesn't appear to be anything to spend them on.

In addition to the undead there are a few low level Dreadlords and demon units around.

Rescuing a few Crypt Fiends gets us some ranged attack support.

Enemy Necromancers are quite the nuisance, since they'll summon their own skeletons on us.

Rescuing a Shade lets us scout out what's ahead.

Though we do have to watch out for enemy Shades that can spot us.

Some Meat Wagons would be really helpful too. Let's clear these guys out and grab them.

These Meat Wagons have a new upgrade too.

Exhume Corpses: Allows Meat Wagons to automatically generate corpses inside them over time.

Just what we need for bringing down defense towers. This is a new type of tower that don't deal much damage, but has a chilling effect.

The Rune of Shielding grants a shield that will block a single harmful spell on our units. That can come in pretty handy.

Right after picking up that, we have to fight off a few Flesh Golems. That's a pretty difficult task.

The mass graves provide an unlimited amount of corpses that Necromancers can raise skeletons from. Arthas can also use them for Animate Dead.

Just north of there we can find some undead fighting the rebels. They'll join us as we approach.

We're nearly out of here. The exit is protected by a level 3 Dreadlord and this extra powerful Abomination.

Escape successful.

The Banshees possess two of the Abominations, then kill the other two.

Arthas is safe, for the moment at least.

7-4: The Return to Northrend

Arthas has made landfall on the icy shore of Northrend once again.

A few Dragonhawk Riders fly in from across the channel.

'

The first thing to do is destroy the blood elf base to the north, which will give us a good staging point. Arthas starts at level 7.

Crypt Lord: Warrior hero, king of the Nerubians. A heavily armored melee fighter who can both deal and take a lot of punishment. Despite being the ruler of a spider kingdom, resembles a beetle more than a spider.

Impale: A line of spikes that bursts forth from the ground, stunning enemies and launching them into the air.

Spiked Carapace: A passive effect that improves the Crypt Lord's armor and grants spikes that return a portion of incoming melee damage to attackers. Similar to Thorns Aura, but not an aura; only affects the Crypt Lord himself.

Carrion Beetles: Summons a carrion beetle from a corpse. They are permanent until killed and up to 5 can be summoned at once. Higher level beetles can Burrow. Can be autocast.

Undead Transport Ship: This ship can transport units the same as a Night Elf or Human one, but looks much spookier.

Undead Frigate: An attack ship that fires cannonballs at enemy ships and air units. Functionally identical to the Night Elf Frigate.

Undead Battleship: The most powerful ship, equipped with long-range cannons that deal Siege damage. It's great at bombarding enemy bases from the coast.

As was mentioned, our Crypt Fiends have a new ability.

Burrow: The Crypt Fiend burrows under the ground to lie in wait. While burrowed it is invisible and regenerates health faster, but can't move or attack.

This is ported straight over from the Zerg of Starcraft, and makes Crypt Fiends look even more Zerg-like.

I dropped all my ground forces on the coast while the ships bombarded them from the sea.

Anub'arak led the charge, bringing impalement to the blood elves.

That was pretty easy.

After completing that we get a base set up for us, plus a secondary objective pointed out. We can also see that Arthas has leveled down to 6.

Time to work on building up my army and getting those upgrades in.

I used a Shade to scout out the dragon's position.

I think they don't expect you to get here with just a Shade.

But anyway, that is what we'll be doing when the army gets to him. I brought a lot of Crypt Fiends along to web the dragons to the ground.

Burrowing our Crypt Fiends allows them to heal quickly between fights.

Sapphiron put up a fight, but was eventually slain.

Not only do we get to claim the dragon's treasures, we also get Sapphiron as a Frost Wyrm.

He's much stronger than normal and can also cast Frost Nova. He can basically handle any attack waves coming to our base by himself, allowing me to focus on clearing the enemies on the path to Azjol-Nerub.

Some of the ice walls will break when approached, opening new routes for our ships.

Our Shade reveals a naga base that will have to be cleared out.

