Bitter Departure

Turn In: Ricket at K3 [41, 86]

Objective: Escort the Injured Goblin Miner out of Crystalweb Cavern, then speak to Ricket at K3.

Quick Facts

• Cave Entrance: [40, 78] — northeast of K3
• Prerequisite: Only Partly Forgotten
• Unlocks: Cell Block Tango (also requires A Delicate Touch)
• Pairs With: Moving In and Ore Repossession

Walkthrough

Starting the Escort

• After turning in Only Partly Forgotten, the same Injured Goblin Miner offers this quest. There are multiple miners in the cave; any of them will work, so competition shouldn’t be an issue even if others are questing.
• Talk to the miner to begin the escort. He’ll say his line and start moving immediately, so make sure you’re topped off on health and mana before accepting.

The Escort Path

• This is not your typical slow-walk escort. The goblin miner moves at a fast run, significantly faster than most escort NPCs. He will not wait for you to drink, loot, or recover between pulls.
• The escort only goes to the cave exit, not all the way back to K3. Once outside, the goblin stops and turns to speak with you, completing the escort portion. You then fly or run to Ricket at K3 to turn in.

Combat During the Escort

• No scripted ambushes. The enemies you’ll fight are the same mobs already in the cave from Moving In and Ore Repossession: Crystalweb Spitters, Crystalweb Weavers, and Snowblind Diggers.
• The goblin will charge into mobs aggressively and has a notable tendency to prioritize Snowblind Diggers over spiders, even if that means running through spider packs to reach them. This frequently results in multi-mob pulls.
• The goblin cannot be buffed or healed by players, but he does heal himself between fights. If you need to eat or drink, let him engage a pack first and recover while he tanks. He can absorb a decent beating.

CRITICAL: Stay Close at the Exit

• May have failed this quest by being too far behind the goblin when he reaches the cave exit. When he stops and turns around to speak to you, you must be within close range to receive credit.
• Do not stop to loot corpses during the escort. The goblin will not wait for you, and falling behind is the single most common cause of quest failure.
• If the goblin despawns or you don’t receive credit, simply return to any Injured Goblin Miner inside the cave to restart.

Bestiary: Crystalweb Cavern Spiders

Crystalweb Cavern is home to a colony of crystal spiders, a frost-aspected arachnid subtype found in several cold-climate locations across Azeroth (including The Nexus and the Oculus in Borean Tundra). The cavern hosts three distinct species, each with different combat abilities worth knowing for the escort:

• Crystalweb Weavers: Cast Crystal Chains, a 6-second frost root that locks you in place while the goblin keeps running. This is the most dangerous ability during the escort, as being rooted while your escort charges ahead is exactly how you fail.
• Crystalweb Spitters: Ranged attackers with Crystal Spike (frost damage) and a 3-second Web immobilize. Less dangerous than Weavers since the root is shorter, but the ranged attack can peel you off the escort path.
• Icetip Crawlers: The large, bright purple spiders in the deepest section. Use Icetip Poison (nature damage). You likely already killed these for Only Partly Forgotten, and the escort path usually doesn’t go deep enough to encounter them.

All three species drop Iceweb Spider Silk, a tailoring reagent used in several WotLK-era recipes, including the Magnificent Flying Carpet. Hunters gained the ability to tame these crystal spider models starting in Cataclysm (Patch 4.0.3a).

Efficiency Tips

• If you followed the 3-quest cave run (Moving In + Ore Repossession + Only Partly Forgotten), start the escort immediately after completing Only Partly Forgotten. The escort path retraces your steps through the cave, so you’ll already have cleared most mobs on the way in.
• After the escort completes at the cave exit, fly to K3 and turn in Bitter Departure to Ricket, then turn in Moving In and Ore Repossession to Tore Rumblewrench (just outside the cave at [41, 80]). Three turn-ins in quick succession.
• Completing Bitter Departure is one of two prerequisites for Cell Block Tango, which unlocks the K3 teleporter to Garm’s Rise and leads into the Know No Fear/A Flawless Plan chain. The other prerequisite is A Delicate Touch from Jeer Sparksocket’s separate questline, so make sure you’ve completed that as well.

Story Context

Ricket reveals some K3 workplace drama. Says she can make the antidote for the miner’s spider bite, then asks you to tell Tore Rumblewrench “that she’s a jerk.”

Tore is the goblin who sent the miners into the cave in the first place (she’s the quest giver for Moving In and Ore Repossession) and apparently never came looking for the injured miners she left behind. Small detail, but it ties the cave questline together nicely.