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 get it, I get it. Cappy’s too busy to see this for himself. His loss! See, I’ve managed to ‘acquire’ a certain shipment of solution from the enemy. And as much as I hate tinkerin’ with inferior goblin technology, I’m inclined to make an exception here. Take this sample. I’ll need you to run a few field tests, just to prove its usefulness, while I try to do a little reverse engineering to duplicate the creation process.
Go to the front and gather the materials to make a decoy, then use the oil.”
-Chief Engineer Boltwrench
Chief Engineer Boltwrench aboard the Skybreaker wants you to use the Smuggled Solution at the Broken Front. Using the solution will require an Abandoned Helm, Abandoned Armor, and Pile of Bones, all found at the Broken Front.
Provided item:
You will be able to choose one of these rewards:
You will also receive:
Upon completion of this quest you will gain:
Quest Giver (Alliance): Chief Engineer Boltwrench — The Skybreaker, Icecrown (lowest deck, prow)
Quest Giver (Horde): Chief Engineer Copperclaw — Orgrim’s Hammer, Icecrown
Objective: Conduct 3 field tests with the Smuggled Solution at the Broken Front using collected battlefield materials.
Quick Facts
Walkthrough
Efficiency Tips
Lore Context
Boltwrench’s dialogue reveals that he ‘acquired’ a shipment of solution from the enemy, quote marks his own, meaning Horde goblin technology. He is also inconsistent about what it is, calling it a solution throughout and then telling you to “use the oil” in the last line of the same paragraph. He’s openly disdainful of goblin engineering but pragmatic enough to use it.
The turn-in dialogue has him boasting that he reverse-engineered the solution in no time, sniffing that he doubts goblins could ever create something a gnome can’t replicate. This sets up his continued role in the Aldur’thar chain, where his inventions become increasingly important to the Icecrown campaign.
Explore Icecrown’s hidden easter eggs, lore mysteries, and connections across Warcraft history in Vikstone’s Icecrown Chronicles, along with the complete quest storyline.
Vikstone's War Journal“I get it, I get it. Cappy’s too busy to see this for himself. His loss! See, I’ve managed to ‘acquire’ a certain shipment of solution from the enemy. And as much as I hate tinkerin’ with inferior goblin technology, I’m inclined to make an exception here. Take this sample. I’ll need you to run a few field tests, just to prove its usefulness, while I try to do a little reverse engineering to duplicate the creation process.”
He put the word in his own quotation marks and did not explain further.
The vial smelled of sulfur and something underneath it that I could not name and did not want to.
The Broken Front provides. That is the thing about that field. Whatever a man needs down there, it is lying about in quantity, and what this needed was a helm, a set of plates, and a pile of bones, and the helm I picked up first still had Stormwind’s lion on the brow under the rime.
Three times, Boltwrench wanted. So I built three men out of what was left of ours and stood them up in the snow, and I got better at it each time, and by the third I had stopped choosing which helm.
The solution does the rest. What you end up with looks like a soldier who went down and did not get back up, and the point of it is not that a frostwyrm carries it off. The point is what happens when something comes down to collect. The first one took mine off the ice and was most of the way back up when it came apart in the air.
“Good news! I’ve managed to reproduce the solution. Hardly an accomplishment, of course. Doubt I’ll live to see the day those neanderthal goblins cook up somethin’ a gnome can’t recreate in his sleep!”
Reproduce. He can make it now, whenever he likes, in whatever quantity the ship can carry, and the raw material is lying in the open two miles south and nobody is coming to collect it.
There are men at the Argent Vanguard who would not touch this. Father Gustav would not. I have been aboard the Skybreaker eight days and I did not raise a single objection.
Boltwrench had already copied the formula by the time Vikstone got back, which turned a stolen sample into a standing supply and made the whole business repeatable as The Solution Solution.
