Dragons of Nightmare world bosses are now live in WoW Classic

It’s time to find 39 of your friends and head out into the wilds of WoW Classic. The Dragons of Nightmare world bosses are now live, along with Zul’Gurub.

Allow me a brief walk down memory lane here. I was a wee Dwarf — level 30 — questing in Duskwood. I find a road which goes up into an unexplored section of the map. This lead to the Twilight Grove and, what’s this? A dragon. Such a lovely green color! No one from the guild I was in at the time was online so I did what any intrepid adventurer would do — I sent in my bear and took a shot. Ysondre promptly ate me. This is bit one of four “Dragons of Nightmare” you’ll find gracing WoW Classic very soon.

Below is a brief summary of their abilities, where you can find them, and other tidbits to make your encounter with them go more smoothly than mine did.

Locations of the dragons

There are four dragons — Ysondre, Taerar, Lethon, and Emeriss — and they randomly spawn in one of four locations; two in Eastern Kingdoms and two in Kalimdor. You’ll need to run to the locations to check for dragons.

• In Duskwood, it’s in the Twilight Grove in the middle of the map.
• In Hinterlands, it’s Seradane, in the northeast corner of the zone.
• In Ashenvale, it’s in Bough Shadow at the very northeast corner of the map.
  • Note to Alliance: If you run across the bridge into Azshara, there is a flight path which will make getting to this location much faster.
• In Feralas, it’s the Dream Bough at the middle top of the map. Feralas is, probably, the longest journey as you’ll either come from the bottom of Feralas or from Desolace above.

Graveyards are relatively close to the dragons so when — yes, when — you die, you can return to combat.

Unless something is changed from when Classic was the game, the dragons will have a random spawn timer. This means it will be very hit and miss whether one is up. Your best bet is to simply go see and then announce it to your guild and in General chat. You’re going to need a lot of folks to bring them down. They share one loot table and this loot is highly prized. I never got the recipe for Flask of Petrification when they were in retail.

Let’s discuss abilities.

Ysondre

This is Seradane in Hinterlands. All dragons are surrounded by level 55-60 elite dragonkin. There will be casters and Warriors. Some Warriors do a knock-back and a charge. There will also be one named mini-boss before the main dragon. These are, essentially, tank and spanks, but do have standard dragon abilities like a breath weapon and a tail swipe. Pull them away from the main dragon.

All dragons have the following abilities:

• Noxious Breath — A poison attack. Only tanks should take this.
• Dream Fog — Those sickly green-colored clouds. Those put you to sleep for 4.5 seconds and will affect tanks so be sure you have another tank to grab aggro. These can be avoided.
• Tail swipe — You know better than to stand behind a dragon, right?
• Summon Player — This summons the player highest on the aggro table in front of the dragon.
• Aura of Nature — This puts a debuff on you causing you to sleep for two minutes.
• Mark of Nature — After dying, if you are affected by the Dream Fog, it lasts two minutes.

Dragons are immune to nature damage, and each dragon has special abilities on top of the above.

Ysondre’s Special Abilities:

• Lightning Wave which hits one target and then arcs to up to ten other players
• Demented Druid Spirits. The spirits cast Curse of Thorns, Moonfire, and Silence. DPS should concentrate on killing these quickly.

Ysondre is considered the easiest of the four to fight.

Taerar

This is in Bough Shadow.

Taerar’s Special Abilities:

• Bellowing Roar — This will fear anyone it hits.
• Arcane Blast — A knock-back ability. You can get knocked or feared into those Dream Fogs very easily.
• Shades of Taerar — Three times, she vanishes and three shades appear with her. All the shades can cast Dream Fog so keep moving. Off-tanks should pick up the shades.

Lethon

This is in The Twilight Grove. You can see the clouds of Dream Fog surrounding Lethon above.

Lethon’s Special Abilities:

• Shadow Bolt Whirl — Four sets of shadow bolts are fired to everyone on one side and then on the other side. These are unavoidable.
• Draw Spirit — The main attack you need to worry about. When this is cast, anyone within 100 yards will be stunned. A spirit of them forms and walks toward Lethon. If they reach her, she is healed so it’s imperative they be killed. They don’t have many hit points but when there are 40 of you in the raid, that’s a lot of spirits.

Emeriss

This is also in The Twilight Grove. Emeriss is considered the hardest of the four dragons to kill and with good reason. You can see the Dream Fog in the battle above.

Emeriss’s Special Abilities:

• Corruption of the Earth — Three times during the fight, she casts this AOE on anyone within 100 yards which removes 20% of your health every two seconds for ten seconds. Make sure everyone has self-healing abilities.
• Tanks will need a lot of healing due to a DOT she applies. This DOT also reduces cooldowns. You’re going to need more than two tanks for her.
• Volatile Infection — Cast on a random player, this disease affects them, and anyone around them, until dispelled.
• Putrid mushroom — When someone dies, a mushroom sprouts on their corpse. These mushrooms pulse and do AoE damage to anyone around them. If those people die, they sprout mushrooms, and so on. The mushrooms cannot be killed. Your raid will quickly get overwhelmed and the field of battle will look like a mushroom farm.

There you go — a brief discussion of the Dragons of Nightmare coming next week. Good luck!