WotLk Classic Preparation Guide: 5 Things To Do Before Classic Wrath of the Lich King Releases

Wrath of the Lich King is finally announced, and this means that we all need to start preparing ahead of it’s release. In this guide, we’ll go over the things that will get fully removed with the release of Wrath, so that we can all start looking into obtaining or completing them before the end of Burning Crusade. Be it mounts, items, titles, events and much more. Blizzard took away quite a lot of stuff from Vanilla and TBC with the release of Wrath, and today we’re going to be going through some of these things together so you can get working on them right away if you haven’t completed or obtained them already.

5 Things To Do Before Wrath of the Lich King Releases - WotLK Preparation Guide

1. Burning Crusade Titles 

These titles originally were made available in TBC and were then removed with the release of Wrath of the Lich King and turned into a feat of strength achievement, at least their respective quests stopped rewarding them, the questlines for these are still in the game till this day even in retail, but there is one small trick you can do to get this even in Wrath.

- Champion of the Naaru: To obtain this title, you need to complete the attunement quests tied to two different raids, Serpentshrine Cavern, and Tempest Keep, it all starts in Shadowmoon Valley from your faction’s hub, the very first quest is called The Hand of Gul’dan, this will have you go through a long and epic journey which will see you kill Cyrukh the Firelord at the end, you may need some help at different parts of this, especially at the end. After that you’ll need to complete the trials of the naaru quests, 3 of them will have you complete Shadow Labs, Steamvault, Arcatraz and Shattered Halls on Heroic difficulty, and the last one will have you kill the raid boss Magtheridon, finally, you’ll need to sneak into Slave Pens heroic to complete the last quest, which has you kill Nightbane in Karazhan and Gruul in Gruul’s lair, with that you’ll obtain the prestigious Champion of the Naaru title. 

- Hand of A’dal: This is a bit more straight forward but equally epic, for this all you need to do is complete the Vials of Eternity quest which you can pick from Soridormi in the Caverns of Time, for this you’ll need to kill Lady Vashj in Serpentshrine Cavern and Kael’thas in Tempest Keep, thankfully those two bosses, and all the other bosses in those raids in fact have been nerfed quite intensively in the past, so you should have no issue getting into a raid and killing them.

2. Amani War Bear

The next thing that gets removed with the release of Wrath of the Lich King is the Amani War Bear, this was added quite recently with phase 4 and will be removed from the Zul’aman timed event once Wrath releases. To obtain this, you need to kill the first four bosses of Zul’aman in less than 45 minutes, the timer actually starts at 20 minutes but you get 25 more minutes by killing the first and second boss, the good news is, the vast majority of Zul’aman raids in Classic TBC nowadays manage to make the timer quite easily. The bad news however is you’re not likely to be invited if your gear is very bad. People who form ZA raids always aim to do it fast and guarantee the mount, so they typically only take people who have a minimum of gear to pull their own weight, be it in healing, DPS or tanking, so if you made it to 70 recently, you can get yourself some gear first before stepping into ZA. 

The other good news is that ZA is on a 3 day timer instead of the typical 7, so that’s way more chances to obtain it, But yeah overtime, as Sunwell releases and people get more and more gear, obtaining this mount should get easier and easier, it’s already pretty easy as is and will only get better from here, and as Wrath is close to releasing, you should see more and more people getting interested in this mount and forming raids for it, so if you don’t have it already and you want it, start joining ZA everytime it resets and you’ll get it in no time. 

3. Naxxramas 40-man

Next up, as you probably know, with the release of Wrath of the Lich King we get one iconic raid rereleased, Naxxramas, which means, that the old version of Naxxramas also gets removed, along with all the items, quests, and gear that you can get from it, at least most of it gets updated to level 80, but a lot of appearances will go away with Naxx 40. The most iconic of which is obviously the Corrupted Ashbringer, a very famous weapon which drops from the four horsemen only in original Naxx 40, this weapon is also quite rare, so you will have to be very lucky or very patience to get this if you’re after it, and it’s not unlikely that you’ll never see it drop before Wrath releases, so the choice is yours. 

