Master of Warcraft

WoW’s Venomous Abyss Raid Finder Wing 3 Is Now Live

2026-09-02T13:40:54.494+02:00

World of Warcraft players who prefer their ancient venomous horrors with 24 strangers and a determination stack can now move another step deeper into The Venomous Abyss. Raid Finder Wing 3, The Serpent Warren, is now available in Europe, opening access to The Lost Explorers and Sszorak. The minimum item level remains 273, and this leaves only one Raid Finder wing still locked: Coiled Altar and Ula’tek arrive next week.

The staggered release has been part of Midnight Season 2’s slightly complicated launch calendar since before the raid opened. Normal, Heroic, Mythic and Raid Finder Wing 1 arrived together with Season 2, Story Mode and Wing 2 followed one week later, and Wing 3 now opens during the week of September 2 in Europe. Blizzard has apparently decided that casual raiders should meet the enormous poisonous snake gradually.

Raid Finder Wing 3 Has The Lost Explorers and Sszorak

The new wing is called The Serpent Warren and contains two encounters:

The Lost Explorers
Sszorak

The Lost Explorers are one of The Venomous Abyss’s stranger encounters, involving a group of unfortunate tortollans dealing with possession and ancient spirits. We previously used the fight as an example when looking at how Rogue Atrophic Poison interacts inconsistently with environmental raid damage, because some of the encounter’s damage sources do not behave like ordinary attackable enemies.

Sszorak is considerably less philosophical. It is an enormous venom-warped monster built around movement, crosswinds and the usual WoW rule that anything green on the floor probably deserves your immediate attention.

Wing 3 Can Help Fill Two Important Tier Slots

There is also a straightforward gearing reason to queue beyond simply seeing the encounters. The Lost Explorers are associated with Season 2 shoulder tier tokens, while Sszorak provides leg tokens. We covered the full distribution when explaining how Ula’tek’s Slumbering Coil Curio can eventually become any tier piece you choose.

Raid Finder naturally provides lower item-level versions than Normal, Heroic or Mythic, but filling an empty set slot can still matter enormously if it activates a two-piece or four-piece bonus. Season 2 class sets have already become one of the main sources of performance changes across the raid, and a modest LFR item can therefore outperform a theoretically stronger non-set piece simply because the bonus matters more than several item levels.

That is especially useful for alts and players who spent the Patch 12.1 pre-season preparing characters for Season 2 but have not been running organized raids every week.

Ula’tek Is Still Locked in Raid Finder Until September 9

Wing 3 does not provide access to the final two bosses. Raid Finder Wing 4, The Tomb of Ula’tek, opens in Europe on September 9 and contains:

The Coiled Altar
Ula’tek

That means Raid Finder players have another week before they can obtain Ula’tek’s flexible final-boss tier reward or see the complete raid through the matchmaking version. Anyone interested only in the story does not need to wait, however. Blizzard already opened Story Mode during the previous reset, giving solo-oriented players another way to experience the raid conclusion without joining a full raid group.

The gap between Raid Finder and the higher difficulties is particularly amusing this tier because Heroic Ula’tek had one of the harshest opening weeks WoW has seen in years, while Mythic adds shielded eggs and an hour-long stacking punishment for failed hatches. Raid Finder will presumably attempt to introduce players to the same ancient horror without requiring employment by Team Liquid.

The Raid Is Already Being Softened Around the Edges

The timing also comes as Blizzard continues adjusting The Venomous Abyss. The September 1 hotfixes reduced several Raid Finder encounters, including a 15% health reduction for Nek’zali, 15% less health for the Entombed Sentinels and major reductions to The Twin Fangs. Higher difficulties received changes of their own, and Mythic Coiled Altar has already been hit by another round of direct tuning.

That fits Blizzard’s broader plan for the tier. Before Season 2 began, the developers confirmed that The Venomous Abyss would gradually become easier as the season progressed, through both player power and targeted encounter changes.

For Raid Finder players, though, today’s job is considerably simpler.

Queue for The Serpent Warren.

Kill two bosses.

Hope the tier token drops.

And enjoy one more week before Ula’tek becomes everybody’s problem.

```

Watch BlizzCon 2026 and Get a Free WoW Mount, Decor and 200 Trader’s Tender

2026-09-02T13:25:14.907+02:00

BlizzCon 2026 is already promising World of Warcraft players several patches worth of announcements, the return of major esports finals and the usual opportunity to spend a weekend watching developers explain what they have secretly been building for the past year. Blizzard has now added something considerably easier to understand: watch World of Warcraft content and get free stuff. The BlizzCon 2026 viewership campaign includes 200 Trader’s Tender, a Housing decoration, a flying mount and a toy, with the full reward track requiring 12 hours of eligible viewing.

The headline reward is the Fluffy Comfy Flying Quilt, an actual flying carpet-style quilt mount unlocked after eight hours. That arrives at a particularly dangerous time for collectors because September’s enormous Trading Post Outlet is already threatening everyone’s Trader’s Tender balance. Fortunately, Blizzard is giving you 200 Tender back for watching two hours of WoW. It is not enough to buy half the Outlet. It is at least enough to make the financial damage slightly more dignified.

Here Are All Four BlizzCon 2026 WoW Rewards

Blizzard’s official BlizzCon 2026 viewership announcement divides the World of Warcraft rewards into four milestones:

2 hours — 200 Trader’s Tender
4 hours — Cuddly Blue Grrgle Housing decor
8 hours — Fluffy Comfy Flying Quilt mount
12 hours — Venomous Champion’s Illustrious Banner toy

The rewards are cumulative, so watching 12 eligible hours earns the entire package rather than forcing you to choose between currency, furniture and airborne bedding.

The Cuddly Blue Grrgle also continues Blizzard’s increasingly determined attempt to fill player houses with plush murlocs. We warned months ago that Housing decor was becoming WoW’s newest collectible problem, and multiple Grrgle Twitch Drops have done very little to disprove that theory. Once you have earned this BlizzCon version, additional copies can be purchased from Dennia Silvertongue in Silvermoon City, Tuuran in Stormwind or Gabbi in Orgrimmar.

Twitch Gives You Until September 27

The important part is that you do not need to cram all 12 hours into BlizzCon itself. Twitch progress begins on September 12 at 9:30 a.m. PDT and remains active until September 27 at 10:00 a.m. PDT. Eligible World of Warcraft Twitch streams can therefore continue generating progress for roughly two weeks after the convention ends.

For European players, that window begins at approximately 18:30 CEST on September 12 and ends at 19:00 CEST on September 27.

You can switch between eligible WoW Twitch channels without losing progress. Watching several simultaneously does not accelerate the counter, because apparently even Blizzard has limits on how efficiently we are allowed to farm blankets.

This follows the same general system players recently used for the Patch 12.1 Sorcerer’s Grassy Garb Twitch Drop, although the BlizzCon campaign has a much larger reward ladder.

YouTube Only Works During the BlizzCon Weekend

You can also earn the rewards through the official World of Warcraft YouTube channel, but the YouTube window is much shorter. It runs from September 12 at 9:30 a.m. PDT until September 13 at 7:00 p.m. PDT, essentially covering the convention itself.

YouTube viewers need their Battle.net and YouTube accounts connected through YouTube’s Connected Apps system. Unlike Twitch, where progress can be earned across participating WoW creators, YouTube progress requires watching the official World of Warcraft channel.

That channel should have plenty to watch. Blizzard has already confirmed that its WoW BlizzCon plans extend through Patch 12.1.7, Patch 12.2 and potentially beyond. The schedule also includes World of Warcraft: What’s Next presentations, a Deep Dive, Housing coverage, world-building panels and other Warcraft programming.

Link Your Battle.net Account Before You Start

For Twitch, make sure your Twitch and Battle.net accounts are connected before relying on the progress bar. Once a reward has been earned, it must also be claimed through Twitch. Blizzard says delivery can take up to 24 hours after claiming.

There is another familiar regional warning. The first Battle.net region you log into after claiming determines where the rewards are delivered. We saw the same issue with the earlier Patch 12.1 Twitch campaign, so players maintaining accounts across multiple regions should resist the urge to click things randomly.

PC and Mac browsers work, as do the Twitch and YouTube apps on Android and iOS. Console apps, smart TV apps and other television versions do not support earning Drops. Your television may therefore display BlizzCon beautifully while contributing absolutely nothing toward your flying quilt.

BlizzCon Attendees Get the Rewards Too

Players attending BlizzCon physically are not required to spend twelve hours staring at a Twitch stream while sitting inside the Anaheim Convention Center. Blizzard says attendees can receive the rewards by linking their BlizzCon Pass to their Battle.net account by September 18. Those rewards are scheduled to arrive during the week of September 21.

BlizzCon itself runs on September 12–13. WoW esports will also return to the physical convention after a long absence, something we first covered when Blizzard announced that both AWC and MDI were heading back to the BlizzCon stage. The Arena World Championship has spent the year working toward that finale since the Road to BlizzCon competition began in April.

The Eight-Hour Mount Is Probably the Main Target

Most players will probably circle the eight-hour milestone. Trader’s Tender is useful, Housing players will want another Grrgle, and the 12-hour banner is a nice extra, but the Fluffy Comfy Flying Quilt is the obvious collector headline.

Blizzard has become increasingly comfortable attaching mounts and Housing decor to limited promotions. We recently saw the Fanta promotion combine a mount with multiple Housing rewards, while Twitch Drops have been feeding WoW’s new decor collection almost continuously since Midnight launched.

The good news this time is that the requirement is unusually forgiving.

Two hours gets you Tender.

Four gets you a murloc.

Eight gets you a flying blanket.

Twelve gets you the whole lot.

And Twitch gives you until September 27 to finish.

For once, the hardest part of obtaining a WoW mount may simply be remembering which browser tab is making noise.

```

Blizzard Just Made Delves Less Likely to Give You Another Trinket

2026-09-02T13:17:35.832+02:00

World of Warcraft's Delves have apparently been handing out slightly too much jewelry. Blizzard quietly changed their loot distribution in the latest Midnight Season 2 hotfixes with one wonderfully concise line: “Trinkets no longer drop as abundantly in Delves.” There is no percentage attached, no new drop table and no explanation of exactly how aggressive the reduction is. What we do know is that players should now see fewer trinkets among their direct Delve rewards, which could be either excellent news or extremely inconvenient depending on which equipment slot your character has been unsuccessfully trying to replace.

The change arrives at an interesting point because Delves have become a substantial part of Midnight Season 2's Hero-track gearing loop. Bountiful Delves, Trovehunter's Bounties and the new Azta'rec progression all provide reasons to keep returning underground long after ordinary outdoor gear stops being interesting. Having a large portion of those rewards repeatedly land in two trinket slots could therefore become increasingly noticeable.

Blizzard Has Reduced Trinket Drops From Delves

The official September 1 hotfix notes contain only one sentence under this particular Delve change:

“Trinkets no longer drop as abundantly in Delves.”

That wording matters. Blizzard has not removed trinkets from Delves, and there is currently no indication that Delve trinkets themselves are becoming weaker. This is a frequency adjustment. Trinkets can still drop; they should simply occupy a smaller share of the loot players see.

Blizzard also has not published the old or new weighting, so claims that the chance has been cut by 20%, 50% or any other convenient number would currently be invented. We will need considerably more live loot data before anyone can put a reliable percentage on the change.

This Could Actually Make Delve Gearing Feel Better

For many players, fewer trinkets may be welcome. Trinkets are unusually complicated gear because two items with the same item level can have dramatically different value depending on specialization, encounter type and proc behavior. We already covered how Season 2's enormous trinket pool was threatening to become its own gearing spreadsheet, and Blizzard has continued adjusting individual items since then.

Just before the season opened, another large trinket tuning pass buffed and nerfed multiple Season 2 options. A trinket dropping is therefore not automatically useful simply because it has purple text and a larger number in the corner.

If Blizzard's new weighting allows boots, gloves, weapons and other armor slots to appear more often instead, Delves may become better at filling general gearing gaps. That could be particularly valuable for alts and returning players using Delves as catch-up content rather than targeting one specific best-in-slot trinket.

It Is Worse If You Were Actually Farming a Delve Trinket

The opposite is naturally true for anyone who wants a particular trinket. Lowering the overall trinket frequency means another layer of probability between you and the item you are chasing. Season 2 already asks players to navigate several overlapping loot systems, from six-rank upgrade tracks and Mistcrest costs to Bonus Rolls and Great Vault choices.

Delves had become one of the more predictable ways to generate extra high-level loot attempts. Three Nightmare Prey Hunts, for example, can lead to a guaranteed Trovehunter's Bounty and Hero-track Hidden Trove from a Tier 8 Delve. The map guarantees the Hidden Trove. It does not guarantee that the item inside is the slot you wanted.

Anyone specifically hoping that chest contains a trinket now appears to have slightly worse odds.

The Hotfix Does Not Say Great Vault Trinkets Were Nerfed

There is another important distinction. Blizzard's note specifically says trinkets no longer drop as abundantly “in Delves.” It does not say that trinkets have been reduced in the Great Vault's World row.

That matters because Delves contribute directly to weekly Vault rewards. We recently covered the special limitations affecting the first Season 2 Great Vault, followed by the much more important change where players can now turn a disappointing Great Vault into a Nebulous Voidcore. Until Blizzard says otherwise or live data demonstrates a separate change, there is no reason to assume this Delve hotfix has altered the Vault's trinket weighting too.

Delves Keep Becoming More Important to Season 2 Gearing

The timing also shows how closely Blizzard is watching Delves now that the full season is active. Before launch, the developers reduced one of Patch 12.1's nastiest Delve poisons by 25%. Azta'rec then became a source of unusual gearing advantages, including Hero Mistcrests capable of pushing players beyond the ordinary weekly crest cap.

Delves are no longer merely the activity you do when nobody else is online. They feed Hero-track loot, Great Vault progression, Mistcrests, maps and some of Season 2's better solo progression.

Now they should also contain slightly fewer trinkets.

