Blood in the Water

Quest Giver: Lord-Commander Arete – Death’s Rise, Icecrown [19.5, 48.1]

Objective: Fill the Gore Bladder with the blood of 10 Ravenous Jaws (sharks).

Quick Facts

• Type: One-time (not a daily)
• Location: Waters around Onslaught Harbor, Icecrown [~12, 42]
• Chain Position: 3 of 4 in the Death’s Rise series. Preceded by The Story Thus Far…, followed by You’ll Need a Gryphon.
• Provided Item: Gore Bladder

Walkthrough

Swim to the Waters Around Onslaught Harbor

• Head northwest from Death’s Rise to the coastal waters surrounding Onslaught Harbor [~12, 42].

Kill Ravenous Jaws and Collect Blood

• Kill the sharks (Ravenous Jaws) swimming in the waters around the harbor.
• The blood does not drop as loot. After killing a shark, use (right-click) the Gore Bladder from your inventory while near the corpse to collect the blood from the water. This is the single most common mistake on this quest, and many players spend 15+ minutes killing sharks, wondering why nothing is dropping.
• Repeat 10 times.

Where to Find Sharks

• Sharks swim near the surface. Don’t bother diving to the sea floor.
• Locations with good shark density: [10, 41], [6, 46], [13, 47], [12, 42].
• The area between Onslaught Harbor and Death’s Rise has a reliable spread.

Return to Lord-Commander Arete

• Fly back to Death’s Rise and turn in the filled Gore Bladder.

Efficiency Tips

• Watch your fatigue bar. Some sharks swim near the fatigue zone boundary (particularly around [32, 53]). It’s easy to tunnel-vision on a shark and drift into fatigue waters. Keep one eye on that bar.
• Hunters can use Track Beasts to locate sharks from the air, making this significantly faster. Non-hunters can use Tracker Snacks for the same effect.
• Death Knights can use Path of Frost to stand on the water between kills and remount quickly. Elixir of Water Walking provides the same benefit for other classes.
• Water breathing items like Tua’kea’s Breathing Bladder (from a Dragonblight quest) help if you prefer skimming just below the surface to spot sharks from underwater, where visibility is better than from the air.
• This quest is separate from the Onslaught Harbor dailies and doesn’t require going on land, so you can complete it independently on your way to or from the harbor.

Lore Context

Arete explains that the blood is needed for a ritual to create a mount capable of taking on the Onslaught’s gryphon riders. The follow-up quest You’ll Need a Gryphon pays this off by having you steal a gryphon from the Onslaught itself.

A popular theory suggests the Ebon Blade death knights at Death’s Rise hand out this quest partly to mock non-death-knights for lacking Path of Frost, making them wade through freezing Icecrown waters while the quest givers watch from the cliffside above.

Arete’s dry comment that “it’s not glamorous work, but it is necessary” supports this reading.

Easter Egg

• The quest title as a possible reference to the Dave Matthews Band song “Don’t Drink the Water,” which contains the lyric “there’s blood in the water.” The phrase “blood in the water” is also a common idiom for vulnerability (as in sharks sensing prey).

Explore Icecrown’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Icecrown Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.