Probably better that I do this one soon, because it might be changing for good in a few months.
Lore:
The Gnomes built a huge, sprawling technically advanced city under the mountains of Dun Morogh. Everything was great until one day, Mekgineer Thermaplugg decided to take over. He unleashed a mountain of Troggs and convinced the Gnomes to detonate a radiation bomb to clear the place out.
Alot of the gnomes bailed out, but a bunch got caught in the blast. There’s even a pocket of them that created a mini-town halfway through the instance. Whatever gnomes were left packed up and moved to Ironforge.
So now, the place is completely irradiated and pretty much empty, and Thermaplugg rules over…whatever it is that he rules over down there. The slimes?
Degree of Difficulty: Hard
Gnomeregan is one of those instances that you’ll do once, and swear off doing ever again. The quests there are annoying, the place is crawling with mobs, it’s sprawling, somewhat confusing, and for level appropriate characters it can take hours to crawl through. And God forbid you accidentally wander into one of the crowds, and pull an alarm bot or a mass of gnomes.
The bosses aren’t all that difficult, actually. It’s funny in that way, and it has the benefit of having a place for Alliance characters to mail and repair. And the drops (for their level) are very good. But I’ve never met a single person who has said they enjoyed running Gnomer, or thought it was a smooth instance.
Bosses:
Viscious Fallout: A big Radioactive elemental. Easy to bypass as he just spawns amongst the other mobs in the room, and doesn’t pull any differently from any of them.
Grubbis and Chomper: A Trogg and basalisk combo that is the “boss” of a quest event that happens in Gnomer, and is entirely skippable. A very simple fight without much effort.
Electrocutioner 6000: A spider tank that drops the key to the second half of the instance (and the back door). Has a hard hitting electric attack, but not a difficult fight.
Crowd Pummeler 9-60: An elite robot which spawns oddly, and is entirely optional. Another very easy boss fight amongst an extremely annoying room full of adds.
Mekgineer Thermaplugg: A very difficult fight at the appropriate level. He has electric attacks, a knockback, and adds in the form of bombs which lock on to specific party members. You can run around the room and turn off the bomb dispensors, but this is a long fight nonetheless.
Special Features:
A few quests start inside the instance, and there’s one long scripted Trogg event in one of the side paths. The town with vendors and a mailbox is a neat in-instance feature that I sort of wish more instances had. A rarespawn boss (that I’ve never seen despite dozens of runthroughs) in the Dark Iron Ambassador.
These days, the biggest reason to run Gnomer is to get a few of the great drops. The Hydrocane (from Viscious Fallout) is a staff that allows Water Breathing when equipped, which is obviously helpful even at 80. Fused Wiring drops here (though there’s a recipe to create it these days). Also, the engineering patterns for Lil’ Smoky and the Bombling only drop from Gnomeregan mobs.
Recommended for Levels: 24-30
I can’t recommend that anybody run Gnomer, really. Ok, you’ll probably have to at least once, but wait until you’re 70-80 and you can just plow through without thinking. Because this place is huge, boring, and extremely annoying. It’s not that the instance is difficult, necessarily, just not really any fun. You’ll want to pick up some of the unique drops here eventually, but until then, leave Gnomeregan to the Troggs.