Your fourth pair of boots sends its regards.

```

These Hidden WoW Dungeon Buffs Can Make Your Season 2 Keys Much Easier

2026-09-02T12:57:17.634+02:00

World of Warcraft's Midnight Season 2 Mythic+ dungeons contain considerably more free power than their boss journals suggest. Several instances hide profession interactions, class-specific objects, route-dependent buffs and temporary items that can increase Versatility, Haste, movement speed or even make enemies take 20% additional damage. None of them will magically turn a disastrous +14 into a timed key, but once dungeon difficulty starts climbing, deliberately walking past free stats becomes an increasingly strange strategic choice.

We have already covered some of these individually, including Altar of Fangs' permanent 3% Versatility buff and Murder Row's absurdly useful Concealed Pistol. But Season 2 contains enough dungeon-specific advantages that it is worth knowing the larger list before your group starts the key.

Altar of Fangs — 3% Versatility for the Rest of the Dungeon

Altar of Fangs contains one of the easiest buffs to justify because once you activate it, you essentially forget about it. After defeating The Writhing Coil, head into the room containing the Ascendant Serpent and look in the upper-left corner for an Unfinished Mixture. A player with at least 25 Midnight Alchemy or 25 Midnight Cooking can interact with it.

The entire party receives Mutating Elixir, granting 3% Versatility for the remainder of the dungeon. The buff also persists through death. That means increased damage, increased healing and reduced incoming damage throughout the final trash section and Zul'jan encounter simply because somebody in the group knows either potions or dinner.

We broke down the exact location and requirements in our full Altar of Fangs Mutating Elixir guide. Considering how aggressively Blizzard has already nerfed the dungeon's more frustrating Season 2 mechanics, free permanent Versatility makes the final stretch considerably friendlier than it looked during opening week.

Voidscar Arena — Choose Mastery or Versatility With Your Route

Voidscar Arena makes the decision even more fundamental because your opening route determines which stat buff the group receives for the rest of the dungeon. The dungeon immediately splits before the first boss.

Take the route toward Raj'kess the Spellstorm and defeating him grants Proof of Mastery. Take the route toward Aegyra the Unyielding instead and you receive Proof of Endurance, increasing Versatility.

You cannot collect both, so this is an actual routing choice rather than something groups should mindlessly click. A composition that scales exceptionally well with Mastery may prefer Raj'kess, while groups pushing difficult keys may value Versatility's combination of damage and survivability.

Voidscar Arena was heavily rebuilt during Season 2 Mythic+ testing, including the addition of these opening miniboss paths. Knowing which side your composition prefers before the timer starts is considerably better than reaching the fork and holding a five-person statistical referendum.

Murder Row — One Crystal Can Buy Several Powerful Tricks

Murder Row has the most elaborate interaction. Before the first boss, inside the building containing the first Row Snitch on the right, you can find a Faceted Crystalline Fel. That crystal can be traded to different vendors for one of several temporary Extra Action items.

The options currently include:

Heartstop Blade — reduces an eligible target's maximum health by 30% and stuns it for six seconds, with three charges.
Felwyrm Egg — summons a mana wyrm and gives 15% Haste for 30 seconds.
Suntouched Special Reserve — increases damage and healing by 2% for 30 seconds and can stack, although excessive drinking has consequences.
Concealed Pistol — hits enemies in a line, applies a Bleed and causes affected enemies to take 20% increased damage for 16 seconds.

For coordinated groups, the Concealed Pistol remains particularly difficult to ignore. As we explained in our Murder Row pistol guide, lining it up across a dangerous pull or saving it for a major boss damage window can produce far more group value than another modest personal buff.

Murder Row is already one of Season 2's more route-sensitive dungeons, and Blizzard has continued changing it alongside places like The Blinding Vale. We recently saw that when the Potatoad Matriarch suddenly became worth 60 Enemy Forces and Murder Row received another tuning pass. The imported route from last Tuesday remains more of a suggestion than scripture.

Den of Nalorakk — Get 5% Versatility for 10 Minutes

Den of Nalorakk contains one of the strongest straightforward stat bonuses. Players with 25 Midnight Alchemy, or Druids in Bear Form, can activate Warding Incense near the large bear statue before the ramp toward The Hoardmonger.

Doing so gives the entire party 5% Versatility for 10 minutes. Unlike many temporary dungeon buffs, Warding Incense also persists through death. Five percent Versatility across an entire group for ten minutes is not a decorative bonus. At higher key levels it translates into meaningful damage, healing and survivability during a substantial section of the dungeon.

Blizzard actually increased this bonus from 3% to 5% immediately before Season 2 launched, part of the enormous package we covered in the final pre-launch Mythic+ dungeon rework.

Den of Nalorakk also contains Snowworn Provisions during the Harsh Winds section. Night Elves, Trolls and Bear Form Druids can interact with the sigil inside to grant Rune of Anchoring, reducing movement forces by 50% for 15 minutes. That can make both the Harsh Winds section and Sentinel of Winter's Frozen Tempest substantially easier to control.

The Blinding Vale — 5% Haste or a Temporary Damage Pet

The Blinding Vale offers another route-dependent choice. Take the left route and, shortly before Lightblossom Trinity, you can find a Light-Starved Blossom. Players with 25 Midnight Herbalism, Paladins or Priests can interact with it to receive Flourishing Stride.

The buff grants:

20% increased movement speed
5% Haste
2-minute duration

The right-side route instead contains a trapped Baby Grovecrawler. Hunters and Druids can free it, causing the creature to assist the party for one minute. Its Spine Shot increases the target's damage taken by 1% and can stack up to five times, potentially reaching a 5% damage-taken increase. Because the pet only lasts one minute, freeing it shortly before Ikuzz the Light Hunter gives considerably more value than releasing it and then spending 45 seconds discussing the next pull.

The Blinding Vale has already been one of Season 2's more frequently adjusted dungeons. the recent Potatoad Matriarch count change reshaped its route math again, so the choice between left and right is not based solely on which buff looks strongest on paper.

Season 2 Mythic+ Rewards Knowing the Dungeon, Not Just Your Rotation

This is becoming one of the clearest themes of Midnight Season 2. Blizzard increased every Season 2 Mythic+ enemy's health by 4% before launch, but the dungeons also contain tools that reward groups willing to learn their surroundings. Professions, classes and routing decisions can turn into actual combat advantages rather than flavor interactions.

That knowledge is becoming more important because players are already pushing surprisingly high keys. more than half of the opening week's completed keys were +10 or higher, meaning these optimizations are relevant to a much larger part of the playerbase than only title-level groups.

They also sit alongside ordinary mechanic knowledge. Knowing that three DPS should handle the green Corrupted Lifeforce orbs in Temple of Sethraliss can prevent a wipe. Knowing that your Cook can provide permanent Versatility in Altar of Fangs can prevent the next one.

Before starting your next Season 2 key, it is therefore worth asking a few questions.

Who has Alchemy?

Who has Cooking?

Does anyone have Herbalism?

Do we want Mastery or Versatility?

And most importantly:

Who remembered to bring the illegal gun?

```

WoW Just Made Mythic Raid BoEs Tradeable While Ula’tek Is Still Alive

2026-09-02T12:38:28.092+02:00

The Race to World First is still trying to kill Mythic Ula’tek, but one of Blizzard’s protections against simply throwing enormous piles of gold at raid progression has already disappeared. With the third week of Midnight Season 2, Mythic Bind-on-Equip drops from The Venomous Abyss are now tradeable. Players lucky enough to loot one can sell it on the Auction House, guilds can move pieces between eligible characters, and anyone with sufficiently deep pockets suddenly has another way to buy an immediate Mythic raid upgrade while the final boss is still undefeated.

This is an interesting change because we highlighted all nine Venomous Abyss BoEs before the raid opened and specifically expected the Mythic versions to remain Bind-on-Pickup during the early Race to World First period. That restriction follows Blizzard’s recent approach of preventing the opening weeks of Mythic progression from becoming quite so directly connected to the Auction House. Apparently “opening weeks” means two. The snake has survived longer than the trade restriction.

Mythic Venomous Abyss BoEs Can Now Be Sold

The change arrived with the third Season 2 weekly reset. According to live testing after the reset, Mythic raid BoEs that previously could not be freely traded can now be listed on the Auction House like their lower-difficulty counterparts. There are nine possible pieces covering every armor category plus a necklace:

Venom Rite Mantle — Cloth Shoulders
Slippers of the Hissing Cult — Cloth Feet
Temple Delver’s Mystic Helm — Leather Helm
Slitherscale Girdle — Leather Waist
Crushing Coiler Coif — Mail Helm
Greaves of the Noxious Depths — Mail Feet
Pauldrons of the Forgotten Sacrifice — Plate Shoulders
Fanged Brute’s Greatbelt — Plate Waist
Bound Serpent’s Jade Eye — Necklace

The secondary stats can vary, which means not every version has equal value. A high-item-level Mythic piece with the right stats for a popular specialization can naturally be considerably more attractive than the same slot with an awkward combination. That was already part of the gold-making potential we discussed in our original Season 2 raid BoE guide. The difference is that the most powerful difficulty is now participating in the market as well.

You Cannot Simply Farm Them at the Entrance

There is one important limitation for anyone already imagining an evening of endlessly resetting Mythic trash. Venomous Abyss BoEs come from specific lieutenants located between raid bosses, and all of them are positioned beyond the first encounter. That means farming them requires considerably more organisation than gathering twenty characters at the entrance and repeatedly introducing the first trash pack to capitalism.

The relevant lieutenants include Gorefang the Reaver, Noxiss Venomcrest, Shriekcoil, Frightmaw and Venomweaver Vexhiss, with the later enemies requiring progressively deeper access into the raid. A group capable of reaching those areas therefore has opportunities to turn a lucky drop into substantial gold, but this is still Mythic raid content rather than an outdoor rare with an Auction House attached.

The Timing Matters Because Ula’tek Is Still Alive

Normally the economic story would simply be that Mythic BoEs have entered the market. This time the timing makes it more interesting. Mythic Ula’tek is still alive after surviving into the third reset, with the leading Race to World First guilds now working through the final phase. That means tradeable Mythic BoEs have become available while the competition they were originally restricted to protect is still ongoing.

The leading guilds have already demonstrated how valuable tiny gearing advantages can be. Liquid spent roughly five and a half days aggressively gearing before committing fully to Mythic progression, then needed 310 pulls to secure the World First on Mythic Coiled Altar. When a final boss is difficult enough that groups are optimizing every available item level, a tradeable Mythic piece with useful stats is not merely an Auction House curiosity.

That does not mean the winning guild can simply purchase nine BoEs and delete Ula’tek. Raid compositions contain twenty characters, usable slots vary by armor class, secondary stats matter, and an expensive BoE still needs to be an actual upgrade. But the third reset has unquestionably added another gearing source while the race remains active.

Ordinary Players Can Buy Their Way Into a Faster Gear Upgrade Too

The change is not remotely limited to Race to World First guilds. Any player with enough gold can buy one of these pieces once suitable listings begin appearing. Season 2 already contains an unusually wide selection of high-end gearing routes. the Great Vault can now be exchanged for a Nebulous Voidcore, while raid Bonus Rolls only cost one Voidcore this season. More than half of the opening week’s completed Mythic+ keys also reached +10 or higher, as we saw in the unusually aggressive first Season 2 Mythic+ Vault week.

Mythic BoEs add something those systems cannot provide: certainty. The Great Vault rolls dice. A Bonus Roll rolls another set of dice. A raid lieutenant may or may not drop anything useful. The Auction House simply asks whether you possess the number written on the right side of the screen.

Check the Auction House Before Equipping One

For Mythic raiders, the practical advice is therefore the same advice we gave before the raid opened, only with considerably more expensive consequences. If one of these pieces drops, check its secondary stats and check the Auction House before immediately equipping it. A piece that is only a modest personal upgrade may be far more valuable to another player who considers it nearly perfect.

Season 2’s higher gearing ceiling already makes upgrade decisions expensive, something we explored when the new Myth-track item levels and Mistcrest costs first appeared. A tradeable raid drop adds another question to the spreadsheet:

Is this better on your character?

Or on somebody else’s character in exchange for an unreasonable amount of gold?

Mythic Ula’tek is still alive.

The Auction House has entered the race anyway.

```

Blizzard Just Reapplied a Mythic Coiled Altar Nerf After Liquid’s Kill

2026-09-01T14:53:48.472+02:00

Mythic Coiled Altar has already been defeated by the Race to World First leaders, but Blizzard is apparently not finished making the penultimate boss of The Venomous Abyss more manageable for everyone coming behind them. The latest World of Warcraft hotfixes reduce the Defilement of the Coiled Altar healing absorb by 20% on Mythic difficulty, directly lowering one of the encounter’s largest raid-wide healing checks. The slightly awkward part is that Blizzard already tried to make essentially this change during World First progression, reverted it, and then watched Team Liquid kill the harder version after 310 pulls.

That history matters because Liquid’s World First Coiled Altar kill required 310 attempts and a five-healer composition. The boss became the defining wall of the raid before Ula’tek, forcing the leading guilds to spend several days solving tight damage requirements, brutal healing pressure and Phase 3 execution. Now the guilds reaching Coiled Altar later in Season 2 will meet a slightly different version of that wall.

Defilement’s Healing Absorb Has Been Cut by 20%

Blizzard’s August 31 hotfix notes make the new change very simple: Defilement of the Coiled Altar’s healing absorb is reduced by 20% on Mythic. The mechanic appears during the later portions of the fight when Zul’jan defiles the altar, placing a healing absorb across the raid while the encounter continues producing additional damage and movement requirements.

In other words, healers are not merely restoring missing health. They first need to chew through a large absorb before their healing can begin moving health bars normally again. Cutting that absorb by 20% does not remove the mechanic, but it gives healing teams substantially more breathing room during one of the encounter’s nastiest pressure windows.

That is particularly relevant because Liquid chose to run five healers for its World First. As we discussed when Liquid finally entered Mythic after five and a half days of aggressive gearing, Race to World First compositions are built around squeezing every possible advantage out of a specific encounter. Coiled Altar demanded enough survival that sacrificing a DPS slot for another healer made sense. A 20% reduction to one of its major healing checks may give later guilds more flexibility.

Blizzard Already Tried This Nerf — Then Reverted It

The strange part is that this particular story started before Liquid’s kill. During the Race to World First, Blizzard briefly pushed another Coiled Altar tuning package that included a 20% reduction to Defilement’s healing absorb, alongside additional reductions to Coalesced Venom and Venom Rupture. Those changes were then reverted because of lockout-related problems before the leading guilds could properly progress with them.

Liquid therefore defeated the version without that second healing nerf. Our breakdown of the 310-pull kill specifically noted that the additional tuning had disappeared before the World First was secured. Blizzard has now brought the Defilement portion back officially, although the August 31 notes do not restore the entire previously attempted tuning package.

That distinction is important. This is not Blizzard suddenly removing another 20% from the whole encounter. It is specifically reducing one major healing absorb.

Two Other Mythic Coiled Altar Problems Were Fixed

The same hotfix batch also corrects two Mythic encounter issues. Coalesced Venom should no longer rarely spawn inside a Virulent Mutation rim, and Soul Sever should no longer incorrectly highlight which Manifestations of Dread will be destroyed. Neither change has the headline number of the Defilement nerf, but both should make progression more consistent by reducing situations where players were receiving misleading information or dealing with awkward spawn behavior.

Consistency matters enormously on a boss this demanding. Coiled Altar already demonstrated during the World First race that small variations can destroy attempts deep into progression. That same difficulty philosophy is visible throughout the raid. We recently looked at how only 231 guilds managed to clear Heroic Ula’tek during the opening week, while Blizzard has openly said it is comfortable making The Venomous Abyss unusually challenging because Season 2 raid rewards are stronger.

The Venomous Abyss Is Already Starting Its Difficulty Curve

This is also exactly the progression curve Blizzard told players to expect. Before the raid opened, the developers explained that The Venomous Abyss would gradually become easier as Season 2 continued. Some of that will happen through increasing player power and better gear. Other parts will come through direct encounter tuning when Blizzard decides a particular mechanic is simply demanding too much.

Coiled Altar has already received both kinds of attention. Players are entering later resets with more tier pieces, Great Vault rewards and Mistcrest upgrades, while Blizzard is simultaneously sanding down specific mechanics. That matters even more because Mythic Coiled Altar can provide some of Season 2’s highest item-level Bonus Roll rewards. There is an enormous incentive for guilds to keep pushing through the encounter once they reach it.

And after Coiled Altar, of course, Blizzard has provided something considerably less relaxing.

Mythic Ula’tek is currently waiting with shielded eggs, Doomscale Wardens and an hour-long punishment for letting the wrong thing hatch.

So yes, Coiled Altar just got easier.

Enjoy the good news while it lasts.

```

Demonology Warlock Just Jumped 18 Spots in WoW’s Raid Rankings

2026-09-01T14:45:45.887+02:00

Demonology Warlock entered World of Warcraft's Midnight Season 2 looking remarkably ordinary. A month ago, we described the spec as having average damage, familiar gameplay and very little reason for organised groups to choose it over the other Warlock specializations. Two weeks into The Venomous Abyss, that assessment has aged approximately as well as most early-season tier lists. Fresh Warcraft Logs data now puts Demonology at #3 in Heroic raid damage at the 95th percentile, an enormous jump of 18 ranking positions from the previous week.

That makes the turnaround particularly entertaining because our Season 2 preview specifically highlighted Demonology's painfully average position. The spec was functional rather than disastrous, but Affliction and Destruction both appeared to have clearer competitive identities. Blizzard has since responded with substantial live buffs, players are assembling their Venomous Abyss tier sets, and the demon army has apparently decided that average was insulting.

Demonology Climbed 18 Places to #3

According to the latest Week 2 Warcraft Logs analysis, Demonology surged 18 positions to become the third-highest-performing Heroic specialization at the 95th percentile. Only the specs above it currently produce stronger normalized overall raid performance in that bracket. At all percentiles, the jump is nearly as dramatic: Demonology gained 15 positions and now sits at #4.

This is not simply one bizarre boss inflating raw DPS. The rankings use normalized aggregate scores designed to reduce the effect of encounters where unusual AoE or damage-amplification mechanics can distort an entire raid's numbers. There is still an important caveat: Warcraft Logs currently bundles Nymrissa Wavecaller from Tidebound Grotto into the Venomous Abyss rankings, so this is not a perfectly isolated eight-boss dataset. Early-season logs also change quickly as players acquire better gear and complete their tier sets.

That gear acceleration is particularly relevant because Season 2's class sets were already causing a major balance debate during PTR testing. Blizzard later started tuning several Venomous Abyss sets before the raid had even opened. Demonology went in the opposite direction: its two-piece bonus received additional help because Blizzard believed its throughput was lagging behind other specialization sets.

Blizzard Gave Demonology a Massive Week 2 Buff

The ranking jump also lines up almost perfectly with Blizzard's August 25 tuning pass. The developers said Demonology and Affliction needed additional throughput, particularly in single-target situations, and the resulting Warlock hotfixes were not subtle.

Demonology received 35% more Shadow Bolt damage, 30% more Demonbolt damage, 20% more Wild Imp damage, 20% more Felguard damage, 20% more damage from Dominion of Argus demons and 30% more Call Dreadstalkers damage. Blizzard also increased the damage of several standard Warlock demons by 350%. Theorycrafting before the reset estimated roughly a 12% single-target increase for Demonology, which is large enough to move a spec very quickly once fresh logs begin replacing older parses.

The changes are a useful reminder of how fluid Season 2 balance remains. We already saw Blizzard tune every class during Patch 12.1 raid testing, while Season 2 trinkets continued changing immediately before launch. Anyone treating a pre-season ranking as permanent evidence should probably keep the spreadsheet open in another tab.

All Three Warlock Specs Are Now in the Heroic Top 10

Demonology is not carrying the class alone. At the Heroic 95th percentile, all three Warlock specializations now appear inside the top 10. Affliction climbed into eighth place, while Destruction sits at tenth. Demonology is simply the most dramatic mover of the three.

Individual encounters show why. Demonology currently reaches the top position on The Coiled Altar, the raid's penultimate boss. That is particularly notable after The Venomous Abyss opened as one of WoW's hardest Heroic raids in years. Strong performance on later bosses matters more than padding numbers on an encounter everyone kills in three pulls, especially once guilds begin spending entire evenings progressing the same fight.

Mythic data remains much thinner because far fewer players are killing bosses at that difficulty, but Warlocks are also showing extremely strong overall performance there. As always, the Mythic sample should be treated more carefully while progression is still heavily concentrated among top guilds.

