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Greetings everyone!

It's been another 6 months since our last update, and we are finally ready to announce the following patch update that will happen in Oribos: Patch 9.2, Eternity's End!
This update will be applied in our realms on Monday, December 12, and will require a client upgrade to version 9.2.7. Do not worry, as a guide will be published (with a cool link here) to walkthrough you in the process of updating your client, or if you are a new user, to fully download and prepare it from scratch!
And, as always, Boris doesn't want to feel left out of the party, so he will join the raid group and be on top of the support files, by offering a character boost! By talking to him, your character will be immediately boosted to level 60, and it will include basic level 60 gear as well! This will skip having to do the campaign and will allow you to jump straight into the action and join your friends! This will only work for one character on each account, so make sure you boost the character that you wanna use!

This update is full of new features and content to explore, places to adventure, and enemies to beat, so we hope you and your friends are ready because it won't be easy!

• A whole new zone: Zereth Mortis, full of content, quest lines, rares, treasures, and much more!
• A new World Boss inside the new zone: Antros, Keeper of the Antecedents!
• A new 11-boss raid: Sepulcher of the First Ones!
• A whole new progression system: Cypher of the First Ones!
• New Torghast Wing: The Jailer's Gauntlet.
• Return of the Class Tier Sets.
• New Double Legendary system: Withdraw the whole potential of your character through the new Waist Legendary and the Memory of Unity!
• A new season for Mythic : Upgraded rewards and new seasonal Affix, Encrypted!
• A new season for PvP and a new feature: Cosmic Gladiator and PvP Brawl to test Arena Solo Queue!
• New sub-profession: Protoform Synthesis, which allows players to craft many new pets and mounts!
   

There's a bit of everything here: for PvE lovers, PvP enjoyers, or even collector maniacs, there's stuff to do!

And, as we always do, we are going to delve into each of those points to further explain each feature and the status of development of those: although most of them will be fully implemented, not all will have all the content available at once. Do not worry, as the development will not stop and we will end up releasing all the content for each feature!

Now, let's jump into it!

ZERETH MORTIS

Zereth Mortis is the new zone arriving in this new patch! As a new zone that serves as the hub for 9.2 with lots of new content, it will probably overwhelm you a bit. Do not forget that we are detailing everything in this new zone.

Zereth Mortis will house three main hubs for players in the zone: Haven, Exile's Hollow, and Pilgrim's Grace.

From the story chapters of the zone, the first 3 will be fully available from release! After these ones, we will add a new story chapter for every 2 weeks! Do not forget that Chapter 6 will be necessary in order to unlock flying in the zone, as well as an additional requirement that will be described below: the Cypher of the First Ones side questline! 

This zone will also be the main source of the new resource used to create Rank 7 legendaries: Cosmic Flux! This resource will be used to create and upgrade Class Tier armors using the Creation Catalyst. We will specify more information about this later on, on the Class Tier armors!

This zone will also feature the NPC Pocopoc, an automa that will accompany you through your journey. Pocopoc is unlocked at the end of Chapter 3 of the 9.2 Campaign. This NPC will be tied to one of the new features of the patch, which is the Cypher of the First ones! We will detail more about it later on.

We will also be introduced to a new faction in this map, called The Enlightened, which is the map's main faction! Led by the former council of the broker Cartel Al, they have found Zereth Mortis and abandoned their pilfering ways to devote themselves to the First Ones.

Of course, all of the daily quests will be implemented, all the rares will be available, and most of the treasures will be waiting for you to be plundered, but beware of the new World Boss: Antros, Keeper of the Antecedents! He will be located on the northernmost island of Zereth Mortis, which can be reached with a translocator at the northern edge of Zereth Mortis. Antros drop gear with item level 259 and Conduits with item level 252!

If you want more information about this amazing zone, you may check this page, where everything has been detailed thoroughly!

SEPULCHER OF THE FIRST ONES

This is the raid being featured in this new zone, and the final raid of the expansion! It features 11 new bosses, ending in a cosmic battle against The Jailer himself: Zovaal!

The raid will consist of 4 wings, being the first wing available as soon as the patch is released!

• Vigilant Guardian, a three-phase encounter in which players need to fight several automa to eventually activate the inactive boss! Here's a strategy guide!
• Skolex, the Insatiable Ravener, a single-phase fight in which the raid has to engage a stationary boss while managing stacks of Ephemera Dust! Here's a strategy guide!
• Artificer Xy'mox, a two-phase encounter that gets more complex as the fight progresses! Here's a strategy guide!
• Halondrus the Reclaimer, a unique encounter that takes place in several areas of the Sepulcher, as Halondrus moves long distances with the raid chasing after them! Here's a strategy guide!