As I sent my attacking force out, I noticed Lady Vashj going for my base. I left Sapphiron to deal with her while my main force destroyed her base.

The Shade scouted out our next task. We'll have to break through a lot of creeps to get there.

A short detour led to a meeting with his eternal grace, the Penguin King.

Shades can't grab items, so I had to have Arthas and Anub'arak come over here to actually get the prize.

The naga's gold mine makes for a good expansion, though it's a bit cramped since non-naga buildings can't be built in water.

Time to break through. I brought a bunch of Necromancers to the fight, plus a pair of Meat Wagons loaded up with corpses.

A few living Nerubians guard the remains of their kingdom.

They were swiftly drowned in skeletons. The Nerubian Ziggurats can produce more units for their side, but were easily overwhelmed.

The last obstacle is a group of Blue Dragons and Dragonspawn. The Dragonspawn are similar to dragons, but are land units rather than flying.

Victory is ours.

Arthas enters the tunnels of the ancient kingdom.

7-6: A New Power in Lordaeron

After disposing of Detheroc, Sylvanas turns her aim toward the last dreadlord, Balnazzar.

We just have to destroy Balnazzar's base. Sounds simple enough.

In addition to Sylvie's base we also have Garithos' forces at our control. At the moment he can only build Footmen and Knights.

Dark Knight: Warrior hero, similar to a Paladin but with a few different abilities. Learns Holy Light, Shockwave, Devotion Aura, and Avatar. His version of Avatar doesn't turn him to stone, but otherwise gives the same stat boosts as the Mountain King version. Not playable in multiplayer.

Garithos' voice lines tend to remind you that he's a racist bastard with quotes like "I hate working with these... people" and "we humans have to stick together."

Rescuing the dwarves will give us the firepower we'll need to break through Balnazzar's defenses. I sent out my army toward them as soon as possible.

There's a health fountain near Garithos' base, which is extremely helpful as the only source of healing their side has is Garithos himself.

I tried using a Shade to scout out Balnazzar's base. It's in the center of the map, right between our two. Unfortunately, he has his own Shades in his base specifically to prevent this, so I didn't get to see much.

There are two other undead factions that can launch attacks at us. The green Dreadlord Insurgents will harass the human base...

...while the orange Dreadlord Loyalists will hit the undead one. Neither is that powerful, but they could prove to be a distraction at a critical moment.

Yeah, really.

Rescuing the dwarves allows us to construct Riflemen, Mortar Teams, and Siege Engines. They have some new upgrades too.

Fragmentation Shards: Increases the damage Mortar Teams deal to Light and Unarmored enemies.

Barrage: Allows Siege Engines to fire rockets to attack flying units. They can hit up to 3 at a time with one volley.

We have a new upgrade on the Undead side too.

Destroyer Form: Allows Obsidian Statues to awaken their true form and transform into Destroyers. This transformation is individually activated per statue, and can't be reversed.

Destroyer: Flying beast awakened from an Obsidian Statue. Immune to magic. Does not regenerate mana naturally, and must instead gain mana by using its abilities.

Devour Magic: Consumes magic effects in an area, restoring health and mana to the Destroyer for each one consumed. Deals damage to summoned units as other dispels, and each summon hit by this counts as a devoured effect.

Absorb Mana: Takes mana from one of your units and gives it to the Destroyer.

Orb of Annihilation: Adds a significant damage increase and splash damage, but drains a high amount of mana per shot. Automatically set to autocast.

Destroyers are mainly anti-caster units, but could come in handy elsewhere.

Balnazzar tried to crash the human base by himself. That's pretty bold of him.

Unfortunately for him, he walked straight into my army and was swiftly slain.

With Balnazzar down, it's the perfect time to launch our big attack.

I pulled off a pincer attack, hitting with both of my armies at once. I made sure to get the Siege Engines on destroying Balnazzar's demon gate as soon as I could.

It was a great success.

Balnazzar's base crumbled before my combined forces.