Raid Participation Exploded in Week 2

The amount of data available has also changed dramatically. Arcane Mage, still the most-played Heroic spec, increased from roughly 84,000 logged players in Week 1 to 223,000 in Week 2. Arms Warrior jumped from around 60,000 to 149,000. Mythic participation increased by roughly ten times as more guilds moved beyond the unusually restrictive opening week.

That makes Week 2 substantially more useful for judging the developing Season 2 meta. The first week's tiny sample was distorted by difficult progression, incomplete tier sets and guilds still gearing. We have already seen how heavily that gearing process shaped the season, from Ula'tek's universal tier token to the lengths top guilds went through before committing to Mythic progression.

Demonology Has Made This Season Much More Interesting

None of this guarantees Demonology will remain third for the rest of Season 2. Players will gain more gear, strategies will improve, further tuning will happen and boss-specific compositions will continue distorting representation. Demonology also already demonstrated in Season 1 how quickly community perception can change once high-end players begin taking the spec seriously.

But this is no longer a theoretical PTR argument.

Demonology was expected to be average.

Blizzard buffed it.

One week later, it climbed 18 places.

The demons appear to have read the tier list.

```

WoW’s Spirit of Tok’jara Mount Takes Six Daily Quests to Unlock

2026-09-01T14:18:26.767+02:00

World of Warcraft players reaching Rank 10 with Zul’jarra’s Forces can finally begin working toward the Spirit of Tok’jara, but the green spectral eagle is not simply handed over with the Renown reward. Instead, Rank 10 unlocks a separate quest chain inside the Vaults of Atal’Utek, and Blizzard has placed the mount at the end of six daily quests. That means even if you reach the required Renown today, Spirit of Tok’jara still takes a minimum of six days to obtain.

The extra wait is worth knowing about because Zul’jarra’s Forces already has several mounts scattered across its progression. We previously covered how the new Zul’jarra Contract became particularly valuable for players pushing the faction’s Renown rewards, including Spirit of Tok’jara, Indigo Coiled Horror and Violet-Backed Skyfang. Rank 10 gets you through the first gate. It does not get the bird into your mount journal just yet.

Reach Rank 10 With Zul’jarra’s Forces First

The first requirement is straightforward: reach Renown Rank 10 with Zul’jarra’s Forces. The faction is central to Patch 12.1’s Coiled Isle progression, with reputation coming from the same activities players are already doing around the island and inside the Vaults. If you are still working toward Rank 10, combining Renown farming with other objectives makes considerably more sense than treating it as a separate grind. Our look at the enormous 300-Curse-Surge achievement already showed how much of Patch 12.1’s outdoor content overlaps with Zul’jarra progression.

Once Rank 10 is reached, head into the Vaults of Atal’Utek and find Du’gal at the Amani Foothold. The useful coordinate is approximately:

/way #2509 50.48 63.86

Du’gal begins the six-part sequence. Only one quest in the chain is available per day, so there is no way to sit down and complete all six in one evening, regardless of how enthusiastically you feel about spectral birds.

The Spirit of Tok’jara Quest Chain Takes Six Days

The six quests arrive in a fixed sequence:

Day 1 — Ancestral Gems
Day 2 — Dark Charms
Day 3 — A Balance Paid in Blood
Day 4 — Wading In
Day 5 — Cursed Existence
Day 6 — The Innocent Essence

The final quest, The Innocent Essence, awards Spirit of Tok’jara. According to current live testing of the complete quest chain, the objectives generally send players into more dangerous sections of the Vaults to collect items or kill enemies. The quests recommend three players, although most can reportedly be completed while in a raid group.

If you have already spent time unlocking the four hidden Altar of Corrosion powers inside the Vaults, much of the terrain will be familiar. That guide also covers movement upgrades such as Spirit Walk and Spectral Shipping, which can make repeated trips through Atal’Utek considerably less irritating. Patch 12.1 has discovered several ways to make players visit the same poisoned underground complex. At least some of them eventually make travelling through it easier.

What Each Daily Quest Asks You to Do

Ancestral Gems sends you looking for gem boxes around the Underbelly and nearby crypts. Dark Charms involves searching for objects around the Venom Pits and adjoining areas. A Balance Paid in Blood is primarily a large kill quest, making it particularly suitable for completing alongside other Vault activities. Wading In involves searching around the edges of its objective area, while Cursed Existence returns to killing enemies. On the sixth day, The Innocent Essence finishes the story and places the mount in your collection.

This is therefore not a difficult mount chain in the traditional sense. There is no extremely rare drop and no puzzle requiring seven friends, three toys from 2014 and an understanding of hexadecimal arithmetic. The real restriction is simply time.

Du’gal Keeps Giving Daily Quests After You Get the Mount

Interestingly, Du’gal does not become useless once Spirit of Tok’jara is unlocked. After completing the six-day chain, he continues offering versions of these Vault objectives as daily quests, with 200 Corrosive Coin among the rewards. That gives players another reason to continue visiting Atal’Utek even after the mount is secured.

Corrosive Coin already feeds deeply into Vault progression. It is used with the Altar of Corrosion and connects with other collector goals, including the Fully Corroded achievement and its path toward the Venomous Coiler mount. The Vaults are therefore developing into one of Patch 12.1’s densest collection hubs rather than a place you abandon once one particular reward is finished.

Patch 12.1 Has Been Very Good to Mount Collectors

Spirit of Tok’jara also joins an unusually large selection of venomous, spectral and generally unreasonable creatures added with Curse of Ula’tek. We highlighted the new three-headed Writhe mounts before the patch launched, while Patch 12.1’s Venomfang serpents somehow managed to make flying snakes look perfectly normal. Even classic Wind Serpents finally became rideable through the new Skyfang mount family.

That fits the larger design of Patch 12.1’s enormous Coiled Isle content loop. Nearly every activity seems to feed another currency, achievement, mount or reputation bar.

Spirit of Tok’jara is at least refreshingly predictable.

Reach Rank 10.

Visit Du’gal for six days.

Receive ghost bird.

World of Warcraft has asked considerably worse things for a mount.

```

This WoW Housing Trick Lets You Choose Your Weekly Cursed Keepsake Reward

2026-09-01T13:49:10.707+02:00

World of Warcraft's Cursed Keepsake looks like another perfectly innocent weekly Housing quest. Complete a short scenario, cleanse a suspicious piece of furniture and receive one of 20 different Purified decor items. The obvious problem is that the reward appears random, which could turn collecting the entire set into at least 20 weeks of hoping Blizzard's furniture lottery eventually produces the lamp, mirror or questionable troll object you actually wanted. Fortunately, players have discovered that the reward is not tied to your character at all. It is tied to the neighborhood, which means you can use WoW's House Finder to shop around until you find the Cursed Keepsake reward you want before completing the weekly quest.

It is exactly the sort of optimization we should probably have expected once Housing decor started becoming WoW's newest collectible problem. Blizzard gave players furniture. Players responded by developing a method for server-hopping through residential districts until the correct candle appeared. The natural order of things has been restored.

Cursed Keepsake Has 20 Different Housing Rewards

Cursed Keepsake is a weekly Warband quest added with Patch 12.1. The object appears near The Last Architect in your neighborhood town square and offers one of 20 Purified Housing decorations. These include items such as the Purified Ancient Urn, Purified Elven Mirror, Purified Floating Lantern, Purified Sin'dorei Candle, Purified Dracthyr Stein and an assortment of troll, tauren, earthen and goblin decorations. With Housing already gaining 18 additional Artisanal Room Plans to turn decorating into a full collection grind, another 20 weekly pieces are exactly what everyone's completion tab needed.

According to current testing of the Cursed Keepsake reward system, the important discovery is that different public neighborhoods can offer different decor rewards during the same week. The reward also appears capable of changing from day to day. You therefore do not need to accept whichever item happens to be sitting inside the bubble in your home neighborhood.

Use House Finder Until the Quest Shows the Reward You Want

The trick is straightforward. Accept Cursed Keepsake, open the Housing Dashboard and use the House Finder to visit other public neighborhoods. Once you arrive, you do not need to travel all the way back to the Cursed Keepsake object every time. Simply check the quest in your log. Its listed reward will update to match the neighborhood you are currently visiting. Keep hopping until the quest displays one of the Purified decor pieces you actually want, then complete the scenario from that neighborhood.

That makes the House Finder considerably more useful than simply locating somewhere to live. Patch 12.1 already expanded Housing with Large Exteriors and substantially larger placement budgets, while Housing Blueprints now let players save and share complete layouts. Being able to browse neighborhoods for a specific weekly reward adds another wonderfully WoW-like use for the system: competitive property tourism for furniture.

Do Not Just Kill the Scenario Mobs as Fast as Possible

There is a second trick inside the Cursed Keepsake scenario, and this one can determine whether you leave with barely enough currency or enough to buy several additional copies of your chosen decoration. During the scenario, the ground contains green corruption pools. Killing enemies while they are standing on those pools clears the corruption and dramatically increases the amount of Keepsake Corruption you receive. Simply rushing through the waves and killing everything wherever it stands can leave you with around the minimum required for the quest. Carefully pulling enemies onto corruption pools before killing them can push the total beyond 600 Keepsake Corruption.

The important detail is that each pool disappears when an enemy dies on it, so blindly gathering everything and dropping one giant AoE burst is not necessarily optimal. Move enemies between pools and use them to cleanse as many areas as possible. Public matchmaking can complicate this slightly if another player joins and approaches the scenario with the traditional WoW philosophy of killing anything with a health bar before it develops opinions.

Extra Copies Cost 100 Keepsake Corruption

After completing Cursed Keepsake, additional copies of that week's purified decor can be purchased for 100 Keepsake Corruption each. That is why maximizing the scenario matters. A strong run can potentially provide several extra copies of one decoration, which is particularly useful for candles, mirrors, lamps and other items you may actually want to use repeatedly in a build rather than own once for collection credit. Keepsake Corruption is temporary, so spend what you want before it expires rather than preserving it as another archaeological layer in your bags.

Housing currencies have already become a recurring theme. Neighborhood Endeavors introduced Community Coupons as an ongoing Housing reward system, while players recently had to spend their remaining Decor Duel currency before that activity disappeared. Cursed Keepsake adds another currency, another weekly objective and another set of decorations because apparently owning a fantasy house also means understanding fantasy municipal finance.

Choose the Reward Before You Complete the Weekly Quest

The most important rule is therefore simple: do the neighborhood hopping before completing Cursed Keepsake. Once the weekly Warband quest is finished, you cannot use House Finder to retroactively turn your reward into another one of the 20 pieces. You can purchase additional copies of the decoration you unlocked, but neighborhood hopping does not let you collect multiple different rewards during the same weekly completion.

Patch 12.1 Housing has already arrived with its share of bugs, strange Blueprint behavior and decor problems, but this particular interaction appears to be the reward system working according to how neighborhoods are configured rather than a glitch.

So before cleansing your cursed furniture this week:

Accept the quest. Visit neighborhoods. Find the reward you want. Then take the mobs swimming in the green puddles.

Housing remains the relaxing part of World of Warcraft.

```

Blizzard Is Auditing WoW’s Top 1% Before Giving Out Season 1 Rewards

2026-09-01T12:57:16.621+02:00

World of Warcraft's Midnight Season 1 ended weeks ago, but some of its most prestigious Mythic+ rewards are still missing. Blizzard has now explained why. Before handing out the Umbral Ashes mount and other percentage-based rewards, the developer is conducting what game director Ion Hazzikostas describes as a thorough review of the Mythic+ ladder, with paid boosting and illegitimate rankings firmly under the microscope.

That is particularly significant because the final weeks of Season 1 turned the top 1% cutoff into an increasingly frantic rating race. Unlike the fixed 3,400-rating requirement for Keystone Myth, Umbral Champion was awarded purely according to regional ranking. Every additional character entering the qualifying percentage could therefore push somebody else below the line. If Blizzard determines that some of those positions were obtained through prohibited boosting, removing them could change who ultimately receives the reward.

Blizzard Has Not Awarded the Top 1% Rewards Yet

Speaking to PC Gamer about Midnight Season 1, Hazzikostas confirmed that Blizzard is still reviewing the rankings before rewards are distributed. The company plans to explain both its methodology and the final results once that process is complete.

The reward most players are watching is Umbral Champion: Midnight Season 1. Blizzard's own seasonal rules required players to finish within the top 1% of Mythic+ rating in their region, with qualifying characters earning the Umbral Ashes mount. The even more exclusive Umbral Hero title went to the top 0.1%.

We covered just how competitive that became when high-end Mythic+ activity continued climbing during the final week. Some players around the title range were still pushing +24 and +25 keys while everyone else had largely moved on to alts and Season 2 preparation. Percentage rewards have the pleasant property of ensuring that nobody near the cutoff can ever truly relax.

Paid Boosting Is the Complicated Part

The important unanswered question is what Blizzard means by illegitimate or paid boosting in this particular audit. Real-money transactions are clearly prohibited, and Blizzard has repeatedly acted against accounts and organizations connected to RMT. We saw that very recently when a major WoW ban wave appeared to target players and boosting groups linked to real-money trading.

Gold-based carries are considerably murkier. WoW has historically allowed individual players and guilds to sell certain in-game services for gold within Blizzard's rules, while organized boosting communities, account sharing and commercial RMT services have faced much tighter restrictions. Neither Hazzikostas nor the current reports have yet established whether every paid carry will be considered ineligible for the Season 1 top 1%, or whether the audit is specifically targeting runs connected to prohibited activity.

That distinction matters. A player who purchased an RMT boost is a very different case from someone who legally paid a guild with in-game gold. Until Blizzard publishes the promised methodology, treating both situations as automatically identical would be getting ahead of what the company has actually said.

Season 1 Had an Enormous Mythic+ Population

The audit is not examining a tiny competitive ladder either. Midnight Season 1 recorded some of the highest Mythic+ participation WoW has seen, with millions of characters appearing in Raider.IO's data. Blizzard deliberately added Umbral Champion to create another goal between the traditional rating achievements and the extremely exclusive 0.1% seasonal title.

That appears to have worked. Players kept pushing because the top 1% mount provided a meaningful target beyond Keystone Myth. The downside is that a percentage system makes questionable carries more consequential. If somebody buys their way into a fixed 3,400 achievement, they have not directly changed another player's eligibility. If they buy their way into the top 1%, somebody else is now ranked outside it.

Resilient Keystones may also have made repeated high-end attempts easier. Blizzard has already said it is watching how the Resilient Keystone system affects Mythic+, although no immediate changes are planned. Once a group's Keystone is protected at a high level, failed attempts carry less punishment, which is useful for ordinary progression and equally useful for anyone selling repeated attempts at a difficult score.

Blizzard Is Not Abandoning Percentage-Based Rewards

Despite the audit, Blizzard does not appear to regret adding the top 1% reward. Hazzikostas and associate game director Paul Kubit told PC Gamer that the percentage-based rewards were popular, and Blizzard is even investigating whether future seasons could use specialization-specific cutoffs. That system is not coming during Season 2, and Blizzard still needs to work through the considerable logistical problems involved.

For now, Season 1 players are waiting for something much simpler: the final list.

We warned before the season ended that Umbral Champion and Umbral Hero were among the Season 1 rewards with a hard deadline. Players pushed until that deadline, the ladder closed, and normally that would have been the end of the story.

Instead, Blizzard is checking the receipts.

Literally, in some cases.

```

The Northrend Cup Is Back — Here’s How to Get 188 Badges

2026-08-31T11:15:50.479+02:00

The Northrend Cup is back in World of Warcraft, which means Azeroth has temporarily remembered that Northrend is good for something besides trauma, undead armies and players getting lost around Icecrown. The limited-time Skyriding event runs until September 8, sending players through a collection of Northrend races in Normal, Advanced and Reverse modes. More importantly for collectors, a complete run can earn 188 Riders of Azeroth Badges on a single character, giving anyone who missed older Cup cosmetics an efficient way to catch up.

The structure will be immediately familiar if you joined the Outland Cup earlier this year. Pick up the introductory quest from Lord Andestrasz, complete the regional racing circuit, chase progressively better medals and turn the resulting badges into cosmetics. Blizzard has turned these regional Skyriding Cups into one of WoW's cleaner side activities: there is no gearing spreadsheet, no weekly power requirement and nobody asking whether your dragon has enough item level.

The Intro Quest Gives You 80 Badges

Before doing anything else, pick up The Northrend Cup Circuit from Lord Andestrasz. He can be found through the Riders of Azeroth hubs in Valdrakken, Stormwind or Orgrimmar. Completing the introductory circuit awards 80 Riders of Azeroth Badges, which is by far the largest single chunk of currency available during the event.

Do not skip this quest and begin randomly flying through Northrend because you saw a race flag. Players made exactly that mistake during previous Cups, and leaving 80 badges sitting on the quest giver is an impressively inefficient way to begin a currency farm. We previously looked at why these Skyriding Cups work so well as lightweight side content, and the Northrend version follows essentially the same formula.

Gold on Everything Brings the Total to 188 Badges

There are 12 Northrend Cup races, and every course has Normal, Advanced and Reverse versions. Each individual version awards one Riders of Azeroth Badge for Bronze, another for Silver and another for Gold. Reaching Gold therefore earns three badges per version, or nine badges per complete race.