• Dausegne, the Fallen Oracle, a single-phase fight that becomes more difficult over time, as she uses her reservoirs to siphon out mana for herself!
• Prototype Pantheon, a council-style fight of the tier, in which you fight prototype versions of the Eternal Ones! 
• Lihuvim, Principal Architect, a single-phase encounter revolving around space management!

• Anduin Wrynn, a multiphase encounter that has us fight remnants of the Jailer's influence!
• Lords of Dread, a fight against both Mal'Ganis and Kin'tessa, which will attack players with a combination of decay and shadow magic!
• Rygelon, a fight where the enemy will use Cosmic Power in order to destroy the players using all sorts of abilities and mechanics!

• The Jailer, Zovaal, a fight where the true destiny of Azeroth will be decided. The Jailer will use his Machine of Origination to remake existence, draining Azeroth of all its life force in the process. Will you be able to prevent it?

This raid will prove to be quite the challenge for every player trying to push their limits in regard to what PvE content is. We will give enough time for everyone to catch up between wings, allowing us to develop with the biggest quality possible. 

Not only that, but we also have news about one of the dungeons that we introduced in the previous patch: Tazavesh, the Veiled Market. In a similar fashion to what happened with Mechagon, it's also happening here now: the dungeon will be split into 2 parts, and each will be available in every difficult mode: Normal, Heroic, LFG, and even Mythic !

Part 1: Streets of Wonder. This first part will have the first 5 bosses of the original megadungeon: Zo'phex the Sentinel, The Grand Menagerie, Mailroom Mayhem, Myza's Oasis, and So'azmi. 

Part 2: So'leah's Gambit. This part will have the remaining 3 bosses of the original megadungeon: Hylbrande, Timecap'n Hooktail, and So'leah.

The 2 parts of this dungeon have been already prepared and will be fully available as soon as the new patch is released!

CYPHER OF THE FIRST ONES

Along with this patch, we are introducing this advanced mechanic, the Quality of Life feature: the Cypher of the First Ones!

The Cypher of the First Ones is a new Zereth Mortis progression system that provides little to no dungeon / PvP / raid power and is instead focused on enhancing your Zereth Mortis experience and enabling further exploration of its secrets, cosmetics, mounts, pets, and achievements.

You can progress this system and its numerous research nodes with the new Cyphers of the First Ones currency. Each research you do also requires a specific amount of real-time when you are doing it on your first character, from 1 minute for the initial node to a full week for the more complex nodes.

Bear in mind that this whole feature, whilst allowing you to upgrade your combat effects and abilities, won't be usable during PvE or PvP instances, so these effects will only be usable in open-world battles and adventures. In other words, it's like a fun upgrade for your character on Shadowland zones.

However, this system is the introduction of 2 very important features that will be very useful for many players. The first one is being able to unlock a quest line responsible to teach players how to fly in the zone! (Requires completing the fourth chapter of the story quest line, which will be available shortly after release). The second one (after completing that quest line) is the ability to unlock the new Sub-profession: the Protoform Synthesis! This will be explained thoroughly, later on. Don't worry!

Unlocking the console and your personal robot helper, Pocopoc, is done in the third campaign story chapter (which will be available immediately as soon as the patch is implemented, as soon as you enter Zereth Mortis). You can also unlock it instantly on alts by choosing the skip dialogue option of Tal-Inara when starting the Zereth Mortis questlines in Oribos.

The currency used for this feature can be farmed in many ways, such as completing the Storyline campaign, looting rare mobs and treasures, beating Puzzle Boxes, Interacting with one of the three Echoed Jiro NPC types, doing daily quests, defeating the Weekly world boss Antros and even from the weekly quest Patterns Within Patterns.

This is a rather complex and complete feature, so we advise you to check this very complete guide explaining everything about this new feature!

THE JAILER'S GAUNTLET

The Jailer's Gauntlet is a completely new wing implemented in Torghast. Commonly known as "Boss Rush", features levels packed with direct action, with boss fights in small packs. Kind of a fast and furious method, absolutely not for the Faint of heart!

