Who are the Shen’dralar?

The Shen’dralar are a secretive faction of immortal elves that reside within the ruins of ancient city of Eldre’Thalas, now known as Dire Maul. They are a group of powerful arcanists that were charged by Queen Azshara with protecting her most prized arcane secrets. Following the destruction of the first Well of Eternity they maintained their immortality by syphoning energy from the demon Immol’thar, which they imprisoned using magical pylons.

For thousands of years this worked quite successfully, however eventually the power from the syphon began to diminish. To preserve their immortality their leader, Prince Tortheldrin, and his loyalists began murdering off other members of the faction. Some say a measure of their sanity was lost in this act, and to this day they respond with hostility to any that try to meddle in their affairs.

The Method

The method here is relatively straightforward and simple – Players can complete three repeatable turn-in quests with [Lorekeeper Lydros] in Dire Maul North all the way to exalted. Each turn-in yields 500 reputation requiring a total of 84 to finish the grind. The complication comes from collecting all the different materials require for each quest.

What you’ll need

• The [Crescent Key] which grants you access to both Dire Maul North and the Library within. Although technically another player can use their key to let you in, you’ll want one for yourself if you’re intending on doing Steamwheedle Cartel as well.
• An engineer friend with a [MOLL-E] to allow you to turn the items in faster. They’re all unique so unless you want to make 30 trips back and forth from Dire Maul to the nearest mailbox this is essential.
• Having a few thousand gold saved is a big advantage as among other things you’ll need 84 x [Pristine Black Diamond]. While its easier to farm the other materials, the diamonds are slightly more annoying to farm and are probably best sourced through the auction house. At the time of writing this (pre-patch 3.1) the diamonds are going for around 40g each making their total cost for the grind around 3360g. I’d expect the price for these to increase after the patch as well.

  See also this thread on player submitted tips for obtaining Pristine Black Diamonds.

Getting everything together

The three turn-in quests require a unique Libram which are random drops off the bosses and trash in Dire Maul. The librams are called [Libram of Focus], [Libram of Protection] and [Libram of Rapidity]. Building up a good stock of these can be as easy as checking the auction house every day to see what’s available, at the time of writing this all three of the librams were routinely available for around 40-80g each.

In addition to the items you can find in the auction house, each one of the librams requires a bind-on-pick item that you’ll need to farm in the plaguelands, scholomance or stratholme. These items are [Frayed Abomination Stitching], [Skin of Shadow] and [Blood of Heroes]. Here’s a quick reference table I put together to show you what’s required for what:

Now since the librams are unique you’ll only be able to have one in your inventory or bank at a time, to get around this I recommend creating an alt guild bank – that way you can store as many librams in the guild bank as you like without having to worry about the unique flag.

Having the bank alt is also a great help in keeping track of how many librams you’ve got saved up as well as what other materials you still need to farm. Here’s a quick screenshot to demonstrate what I mean:

As you might notice, with a single glance, it’s very easy to see what librams/diamonds/shards you have in stock. You can then plan out which of the bind-on-pickup items its going to be most effective for you to farm. Now for a little detail to help you with each of the specific items:

Frayed Abomination Stitching

The best way to get these is by doing Stratholme Baron runs. You’ll usually get 2-3 stitchings in a single run from the abominations, and you’ll also have a chance at picking up the [Deathcharger's Reigns] which also gets you a feat of strength. With these runs being so fast to do, and the protection libram only requiring 1 stitching, these are definately the easiest of the three to gather for.

Skin of Shadow

These are about a 15% drop rate off various bosses and trash mobs in Scholomance. The best way to farm these is to jump off the edge at the start of the instance and head straight for Rattlegore and kill him plus all the trash in his room. After that head over to kill Lady Illucia Barov and her trash, then the Ravenian and whichever other bosses you like. The aim is to take at least 12 minutes before resetting the instance so you don’t have to worry about getting locked out.

I personally couldnt resist killing Doctor Theolen Krastinov every time for a chance at the fabled [Sawbones Shirt].

Blood of Heroes

These are ground spawns that appear all over the place in both the Eastern and Western Plaguelands. While it doesn’t take much effort to ride around and find these it can be slow and gets tedious pretty quick. There are two mods I highly recommend to help out in collecting these. The first mod is Gathermate which shows the locations of all the nodes on your map. The second mod is Routes, which can take the node data from Gathermate and display the most efficient route between them all on your map. It was great because it meant I could just zone out and follow the pretty line.

Just when you thought it was over…turn in time!

Up until Wrath of the Lich King gifted our lives with [MOLL-E] this was actually one of the hardest parts of the grind. Since the librams are unique you needed to take them one at a time between Feathermoon Stronghold (Alliance) or Camp Mojache (Horde) and Dire Maul.

You’ve still got this option available to you, of course, but I’d implore you to drag an engineer friend out to plonk down their portable mailbox next to the quest giver. That way you can turn in 30-40 at a time and save yourself some time.

Exalted with the Zandalar Tribe yet? If not save all the arcanum quest rewards you receive, as they can be turned in to Zanza the Restless in Zul’Gurub for 500 rep each!

Links and other resources

Beyond the usual suspects (wowhead etc) there arent really a lot of good sources for information on the Shen’dralar. I think that’s in part because the grind is so straightforward – you get the librams, you turn them in, you get the rep increase, you move on with your life. If you’re considering taking on this grind I’d still suggest reading up as much as you can, and I’d definitely recommend doing this at the same time you grind Dire Maul North for Steamwheedle Cartel rep as you’ll save a little on librams while getting other rep at the same time.

Some of the resources I used to help me were:

• WowJuju Reputation Calculator – Great to keep track of how many librams turn-ins you’ve got to go. Not ultra important for this grind since the rep is an even +500 no matter which kind.
• Shen’dralar on WowWiki – Not a lot of useful rep information here, but some interesting lore links if you’re interested in reading up some more on the history of the Shen’dralar.
• Shen’dralar on WowHead – A good place to keep an eye on for any useful information or changes to the Shen’dralar. You never know what you might find in the comments to help you out.
• WoW Forums – Achievement Forum – This is another great source for guides, up to date information and accounts of other peoples experiences with various grinds.