The math looks like this:

80 badges — Northrend Cup Circuit introductory quest
108 badges — Gold ratings across all 12 races and all three versions
188 badges total — one complete Gold Cup run

You do not need Gold everywhere simply to earn currency. Bronze and Silver still contribute badges as you improve your times, so even players who have no desire to spend Sunday evening discovering exactly how aggressively a tree can stop a dragon will make progress. The full 188 is simply the maximum standard haul from completing the entire Cup on Gold.

You Can Farm More Badges on Alts

If 188 badges are not enough for your shopping list, the event also works well with alts. Additional characters can run the races and generate more Riders of Azeroth Badges, allowing dedicated collectors to accelerate the catch-up considerably.

That puts the Cup in familiar WoW territory. We recently looked at how Dragonflight Timewalking turns old content into another badge farm, and Blizzard continues to use currencies as a convenient excuse to send players back through older parts of the game. At least this time you are flying over Grizzly Hills rather than returning to Ruby Life Pools to reopen emotional wounds.

There Do Not Appear to Be New Northrend Cup Rewards for 2026

There is one important warning for returning racers: the 2026 Northrend Cup does not currently appear to introduce a new set of exclusive rewards. Instead, the event functions primarily as another opportunity to obtain previously available Northrend Cup items. That includes the blue Icy Drake Racer transmog pieces, Checkered Pennant, several Drakewatcher Manuscripts and other Riders of Azeroth cosmetics.

Gold completion is still useful beyond the currency. Completing every race on Gold across Normal, Advanced and Reverse contributes to Northrend Racing Completionist: Gold, which awards the Frosted Riders of Azeroth Tabard and associated racing achievement rewards.

That makes this much more of a catch-up event than a mandatory 2026 collector emergency. After months where WoW has repeatedly thrown one-day transmogs, seasonal collectibles and other limited-time distractions at players, that is actually rather refreshing. We have already discussed how WoW's increasingly dense content cadence can become exhausting for collectors. The Northrend Cup is considerably more relaxed if you already own its rewards.

You Have Until September 8

The Northrend Cup runs through September 8, 2026, so there is still time to work through the circuit without treating Skyriding like a second job. Blizzard's regional Cup formula has remained pleasantly straightforward since Dragonriding evolved into the broader Skyriding system, one of the more enduring additions from the Dragonflight era of WoW.

Pick up the quest.

Race around Northrend.

Earn up to 188 badges.

Try not to hit Dalaran.

We have already done that once.

```

Three Green Orbs Are Wiping WoW Groups in Temple of Sethraliss

2026-08-31T11:00:17.243+02:00

If your Temple of Sethraliss group reaches the final boss, kills the Corrupted Guardian and then mysteriously explodes a few seconds later, there is a good chance nobody touched the three glowing green orbs sitting on the floor. The redesigned Avatar of Sethraliss encounter has brought an important Mythic+ mechanic into Midnight Season 2: when the Corrupted Guardian dies, it creates three Corrupted Lifeforce orbs, and as a general rule each DPS player should immediately soak one. Ignore them and Corruption Burst can turn an otherwise stable pull into five corpses wondering what happened.

This is particularly easy to miss because Temple has changed substantially from its Battle for Azeroth version. We spent much of the PTR watching Blizzard repeatedly rebuild the Temple of Sethraliss final encounter, and the company made another major round of dungeon changes only hours before Season 2 launched. Anyone relying entirely on eight-year-old muscle memory is therefore running a modern Mythic+ dungeon with historical documentation.

Each DPS Should Usually Take One Green Orb

The sequence is straightforward once you know what to look for. During the Avatar of Sethraliss encounter, the group kills a Corrupted Guardian. As it dies, Unstable Corruption creates a dangerous area around the Guardian that players should move away from. When that resolves, three green Corrupted Lifeforce orbs appear. Those orbs need to be collected quickly.

According to the current breakdown of the redesigned final boss, the simplest assignment is one orb for each DPS. Soaking Corrupted Lifeforce cleanses it so the Avatar can consume the energy and restore health. If an orb instead expires without being handled, it triggers Corruption Burst, dealing heavy Shadow damage to the entire group and increasing damage taken from subsequent Corruption Bursts by 100% for three seconds.

That last part is why leaving multiple orbs untouched becomes so ugly. One missed orb hurts. Several expiring together can rapidly turn into escalating group-wide damage that is extremely difficult to recover from, particularly as key levels rise. Blizzard already increased the health of every Season 2 Mythic+ enemy by 4%, so spending extra time recovering from avoidable boss mechanics is not helping the timer either.

Why the Tank and Healer Should Avoid the Orbs

The tank and healer can soak an orb if something has gone wrong, but they are normally the worst players to assign. Taking Corrupted Lifeforce applies Corruption for 15 seconds. The debuff deals periodic Shadow damage, increases Physical damage taken by 250% and reduces healing done by 33%. It can also stack. Giving that to the tank immediately before another physical hit is adventurous. Giving it to the healer during an encounter where healing the Avatar is literally the objective is equally creative.

This is why the DPS assignment works so cleanly: three orbs, three DPS players. Each takes one, nobody doubles up unnecessarily, and the tank and healer remain free to perform the jobs Blizzard has already made sufficiently complicated.

Temple of Sethraliss Has Changed More Than It Looks

The green orbs are another reminder that this is not simply the 2018 dungeon with larger numbers. Blizzard retired three original Temple of Sethraliss achievements because the Season 2 rework changed too much of the dungeon, and even after launch it had to fix Temple's Enemy Forces calculation without breaking existing routes. We specifically recommended using the Patch 12.1 pre-season to relearn returning dungeons for exactly this reason.

Fortunately, this particular mechanic does not require a spreadsheet.

Guardian dies.

Three green orbs appear.

Three DPS players soak them.

Sometimes Mythic+ really can be that simple.

```

Upgrade Your WoW Bonus Roll Gear to 321 Without Spending Myth Crests

2026-08-31T10:45:49.184+02:00

Getting a 318 Myth-track item from a Season 2 Bonus Roll feels good. Immediately spending 20 precious Myth Mistcrests to upgrade it feels slightly less good. Fortunately, World of Warcraft's gear upgrade system contains a very useful overlap that can let you take that 318 Myth 1/6 item to item level 321 without spending any Myth Mistcrests at all. The trick is simple: upgrade a Hero item in the same equipment slot to Hero 6/6 first.

This matters considerably more now that Nebulous Voidcores are available through the Season 2 Great Vault and players can use them to target additional Myth-track gear. A Heroic raid Bonus Roll or eligible +10 Mythic+ Bonus Roll can produce item level 318 Myth 1/6 gear. Before immediately feeding that new item Myth Mistcrests, however, check what you already own in the same slot.

Hero 6/6 and Myth 2/6 Are Both Item Level 321

The trick works because Season 2's upgrade tracks deliberately overlap. Hero 5/6 is item level 318, exactly matching Myth 1/6. Hero 6/6 reaches item level 321, exactly matching Myth 2/6. Blizzard's upgrade system also remembers the highest item level your character has reached in each equipment slot. Once that slot has reached a particular item level, another item in the same slot can normally be upgraded to that level without paying additional Mistcrests.

So imagine your Bonus Roll gives you a shiny new 318 Myth 1/6 pair of gloves. You also own Hero-track gloves sitting at 318 Hero 5/6. You have two options. You can immediately upgrade the Myth gloves to 321 Myth 2/6 and spend 20 Myth Mistcrests. Or you can first spend 20 Hero Mistcrests upgrading the Hero gloves from 318 to 321. That establishes item level 321 as your glove-slot watermark. Put the Myth gloves into the upgrader afterwards and their 318-to-321 upgrade no longer requires Myth Mistcrests.

You have effectively spent Hero Mistcrests to save Myth Mistcrests. Nothing is being converted, and this is not an exploit. It is simply the normal slot-based upgrade discount interacting with the overlap between the Hero and Myth tracks. The current Season 2 upgrade table confirms the important breakpoint: Hero 6/6 and Myth 2/6 both land at 321.

Why Saving 20 Myth Mistcrests Actually Matters

Twenty crests may not sound dramatic until you look at the entire upgrade bill. Season 2 uses a flat 20 Mistcrests per upgrade rank, meaning taking a normal Myth 1/6 item from 318 all the way to Myth 6/6 at 334 costs 100 Myth Mistcrests. We covered that cost when Blizzard revealed the Season 2 Mistcrest upgrade structure. Saving the first 20 therefore removes one fifth of the normal Myth-track crest cost.

That becomes even more valuable because Myth Mistcrests are one of the currencies high-end players are actively trying to maximize. We have already seen Azta'rec become valuable because his reward can push players beyond the normal weekly Mistcrest cap, while Race to World First guilds spent days squeezing every possible gearing advantage out of the opening week. When Liquid spent roughly five and a half days preparing before serious Mythic progression, crest efficiency was part of exactly this kind of optimization.

Be Careful With Rings, Trinkets and One-Handed Weapons

There is an important exception. Rings, trinkets and one-handed weapon setups have two relevant equipment positions, so the system looks at the lower of your two item levels when determining the discount. One 321 ring and one 318 ring does not establish a 321 watermark for both ring slots. The same applies to trinkets and one-handed weapons. You generally need both relevant slots at the target item level before assuming the replacement upgrade will be crest-free.

This is especially worth remembering with trinkets because Season 2 contains plenty of newly tuned trinkets worth chasing, and Bonus Rolls are particularly attractive when a specific raid boss holds your best option. Blizzard already cut Season 2 raid Bonus Rolls from two Voidcores to just one, making repeated targeted attempts much easier to justify.

Check Your Hero Gear Before Upgrading Any 318 Myth Item

The practical rule is therefore extremely simple. Whenever you receive a 318 Myth 1/6 item, do not automatically click Upgrade.

First check whether you have Hero 5/6 gear in the same slot. If you do, taking that Hero item from 318 to 321 with Hero Mistcrests can establish the watermark that makes the first Myth upgrade free. This is particularly relevant for players using the Season 2 strategy of choosing targeted Bonus Rolls instead of automatically taking Great Vault gear, because Heroic raid and high Mythic+ rolls are now regularly putting fresh Myth 1/6 items into players' bags.

Season 2 gearing contains enough currencies, tracks, rolls and weekly decisions already.

You may as well make Blizzard pay for one of the upgrades.

```

WoW Season 2 Just Had Its Easiest First Mythic+ Vault Week Ever

2026-08-31T10:36:46.021+02:00

World of Warcraft players apparently looked at Midnight Season 2, looked at the new dungeon pool, and decided that +10 was the new starting line. New Mythic+ data from the first full Vault week shows that 54.75% of all completed keys were level +10 or higher. During the equivalent opening week of Midnight Season 1, that number was only 45.96%. Even more interestingly, +10 and +11 keys were actually completed more successfully than they were last season, making this the easiest first Great Vault week for those important reward levels yet.

That matters because +10 is where Season 2 gearing becomes considerably more interesting. As we recently covered in our Season 2 Great Vault and Nebulous Voidcore breakdown, completing +10 or higher Mythic+ can feed Myth-track rewards into the weekly gearing system while also giving players access to some extremely valuable Bonus Roll opportunities. Players therefore had every reason to push quickly rather than spend the opening week comfortably farming low keys.

More Than Half of All Keys Were +10 or Higher

According to the first-week Mythic+ data compiled from Raider.IO, 54.75% of completed Season 2 keys were level 10 or higher. Every key level above +9 represented a larger share of runs than during the opening week of Season 1, and the absolute number of completed runs was actually higher from +11 through +18 despite overall Mythic+ participation falling.

The completion numbers are equally revealing. Across every key level, the overall in-time rate was 87.00%, slightly below Season 1's 87.66%. But +10 keys improved by 3.34 percentage points, while +11 improved by 2.11 points. The affix combination was the same during both opening weeks, which makes the comparison particularly useful. Season 2 did not simply hand players a friendlier affix week. Groups were getting through the important Vault levels more reliably.

Some of that is probably preparation. Players entered the season knowing exactly how valuable higher keys would be, and we warned before launch that getting stuck with an unnecessary +2 Keystone could slow down your opening-week climb. Blizzard also made substantial changes to the dungeon pool immediately before launch, with last-minute Season 2 dungeon tuning removing several particularly ugly mechanics and route problems.

Altar of Fangs Went From Disaster to Surprisingly Normal

Nothing demonstrates that tuning effect better than Altar of Fangs. During the opening days, we covered how Altar of Fangs was immediately giving Season 2 groups a bad time. Its overall first-week in-time rate finished at just 83.72%, making it the weakest dungeon across the full week, but the picture changed dramatically after Blizzard's nerfs. The dungeon's in-time percentage improved by 8.90 points across all key levels, with improvements reaching more than 20 percentage points at certain levels between +7 and +13.

Players have also started discovering smaller advantages that make the dungeon less hostile, including the hidden Altar of Fangs interaction that gives the entire group 3% Versatility. Mythic+ is often decided by a collection of small optimizations. Sometimes that means perfect cooldown planning. Sometimes it means remembering that somebody in the group knows how to cook.

But Mythic+ Activity Still Dropped 22.61%

There is one large asterisk attached to the success story. Total Mythic+ activity fell 22.61% compared with the opening week of Midnight Season 1, while 17.05% fewer characters appeared on Raider.IO's leaderboards. So Season 2 produced fewer runs overall even while a much larger share of those runs happened at higher key levels.

That does not necessarily mean players are abandoning Mythic+. Season 2 has considerably more competition for their time, and WoW has repeatedly shown how quickly players shift toward whatever activity currently offers the best reward. We have already seen Timewalking pull players away from Mythic+ when the weekly reward math becomes attractive, and the current gearing system now includes raids, Delves, Bonus Rolls and Great Vault choices competing for the same hours.

For the players who did run keys, though, the message from week one is surprisingly clear.

Fewer people ran Mythic+.

The ones who did went high.

```

Mythic Ula’tek Is Already Punishing One Mistake for an Entire Hour

2026-08-31T10:31:47.903+02:00

The Race to World First has finally reached Mythic Ula’tek, and Blizzard has apparently decided that managing a room full of murderous snake eggs was not stressful enough. The final boss of The Venomous Abyss adds several nasty Mythic-only changes, but one stands out immediately: if a Blightscale Spawn successfully hatches into a Viper, the entire raid is hit by Putrid Membrane, a Nature damage effect that lasts for one hour. It also stacks. In practical progression terms, that turns every uncontrolled egg into additional raid-wide damage that healers may have to carry for the remainder of the attempt.

Ula’tek was never expected to be gentle. Team Liquid needed 310 pulls just to defeat Mythic Coiled Altar and become the first guild to reach the final encounter, while Echo followed shortly afterwards. That already made the penultimate boss one of the biggest walls of the tier. The reward for getting through it is apparently a room filled with eggs that now require damage, precise movement and considerably more respect than they did on Heroic.

Mythic Ula’tek Makes the Eggs Much More Dangerous

On lower difficulties, controlling Ula’tek’s Blightscale Spawn is already central to the encounter. Caustic Waves can hatch the eggs, creating Blightscale Vipers and applying Putrid Membrane to the raid. Mythic adds another problem: the eggs begin with Hardened, an absorb shield that must be damaged through before they can even be moved. Once a player picks one up, they receive Noxious Shell, and two players carrying eggs cannot simply wander into each other. Moving within three yards of another egg carrier triggers Noxious Splash, instantly hatching the egg and dealing heavy damage to the carrier.

According to the live Ula’tek encounter information, a Viper that successfully hatches applies Putrid Membrane to every player, dealing Nature damage every second for one hour. The effect stacks. That does not mean your character is sentenced to an actual hour of raid progression after one mistake; encounter resets obviously remain encounter resets. What it does mean is that during a successful attempt, an unnecessary hatch becomes persistent additional healing pressure instead of a short mistake that simply disappears twenty seconds later.

And Ula’tek was already unusually demanding before Mythic. We saw Heroic Ula’tek survive for days before QingShui secured the first kill, and only 231 guilds worldwide managed to defeat Heroic Ula’tek during the opening week. Mythic is taking the central mechanic from that encounter and removing much of the room for sloppy recovery.

Phase Two Adds Even More Egg Management

The problems do not stop with the opening phase. Early Race to World First observations show considerably more egg management during the later portions of the encounter, while Doomscale Wardens complicate positioning and add control. The Mythic encounter journal confirms that Wardens can protect nearby eggs, preventing players from interacting with them while the Warden remains alive, while Writhing Gestation can transform nearby Blightscale Spawn into dangerous clutches that eventually hatch.

That creates exactly the kind of final-boss puzzle top guilds spend hundreds of pulls slowly dismantling. Damage cannot simply be thrown into Ula’tek. Players need enough damage to remove Hardened from the correct eggs, enough coordination to move them without triggering Noxious Splash, enough add control to keep later mechanics contained and enough healing to survive whatever mistakes remain. One uncontrolled hatch does not necessarily end the pull immediately. In some ways, that is worse. It simply makes everything afterwards harder.

The Race to World First Is Now About Ula’tek

At the time of writing, Mythic Ula’tek is still alive. That means the exact strategies, compositions and progression numbers will continue changing as Liquid, Echo, Method and the rest of the leading guilds discover how much of the encounter can actually be optimized. After the enormous amount of gearing required before Liquid even committed properly to Mythic progression, the final boss is where all of that preparation finally has to pay for itself.

