A Mage without Briarwood Reed felt incomplete.
Gabryell had already decided he was going to get one no matter how many UBRS runs it took.
Once everyone was free to do their own thing, he immediately formed another full-clear UBRS group and fished for a Jed spawn. He wasn't stopping until Briarwood Reed finally dropped.
Unfortunately, the loot gods weren't impressed by his determination.
They cleared UBRS again.
No Briarwood Reed.
"I refuse to believe this thing won't drop today."
The moment the run ended, Gabryell started organizing another one.
At this rate, he could already imagine what UBRS would eventually become for casters: if Jed wasn't up, half the Mages and Warlocks wouldn't even want to stay.
"If it doesn't drop this time, I'll cut my dick off."
That wasn't Gabryell speaking.
It was Coldhands.
Apparently, the loot gods decided that was finally enough commitment.
This time, Jed dropped Briarwood Reed.
"Haha! Ogabs, then I won't hold back!"
And just like that, Coldhands won the roll.
Gabryell stared at the result.
Wonderful.
He had finally seen another Briarwood Reed, only to watch it disappear into someone else's bags.
At least the rest of the run was ridiculously lucky.
Rend dropped one half of Dal'Rend's Arms.
Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge (Rare)
Binds when picked up
Main Hand
Sword
81–151 Damage
Speed 2.80
(41.4 damage per second)
+4 Strength
Durability 90 / 90
Requires Level 58
Equip: Improves your chance to get a critical strike by 1%.
Dal'Rend's Arms (0/2)
Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian
Dal'Rend's Sacred Charge
(2) Set: +50 Attack Power.
DeathScum nearly started celebrating on the spot.
"Haha! Does this mean I don't have to buy Krol Blade anymore?"
A Krol Blade on the Auction House could cost as much as eight hundred gold right now.
At that price, the seller wasn't looking for a buyer.
They were looking for a rich idiot.
"You can skip it for now," Gabryell said. "Use Dragon's Call in your off-hand. If we get the other Dal'Rend sword, even Dragon's Call can retire."
Completing Dal'Rend's Arms would be a clear upgrade for him.
Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian was a fast 1.80-speed off-hand, making it convenient for applying poisons, while the completed set added another 50 Attack Power. That bonus improved his overall melee damage rather than relying on Dragon's Call's random summon proc.
DeathScum was already getting greedy.
"Then hopefully the off-hand drops next run too."
If Gabryell had known what he was thinking, he might have beaten him to death on principle.
Wasn't that basically wishing for even more UBRS runs?
Rend had also dropped Dragonrider Boots, and Gabryell won them.
That was at least some consolation for losing Briarwood Reed again.
Whether Dragonrider Boots or Omnicast Boots were better depended on what a caster valued more. Dragonrider Boots offered a stronger all-around package with plenty of Intellect, while Omnicast Boots leaned harder toward spell damage.
Gabryell didn't obsess over tiny pre-raid differences.
If he already had one strong option, he wasn't going to waste ten more hours farming another pair of boots just because some future best-in-slot list ranked it slightly higher.
The good luck continued.
The Beast dropped Finkle's Skinner, which Lunatori won.
For a Druid with Skinning, it was especially useful. Druids couldn't equip swords, so even when Zul'Gurub eventually opened in 2005, the +10 Skinning sword from the tiger boss wouldn't be an option for her.
A dagger was another matter.
With Finkle's Skinner providing the extra Skinning skill she needed, Lunatori could help skin The Beast and obtain a Pristine Hide of the Beast.
This one went to DeathScum for his Breastplate of Bloodthirst materials.
And somehow, the run still wasn't finished handing out useful loot.
General Drakkisath dropped Draconian Deflector.
Carlos finally had another excellent Fire Resistance shield for Molten Core preparation.
Fearless now had Draconian Deflectors available for both its main tank and primary off-tank, giving them a little more confidence going into the fire-heavy raid. The shield's combination of armor, Stamina, Fire Resistance, and +Defense made it particularly valuable for early progression.
"Another run?" someone asked.
It was already getting close to ten at night.
One more full clear would probably take them right up to lights-out, and after playing most of the day, everyone was starting to feel it.
Gabryell hesitated for barely a second.
"One last run."
If he still didn't have Briarwood Reed by the time Molten Core progression began, he might be the next one making dangerous promises about his anatomy.
Fortunately, threatening his future bloodline seemed to improve his RNG.
Usually they had needed several resets to fish up an instance with Jed.
This time, Jed was already there.
No resets.
No repeated Mind Vision checks.
They could simply play the dungeon.
And somehow, Jed dropped Briarwood Reed again.
The trinket's drop rate wasn't impossibly low in the first place. The real problem was competition.
In a fixed guild group, anyone who kept farming Jed would eventually get one.
Pugs were another story.
Every fresh group meant another Mage, Warlock, Priest, or Druid rolling against you. Someone with terrible luck could watch the Reed drop several times and still never take one home.
That demand would eventually create entire UBRS runs built around Jed and Rend, including groups where desirable drops were reserved or sold for gold. Briarwood Reed was valuable enough that desperate casters would happily pay hundreds of gold rather than lose another roll.
"You take it this time," Danielly said.
She had seen how long Gabryell had been farming the trinket and simply passed.
Lunatori didn't.
She had recently become more aware of the difference between her healing output and Danielly's, and she wanted every upgrade she could get.
