Congratulations to Brassbolts on becoming our 53rd Shadowlands Iron Man Challenge champion! Brassbolts’ Iron Man journey took 595 days, 1 hour, and 11 minutes, with a /played time of 2 days, 3 hours, and 9 minutes to complete.

Brassbolts is this Forgottenfables’ 1st ever challenge champion. “…but my 7th attempt overall. My previous best was a Void Elf Hunter at 84 pre-level squish.”

Forgottenfables chose to play the Iron Man Challenge because “I started doing the Iron Man Challenge out of boredom with WoW. Having played since just after the launch of vanilla I was looking for a way to refresh the game outside of the max level gear grind.”

Brassbolts was created as a Gnome Hunter. “I didn’t have any particular reason for making a Gnome specifically, but I had been consistently going Beast Mastery/Hunter out of comfort and having a pet to take the hits instead of me.”

Forgottenfables chose the following strategy to level Brassbolts: “I actually started out by running out to Teldrassil, and leveling up initially in Dolanaar due to my familiarity with the area (My very first character was a Night Elf Priest back in vanilla) and initially Brassbolts was intended to be an Iron Team character alongside my wife, but she changed jobs and finding time that both of us could play WoW was difficult, so I used Brassbolts as a quick start after an unfortunate Green equip accident with a walking vendor on my previous challenger a Dark Iron Dwarf named Ironaya.”

“She is my first champion, but her route actually differed quite a bit from all my previous attempts! I started out in Dolanaar, then went into Darkshore till about level 25, and then over to Loch Modan till 30, and here is where I diverged from all my previous routes.”

“Once I could fly I actually Chromie Timed to Burning Crusade and flew straight over to Zangarmarsh for the densely packed quests for efficiency, from there it was down into Nagrand for more easy kill X amount of stuff quests and then into Blades Edge Mountains where I had my first close call because I forgot about the flak cannons in the Forge Camps, and was idly flying around for map reveal spots and almost got shot down!”

“After that happened I abandoned Burning Crusade in favor of starting Wrath of the Lich King in Chromie Time and burned through Borean Tundra (Specifically the area around Valiance Keep and the Fizzcrank Airstrip) and then I went to Dalaran to take the cookie crumb quests to Sholazar Basin and Icecrown. After doing a little bit of the start of Sholazar, I had a couple of really rough quests and opted to go to the Argent Vanguard and start those quests, once I was done there I was around 43-44-ish, so I opted to head to Grizzly Hills for the initial easy quests and up into Zul’drak for a little bit of the initial questing.”

“At this point, I was 48 and opted to make use of the Candy Buckets to push me up into Shadowlands (all the way to 52 once I got kicked out of Chromie Time) which I was super nervous about, as I hadn’t gotten any gear upgrades since my low 30’s, I opted to do Threads of Fate and immediately joined the Necrolords for the Fleshcraft Shield and Death Chakram to help me kill things a little quicker!”

“I went to Maldraxxus first and set about doing the available world quests; After those were finished I went over to Bastion to get started on their World Quests and opted to blow through a lot of the sidequests to finish the “Aiding Bastion” quest, which put me up to 55!”

“I returned to Maldraxxus and finished up their “Re-enforcing Maldraxxus” over-arching quest and then decided to check the AH for any gear upgrades, as the only ones that had been posted were consistently prohibitively expensive, as in 50k-100kG for gray gear, and got lucky with a Bow that doubled my damage output from 10-17 to 20-29 and upon my return, I scored a couple of pieces of gray gear that were MAJOR upgrades!”

“After returning to Oribos I headed for Ardenweald to start their world quests and their overarching “aid” quest, I finished it but didn’t turn it in, as it was worth 109k XP so I opted to hold it for my last turn in so that I had to spend as little time in Revendreth as possible.”

“When I finally got to Revendreth I was 58, with about 40k XP left to 59. I headed into Pridefall Hamlet and was really feeling the lack of gear as most fights my bear was dying multiple times. Pushing through the early quests and a couple of World Quests I hit the magic number that made it so the turn into Ardenweald would push me to cap, so I immediately hearthed out and took the flight path to the quest turn in for the victory! I then opted to take a quick equipmentless victory lap around Oribos!”

Were there any close calls while leveling Brassbolts? “Several! Most were in Shadowlands, when doing WQs by following other players in and poking things they were fighting, I had a couple of VERY scary close calls when large groups of mobs spawned in around me, but the first/funniest close call was when I was flying through Blades Edge Mountains for the Map Reveal XP and I forgot about the Flak cannons in the Forge Camp and I almost got shot down.”

Forgottenfables has the following advice for others trying out the Iron Man Challenge: “Take it slow and don’t panic! I lost a couple of runs to panicked double clicking on survival cooldowns and one hilarious loss to a panicked disengage off a cliff!”

What’s next for Forgottenfables? Is it time for a break or are there other challengers waiting in the wings? “Currently I have an Ironman Paladin that’s primed to start another attempt and an Iron Shaman that is waiting for Teams to come back online!”

Best of luck with your other challengers, Forgottenfables, and congratulations once again on Brassbolts becoming our 53rd Shadowlands Iron Man Challenge champion!