wow-classic Season of Mastery 1.14.3 PTR Dev Notes

[Staff 940]

We have a big PTR patch for SoM with changes to the War Effort, the Temple raid, and even major economic adjustments, including profession modifications, bug fixes, and more.

1.14.3 (Source)

The Gates of Ahn’Qiraj

• The War Effort now requires half as many total resources as before.
• Reduced the time until auto-completion of War Effort objectives begins.
  • With this change, the gates of Ahn’Qiraj will open on all realms within a month of the event being initiated.
• The “Brood of Nozdormu” reputation reward from the repeatable quest “The Hand of the Righteous” has been doubled.
  • Developers’ notes: There is a known issue with how this is displayed. The chat log text will display 200 reputation gained, while the actual amount of reputation gained for completing this Quest is 400.

The Temple of Ahn’Qiraj

• Significant adjustments have been made to the Prophet Skeram encounter.
• Players will now find piles of “Quick Sand” scattered throughout the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj. Interacting with these piles will grant nearby players a stackable bonus to movement speed (both mounted and un-mounted).
• Raid groups that manage to defeat the Prophet Skeram to gain access to the tunnels beneath Ahn’Qiraj will encounter the “Prophecy of Chaos” and may interact with this mysterious object to receive dark whispers and enable additional challenges in the Temple of Anh’Qiraj.
  • New Prophecy of Chaos mechanics become available as players reach new reputation levels with the Brood of Nozdormu.
  • Defeating bosses while under the influence of the Prophecy of Chaos will result in increased loot rewards, scaling with the difficulty chosen.
• The difficulty of the baseline Fankriss the Unyielding Encounter has been adjusted.
  • Developers’ notes: While this encounter has not seen the addition of any new mechanics, players should now find that they will need to engage the existing mechanics in a much more meaningful way. Even in Original World of Warcraft and WoW Classic, this encounter always felt like it was a step down in difficulty relative to everything else in the Temple of Ahn’Qiraj, and the nature of these changes should make even the base version of the encounter feel more dangerous in Season of Mastery.
• C’thun has been restored to his original, most horrific form.
  • Developer’s Note: By popular demand, we’ve implemented the “pre-nerf” version of C’thun in all of his mathematically impossible glory.

Economic Adjustments

• Adjustments have been made to certain professions and the availability of many crafting materials:
  • Removed the level 60 requirement for alchemists to proc additional items from successful crafts.
    • Level 300 Alchemy is still required.
  • Removed the level 60 requirement for Herbalists to receive black lotus from high-level herb spawns.
  • Successful crafts of Arcanite Bars, Mooncloth, and Cured Rugged Hide will now proc additional bars, cloth, or hides, respectively.
    • Level 300 Alchemy, Tailoring, and Leatherworking required.
  • The respawn times of almost all herbalism nodes have been significantly adjusted.
    • Developers’ notes: In many cases the minimum and maximum respawn times have been reduced by half, or more. This is in addition to the respawn timer changes made in earlier content phases of Season of Mastery.
  • Thanks to improvements in fishing line technology across Azeroth, it is now possible to receive multiple Firefin Snapper, Oily Blackmouth, and Stonescale Eel from a single successful fishing attempt.
  • Increased the amount of Elemental Water, Earth, and Fire from relevant herbalism and mining nodes.
  • Added a chance for more than one Demonic Rune to drop at once from creatures that would normally drop Demonic Runes, such as Satyrs.
• Greatly increased the availability of Scarabs, Idols, and Coffer Keys in both the Ruins and Temple of Ahn’Qiraj.
• Greatly increased the availability of Bijous and Coins from all sources in Zul’Gurub.
  • Hakkar will also now drop a cache of Bijous when killed.

User Interface

New accessibility options such as Text to Speech and Speech to Text have been added to Burning Crusade Classic. You can learn more about these features here.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue in Classic Era where C’thun would occasionally use his erratic movement animations during his Dark Glare ability.
• Fixed an issue in Classic Era and Season of Mastery where Farmer Dalson’s outhouse in Western Plaguelands could get stuck in a non-interactive state and block quest progression.
• Fixed an issue in Season of Mastery where the instance exploitation-prevention mechanics could be bypassed with engineering grenades.
• Fixed an issue in Classic Era where Maexxna’s web wrap would sometimes immediately drop affected players to the ground rather than suspending them on the wall.
• Made some improvements to the Subdue Private Hendel step of the quest “The Missing Diplomat” in Dustwallow Marsh that should reduce the likelihood that the event stalls and blocks quest progression.