The rewards are certainly appropriate for the difficulty. Ula’tek drops the Slumbering Coil Curio omni-token that can become any Season 2 tier piece, while Mythic loot from Ula’tek can reach the extraordinary late-boss item levels we covered in our Season 2 Great Vault and Bonus Roll breakdown.

For everyone who is not currently being paid to move radioactive snake eggs around a Mythic raid arena, there is at least some comfort. Blizzard has already confirmed that The Venomous Abyss will gradually become easier as Season 2 progresses.

Liquid and Echo do not have that luxury.

They have eggs.

Lots of eggs.

```

Blizzard Removed the Timegate From This WoW Achievement

2026-08-30T14:13:40.393+02:00

One of the Coiled Isle's more annoying achievement timegates has quietly disappeared. Mixing Mysteries can now be repeated without a daily cooldown, which means players no longer need to spend ten different days slowly working through the combinations required for Mysterious Mix Master. If you already have the ingredients, or you are willing to buy them from the Auction House, the entire achievement can now be finished in one sitting. Complete all ten mixtures and you earn the Mysterious Voodoo Mask housing decor, while the individual offerings also provide Voidlight Marl and can potentially lead to another collectible along the way.

The change is particularly welcome because Patch 12.1 already contains plenty of objectives controlled by weekly rotations. We just covered how Oppose the Foes requires waiting for three different Ancient Foes to rotate through the Vaults of Atal'Utek. Mysterious Mix Master originally added another calendar to the pile, except this one was attached to a cooking pot. Blizzard has now removed that restriction. Bring ingredients, make terrible-looking stew, repeat until achievement.

Mixing Mysteries No Longer Has a Daily Cooldown

At the launch of Patch 12.1, Ofi the Sly's Mixing Mysteries quest operated on a daily lockout. Each completion allowed players to combine three ingredients in Ofi's Cauldron and produce one of ten different Mysterious Offerings required by the achievement. Since you need every result, that structure could turn Mysterious Mix Master into a lengthy process even if you already had a bank full of ingredients. According to the latest testing of the changed Mixing Mysteries quest, that cooldown is now gone. Ofi will immediately offer the quest again after a completion, allowing you to continue mixing as long as you have the required materials.

That converts the achievement from a daily routine into a straightforward material hunt. There are only three ingredients involved and every recipe consumes three of them. To create every unique offering exactly once, you need 10 Serpent's Feathers, 10 Ancient Knucklebones and 10 Clouded Blood-Pearls. Conveniently, the mathematics work out perfectly across the ten recipes, so 30 total ingredients are enough to finish everything without leftovers. Azerothian voodoo has apparently discovered inventory management.

You Need Rank 3 With Zul'jarra's Forces First

There is still an unlock requirement before you can begin throwing mysterious animal parts into Ofi's cauldron. Reach Rank 3 with Zul'jarra's Forces, after which you can find a Handful of Esoteric Ingredients while opening the small treasures scattered around the Coiled Isle. That item begins the introductory quest that eventually brings Ofi the Sly to the large cauldron at Tokka's Landing and unlocks Mixing Mysteries.

Players collecting the ingredients naturally will also want the relevant Ofi's Offerings bonus from the Altar of Corrosion, which allows the special ingredient containers to appear while exploring the island. The three materials come from different treasure types: Ancient Knucklebones are found in Cracked Canopic Jars, Serpent's Feathers come from Venom-Clotted Baubles, and Clouded Blood-Pearls are found in Singing Shells. If wandering around the Coiled Isle opening containers sounds less appealing than paying somebody else who already wandered around opening containers, the ingredients can also be purchased through the Auction House.

All 10 Mysterious Mix Master Recipes

The achievement itself is wonderfully predictable once you know the combinations. Mysterious Mix Master requires all ten different offerings, and each one is determined entirely by which three ingredients you hand over. There is no need to guess your way through the cauldron or repeatedly produce the same offering while maintaining an increasingly angry spreadsheet.

Offering	Serpent's Feather	Ancient Knucklebone	Clouded Blood-Pearl
Phlegmatic Offering	3	0	0
Pestilent Offering	2	1	0
Odious Offering	2	0	1
Melancholic Offering	0	3	0
Eerie Offering	1	2	0
Fragile Offering	0	2	1
Choleric Offering	0	0	3
Virulent Offering	1	0	2
Volatile Offering	0	1	2
Balanced Offering	1	1	1

You can complete the recipes in any order. If you begin with exactly ten of each ingredient and follow the table, you will finish all ten criteria with all 30 materials consumed. More importantly, because Mixing Mysteries is now immediately repeatable, you can simply turn one combination in, pick up the quest again and move directly to the next recipe instead of returning tomorrow.

The Reward Is the Mysterious Voodoo Mask

Completing all ten criteria awards the Mysterious Voodoo Mask, a housing decoration that can be added to your House Chest. Finishing the achievement also unlocks additional copies from Firetender Zab'ni at Tokka's Landing for 150 Voidlight Marl each, which is useful if your interior design philosophy can best be described as “there are not enough unsettling masks on this wall.” Each Mysterious Offering also generally contains around 22 Voidlight Marl, so the ten required turn-ins provide some useful currency while you work through the achievement.

There is another possible prize worth knowing about. The activity is also associated with the Cauldron Concoction companion pet, and current discovery work indicates the Balanced Offering is worth continuing to make if you are hunting it. That gives the system at least some reason to remain relevant after the achievement itself is complete rather than turning Ofi's enormous cauldron into another piece of abandoned Patch 12.1 infrastructure.

Farming the Ingredients Fits Naturally Into Coiled Isle Exploration

If you do not want to buy the materials, this is also an easy objective to combine with everything else happening on the island. Players hunting the 22 Coiled Isle treasures required for the Auriferous Venomfang mount are already encouraged to explore corners of the zone they would otherwise fly straight past, while the Vaults, Incursions and rotating Ancient Foes provide additional reasons to remain in the area. You can therefore collect Ofi's ingredients naturally instead of treating Mysterious Mix Master as a separate farm that requires three hours of flying circles around one tree.

The Coiled Isle has gradually become one of the denser outdoor zones in Season 2. It contains mount achievements, treasures, reputation, Prey content, Vault activities and even the recently returned Dragonflight-style Rock Climbing World Quest. Blizzard removing the daily cooldown from Mixing Mysteries makes the achievement fit that structure much better. You discover the system, collect the materials and complete it when you want rather than being told that the cauldron has apparently reached its contractual daily mixing limit.

Auction House Players Can Finish This Very Quickly

If the achievement is all you care about, the fastest route is extremely simple. Reach the required Zul'jarra's Forces rank, unlock Ofi, buy 10 Serpent's Feathers, 10 Ancient Knucklebones and 10 Clouded Blood-Pearls, then complete the ten combinations at Tokka's Landing. Material prices will vary by realm and region, particularly now that more players know the timegate is gone, so check whether buying all 30 reagents actually makes sense before committing your gold.

Everyone else can simply gather them while doing normal Coiled Isle activities. Unlike weekly systems such as Oppose the Foes, nothing about the achievement now requires waiting for the correct day once the prerequisites are finished. That is the meaningful part of this change: Blizzard has not made Mysterious Mix Master easier by reducing the number of recipes or automatically granting missing criteria. It has simply stopped telling players they are only allowed to stir Ofi's soup once every 24 hours.

Mysterious Mix Master Is Now a One-Day Achievement

If you previously ignored Mysterious Mix Master because it looked like another ten-day checklist, it is worth looking again. Unlock Ofi the Sly, collect or buy the three ingredients, and you can now repeat Mixing Mysteries until every offering is complete. Ten of each ingredient covers all ten recipes, and finishing the set gives you the Mysterious Voodoo Mask without another daily reset standing between you and the reward.

Patch 12.1 still has plenty of calendars. Ancient Foes rotate. Raid loot resets. Great Vault rewards arrive weekly. Season 2 is not suddenly becoming an anarchist experiment in unrestricted progression.

But one small timegate is gone.

The cauldron is open.

Bring 30 suspicious objects and start cooking.

WoW Quietly Brought Back a Dragonflight World Quest Feature

2026-08-30T14:04:19.952+02:00

World of Warcraft has quietly resurrected one of Dragonflight's smaller outdoor activities in Patch 12.1. Rock Climbing World Quests are back, appearing on the Coiled Isle through a new quest called Slithering Heights. The minigame disappeared when Midnight launched despite surviving through The War Within, and Blizzard never made much noise about its absence. Now it has returned just as quietly, tucked among the snakes, treasures and cursed ruins of the Coiled Isle. There is no major achievement attached, no exclusive mount waiting at the top and apparently no elaborate progression system demanding seventeen currencies. You simply climb the rocks. Sometimes World of Warcraft remembers activities are allowed to exist because they are mildly enjoyable.

Slithering Heights Brings Rock Climbing Back to WoW

Dragonflight originally introduced two notable types of activity-based World Quests: Dragon Racing and Rock Climbing. Both continued beyond the expansion into The War Within, but neither appeared to make the transition into Midnight Season 1. That has now changed for at least one of them. Players have discovered the new Slithering Heights World Quest on the Coiled Isle, using the familiar rock-climbing mechanics from previous expansions. You climb across a wall, move between handholds and deal with the small hazards placed along the route rather than simply flying to a quest marker and deleting six unfortunate creatures.

It is a small addition compared with everything else Patch 12.1 dumped onto the island, but that may be part of the appeal. The Coiled Isle already contains Vaults of Atal'Utek activities, Curse Surges, lairs, Delves, Prey content and numerous other objectives. Rock climbing does not need another reputation track attached to it. It is simply one more thing that can appear while you are moving around the zone.

There Is No Special Achievement or Exclusive Reward

If you are already opening the achievement panel and wondering whether Slithering Heights is secretly required for another mount meta, you can relax. Unlike some earlier Rock Climbing World Quests, the new activity does not currently have a special achievement or unique collectible reward attached to it. The War Within, for example, had Hanging Tight for players who wanted an additional climbing challenge. Slithering Heights appears to be much more straightforward: complete the World Quest, receive the normal reward attached to it and move on.

That makes it very different from some of the other Coiled Isle activities we have been covering. If you want a guaranteed mount, there are still 22 Coiled Isle treasures leading to the Auriferous Venomfang. Players working deeper inside the Vaults can now also progress the Oppose the Foes requirement for the Venomous Coiler meta-achievement. Slithering Heights asks considerably less of you. Find rocks. Climb rocks. Receive normal World Quest payment for having successfully understood rocks.

Rock Climbing Was One of Dragonflight’s Better Small Ideas

Rock climbing was never the feature people put on expansion box art, but Dragonflight benefited from having these smaller activities mixed into its World Quest rotation. Not every outdoor objective needs to be disguised combat. Racing, climbing, photography and other minigames gave players something mechanically different to do while traveling around the world. Removing those activities does not destroy an expansion, but their absence can make outdoor content slowly converge on the same handful of objectives: kill enemies, click objects, fill bar, repeat until emotionally beige.

That is why seeing Rock Climbing return is more interesting than the reward attached to this specific quest. Patch 12.1 has already made the Coiled Isle a dense little outdoor zone, and several of its strongest pieces of side content involve exploration rather than traditional combat. Treasure hunting is one example, while the island's rotating activities provide another reason to revisit areas you might otherwise ignore. Even getting there has become easier now that players can use the Coiled Isle portal from Silvermoon, with Blizzard also fixing the earlier problem where some alts could lose access to that portal.

Dragon Racing Has Not Returned Yet

The obvious question is whether Rock Climbing's return means the other Dragonflight activity is coming back too. So far, there is no equivalent return for Skyriding or Dragon Racing World Quests in Midnight. That does not mean Blizzard has abandoned them permanently, only that Patch 12.1 currently gives us evidence for Rock Climbing and not racing. Given how naturally Skyriding races fit large outdoor zones, it would hardly be surprising to see them reappear in a later patch, particularly as Blizzard continues recycling successful world-content systems rather than leaving every expansion's smaller ideas behind when the next loading screen appears.

For now, Slithering Heights is a one-feature comeback. There is no grand roadmap announcement saying that Dragonflight World Quests are being restored one by one. Blizzard simply put a climbing quest on the Coiled Isle and allowed players to notice it. Considering we already know Blizzard is preparing Patch 12.1.5, 12.1.7, Patch 12.2 and content beyond that, there is plenty of room for other older outdoor activities to return later.

Not Everything Needs a Mount Attached to It

World of Warcraft has become extremely good at teaching players to ask what an activity gives them before asking whether it is enjoyable. Mount? Pet? Reputation? Crests? Achievement? Weekly progress? If the answer is none of the above, the modern MMO brain begins calculating whether those four minutes could instead be converted into 0.13% more character power somewhere else.

Slithering Heights is refreshing precisely because it does not appear to be trying very hard. It is a small World Quest built from a minigame some players enjoyed in Dragonflight, brought back on an island that already has more important things to grind. If you liked Rock Climbing, there is now another reason to do it. If you hated Rock Climbing, Blizzard has kindly avoided attaching a mandatory serpent mount to the top of the wall.

Rock Climbing disappeared in Midnight Season 1.

Patch 12.1 quietly brought it back.

Now we just wait to see whether Dragon Racing remembers the way home too.

Blizzard May Give Every WoW Spec Its Own Mythic+ Leaderboard

2026-08-30T13:58:06.678+02:00

World of Warcraft's Mythic+ endgame has a familiar problem: Blizzard tells players to play the specialization they enjoy, while the leaderboard quietly points toward five very specific character portraits. Now Blizzard is considering a fairly radical way of changing what high-end Mythic+ competition actually measures. In a new developer interview, Game Directors Ion Hazzikostas and Paul Kubit said the team is considering making some future high-end Mythic+ achievements and end-of-season leaderboards specialization-based rather than purely global. The idea is straightforward: instead of every Frost Death Knight, Affliction Warlock or Feral Druid effectively competing against the same handful of meta compositions for one global cutoff, players could have meaningful competitive goals based on how far they push their chosen spec.

Nothing is changing during Midnight Season 2, and Blizzard has not announced a finished system. But the fact that the developers are openly discussing spec-based competition says a lot about the Mythic+ problem they are trying to solve. At the highest level, a specialization can be perfectly capable of clearing extremely difficult keys and still virtually disappear from public perception because another spec offers 3% more damage, better stops, Bloodlust, a crucial defensive or one particularly useful dungeon interaction. The spec is not necessarily bad. It simply loses the job interview.

Blizzard Wants More Specs to Have High-End Goals

During Psybear's interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Paul Kubit, Blizzard explained that specialization representation is one of the ways the team evaluates Mythic+ balance. Raw DPS is only one part of the equation; utility, survivability, crowd control and group synergy all influence whether a spec appears in the highest keys. Blizzard's stated goal is to make representation as diverse as possible because that eventually affects ordinary players too. When almost every top-ranked group uses the same specialization, the message travels down the ladder very quickly, even if the actual performance difference matters far less in a +10 than it does in a world-record key.

The proposed solution would not necessarily make every specialization equally powerful. Instead, it could change what players are competing for. A Frost Death Knight might chase a ranking against other Frost Death Knights. A Feral Druid could measure progress against other Ferals. A Survival Hunter could pursue a meaningful end-of-season target without first asking whether Marksmanship currently has the better invitation acceptance rate. Blizzard hopes that could demonstrate that far more specs are capable of high-level Mythic+ than the five appearing in the very best team in the world.

The Current Global Leaderboard Rewards the Best Composition

The current system naturally rewards optimization. At the absolute top end, players are not merely asking whether a specialization can complete a key. They are asking which five-character combination gives them the greatest probability of completing the highest key currently possible. When the difference between timing and depleting comes down to seconds, one extra defensive, interrupt, dispel or percentage of damage becomes enormously valuable. That is not irrational elitism. It is what competitive systems produce when everyone shares the same finishing line.

The problem begins when that top-end optimization becomes the community's universal definition of whether a spec is viable. Season 2 has already produced repeated tuning passes as Blizzard tries to pull underperformers closer together. We just covered the upcoming large Frost Death Knight buffs to Obliterate, Frost Strike, Howling Blast and melee damage, while Blizzard has been making adjustments almost weekly through its broader Season 2 class tuning cycle. Those buffs can improve balance substantially, but there will always be a mathematically best composition unless every specialization becomes the same character wearing different trousers.

A Spec-Based Ranking Could Make “Off-Meta” Competition Matter

This is where specialization-based rankings become interesting. Imagine that the overall top team is running +25 keys, while the highest-ranked Frost Death Knight has reached +23. Under today's community shorthand, the Frost DK is two key levels behind and therefore apparently inferior. Under a spec-based competitive system, that player might simultaneously be the number one Frost Death Knight in the world. The achievement is suddenly visible instead of disappearing beneath the global meta.

That could be particularly valuable for players who enjoy one specialization deeply enough to master it rather than reroll whenever Warcraft Logs changes color. Blizzard says players should feel empowered to play what they want, and a spec-based endgame target would finally give that philosophy a competitive structure. You would still have the absolute global leaderboard for players chasing the mathematical ceiling, but there could also be recognition for pushing a less common spec as far as it can realistically go.

It would also make Blizzard's ongoing balance work easier to understand. When a spec receives a major tuning package, as Frost DK is getting next reset, players could immediately see whether its own high-end ceiling moves rather than judging success exclusively by whether it replaces something in the world's best five-player composition.

There Is One Very Funny Problem: Players Might Reroll Anyway

