Cataclysm Secrets and Hidden Locations

These are the secrets and hidden locations I’ve found so far, plus the contributions by the commenters: Livae, Larsa, Riun and Tabathine. Thanks to all of you! I’ve also added the discoveries made by the bloggers/podcasters Syrco (Syrco Owl) and Skolnick (Warcraft Less Traveled).

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Under the giant torrent in Darkshore

Under the giant torrent in Darkshore, ther’s a hidden location. If you’ve been there, you know that it would look like a suicide attempt to jump in, but that is exactly what you should do…not suicide.. only the jumping.

Bonus info: You won’t die!

Instead it triggers a small cinematic, where you get to watch yourself dissapear into the eye of the storm, whereafter you fall into an underground cave.

Here you meet an npc which conviniently can teleport you back up, no strings attached, but this is not were the easter egg is buried.

By following a ramp going upwards you eventually meet the ghost of Telarius Voidstrider.

As the picture shows, he is indeed hostile and will say the following: “The shadows will consume you. You are not prepared to face the void.”. Very reminiscent of Illidan Stormrage’s tagline.

For Alliance players he drops a quest item: his writings containing certain secrets on the path to becoming a Demon Hunter. If you’re horde, he will not drop a quest item thus you can’t get the achievement, Tabathine reports in the comments, but he will still attack you.

You need to be level 10 to take the quest, but sadly it doesn’t have an epic follow-up that allows you to start the transformation of becoming a demon hunter yourself – what a let down!

Instead you get an achievement for completing it when you trustfully hand it in at Lor’danel.

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The alcove in Stormwind

I found this one by accidentally running through a gate and into this tiny hidden garden. Before you get excited about a secret place inside Stormwind itself, I should say there’s practically nothing in there, except for a table with some big gems on it. Maybe there is a quest leading to it, but I havn’t been able to track any down. So perhaps this is the new but less flashy Cutthroat Alley?

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Thunderstrike Mountain

I found this place by exploring Twilight Highlands myself and as far as I know, there are no quests leading you to this place. I have not seen graveyards like these before, which is why I’m adding them.

You can only reach this place by flying, as it has no path to the top.

Judging from the lightposts this has to be graveyards of the Wildhammer clan.

The picture below shows the decorated graves and the lit candles.

I think it’s a very beautiful peaceful little place with a great view over the Krazzworks.

If you follow the ramp upwards you get to the second area. I’m not sure what it is, whether it’s a summoning circle or perhaps even a gryphon graveyard, judging from all the feathers. Go there and judge for yourself, and remember to notice the carvings on the tree trunks.

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The Steaming Pools and the Riding Camel

If you ever see this little mysterious camel shaped figurine when venturing in Uldum, do pick it up.

95% of the time it will turn into dust, which you can loot and mysteriously sell for 25 gold. But if you’re lucky you will be swirled up in a cyclone, teleporting you to the semi-secret area named The Steaming Pools, located on the border between Silithus and Feralas.

I went to The Steaming Pools, which is depicted below and it’s completely devoid of any life, plus it also looks a little underdeveloped, not much going on. Some say you can get there by foot, but I was not able to find any paths leading there.

If you get the mysterious teleport there, you’ll see camels walking around not to mention the mysterious owner “Dormus the Camel Hoarder“. He’s an brutal looking elite (with around 225k health points), which you will have to kill. But no worries, most people say he hits like a puppy. The problem is rather finding the rare and small camels and eventually getting one that will actually teleport you.

Looting this guy will mysteriously award you the very rare mount Reins of the Grey Riding Camel. Very suitable for riding in the desert, but unfortunately this camel does not fly.

I added a spawn map below taken from Wowhead.com.

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Tekton at Elwynn Falls

Before the Shattering (aka patch 4.0.3a) Elwynn Falls was a closed off area, hard to get to by normal means of traveling. Instead it was meant as scenery for the flying adventurers, just like the dancing troll village, which however was tranformed into a whole quest hub of it’s own. Elwynn Falls was empty back then, now the owner of the before abandoned house has returned, which you can see with lit windows near the upper left corner of the waterfall.

Agee Tyler, the gnome depicted below, sits in front of the fireplace in his empty house. He doesn’t give you any quests and is most likely one of those azerothian hermits.

He owns a herd of sheep which graze outside his house peacefully, but if you look closer, one of the sheep does not only appear to be robotic, it also has a name! – “Tekton“.

Few people can abstain from killing critters, especially when they’re crowded together. I should warn you though, critter-killers, this sheep is explosive and depending on your position, it might blow you off the edge into a leap of faith. If you survive the explosion, Agee Tyler himself will come out and frown upon your misdeed of killing his sheep.

