Onyxia’s Lair: WoW Forever Raid Guide

Onyxia’s Lair in WoW Forever: what is confirmed

• 40 players, opening Dec 9. It unlocks on the same day as the two new raids, 5 weeks after Forever launches.
• The first 40-player raid. In the September 17 Live Q&A, Blizzard said 40-player raids are coming, starting with Onyxia’s Lair, but that not every tier will have one.
• One boss in the demo. In the BlizzCon demo’s Legacy Challenges window, Blizzard Watch found Onyxia still listed as the only boss for her lair.
• Bring fire resistance. Blizzard’s raid overview of October 21 describes the three-phase fight with powerful fire attacks that punish an unprepared raid, and tells players to build fire resistance before going in. It announces no change from Classic.
• The only original raid, for now. Blizzard says Forever starts at the beginning of World of Warcraft, so the iconic raids players know haven’t opened yet and will be rediscovered later; in an interview with The Sun it said Molten Core will open someday, but not now.
• The Drakefire Amulet. Every raid member needs it in their bags to enter; it doesn’t have to be worn. The attunement is Classic’s, by faction: Alliance players start in the Burning Steppes and go through Blackrock Depths and Stormwind, Horde players start in the Badlands and go through Lower Blackrock Spire, Orgrimmar, Desolace and Dustwallow Marsh; both end in Upper Blackrock Spire.
• A weekly reset. All three raids are currently planned to reset each week, Blizzard’s raid overview says.

What Forever’s raid rules mean for Onyxia

Blizzard’s raid rules apply to every raid, not to Onyxia in particular. Raids have a single difficulty (Live Q&A), and the developers told But Why Tho? that difficulty doesn’t scale with your level, so you can out-gear or out-level a raid. The developers told MMORPG.com that items in general keep their stats hidden until they drop for you or on your server. Wowhead’s summary of The Sun interview says you can get your tier pieces across all three raids, without saying which pieces drop where.

The developers said the new raids at launch won’t need an attunement, which leaves Onyxia’s Lair out: on the WoW Forever Podcast episode 3, the designers said its attunement stays, per character and not account-wide, “at least at launch”.

Official: defeating Onyxia is a Legacy Challenge worth 1 Legacy point, Blizzard’s Legacy article of September 23 says (Wowhead had datamined it as “Conqueror of the Lair”). See WoW Forever Legacy.