WoW: The Test of Righteousness Quest

Last night I finished off this quest with my good buddy Rob and noticed that it's not entirely clear what you need to do and where you need to go: you can figure it out by piecing together forum posts and carefully reading the quest instructions. However, the reality is that you want to fast track your way through this baby and get your Paladin hands on Verigan's Fist to smash some NPC and PvP skulls. Which means you will probably skim the instructions and cause yourself some grief by having to add to the already surmountable travel time surrounding this quest. Therefore, I'm going to provide you .. yes you with some to the point instructions and advice.

When to Start:
I suspect you could solo all of this with the exception of the Deadmines peice as a level 25ish Paladin. However, Rob and I teamed up for this run and we both were level 27-28 Paladins making the quest time consuming but pretty much a cake walk: with the exception of "someone" using Turn Evil in Shadowfang Keep causing a female ghost to run everywhere and inform every elite npc we were there and that they should come and stomp on us. Other than that one painful death the only issue we encountered was adding travel time by not realizing certain side quests need to be picked up and turned in to accomplish our end goals.

The Quest Objectives:
Alright this is a gathering quest at the end of chain that starts when you click on the blue "?" over Duthorian Rall's head at the Cathedral in Stormwind. This becomes available at level 20. After following the quest chain you will eventually talk to Jordan Stilwell just outside the Iron Forge gates who will promise to make you Verigan's Fist if you gather all the stuff he needs to build it:

1) Purified Core Gem: found at Blackfathom Deeps in Ashenvale
2) White Stone Oak: found at Deadmines in Westfall
3) Jordan's Refined Ore Shipment: found at Mo'Grosh Stronghold in Loch Modan
4) Jordan's Smithing Hammer: found at Shadowfang Keep in Silverpine Forest

You pretty much have to go to every area accessible to level 20-30s in the game and I feel for you if you don't have the flight paths. I suspect that anyone playing alliance is looking at the long run to Shadowfang Keep as it's in Horde leveling territory. To get to there I would start at Wetlands run north and enter Arathi Highlands via the Don Modr path, run west across the Arathi and enter Hillsbrad Foothills, run west right across Hillsbrad and finally get to Silverpine Forest where you will find the Shadowfang Keep instance. I highly recommend taking the short detours to the Refuge Pointe in Arathi and South Shore in Hillsbrad to pick up the flight paths. Anyway, I'm going to suggest the order listed just because that might have made sense for us if we had followed it: sadly we never. I'm also suggesting you make Iron Forge your home till your done this quest.

Step 1: Get the Purified Core Gem
- First step you have to go to Auberdine in Darkshore and get a Corrupt Core Gem quest from Thundris Windweaver. If you forget this you can kill Nagas all day and not get a drop.
- We then flew to Astranaar and ran to Blackfathom Deeps on the north west coast, Zoram Strand. In retro spec it probably would have been just as fast to run from Auberdine along the coast.
- You don't need to enter the instance to get the drop. In fact we both got the corrupt core gem pretty quick walking in the tunnels and wiping out evil on our way to the instance.
- Go back to Auberdine and turn in the quest you picked up from Thundris (wish my mom had named me that) who will then purify the core gem for you. We forgot to do this and had to make the long haul all the way back just to get the gem purified.
- Grab a boat to Stormwind and make your way to Westfall for the next step.

Step 2: Pilfer the White Stone Oak lumber
- This is the one step that I know I couldn't solo as a mid 20 level toon primarily thanks to: Rhahk'Zor and his stupid archer friends. Anyway I assume you can make it to Deadmines allright on your own but just too note the entrance is in one of the buildings found at Moonbrook in Westfalls.
- Make your way to the instance, none of the npcs should prove much of challenge in 2 or 4 groups just don't get cocky and agro an entire room. Enough 17 level npcs will take down a mid 20 level Paladin. Same follows when you enter the instance but you should find it doable until you meet Rhahk'Zore. Two can take him down pretty fast so kill him and you make your way through one more section of the instance opening the 2nd door. You should see a bunch of elite woodworking Goblins one of these will drop the White Stone Lumber but I would suggest trying to only pull 1 or 2 at a time.
- Once you got the lumber you can try and finish the instance or simply hearth yourself to Iron Forge

Step 3: Find Jordan's Refined Ore Shipment
- Assuming you hearthed to Iron Forge make your way to Thelsamar in Loch Modan and pick up Bailor Stonehand's quest that sends you to Mo'Grosh Stronghold to get the ore shipment. I can vouch for the fact that if you don't get this quest you can not pick up the shipment at Mo'Grosh and we had to run there twice because we didn't realize we had to pick up a sub-quest in Thelsamar.
- Make your way to Mo'Grosh Stronghold and you'll find the shipment behind a tree at co-ordinates 72,22. Grab them and make your way back to Bailor to turn in his quest and get credit for the Ore Shipment.
- Make your way to Shadowfang Keep using the instructions I detailed above.

Step 4: Retrieve Jordan's Smithing Hammer
- Enter Shadowfang Keep and take a right into the room close to the entrance working your way to the jail cells slowly pulling and killing the elite npcs. I soloed this with the Blood Elf Paladin so know it's possible as long as you take your time. I would suggest you kill everything in the opening stage of the instance.
- Once you get to the jail cells open the one with the human mage and ask him to open the door to the next stage of the instance.
- When you enter this stage of the instance Jordan's Hammer is in the stables down the stairs and straight ahead. Hug the wall and try to proactively pull the npc's that you think you can't get by without agroing. We died here mainly due to the liberal use of the Turn Evil spell but if you take your time and carefully pull npcs on the say you can make it.
-Enter the stables and note, DO NOT USE THE CONCENTRATION SPELL IN THE STABLES. The stables are full of elite fel-horses who will leave you alone as long as you leave them alone. Apparently and area damage spell isn't leaving them alone and they will attack you and probably kill you.
- You should see the wow twinkle locating the hammer grab it and hearth your way to Iron Forge (providing and hour as passed since the last hearth).

Enjoy your smoking blue hammer. I'm personally looking forward to trying it out in the Arathi Battle grounds tonight.