I guess killing critters, like sheep, sometimes has consequences and Tekton and Agee are here to remind you of that, critter-killer!

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Critters at War in Mulgore

Speaking of critters, Livae noted in the comment about a spot in Mulgore, where critters are at war.

I had to see this so I traveled to this location as soon as I was able to, and yes, these critters indeed have their own little zone of destruction.

There’s no ordinary mobs here, only critters… critters wielding weapons, rabbits with axes and prairie dogs with helmets and daggers…

Rumours say they are at killing each other, and I did see what could look like them chasing one another. None of them were dead though, instead the grounds were littered with mice corpses, innocent murdered civilian mice!

Secretly I was hoping for critters that were lethal, especially to all of you critter killers out there – but no. They still only have one health point and will die as soon as you carefully poke them with the tip of your pinky. This even goes for the prairie dog to the left wearing armor.

When you kill them nothing really happens, except they shrink back to normal critter size and lie there, dead and pretending to be an ordinary critter.

So even though we were lucky enough to see critters wielding weaponry, they still haven’t managed to build an army and rebel against our critter-killer guild achievement of murdering 50.000 of them. On the contrary it looks like these critters have an achievement of their own: killing 50.000 mice.

Riun wrote in the comments that this is only half the story. At night the mice turn into insane little skull headed, double barrel gun wielding retaliating rodents. At least they keep their own animal populations under control.

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The Random Camp at Lake Dumont

Lake Dumont, or more accurately the island in the middle of the lake, is the scene of what looks like a diverse group of allies who’s shipwrecked here near a broken mage tower. The location is straight above Dire Maul in Feralas.

Livae said in the comments: “It’s like a broken tower with a bunch of random people. I know, best description ever.“, and that is basically it.

Some of these NPC’s are just sitting around, one is sleeping, a couple is dancing, a group stands in a circle talking, and of course there’s the grave carrying the name “Ivan”.

Unphased and disconnected, life on the island goes on even after you arrive, none of them begs you in a quest to bring them home, nor will they attack any approaching member of the Horde, they are in fact friendly. Often we find stranded people in Azeroth to have lost their minds, as is the case with the Bilgewater goblins at Land’s Ends Beach in Tanaris, but no, these people seem to be hanging out chilling.

Rumour has it that all of these NPC’s are named after people in affiliation with Blizzard, and perhaps this place is a sort of memorial. Loads of NPC’s in the Azeroth game world are named from real people and created in honor of them. Blizzard prefers NPC’s over monuments and statues and I think this is also the case here, random as it is.

The only NPC’s that don’t have “real names” are the three cats. One of them is quite bigger than the others, and carries the name Rose, as depicted on the picture to the left.

I can’t help but feel that this place has to contain something more… but at this point, this seems to be it.

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The Underwater Goblin Club Room

I believe this place could have remained unknown for a long time, because this one is definately well disguised. I’m able to add this one also thanks to Livae who unknowingly discovered this place by hiding from the Horde.

To go to the hidden goblin club room yourself, you need to travel to the east-end of Thousand Needles.

Swim under the Fizzle and Pozzik’s Speedbarge and look for the hole in which the chain to the anchor leads up.

To compensate for the clumsy description, the picture below shows where you need to swim up. It’s at the side of the ship and it doesn’t immideatly look as if there’s anything up there.

Indeed it does have a goblin pin-up poster, a table with empty cans, fancy pineapple drinks and what looks like chinese takeout… where do you get that in Azeroth? I’d love to know!

Should I remind you that this place is underwater. I don’t know when this room was being used, nor do I know what the engineers had in mind when they built the entrance underneath the bottom of the ship – of course it would flood!

I think this place is worth a visit, but thanks to the constructors of the Speedbarge, consider underwater breathing.

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The Fairy Ring and the Two Sceletons

If you look at the map of Tirisfal Glades, you may have noticed the western lake surrounded by mountains, with a tiny island. It doesn’t look like there’s anything there, but as Larsa testified in the comments, this place is not entirely empty.

The area, marked with yellow above, stretches out covering what looks like hills on the map, but surprisingly it’s a forest inhabited only by critters when I first went there.

In patch 4.1.0, which came out late April 2011, they added Fey-Drunk Darters, Tirisfal Stags, Does, and Fawns, which we shall see, don’t act like normal animals.

When I scouted around, I found a circle of mushrooms on the spot where the arrow is on the map picture up above. Fairy rings are known from real life as well, traditionally thought to be places where one could witness pixies or fairies dancing.

