blood elf

These silly things are pretty awesome looking. They are non-binding bits of vanity gear that drop off of rarely found, stealthed blood elf bandits on Azuremyst Isle. Unlike the plain red defias bandit masks that drop off of brotherhood rogues in Westfall, the Blood Elf Bandit Mask is not class specific, anyone can wear one! Alliance players that are patient enough to hunt down these stealthed level 7 blood elf bandits on Azuremyst Isle have a fairly decent chance of getting one. For those of you that don’t know, Azuremyst Isle and the Exodar are only a quick boat ride from Auberdine. Horde players are going to have a tougher time of it. High level Horde rogues and druids can easily stealth their way onto the boat. So if you have a higher level horde main (preferably with an epic mount) you can show up on Azuremyst unscathed and spend your next hour or more tearing around the island hunting these guys.

For lower level Horde characters intent on acquiring a mask – be prepared for either a looong ghost run from the Barrens or Ashenvale – or – you can make your way to Auberdine and let yourself get killed near (or on) the Azuremyst Boat. You’ll likely get murdered again once you get off the boat – so make sure to be doing this little jaunt ‘sans-gear’ or you’ll have a repair bill to go along with what could be hours of fruitless searching.

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Auberdine or which boat goes where. Simply find the inn and check out the pier. There are two boats that have historically docked here. About halfway out the pier is a ‘t’ junction – where the boats to Menethil Harbor and Ruth’theran Village have always docked. The newest boat arrives at the far end of the pier (there are signs – try to look for them if you’re running from the Auberdine guards!)

How to Find Them

There are a number of known spawn points that ring the island. With a high level main and an epic mount, you can cover a lot of ground quickly. Everyone else – best bet is to pick a region and camp the spawn points. Re-pop time on these guys is somewhere between 2 and 5 minutes – with the next bandit appearing at a new location after the last is killed.

Click on the map to see known spawn points and a suggested route to take to find these guys

Hordies that aren’t uber leveled are suggested to take an alternate routes anytime the path crosses too close to the Exodar 🙂

A simple macro can also help snuffle these guys out. Just create a new macro and type the following:

/target Blood Elf

Put that on an action bar somewhere and just spam the crap out of it as you race around Azuremyst Isle. If you manage to find one this way – stop immediately and start searching in a tight circular pattern until you either see his stealthed figure – or he ambushes you. Either works.

Anyway – I hope this has been entertaining and helpful. For those of you that are hard to teach or resistant to helpful tips – here are a few that I can’t stress enough.

1. These guys are on Azuremyst Isle – not Bloodmyst Isle
2. A mask won’t drop with every kill
3 Others are hunting these guys at the same time you are.
4. This might take minutes…it might take hours.

I killed elves on Bloodmyst Isle for over an hour one night thinking that the masks randomly dropped off the packs of blood elves camped behind Blood Watch. I gained a level in that time and gathered stacks of cloth – but no mask. A little google searching and some patience would have saved me that trouble.

I’ve Got One..Now What?

Wear it dummy! Give it to a friend – give it to a favorite 10-19 battleground twink! Or do like a lot of other folks are doing and sell that bad dog. Prices are variable these days so selling them is still a bit of a hit and miss thing. WoW Econ is showing historical prices on the Alliance side to be running around a 10G average over the month of November, 2007 – though your server economy will dictate. Back in the early days of the Burning Crusade, these cheese-cloth wonders would fetch as much as 25-50G. The fervor has died down somewhat, but you can still make a tidy sum selling to folks willing to pay well for RP clothes or who simply want a unique look on their latest alt.

Matching Robe?

According to some folks – there is another drop available on Azuremyst that makes a great compliment to the mask. The Silvermoon Robe Family are a fairly nice couple of cloth robes that would make any level ALT level 13-20 feel like the best dressed toon in Azeroth. The robe usually drops off of Fenissa the Assassin (rare mob) who can be found around the Vector Coil or Cryo Core (she stays stealthed, but you can usually find her fairly easily.)

Growl’s Experience Hunting The Mask

Growl has managed to nab 4 of these things. I haven’t managed to find one dropping in any one location more than I have the other – so I can’t recommend choice hunting spots. The best bet is to keep an eye out around the marked spawn locations and hope you get lucky. The drop rate isn’t spectacular – but it isn’t bad either. The real problem is finding the bloody belf where ever he happens to be on the map. I’ve circumnavigated Azuremyst for an hour straight and not seen the blighter before. Other times – I’ve had him start stabbing me in the kidneys when I least expected it. As usual with most rare drops and rare spawn in the game – your mileage may vary – and vary wildly.

Good Luck and Happy Hunting!