Obtaining a Felhunter
The felhunter, a truly horrific-looking demon, is the summon gained by warlocks at level 30 and the final standard summon in the warlock arsenal. All of the summons gained after the felhunter, not counting the felsteed at level 40, are considered “end-game” summons. That is, they are difficult to summon and even more difficult to control, so even high-level warlocks don’t tend to use them very much. Thus, in a way, the felhunter completes the warlock’s standard bag of tricks.
Unfortunately, as you might have figured out from the succubus quest at level 20, the difficulty of attaining each successive demon increases exponentially. For the voidwalker, all you had to do was retrieve a book from a nearby tower. For the succubus, you had to travel to separate, distant locations to gather the hearts of two specific individuals. Get ready to take a few hours on this one, because it tops the succubus quest by leaps and bounds.
Your quest begins in Undercity, where your usual quest-giver tells you to seek out Strahad Farsan in Ratchet for additional training. Ratchet is, unfortunately, all the way over in the Barrens past Durotar. Hop on the zeppelin and run west to the Barrens. You’ll find the town on the eastern portion of the map near the center. It’s faster to run along the riverbank, but you can follow the roads as well. If you do, you’ll find Ratchet along the southeastern path out of the Crossroads.
When you get there, set your home at the inn; this will help save you a lot of additional running later on. Talk to Strahad and get the next segment of the quest. Congratulations, you get to go back to Undercity and talk to Jorah Annison, a librarian in the Magic Quarter. Get used to it, because you’ll be doing a lot of running back and forth.
About face and return to Undercity. When you speak with Jorah, he finally gives you a quest that involves something more than running. You’ll need two items, one from the Western Strand in Hillsbrad and one from the centaur cave in Thousand Needles.
Start by catching a bat to Tarren Mill. From there, run to the southwestern stretch of beaches. Don’t be afraid to take the long way on this one, because cutting corners could get you killed if you venture too close to Southshore.
You’ll find the Moldy Tome in a camp of murlocs SSE of the Azurelode Mines. It’s sitting out in the open, so it’s best to scout around with an Eye of Kilrogg first to figure out whether you’ve got the right camp or not. I got some good advice online that I’ll repeat here. Send your Voidwalker to aggro the entire camp, then rush in behind it and pick up the tome. When it gets low on life, Sacrifice it so you’re not interrupted in the process. If you do it correctly, you should be able to run in, snatch the tome, and escape in complete safety.
Once you’ve got the Moldy Tome, hearth back to Ratchet. From here, you’ll need to run all the way south to Thousand Needles. Don’t worry about the territory; nothing should pose a threat to you here. Take the elevator down into the valley and proceed along the northern cliff face. After a short walk, you should find yourself in a centaur camp. Just continue forward along the cliff face until you find a cave.
The Tattered Manuscript that you need is in a chest somewhere in the cave. Nothing in here is too powerful for you to kill, so there really shouldn’t be much concern in searching until you find it. Once you get the Manuscript, you’ve got quite a walk ahead of you. Run from Thousand Needles to the Barrens to Durotar and take the zeppelin back to Undercity. It’s a pain, I know, but necessary to complete the quest.
Talk to Jorah again and he commends you on a job well done. Unfortunately, you’re not finished yet. He says that you need to obtain three Channelling Rods in the Wetlands. Yes, that would be the same Wetlands you had to swim to when you got your succubus. Take another bat to Tarren Mill, this time heading to the extreme eastern coastline just south of Dun Garok. From there, hop in the water and swim south to the Wetlands.
This time around, at least, you don’t have to worry about aggro as much, because you’re now high enough level to easily solo any of the monsters here. Once you hit the coastline, head east until you find the road, then follow it south. When you hit a T-intersection, keep going south. This should lead you into the vicinity of a large encampment of Dragonmaw orcs.
The rods aren’t very difficult to get. They drop from all the orcs here, so just keep killing them until you get all three. Take heart, because you’re finally nearing the end of this accursed quest. Once you’ve got what you need, hearth all the way back to Ratchet. Go see Strahad, who will now summon a felhunter for you to kill.
Killing the felhunter, ironically, is the easiest part of the whole ordeal. I defeated it using my succubus without any real difficulty. Then again, I’m sure Blizzard feels you’ve earned it at this point, so killing the damned thing is just a formality to stay consistent with the other summoning quests.
Congratulations, after a few hours of running you’ve finally gotten your felhunter. This is, of course, only the Horde side of the quest, but I’m sure the Alliance version is quite similar. I haven’t even had a chance to use mine yet, tired as I was last night when I finally obtained it, but felhunters are supposedly the best choice when facing off with spellcasters and rogues. I plan to get back on tonight and test the beast out more fully, right after I run back to a territory where I can get soul shards.