How to start and complete the The Body on the Banks quest in WoW Dragonflight

After what seems like an eternity, I finally managed to finish The Body on the Banks quest in World of Warcraft Dragonflight. What should have been a quick and painless quest, turned out to be one of the worst experiences in this patch so far. Here’s how to complete The Body on the Banks quest.

How to start The Body on the Banks quest in WoW Dragonflight

To start the quest, you need to finish the Azerothian Archives questline leading up to the part when you visit the Ohn’ahran plains. You can start by accepting the banner quest in The Roasted Ram Inn in Valdrakken and, from there, finish the next few quests at Algeth’ar Academy (northeast of Valdrakken). After you finish the quests there, specifically Roska’s quests where you excavate things using a fire elemental, you’ll be sent to Ohn’ahran plains. From there, do the Surveying the Riverbed quest.

The Surveying the Riverbed quest is a bit buggy. You go around the lake and try to excavate items using a water elemental, similar to how you did the quest earlier with the fire elemental. Unfortunately, you will have dirt mounds that spawn and disappear, your water totem disappearing, and, most annoyingly, other players doing the same quest and getting in your way.

It may be a bit annoying, but you should have no trouble excavating two small items.

After excavating two small items, you’ll be asked to excavate a big one. Go near the water bank, start excavating, and… you’ll uncover a body. Yikes! (you’ll be saying that a lot during the next bit).

Even before you turn in Surveying the Riverbed the body will have a quest marker. Accept it and start The Body on the Banks. Roska will appear, talk to her to initiate the next bit. Now, get ready because this next part gets ugly.

Is The Body on the Banks quest bugged?

Ho, boy! So, to complete this quest, you need to excavate the body from the dirt mound on the river bank. Easy, right? It should be, but unfortunately, in its current state, the quest is anything but.

The Body on the Banks is one of the most bugged quests, not only in this patch, but potentially in all of WoW (yes, that includes WoW Classic quests, too). So many things can bug out for you. You are supposed to use your water elemental to dig out the body by balancing between enough dirt and enough water. Unfortunately, everything that I just mentioned can bug out. In fact, here’s a list of all the bugs:

• Dirt mounds don’t spawn, so you must talk to Roska to spawn more. Unfortunately, they disappear for no reason, and you have to talk to her again.
•  The water totem can disappear as soon as you summon it.
•  The arrow on the bar can instantly go to either side, not giving you enough chance to dig.
•  The progress on the excavation can reset randomly.

What is the source of all these bugs? Other players. Unfortunately, this quest is similar to many WoW Classic quests, where only one player (or group of players) can do it at a time. However, seeing how we all want to finish all quests as soon as possible, everyone is going to be fighting you for progress, and in the end, nobody is actually going to finish the quest because it will keep resetting and bugging out. Naturally, nobody wanted to form a queue. 

I kept trying and trying, but the bugs kept piling up, and my excavation progress kept resetting. 

Fortunately, there is a temporary solution until this quest is fixed.

How to complete The Body on the Banks quest in WoW Dragonflight

To avoid all other players, simply turn on War Mode. The quest is zoned out, so if you have PvP on, you’ll only be able to see other PvP-flagged players. And seeing as many players don’t want to PvP in this zone, this makes you see… ummm… nobody. Yeah, as you can see in my image, I was all alone with the corpse after turning War Mode on. Thanks to user ‘SouletsWoW’ on WoWhead for the solution. 

Once alone with the corpse, I summoned a water totem and started digging. After only a few seconds, the corpse was excavated, and I could turn in the quest. I got a ‘whopping’ 28 gold and nine silver for finishing the quest, but the biggest reward is that I can put this whole thing behind me.

Good luck. Have fun, and, what can I say, sometimes you just have to turn War Mode on.