This fun, fast-paced alternative to traditional Torghast can be completed (at the appropriate layers for level) in under 30 minutes without a hurry. The quick succession of layers, plenty of high-powered Anima Powers given on each floor, and no time-wasting rooms full of trash packs breathe new life into the Torghast experience.

Completing layers of the Jailer's Gauntlet gives rewards such as a pet, a new Hearthstone toy, a title, and the Colossal Ebonclaw Mawrat mount! it will also be one of the main sources of Cosmic Flux, one of the main resources needed for the Class Tier Sets, and also to upgrade legendary items to rank 7. As you can see, quite important!

Here's a quick overview of the features of this new kind of wing, compared with the traditional ones:

• The Box of Many Things doesn't apply, so there are no Torments or Blessings.
• There is no timer to beat.
• The Death Rule is back. You are allowed up to 5 deaths before the Tarragrue shows up.
• If you die on a level, the boss resets to full health.
   

However, the Jailer's Gauntlet also lacks many things a normal Torghast has:

• No trash packs beyond a few that might spawn from portals.
• No traps.
• No events, puzzles, or chests.
• No Ashen Phylacteries.
• No Mawrats.
• No Souls to rescue in any form.
   

There's so much more information to cover about this feature, which can be all seen in this full overview guide here.

CLASS TIER SETS

In Patch 9.2, all classes can obtain brand-new class tier sets from a variety of sources! Tokens to create them primarily drop from bosses in the Sepulcher of the First Ones' raid. The items also have a chance to appear in all nine slots of the Great Vault, and if you are unlucky and cannot obtain a specific armor piece, you can craft it using an existing item through the Creation Catalyst system (which has been introduced in Zereth Mortis). There's more information about the Crafting Method with Creation Catalyst and Cosmic Flux here.

Each class will have dedicated Class Tier sets, with 2-piece and 4-piece set bonuses that benefit each class and spec. For example, Hunter sets will have property versions for Beast Mastery, Marksmanship, and Survival, meaning that you'll be able to collect exactly the right set that helps out your class and spec the most!
Each version of the Class Tier Set will have bonuses for having 2 or 4 pieces in the set. At present, most of these set bonuses both affect the same key ability or spell, such as Kill Command for Beast Mastery hunters. There's a full list here of all of the class bonuses.

Finally, the Class Tier Sets will have different tints and/or effects based on how these are acquired. There are six categories of tints in total, which are the ones from LFR, Heroic, Normal, Mythic, PvP, and finally, Elite.

If you need more information about this new feature, such as all the farming methods, cooldown, and such, we advise you to check this guide!

DOUBLE LEGENDARY SYSTEM

In Patch 9.2, players can unlock the ability to equip two Legendary items instead of just one! However, players will unlock this feature after completing Chapter 7 of the 9.2 Campaign (which will not be available until mid-January, approximately).

Once this feature is unlocked, one Legendary can be the Legendary of your choice, and the other must be your Covenant Legendary.

There are two ways to equip your Covenant Legendary in tandem with another Legendary:

• You obtain an item level 265 Belt (the Unity Waist) after completing Chapter 7 of the 9.2 Campaign.
• You can craft the Legendary in the usual way using Memory of Unity up to item level 291. To purchase this, you need to achieve a Revered reputation with the Enlightened (reputation guide here).

Both of these Double Legendary items will automatically change their effect based on your current Covenant, so you don't need to buy or craft multiple Legendaries if you switch Covenants!

In order to unlock it, players need to acquire the Memory of Unity, which is sold by Vilo, the Enlightened Quartermaster. Purchasing the Memory of Unity requires a Revered reputation with The Enlightened. Once bought once, you don't need to buy it for any other character: it will be unlocked account-wide!

All the information about this new feature can be seen here, so don't hesitate on taking a look at it if you want to know more about this feature!

NEW MYTHIC SEASON AND ENCRYPTED AFFIX!

A new patch comes, and with it, a new Mythic season! As always, a new season means many changes: enemies will be stronger, but rewards will also be better! All of the gear will have the item level increased, including Mythic :

• Normal Difficulty: Item Level 210.
• Heroic Difficulty: Item Level 223.
• Mythic Difficulty: Item Level 236 (Valor Upgrade Level: 1/12).

Of course, getting a higher Mythic level will also grant higher item-level gear. This will also affect the item-level reward from the Great Vault!

Here you can see a table showing the rewards from the current season, and also the ones we had during season 2:

Alongside this, we are welcoming a new Seasonal affix: "Encrypted", which will be active during the entire season.

