The Admiral

I was running my level 12 Priest through Deadmines with my level 80 Druid. With the Druid, I initially picked up the first quest, The Foreman, but abandoned it because my Priest was not high enough (level 15 requirement) and figured I would come back and do them both together.

When my Priest entered the Mast Room, the quest The Carpenter was automatically offered, even though he does not meet the level requirements and does not have the Stormwind Communicator Mk. II, yet my Druid got no quest.

Upon entering the Goblin Foundary area, the same thing happened with the quest The Machination; offered to my ineligible Priest just for walking through the door, but not to my eligible Druid.

Once walking onto the dock in the Ironclad Cove area, I was given the quest The Admiral, but upon completion, I was NOT given the follow-up quest, The Defias Kingpin.

I ran through the dungeon again, this time doing the quest line with my Druid, starting from the beginning, and was given every quest normally as I progressed through the dungeon, without incident.

Once my Priest reached level 15, I zoned back into Deadmines and Lieutenant Horatio Lane offered me both The Foreman and The Defias Kingpin at once.

TL;DR - Even if you are below level 15, it seems you can still do every quest in this chain except the first and the last.

-- SPECIFIC INFORMATION ABOUT THIS FIGHT --

I kept killing him too quickly to see if there are any more changes as the fight progresses, but it seems that as you damage him, he will disappear, and the area becomes shrouded in mist, out of which appear some mist-elemental-type creatures. After killing a certain number, or after a certain length of time progresses, Admiral Ripsnarl reappears. I got him to disappear and reappear twice before accidentally killing him.

If you are rep farming, it is worth noting that the elementals (as well as all of the targetable cannons in the zone) give +3 rep.

EDIT: I came back and tried this again. I got Admiral Ripsnarl to just above 50% health, and stopped damaging him. It seems the "Vapor" elemental adds will spawn indefinitely. It became nearly imposible to count the number of them by eye after 18 or so. They continued to spawn for well after that, until I grew bored and killed them all. Calculating by the rep gain, there turned out to have been 35 of them total.

As a lvl 20 paladin, I got to the door leading to the Admiral, but the door is locked. Where's the key?

SL S4

SOLUTION TO QUEST PROBLEM: Heroic turn-in problem still exists in 2022!

1 - You need to EXIT dungeon,
2 - RESET to Normal mode,
3 - re-enter and you'll be able to turn this in to [npc=46612] not too far inside.

Enjoy your loot!