What changed in the run overhaul
- Kill ladder and altars. Kills rouse the first three bosses; the last three wait at lit altars. Altars
- The sixth boss wins the run. There is no 15:00 survival clock to outlast any more.
- The Lich King. If the sixth boss still stands at 15:00, he hunts the party. The Lich King
- Six zone types. Homelands, Arenas, Warfronts, Raids, Cities and the Battleground, each with its own rules; your wins unlock the next. Zone types
- Relics and modifiers. Each zone type hides one relic; relics unlock Hurry, Hyper, Bone Zone, Boss Rush and Inverse. Relics
- Homeland surprises. A Shrine, a Cache and a hidden Coffin, named rares, stampedes and ghost walls. Homelands
- Free caches. Raid bosses, City levers and named rares drop free caches; paid caches open after 1, 3 and 5 bosses. Caches
- Hall of Champions. Top Runs ranks clear time, Kingslayers lists Lich King kills, and old records sit in Season 0. Leaderboard
- Co-op rewards. Level-up picks sit in a side panel so you keep fighting, and every two boss kills grant one more reroll.
- Rank badges. Active spells show their rank on the action bar, and tooltips show the rank and its maximum, such as "Rank 2 / 5".
Stronger Together
Enter an arena with one to four players. Experience and victory belong to the party; each hero chooses their own spells and upgrades. To win Survival, defeat all six bosses. Kill enemies to rouse the early bosses, then stand at lit altars to summon the late ones. On chase zones, the Lich King can arrive at 15:00 if enabled by the realm; finish the boss ladder before Frostmourne claims the party. Regular enemies keep arriving throughout the run. Endless repeats the boss ladder with stronger enemies each cycle and has no final victory.
Your first adventures
Choose a saved hero and begin on Normal or Heroic I. Collect permanent starter equipment from bosses, then try Heroic II for materials, talents and stronger victory equipment. Return to Armory between runs to see what you earned. Guest and offline runs are practice and award no permanent progress.
- Move & fight
- W A S D or arrow keys. Spells attack automatically; right-click a spell on your action bar (or press Shift + its number) to cast it yourself with its number key or a click, and do it again to make it automatic. Left-click focuses an enemy; Tab / Shift + Tab cycle targets with bosses first (or click the boss frame to focus that boss), and T restores automatic targeting. Attacks still need their normal range.
- Stay alive
- F uses your class escape from level 5; a Hunter's F lays a Frost Trap that slows enemies in its field. Q drinks a healing potion; E uses your race's racial ability (Perception, Blood Fury, Stoneform, Shadowmeld, Cannibalize, War Stomp, Escape Artist or Berserking) from level 1. Watch the potion charges and every cooldown. Stand within 3.5 yards of a fallen ally for four seconds to revive them. Touch a battleground rune for a short boost: Restoration heals, Berserking adds damage, Speed adds pace, and the Greed rune pulls every experience gem and coin on the field to the nearest hero and widens your pickup radius for a short while.
- Choose rewards
- Pick a level-up reward with 1, 2, or 3; R spends a reroll. Solo reward choices pause combat. Co-op continues, with three seconds of protection when new choices arrive. Rerolling does not refresh protection.
- Find your way
- C opens Character; B opens your bags at the bottom right, where a right-click equips a piece mid-run; Esc closes a window or opens the game menu. Enter opens party chat in the bottom-left chat window (your hero stops while you type); Enter sends the line and Esc closes it without sending. Use Armory → Drop Tables for Starter bosses, Victory equipment and Temporary caches. Boss Contracts lists permanent reward requirements. The Codex explains classes, spells, talents, items and zones. The Leaderboard button opens the Hall of Champions, the realm's best runs, damage, healing, GearScore, Endless survival and cleanest victories (you can choose to keep your heroes off it).
What carries into your next run?