Blizzard has already identified the obvious loophole. If rewards or prestigious achievements are tied to being among the best players of each specialization, players may simply look for whichever spec has the least competition. Instead of rerolling because Fire Mage is overwhelmingly powerful, somebody might reroll because only 43 people are seriously pushing Arcane and the spec-specific cutoff is therefore easier to reach. The system intended to encourage people to stay on the specialization they love could accidentally create an entirely new spreadsheet explaining which specialization is statistically easiest to pretend you love.

Hazzikostas specifically acknowledged that possibility in the interview. Blizzard sees spec-based rankings as potentially encouraging healthier representation, but also recognizes that competitive players optimize reward structures just as aggressively as they optimize damage. If a title requires being in the top percentage of one specialization, population differences become extremely important. A popular spec may have thousands of serious competitors while an obscure one has a dramatically smaller field. Simply copying the current percentile system 39 times would therefore create some strange incentives.

This Would Not Fix Mythic+ Balance by Itself

A specialization leaderboard also cannot substitute for actual balance. If one spec genuinely lacks the survivability or utility required to complete certain high keys, giving it a separate ranking does not magically solve that problem. Blizzard still needs to make sure the dungeon environment allows a healthy range of compositions to function. That includes class tuning, dungeon tuning and decisions about utility that go far beyond damage meters.

We have already seen how strongly dungeon knowledge and group composition can matter in Season 2. Den of Nalorakk can give an entire party 5% Versatility with the right Druid or Alchemist, while Altar of Fangs offers another profession-based 3% Versatility buff. Blizzard has also been altering routes and enemy count through changes like the Potatoad Matriarch becoming worth 60 Enemy Forces. The highest Mythic+ keys are therefore not a sterile DPS test. They reward knowing exactly what five characters can exploit, survive and control inside each dungeon.

Blizzard Has Already Moved Away From Affixes Designed to Force Diversity

The discussion is also interesting because Blizzard has tried other ways to encourage composition diversity before. Hazzikostas noted that some of the original Legion affixes were deliberately designed to make different classes and specializations attractive in different weeks. In theory, that creates rotating diversity. In practice, it can create weeks where your preferred character simply feels like it received a calendar invitation saying, “Please stay home.” Blizzard has since moved away from that style of heavily rotating affix pressure and says it is happier with a more streamlined Mythic+ structure.

The developers also pointed to utilities such as Bloodlust as an example of a different solution: spread critical functionality across enough classes that groups are not forced into one exact choice. That philosophy is healthier for ordinary groups, but the very top end will still find the optimal package. A spec-based ranking system would essentially accept that reality rather than pretending perfect global representation can ever exist.

This Could Change How Players Think About the Meta

The biggest effect may therefore be psychological rather than numerical. WoW players love tier lists because they compress complicated information into a letter. Unfortunately, the letter then becomes law. A spec capable of timing a +20 can struggle to get invited to a +12 because somebody saw it listed in B-tier beneath three alternatives. Separate high-end achievements could provide visible evidence that “not global meta” and “incapable of difficult content” are very different things.

That would not eliminate group discrimination, nor would it stop players from copying Race to World First and Mythic+ tournament compositions they do not actually need. But seeing a leaderboard where every specialization has elite players completing difficult keys could make the conversation slightly more nuanced. The best Survival Hunter would no longer just be position 8,421 on an overall list dominated by another spec. They would be the best Survival Hunter.

Do Not Expect This in Season 2

The important caveat is timing. Blizzard specifically says this idea is not planned for the current season. It is something the team is considering for future end-of-season Mythic+ goals, and there are no confirmed thresholds, rewards or implementation details yet. Season 2 will continue using the existing competitive structure, with global performance and percentile cutoffs determining the highest seasonal achievements.

That means players should not start leveling seven underrepresented specs because somebody told them Blizzard is handing out thirty-nine separate titles next week. Nothing of the sort has been announced. What we have is a design direction the developers are actively discussing, and one that could potentially become much more important after Blizzard reveals more of its future plans. We already know BlizzCon 2026 will look at Patch 12.1.7, Patch 12.2 and even content beyond 12.2, so there will be plenty of opportunities for Blizzard to explain where Mythic+ competition goes next.

Maybe Being the Best Frost DK Should Actually Mean Something

There will probably always be a global Mythic+ meta. Competitive players will calculate the strongest composition, run it extremely well and push the game until another key level becomes mathematically possible. That is part of the appeal. The question Blizzard is now asking is whether everybody else competing at a high level needs to be measured exclusively against that one composition.

A spec-based leaderboard could let players chase something more personal: not simply the highest score in the world, but the highest score anyone has managed with the specialization they actually enjoy playing. It would not make balance irrelevant. It would not stop rerolling. And, knowing World of Warcraft players, somebody would have a spreadsheet identifying the easiest spec-specific title approximately eleven minutes after the system launched.

But it would make one thing much easier to say:

You do not have to play the global meta to be one of the best players of your spec.

For Mythic+, that could be a surprisingly meaningful change.

Only 231 Guilds Beat Heroic Ula’tek — And Blizzard Says the Difficulty Is Intentional

2026-08-30T13:45:26.151+02:00

If Heroic The Venomous Abyss felt unusually brutal during its opening week, the numbers suggest you were not imagining it. Only 231 guilds worldwide earned Ahead of the Curve: Ula'tek during the raid's first week, according to Raider.IO leaderboard data compiled by Wowhead. That makes The Venomous Abyss the hardest Heroic raid to clear in its opening week since Vault of the Incarnates, where just 110 guilds managed to defeat Heroic Raszageth. The difference this time is that Blizzard does not appear to view the unusually steep Heroic difficulty as entirely accidental. Game Director Ion Hazzikostas says Season 2's stronger Heroic raid rewards give the team more room to make the difficulty itself more demanding.

That is an important change in philosophy. Heroic raiding has spent several expansions occupying an awkward space where the effort required to defeat later bosses could compare poorly with simply running Mythic+, particularly once players had access to strong weekly Vault rewards elsewhere. Season 2 changes that equation. Heroic raid Great Vault rewards now jump onto the Myth track, and Nebulous Voidcore Bonus Rolls can also award gear at the equivalent Vault level. Blizzard made those reward changes specifically to increase the value of raiding, and it now appears the other half of that bargain is becoming clear: if Heroic gives more valuable loot, Blizzard is comfortable asking players to work considerably harder for it.

231 Guilds Cleared Heroic Ula’tek in Week One

The comparison with recent raids is striking. Raider.IO's first-week data shows 231 guilds completing Heroic Ula'tek, compared with 535 guilds completing Liberation of Undermine, 637 clearing Nerub-ar Palace, 893 finishing Amirdrassil and 1,016 defeating Heroic Aberrus during their respective opening weeks. Only Vault of the Incarnates sits below The Venomous Abyss among those recent tiers, with 110 first-week Heroic Raszageth kills.

That makes Venomous Abyss a substantial outlier rather than merely a slightly harder raid. Fewer than half as many guilds completed it in Week One as Liberation of Undermine, and the number is roughly a quarter of Amirdrassil's first-week total. We already saw the warning signs when Heroic Ula'tek resisted even Race to World First guilds for days before the first kill. Those guilds normally treat Heroic as part of their gearing preparation rather than the main progression event. Ula'tek apparently missed that memo.

Blizzard Says Better Rewards Let Heroic Be Harder

The most interesting part comes from a recent interview with Ion Hazzikostas and Paul Kubit. In Psybear's developer interview, Hazzikostas explained that Blizzard has more room to tune Heroic as a genuine challenge now because the difficulty provides Myth-track rewards through the Great Vault. The developers felt it had become difficult to justify demanding Heroic raid encounters when players could complete a moderate Mythic+ key for equal or superior rewards. Season 2's reward changes are intended to restore some of Heroic raiding's value, and Blizzard believes there is consequently room for a steeper challenge.

That philosophy matches the reward overhaul Blizzard outlined before Season 2. Heroic raid Great Vault rewards now start at Myth 1/6, while Voidcore rewards are aligned with the equivalent Great Vault level and raid Bonus Rolls were reduced to one Voidcore each. We have already looked at how that has transformed weekly gearing through the new Great Vault Nebulous Voidcore option. Heroic is no longer simply a stepping stone that becomes irrelevant the moment Mythic+ starts producing better weekly gear. Blizzard has made it more rewarding, and now it is making players earn those rewards.

Week One Was Actually Easier in Two Important Ways

There is an uncomfortable wrinkle in the 231-guild statistic: Heroic Ula'tek had two strategies available during the first reset that made parts of the encounter easier, and neither works the same way after the weekly reset. One was the so-called Tether Skip, where players could use the Warden during Phase 2 to delay the Tether cast long enough to kill the relevant add before the mechanic became a major problem. The other involved sacrificing players responsible for the final soak mechanics, effectively allowing the raid to bypass part of the intended late-fight execution.

Those methods no longer function after the reset, meaning the current version of Heroic Ula'tek is in some respects harder than the encounter defeated by those 231 first-week guilds. Players do have more gear now, of course. A second Great Vault has opened, more tier bonuses are coming online, additional Crests are available and Blizzard has already made several raid adjustments. We recently covered how Heroic Vashnik's Infusion scaling was cut from 200% to 100%, demonstrating that Blizzard is perfectly willing to smooth out encounters where the numbers prove excessive. Ula'tek, however, remains deliberately positioned as the raid's final Heroic wall.

This Changes What “Heroic Raider” Means in Season 2

There is a broader consequence to Blizzard's philosophy. For years, many organized guilds have treated Heroic as something they rapidly clear before settling into Mythic progression. Ahead of the Curve remained meaningful for a large part of the playerbase, but the highest-end guilds often demolished Heroic during split runs while collecting gear. Venomous Abyss has blurred that distinction. When guilds accustomed to steamrolling Heroic are spending serious progression time on Coiled Altar and Ula'tek, the difficulty has started behaving more like an endgame destination of its own.

That does not mean Heroic is becoming Mythic. Mythic still contains additional mechanics, tighter tuning and the encounters that ultimately define the Race to World First. We saw that very clearly when Team Liquid needed 310 pulls to defeat Mythic Coiled Altar. But there is now a more substantial progression curve between Normal and Mythic, with Heroic occupying a space where players can earn genuinely powerful weekly rewards while facing encounters designed to resist them for more than one evening.

The Great Vault Is Part of the Difficulty Equation Now

This also makes the Great Vault much more than a weekly consolation prize for Heroic raiders. Because Heroic raid slots produce Myth-track rewards, every additional Heroic boss kill can contribute toward a character's long-term progression above the level of the direct boss drops. That means a guild struggling through Heroic Ula'tek is not simply chasing Ahead of the Curve and whatever happens to fall from the corpse. It is also unlocking access to a much stronger weekly reward ecosystem.

The same applies to Bonus Rolls, although Blizzard has already started putting boundaries around how aggressively players can exploit them. We recently covered both the new restriction preventing repeat Bonus Rolls on loot-locked bosses and the subsequent reports that the restriction appeared to activate earlier than Blizzard originally announced. Those systems matter because Heroic Ula'tek is not merely dropping Heroic-quality rewards anymore. Her loot table feeds into some of the strongest non-Mythic-raiding gearing opportunities available in Season 2.

Heroic Will Still Get Easier Over Time

None of this means only a few hundred guilds are supposed to earn Ahead of the Curve for the entire season. The opening-week statistic measures the raid at its most hostile point: players have relatively little gear, incomplete tier sets, immature strategies and limited experience with the encounters. Every reset pushes those conditions in the player's favor. More Great Vault gear enters circulation, Catalyst options expand, Crests upgrade existing items and strategies become increasingly standardized.

That is the same progression curve we examined when asking why The Venomous Abyss will become easier as Season 2 continues. Blizzard can also add targeted nerfs if particular mechanics continue blocking too many groups. The fact that Heroic was intentionally allowed to start harder does not mean Blizzard intends to leave it permanently tuned for the 231 guilds capable of clearing it in Week One. Opening difficulty and eventual accessibility are two different things.

231 Guilds Is Still an Extraordinary Number

Even with all that context, the opening-week result is remarkable. Only 231 guilds reached the end of Heroic The Venomous Abyss before the first reset. That puts Ula'tek much closer to the notoriously difficult Heroic Raszageth opening than to most recent Heroic end bosses, and Blizzard's explanation suggests at least part of that difficulty was deliberate rather than an accident the developers are racing to erase.

The trade is becoming increasingly clear. Heroic raiding gives better rewards in Midnight Season 2. Heroic Great Vault slots can produce Myth-track gear. Bonus Rolls can turn Heroic boss kills into targeted Myth-track opportunities. In return, Blizzard feels more comfortable making Heroic raiders actually progress through Heroic.

Better loot.

Harder bosses.

And somewhere in the middle, 231 guilds spent Week One discovering exactly what that bargain looks like.

Team Liquid Finally Breaks Mythic Coiled Altar After 310 Pulls

2026-08-30T13:05:34.524+02:00

The wall has finally broken. Team Liquid has claimed the World First Mythic Coiled Altar kill after 310 pulls, ending several days of progression on the penultimate boss of The Venomous Abyss and becoming the first guild to reach Mythic Ula'tek. Coiled Altar had effectively frozen the top end of the Race to World First in place, with Liquid, Echo, Method and the rest of the leading field all trying to solve an encounter that demanded extremely tight damage, survival and execution deep into the fight. Blizzard nerfed the encounter during progression, briefly attempted another adjustment and then reverted that second change. Liquid ultimately killed the version that remained, and now there is only one boss left between somebody and the Season 2 crown.

According to the World First Coiled Altar kill report, Liquid required 310 pulls to finish the encounter. Raw pull count alone does not make it the hardest penultimate raid boss WoW has ever produced, but the amount of actual progression time spent on it puts Coiled Altar among the most serious second-to-last walls of the modern Race to World First era. Wowhead compares the fight to bosses such as Mug'Zee in Liberation of Undermine and Tindral Sageswift in Amirdrassil: encounters that existed primarily to make the final boss wait patiently while everyone spent several days screaming at the boss immediately before it.

Liquid Needed 310 Pulls to Finally Kill Coiled Altar

Three hundred and ten attempts tells only part of the story. Coiled Altar survived for several days because the encounter demanded very little slack, particularly once guilds reached the later stages. Liquid had to combine Vantus Runes, extremely optimized damage, carefully planned cooldowns and near-perfect execution while also dealing with encounter variance that could make individual pulls significantly uglier than others. We already covered the moment Blizzard hit Mythic Coiled Altar with its first substantial Race to World First nerfs, including reductions to Veil of Twilight, Malacrass, Zul'jan and other pressure points. Those changes improved the situation, especially around the Phase 2 damage requirement, but they did not transform the boss into free progression.

That is worth emphasizing because mid-race tuning can sometimes make a World First kill look simpler in hindsight than the actual progression was. The top guilds had already spent a huge number of pulls learning the harder version before Blizzard intervened, and the resulting kill still required more than 300 attempts. Coiled Altar did not fall over because somebody changed a percentage in a database. Blizzard removed some of the excess pressure, the guilds continued progressing, and Liquid eventually put together the pull where essentially everything worked.

Blizzard Tried Another Nerf — Then Reverted It

The tuning story became stranger when Blizzard briefly pushed another reduction intended to make the encounter easier and then quickly reverted the change. That left the first major nerf in place but prevented Coiled Altar from receiving the full additional reduction players had briefly expected. As a result, Liquid's World First came against the tougher retained version of the encounter rather than the more heavily softened version that appeared momentarily possible.

That makes the kill a useful conclusion to the tuning story we have been following all week. Blizzard has been unusually active with Venomous Abyss adjustments, from the enormous 40% Mythic Nymrissa health nerf to changes affecting Vashnik, Coiled Altar and Ula'tek. We have also already seen how much some of those changes alter strategies on lower difficulties, including the Vashnik Infusion scaling reduction from 200% to 100%. Coiled Altar demonstrates the other side of that process: Blizzard can tune a boss during the race and still leave enough difficulty behind to consume several days of elite progression.

Liquid Used Five Healers for the World First

Liquid's kill composition used two tanks, five healers and thirteen DPS. The tanks were a Guardian Druid and Protection Paladin, while the healing team consisted of two Preservation Evokers, two Discipline Priests and a Restoration Shaman. The DPS lineup featured Havoc Demon Hunter, Windwalker Monk, Subtlety Rogue and Arms Warrior in melee, backed by Balance Druid, Augmentation Evoker, two Marksmanship Hunters, two Arcane Mages, a Shadow Priest and two Affliction Warlocks at range.

The five-healer setup is another reminder that Race to World First compositions are built around the exact demands of a single encounter rather than whatever happens to be sitting at the top of a general raid tier list. Liquid was willing to sacrifice another DPS slot for additional healing coverage because surviving the fight consistently was worth more than simply maximizing theoretical damage. That is also why weekly class tuning can matter so much during this stage of the season. Blizzard is still moving specs around aggressively, including the latest major Frost Death Knight buffs arriving with the September 1 reset, but the RWF guilds are solving today's encounters with today's numbers and whatever composition gives them the best chance of seeing the next phase alive.

Coiled Altar Became the Real Wall of the Raid

The early half of The Venomous Abyss produced several quick World Firsts and a surprisingly varied set of winners. Method demonstrated how quickly an encounter could disappear when it killed Mythic Vashnik in only 11 pulls, then went in the opposite direction strategically by turning off its streams before taking the Mythic Sszorak World First. Coiled Altar changed the rhythm completely. Instead of several guilds quickly moving from one early encounter to another, nearly the entire leading group accumulated behind the same boss.

