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City of Dalaran: WoW Forever Dungeon Guide

The barrier over Dalaran is gone and the Kirin Tor are losing control of the city. Blizzard calls it more than a dungeon: a levels 28–33 dungeon with a whole city to explore.

Robed casters around a glowing rune circle in the City of Dalaran dungeon in World of Warcraft: Forever
Blizzard’s own screenshot of City of Dalaran, from the BlizzCon press kit. Image: Blizzard Entertainment.

Levels are from Blizzard’s September 15 Kaivax post; the rest is checked against the What’s Next panel video and recap. Last reviewed: . The beta section follows Wowhead’s walkthrough of and the beta client, build 1.60.1.70790; reviewed .

What the beta shows in City of Dalaran

The beta client names 9 bosses, one of them a secret boss you summon with a book brought from Shadowfang Keep. Wowhead found 8 Horde quests, five of them the chain for the Dalaran Sewer Key; its Alliance quest table was still empty. Almost every enemy here is immune to Arcane damage.

Bosses

  1. 1

    Arcane Anomaly

    After you leave the sewers. Focal Blast is an arcane beam that sweeps the room counter-clockwise and kills: stay out of it. Small adds stand at the room’s edge: fight inside the circle on the platform so they aren’t pulled.

  2. 2

    Fel Ancient

    Entangle roots two players with damage over time, and Fel Timbers leaves a green pool that hurts: the danger is the two together (Blessing of Freedom or Escape Artist gets you out). Can be reached without killing the earlier bosses.

  3. 3

    Mana Devourer

    By the entrance to the Violet Hold. Debilitate hits everyone within 45 yards and drains 200 mana each time: a race against the group’s mana. Drain Vitality deals arcane damage to its target, then more over 10 seconds. Immune to Arcane. Clear the trash in its area first: it joins the fight.

  4. 4

    Mana Elemental

  5. 5

    Unstable Sentinel

    Malfunction has a short wind-up, then heavy area damage within 25 yards: ranged stay out of range, melee step away. Non-elite Angry Tomes come out of the buildings as you approach: kill them first.

  6. 6

    Lyn the Ignored

    • Secret boss
    • Kill statistic

    Secret boss, in the sewers. Shadow Bolt Volley, and Curse of Thorns: a curse that makes your own attacks hurt you, hard on melee, so remove it. Raise Dead calls two non-elite skeletons.

    How to summon it
    1. In Shadowfang Keep, kill Archmage Arugal and click the book on his table, an object Forever adds: it gives the Black Tome.
    2. Take it to Ambermill, the Dalaran-held town in Silverpine Forest. Inside the keep, use the Black Tome next to the Ambermill Leyline Focus: it becomes the Tome of Dalaran.
    3. In the City of Dalaran, kill Atrexis the Grave Knight and go on through the sewer. Where the way turns right to the surface, go straight on into the tunnel to a purple rune on the floor and use the Tome of Dalaran there. Lyn the Ignored appears after a short scene.
    • Black Tome
    • Tome of Dalaran

    The Tome of Dalaran isn’t used up and has a 3-minute cooldown, so the group can try again after a wipe.

  7. 7

    Atrexis the Grave Knight

    Early, in the sewers: a simple tank fight. He summons non-elite skeletons with Raise Dead and disarms the tank, so tank with a shield and hold heavy area damage until the tank has threat. Also Unholy Frenzy, Thrash and Strike.

    • Graveweave Bindings Cloth armor
    • Bonebinder's Signet Ring
    • Gravespike Repeater Crossbow
  8. 8

    Mana Wraith

  9. 9

    Shade of the Archmage

    • Final boss
    • Kill statistic

    Final boss. His abilities cost him mana; when he runs out he casts Mass Polymorph and Evocation to refill. Arcane Bolt on the tank, Arcane Explosion within 20 yards, and Bounding Mana, an arcane boomerang thrown at one player that hits anyone in its path: spread out, casters at range. He resets if he leaves his room.

Quests

  • 8 quests

  • Prison Break In

    • Horde

    Key chain, step 1. From Magus Wordeen Voidglare in Tarren Mill: find the traitors and recover their artifacts.

  • Key to the City

    • Horde

    Key chain, step 1, taken together with Prison Break In: get the Grimy Key.

  • Dalaran Patrols

    • Horde

    Key chain, step 2: kill 6 Dalaran Summoners and 12 Elemental Slaves.

  • Blood in the Streets

    • Horde

    Key chain, step 3: hand it in to the Image of Archmage Modera outside Dalaran.

  • Heart of Disruption

    • Horde
    • Dalaran Sewer Key

    Last step of the key chain, from the Image of Archmage Modera: enter the dungeon and collect the Arcane Mote. It gives the Dalaran Sewer Key: one player in the group with the key opens the gate for everyone.

  • The Grave Knight

    • Horde

    From Melisara in Tarren Mill.

  • Source of Power

    • Horde

    From Doctor Martin Felben in the Apothecarium, Undercity.

  • Opportunistic Education

    • Horde

    From Rexxie Copperclutch at the dungeon entrance.

Where this comes from

Boss names and their order are the beta client’s own (DungeonEncounter, build 1.60.1.70790): nine encounters. Wowhead’s guide describes eight, in the order a group meets them: Atrexis the Grave Knight, Arcane Anomaly, Arcanic Enigma, Unstable Sentinel, Mana Devourer, Fel Ancient, the secret Lyn the Ignored and, last, Shade of the Archmage. The client has no Arcanic Enigma; it names a Mana Elemental and a Mana Wraith the guide says nothing about. No source says which of the two it is, so those two cards carry no tactics.

