Quick Facts

Storyline
Azshara Runaway Shredder! The Captain's Logs Up a Tree Defend the Gates! Arborcide A Quota to Meet Basilisk Bashin' Stone Cold The Perfect Prism Prismbreak Refleshification Another Warm Body Hand-me-downs Military Breakthrough First Degree Mortar In The Face! Profitability Scouting Private Chat A Thousand Stories in the Sand Memories of the Dead Mystery of the Sarcen Stone Survey the Lakeshore Gunk in the Trunk Dozercism Mortar the Point To Gut a Fish Investigating the Sea Shrine The Keystone Shard Report to Twocrush Sisters of the Sea When Science Attacks Segmentation Fault: Core Dumped Nine's Plan Raptor Raptor Rocket Mysterious Azsharite A Gigantic Snack Befriending Giants Azsharite Experiment Number One The Terrible Tinkers of the Ruined Reaches Azsharite Experiment Number Two Operation Fishgut Rapid Deployment There Are Many Like It Mop Up Halo Drops Field Promotion Head of the Snake Ticker Required Handling the Goods Still Beating Heart Extermination Shore Leave Azshara Blues Friends Come In All Colors A Little Pick-me-up That's Just Rude! Absorbent Full of Hot Water Wash Out Dressed to Impress Waste of Thyme Renewable Resource Shear Will Manual Labor Trouble Under Foot The Pinnacle of Learning Watch Your Step The Trial of Fire The Trial of Frost The Trial of Shadow Xylem's Asylum Wasn't It Obvious? Easy is Boring Turning the Tables Pro-liberation Ice Cold Fade to Black Farewell, Minnow Airborne Again Where's My Head? Lightning Strike Assassination Grounded! Rigged to Blow Push the Button! Blacken the Skies Commando Drop Let Them Feast on Fear The Conquest of Azshara

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by 533061

This is a great and fun quest, once you run through the big portal you'll see a large amount of shadow portals surrounding the area, with runes on the ground and a crystal to start the event.

The goal is, once you activate the event, to "lure" the Shadows into the runes, it's fairly easy as they will pursue you in a direct line.

The crystal will pulse out a shadow on the ground that will then rush to a portal, this lets you know a Shade will spawn from that portal and begin chasing you. Expect to have about two to three shades up at a time chasing you. Never forget to look behind and to the sides, as they love to flank you.

Once a shade runs into a rune, both will disappear and give you a buff. Once your buff reaches 20 stacks, the quest will complete. The runes take a few seconds to respawn, but there is a sufficiently large amount of them in the area so you shouldn't have any problems completing this one.

As a last note, some shades do seem to chase a lot faster than others, so always try to keep a rune lined up with every shade that spawns.

Comment by Dugiswowguide

The 'circle shadow' generates from under your character feet and it shoots out to the portal, so the closer you are to the portal the faster the shades will come.

The best to do this is to stay by the starting crystal as it gives you the longest distance from the portals and allow you more time to position yourself

check out my video below for the example.

The Trial by Shadow Video

The Trial by Fire Video

The Trial by Frost Video

Comment by Jaymacibe

Either this quest is a little buggy or something.
I lead some of the mobs right on top of the circles and they go right in the middle and it doesn't kill them.

Comment by 420211

This is part of a quest chain in which the player aids Kalecgos (the new blue dragon aspect) in finding Azuregos and protecting him from the black dragonflight. It spans much of the land of Azshara and is composed of many quests, several of which are completely original in their concepts.

1.)Azshara Blues
2.)Friends Come In All Colors

Helping out Ergll:
3.)A Little Pick-me-up
4.)Absorbent
---5.)Full of Hot Water
6.)That's Just Rude!

