Congratulations to Tejbegriz on becoming our 9th Iron Champion during Battle for Azeroth! Corpsegrind accomplished this in a /played time of 11 days and 14 hours.

We asked Corpsegrind what drew him into trying the Iron Man Challenge and this is what he had to say; “I’m creating World of Warcraft related content on Youtube and the main reason was to accomplish something really big. Earlier I had a series of tough leveling challenges like leveling without weapons, tanking dungeons blindfolded, etc. After succeeding in these the upcoming challenge was the Iron Man, so I started to gather info on it and here I found wowchallenges.com about 10 months ago.”

Corpsegrind felt the worst of the challenge was getting used to the nature of it. “About the 10th occasion where I died had to rethink why I keep failing and then tried something new: Since in this challenge there are several ways to fail I had to set up my own rules and with that a solid goal system on the length of a leveling session. Every time I failed a new rule came in to avoid it to happen again. The more rules I made for myself the further I got but that wasn’t enough. I’m somewhat new to WoW so even if I had a scout character mostly I relied on massive luck since WoD+Legion+BFA zones were completely unknown to me, so at every corner in these zones I had to prepare for a jumpscare-escape. Levelling-wise the worst was the last level, without the war campaign quests I ran out quickly of doable quests in Zandalar so I had to kill about 3000 mobs and with a few daily quests thanks to Midsummer event.”

When we asked Corpsegrind what he felt the easiest part of the challenge was he said, “Looking at it wholly at first nothing is easy so jumping to that point when it got a little easier: After dying about 4-5 times around level 40 I changed toon but stayed on the same leveling path. With every death, it has gotten much faster, manageable where to go and when, what quest to avoid, and what to do when that certain point of no return comes.”

There were lots of memorable moments as well. “I had an embarrassing near-death experience when after of months of hard work I managed to take control of my panicking when getting on low health: I was hunting treasures in Frostfire Ridge somewhere where you have to kill ice elementals to get to a corpse imprisoned in ice, I used the zone ability and called down reinforcements but I forgot that other mobs are patrolling the area so one of the reinforcements after killing the ice elementals pulled a pack of mobs, I was on to bubble hearth but made the mistake to look back at what else is coming and then I broke the hearth casting and right then the divine shield wore off and I had to run away from at least 4-6 mobs, the whole scene lasted for about 20-30 seconds but on that point I got literally everything on cooldown and was below 20% hp and it got lower and lower as the very last mob just before landing the killing blow evaded. Another memorable moment was at 90% of 119 when 2 players tried to kill my character by pulling mobs intentionally into the consecration. Had to bubble hearth 4-5 times, but I met players along the way who accidentally others intentionally tried to do something to make me fail again.”

Corpsegrind has a few tips for anyone wanting to attempt the challenges, “I tried the most unusual ones: Mostly people say that don’t get too attached to an Iron Man character because if you lose the challenge it will have a negative impact on your confidence to do it. After I realized that I take a lot of situations lightly, I gave it a shot and treated the next character as something very important and that helped in a way to make me know where and when to stop when it’s not safe to do a quest or kill anymore. The other one is for panicking: the worst thing is when you are suddenly surprised by a flock of mobs and the fear of losing your character easily clouds your mind. The only thing I needed to learn is to take control immediately of these situations by strictly bubble-hearth out of every similar situation that’s already overwhelming. Do not take any chances. When you are about to take down a tough creature/rare make sure you got an escape route already planned, killing quest mobs in a way you know how much time you got before they start to spawn behind you, if necessary check out what spells to expect on a scout character. Finally: Stay adamant about your goal, because at first failure is unavoidable, but every mistake you will make is a lesson that you can adapt and overcome.”

Up next for him is going through his recorded Iron Man footage and creating highlights to try to help out other challengers like the top 10 most difficult quest mobs to kill, near-death experiences and other funny moments.

Once again congratulations Corpsegrind on safely getting your pally Tejbegriz to 120!