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Comment by 4618

This is one of those escort quests, and it's a long one. To complicate matters, Gilthares likes to initiate combat.

Couple of things to note: 1) As with other escort quests, there are occasions where mobs don't attack. They'll just follow along behind for awhile. This can save you the trouble of killing them, however, if the escortee stops (such as for an 'ambush' or to fight a different mob), the ones following will attack. 2) There are no ambushes on this escort quest, there won't be a time where 2 or 3 come out of nowhere. However, you will need to clear away pretty much everything between Northwatch and Ratchet.

Comment by TheOnyx

If someone has already started the quest, Gilthares will not be sitting in the bottom of the tower as he normally would be doing. If you want to accept this quest and he isn't there, you'll have to wait until the other party finishes the quest before he will respawn and allow you to accept it.

Comment by 15517

If you want to save yourself a lot of headache, clear out the area around the blacksmith before you accept the quest. He is very agressive, and the icky humans run away at 20% health.

Comment by WithFieryTruth

Beware of any Alliance in the area, because they can kill the NPC. I was almost done with the quest (after already having to wait for respawn once after the guy pulled too many mobs) when a damn high-level Human Paladin shows up and one-shots Gilthares. I seriously wanted to punch him in the face IRL.

Comment by 82795

He has a very long respawn time. Doesn't help either if people take a long time to do the escort itself. Friends and I had to wait almost 35minutes from after the previous guy started it.

Comment by Hinahina

If you wear cloth, SKIP IT. There is NOTHING to benefit from this quest besides EXP you can easily make up. Usually I try to do every quest but this one is honestly a killer, especially since respawns are on steroids and happening so quickly. This quest is NOT worth solo'ing, come back for rep gains later, I guess.

Comment by mistyblue

he is slower than molases on a snowy morning!

Comment by 61183

Biggest key if you're not preclearing, keep him healed and let him lead.

If you start fighting or casting before he does, he likes to walk right by the group now running toward you and will pull the next group, guaranteeing failure. Use focus targeting to keep an eye on his health, he won't last more than a minute in combat on his own. Pull aggro off him if you can, to pull them toward you, because everything runs at low health. If you don't have heals, high burst or a way to stop runners, this is gonna get rough. He doesn't stop till he's outside, so bring mana pots if you have them.

once your outside the hold though, the trip to ratchet is long, but really easy.

Comment by Nienie

Just skip it. I'm a 21 warrior and killed everything easily, but the walk to Ratchet made me so annoyed that I didn't want to play for the rest of the night. He aggroed every single level 11-12 pirate on the shore that was within a 30 yard radius because he just had to run up to them and punch them. Not worth the time at all. I started the quest at 6:11:12 and finished it at 6:28:50.

Comment by Moonking1983

Save yourself alot of time and headache pills, cause this is one of those quests that should've stayed on the drawing board. The mobs tend to respawn REALLY fast. They run away REALLY fast when they're about to die. The marines LOVE to use Disarm (murder for you if your a rogue, shaman or warrior). The preservers LOVE to use a 60+ damage Smite & their stupid Renew heals them for ALOT. Plus, the idiot your escorting loves to run into groups of mobs, then runs into another groups!

In Lamens terms, DONT DO IT!

Comment by Sgtown

Counts towards Loremaster of Kalimdor. So you 80's out there, bite the bullet and do this escort!

Comment by eierkoek

'Nice', Bob the newb thought when he saw an exclamation mark appear on his minimap, 'there is a quest over there.' Little did he know about all the pain and suffering that awaited him. After clearing the room and accepting the quest he already got a bad feeling, but being a newb, he ignored it, and waited until Gilthares finally arrived at the 2 mobs our impatient Bob already was killing. However, he didnt expect such a speed from the NPC when Gilthares ran towards the next pack while screaming he was getting attacked and really needed help. After the corpse run he decided to try it a again, with a bit smarter pulls. So he waited for the respawn of the NPC. Which took 2 kills of the respawns of the mobs guarding him in the room. Bob was about to give up on the quest, just as the NPC reappeared. He safely managed to escort Gilthares out of the hold. However, just when passing through the pirate camps a night elf hunter passes by and kills Gilthares. Screaming with frustration, Bob swears to complete the quest. After a few tries he manages to get out of the hold again and decides to quickly get a drink, since Gilthares seams to be cripple. He just returns in time to see Gilthares screaming something about being attacked while running into a pack of 5 pirates to get slaughtered mercilessly. Bob lets out another scream and doesnt touch WoW for the next few days, because of the anger and hate still inside of him after attempting this quest.