Finding Archmage Xylem:
7.)The Way to a Mage's Heart
8.)Wash Out
9.)Dressed to Impress

Helping Xylem and his Apprentices:
10.)Shear Will
11.)Waste of Thyme
12.)Renewable Resource

13.)Manual Labor
14.)Trouble Under Foot

Getting to Xylem's Trials
15.)The Pinnacle of Learning
16.)Watch Your Step

Xylem's Trials
17.)The Trial of Fire
---Achievement: Glutton for Fiery Punishment
18.)The Trial of Frost
---Achievement: Glutton for Icy Punishment
19.)The Trial of Shadow
---Achievement: Glutton for Shadowy Punishment

Finding Azuregos
20.)Xylem's Asylum
21.)Wasn't It Obvious?
22.)Easy is Boring
23.)Turning the Tables

The Final Battle
24.)Fade to Black

Comment by 139938

If there's someone already doing this when you arrive at the platform, wait until they're done -- it's difficult to discern which are your shadows and which are theirs. >.>

Comment by Wezzy

It's worth posting that if you're having trouble, you can kill ones that get too close and it won't affect your counter, as long as you make sure to lead some onto the runes, too.

Helps a lot if you're just going for the achievement ( Glutton for Shadowy Punishment ) as it isn't timed and you just need to lead 20 onto runes without being damaged

Comment by havilah

Does anyone else get a glitch where the altar does not appear so you cannot begin the event? I'm thinking that it may have something to do with me entering the portal in travel form.

I opened a ticket with a GM and they basically said "Thankyou for adding to our bank of knowledge" without giving me any information whatsoever on how to fix it.

Comment by Anathelia

Something to note for people trying to do the achievement: Your achievement is not linked to the quest. If you do take a hit, but manage to get say, 6 or 7 trapped after that before you complete it, you can actually start it over again and get the other 13 the second time around.

If you're really wanting to cheat it... you can jump through the portal, then port back and start it over every 4-5, before they start spawning faster. It's the lazy way of it... but you can do it.

Comment by DreamMkr

If the portal is gone and ya cant get through to start the quest, just click the orb for the type of portal ya wanna go through and it will open the portal for ya.

Comment by 707214

Unfortunately, if you're like me, and you fell off the cliff while trying to do this challenge.. There is no easy way back up. You have to run all the way to the Northern part of the zone, and swim to the Arcane Pinnacle, then jump up around to get back.

Comment by fordman7795

The way I did this was start the event and mount up. Once the ghosts start chasing you, head to the front near where they spawn and sit there on your mount. Let them keep spawning until you have around 20 beating on you. Then take off on your mount in circles until they blow up. First pack i got 14 in one portal then finished off the couple stragglers.

Comment by hoopy

Tip to warlocks (and i assume any class with pet)
Just summon your voidwalker and put it on aggressive, then you can almost just stand still and wait. Voidy will kill all that get too close, and the far ones go into portals = achievement done.

Havent tested but i would think this works with all pets.

Comment by 726569

Bugged for me, look: http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/9805/issues.png

Comment by Emmnus

I've had a few run straight over the runes without anything happening.

Quite annoying really, its not like they were just clipping them, they went straight though the middle.

Comment by 731137

I cannot find the altar anywhere when I go to the trial of the shadow. I don't see anything to click on. could it be a glitch?

Comment by FlyvendeHest

I had the beforementioned issue for many weeks, checking back occasionally to see if it was fixed or not. Abandoning etc didnt work for me. Today I solved it: I upgraded my account from Burning Crusade to Cataclysm (probably would have worked with WOTLK as well - I remember reading that somewhere)

The issue for me was that actually, my client was updated all the way to cataclysm, but as my account was only BC, it reverted the two config-files in the /WTF dir. So, there it is - solved!

... and I got to see Azuregos :)

Comment by 751120

Easy...I zoomed the camera all the way out, and just ran forward and back, forward and back...camera out so you can see if they are running up on you from behind :D

Comment by 512409

If you have a flying mount and are trying for the achievement Glutton For Shadowy Punishment (for some reason the link didn't work)
Activate the quest at the altar, which is a floating pillar.

