The first wing of Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible LFR will release alongside other difficulties in Dragonflight Season 2

Dragonflight patch 10.1 will release the week of May 1, and the following week will see the start of Season 2 alongside the opening of the new raid Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible. Like with the Vault of the Incarnates raid in Season 1 the Mythic difficulty will be available the same week as Normal and Heroic — even though it was theorized that this was originally done to ensure the first raid of Dragonflight didn’t run into the holidays. There’s a bigger change coming to the release schedule with Aberrus, however: the first wing of LFR (titled The Discarded Works) will also release along with the other difficulties at the start of Season 2.

To understand why this is a big deal, it’s important to remember that LFR has not opened at the start of the raiding season since Dragon Soul, the final raid of Cataclysm. This was also the very first LFR, making Aberrus only the second time LFR will have launched at the same time as Normal mode. While there will still be two weeks between the release of each LFR wing, at least those who raid exclusively in LFR won’t have to wait an extra week to get started.

The bosses and schedule for the LFR wings are:

Week of May 8—Raid Finder Wing 1: The Discarded Works (Kazzara the Hellforged, The Amalgamation Chamber, The Forgotten Experiments) becomes available.
Week of May 22—Raid Finder Wing 2: Fury of Giants (Assault of the Zaqali, Rashok the Elder, The Vigilant Steward Zskarn) becomes available.
Week of June 5—Raid Finder Wing 3: Neltharion’s Shadow (Magmorax, Echo of Neltharion) becomes available.
Week of June 19—Raid Finder Wing 4: Edge of the Void (Scalecommander Sarkareth) becomes available.

This will not satisfy those of us who think the wing release should be staggered only a week at a time — or all available on the first day of a new Season — but hopefully this means the development staff is becoming more receptive to the idea. While the more likely answer is that the aggressive 2023 schedule for Dragonflight is driving this decision for Aberrus, let’s hope that, like Mythic difficulty, we’ll continue to see LFR releasing at the same time as the other difficulties.