The other iconic thing that drops from Naxxramas is the tier 3 set, Dreadnaught, Bonescythe, Plagueheart, there’s a lot of really cool sets that drop in Naxx 40, unfortunately Blizzard decided to update their models in Wrath. Obtaining a full set between now and the release of Wrath should be way more feasible than getting Corrupted Ashbringer, still you’ll probably have to do quite a bunch of runs of Naxx if you want to complete set because there’s 8 pieces remember. Also, remember that you need to spent quite a lot of gold to get each one of those pieces, each one requires a certain amount of clothes, hides, nexus crystals or arcanite bars, and those will go up in price the closer we get to Wrath. 

Another iconic item is the legendary staff Atiesh, which also gives a feat of strength achievement in Wrath, having Atiesh is not only cool for bragging rights but also useful, you can create a portal to Karazhan with it at any moment, getting you close to the southern part of Eastern kingdom very fast, especially if you’re horde, again, Atiesh will require a lot of weeks of clearing Naxx, especially if you’re competing for splinters with other players. Also remember that Naxx has an attunement of it’s own, if you’re exalted with Argent Dawn you don’t need to worry about anything, but the minimum you need to be to get attuned is honored and you’ll need to spend some gold, arcane crystals, nexus crystals and righteous orbs to complete the attunement quest for Naxx to even set foot into it, again I expect all these things to go up in price closer to Wrath, but yeah, whether you’re looking for tier 3, Corrupted Ashbringer, Atiesh or anything else.

4. Onyxia 40-man

The other raid going away with Wrath is Onyxia’s Lair 40man, thankfully for this one we have quite some time before it’s removed and we’re not losing as many things as with Naxx 40, back in the day in Wrath, to honor the 5 year anniversary of WoW, Blizzard decided in patch 3.2.2, which was a month or so after the release of Trial of the Crusader, to update Onyxia and make it a level 80 10 or 25 man raid, with current level items too. There’s actually very little that we lost with the rerelease of Onyxia, all the original transmogs were kept intact, if you were a hunter you could still obtain Rhok’delar because the mobs outside the raid dropped the Rhok’delar sinew, and even the original tier 2 helmets were moved to Nefarian, mainly what we lost is the Quel’serrar questline. Quel’serrar is a stunning looking tanking sword obtainable by warriors and paladins from vanilla, you can still obtain a replica of it in updated Onyxia, so if you’re only interested in the transmog that’s it, but if you want to original sword itself and to complete the questline for it, you’ll have to do it before Onyxia rereleases midway through wrath. So Onyxia is way less important do to than Naxx 40, simply because all she gives is still obtainable in it’s rereleased version with the exact same models, still, if you want to obtain the actual original items like Quel’serrar or even the original Viskagg or Deathbringer, you could do it, if you want before it gets rereleased, you may even be able to solo Onyxia 40 in Wrath. 

5. Wrath Prepatch

Last but not least, one thing that you need to prepare for and complete before it’s gone is the Wrath of the Lich King prepatch event, obviously Blizzard announced that Death Knights will be available during prepatch, so you may want to consider obtaining during prepatch on your death knight, be it Corrupted Ashbringer, the Hand of A’dal or Champion of the Naaru titles, Amani War Bear, and whatnot, that’s one thing. But prepatch also introduces a plethora of items that will get removed as soon as the event ends, the most iconic of which is the Arcanite Ripper, a unique looking axe that basically looks like a guitar, the on use effect is the coolest part because it turns you into a blood elf that plays the guitar. The other item or items obtainable from this event is the Blessed Battlegear of Undead Slaying, this is a unique color for this set and this transmog was never added back to the game ever since this event, I strongly suggest getting this because Cataclysm adds Transmogs and you don’t want to not miss having this in your collection tab. Finally the last item from prepatch is the Vampiric Battling, it’s just a bat pet, remember Wrath adds the pet tab so this won’t take space in your bags. So the prepatch adds a lot of unique and cool looking items to the game that will unfortunately get removed after the event is over, if the TBC prepatch is anything to go with, we shouldn’t expect this to last very long, so make sure to get all these items if you want them in time before they’re removed forever.