Attempted this with a Protection warrior (me), MC/BWL-geared mage and warlock, a priest and a not-so-great paladin. There should be no breaks - constant pulling and fighting is required. We got through the gauntlet with about 10 minutes left, and it took about 15 minutes to clear the abominations, Rammstein, the skeleton spawns, and Baron. So aim to start pulling the abominations with 15 minutes left and if you keep the pace up pulling them you should be good.

This is the infamous ""45-minute Strat"" run that many have tried and few have beaten. It's part of the Dungeon Set 2 (Tier 0.5) upgrade quest chain, so it's appropriately difficult.

In order to pull this off successfully, you need to know how to cut the right corners:

1. you do not need (or want) to pull every group of mobs that you would normally pull on a Strat dead run. Walk around every group you possibly can. Battle the fewest number of enemies possible.

2. do not loot anything (except - maybe! - for the minibosses). You do not have the time to roll for random greens, but more importantly, if it takes you 3s to loot a mob and you loot 100 over the course of the run, that's 5 full minutes used. The timer is too tight to justify 5 minutes of looting.

3. start the next pull before the current mob is dead. The DPS players (specifically rogues and hunters) should basically have no downtime throughout the run. The only breaks you should take are for the casters to drink up, and even then you should only drop out of combat long enough for them to start.

4. most importantly and most obviously, remember to concentrate your firepower on a single target before moving onto the next one. That actually applies to every group, but people seem to forget easily.

Unfortunately a good part of this run is luck. With that said, best of luck to you. :)

Keep in mind you don't have to kill the Baron within the 45 minutes. You just have to engage him. Unless you're critically short on time, get buffed, your cooldowns up, and to full health and mana before starting it up. After all, no matter how much time you have left you only get one shot at him if you want complete the quest.

Some notes on soloing this for Loremaster. I found it pretty hard to figure out what to do from the previous posts.

I avoided Strat while levelling; I just didn't like the instance much. But trying to finish Loremaster, it was either get a raid together to run ZA, or solo Strat.

My toon is a lvl 80 Pally. He worked in his alternate spec, Retadin. He's reasonably well geared, mostly ilvl 200 stuff.

Main points:

• At lvl 80, your aggro radius is tiny. You can walk pretty close to the mobs without aggro. Edge your way around groups, or wait till traffic opens a gap and dash through. This really speeds things up.
• Doing this, you will occasionally get a swarm of very low level nuisance mobs coming from crates near the edges of the road. Take them out without AoE to avoid aggroing the others. For me, Retribution Aura did the trick.
• At this level, none of the bosses are challenging, so I won't go into detail on the fights. What's more difficult is the occasional aggroing of a group of trash. I found AoE very useful when that happened, as well as being able to self heal. The occasions where that was required were far enough apart that I could probably have just used potions. Some of the mobs will web you, and having a trinket or other means of removing movement problems helps.
• If you do aggro a trash mob or two, don't try to run away; as they follow you they pick up more trash. Deal with it on the original site, preferrably without AoE.

Route:

Strat is divided by a series of gates. Some open to a touch. Some require the Key to the City. The gate to the final boss on this quest opens after taking out 3 previous minibosses.

There are some http://www.wowwiki.com/File:StratholmeMap.jpg good http://www.wowwiki.com/File:StratholmeWithShops.jpg maps on the wowwiki site, which I refer to below.

If you don't have the Key to the City:

The gate to the NE (right) of the main entrance, heading directly into Festival Lane, is locked and you will have to go around it. Work your way clockwise around the block facing you as you come in. You will have three sets of double gates, first going from Kings Square into Market Row, from MR into Festival Lane, and from FL to Elder Square. None require a key. When you're between the double gates there will be a swarm of rats or other low level mobs; AoE is useful here.

Once you're through to Elder Square, kill Magistrate Barthilas, the first miniboss. He drops the Key to the City, which you need for subsequent gates. Head through the north one, into The Gauntlet.

The Gauntlet contains 3 alcoves with 'zuggurats', smallish pyramidal buildings (green areas on the second map). Each holds a mini boss, which you need to kill. Moving around this area without aggroing some trash is probably impossible, so be prepared to take out groups when you have to.

Once all 3 minibosses are dead, the gate to the final area, Slaughter Square, will open.

SS is patrolled by about 15 Abominations. Clear all of them out, and the door of the final ziggurat will open, and out will come another, somewhat higher level named Abomination. Kill him, and deal with the low level zombies and skels that come from the side.

The door then opens again. Go in, deal with the 3-4 trash just inside.

This leaves just the final boss, Baron Rivendare, who is guarding Ysida, the prisoner you are after. Kill him, and she is liberated. Talk to her, get her quest and item, and you're done.