Permanent starter equipment · Normal & Heroic I
Every class has three starter pieces: a weapon, chest and boots. Each eligible boss defeat gives your saved hero a personal 20% chance for one unowned class piece. After four consecutive misses, the next eligible boss guarantees a piece. A drop resets the miss counter; the collection stops rolling when complete. Pieces and misses save immediately across runs, even if you later lose. Bonuses begin next run.
Eligibility is checked at each boss defeat in Survival: be connected then, have been connected for at least 60% of the run so far, and deal at least 1% of party damage (minimum 1 damage) or heal other heroes for at least 25% of your maximum health. Downed contributors can qualify. Endless does not award starters. Starter pieces stay at rank 1 and do not replace stronger equipped gear. The chest and boots belong to the class's original dungeon set; wearing both gives a small adapted 2-piece armor bonus. The weapon is not a set member.
Temporary cache equipment · every difficulty
Pick up gold during the run, approach an available cache, then use G or its interaction button to buy a personal reward. Up to three caches open per run, after 1, 3 and 5 bosses are defeated (the clock does not matter); purchases cost 150, then 275, then 400 gold. Raid bosses and City levers also drop free personal caches that cost nothing and do not count against those three. Choose temporary equipment for five slots: two rings, two trinkets and one amulet, up to rank 3. Your gold and cache equipment reset next run.
Boss altars & the kill ladder · how bosses arrive
Bosses are summoned by the room's kills, and the run bar shows how far along you are ("Boss 3 · 412 / 1400"). Bosses 1 to 3 arrive after a short warning banner. Bosses 4 to 6 wait at an altar, a crystal that lights far from the start (see the minimap marker); the run bar reads "Altar lit". Stand together in its ring for 2 seconds to summon the boss. Progress holds while nobody is inside, and the next altar only lights once that boss is dead. Raids light altars from the first boss, and Arenas and Warfronts have none.
The Lich King · what happens if you are too slow
If the sixth boss still stands at 15:00, the Lich King arrives and hunts the nearest hero; a minute before, the run bar turns blue and reads "Frostmourne stirs". He runs faster than you and gains speed every 30 seconds, and his touch downs a hero outright (the party can still revive them). Slows work on him down to half speed, stuns and roots hold him for 1 second at most, and nothing pulls him. After 60 seconds he becomes Unstoppable, and after 5 minutes Frostmourne claims every hero; the run bar counts that doom clock down. Trash keeps spawning, so lighting your last altar during the chase can still win.
On Normal he cannot be hurt: he is how a too-slow run ends. On Heroic I and higher he can be killed, though no single hit takes more than 1% of his health. Slaying him wins the run as a Kingslayer: a guaranteed shared legendary roll, the Kingslayer title under your hero's name and a place on the Kingslayers board. The Frozen Throne has no chase: he is its sixth boss, summoned at an altar. Endless has no Lich King.
Zone types & relics · what unlocks the rest of the map
Every zone belongs to one of six zone types, shown beside its region in the zone chooser: Homelands, Arenas, Warfronts, Raids, Cities and the Battleground, plus The Frozen Throne. Homelands are open to everyone; the others unlock on your account through clears (an Arena after your first victory, Warfronts after a Heroic I clear, Raids after Mythic, Cities and the Battleground after a Warfront clear, the Frozen Throne after a Lich King kill). Each zone type changes the fight with its own rules, such as rounds, gates, altars, levers or a flag. Homelands also hide a Shrine (an extra reward pick), a Cache (a free cache) and a Coffin (a lasting perk), roam named rares that drop a free cache, and may send a stampede along a marked line or close a ghost wall around the edge.
Each zone type also hides one relic at a far, fixed spot marked by a question mark on the minimap, collected once per account. A relic unlocks a run modifier the party leader can pick in the Difficulty dialog: Hurry, Hyper, Bone Zone, Boss Rush or Inverse. Modified runs are recorded with their modifiers and kept off the main boards.