That didn't mean Restoration Druids were useless. Far from it.
But in early Vanilla, Priests had an extremely strong raw healing toolkit, while Druids were often valued as much for their HoTs and utility as for topping healing meters. Lunatori had started feeling that difference firsthand.
The two rolled.
Lunatori lost.
For once, she looked genuinely discouraged.
Gabryell noticed immediately.
"Don't worry about it. We can keep farming tomorrow until everyone who needs one has it."
For two of the guild's core healers, Briarwood Reed was absolutely worth farming before Dire Maul opened in 2005. Its constant +29 damage and healing made it one of the strongest readily available caster and healer trinkets at this stage.
Lunatori nodded.
"Okay. I'll be online on time tomorrow."
A little competition wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
If anything, it had made her more serious.
"Anyone who can be online tomorrow, try to show up," Gabryell told the group. "We're farming dungeons most of the day."
Now that Briarwood Reed was finally sitting in his bags, Gabryell felt as though a weight had come off his shoulders.
"Starting tomorrow, we're not just running UBRS. We need more Scholomance, Stratholme, and BRD too. Progression is almost here, so get whatever upgrades you can before then."
Gabryell needed to set the standard himself.
He expected Fearless's core players to arrive prepared for Molten Core, which meant he couldn't show up wearing half-finished dungeon gear and then lecture everyone else about preparation.
Fortunately, the second Briarwood Reed seemed to use up the rest of the run's luck.
The later bosses dropped nothing especially exciting.
The Dal'Rend's Tribal Guardian DeathScum wanted never appeared.
If he wanted to complete the set, he was apparently going to have to suffer through the same kind of grind Gabryell had just endured for Briarwood Reed.
Once the final UBRS run ended, it was late enough to call it a night.
Gabryell disbanded the raid and told everyone to get some rest.
Just as he was preparing to log off, Dreamshade whispered him.
"Ogabs, we're planning to start Molten Core progression the day after tomorrow."
That was about what Gabryell had expected.
"How many raids are you bringing?"
"Three or four. More groups means more chances at the server first."
Gabryell smiled when he read the message.
The logic wasn't wrong.
More raid teams meant more attempts.
But in late 2004, simply throwing more players at Molten Core wasn't enough.
The encounters were unfamiliar, reliable strategies barely existed, addons and theorycrafting were primitive compared with what players would eventually have, and even many excellent players were still learning the fundamentals of raid optimization.
Gabryell knew exactly how large that knowledge gap was.
In his previous life, he had watched footage of Ascent's world-first Ragnaros kill from April 25, 2005. World of Warcraft had launched in North America on November 23, 2004, meaning Ragnaros survived for roughly 154 days before that first recorded kill.
One of the Rogue POVs from that era had always stuck in Gabryell's memory.
The Rogue's gear was respectable for the time: Krol Blade, part of the Dal'Rend setup, strong level-60 dungeon gear, and a few epics.
But from a later player's perspective, the gameplay looked bizarre.
The build mixed Combat with enough Assassination investment to pick up Cold Blood, sacrificing some of the deeper raid-oriented Combat options.
More importantly, the Rogue barely seemed to use Slice and Dice.
Gabryell still remembered staring at the footage in disbelief.
For a sustained-damage Rogue, Slice and Dice was one of the most fundamental tools in the entire kit.
How did you play a long boss fight without maintaining it?
Maybe the player had been worried about threat.
That explanation only went so far.
Feint existed.
Vanish existed.
And the same Rogue was willing to use offensive cooldowns such as Cold Blood and Blade Flurry.
If you were willing to burst, why completely neglect one of your core sustained-DPS finishers?
Even years later, players analyzing footage from those early Ragnaros kills would point out that Slice and Dice was absent from the Rogue's bars and barely—or never—used.
And yet that Rogue was still near the top of the raid's damage.
That was the part Gabryell found incredible.
Not because the players were stupid.
They were pioneers.
There were no fifteen years of guides, optimized spreadsheets, private-server practice, WeakAuras, polished boss mods, raid simulators, or communities that had already solved every talent build and rotation.
They were figuring the game out while playing it.
But from Gabryell's later perspective, the difference was enormous.
A reasonably competent Rogue from the much later WoW Classic era, armed with years of accumulated knowledge, would look dramatically cleaner than even elite raiders from the first months of the game.
"So this is what top-level WoW looked like in 2005..."
Gabryell couldn't help smiling.
No wonder Ragnaros had survived for months.
And that was precisely why he was so confident.
The twenty or so players who had been running with Gabryell regularly had already absorbed an enormous amount of knowledge that shouldn't exist yet: positioning, threat control, downranking, consumable preparation, talent builds, dungeon routes, raid roles, and gear priorities.
None of those things seemed revolutionary on their own, but together they represented years of accumulated player knowledge being dropped into late 2004. Fearless simply wasn't competing on equal terms with the rest of the server.
"The server first is mine. Not even Blizzard is taking it away from me."
Gabryell leaned back in his chair. He had no doubt that Fearless could claim the server-first kills in Vanilla's raids—as long as the game itself didn't throw some completely broken early-version mechanic at them.
He returned to Dreamshade's whisper and replied, "Good luck."
He meant it. He just hoped Dreamshade's three or four raid groups survived Molten Core long enough to remain on speaking terms.