Fight back against a grim future in WoW patch 11.1.5’s Return to Horrific Visions

While we recently took the time to stage a Goblin revolution in the Liberation of Undermine, even our pit stop there — like the rest of The War Within so far — had us dealing with the machinations of Xal’atath and other, even shadier denizens of the Void. Naturally, now that we’ve made a side trek to bring what passes for peace to Undermine, it’s looking like in patch 11.1.5 (currently on the PTR, with this event slated to begin on May 20th) the story will naturally steer back towards darker things — literally, with the return of the Horrific Visions of N’zoth, a feature from the last patch of Battle for Azeroth. With darker things on the horizon, it’s time to strap on your finest combat gear and take a swing at what lurks in the darkness.

What are Horrific Visions?

It’s said that the Void sees all possibilities at once and considers them all truth. Horrific Visions were a sort of culmination of that concept; through a portal inside the Heart of Azeroth chamber, you could enter into a dark vision of a Stormwind or Orgrimmar where the Void won. Inside, while navigating heavily Void-tainted parts of the city, you had a limited timer (indicated by a steadily-ticking sanity meter) to fight back against both the fleshy, tentacle-y minions of the Void, as well as corrupted versions of characters you know and love — like a fully Void-aligned Alleria Windrunner as the final boss of the Horrific Vision of Stormwind, whose goal was to turn Arator the Redeemer over to the darkness. Each Visions also contained a different affix in each of the five areas of the city, sort of like Mythic+ affixes, such as Bloodthirsty (periodically radiate damage that hits everyone, friend or foe, and heals you) or Entomophobia (hallucinatory insects that forced you to run forward after a short delay unless you jumped up and down to remove them).

Completing Horrific Visions initially rewarded catchup gear, Azerite Essences for your Heart of Azeroth, Corrupted Mementos to purchase a variety of things with like cosmetics or mounts, and they were also the primary way to upgrade Ashjra’kamas, a legendary cloak that was required for raiding (literally: if you attempted to fight N’zoth without it, he instantly shattered your mind and took control of you) but also would enable you to complete more side objectives inside each Vision, thus earning more rewards in a fun positive feedback loop.

Horrific Visions could be completed in a group of up to five people, and were role-agnostic (though obviously five healers would find it slow going). You could also complete them solo, with a number of achivements and rewards for doing so. If you really wanted to amp up the challenge — and the rewards — you could also find and activate Faceless Masks to both add health and damage to enemies as well as turn on a bonus challenging feature, like Mask of the Burned Bridge, which caused you to drop void zones behind you when you moved.

In a way, Horrific Visions felt like a sort of precursor to our current Delves, in that you’re entering a self-contained story area with a constraint (time rather than lives) and looking to clear as much as you feasibly can to rack up rewards at the end.

What’s new in Return to Horrific Visions?

For one thing, that mention of Delves wasn’t just a throwaway line. Solo players now have the option of being accompanied by a construct of Soridormi, who we last saw closing Time Rifts left and right, which implies that the Horrific Visions are literally a flashback of sorts. (Time traveling backwards to an alternate future? Bronze dragons are truly on some wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff.) Soridormi will be able to take on any role if desired, a feature no doubt built on the same tech as Brann Bronzebeard in Delves, which should make these more approachable to players who want to play solo but still want some kind of help along.

We’ll be earning Displaced Corrupted Mementos this time, used to buy more cosmetics — sick purple motorcycle, anyone? Horrific Visions will also continue to be a source of catch-up gear for alts, though exactly at what level remains to be seen. For people who like achievements, the old Feats of Strength (up to and including Mad World, which required soloing both visions on their hardest difficulty with all five Faceless Masks activated, rewarding the title “the Faceless One“) are still around in 11.1.5 and can be earned in Return to Horrific Visions; however, there are now newer, harder challenges for players that are up for it — including three new masks with unknown effects, and more solo achievements for completing visions with the new total of eight masks turned on.

Perhaps most interesting, however, is the return of another feature from the same patch as Horrific Visions: Corruption effects! Initially found randomly on gear, these effects would have powerful effects, but in return you would rack up a “stat” called Corruption which, at certain thresholds, would have detrimental effects on your character — one of Blizzard’s many dalliances with kiss-curse systems. It appears we’re getting the good without the bad this time, as Corruption effects are now returning as helmet enchants, such as Greater Rune of Infinite Stars or Lesser Rune of Twilight Devastation. We don’t know exactly how these are tied to Horrific Visions, but I would wager the Black Blood Residue is found from completing them, so if you want to get these potent head enchants, you’ll have another reason to fight the darkness.

There’s also another, less positive change to go with all of these: a dose of FOMO. Currently, Return to Horrific Visions appears to be a limited-time event on the PTR, although that “limited time” is the rest of patch 11.1 (unlike regular Horrific Visions, which you can still go and do today). If there’s anything out of there that sounds appealing to you, definitely pencil in a spot in your busy calendar to go fight back the Void for fun and profit!