Car modes · Barren Bashers, Mirage Kart, Car Brawl and Car Soccer
Car modes are separate from Survival: pick one under Your next run on the main screen (a party leader picks it for the room). Barren Bashers is free driving with no goal. Mirage Kart is a race on Mirage Raceway with item boxes: the leader picks the course (Random, Forward or Reverse) and the length (Sprint, Grand Prix or Endurance: one, three or five laps); press R for the Goblin tow when you are stuck. Car Brawl is last car rolling, three lives each: choose one of the six arenas in the arena row that appears under the modes. Car Soccer is 4 v 4 with a ball on Salt Flats Pitch.
WASD drives, F boosts, Shift drifts and H sounds the horn. A car room seats up to eight and needs a signed-in account. Nothing is earned there: no experience, gold, loot or embers. Signed-in drivers who finish a Mirage Kart race on their own go on the Mirage Raceway leaderboard.
Permanent materials & victory equipment · Heroic II and above
A server-verified run that meets the boss-contract requirements earns embers and sigils, even on defeat: by default Heroic II or higher and three bosses defeated. Spend them on gear upgrades and talents in the Armory. Victories on the hardest difficulties (by default Heroic IV or Mythic and five bosses) also award a relic. The realm can adjust these requirements and prices; the Armory always shows the current ones. New gear and upgrades apply next run.
A qualified victory with all bosses defeated has one shared equipment chance, by default 2% / 3% / 4% / 5% on Heroic II / III / IV / Mythic (the Armory's Drop Tables show the current chances). Victory equipment has no guaranteed drop. A Mythic victory with three completed optional objectives also qualifies for a rare shared legendary roll (see the Codex's Progression rules for the current odds), which replaces the regular drop.
Win on Mythic to unlock Keystone 1; each keystone victory unlocks the next level, and keystone gear outgrows raid sets and legendaries. Pick any unlocked level with the Keystone stepper under Mythic in the Difficulty dialog; gear that drops there shows its level as a gold K badge beside its item level.
A won keystone room also pays Keystone Runes, which reroll the random suffix of a world gear piece in the Armory, and Titan Residuum, which the Keystone Vendor on your hero card trades for a random piece in the slot you choose. Browse the vendor at any time; win on Mythic with your class to unlock purchases.
Eligible contributors roll Need, Greed or Pass, with one voter per account. Shared loot uses the same 60% connection and damage-or-healing thresholds described above, measured over the completed run. Need requires a real upgrade for your class and takes priority over Greed. A winning Greed roll receives usable gear, or salvages a duplicate or class-ineligible item into embers (12 by default; the roll names the amount). Unanswered votes become Pass after 30 seconds; solo rolls resolve automatically.
Train talents & take on optional quests
Open Talents, select a node and choose Learn Rank. Each rank counts toward your class's talent-point limit and costs sigils, a little more for each point trained; the Armory shows the current price. Meet the node's earlier-tier and prerequisite requirements first. Trained effects begin next run. Reset Class Talents returns the exact sigils spent on that class's trained points.
Optional contracts offer extra challenges and real rewards. Four of seven kinds turn up in each run: the first between 0:40 and 1:30, then one every few minutes. Walk up to Illidan (the gold !) or one of the contract's circles to start it; a gold arrow trail on the ground always points to your next step, and a banner tells you what to do in one line. Each takes under a minute: Seal the Rift (stand in two runes for 3 seconds each), Recover the Supplies (carry two crates back with G), Hold the Line (stay beside Illidan for 30 seconds), Escort (walk him to three close waypoints), Bounty (hunt down a marked elite; once found it escapes if you lose it for 20 seconds), Light the Beacons (stand in each of three braziers beside him) and Cleanse the Corruption (drain two patches). A contract fails only if its 90-second clock runs out or Illidan falls. Every success drops XP, gold worth 35% of the next cache, a potion and a barrier, plus a free treasure (runes, crates, braziers) or a free level-up pick for every hero (the fighting contracts). They are optional for ordinary Survival victory.
Runs are less predictable now: free treasures arrive at varying times and every boss drops one or two more, battleground runes return at varying times, and once or twice a run an Ambush (a warning, then a pack from one side) or a Windfall (experience raining down around you) breaks the rhythm.
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Warforge Veterans