And soon, it was wiped out completely.

Varimathras reluctantly kills his brother with a claw swipe.

And there was much rejoicing.

The Forsaken are the faction of free-willed undead that undead player characters in World of Warcraft belong to. They would later become a part of the Horde, with Sylvanas herself eventually rising to the position of warchief.

That's the end of Sylvanas' story. We'll return to Arthas for the next mission.

7-7-2: The Forgotten Ones

Arthas and Anub'arak have taken their first steps into the Old Kingdom.

I think this loading screen text is misaligned.

But that's not important right now.

The first thing we see is a row of towers waiting to kill us.

That sounds pretty easy. The switch to open it should be nearby.

There we go. Now we just need to do that for the other side.

And done.

We can find more gold coins, which like in the last mission, we can take with us to the final battle.

Arthas has deleveled to 4 and can no longer use his ultimate, but Anub'arak has his freely available.

Locust Swarm: Summons a horde of locusts that attack everything in a large radius around the Crypt Lord. They can't be directly controlled or attacked. The locusts have a life-stealing effect on their attacks and will restore health when they return to the summoner.

Rescuing captured Crypt Fiends will give us a few reinforcements.

Also, there's a room full of crabs here for some odd reason.

This +6 strength belt is a pretty nice thing to find...

But of course, it's a trap. Taking it summons a swarm of scorpions into the room.

The breeding pods will continually spawn Nerubian young until they're destroyed.

I went for the latter option, and had Anub'arak hit the four levers to shut the doors.

This room is covered in hostile tentacles. That's not something we really want to see. They can attack enemies in melee, but can't move, so ranged attacks can clear them easily.

The Faceless Ones are the servants of the Old Gods, the Lovecraftian horrors of the Warcraftverse.

They're formidable opponents, but not invincible.

Finding all the missing Crypt Fiends is a good thing, since we're going to want as much reinforcement as we can get for the next room.

The Forgotten One is a major boss fight with 3600 HP. It is immobile, but attacks by throwing fireballs, and can also spawn tentacles and cast Flame Strike.

I surrounded it with Crypt Fiends and had them all focus fire on it at once.

That was actually pretty easy.

Next time, we conclude the journey through Azjol-Nerub.

7-8: A Symphony of Frost and Flame

Arthas has made it through the tunnels of Azjol-Nerub to the Icecrown Glacier.

The battle for the Frozen Throne is about to begin.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out that this mission title is a reference to A Song of Ice and Fire.

We need to control all four obelisks while preventing Illidan from doing the same. It doesn't sound that hard. Arthas starts at level 2, but has EXP gain enabled, allowing him to regain his lost levels.

Before starting on that, we need to establish a base. This small naga base should be a good starting point.

This is one of the only campaign missions where we have to build a base from scratch. These two Sacrificial Skulls can be used to create a small area of blight, which should help with establishing things quickly. More can be bought at the Tomb of Relics if needed.

While we're doing that, Illidan will take control of the obelisks he has bases near. We can't really do anything to stop him right now.

All the gold we picked up in Azjol-Nerub also helps for getting this base up and running.

As soon as I finished that, I sent Arthas down to the south obelisk. It's the closest one to our base. To capture it, Arthas needs to channel at the obelisk circle for 30 seconds. It's important to bring an escort, as he is quite vulnerable during this time.

One down, three to go. We'll need a lot of protection for this one.

Illidan snatched up another, and we can also spot a blood elf attack wave heading for our main.

I decided to build a secondary base near the south obelisk, as there's a gold mine nearby. A lot of the terrain here isn't buildable on, making laying out our buildings kind of difficult.

Illidan has three obelisks to our one. We'll have to defend the last like our lives depend on it, because it does.

And now the enemy heroes start showing up. Kael'thas leads the red blood elf faction, Illidan leads the blue naga, and Lady Vashj leads the teal naga. They're all level 10 and a major threat whenever they appear.

Jaina is probably sitting in a café with Thrall right now, very glad over how she dumped you two losers.

