Wednesday, June 18, 2025

Ghosts of K'aresh is War Within's Third Major Patch

 There has been a fair amount of hinting at this, but it does seem that our underground adventures in War Within will take us to a very different location in the final patch, the void-wracked world of K'aresh.

We also now know the final* boss, which will be a resurrected Dimensius the All-Devouring. Yeah, remember that giant voidwalker from that group quest in Netherstorm? What? You were three years old when Burning Crusade came out? You're saying that I'm done now and should just climb into my coffin?

Yes, Dimensius has long been a subject of lore speculation, as they're the only actual named Void Lord we've ever encountered (depending on what the jury decides is Xal'atath's actual classification).

For those of us who played through Shadowlands and found the Brokers to be quite similar to the Ethereals, it seems that Blizzard is throwing fuel on the fire of speculation for that, as the Brokers will be joining us on K'aresh (along with friendly Ethereals like Locus-Walker,) and Tazavesh, the Veiled Market will be traveling out of the Shadowlands and to this wrecked world to serve as our home base hub there - though a new version of the Shadowlands mega-dungeon will also be available (along with its two halves as M+ dungeons this season).

We'll also be getting a legendary cloak, the primary function of which seems to be to let us phase between normal reality and some kind of ethereal space, which will be used as a boss mechanic in the raid as well as for exploration outdoors.

It does seem like the Netherstorm nostalgia keeps rolling (perhaps making up for skipping Farahlon in Warlords of Draenor, the pre-destroyed version of that zone that we never got to see) as the raid will be Manaforge Omega, where mana is drained from the dead world (we apparently enter the raid via one of the mana pumps). The raid will conclude with a fight against Dimensius, which has been described as the biggest raid boss in WoW's history, supposedly the size of Stormwind (I guess the previous record-holder's got to be Madness of Deathwing - obviously not counting the Old Gods, as, while their full forms are the size of continents, the "nodes" that we actually fight are big, but not that big).

The patch will also bring a new dungeon, Eco-Dome Al'dani. Curiously, story-wise, this actually takes place after the raid, meaning that in theory its final boss is the true final boss of War Within.

Delves will have a new nemesis for the new season, a familiar face, which is that Ethereal boss from Nerub'ar Palace. There's also going to be a new delve, Archival Assault, which takes place within the Azure Vaults dungeon from Dragonflight, where you try to prevent plundering Ethereals from stealing the secrets and magic from the place.

As an interesting note, the class tier sets' bonuses are going to work a little differently: rather than affecting different abilities by spec, they're going to have bonuses tied to your Hero Talents. I'll be curious to see how that looks in practice.

Anyway, sounds like some fun stuff. It does also feel like a bit of a last-patch swerve, which we do often get in an expansion, taking the action out of the expansion's main setting like when we returned to Orgrimmar in Mists of Pandaria or discovered the surreal land of Zereth Mortis in Shadowlands.

It's also notable that, like Iridikron, this expansion's ostensible primary villain does not seem to be on the final boss chopping block.

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