WoW Reviews & Guides

Tempest Keep is a former naaru fortress in the Netherstorm in Outland. This crystalline fortress is now ruled by Kael’thas Sunstrider, the lord of the blood elves, and dominated by scores of his brethren. The structure is divided into three wings – satellites of the gigantic structure – with the fourth wing, the Exodar, now in the world of Azeroth as the Draenei capital.

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Onyxia’s Lair is a small cave system located in the southern parts of Dustwallow Marsh. It is home to Onyxia and her guards, the remaining members of the insidious Black Dragonflight. There also her brood of new eggs is hidden, awaiting maturation. Should anyone ever threaten Onyxia within her lair – within distance of her precious eggs – her wrath would be terrible beyond comprehension.

Patch 3.0.2: Since Lady Katrana Prestor is no longer in game, the attunement is lifted for both factions. As such, it is no longer necessary to have the Drakefire Amulet in your inventory to enter.
Patch 3.2.2: Onyxia’s Lair has been retuned for level 80 players because of World of Warcraft’s 5th birthday.

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The Forge of Souls is the first wing of the dungeon complex known as the Frozen Halls, located within Icecrown Citadel. The instance portal is located to the left inside the secured area of Icecrown Citadel, near the meeting stone. No attunement is required for entry, but completing the instance is required to gain entrance to the Pit of Saron.

Lore

Serving as the first wing in this expansive dungeon, the Forge of Souls will quickly put players to the test of carving through the Scourge stronghold into deeper, more treacherous locations. Jaina will command Alliance forces, and Sylvanas will direct Horde forces. The goal is to ruin the twisted engines known as soul grinders found in this portion of the citadel, and then players can advance — that is, if the Horde and Alliance forces can overcome the foes who confront them.

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The Pit of Saron is the second wing of the Frozen Halls instances of Icecrown Citadel, released in patch 3.3. The enormous pit in the dungeon is filled with large extracts of saronite ore and the Scourge have taken many Alliance and Horde prisoners forcing them to mine the saronite or face torture and reanimation into undeath. The players help Jaina Proudmoore or Sylvanas Windrunner rescue the prisoners and put a stop to the Scourge’s operations and defeat the brutal scourge master of the area and his lieutenants.

To become “attuned” to the Pit of Saron, players are required to complete the quest Echoes of Tortured Souls (Alliance) / (Horde) in the Forge of Souls as part of the Frozen Halls story line quest chain.

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Halls of Reflection is the third and final wing of the dungeon complex known as the Frozen Halls, located within Icecrown Citadel. The The Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron must be completed before a player can enter the Halls of Reflection.

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In World of Warcraft: Cataclysm Beta we’ll be making several changes to class talents and abilities. Here you will get a glimpse into some of the changes we have in store for the druid. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Let’s kick things off by checking out some of the new druid spells and abilities!

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With the upcoming World of Warcraft: Cataclysm many game elements will be changing, and each class will be receiving a number of tweaks. Here, we will explore the changes that are being made to the gun-wielding, pet-training hunter. The information you’re about to read is certainly not complete, and is only meant to act as a preview of some of the exciting new things to come. Without further ado, let’s take a look at the new hunter abilities!

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Archaeology

• New Secondary Profession: Archaeology – lets you collect and use artifacts unearthed from the ancient races
• No longer linked to Path of the Titans; Geared more towards exploring the lore of the game.
• Each archaeologist uses the profession to uncover clues hidden in the world around them, such as troll relics or map fragments, and decipher their meaning, enabling the clever archaeologist to manipulate pieces of the past, learning the location of a treasure cache or valuable artifact. Such artifacts are highly sought after by the Archaeology Society, and they pay in gold and items for their return.
• Interacting with an artifact you find is similar to other gathering professions. It has been specifically stated that you will be able to track both Artifacts and your regular “tracking” for gathering professions.
• Recovered artifacts will be placed in a Journal, not in bags
• Rewards from Archaeology will be something “like”: a skeletal T-Rex non-combat pet or the ability to teleport to a dungeon you’ve been to before
• Two types of artifacts: Common – more lore-oriented; and Rare – when combined will create usable items, sometimes even weapons

Reforging

• allows Tailor to modify cloth gear, Leatherworkers to modify leather, etc.; Specifically, they can reduce a single statistic on applicable items and convert 50% of the lost points into another stat not already on the item; this service can also be provided to other players if you see fit
• it appears this will be enacted using scrolls, and some stats may not be permissible to swap over, like stamina —> strength – see link for more info

Herbalism

• All Cataclysm herbs have the chance of containing Volatile Life.
• There won’t be a new Lotus equivalent in Cataclysm.
• “Heartblossom — Named for its deep red color, this delicate flower grows close to the ground, and always in pairs. If one blossom is taken, the other flower begins to wilt immediately and dies soon after. It is considered very unlucky to disturb a Heartblossom without blessing it first.”