Illidan decided to attack me right after I dealt with Kael.

He's the number 1 priority target whenever he appears, as only he can capture the obelisks. Unfortunately, he's not easy to bring down. His Evasion offers him a lot of survivability, and he'll burn our heroes' mana away with repeated Mana Burn casts. He'll also frequently use Metamorphosis for an HP boost. Taking him out also gives a lot of EXP for Arthas and Anub'arak.

I tried to move for the east obelisk after defeating him, but wasn't able to break through. I got Arthas and Anub'arak out of there before they fell.

And after that, Lady Vashj decided to go say hello to my main.

The second time I went for the east obelisk, I successfully claimed it. Two down, two to go.

The most important part of this mission, in my opinion, is keeping Arthas and Anub'arak together. They both have a whole lot of survivability and access to self-healing moves, and the enemy heroes generally attack one at a time. Double teaming them allows us to take them down.

We had to fend off another attack from Lady Vashj at the south obelisk. After dealing with her, I sent my troops up to help out Arthas and Anub'arak.

They managed to fend of Illidan again, and held out until reinforcements arrived.

Right after that, I made for the north obelisk.

There's another one down.

Illidan showed up again to try and reclaim this one, but we brought him down yet again.

It was the perfect time to make a move for the last one.

Now all we need to do is ensure that Arthas survives for the next 30 seconds.

And the Frozen Throne is secured.

Arthas lunges toward Illidan, and the two end up in a sword lock.

Arthas retrieves Frostmourne as soon as he can.

Meanwhile, Illidan drops his blades...

...and awakens his inner demon.

The finishing blow!

Illidan lies splayed on the ground. According to later games he survived this, but this may or may not be a retcon.

As Arthas ascends the steps to the Frozen Throne, echoes of his memories pass through his head.

The Lich King speaks from within the ice.

With a loud yell, Arthas moves to strike the throne.

Arthas has become the new Lich King.

That concludes the story of The Frozen Throne.

The end credits feature Arthas rocking out to Level 10 60 70 80 85 800 Elite Tauren Chieftain's single "Power of the Horde."

"STORM! Black clouds fill the sky!"

"EARTH! I hear my fans all cry!"

"FIRE! Thunder will bring forth!"

"DEATH! From the power of the Horde!"

Arthas gets a cool lightning effect on him for the guitar solo.

For the rest of the (rather long) credits we can see artwork of the different units.

Plus some older concept art that was used for the original version of the game.

Even after all that, we're still not done. The Horde campaign is a side story unconnected to any of the others, and was mainly written as a prequel to the then-upcoming World of Warcraft. It also has a very different structure than the prior campaigns, which we'll see when we get into it.

8-1-2: Protecting the Border

Picking up where we left off last time, Rexxar's next task is to check in at the border outpost.

Let's get moving.

Well, there's something to work on.

The entrance to the Beast Den should be near.

We just need to kill every quillboar on this map. It's a small map, but it still takes a bit to hunt them down.

The reward is an extra skill point for our heroes. That's pretty handy.

The observatory is right by the exit.

We'd better go back and notify Thrall about this.

Before doing so, I decided to take a look around the north side of the map. Here we have some bronze dragons zapping us with lightning breath.

Here's something else to work on. The Thunderbloom Bulb is the easiest component to find, as it's near the entrance to Thunder Ridge.

The Thunder Phoenixes appear to just be plain old fire phoenixes. Taking out their nest will secure us an egg.

On the way to the last component, I ran across a shaman in distress.

There's another thing we'll need to do after finishing this up.

The last component for the brew can be bought at this shop. While I was here, I also picked up an Orb of Lightning. This allows the hero's attacks to occasionally cast Purge on enemies.

Done and done.

Completing this quest gets us a new hero, who will come along for the rest of the campaign.

Chen is a Brewmaster, much like the one we unlocked from the secret mission. He starts at level 1 but has 2 extra skill points. He's a bit far behind our other heroes, who have reached level 5 by now. He'll need to do some catching up.