Mount, do not fly yet.

Wait for shadows to enter, some of the paths to you will require them to walk over traps.

If they get to close, fly. They will break off combat and return to their entrance.

Land, and repeat until you have your 20.

Note, the Mage Mana Shield, while it prevents damage, it does not prevent the shadows from reseting your counter to 0 if they touch you.

It feels like cheating, but I could not get above 6/20 until I tried this.

Note also that the count will survive returning through the portal, and if the quest times out, you can get off your mount and restart it.

Note III, the achievement is totally seperate from the quest and can be done after finishing the quest, which only requires 20 shadows, not 20 shadows without damage or touch.

Comment by duwg

This is how you do it perfectly and get the achievement youtube.com/watch?v=N9FmFcMWDHo

Comment by lovkyne

Probably a bug, when I came to the place to do this quest, there was said to touch the altar to start-but there wasn't any altar.

EDIT: they fixed it ^^

Comment by 776309

i have the same issue as lovkyne accessed the location through the portal when i got there i was told to start the quest by touching the altar but the altar is not there.

Comment by 777314

Also , you can't get Azshara Quests if this quest isn't working

Comment by 933764

Summon your mount right after you touch the alter if you have one. Also I agree with Hoopy if you are a warlock getting your void walker helps keep the shadows away if they dont get hit by a ruin.

Comment by 895707

I completed this on a flying mount as an 85. If you find there are some getting too close, or you are boxed in, just take off. You will immediately leave combat and the shades will reset back to the portals they spawned from. Land immediately, and the event will continue.

Comment by 1440987

The Trial of Shadow http://youtu.be/W2VfjZvoQmU

Comment by 1374013

The Trial of Shadow https://youtu.be/JXTK9UuO2uo

Comment by 1541630

If you have an AoE ability you can just stand in a middle circle and cast it when a ghost gets near. I constantly kept casting Blizzard with my mage and completed the quest fairly quickly.

(I could not use my flying mount. Once the trail started I was in combat.)

Comment by WoWGnGP

i made i playthrough of this quest if anyone wish to see how to do it :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftv_k4lcovE&feature=youtu.be

Comment by Nikilla42

I made a video on the whole questline + the trials for anyone who needs a guide :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oe5A2fMZtgU

Comment by mpwalter

I found this the least annoying of the 3 trials that Xylem gives. The trial by frost is the worst.

Comment by Larlard

Still gave me the same bug. I kept getting into the same problem where they just got too close to my character. And once they got too close, they just would not go into the runes anymore. Stupid bug. They should really fix it. In any case, if you're going to be doing this the "proper way" without using a flying mount, you're gonna just have to face the truth. Either you're damn lucky with the runes and the spawns, or you're just screwed. Best thing to do is make sure they don't touch you, which means you can still use ranged attacks on them if you can instant-kill them with it. Best of luck to everyone else still facing this dumb, stupid problem that the developers don't ever want to fix. I'm gonna keep trying to see if I can get the title.

Comment by Akushalah

If you have Weeping Souls aggroed onto you when you finish and take the portal away from the area, they will follow you into your next trial. I had one stay aggroed and slowly follow me over to the Trial of Fire area, and I had to pause to kill it, then resume.

Links

The Trial of Shadow

Complete the Trial of Shadow by luring 20 Weeping Souls into the shadow runes without getting touched.

	Shadow Trial Completed (1)

Description

Let us not be confined by the bounds of the mage repertoire of magic. I, for one, choose not to be classist. Necromancy can just be so much fun!

Touch the Shadow Crystal to open a portal to my Trial of Shadow. Once there, move to the Altar when you are ready to begin.

Weeping Souls shall begin to pursue you... your goal is simply to drag them into the traps. And be sure not to let them touch you.

Progress

Completion

Rewards

You will receive:

Gains

Upon completion of this quest you will gain:

See if you've already completed this by typing:

/run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(24479))

Guides

Glutton for Punishment