Mining

• Obsidian is the new common mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, and Volatile Shadow.
• Elementium is the new uncommon mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems, Volatile Fire, Volatile Water, or Volatile Earth.
• Pyrite is the new rare mineral found when mining in Cataclysm, and can contain gems and Volatile Fire.
• Previous Elementium Ore and Bar used for classic quests will be renamed to Elementium Ingot and Hardened Elementium Bar.

Skinning

• Savage Leather, the basic Cataclysm leather, can be gathered from most creatures found in the expansion areas and can be converted to Heavy Savage Leather at a 6:1 rate.
• Pristine Hide, the rare Cataclysm hide, can be found when skinning creatures in the expansion areas, or be converted from Heavy Savage Leather.

Alchemy

• New elixirs will be about 75% as strong as flasks. So you can get more total stat points with two elixirs, but flasks will still be the best at giving you a single offensive or defensive stat.
• New unique material used by nearly all high-level recipes will be created by alchemists on a one-day cooldown.
• New Mysterious Potion created with common materials restores health and mana in a massively random range, as well as sometimes granting the benefit of another potion. The health and mana range is from 1-20,000 and is able to crit. The minimum amount restored, however, is scaled upwards by the Alchemy skill, making it a great choice for alchemists to keep for themselves.
• All potions and elixirs now use the same basic vial type. Flasks still use a fancy vial.
• New Alchemist Stone.

Enchanting

• may be able to finally enchant gear with resilience
• In general, material component costs for most recipes are more moderate in how much they require, while the highest-end recipes will still require large quantities. The goal of this change is to make the leveling recipes more consistent and not create unintended roadblocks in getting to the higher skill levels.
• An enchanter vanity pet is being added.

Weapon Enchantments

• Avalanche — Chance to deal Nature damage on melee hit/spell hit.
• Elemental Slayer — As expected, this enchantment helps players deal devastating damage to elemental creatures.
• Hurricane — A stacking haste proc.
• Heartsong — Mana regeneration through increased Spirit when chain-casting spells.
• Many more maximum-level enchantments are still in progress.

Engineering

• Engineering is still being designed, but expect new unpredictable gadgets to use on yourself or enemies. Toys, explosives, and even a new vanity pet or two. Oh, and powerful mechanical bows and crossbows in addition to guns.
• In general, we want Engineering to remain a tradeskill mainly focused on creating fun or useful gadgets for the engineer, but we are exploring options for items that can be sold to other players for profit.

Inscription

• With the large number of class changes coming with Cataclysm, many existing glyphs will see new functionality.
• Minor glyphs are woefully uneven from one class to the next right now, so they’re a focus for us to clean them up and try to ensure that everyone has minor glyphs they’re excited about.
• New Darkmoon Cards will be added, with hopes they’ll all be as awesome as the Greatness card.
• We’ll be adding more major glyphs as well, but in the hopes of making them as balanced as possible, we’ll likely wait until after the expansion ships to add any for the new abilities in Cataclysm.
• New and more desirable off-hand and relic recipes will be added.
• Addition of ‘Medium Glyphs’ that may focus more on ‘fun’ alterations to abilities. Idea is to have 3 of each type of Glyph (Minor, Medium, and Major) at level 85
• Possibility of making Glyphs permanent and swappable
• Glyph UI will now show all Glyphs that are available to your class

Jewelcrafting

• Some gem colors have changed! Hit is now blue. Mastery and Dodge are yellow. Intellect is now red. These simple changes have created a much more diverse matrix of gem cuts.
• New Jewelcrafting dailies will be introduced.
• Many cuts are being added to support the new Mastery stat.
• Some new Cataclysm jewelry recipes have completely random properties, and can sometimes create superior and epic versions.
• Jewelcrafters will have some fun new (and potentially lucrative) vanity items, including fist weapons, rhinestone sunglasses, monocles, and stardust (sprinkle on players for entertainment).