Let's go deal with those warlocks next.

The coven wasn't hard to find or bring down, and the relic was retrieved.

The relic grants Endurance Aura, which is quite helpful for all the running around we have to do. We also get a pair of Shaman Claws that add a damage boost plus the Orb of Lightning effect.

Now we can head back to Thrall, and he already has more stuff for us to do.

Nazgrel will be joining us for this quest. He's a Raider with a whole lot of extra power, plus Hardened and Resistant Skin.

Along the way Chen leveled up to 2. However, we can't raise a skill to level 2 until he reaches level 3, so we had to spend his skill point on something else.

Attribute Bonus: An ability shared by all heroes in this campaign. Adds +3 to all hero stats for every level placed in this skill.

Generally I only find this useful as a place to spend skill points when you have nowhere else to put them.

I decided to go over to Thunder Valley and help Drek'thar out first. Nazgrel will wait until we return.

We have Drek'thar as a guest for this quest. He's a level 10 Far Seer and will be quite the help.

His Far Sight reveals nearly the entire map. I wouldn't be surprised if this here was the source of the thunder lizards' agitation.

Rexxar reached level 6 and learned his ultimate around here.

Stampede: A channeling effect that calls a horde of rampaging lizards to the field. They'll deal damage to anything they crash into.

This is best used against large groups, and I'm really only using it here for the sake of demonstrating it.

Rokhan learned his ultimate too.

Voodoo Spirits: Summons a horde of spirits that attack everything in a large radius around the user. They can't be directly controlled or attacked. The locusts have a life-stealing effect on their attacks and will restore health when they return to the summoner.

The standard Shadow Hunter ultimate makes units in a large radius around him invulnerable and isn't really usable in a campaign like this, so Rokhan gets a copy of Locust Swarm instead.

I called it.

All Thunder Lizards in the valley have now become Enraged Thunder Lizards and will need to be put down.

Killing them all grants the Thunderlizard Diamond, which can be used to cast Chain Lightning. After we're done with that, we might as well grab the eggs too.

Using Far Sight to spot the nests let us find them in no time.

Drek'thar's spellbook is a pretty nice reward. It can be used like a Scroll of Town Portal to port to Orgrimmar unlimited times.

Using that brings us back to Thrall in no time.

And another errand is out of the way.

Next stop, the outpost.

Well, at least we can avenge them.

The humans attacked on sight and were swiftly cut down.

They seem to be part of the same invading force.

I stampeded through this base pretty quickly. After that, it's straight back to Thrall again.

We'll stop here for now. Next time, we make for the Echo Isles.

8-2-1: Old Hatreds

Rexxar arrives in the Darkspear Tribe's new village, in Dustwallow Marsh.

Straight to the point. Let's get going.

The exit we need to go to is right by the village.

For this quest we can only use Samuro, a level 10 Blademaster. Luckily, infiltration and distraction are things that Blademasters are very good at.

The Arcane Towers can detect Samuro while Wind Walking. Attacking the conveniently placed explosives near them removes that issue.

We need to plant the five bombs at key locations in the human base. It also seems like there's another sidequest waiting for us. Maybe we should go check that out.

This might have been a bad idea.

Just like our other heroes, Samuro can be revived at the Resurrection Stone as many times as needed.

The second attempt went much better.

Though Samuro still lost nearly all of his health.

But hey, we only need health if we get caught.

Primed and ready.

The bombs go off, allowing Rexxar the opportunity to gain an audience with Jaina.

Wow, this base got wrecked fast. Almost makes me feel sorry for bombing it.

Jaina gets to come along for this quest. For whatever reason, she's level 8 here when in previous campaigns she was level 10.

We need to see if we can find any survivors and ask them what's going on.

Chen took a fall here. For whatever reason he seems to take the most damage out of all our heroes.

The naga lair is guarded by a level 10 Sea Witch, plus a few Royal Guards.

Jaina's ultimate ability can bring us right where we need to go.

