5 things you need to know about the Stormstout Brewery

The Stormstout Brewery is one of the two instances you'll be running once you start on dungeons in Mists. It's available at 85 and is probably the easiest of the ones currently available in the beta. So it's a great place to start out your journey to 90!

Being lovely, helpful people, we here at WoW Insider thought we would put together a short and sweet set of tips to aid you in your attempts to cleanse the Stormstout Brewery of its pollution. This isn't intended as a full guide (although of course we have furnished you withone of those in the past) but more as a helping hand for those who don't want a step-by-step walkthrough.

So what does the brave adventurer need to know?

1. Watch your debuffs! There are a lot of debuffs flying around in the Stormstout Brewery, there really are. My favourite debuff is Bloat, which makes you shoot beer out of your ears. If you're a melee player or a ranged player who likes to cuddle up to other ranged players, you'll need to check if your healer's able to keep up with the damage you're no doubt inflicting on your teammates. If not, you should probably take your beery ears elsewhere.

Bloat is definitely not the only debuff you'll get. There are various others that inflict damage, stun you, silence you, slow you, and do all of the above. "But my healer can dispel me!" I hear you cry. Well, not if you're standing in one of the debuff puddles. A what, now? Well, there are many puddles of bad in Stormstout Brewery, especially around the Alementals just after Hoptallus, that put a debuff on you while you stand in them as well as inflicting damage. So if you notice that you're debuffed, move, jump, run away, run back again. Try everything. And keep an eye on your debuffs!

2. In order to mount the barrels, you need to click them. Those of you who've read the guide or played the instance will know exactly what I'm talking about here -- it's Ook-Ook's barrels. They come along fairly regularly in this fight, and you can either dodge them or jump on them and steer them around. Only if you spot someone doing it, you'd be forgiven for thinking that you just leap cheerfully into the air and use your cat-like reflexes to land gracefully on the barrel. But you'd be wrong. What you actually do is get within range of the barrel and click it. You'll notice how your pointer turns into the mounting arrow. There, wasn't that easier? Also, you can cast while running on the barrels -- yes, while moving. What larks!

3. Click the hammers. Oh come on, Olivia, now you're just being obscure. No, seriously, after the first boss, Ook-Ook (of barrel fame), you'll enter a gauntlet of angry little bunnies called Virmen. You'll notice that some of the angry bunnies have hammers. Keep an eye on them, and you'll spot that they drop hammers. The onslaught of bunnies may seem overwhelming until you've got your greasy mitts on a hammer, which you do by clicking it. Once you have your hammer, an extra action button will appear in the middle of your screen, and clicking on it will cause you to do a short-cast hammer smash. This pretty AoE will send angry bunnies flying into the air to meet their doom. Take that, bunnies!

4. It's a gauntlet -- keep moving. Yeah, a lot of the trash in Stormstout Brewery is gauntlet-styled. What does that mean? Well, apart from being a fetching glove, a gauntlet means that the trash will just keep coming until you achieve a certain objective that ends it. Remember the trash on the way up to Akil'zon in Zul'Aman? Exactly like that! Keep pushing forward through the trash, and it'll stop coming eventually. In a couple of cases, the way to stop it is to pull the boss, which can put a bit of a strain on mana if you're healing. Good luck!

5. Watch your character! Particularly if you play a ranged DPSer or a healer, you may have become accustomed to not paying a huge amount of attention to your character, apart from positioning. Stick them in the right place and go back to your rotation, am I right? Melee players may be more attentive, but not necessarily. In Stormstout Brewery, there are two debuffs that spring immediately to mind that make your character shoot damaging streams of beer. The beer damages the rest of the party, and while this dungeon isn't the hardest you'll encounter, your healer will no doubt thank you for not spewing beer on your cohorts. Alcohol is bad for you, you see.