Yes, this actually happened to me. No, I'm not called Bob.

Comment by Shooya

Not that hard as a level 17 druid with 5/5 Furor and 3/5 Naturalist. I really don't think any other class is good for it at this level, casters and melee get royally screwed, with the spell interruptions and disarms. Anyway, make sure to clear all the packs on the closest side of the blacksmith to the path coming down from where you will escort Gilthares. Don't bother with patrols, they respawn within literally 30 seconds. You have to clear the two mobs outside the tower, throw regrowth and rejuve on yourself and then take all 4 mobs inside the tower. Obviously, focus the Preserver first and while doing this, talk to Gilthares to start the quest. Make sure you bring mana and health pots, though I didn't need them. The entire quest took me around 25 minutes (it really isn't worth it) but after seeing all the whine posts above, I just had to do it. :p

Also, yes, the alliance probably will be a pain. Luckily for me, I did this between 4:30 and 5am. No alliance in sight.

Comment by Cotytto

You Alliance people that one shot this guy are the lowest form of scum imaginable!This quest is a pain enough as it is,you just make it unbearable!

A crappy level 53 Alliance shammy just had to kill this guy right outside Ratchet!
On my lowbie druid at 4 am in the friggin morning at the time!

I feel better now that I've vented.

As said by others skip it if at all possible,unless you are just trying to get every quest in for an achievement.Rewards stink,mobs respawn quickly and run away far too fast.He walks slower than you can.He aggros everything.And as evidenced by my venting and the others "whine",any Alliance will go out of their way to screw you up.Plus it doesn't even flag them,which is utter BS.

Just not worth it.

Comment by 309204

Ugh. I worked on this quest for probably ten or fifteen minutes, and even cleared a few of the Northwatch mobs at the bottom of the hill before I started the quest. The Theramore marines were a piece of cake- it was when we got to the pirate camp that Gilthares proved to be dead weight. Baron Longshore was at the first camp we came to, and Gilthares just had to get *everyone* involved. Almost finished that fight when he went down- after spending awhile on that quest, my heart sank when he died. I refused to go back and finish. This is the very reason I hate escort quests to my core.

Comment by Khorrupt

Somehow he knows the names of every NPC he comes across.

"Southsea Brigand coming right at us!"
"Tazan heading this way fast! Time for revenge!"

Comment by zair99

Ugh, one of the worst quests in WoW. I'm adding my vote to not even bother. This quest isn't worth it.

Comment by TorachiKatashi

Is there any way to finish this quest? Every single time, I have some spiteful Alliance player come through when I'm literally 95% finished and one-shot the NPC on me. God, apparently Blizz doesn't want to make money, the way they enable and encourage the higher-level players to ruin the game and chase off the lower-level newbies. I don't know what they plan to do when all of the sudden, they can't get any new players to join because they've rightfully earned the reputation of being such a negative game.

Comment by Yewb

This quest is annoying, but I managed it first try fairly easily on a level 23 shaman (as my first character). It's not too bad as long as you worry about killing whatever he's decided to aggro before whatever happens to be attacking you.

He will aggro absolutely everything within a 50 yard radius, though.

Comment by 441563

pretty hard but soloable for a lvl 19 enh sham you have to kill like 3 mobs at once and you barely get a chance to heal. if you get a chance pull one guy at a time with wind shear since it only causes a little threat. gilthares seems to love aggroing mobs so it can get a little hairy.

hope this helps

Comment by 442307

I'ts really hard, while I kill everyone, and then go for this elf, they already respawn... I advise to do this in group, because it's extremely hard to deal with lots of dudes at once by alone. Never did it alone xD.

Comment by Ovplain

Easy with a level 20 Shaman. Still it was annoying as hell due to the fact that you actually have to take him all the way through Ratchet.:/ Felt like forever.

