WoW SoD P7 Naxxramas Challenge

Time: 2025-02-13 by mmojugg Game: WOW Classic Season Of Discovery Guide Tags: WoW SoD P7 Naxxramas

Unprecedented challenge in WoW Season of Discovery Phase 7

The World of Warcraft Classic community has faced perhaps the most challenging raid since the servers went live: Naxxramas in Season of Discovery Phase 7. Unlike previous raids, which were cleared within hours of their release, Naxxramas has defied expectations by remaining unconquered well into its second week.

The new difficulty levels

Naxxramas in Season of Discovery features a range of difficulty levels from Difficulty 1 to Difficulty 5, or as players call it, from 0 to 4 Lights. On the highest difficulty, which is set at 20 players, only four guilds worldwide have uploaded their combat logs. The best performing guild, Btribe from Europe, with a storied history dating back to Wrath of the Lich King Classic, managed to get to 11 out of 15 bosses in the first week, but couldn't get any further.

Difficulty mechanics: Each of the four zones in Naxxramas can be 'empowered' at the entrance to the raid, adding unique mechanics or attachments to the enemies in that zone. This empowerment increases enemy health and damage across all zones, but doesn't affect the level of the drops, only their quantity.

Bosses and their secrets

The design of the raid means that once all the lower bosses have been completed on the hardest difficulty, players will be able to unlock undisclosed secrets for the final two bosses, Sapphiron and Kel'Thuzad. With the current world record holders stuck on Gothik the Harvester, the community is eager to see what Blizzard has hidden in these final encounters.

The Numbers Game

Originally, Blizzard aimed for 10 difficulty levels for Naxxramas, but this was later reduced to 5. The health pools for bosses such as the Four Horsemen are dramatically increased, with each having 12 million health, 24 times more than in the original version. Kel'Thuzad, the final boss, has an astonishing 56 million health, dwarfing even some of the toughest bosses from previous expansions.

PTR testing showed that even the Four Horsemen could be defeated, albeit in a gruelling 42-minute battle. However, Gothik's mechanics mean that he can't simply be overpowered; your DPS will need to be up to scratch to progress.

The Dawn Emblem Boost

One reason Blizzard has been able to push these numbers so high is the introduction of the Dawn Emblem buff. At its maximum level (10), it can increase your damage by 300%, essentially quadrupling your damage output. The buff is upgraded using Echoes of Courage, earned by killing bosses, with a weekly cap of one level increase.

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With this system in place, guilds such as Btribe could potentially complete the raid next week with a level 3 Dawn Emblem, while others could choose to start at lower difficulties and gradually increase as their buffs improve.