The Deaths of Chromie is solo content coming in patch 7.2.5. I'll try to avoid spoilers in this initial post, and will add pointers to guides and such as I find out about them.
* You start the scenario by talking to Chromie on top of Wyrmrest Temple in Northrend. There's a portal to Wyrmrest Temple from new Dalaran in the tower.
* Chromie has talents, similar to order hall talents, which will make the scenario easier. The first two are instant but the rest will take some time to acquire.
* You are normalized to level 112 (it's the future!) and item level 1000.
* You must be level 110 to run the scenario, but it won't go away in future expansions.
* The rewards seem to be mostly timewarped badges.
* They tried to make it balanced between different player roles, unlike withered army training which favors tanks.
The title of this content is about as spoiler-free as 'The Death of Qui-Gon Jin'.
Really only in the sense that every raid boss could be titled "The Deaths of Everyone in Your Raid Except That Person Who Always Holds On and Tries to Shadowmeld, and Usually by Implication Everyone Else in Azeroth Because the Bad Guys Will Win if You Don't Take This Guy Out, Unless it's an Optional Boss in Which Case Nevermind".
* Chromie's talent tree is gated on a rep grind as well as research time costs. You appear to get rep mostly from killing mobs. The second row (gated by one rep level) lets you turn Chromie into a tank or healer. The final talent looks like it might be a very large buff.
* Playing at the scaled level and item level is fun, because you have a lot of haste.
* Death doesn't end the scenario, just teleports you back to wyrmrest temple. You do take durability damage from dying. On the flip side, you can sometimes get gold from Sands of Time (a thing that drops periodically and grants you a choice of two rewards).
* I got about half of the first rep level on my first run-through as a moonkin, killing only trash and dying to the minibosses, and almost all of the first rep level on my first run-through as a vengeance DH when I was able to kill minibosses.
* Sands of Time should be used immediately. They disappear at the end of a run so you can't stockpile them. The extra action button will let you use one if if you have any. The left option is typically oriented towards gaining Chromie rep or gold, while the right option is oriented towards helping the current run, so you can pre-pick based on what your goals are.
* If you're at Wyrmrest Temple to turn something in and have only a few minutes left, you can exit the scenario via the northern gate and restart it so that you have 15 minutes to do the next thing, if you don't have a reason not to.
* You get 150 timewarped badges from the intro quests.
So far this puts the single-player content in 7.2 to shame, although the initial difficulty and Majora's Mask gameplay may turn some people off.
After a dozen or so runs, some on the moonkin and some on the DH, I've hit a point where I think I've seen all of the major elements, but doing them all in fifteen minutes seems impossible. That's presumably where the Chromie talents and taking the right-side option of the sands comes in. Also, while being a tank might make it easier to get started, being a DPS seems like a better choice for doing everything in 15 minutes--although there is much more pressure on DPS to execute mechanics correctly in order to not die, even with Chromiehealer helping. I haven't tried being a healer.
The rep grind doesn't seem bad at all; the time gates should be the major limiting factor for getting Chromie talents. On the DH I'm about halfway through the third-to-last rep level.
There's been some server lag, probably because many people are doing this on the first day. It's of course frustrating to sit there doing nothing for five seconds while a timer is ticking down, but I'm sure this will get better pretty quickly (after perhaps getting worse on the first evening). There was also a round of realm restarts this afternoon, and then I think the servers might have fallen over a few minutes ago due to general patch day woes.
I've run it twice and I'm confused. Each time I managed one of the minibosses which, even as a tank, seem tough. Killing trash takes a long time. Can you switch talents in the scenario?
There's something in the guide about going directly to a miniboss - couldn't figure out how to do that. And I opened one portal but didn't go through. Was that what I was supposed to do?
For the four <redacted>s, once you've done the trash step, you don't have to repeat it on future runs; you can just go straight to where the miniboss spawns.
For the portals, once you've spawned one, it will stay there on future runs. It's probably best to try each one out for the first time on a fresh run, or at least when you have a substantial fraction of the 15 minutes left.
I thought that was likely the case and went back to the one miniboss I had killed's spawn spot but nothing was there. That's what confused me. I think the NPC's have dialog that tells you to do this which is why I went (I didn't read the guide until after my runs).
I thought that was likely the case and went back to the one miniboss I had killed's spawn spot but nothing was there.
Ah, that did catch me up once--you have to wait a few seconds for it to spawn.
Once you wait out the time to research a Chromie talent row, you can flip between the talents without waiting. So don't worry about which option to pick; you can trivially change it after you finish researching it.
The climb to the final rep level (Epoch Mender -> Time Lord) takes 5000 rep, not the 3500 you'd expect from the linear progression. I was able to farm up about 2000 rep on my last run, so this isn't really a big deal.
There are elites conveniently located near each of the <redacted> which drop 1-2 Sands of Time each. These are good fodder for a farming run, although it's unlikely that you'd want to spend time killing them on a completion run.
So far, I haven't bothered to read up on these encounters. My first foray into the experience was grossly inefficient (I've only done one of the timed missions), but I feel like I managed to advance the plot.
Is this a plausibly enjoyable approach to the Deaths of Chromie experience for someone with little patience for the "try all the things" approach, or should I resort to Google?
For reference, I did very little Googling of withered training and relied heavily on Google for the Suramar ley line achievement (find subway entrances and complete the quests within). I am happy with both those choices.
I think so. As long as you feel like you're somehow advancing the plot each time, or at least have an idea for how to do so next time, you probably don't need any external guidance. If you run into a wall, then it might be time to look at the wowhead guide or something similar.