Mass Teleport: Teleports the user and up to 24 nearby units to the location of another allied unit or structure. A handy utility spell, but not one that really has much use in the campaign.

Back when Jaina was first introduced, I mentioned that she's the "daughter of the sea" since her father is a naval admiral. Well, look who decided to show up. It's him, Grand Admiral Daelin Proudmoore, in the flesh. The dark green he wears is the signature color of the Kul Tiras Navy, and with the Reforged model improvement we can now see the anchor sigil on his cape.

Jaina teleports out of there, but not before opening up an escape route for Rexxar.

Now we need to escape from the city.

Surprisingly, there are a few shops that will sell to us while the rest of the isle's inhabitants are trying to kill us. I guess they don't discriminate at least.

We can open the gates by pressing the glowing switch near them.

Admiral Proudmoore's forces won't touch one of their own ships, but we will have to disembark to open more gates.

Chen leveled up to 6 and learned his ultimate around here.

Storm, Earth, and Fire: Splits the Brewmaster into elements, forming three specialized warriors. If all three are killed, the Brewmaster dies. If at least one survives to the end of the summon timer, he is reborn.

Storm: A ranged caster who hurls balls of lightning. He can cast Wind Walk, Cyclone, and Dispel Magic.

Earth: A heavy melee warrior armed with a stone club. Can use Taunt and Pulverize, and has spell immunity.

Fire: A fierce melee warrior wielding a pair of blades. Has Permanent Immolation.

Unfortunately, as I soon learned, the Pandaren Elementals can't board transport ships. I had to wait for the timer to run out so I could actually get Chen on the boat.

We have to break through a whole lot of Human units to get to the end. Fittingly for a naval force, many of the magic users here are hydromancers.

The last gate is guarded by a trio of enemy heroes: A Paladin, Mountain King, and Archmage. The Mountain King is level 14, the other two 12. Yeah, heroes in this campaign actually have a higher level cap, at 15 rather than 10. There's no easy way to deal with these guys, and I ended up sending all my heroes back to the Resurrection Stone multiple times before getting rid of them.

Once that's done, we can sail on through.

And from there, we report back to Vol'jin.

We'll stop here for now. Next time, we rally the Horde together.

8-2-3: First Blood

The warriors of the Horde have been brought together, and now it's time to take the fight to Admiral Proudmoore.

The first thing to do is meet up with Thrall, who has gained a few levels since we last saw him.

There's one last sidequest to take care of first. All the materials needed can be found on this map.

The sea giant Storm Lord has the eye we need.

Here's a few wildkin we can get the claw from.

And way in the northwest corner of the map, we can find an Elder Bronze Dragon who will drop a scale.

Once we have those, we can meet Thrall at Tidefury Cove.

He's waiting right at the entrance.

The completed standard grants +5 to all stats and Vampiric Aura, and we can see it proudly displayed above Rexxar's head.

We have control of all unit producing structures in our base and can build units for free, up to a limit of 40 food. They'll be helpful for bringing Proudmoore's base down.

We'll need all the help we can get to break through his defenses.

Admiral Proudmoore himself appears on the field, and he's quite dangerous.

When his health turns low he becomes invulnerable. We won't be truly rid of him until we destroy his Castle.

The first attack wave has fallen. Time to gather some reinforcements and try again. Like with the rest of this campaign, we have unlimited tries.

Proudmoore's forces will assault our base as well. Thrall can handle base defense, allowing us to focus on offense.

Admiral Proudmoore is still invulnerable and still being a thorn in our side. Here he calls down a monsoon, zapping an area with lightning strikes.

We died yet again. Time to build up another attack.

There's our main target. Proudmoore's castle doesn't fall easily, and it has five arrow towers attached to it.

A sustained effort managed to demolish it. Let's report back to Thrall.

The enemy forces flee to their ships.

Thrall wandered offscreen for some reason. Probably another glitch.

That wraps up Act 2. Next time, the siege of Theramore commences.