A New Plague is the Horde questline that sets the tone for the whole undead starting experience. Apothecary Johaan sits in Brill, in Tirisfal Glades, and asks you to fetch increasingly unpleasant ingredients for the Royal Apothecary Society’s pet project. It runs four parts deep, all of it inside one zone, and it never sends you further than a few minutes of running from the turn-in.
Quick answer: Pick up A New Plague from Apothecary Johaan in Brill at level 6, then hand in 5 Darkhound Blood, 5 Vile Fin Scale, and 4 Vicious Night Web Spider Venom across the chain.
A New Plague chain: All four parts and rewards
Every part is Horde-only, requires level 6, and is sharable with your party. Johaan starts and ends each step, so Brill stays your hub for the entire chain. Turn-ins also award reputation with Undercity.
| Part | Level | Objective | Reward |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 6 | 5 Darkhound Blood | Weak Troll’s Blood Potion (3) |
| 2 | 9 | 5 Vile Fin Scale | Slumber Sand (5) |
| 3 | 11 | 4 Vicious Night Web Spider Venom | Apprentice Sash |
| 4 | 11 | Final step in Tirisfal Glades | 880 experience |
The first turn-in also pays out a small amount of copper and silver, and the third step is the one that opens up the Glyphic Scroll and Hallowed Scroll quests. Experience values shift between Classic realms and Season of Mastery, so treat the numbers as the baseline rather than a fixed figure.
Part 1: Collect 5 Darkhound Blood near Brill
Johaan opens with a pitch about Lady Sylvanas tasking the apothecaries with a disease strong enough to break Arthas’s Scourge. His theory is that beast blood is the missing component, which is why the first errand is a straightforward kill-and-loot run.
Part 2: Where to farm 5 Vile Fin Scale
Johaan decides the disease needs more reagents to spread properly, which means murloc parts. Head for the coastline to the north or west of Brill and look for Vile Fin camps along the water. Almost every Vile Fin murloc in Tirisfal Glades and neighboring Silverpine Forest drops the scale at the same rate.
| Murloc | Level | Scale drop chance |
|---|---|---|
| Vile Fin Puddlejumper | 7–8 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Minor Oracle | 8–9 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Muckdweller | 9–10 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Shredder | 12–13 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Tidehunter | 13–14 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Shorecreeper | 16–17 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Tidecaller | 17–18 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Lakestalker | 18–19 | 40% |
| Vile Fin Oracle | 19–20 | 40% |
Stick to the Puddlejumpers, Minor Oracles, and Muckdwellers at this stage. They drop the scale just as often as the high-level Oracles further out, and you can pull them one at a time at level 9.
Turning in the five scales pays out Slumber Sand and moves the chain along. Johaan confirms the hand-in by telling you the scales are exactly what the concoction needed.
Part 3: 4 Vicious Night Web Spider Venom in eastern Tirisfal Glades
The third step is the tightest of the four. Johaan has dug up an old text describing an ancient plague that killed thousands, with the active agent preserved in the venom of Night Web Spiders. He wants 4 samples of Vicious Night Web Spider Venom to test against his mixture.
- Only Vicious Night Web Spiders count, not the weaker Night Web Spiders.
- They cluster across eastern Tirisfal Glades, spread over a wide stretch of ground rather than one camp.
- The quest is flagged for level 11 but still accepts characters as low as level 6.
- The turn-in gives the Apprentice Sash along with Undercity reputation.
Finishing this step is also what unlocks the Glyphic Scroll and Hallowed Scroll quests, so it is worth clearing even if you plan to leave Tirisfal Glades soon after.
Part 4: Closing out the chain
The fourth and final A New Plague step stays inside Tirisfal Glades and is tuned for level 11, with the same level 6 minimum as the rest of the chain. It pays the largest experience award of the four at 880, which makes it a solid send-off before you move on toward Silverpine Forest.
How to confirm a part is already complete
If you are not sure whether an alt or an old character already cleared a step, the fastest check is a chat macro. Run this in-game and it prints true or false for the third part of the chain.
/run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(369))Swap the number for the part you want to check. The four quest IDs are 367, 368, 369, and 492, in chain order. A true result means the quest is already flagged as complete on that character and Johaan will not offer it again.
One last thing worth knowing: this version of A New Plague was pulled from the live game in patch 4.0.3a when Cataclysm rewrote Tirisfal Glades. It only exists on Classic-era realms, where it was reintroduced in patch 1.13.2, so if you are hunting for Johaan on a retail character, he is no longer handing out darkhound errands.