Cooking

• Cooking is still in the early stages, but we plan on continuing with daily quests, feasts, and some fun new recipes.
• We liked the cooking dailies that had players picking up items that spawned in the world near the quest giver, so most if not all new cooking dailies will work similarly.

First Aid

• Bandages will have a short cast time and put a heal over time effect on the target for 8 seconds. This effect is broken by damage.
• Three new bandages! That’s right: THREE!
• “Dense Embersilk Bandage” Heals for 34,800 over 8 seconds. Requires 3 Embersilk to create.

Fishing

• Lots of new fish and other fun items to catch! Fish are still used to make premium food.
• New fishing dailies.

Other

• New Recipes
• Skill Cap raised to 525 – “Illustrious”
• Skill Points: allow the gaining of multiple points for some tasks; while intended for Crafting profs, this has been mentioned for Gathering as well
• Profession Specialization removed

Flame Leviathan is the first boss encounter in Ulduar, found in the Formation Grounds. Most of the players in this encounter do not use their regular class abilities, but instead use vehicles (similar to drakes in Malygos’ third phase). The rest of Ulduar is not accessible until this boss is destroyed.

Overview

This is a vehicle fight, similar to Ley-Guardian Eregos and Malygos’ Phase 3. In the beginning of the instance, players will find an Expedition Camp, where they can choose their vehicles – Salvaged Siege Engine, Salvaged Demolisher, or Salvaged Chopper; players may select to be passengers or drivers in either Siege Engines or Demolishers. Choppers’ passengers have no function. There are 2 (25 Player: 5) of each kind of vehicle. There are two stages of the fight – a gauntlet event, where the Iron Army tries to stop the players from proceeding farther into the instance; and the actual fight against the Flame Leviathan.

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The Ruby Sanctum is the red dragonflight’s sanctum within the Chamber of Aspects beneath Wyrmrest Temple in Dragonblight. It is a raid dungeon with both 10 and 25-player normal and heroic modes.

The dungeon’s release was delayed until a week after patch 3.3.5 went live in the US, in an effort to make sure all players world-wide could access it at the same time, (with the exception of the U.S. servers down for 24 hour maintenance the day of it’s release.).

The Ruby Sanctum is an extension to the Wyrmrest Temple dragonflight Sanctum raids. Sacred grounds of the red dragons, the Ruby Sanctum was invaded by the Twilight dragonflight. It was released in patch 3.3.5 and it’s is very similar to the Obsidian Sanctum – both in its physical appearance and encounters. Three hills, guarded by mini-bosses overlook a central area, where the only real boss of the raid resides – in this case that’s Halion the Twilight Destroyer. His lieutenants are Baltharus the Warborn, General Zarithrian, and Saviana Ragefire.

All three of the mini-bosses, as well as Halion drop Emblem of Frost. Halion himself, the only boss with loot drops epic gear half a tier (7 item levels) higher than the ones in the Icecrown Citadel. New trinkets, amongst other things, await those strong enough to defeat the Twilight Destroyer in a place where he is equally able to fight in both the physical realm… and the twilight one.

Lore

When a clutch of twilight dragonflight eggs was discovered within the Obsidian Sanctum, Korialstrasz asked the Council of Six to send adventurers to destroy them. The deed was done quickly, and without fanfare or acknowledgment. At first all seemed quiet, but then all communication with the guardians in the Ruby Sanctum ceased. The guards stationed at the portal were slain, and the mystic stones shattered. The implications of the Ruby Sanctum being breached are dire, and little is known of the identity of the attackers, as the black dragonflight’s numbers in Northrend seem too limited to have pulled off such an attack. What power would dare to attack the stronghold of the red dragonflight, and how did they get past the guards undetected?

Encounters

The black dragonflight has assaulted the sanctum and is attempting to destroy it to facilitate Deathwing’s reemergence into Azeroth. Halion will be the primary encounter, along with three mini-encounters that must be completed prior to him. Unlike the Obsidian Sanctum, there are no progressive hard modes from leaving up some or all of the minibosses. Loot is comparable to that of the Lich King.

Quick Facts