This week’s other interests wow Patch 8.3 marks the release of new hunter trainable pets; the second Finding Band difficulty wing for the Ny’alotha raid; the opportunity to be a rare and evil creature; the right time to start working on an alt; and the continuation of the Black Moon Fair.
This guide covers the week of February 4-10 (February 5-11 on EU servers), so here is everything you need to know about how to excel in Azeroth.
Darkmoon Faire – Get Your Bonus Reputation and Some New Arcade Games
The Darkmoon Fair runs through Saturday night, so grab your WHEE! Upgrade the roller coaster or carousel to give you a ten percent bonus on reputation and experience gains. While you’re there, check out the new Darkmoon Faire Arcade, which offers life-size versions of some pretty entertaining minigames.
Some are familiar, including the pattern matching game from the Tortollan world missions and the circuit uncrossing game from the Nazjatar world missions. But one of the funniest is a reboot of the old Minesweeper game that came with Microsoft Windows.
‘HexSweeper’ makes you step on hexagons to erase them or right-click on a space to mark it as a mine. If you fail, you explode (and die, although you will not take any durability damage). There are five levels, plus level X, which does not label any of the hexagons to start with.
So far there is no indication of rewards for playing, but you can play all arcade games for a whole day with a single game token.
Hunters, get your new beasts
Hunters were given the ability to tame a collection of new animals in a recent review, including terrifying crows, rocs, sea snakes, and mechanical chickens. One of the prettiest is the Rukhmar world boss in Spiers of Arak (from the Warlords of Draenor expansion), which are now tame.
Seeking Raid Ny’alotha opens a second wing
The second wing of the Ny’alotha raid, the Awakening City, is now open in the Find Party tool on Finding Raid difficulty. This wing includes the bosses in the Halls of Devotion: Dark Inquisitor Xanesh, Vexiona, The Hivemind, and Ra-den the Despoiled.
Battle for Azeroth
Battle for Azeroth has been an extremely hostile expansion, but as the busy 8.3 routine begins to wind down, it may be time to dust off a second character. Keeping up takes a lot of effort the first week, as you work your way through the introductory missions and complete your first series of Horrible Visions to level up your new legendary cape. (Hint: Every time Magni tells you to meet him somewhere, talk to him again. He doesn’t offer you a chance to skip scenarios until you do.)
But after the initial effort, you can keep up by doing the weekly major assault, biweekly minor rounds, a Horrible Vision, and whatever daily minor visions you get in; those tend to take only a few minutes. You’ll end up with two essences for your Heart of Azeroth legendary neck just by following these steps, plus another if you participate in Ny’alotha’s raid against that character.
The Worldvein Essence, which can be obtained by running the Island Expeditions weekly quest, is relatively easy to obtain and has recently been substantially upgraded, making it one of the best Essences for some classes.
Essences are still the stumbling block for alternate characters, but it’s possible to get an alt reasonably at 8.3, if not perfectly minimal.
Become a freak
You can become Void Wraith, a rare mob in World of Warcraft, thanks to a secret recently discovered by Secret-Finding Discord. It’s a long chain, ending in the ability to turn into a giant purple evil specter, marked on player maps as a rare creature with additional rewards. You will be hostile to both factions, and if you manage to kill some players before they kill you, you will get some rewards. Interestingly, players who kill you will receive the same perks as killing other rare, including currency and Azerite power for their necks.
The short version is that you have to kill the summoned creature Adherent of the Abyss in Stormsong Valley, then use the Abyss Aether item when in a N’Zoth assault on Uldum’s Vale of Eternal Blossoms. You will see a fragment of corruption in some of the glowing purple cracks in the ground. Looting it gives you a quest to find 20 of them.
When you complete that mission, you immediately transform into a Void Wraith, with 4.6 million health and new abilities. To earn your rewards, you must kill ten players of any faction without dying.