That is usually the moment a Race to World First starts feeling less like a raid launch and more like the actual competition. Early bosses are frequently solved while guilds are still optimizing gear, completing splits and deciding exactly how much sleep is considered a luxury. A serious penultimate boss forces everybody into the same problem long enough for strategy, composition and execution differences to become visible. Coiled Altar did exactly that. It also justified why Liquid spent so much of the opening week preparing before Mythic progression; as we covered when Liquid spent roughly five and a half days gearing before properly entering Mythic, those enormous split schedules are designed for the moment when another few item levels might be the difference between a 1% wipe and a kill.

Now Liquid Gets to Learn Mythic Ula’tek First

The immediate reward for surviving 310 pulls of Coiled Altar is, naturally, the opportunity to fight something worse. Liquid is now the first guild to begin serious progression on Mythic Ula'tek, the final boss of The Venomous Abyss and the encounter that will actually decide the Race to World First. At the time of writing, there is no Mythic Ula'tek World First yet, so Liquid's advantage is information: they get the first meaningful look at the Mythic-only mechanics, damage requirements and whatever unpleasant surprises Blizzard has reserved for the finale.

We already have plenty of evidence that Ula'tek is not likely to be a ceremonial final boss. Heroic alone caused significant problems during opening progression before QingShui secured the first Heroic Ula'tek kill, and Blizzard has continued adjusting the encounter through hotfixes. Even Story Mode exists specifically so players interested primarily in the campaign can finish The Venomous Abyss story without tackling the proper raid version of Ula'tek. Mythic is where Blizzard gets to stop being polite.

The Advantage Is Real, but Echo and Method Are Still Coming

Liquid being first to Ula'tek does not mean the race is finished. Echo and Method have already accumulated enormous amounts of Coiled Altar experience of their own, and once another guild gets its kill, it can immediately begin consuming whatever public information Liquid has revealed on the final boss. This is the strange information economy of the modern Race to World First: reaching a boss first gives you valuable progression time, but streaming that progression also means everyone behind you gets to study your homework.

Method already demonstrated the alternative when it went dark on Sszorak. Whether any guild decides to hide meaningful Ula'tek progression remains to be seen, but the stakes are now considerably higher. Individual boss World Firsts are nice. The final boss is the one that puts the guild's name beside the raid tier forever.

The Race to World First Is Finally on Ula’tek

Coiled Altar did exactly what a great penultimate raid boss is supposed to do: it forced the strongest guilds in the world to stop, learn and suffer for a while before they were allowed to see the finale. Liquid needed 310 pulls, several days of progression, a five-healer composition and the benefit of Blizzard's first tuning pass to finally break through. The additional nerf that might have shortened the process was reverted, and Liquid still found the kill.

Now the entire raid has narrowed to one name: Ula'tek. Liquid gets the first serious attempts. Echo and Method are trying to follow. Somewhere inside Blizzard's raid design team, somebody is almost certainly watching the pull counter with professional interest and absolutely no guilt whatsoever.

Seven bosses down.

One left.

The Race to World First has finally reached the part that actually decides the world first.

Xbox May Be Taking World of Warcraft Back to Hollywood

2026-08-29T11:43:12.600+02:00

Warcraft may be heading back to Hollywood. According to a new entertainment-industry report, Xbox is exploring a broader studio deal that could turn several Microsoft gaming properties into movies or television series, with World of Warcraft reportedly among the franchises being discussed. Nothing has been announced, no Warcraft show has been ordered, and there is currently no cast, studio or release date. But after a decade with no major live-action return to Azeroth, the possibility is suddenly more concrete than another round of fans explaining why Arthas would make a great television series.

The report comes from Hollywood outlet Puck and has since been highlighted by Wowhead's coverage of Xbox's potential entertainment plans. The broader idea is apparently not to sell one isolated Warcraft project, but to find a studio relationship capable of developing adaptations from multiple Xbox-owned franchises. Warcraft is mentioned alongside properties such as The Elder Scrolls and Halo, which makes considerably more sense now that Microsoft owns Blizzard rather than simply supplying Windows to the people making the game.

There Is No World of Warcraft TV Series Yet

That caveat needs to remain attached to every part of this story. Xbox has not officially announced a World of Warcraft television series, and Blizzard has not revealed a new Warcraft movie. What we have is a report that Microsoft Gaming is exploring a broader Hollywood arrangement and that Warcraft could be one of the properties involved. “Could” is doing important work there. Entertainment projects can spend years being pitched, developed, rewritten or quietly placed in the same drawer containing every other adaptation somebody announced at lunch and never mentioned again.

Still, Microsoft has considerably more leverage than Warcraft had the last time Azeroth reached theaters. Microsoft completed its acquisition of Activision Blizzard in 2023, bringing World of Warcraft directly into the Xbox portfolio alongside an enormous collection of game franchises. That creates an obvious incentive to look beyond games themselves, particularly at a time when major game adaptations have demonstrated that audiences will happily watch a familiar gaming universe when the adaptation understands why people liked it in the first place.

Warcraft Already Tried the Movie Route in 2016

Of course, Warcraft has been here before. Duncan Jones' Warcraft arrived in theaters in 2016, adapting the earliest conflict between humans and orcs and introducing audiences to characters including Durotan, Lothar, Garona, Khadgar and Medivh. Blizzard treated the release as a major event at the time, even giving World of Warcraft players movie-inspired transmogs and running theatrical promotions.

The film developed a much warmer relationship with Warcraft fans than with many critics, but it never produced the sequel its ending was clearly preparing for. That left the franchise in an awkward position. Warcraft had successfully demonstrated that its world could look spectacular on screen, but the movie also had to introduce an absurd amount of lore, factions, magic, politics and proper nouns within roughly two hours. Azeroth is not famous for keeping things simple. Even current WoW storytelling regularly needs an entire campaign before asking players to finish the final chapter through Venomous Abyss Story Mode. Compressing Warcraft history into one movie was always going to resemble trying to explain raid mechanics during the ready check.

A Television Series May Actually Fit Warcraft Better

That is why the television part of the new report is arguably more interesting than the possibility of another film. Warcraft has an enormous cast and stories that work through gradual escalation. Arthas does not become the Lich King because somebody needs an impressive villain by minute 47. His story works because we watch the prince, the plague, Stratholme, Northrend, Frostmourne and the consequences unfold over time. The same is true of Illidan, Thrall, Jaina, Sylvanas and dozens of other characters who become considerably less interesting if their entire history is reduced to three flashbacks and somebody saying “as you know.”

A series could give those stories room to breathe. One season could focus on Lordaeron and the beginning of Arthas' fall without immediately racing toward Icecrown Citadel. Another could follow Thrall's rise and the founding of the modern Horde. Blizzard would not even need to start with World of Warcraft itself; Warcraft's history provides decades of material before the MMO's original opening cinematic technically becomes relevant.

That kind of slower storytelling also fits where modern Warcraft currently is. Midnight has become increasingly comfortable placing major narrative moments across campaigns, open-world content and raids, while Blizzard is already looking far beyond the current patch. As we recently covered, Blizzard plans to discuss Patch 12.2 and even what comes after it at BlizzCon 2026. Warcraft is not suffering from a shortage of stories. The problem is deciding which 0.4% of them a new audience should be expected to understand first.

The Lich King Is the Obvious Candidate — But Maybe Too Obvious

If Xbox really does begin pitching Warcraft adaptations, the immediate fan suggestion will be Arthas. It is easy to understand why. The fall of Prince Arthas is probably Warcraft's most recognizable self-contained tragedy, and the Lich King remains one of Blizzard's most marketable villains. A television structure almost writes itself: start with Lordaeron, introduce Arthas and Jaina, slowly reveal the plague, end the first major arc with Stratholme and let Northrend take things somewhere considerably colder and worse.

But there is also an argument for starting smaller. A series does not necessarily need to adapt Warcraft III directly. Azeroth is large enough to support a story about characters who are not already surrounded by twenty years of expectations. That could give writers room to establish Stormwind, Orgrimmar, the factions and the rules of the world before placing the entire history of the Scourge on viewers' shoulders.

World of Warcraft itself increasingly understands that accessibility matters. Story Mode now allows players to experience major raid conclusions without joining a traditional raid group, while encounters such as Ula'tek demonstrate how complicated the actual endgame version of those stories can become. A television adaptation would face the same basic problem in reverse: keep the scale and personality that longtime fans recognize without requiring viewers to have completed Loremaster before episode one.

Microsoft Has Both Good and Bad Adaptation Examples

There is also a large elephant standing beside the potential studio meeting, and it is wearing Mjolnir armor. Xbox has already seen how difficult game adaptations can be through Halo, a television project that generated plenty of debate about how far an adaptation should move away from the source material. On the other hand, the broader games industry has produced several recent examples showing that adaptations can become enormous mainstream entertainment when the right creative approach is found.

That makes a hypothetical Warcraft series less ridiculous than it might have sounded ten years ago. The question is no longer whether game adaptations can work. The question is whether Warcraft would receive writers and producers willing to treat Azeroth as a coherent world rather than a box of recognizable names, armor sets and creatures to be shaken onto a screenplay.

Warcraft Would Need to Choose Its Audience

The biggest creative decision would probably arrive before anyone starts casting Arthas. Is the project primarily for existing World of Warcraft players, or is it designed for people who have never visited Azeroth? Trying to serve both audiences is possible, but the 2016 film demonstrated how difficult the balance can become. Fans want the details. New viewers need enough space to understand why any of those details matter.

There is also a tonal problem. Warcraft can be bleak enough to contain genocide, undeath and entire kingdoms collapsing, then five minutes later ask you to rescue a raccoon trapped in magical garbage. We literally just covered the secret J'imothy raccoon pet hiding in Silvermoon. That strange ability to move between epic tragedy and absolute nonsense is part of Warcraft's identity. A successful adaptation would need to understand that Azeroth is not simply grim prestige fantasy with shoulder armor.

For Now, This Is Still a Hollywood Possibility

There is plenty of distance between “Xbox may be pitching Warcraft” and sitting down to watch Episode 1. A studio agreement would need to happen. A specific project would need to enter development. Writers, producers, directors and eventually a cast would need to be attached. Even then, Hollywood has a magnificent collection of announced projects that never progressed beyond a press release and one piece of concept art.

But the interesting part is that Warcraft appears to be back in that conversation at all. Microsoft now controls one of gaming's largest fantasy universes, Blizzard is actively expanding that universe through Midnight and future patches, and Xbox is reportedly looking for ways to turn more of its gaming portfolio into film and television. Ten years after the Warcraft movie, the pieces are at least sitting on the same table again.

No World of Warcraft series has been announced.

No actor has been cast as Arthas.

Henry Cavill does not need to clear his calendar yet.

But Azeroth may once again be looking toward Hollywood.

And this time, perhaps someone will give it more than two hours.

You Can Finally Finish Oppose the Foes for WoW’s Venomous Coiler Mount

2026-08-29T11:37:38.839+02:00

Three weeks into Patch 12.1, one of the time-gated requirements standing between World of Warcraft players and the Venomous Coiler mount can finally be completed. The Oppose the Foes achievement requires defeating all three Ancient Foes inside the Vaults of Atal'Utek, but Blizzard only makes one of them available each week. Players who have kept up since the patch launched can now have all three names checked off. Players who missed one, unfortunately, have discovered the less exciting side of rotating content: you now have to wait for that boss to come back.

Oppose the Foes Requires Three Different Ancient Foes

The Oppose the Foes achievement asks players to defeat Congealed Malice, Khu'tulak and Susarikk inside the Vaults of Atal'Utek. The fights themselves are not the difficult part of the achievement. The calendar is. Only one Ancient Foe is available during a given weekly rotation, which means the achievement takes a minimum of three weeks even if you have been diligently living underground with the snakes since Patch 12.1 arrived. With the third rotation now underway, players who defeated the Ancient Foe in each of the first two weeks can finally finish the requirement.

If one of those names is still greyed out in your achievement panel, there is no way to force that particular boss to spawn this week. You will need to wait until its rotation returns. This is therefore a good achievement to check now rather than six weeks from now when you finally decide you want the mount and discover that one elderly Amani spirit has control of your schedule.

Ancient Foes Spawn After a Temple Incursion

You do not simply find Ancient Foes wandering around the Vaults. They are the final step in the Temple Assault cycle. After players successfully complete a Temple Incursion, the week's Ancient Foe becomes available and appears on the map. According to the current Vaults of Atal'Utek activity guide, you then have ten minutes to defeat it before the objective fails. The three possible bosses are Congealed Malice, a particularly ambitious pile of slime; Susarikk, one of Ula'tek's early progeny; and Khu'tulak, an ancient Amani spirit who apparently did not receive the memo about remaining ancient and dead.

Temple Incursions themselves happen as part of the repeating Vault activity cycle, so you do not need to spend the entire evening camping a spawn point. Watch the world map, join the active Incursion when it appears and stay for the Ancient Foe afterward. If the Vaults are busy, these encounters tend to attract plenty of other players because the bosses are useful for much more than the achievement.

The Ancient Foe Is Worth Killing Even After You Have the Achievement

Each successful Ancient Foe kill awards a Venom-Drenched Sack containing 200 Corrosive Coins, 10 Champion Mistcrests and a Veteran-track piece of gear. Your first Ancient Foe kill of the week can also provide a Corrosive Soul and Venom-Cursed Fragment, making the encounter useful for characters still progressing through Patch 12.1 systems. We have already looked at how alts can accelerate their Corrosive Soul farming, and the weekly Ancient Foe remains one of the activities worth including in that routine.

Two Venom-Cursed Fragments can also be combined into a Champion-track gear reward, so even players who do not care about the Venomous Coiler have a reason to show up. Further kills of the active Ancient Foe can continue awarding the Venom-Drenched Sack as well. In other words, this is one of those rare achievement requirements where Blizzard has remembered to put actual loot behind the checkbox.

Oppose the Foes Is Part of the Assault the Vault Meta

The real reason mount collectors care is Assault the Vault. Completing that larger meta-achievement awards the Venomous Coiler, a poisonous serpent mount native to the Vaults of Atal'Utek. Oppose the Foes is only one piece of the meta, which asks players to engage with essentially every major activity in the Vaults rather than simply killing three bosses and leaving.

Roll the Patrol – complete all 12 Temple Patrol variants.
Spike the Strike – complete all six Temple Strikes.
Submerge the Incursion – complete all three Temple Incursions.
Oppose the Foes – defeat all three Ancient Foes.
The Honored Dead – discover all 12 Funerary Inscriptions.
A Lone Wanderer – collect the large Soul Globe during Purifying Earth and Sky.
Soft Underbelly – defeat the required named elites in the Underbelly.
Ritual Behavior – use each required offering during the Summoning Ritual.
Dance While Everyone Watches – dance near all three stones during Cache of the Three.
Fully Corroded – unlock 20 talents at the Altar of Corrosion.

Some of those requirements are much easier to clean up later than others. The rotating activities are the dangerous ones because missing a particular Patrol, Strike, Incursion or Ancient Foe can turn a simple checklist into waiting for Blizzard's schedule to cooperate. We have already covered how four Altar of Corrosion powers are hidden behind special items, which is another requirement worth dealing with before you reach the end of the meta and discover that buying Corrosive talents was somehow the easy part.

If You Missed an Ancient Foe, Check Which One You Need Now

This is the practical takeaway. Open your achievement panel, search for Oppose the Foes and check whether Congealed Malice, Khu'tulak and Susarikk are all complete. If you have followed the rotation every week, the three-week gate can now be finished. If one is missing, make a note of the name because you will need to catch that specific Ancient Foe when it returns. Killing this week's boss repeatedly will give you rewards, but it will not persuade the achievement to accept Susarikk as three different snakes wearing increasingly elaborate hats.

It is also worth working on the rest of Assault the Vault while waiting. Patch 12.1 already contains several guaranteed collectible routes that are much kinder than traditional 1% mount farming. We recently mapped out the 22 Coiled Isle treasures required for the Auriferous Venomfang, another serpent mount with no drop-rate lottery attached. The Venomous Coiler works on the same basic principle: complete the checklist and the mount is guaranteed. The difficulty is remembering which checklist items Blizzard only lets you see at particular times.

The Three-Week Gate Is Finally Open

For players who have been keeping up since Patch 12.1 launched, Oppose the Foes can finally move from “waiting for Blizzard” to “done.” That is a significant piece of the Assault the Vault meta out of the way and another step toward the Venomous Coiler. For everybody else, the good news is that the achievement is not missable permanently. The Ancient Foes rotate back around. The bad news is that World of Warcraft remains extremely committed to teaching patience through calendars.

Check your achievement. Kill the active Ancient Foe. And if you already have all three, congratulations: one more snake is no longer standing between you and a different snake.

WoW Players Are Losing Sparks and Crests to Broken Crafting Orders

2026-08-29T11:28:39.457+02:00

World of Warcraft players may want to be a little careful before submitting an expensive Crafting Order this weekend. Multiple Season 2 reports describe orders becoming stuck or effectively disappearing after being submitted, leaving the crafter unable to complete them and the customer unable to cancel them normally. The worrying part is what can disappear with the order: players have reported Sparks of Tides, Mistcrests and expensive crafting materials failing to return. This does not appear to affect every Crafting Order, and plenty of players are crafting normally, but when the bug does occur it can temporarily swallow some of the most heavily time-gated resources in Season 2.

The timing is particularly unfortunate. Blizzard has only just begun returning Sparks of Tides that went missing through a separate Season 2 bug, meaning some players have finally received the crafting currency they were waiting for and are now discovering an entirely different way for that currency to disappear. World of Warcraft apparently looked at the phrase “crafting progression” and decided it needed more suspense.

