War stories, articles & game guides
Gamer
Tribute
2026
Expeditions,
War Stories &
Culture
War stories, articles & game guides
Gamer
Tribute
2026
Expeditions,
War Stories &
Culture
“I‘m sure you’ve seen those blue and white platforms hovering over the quarry. They’re the transportation the mage hunters used to land their forces here, and now they’re loading them up with our artifacts and fragments of our statues. We must stop them before they leave the quarry. The small creatures digging in the quarry carry explosives. Take them and use them to destroy the three floating platforms.
The leader keeps watch from a fourth, grounded platform, but we’ll deal with him afterward.”
-Etaruk
Etaruk, outside the Coldrock Quarry, wants you to destroy the North Platform, the East Platform, and the West Platform.
You will be able to choose one of these rewards:
You will receive:
Upon completion of this quest you will gain:
Quest Giver: Etaruk, camped near the entrance to Coldrock Quarry [~52, 35]
Turn In: Etaruk [~52, 35]
Objective: Destroy the North Platform, East Platform, and West Platform.
Quick Facts
Walkthrough
Step 1: Collect Gnomish Grenades
Kill Beryl Reclaimers (the small gnome diggers) inside the quarry. They drop Gnomish Grenades at a high rate (players report 80-90%). You need exactly 3 grenades.
Tip: Grenades stack, so collect all three before heading to the platforms. This saves running back and forth.
Note: The quarry also contains Beryl Treasure Hunters (humans) from the previous quest. The grenades only drop from the gnome Reclaimers, not the human Treasure Hunters. If you’re only looting Cores of Malice, you’re killing the wrong mobs.
Step 2: Destroy the Platforms
The platforms are glowing blue and white structures floating above the quarry. Look up to spot them.
Platform Locations and How to Reach Them:
North Platform [52, 32]:
West Platform [50, 33] (or [51, 34]):
East Platform [52, 35] (or [53, 36]):
To use a grenade: Target the platform (look up at it), then right-click the Gnomish Grenade in your inventory. The grenade will arc toward the platform and destroy it.
Important: Wait for Cooldown
If another player just destroyed a platform, wait until the fire effect dissipates before throwing your grenade. If you throw while the platform is still burning from someone else’s grenade, yours won’t count.
Flying Mount Strategy
If you have Cold Weather Flying (available to alts at level 68), this quest becomes trivial:
Story Context: Stopping the Plunder
Etaruk explains why these platforms must be destroyed: “They’re the transportation the mage hunters used to land their forces here, and now they’re loading them up with our artifacts and fragments of our statues. We must stop them before they leave the quarry.”
The blue dragonflight’s mage hunters arrived on these floating platforms, murdered the tuskarr craftsmen, and are now loading stolen artifacts onto the same platforms to transport them back to the Nexus. Destroying the platforms traps the remaining forces and prevents the theft.
Etaruk also mentions a fourth platform: “The leader keeps watch from a fourth, grounded platform, but we’ll deal with him afterward.” That leader is Curator Insivius, the target of the next quest.
Lore: The Beryl Reclaimers
The Beryl Reclaimers are gnomes, not humans like the Treasure Hunters. While the human mage hunters are former Kirin Tor members who defected to Malygos, the gnome Reclaimers appear to be specialists brought in for excavation work. Their job is digging up tuskarr artifacts and sacred stones.
Why gnomes?
Gnomes are renowned engineers and excavators. They carry Gnomish Grenades, a classic gnomish invention. The blue dragonflight likely recruited (or coerced) gnome specialists for this plundering operation, just as they recruited human mages as hunters.
Explore Borean Tundra’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Borean Tundra Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.
Vikstone's War JournalThree floating platforms hovered over the quarry, already loaded with stolen artifacts and statue fragments. This was the mage hunters’ escape route.
“The small creatures digging in the quarry carry explosives,” Etaruk told me. “Take them and use them to destroy the platforms. The leader watches from a fourth platform on the ground. We’ll deal with him afterward.”
The Beryl Reclaimers never saw it coming. A few quick kills, a few appropriated grenades, and suddenly their own demolition supplies were being used against them.
The East Platform went first, as the explosion scattered debris across the quarry floor and sent mage hunters scrambling. The North Platform followed, then the West. Each blast closed another escape route.
By the third explosion, the treasure hunters had figured out what was happening. Too late to stop it. The floating platforms lay in ruins, their cargo of stolen artifacts partly buried in rubble.
Etaruk watched the last platform fall. “The mage hunters won’t find it as easy to plunder our quarry as they’d imagined.”
Their leader remained on that grounded platform. No way out now. Nowhere to run.
We’d deal with him next.
Three platforms down and their leader stranded on the grounded fourth with no reinforcements coming, which makes A Visit to the Curator considerably less dangerous than it would have been an hour earlier.