Also according to folklore, they are considered dangerous and not safe to go near, and added by the hovering mist above it, the surroundings are rather eerie.

However, about every sixth hour or so a beautiful performance takes place, confirming that this mushroom circle indeed is magical when it draws the animals in and the darters engage in what looks like a ritual of music:

This video is made my Syrco (the author of Syrco Owl, a moonkin blog), who also wrote a detailed description of what happens at the mushroom circle in his post World of Warcraft Secrets: The Whispering Forest, including some really nice screenshots.

Tirisfal Glades is said to host an Old God, and I’ve heard rumours speculating that this fairy ring is a sign of this God’s existence. (I’ve written about Old Gods before and ranked them number 4 on my article about The 10 Most Creepy Things in WoW) But judging from the later added darter dance, it doesn’t look like the works of an Old God anymore.

However, there is more to see here…

In the lake, you’ll see a small island, on which a fishing chair and equipment are situated, and the ground is crawling with rats and littered with fish bones.

This is also the scene of a murder! The sceleton lying on the ground, is the body of a fisherman, impaled by a sword while still wielding his fishing pole.

If you’re still up for more, continue by swimming slighty east of the island to the bottom of the lake where you’ll find a crashed air plane and the small body of what is probably a gnome.

Strange sights, perhaps interconnected?

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The Tauren Hut with the Big Smoking Pipe (and other Stonetalon locations)

Worthy of notice, the empty tauren hut is not your everyday tauren hut. It features not just the mill and totems as the picture below displays, but also a grand smoking pipe and a strange graveyard connected to the side of the hut.

I was asking myself “which kind of person would live here?” and decided to hang around, hoping the mysterious resident would magically spawn and sit behind their pipe for a puff.

Then again I wasn’t sure I wanted to know, after all it almost apeared as if this person was collecting especially tauren sceletons but also a sitting troll in a bowl.

I know the tauren burial tradition is inspired by real-life native American culture, so the scaffolds are not the strange part, but putting the graveyard in the backyard seems more unusual though.

Needless to say, the host never came to greet his uninvited guest. Perhaps my luck in the end!

This location is not the only one in Stonetalon Mountains that I would deem hidden, the map underneath shows the two other points, both farther to the north east.

As Larsa wrote in the comments, the lakes near the empty smoking tauren hut and the dead hunter are not marked on the map, even though they are both of a reasonable size.

The sceleton of the dead hunter sighting is also quite mysterious. Sitting crouched on the little island, clues to his/her death is unknown. The broken boat, the small shed and boxes, tools and a small cage leaves the impression that this was the home of the hunter and perhaps his now buried family.

These three wooden grave markings are situated not far from the small shed, and tell the tale of what could be the tragic end of a family.

Further towards south-west, in the upper left corner of the map, you’ll find an empty area, except for a small hut and a little further east, some ruins with a few sceletons. These locations are however not as interesting as the above two examples.

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The Black Bear Camp and the Dun Morogh Tree (Update August 2011)

Just when you think there are no more goodies to find, more pops up and this is a good one indeed. This location was discovered by Skolnick who runs Warcraft Less Traveled, a podcast devoted to exploration, so if you’re in to that, it’s definitely one to keep an eye and ear on.

Well, Skolnick found the Dun Morogh Tree by accident as it is listed as an NPC, which is strange for a tree. I suspect he is the first to have noticed this addition that came along the 4.1.0 patch back in April this year. His #54 podcast tells the story of the interesting discovery of this very much amusing location, hidden away in the Northwestern part of Dun Morogh.

At the Southern part of this area, you’ll find a small tent with a fireplace and a bit of provisions, however, it’s empty. The same scene can be found at the Northern mark, but here a family of black bears have moved in.

You can see two bear cups, one sitting presumably enjoying the warmth of the fire and one of the parents, probably mother-bear, inhabitating the tent. How nice you might think…

But not far from here papa-bear is keeping the previous owners at bay, two dwarven brothers stuck in the NPC “Dun Morogh Tree”, too scared to climb down.

Jermaine and Anton Buckey squabble about the pickle they are in, one sitting further up looking rather comfortable (the picture below) and the other holding a branch to defend against the “wee bear” (the picture above).

For the sake of the story, I suspect these two dwarves are explorers out tracing this somewhat empty area. Now they provide comedy relief for the rest of us player-explorers – hang in there Buckeys!

For more information, a fully detailed description and discovery background behind finding this location, I advise you to listen to the 9 minute long Warcraft Less Traveled #54 podcast.

More?

I’m expecting more secrets revealed as Cataclysm unfolds, especially after we’ve seen several new additions being added with patch 4.1.0. I will attempt to update this post when I find more.