Scepter of Shifting Sands and the AQ Gate Opening essentials

The AQ Gate Opening event is by far the most anticipated WoW Classic content. Both factions unite to combat a looming threat in the deserts of Silithus. Heroes all over Azeroth unite under a common banner to defend the realm.

The most dedicated of players however, are set out on the most epic quest line to obtain the Scepter of Shifting Sands and shatter the doors of Ahn’Qiraj. The following wiki is dedicated to the process, preparation and time needed to complete this insane task.

AQ Gate Opening prerequisites

Before you set out to even attempt completing this quest line before the first AQ Gate Opening on your realm, you have to be prepared to invest a large portion of in-game time. Completing the entire questline would take approximately 300 hours of playing if you attempt doing this mostly alone and with no help from other players. If you have a dedicated crew of friends you can trim nearly 60% of this time by delegating grinding tasks to your friends. There is still a lot of hours spent in simply doing all the chores this quest line requires.

We will subdivide the prerequsites in three categories: The Grind, Mats and Raids

The Raids

Your first goal is to have a raiding guild willing to invest time and effort to assist you on your quest to obtaining the Scepter of Shifting Sands. Many aspects of this quest line will requre groups of atleast 20 people to complete. On top of that you will need to do Molten Core and Onyxia once and Blackwing Lair during your quest line.

A raid group will additionally be needed at at least 3 other times during this quest line. Some quests will also require a group of at least 5 people to complete.

The Grind

The grind is by far the longest and most aggravating task on the list. You will have to kill approximately 20 thousand Silithids to obtain the required amount of Silithid Carapace Fragments before you even start the quest line. This is where your raiding guild and friends come in as they can help you grind out all the materials you need and also protect you during grinding process.

A single person can in theory farm between 70-150 fragments per hour depending on class and performance. You would need to turn in a grand total of 41,400 fragments to complete the initiation quest. In the most ideal of circumstances this would take a single person 278 hours of constant Silithid slaying to complete. Luckily your friends can help out and be deputized in this task. The more friends and guildmates you have farming with you and for you the shorter the time required to complete this task.

The Mats

Additional materials need to be grind-ed before as well. If you are wealthy enough you can also buy them off the Auction House. You will need:

10 Elementium Ore
20 Goblin Rocket Fuel
20 Chimaerok Tenderloin
10 Blue Sapphire
10 Azerothian Diamond
20 Arcanite Bar
20 Deeprock Salt

All of this materials would cost you up to several thousand gold depending on when you obtain them and the realm you play on.

Lets assume you have collected everything needed, you also have plenty of friends to help you along the way and you have the time to invest into this legendary task.

Obtaining the Scepter of Shifting Sands

Once the AQ Gate Opening event goes live you would need to run Blackwing Lair straight away and reach Broodlord Lashlayer the 3rd boss of the Raid Instance. He will drop “his head” upon slaying him which started the entire AQ Gate opening quest line. Upon returning his head to the quest giver you are going to need to do the Silithid Carapace Fragments grind we mentioned above in order for some “Dragons” to even want to speak to you.

After you complete the grind, said Dragons will send you on an three separate questlines to obtain three fragments (Red, Green and Blue) in order to complete the Scepter of Shifting Sands. One of the three fragments would require you to re-clear Blackwing Lair the following week which means you have at least 7 days to complete the entire questline if you want to be among the first players completing it.

Several other aspects of the questline would require slaying Onyxia and Ragnaros while also obtaining an item in Molten Core. In order to not mess up it would be ideal to clear this Raid Insances only once you have the quest required within. The rest of the quest line will serve as a low-key world tour around cities and zones in Azeroth. WoW Classic Addons such as Questie! would greatly optimize your pathing and process.

For a true WoW player no mountain is tall enough

The questline and obtaining the Scepter of Shifting Sands is not hard by any metric if you are willing to invest the time in it. Based on how much the player base and players have evolved since the event was first live, doing all the chores in an optimized manner is quite an easy task.

The only real requirement is the time and effort you will put into it.

The reward however is the insane feeling of accomplishment once you mount on a Scarab Mount inside your capital city as plebs bow to your might. (That is if you finish first or within 10 hours of the first person finishing their scepter)

Good luck, and may the fastest grinder win during this WoW Classic AQ release.