A Tangled Skein

Quest Giver: Specialist Cogwheel — Drak’Sotra, Zul’Drak [58, 72]

Objective: Use the Tangled Skein Thrower to destroy 5 Plague Sprayers.

Quick Facts

• Level: 76
• Type: Use item on target (channeled)
• Location: Kolramas area, around [56, 80]
• Provided Item: Tangled Skein Thrower
• Chain: Skimmer Spinnerets → Crashed Sprayer → A Tangled Skein
• Also requires: Throwing Down completed (unlocks Cogwheel’s quest line)

Walkthrough

Head to the Kolramas area around [56, 80]. The Plague Sprayers are flying in the sky, not on the ground. Look up. They’re nerubian constructs hovering above the blighted terrain, spraying plague below.

Target a Plague Sprayer, then use the Tangled Skein Thrower from your inventory. It’s a channeled ability that shoots webbing at the sprayer. The web fouls up the sprayer’s levitation magic, causing it to crash to the ground. You need to bring down 5.

Important: Don’t move during the channel. Stay still until you get quest credit for each sprayer. There’s a short delay after the cast bar finishes before the kill registers.

Tips

• The Ensorceled Choker disguise prevents mob aggro while you channel, which is very useful since you’re standing still in Scourge-infested territory.
• Druids can stealth (Prowl in cat form) between sprayers, use the thrower, then re-stealth. Rogues can do the same.
• Pet classes: Dismiss your pets before using the Tangled Skein Thrower. Pets on defensive stance will run toward the sprayer’s position and pull nearby mobs. Some retail-era reports indicate that the item fails to register kills at all when pets are active.
• Plague Sprayers can be “tagged” by other players. If a sprayer appears gray, someone else has already targeted it. Wait for a fresh one or move to a different sprayer.
• The Tangled Skein Thrower shares its item graphic with the Mote Extractor, so don’t confuse the two if you’re an engineer.

Return to Specialist Cogwheel at [58, 72] for your choice of blue weapon reward.

Lore Context

This quest is the payoff to Cogwheel’s three-step engineering plan. She used the nerubian spinnerets (quest 1) and the plague sprayer parts (quest 2) to build the Tangled Skein Thrower, a web-launching device that turns the nerubians’ own silk against their flying machines.

Cogwheel specifically notes the poetic justice: “The webbing should foul up their hover spells long enough to cause them to crash to the ground just like Kolramas. Kind of poetic. I like that!”

The crashed necropolis Kolramas is the same wreck the Hath’ar nerubians are emerging from, so Cogwheel is using their own technology to repeat their own fate.

The quest title references Piers Anthony’s fantasy novel With a Tangled Skein (1985), part of the Incarnations of Immortality series. A “tangled skein” also refers to a tangled ball of yarn/thread, fitting the web theme.

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