I got home late Wednesday night, thanks to work. After a hasty dinner of leftover pepperoni pizza and a couple glasses of Michael Shaps Cabernet Franc (boy, does that sound snooty), I grabbed the wine bottle and headed up for a little bit of WoW before bed.

I was hoping we might have something as a guild going, but of course, I try to log in, and I'm #293 in the queue. Yikes. I wandered over to the official forums and found an interesting thread about "Why do we kill Van Cleef?"

If you've played through the quests, you know the story. The Defias Brotherhood are often your enemies in the human lands, from the earliest levels through the mid-20s (if you go into Duskwood or the Stockades). Their thugs and brigands attack and harass the farmers and merchants in the area. Their incarcerated brethren in Stormwind have rioted and taken over the prison.

As you play through the quests you find out why they do what they do. They're led by a man named Van Cleef, a former middle class (basically) leader of the Stonemason's Union. He helped rebuild Stormwind after the war, and the nobles then told him to bugger off, he's not getting paid. Incensed, and devastated financially, he turned to crime and rebellion against the corrupt Stormwind regime.

And that's an interesting point. Stormwind is, after all, incredibly corrupt. The city is a beautiful, picture perfect place - but the officials are bribed, crime hides in the streets, and even a dragon has infiltrated the highest ranks. It all comes together as you quest for Stormwind - and there are still good people out there.

Eventually, though, you're tasked with killing Van Cleef and bringing back his head to the Westfall Militia. They're basically just flat out good guys - yes, they're tough on crime, but they're underfunded and undermanned, just trying to defend the innocent farmers of Westfall from gnolls, murlocs, Defias, insane mechanical Harvest creatures, and the such.

But back to me. I have a druid, around level 15. He's pretty much camped out in Darkshore, as most druids are, though he has his hearthstone set in Ironforge (between that and my ability to teleport to Moonglade, it makes it easier to get around the world that way). His gear is kind of crappy, though, and he needs more. It's still a while before he can do the Deadmines, and even then it'd have to be in a group.

But Daic - my level 60 hunter - just got a new main hand weapon, a Dawn's Edge with the nifty +15 agility enchant. His one handed axe score is still pretty low - in the 160s or so - and I needed to level it. So I decided to head to the Deadmines with Daic, as he can easily handle dozens of the elites in there by himself or with Azrai, his pet, and see what gear he can get for Drakeed (my druid).

The Deadmines are a lot of people's favorite instance. I had my usual troubles finding my way in - you have to go into a building, up the stairs, around a corner, down a ramp, and through a network of caves to get there, and I get lost all the time. Fortunately for me most of the mobs really don't aggro on me unless I'm right next to them, and there were a few mining nodes to hit. I pushed through and eventually found the instance entrance.

Basically, you're going through a series of mines. After fighting your way past the miners and goblins, you'll fight a large shredder machine (and, after it's dead, the pilot comes out to fight). You'll fight your way down around a giant forge, and eventually end up in a large cavern out of the Goonies, complete with pirate ship - it seems Van Cleef has gathered a bunch of pirates, and they're planning on attacking!

To get on the ship, you have to fight Mr. Smite, one of my favorite battles. He stuns everyone a couple of times during it, running over to a treasure chest to get new weapons. "You landlubbers are tougher than I thought! I'll have to improvise!"

So I got through there. As usual, my bags were overflowing with gear. The best gear - the blues, typically - are bind on pickup, which means I basically just got to vendor them, as I can't disenchant them. A lot of the gear wasn't appropriate for my druid - things like swords or mail armor. The leather armor I sent to Drakeed, the rest I put on the Auction House or vendored. I made enough that night to make up for my repairs and arrows plus a few silver more - not a huge load, by any means, but the armor will help Drakeed.

I did have a pleasant surprise the next day - between all the cloth I got, the metal, and the various Bind on Equip gear, I ended up making well over 9 gold on the run. That's not bad for about a 1/2 hour run through an instance with basically no fear of dying!