• Groups of 3 relics of the First Ones will spawn in some trash packs and with all bosses.
• The first relic killed decides which automaton will spawn when all 3 are relics are killed.
• Killing an automaton instantly gives you a powerful buff.

You can find more information about the different relics and the different buffs that each relic grants when destroyed, here.

NEW PVP SEASON AND PVP BRAWL

The current patch ends, and with it, the PvP Season 2: Unchained Gladiator! This season has been going on for almost 5 months and it was about time to end it. The end-of-season announcement, as well as the tier rewards, have been compiled in this post. Don't forget to check it out, and congratulations to every winner!

Not only we are starting the new PvP Season 3: Cosmic Gladiator alongside the new patch, but we are also introducing a new feature on the server: The Solo Shuffle! This new feature allows players to basically queue to arenas 3vs3 by themselves without requiring other players to join. Players would then join a pool with 4 DPS and 2 Healers, and then they would split into 2 teams of 3vs3, and would fight one team against the other! Each fight will reshuffle the team every time, ending up with 6 different combinations. Players will fight on each combination, trying to win as many fights as possible, in order to determine who's best! However, there will be notable differences compared with a regular arena just to speed things up:

• The first team to kill an opponent will immediately win the round.
• Mana regeneration is further restricted, and drinking will work differently.
• If a player leaves, the match is resolved as if that player lost every round.

This new feature will not count towards any rating and will be a new way to offer players a PvP challenge. Players will be able to queue by themselves, at any moment, and fight players without the pressure of having to win to get arena rating or keep their precious rating intact. This was based on the current Looking for Group and Looking for Raid features, where players can just queue by themselves and join an automatically assembled group of players to do a dungeon or a raid.

There's a lot of stuff to cover between rewards, upgrades, gear changes, and much more, so we advise you to check this full guide that illustrates absolutely everything about the upcoming season 3!

PROTOFORM SYNTHESIS

One of the big additions of the patch, is a whole new sub-profession (unlocked through the Cypher of the First Ones after doing the fourth chapter of the story questline) based entirely on farming materials from all creatures around Zereth Mortis, in order to craft new pets and mounts for the players!

• Pet Crafting is unlocked after fully researching the Cypher talent Dealic Understanding. Once the research is completed, Pocopoc will offer the quest Protoform Synthesis. Simply escort Pocopoc to the Protoform Synthesis pet forge and you will unlock the system. Guide with all of the pets.
• Mount Crafting is unlocked after fully researching the Cypher talent Sopranian Understanding. Once the research is completed, the questlines The Final Song and then A New Architect will become available, starting with the quest Finding Tahli. Completing both these questlines, ending with A New Architect, will unlock the mount crafting system. Guide with all of the mounts.
   

In order to craft all of these new pets and mounts, many reagents will be required to be collected and will start being dropped by enemies as soon as the player unlocks the Dealic Understanding Cypher of the First Ones research, and after completing the short quest Protoform Synthesis. Some mount rare reagents will need a few more requirements to be unlocked, which are all fulfilled as soon as the Mount Crafting is fully unlocked. 

This new system brings a lot of new reagents and conditions to unlock and allows players to get many new pets and mounts. In fact, there are too many to list here, and we are welcoming everyone to take a look at this complete guide featuring absolutely everything! We hope this new system allows mount and pet collectors to finally enjoy collecting again!

Patch 9.2 will be the last big Patch inside Shadowlands. This Patch will bring players many new things to do, between PvE, PvP, and just other activities, but we also want to start working on adding new ways to entertain players inside the game. That's why we want to start making events ourselves, between PvE events, PvP ones, and other kinds of minigames, just to spice things up a little more. 

Our developers have been working nonstop on all of this new content, and rest assured as we will keep working on fixing any possible issues that there may be, as well as finish developing all of the content up to patch 9.2.7. And rest assured, that it will not be the end of it... it may be Eternity's End, but we are still not done!

Do not forget that Boris will be added to the realm, offering a free character boost to level 60 with basic gear per account! Want to play with a new character? Want to invite a friend and play together? With new content arriving on the server, and even more to come, it's a great moment to do it!

Finally, we would like to thank every player who's playing on the server for supporting this ever-growing project and dedicating their time to be entertained here. We also want to thank all Freakz players who joined us after the server merge and decided to stay with us. And we hope we can stay together for many more years!

See you next week on Oribos for the release of Patch 9.2: Eternity's End! 
The Firestorm Team