Crafting Orders Can Become Stuck Between Both Players

The reports follow a fairly consistent pattern. A player submits a Crafting Order with the required materials and expensive seasonal resources attached. The order then either fails to appear properly for the receiving crafter or disappears while they are trying to work on it. On the customer side, the order may no longer be available to cancel either. Normally, cancelling or expiring a Crafting Order should return the supplied materials, but affected players say that does not always happen here. Wowhead has collected reports from the NA and EU forums, Reddit and community Discords describing Sparks, Crests and normal materials becoming inaccessible after the order fails.

One player reported the issue directly on Blizzard's official Bug Report forum after submitting an order for leather boots and finding both the order and the supplied materials missing. Other reports describe similarly expensive crafts disappearing during the process. This is worth distinguishing from an ordinary Crafting Order simply expiring: those materials should normally be returned through the mail, sometimes after a delay. The current bug reports concern orders that appear to become stuck or vanish in a way that prevents normal completion or cancellation.

Some Players Have Lost 80 Myth Crests and a Spark

The potential cost is what makes this much more serious than a disappearing stack of inexpensive profession materials. Some affected high-end crafts included 80 Myth Crests, a Spark of Tides and the other materials required for the item. Losing access to 80 Crests is painful enough on its own, but Sparks are deliberately time-gated and cannot simply be farmed back in an afternoon. We have already seen how disruptive missing Sparks can be this season, particularly for characters trying to craft expensive weapons or finish a planned gearing setup.

That matters even more because crafted gear is competing with several other tightly controlled Season 2 progression routes. Players are already making weekly decisions between raid loot, Mythic+, the Great Vault and its new Nebulous Voidcore option, and Catalyst conversions. Blizzard only recently fixed another problem where some Great Vault and Voidcore raid items could not be converted through the Creation Catalyst. Losing the resources for a major craft therefore does not simply mean losing materials; it can disrupt an entire week of planned character progression.

Blizzard Support Says the Behavior Is Not Intended

There is at least some acknowledgement that the problem is real. One affected player shared a Customer Support response stating that Blizzard has seen similar reports and that the behavior is not working as intended. According to that response, the case details were passed to the development team for investigation. Support could still see the missing crafted item associated with the character on the server, suggesting that at least some of these orders may not be permanently deleted even though the player cannot currently access them.

The same response indicated that the server may periodically attempt to return affected items when the character logs in or passes through a loading screen, but Blizzard could not guarantee that this would happen in every case. More importantly, Customer Support reportedly does not currently have a direct way to manually resolve the issue. Players are being asked to submit an in-game Bug Report and wait while the development team investigates. There is currently no published timetable for a complete fix.

This Does Not Mean Every Craft Is Broken

It is important not to turn a serious bug into a broader claim than the evidence supports. Most Crafting Orders are not necessarily failing. The reports describe an intermittent problem rather than a universal shutdown of the crafting system, and Blizzard has not told players to stop using Crafting Orders. If you have completed several crafts without an issue, that does not contradict the reports. It simply means your orders worked normally.

The sensible question is therefore one of risk. If you are submitting a relatively inexpensive craft with replaceable materials, you may decide the small apparent risk is acceptable. If you are about to commit a Spark, 80 Myth Crests and a pile of expensive reagents to a major weapon or armor upgrade, waiting for clarification or a hotfix is considerably easier to justify. Season 2 has already demonstrated that Blizzard can repair affected characters after the fact, as we saw with the ongoing Spark of Tides restoration waves, but “Blizzard may eventually give it back” is not an especially comforting crafting strategy.

If Your Crafting Order Disappears, Do Not Panic Immediately

If an order appears to vanish, first make sure you are not simply dealing with a normal delay or expired order. Check your mail, relog the character and move through a loading screen before assuming the resources are permanently gone. If the order remains missing and neither player can complete or cancel it, submit an in-game Bug Report with as much detail as possible, including the item, attached materials, character and approximate time the order was submitted. A support ticket can also document the problem, although current reports suggest Game Masters may not be able to restore the order manually while the underlying issue remains under investigation.

And if the missing resources include a Spark, remember that this is separate from the earlier Season 2 Spark problem. Blizzard's recent restoration process addressed characters whose Sparks of Tides were never correctly awarded. This Crafting Order problem occurs after resources have already been earned and then committed to a craft. Season 2 has somehow managed to produce both “the Spark never arrived” and “the Spark arrived and then vanished into tailoring administration” within the same week.

You May Want to Delay Your Most Expensive Craft

Until Blizzard provides more information, the safest approach is not to panic and abandon professions entirely. It is simply to think twice before putting your most valuable time-gated resources into a Crafting Order if the upgrade can wait. This is especially true for Myth-track crafts using large amounts of Crests and Sparks, where a failed order can temporarily remove resources that took substantial progression to obtain.

Crafting remains one of the strongest ways to control your gearing in a season increasingly dominated by random raid drops, new restrictions on targeted Bonus Rolls and weekly Great Vault decisions. The entire appeal is that crafting is supposed to be the predictable part. You gather the resources, find the crafter, specify the item and receive the gear.

At the moment, a small number of players are discovering an undocumented fifth step:

wonder where everything went.

Frost DK Is Getting Another Massive Buff in WoW Season 2

2026-08-29T11:18:51.554+02:00

Frost Death Knights are getting another substantial round of buffs in World of Warcraft Season 2, and this time Blizzard is hitting several of the buttons players actually press constantly. With the September 1 weekly reset, Obliterate damage increases by 15%, Frost Strike by 20%, Howling Blast’s main-target damage by 15%, and regular melee damage by 10%. Blizzard says the goal is specifically to improve Frost’s performance in single-target and two-target cleave situations, two areas where the spec has continued to trail stronger options despite previous tuning. It is also another sign that Blizzard is willing to keep stacking buffs week after week rather than waiting for a larger patch to rescue underperforming specs.

Frost Death Knight Gets Four Separate Damage Buffs

The new numbers come directly from Blizzard’s September 1 class tuning announcement. Frost Death Knight receives four PvE increases at once:

Howling Blast main-target damage increased by 15%.
Obliterate damage increased by 15%.
Frost Strike damage increased by 20%.
Melee damage increased by 10%.

That distribution is important because this is not simply another flat aura buff hidden somewhere in the background. Obliterate and Frost Strike sit directly in Frost’s core rotation, while the Howling Blast change improves main-target damage without simply turning every AoE pull into an uncontrolled numbers festival. Blizzard’s stated target is single-target and two-target cleave, which makes the changes particularly relevant in raids and boss-heavy Mythic+ pulls. We already covered Frost Death Knight’s earlier Season 2 double buff, so September 1 is becoming another significant step in what is now clearly an ongoing attempt to push the spec upward rather than one isolated correction.

Obliterate and Frost Strike Are the Big Winners

The headline number is probably Frost Strike’s 20% increase, but Obliterate gaining another 15% is arguably just as important because it strengthens one of the attacks most closely associated with the spec’s entire identity. Frost has historically been at its most satisfying when Obliterate actually feels like an Obliterate rather than a politely worded suggestion, and the September tuning should make those hits considerably healthier. The 10% melee increase also matters more than it initially appears because it adds passive damage throughout an encounter without requiring any rotational change, while the main-target Howling Blast increase helps improve focused damage when Rime procs are flowing.

This is also why simply adding the four percentages together would be misleading. Frost DK is not receiving a “60% damage buff.” Each increase applies to a different part of the damage profile, and the real overall gain will depend on build, encounter length, target count, gear and how much of a player’s total damage currently comes from each affected source. The practical conclusion is still straightforward: this is a large tuning package, particularly for sustained boss damage and smaller cleave scenarios. Blizzard would not be touching four major sources simultaneously if the internal raid and Mythic+ data suggested Frost was already sitting exactly where the developers wanted it.

Blizzard Is Still Repairing Season 2 Class Balance

The Frost changes are part of a much larger September 1 tuning pass rather than a Death Knight-specific emergency. Blizzard says it has continued examining raid, Mythic+ and PvP data after last week’s adjustments and identified several underperforming specializations that still need help. That fits the pattern we have been following throughout the opening weeks of the season, where Season 2 class tuning has arrived in repeated weekly waves instead of one enormous correction after the meta has already settled.

Frost is not even the only DPS spec receiving a substantial increase. Beast Mastery Hunter and Survival Hunter both gain 7% overall damage, Frost Mage gets 6%, Feral Druid receives 5% overall ability damage plus 10% auto-attack and Ferocious Bite buffs, Havoc Demon Hunter gets another 4%, Balance Druid gets 4%, Fire Mage gets 3%, and Windwalker Monk receives 4%. Protection Paladin gets one of the funniest individual numbers in the entire tuning pass, with Blaze of Glory damage increased by 150%, alongside 30% increases to Consecration and Divine Guidance.

Mistweaver Is Getting Help Too

Healers are not being ignored either. Mistweaver Monk receives a 5% increase to all healing, while the Venomous Abyss four-piece set bonus activation chance rises from 20% to 25%. Restoration Druid receives a 4% healing increase, and Discipline Priest gets a 20% reduction to Shadow Mend’s mana cost. Those changes are especially interesting this early in Season 2 because tier bonuses are still becoming active across more characters each week, meaning Blizzard is simultaneously tuning the base specs and the seasonal systems layered on top of them.

That relationship between class tuning and tier gear has already been messy this season. Blizzard has previously adjusted multiple Season 2 tier set bonuses, while individual specs have needed further intervention afterward. Ret Paladin, for example, has already gone through both a 6% Season 2 damage increase and a later major four-piece set bonus buff. Frost DK now looks like another spec Blizzard intends to keep adjusting until the live performance data lands in a healthier place.

Frost Is Getting the Attention Unholy Players May Want

The Death Knight comparison is also difficult to ignore. Frost is receiving another direct damage package while Unholy is absent from this particular PvE tuning list. That will inevitably produce some class-forum enthusiasm. We recently covered how an Unholy Death Knight bug fix effectively turned into a Season 2 damage increase, but Frost has now received multiple deliberate tuning passes focused specifically on its output. Blizzard’s notes make the intent unusually clear: the developers want Frost stronger on single targets and two-target cleave, and they are willing to put meaningful percentages on core rotational abilities to get there.

That does not automatically mean Frost jumps to the top of every raid ranking or becomes mandatory in Mythic+. Balance changes do not happen in isolation, particularly when Hunters, Mages, Druids, Monks and Demon Hunters are all moving at the same reset. The actual meta will depend on how those changes interact with current gear, tier sets, dungeon routes and raid encounters. But Frost DK players do not need a simulation spreadsheet to understand the general direction. When your core spender gets 20%, your signature strike gets 15%, your main-target Howling Blast gets 15% and even your white swings get 10%, Blizzard is not being subtle.

The September 1 Reset Could Move the Meta Again

Season 2 class balance is still moving quickly enough that rankings from one reset can age badly by the next. That is probably healthy this early in the season, particularly if Blizzard is using live data to lift specs that are genuinely underperforming instead of immediately chopping down everything at the top. The downside is that players trying to choose a main can currently watch their class move several percentage points every Tuesday while wondering whether the character selection screen should include stock-market arrows.

For Frost Death Knights, however, September 1 looks straightforwardly positive. Blizzard wanted more single-target and two-target cleave damage, and the solution is four direct buffs to abilities that contribute throughout normal gameplay rather than one obscure talent nobody uses. Frost already received help earlier in Season 2. Now it is getting another substantial package only a week later.

Obliterate +15%. Frost Strike +20%. Howling Blast +15% on the main target. Melee +10%.

If Frost DK is still cold after that, it will at least be hitting considerably harder.

Blizzard Activated WoW’s Bonus Roll Lockout Days Early

2026-08-29T11:11:57.621+02:00

Yesterday, Blizzard told players that the new Nebulous Voidcore Bonus Roll restriction would arrive with next week’s scheduled maintenance. Today, it appears to be here already. Multiple player reports now suggest that raid bosses you are already loot-locked to are no longer offering a Bonus Roll opportunity, even though Blizzard’s original announcement specifically said the change would begin with the next weekly reset. That is a fairly important distinction for anyone who spent Thursday assuming they still had the rest of the current lockout to use the old system. If your plan was to kill a boss earlier in the week, come back later and spend another Voidcore on the same difficulty, the game may already have decided that plan is over.

Blizzard Originally Said the Change Would Start Next Week

In Blizzard’s official Raid Bonus Roll update, Kaivax stated that with scheduled weekly maintenance next week, Bonus Rolls would only be usable on encounters where the player was still eligible to receive normal loot. We covered that announcement in our breakdown of WoW’s incoming repeat Bonus Roll lockout, because it directly killed one of Season 2’s strongest targeted-loot strategies. The rule itself was simple enough: one loot-eligible kill on a given difficulty, one opportunity to use a Bonus Roll, then wait for the reset. The important part was that Blizzard explicitly gave players a start date. That date appears to have become considerably less reliable.

Reports now indicate that characters who already killed a raid boss on a particular difficulty this week are no longer receiving a Bonus Roll prompt when they defeat that boss again. That is exactly how the new restriction is supposed to function. It is simply not how Blizzard said the current reset would function. At the time of writing, Blizzard has not published a separate clarification changing the announced activation date, so the safest conclusion is that the restriction appears to have gone live early.

Heroic Ula’tek Farmers Are the Obvious Losers

The players most likely to notice are those targeting Heroic Ula’tek. Nebulous Voidcores became dramatically more attractive in Season 2 after Blizzard reduced the raid Bonus Roll cost to a single Voidcore, and the system became even more central this week when eligible players gained the option to take a Nebulous Voidcore directly from the Great Vault instead of accepting unwanted gear. Put those two systems together and players suddenly had a very powerful way to target specific raid loot rather than simply hoping the weekly Vault behaved itself.

Ula’tek was an obvious destination for those saved rolls because her loot table contains some of the most desirable Season 2 items, and Heroic Bonus Rolls can produce extremely strong rewards. Under the previous behavior, you could kill Heroic Ula’tek, use a Bonus Roll, return later while already loot-locked and still receive another Bonus Roll opportunity after another kill. Once the new restriction is active, that stops completely. If the current reports are accurate, it has already stopped before the reset Blizzard originally named.

The Timing Is the Real Problem

The underlying restriction is not especially complicated. In fact, it makes Bonus Rolls behave more like ordinary raid loot: if the character is no longer eligible to receive loot from that encounter and difficulty, another kill does not create another chance. Blizzard has argued that this better aligns Bonus Rolls with the rest of the raid reward system. The problem is that players make gearing decisions around announced timings, particularly when Season 2 already asks them to juggle the Great Vault, Bonus Rolls, crafting, tier conversion and raid lockouts at the same time.

We have already seen how sensitive that ecosystem can be. Blizzard recently had to fix a bug preventing some Great Vault and Voidcore raid gear from working properly with the Creation Catalyst, while the Vault itself only just gained its new Voidcore alternative. A player could reasonably have killed Heroic Ula’tek earlier in the week, held onto another Voidcore and planned a repeat kill this weekend because Blizzard had publicly said the lockout change would not arrive until the next maintenance. If the restriction is already active, that player did not misunderstand the system. The system changed sooner than advertised.

This Also Makes Every Voidcore More Important

The early activation matters because repeat farming was one of the few ways players could aggressively focus their Bonus Rolls on one exact loot table. Without it, Voidcores remain useful, but they become much more dependent on weekly raid eligibility. You can still target the boss you care about, and different raid difficulties continue to have separate loot lockouts, but you cannot simply stockpile several Voidcores and repeatedly kill the same Heroic boss until the knockout system gradually removes unwanted rewards.

That also changes the calculation when opening the Great Vault. We recently argued that players should look at the entire Great Vault rather than automatically taking the highest-item-level piece, and the addition of Voidcores made that decision even more interesting. A mediocre Vault item might be worth rejecting in favor of a targeted Bonus Roll. But if that roll is now limited by raid loot eligibility sooner than expected, the timing of when and where you spend it matters considerably more.

Do Not Assume the Old Rule Still Works This Weekend

For now, the practical advice is straightforward. If you were planning to revisit a raid boss this weekend purely because you believed the old repeat Bonus Roll behavior remained active until the next reset, do not assume that is still true. Check whether your character is already loot-locked on that difficulty and be prepared for the Bonus Roll window not to appear. The same Voidcore can still be saved for another eligible encounter or difficulty rather than being wasted on a run that no longer provides the opportunity you expected.

Blizzard said the new rule would begin with next week’s maintenance. The restriction now appears to be behaving as though that maintenance already happened. The Bonus Roll system itself is not broken by this change, and Voidcores remain one of Season 2’s most useful targeted-loot tools. But the short window where players thought they could squeeze in a final weekend of repeat boss farming may already have closed.

Apparently even the Bonus Roll has discovered early access.