Black is Back

Take a good look everyone. Is this  not the most awesome transmog set you’ve seen in a long time? Thought so. Now before you get too excited I should tell you that this set only looks good on female toons and blood elf males. They look extra fabulous, but really, why would you want to play one of those?

What you see here is the Black Dragon Mail set, with a couple of extras.

There are a few ways to get it. The easiest is to buy everything off the auction house. It won’t be cheap, and you may have a hard time finding these items, but you’ll get them fast.

Another option is to find leatherworkers and commission them to build you set. Nothing wrong with asking the support classes to make themselves useful why you do all the heavy lifting killing those internet dragons.

Then there’s the hard way where you do it all yourself. You know, for those times when the aforementioned support classes take your mats and make the wrong item, or don’t understand what a cash cow they have in being able to craft and sell these items.

This is in fact, the route that I took. It required a couple of nights of cutting myself off from the real world as I plunged the depths of Blackrock Mountain and Old Hillsbrad, over and over again. Painful, but worth it.

Alright so let’s get you into this set. The pieces are as follows.

• Black Dragonscale Boots
• Black Dragonscale Breastplate
• Black Dragonscale Leggings
• Black Dragonscale Shoulders
• Stylin’ Adventure Hat
• Nerubian Gloves
• Nerubian Belt
• Vengeful Gladiator’s Longbow

You’ll be making the boots, breastplate, leggings, hat, gloves, and belt. You’ll need to do a little PvP to get the bow. You’ll need a high level leatherworker/Skinner who can make at least Wrath of the Lich King patterns.

You’ll need to gather 83 Black Dragonscales, 70 Rugged Leather, three Cured Rugged Hide, three Fiery Core, three Lava Core, 11 Rune Thread, 22 Borean Leather, six Heavy Knothide Leather, two Cobra Scales, eight Primal Life, one Black Dye, a full tank of gas, and half a pack of cigarettes. Wait until dark, put on a pair of sunglasses and hit it!

Gloves and Belt

These are by far the easiest items to make. The patterns are learned from the Leatherworking trainer, and the only material you need is Borean Leather. Twenty-two of them to be precise.

Boots

The legs, shoulder, and chest patterns are all BoE so it is possible to find them on the AH. The pattern for the boots is BoP, is tied to the Thorium Brotherhood reputation, and amazingly easy to  get. I’d start with this one.

Assuming that your rep with the Thorium Brotherhood is zero, just head over to Searing Gorge and start doing some quests. My Leatherworker/Skinner Hunter was 85 so I blew through these in no time at all, making all the levelers both angry and jealous. About 30 minutes of questing, and I had enough rep to buy the pattern, which is sold by Lokhtos Bargainer in the Grimm Guzzler.

Breastplate

The breastplate is sold by Plugger Spazzring a powerful Warlock who is capable of summoning demons from beyond the Nether, but not a simple leatherworking pattern . You see, he doesn’t always have the pattern in stock, which means you’ll need to wait for it to spawn. It took about 45 minutes of waiting to get mine. Your wait time will vary, of course, but plan to put in some camping time in the Grim Guzzler.

Shoulders

The pattern for the shoulders is a random drop from Anvilrage Marshalls found in the Western Garrison area of Blackrock Depths. There are enough of them that you should get the pattern in 1-3 runs.

This area is before the Grim Guzzler. Once you get this pattern and the patterns that you find in the Grim Guzzler, you can use the tunneler at the beginning of the instance to bypass the area and make getting the leggings pattern faster.

Leggings

This pattern drops off of Anvilrage Captains which are found in final room of the dungeon. They share a spawn with Doomforge Dragoons, so the number of Captains available on any given run will vary. You can get 1-3 or a whole room full of them. This pattern and the hat were the hardest to get.

The Hat

This pattern drops from Durnholde Rifelmen and Don Carlos in Old Hillsbrad. It’s supposed to drop in both normal and heroic, but I recommend running it in heroic. Remember you’re here to get the pattern. Once you kill all of the Riflemen, just leave the instance, reset it, and carry on until you get it. The pattern is BoP so you have to be a Leatherworker to get it. The riflemen will taunt you by wearing the hat.

Gathering the Mats

Once you have all the patterns it’s time to gather up the materials to craft this set of awesomeness. I’d check the AH first and buy what you can. Especially the Black Dragonscales, Lava and Fiery cores. My AH had everything but the Dragonscales.

If you’re reduced to gathering the Black Dragonscales, then be prepared to spend some quality time in Upper Black Rock Spire (UBRS). There’s no special strategy, or Tauren dragonscale dance you can do. Just go in there and skin all the things until you’re done.

I found the Lave Core and Fiery Cores on the AH, so I just bought them. If you have to farm them, then head to Molten Core. I suspect you’ll get them pretty fast. I’d tell you to farm some T-mog tier, but the whole point of this article was to get your perfect T-mog set, so just focus on the cores.

The other items that’s a pain to find are the Cobra Scales. You only need two, so just head out to Nagrand and skin a few Twilight Serpents. Get your knothide heavy leather while you’re at it.

For the Primal Life, I again encourage you to seek out the AH. If you can’t find anything, then hit the Underbog in Zangarmarsh. But really check the AH.

Once you’ve got everything, hop on your Leatherworker and craft away.

The Bow

The Vengeful Gladiator’s Bow can be purchased for 720 honor. A real bargain. It took about three to four battlegrounds to get. This will go faster the more battlegrounds you win, so do your best to help your team. If you don’t understand the battleground objectives, then just focus on pew-pewing the squishies and other support classes. Heck take out a Hunter or two while you’re at it.

Once you have your honor head out to Area-52 in Netherstorm and fin Kezzik the Striker. He’s the Goblin with the goods.

Final Thoughts 

The good looks don’t stop with gear. Accessorize this set with the perfect pet and mount. I’ll share some of my favorites in an upcoming post, so stay tuned. For now, all of this fashion talk has put me out of my comfort zone, so I’m off to eat a steak and drink a beer.

Good luck getting this set!