When is WoW Classic Season of Discovery Phase 5? September 26!

World of Warcraft Classic‘s Season of Discovery Phase 5 launches on September 26, 2024 at 1PM pacific time! The WoW Classic 2024 roadmap didn’t originally list Phase 5 and instead there’s a marker for “End Game Updates” but we can consider this it’s own phase since Blizzard now has named it as such.

The PTR testing focus gave us a hint at what was in the works but the Phase 5 patch notes have confirmed what this phase is launching in Season of Discovery!

What’s in Season of Discovery Phase 5?

• Blackwing Lair raid
• Zul’Gurub raid
• The Crystal Vale raid instance
• Tier 2 sets
• New Ring runes

The Blackwing Lair and Zul’Gurub raids will be coming in Phase 5 in different capacities — Blackwing Lair as a 20-40 player raid and Zul’Gurub as a 10-20 player raid. Blackwing Lair has five difficulty modifiers named after the various dragonflights are available in Blackwing Lair and function similar to the Heat levels in Molten Core by introducing unique mechanics. The Crystal Raid will be available as a raid encounter tuned for 20-40 players and players will not need to be on the Thunderfury questline to summon Prince Thunderaan. Blackwing Lair is on 7-day reset timers while The Crystal Vale and Zul’Gurub are both on a twice-weekly reset timer.

Three new Ring runes targeted for Hunters and casters are also immediately available for testing, though once Phase 5 officially launches they’ll need to be discovered like any other rune:

• Ranged Specialization rune — Increases changes for Beast pets to hit by 2%
• Frost Specialization — Applies to Hunter Trap hit chance
• Fire Specialization — Applies to Hunter Trap hit chance
• Healing Specialization rune — Increases healing by up to 26
• Meditation Specialization rune — Increases Mana regenerated for 5 seconds by 5

There has also been quite a bit of datamined content from the PTR, so if you’d rather not be spoiled this is your warning to stop here! If you continue, just remember that datamined content could come any time during Phase 5 or not at all. Up to three new dungeons were datamined from the PTR and since Phase 4 also added a new dungeon, this isn’t totally unexplored territory. Some new and updated weapon models were also found in the PTR files, including some Ahn’Qiraj themed weaponry. These items are likely related to the Ahn’Qiraj war effort event which isn’t immediately in Phase 5 and will instead launch sometime later this year, possibly during the WoW 20th Anniversary Event, which notably brings Classic Timewalking activities to retail WoW.

As Phase 5 releases, we’ll keep you updated on everything that unfolds!

Originally published on September 3, 2024. Updated on September 25, 2024.