Retest Now

Quest Giver: Chief Engineer Boltwrench (Alliance, aboard The Skybreaker)/Chief Engineer Copperclaw (Horde, aboard Orgrim’s Hammer)

Objective: Drink the Diluted Cult Tonic, collect 10 Tainted Essences from cultists at Aldur’thar, combine them into a Writhing Mass, and throw it into one of the three cauldrons.

Quick Facts

• Location: Aldur’thar, cauldrons at [49, 33]
• Chain Position: Cannot Reproduce → Retest Now (one-time) → Retest Now (daily)
• Provided Item: Diluted Cult Tonic
• Pairs With: Not a Bug, No Rest For The Wicked (daily versions, same area)

Walkthrough

Step 1: Drink the Tonic

• Use the Diluted Cult Tonic from your inventory. This gives you a 10-minute buff called Dark Discernment that allows you to loot Tainted Essence from cultist kills. Without this buff active, essences will not drop.

Step 2: Kill Cultists for Tainted Essences

• Kill any Cult of the Damned mobs in Aldur’thar while the buff is active. You need 10 Tainted Essences.
• The westernmost platform of Aldur’thar has the highest concentration of eligible mobs.
• If you are also doing Not a Bug, do that quest first. The Void Summoners you kill for Not a Bug have a ~21% drop rate for Tainted Essence, letting you make progress on both quests simultaneously.

Step 3: Create the Writhing Mass

• Once you have 10 Tainted Essences, right-click the stack in your inventory to combine them into a Writhing Mass.

Step 4: Choose Your Cauldron

• Fly to the cauldrons at [49, 33]. Right-click the Writhing Mass while standing near any of the three cauldrons. Each cauldron grants a different 2-hour buff:

• These buffs only work within Icecrown and do not stack with similar buffs (e.g., the AP buff is overwritten by Mighty Alchemist’s Stone since both are +100 AP). Scrolls of the same stat type will also conflict.

Step 5: Turn In

• Return to the Chief Engineer aboard your airship.

Bonus Buff Trick

• You can farm a second set of 10 Tainted Essences before throwing the first Writhing Mass. Create the second Writhing Mass, throw the first into one cauldron, then immediately throw the second into a different cauldron. This lets you stack two different buffs (e.g., Attack Power + Stamina). You must do this before turning in the quest.
• You cannot refresh an active buff by throwing another Writhing Mass into the same cauldron.

Efficiency Tips

• Pick up Not a Bug and the daily version of No Rest For The Wicked before heading to Aldur’thar. All three share the same area.
• Drink the Tonic before you start killing for other quests. The essence drops are an overlay on normal kills, so there is no reason not to have the buff running while you do everything else.
• After completing the one-time version, this unlocks as a daily quest from the same Chief Engineer.

Lore & Secrets

QA Bug Tracker Easter Egg

Part of the QA-themed quest cluster. “Retest Now” is the status used in bug tracking when a developer’s fix is ready for the tester to verify. In context, the Chief Engineer has analyzed the cauldron samples from Cannot Reproduce and developed a countermeasure (the Diluted Cult Tonic). Now it is time to “retest” by sabotaging the Cult’s cauldrons with their own corrupted essences.

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