Comment by 296787

Soloed with a lvl 17, dinged 18, hunter. -.- I preempted him only because I've done this quest before on many of my toons. Killed everything before, and I swear! It was only a minute after I started the quest, and had the killed mobs at the bottom of the ramp at his tower... all the BS mobs had respawned! 2-minute respawn timer for the mobs, easily.

But yeah, he's one angry deckhand. Easy (but annoying) if you can handle preempting him; I ran ahead of him the entire time. This allowed me to eat and drink if needed, and hope he might walk a bit quicker...

Comment by metallikop

Did this quest at level 80 while trying to gain The Seeker title and grind to exalted with the Steamwheedle Cartel. I can one shot every mob between the starting point and Ratchet and the quest took exactly 10:06 without Gilthares ever stopping to fight. Consider that for 1950 experience and an absolute best time of 10:06 you're better off grinding mobs or going for other quests then wasting time on this one.

Comment by 229431

after playing wow for 2 years and attempting this quest on every toon since i started, i finally got it done right now. The reason i did it is because its almost 2k exp (the wailing caverns quests in ratchet dont give that much). The only thing that has ever got me here is not the mobs, but the darn alliance. Worth it depends on how you think. grabbing the 2 WC quests in ratchet, and going to the wc entrance to complete / run back takes longer than this , and rewards less.

as for a tip for npc's , you can get way ahead of this guy long as you kill fast enough that he will never go attack stuff. soon as you start the quest take off and kill anything and everythign in the way as fast as possible. i did this as a 19hunter(using ravager pet) and he only ever went to attack anything 3 times during the entire trip. just get way ahead of the guy

Comment by techkyle

As a 22 hunter, it took me about 15 minutes with most of the mobs cleared for him. If you can, try going slightly out of "You're fighting something, so I'll assist you" range and kill things before he has a chance to "help". This won't interrupt his walking and should help you complete this quest slightly faster.

..that is, of course, if you bother to do this quest at all. The quest rewards are not at all worth it, in my opinion.

Comment by 28464

Most ironic quote of the whole quest: "Almost back to Ratchet! Let's keep up the pace..."

WHAT pace?

Comment by Sebreth

This quest is downright evil to we rogues... I'm typing this as I wait out his respawn time for the third time.

Comment by TorachiKatashi

You know those little dogs in the dog park who run up and start fights with much larger dogs as though they stand a chance?

That's this guy.

Keep a close eye on him, especially if you run ahead to clear mobs. He has a horrible habit of suddenly darting off to the side towards a mob you didn't think could possibly be close enough to aggro him.

Comment by CallistaZM

On the bright side....he's very cute :D

Comment by 13769

the SOB just decided to pull 6 mobs right outside of rachet and of course died...... f this quest

Comment by 368782

My favorite part is when he says, 'Southsea Cannoneer coming right at us!' as he's running towards the mob to punch it in the face.

(and by favorite I mean I would rather paint my house 6 times before doing this quest again.)

Comment by 655255

This quest really isn't worth it. Attempt 1: he pulled about 5 at once and died while I was trying to keep them all off his back. Attempt 2: Almost to Ratchet, a lower-level Alliance hunter kills him FOR NO REASON. And it was pretty obvious I was doing the quest too. I almot screamed. I was a 28 lock, all the kills were easy, and yet this quest still is not worth the time and the anger.

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Free From the Hold

This quest was marked obsolete by Blizzard and cannot be obtained or completed.

Safely escort Gilthares Firebough back to Captain Brightsun in Ratchet.

	Escort Gilthares Firebough back to Ratchet (1)

Description

Finally! Someone to rescue me!

I can't believe you got past the guards. These zealots from Theramore are out of their minds. They sank our ship and imprisoned me, the only survivor. I was called an enemy and threat to the Alliance.

Me! A threat to their great sham of an Alliance? I was a deckhand on a moonshine transport between Ratchet and Booty Bay.

Enough talk. Help me get back to Ratchet will you? Let me know when you're ready and we'll make our break.

Completion

Rewards

You will be able to choose one of these rewards:

	Buckled Boots			Riveted Gauntlets

You will receive:

Gains

Upon completion of this quest you will gain:

350 reputation with Ratchet

See if you've already completed this by typing:

/run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(898))

Free From the Hold

Description

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