Arcanic Enigma, in Wowhead’s guide: the fight starts with two Mana Phantoms that cast Mana Burn; kill them first, no more spawn. Manamorph takes one player out for 8 seconds: a Magic effect, so dispel it. There is an area Silence around the boss, so the healer stands away. It keeps summoning small Arcane Manalings to cleave down.

Between bosses: almost every enemy is immune to Arcane damage (Arcane Explosion and Arcane Shot do nothing). The non-elite Mana Phantoms cast Mana Burn: interrupt them and kill them first. A Saturated Remnant leaves an area that restores mana when it dies.

Tactics, quests and the summoning are from Wowhead’s City of Dalaran guide and its October 11 post on the secret boss. Wowhead recommends levels 28–34, close to Blizzard’s 28–33. Of the loot, only the first rows of the first boss were read, and the Alliance quest table was empty. The two tomes and the key are in the beta client’s item table; the three drops aren’t yet. All of it is beta content and can change before launch.

What Blizzard has said about City of Dalaran

In the What’s Next panel Blizzard put the City of Dalaran in the Alterac Mountains with its magic coming apart: spells backfire, arcane constructs run wild and demonic energy spreads through the streets. The line from the panel is that this is more than a dungeon — the city itself is there to explore.

Kaivax’s September 15 table puts it at levels 28–33. An earlier figure of 20–35 went around after the panel and is out of date; Wowhead’s own dungeon guide still carries “Level 20-35” in its text while its table says 28–33.

On the WoW Forever Podcast episode 3, the designers called it compact, with other Forever dungeons “at least four times as big”. They also said one shared entrance through the sewers replaced the two faction entrances first planned.

Blizzard released a press kit screenshot of the dungeon, with robed casters around a glowing rune circle.

Loading screen art of the City of Dalaran: violet spires and domes rising among pine trees
The loading screen of City of Dalaran. Art © Blizzard Entertainment, from the WoW Forever beta client (build 1.60.1.70450).

Where City of Dalaran is

The city stands in the Alterac Mountains, where Classic players only ever saw the purple dome.

Wowhead’s dungeon overview adds that the barrier has come down and the city has been rebuilt but is not fully under control, which is why the Kirin Tor need help — the same story Blizzard told on stage.

Dalaran itself is open in the beta, north-west of Southshore: up the stairs north of Hillsbrad Fields, on the flying boat from Valanaar on Zephras Isle, or, until the last beta build, through the portal from Stormwind’s Wizard’s Sanctum. It is a sanctuary, but only the Alliance is welcome inside the walls at first (Wowhead, September 29). In the October 8 beta build, Wowhead found that the Horde gets in after clearing the dungeon: the Heart of Disruption quest line, which awards the Dalaran Sewer Key, leads to a quest called Shrewd Negotiations, and once that is done the guards turn from hostile to neutral. Many citizens still offer the Horde nothing; the arrow, food and drink vendors, Mage training and the stables work. Blizzard doesn’t mean it to stay that way: designer Josh “Aggrend” Greenfield said on X, per Wowhead, that full Horde access to Dalaran “isn’t really intended” and that the team will look at it. He added that the Horde gaining Kirin Tor reputation is already fixed internally, with the fix due the following week. Both reports are listed in our October 8 beta build article.

The dungeon is under the city. The Alliance reaches it through the sewers from the Cantrips & Crows tavern: open the gate and follow the pipe to the portal. The Horde comes in from outside the city at /way 8.8 59.6 and needs the Dalaran Sewer Key. The dungeon itself opened for testing with the beta’s October 8 build, Blizzard’s development notes say; a week earlier, when the beta went to level 30, it wasn’t in yet.

In the last beta build, Wowhead found the city changed (October 22): the portal from Stormwind to Dalaran was gone, though the one back to Stormwind stayed; Arcane Sentries are level 55 elites; Kirin Tor Guards point the way to the inn, the trainers and a transmogrifier; there are profession trainers and a Druid and a Mage trainer; battlemasters in the Underbelly queue you for every battleground, the Darkspear Islands included; and Magus Olvek gives the Alliance a new quest, Past Due, to defeat Arcanist Doan in the Scarlet Monastery Library. Blizzard may still change the city before launch.

Getting to the dungeon, per Wowhead’s guide: the Alliance needs no quest chain and enters through Dalaran’s sewers or by a teleport from the Image of Archmage Modera; the first trip to the city is on foot from the Hillsbrad Foothills. The Horde swims over from Silverpine Forest, a few minutes on foot from the Sepulcher, to a tunnel of its own where the Image of Archmage Modera lets the group in, and needs the Dalaran Sewer Key from a five-quest chain that starts in Tarren Mill (the City of Dalaran quests below). It isn’t a true attunement: one player with the key opens the gate for the whole group. Since Blizzard says full Horde access to Dalaran “isn’t really intended”, the Horde’s side of this may still change.

Blizzard’s dungeon overview of October 21 lists a required attunement for both factions: the Alliance starts with “An Alarming Request” from Emissary Jacques in Southshore, the Horde with “Key to the City” and “Prison Break-In” from Magus Wordeen Voidglare in Tarren Mill. After earning the Kirin Tor’s trust, groups enter through the sewers and choose among several paths to the source of the trouble. That differs from Wowhead’s beta guide above, which found no quest chain for the Alliance.

The other new dungeons

All nine in level order, and what changes for dungeons in Forever, are on the WoW Forever dungeons page.

Not announced yet

  • The loot
  • How many players the dungeon is built for
  • The Alliance’s quests in the dungeon: Wowhead’s table was still empty
  • Which of the client’s encounters Wowhead’s Arcanic Enigma is, and what the Mana Elemental and the Mana Wraith do
  • The loot beyond the first boss’s first drops, and the bosses’ levels

Sources

How we choose and check sources