Each black-and-white photo revealed eyes fraught with emotion. Some narrowed in inquisition, others looked away, suspiciously. The question remained the same with each set of eyes: “What word best describes what the person in the photo is thinking or feeling?”
So, actually, neither of us were correct. My memory was hazy on this (clearly) so I went back to Goldenrod himself, and confirmed that:
The 1000 Seething Cinders create the Runestaff of Nordrassil.
The Runestaff siphons smouldering essences off dead Firelands bosses.
250 essences create the Heart of Flame.
You can’t see it in the screenshot, but he had already hearthed/traveled to Coldarra to hand in the Heart of Flame quest. It just looks like he looted it because we’re all standing in the Rag room. Updated the post to reflect these actual events.
while older images emerged from bottom of the screen.
“from the bottom of the screen.”
Three Metas remained for Glory, two were non-factors.
Just for redundancy’s sake, since this phrase was used in the previous paragraph, change “non-factors” to “inconsequential” (I was going to say trivial but you use that in the next paragraph!)
I actually just did the quest myself on an alt the other week.
You are correct on the first two steps.
Technically on the heart of Flame you loot it from the Heart of Ragnaros which spawns after you kills him and someone has a fully empowered staff (with the 250 smouldering essences) though this may be picking knits.