What’s in Dragonflight Season 4? Awakened raids are the new Fated raids, arriving this spring

At BlizzCon 2023, Game Director Ion Hazzikostas confirmed in an interview with Icy Veins that Season 4 of Dragonflight is coming. We also got some information about what content will be included in the season — namely the return of a couple of fan-favorite features from the last season of Shadowlands, including Fated raids. In Dragonflight, these will be called Awakened raids.

When will Dragonflight Season 4 launch?

Season 4 is currently on the PTR for testing, and Dragonflight Season 4 launch on April 23.

What’s in Dragonflight Season 4?

Though it won’t include a new raid tier, it will bring with it the return of two features from the end of Shadowlands with Awakened raids and a system akin to the Puzzling Cartel Dinar that accompanied them last time. These systems work together both as a sort of “last hurrah” for the expansion’s raids, as well as a way to players to pick up those hot wishlist items that never dropped for them during the raid — especially nice given the regular inclusion of extremely rare items on some bosses’ loot tables.

For those who weren’t around for the first run of this system, Fated raids seem almost like a spinoff of the Mythic+ system. While a raid was Fated, its bosses will be scaled up in difficulty, as well as having one or more additional mechanics applied to them — almost like Mythic+ affixes. The abilities usually add a small extra layer of difficulty but, when overcome, apply a buff that makes overcoming the fight’s improved scaling a bit easier. For example, in Shadowlands‘ Fated raids Chaotic Essence added an enemy that needed to be interrupted before its cast killed everyone, followed by the frantic destruction of the Chaotic Motes it spawned after being interrupted — but then every Mote killed gave the raid a stacking damage and healing buff.

Each week, one raid from the expansion will be marked as Fated for the entirety of the week, then change to a different raid the next week. In Shadowlands, this started with the earliest raid from that expansion and then continued to the next, until the expansion prepatch 10.0 dropped — at which point all raids from Shadowlands remained Fated until the expansion launched. If this works the same, we can expect the first Fated raid to be Vault of the Incarnates, followed the week after by Aberrus, then Amirdrassil, then back to Vault, and so on. World bosses corresponding to the raid tier are also Fated at the same time — so for example, while Aberrus is Fated, so would be the Zaqali Elders world boss in Zaralek Caverns.

What reward can you expect for this victory lap through the expansion’s raids? In Shadowlands, there was a reward of an exclusive mount for completing all of the Fated raids on normal or higher, Jigglesworth Sr., so it seems likely there will be something of that kind again. Heroic rewarded a title, while Mythic rewarded you with teleports directly to the Fated raids.

However, the real reward is the Puzzling Cartel Dinar, which will be replaced by a new currency called Antique Bronze Bullion. Dinar was rewarded from a series of quests to kill a decreasing number of Fated bosses (for example, Crossing Fate required 30 Fated boss kills, while Turning the Wheel only required 15), and a Dinar allowed you to pick any item from any of the expansion’s raids and purchase it for one Dinar. No RNG required, no praying for a lucky drop, you just got the item you wanted. Perfect for obtaining either that rare power item you could never get your hands on, or for getting some transmog you couldn’t quite get ahold of (or which maybe never had a chance to drop for you in the first place!), the return of the Dinar system really is a welcome announcement for anyone who still has a wishlist item from one of Dragonflight’s raids, and serves as a great way to bid these raids a fond farewell.

Originally published November 6, 2023; last updated April 2, 2024