Overview
With the upcoming AQ patch, we are going to start by taking a trip back in time! The year was 2006, and for the first time, the AQ war effort was live in Azeroth. Players got together in a cross-faction race to gather materials from all over Azeroth, which once completed allowed players to start the scepter of the shifting sands quest. During this epic quest, players had to group up for all 4 dragons of nightmare among other raid related quests. This all culminated in the gong being rung and gates of AQ 40 being opened.
This original event saw completion in the middle of the night allowing very few players obtaining the scarab lord title as well as the AQ black battle tank a super rare mount.
The War Effort
The war effort resource gathering – since this is server wide there is quite a bit to gather and not all servers like mine have everything saved up to be complete day one. The materials that need to be gathered can be found here
The Scepter Of The Shifting Sands
As mentioned once the war effort is complete then you need to embark on the epic quest to obtain the scepter of the shifting sands. This scepter is needed to ring the gong to unlock the gates of AQ. For a complete guide you can check out this article here
Resist Gear
There are a couple fights within AQ that will require you to build some resistance sets. Right now with some of these fights not testable on PTRs it is not 100% confirmed you will NEED this, however, it is for sure better to have and not need it then to not have it and have to rush to farm it.
Princess Huhuran being one of the more famous resistance fight as she uses a poison that needs to be soaked. This is mainly needed by melee classes and hunters if you are alliance or shamans if you are horde depending on how much melee you have in your raid. A list of Nature resist can be found here!
The other fight you will need a warlock with Shadow resist gear for Twin Emperors, as for this fight you have a warlock tank one of the bosses. A list of shadow resist gear can be found here!
Consumables
AQ 40 consumables will be super helpful to keep your raid progression through those first weeks. Greater Nature Protection Potion will be super helpful for mitigating damage on some of those more intense fights. For warlocks having Greater Shadow Protection Potion probably wouldn’t hurt either! If you guys are anything like our guild you will want to invest in your normal raid consumables as well as flasks at least for the first weeks. Specifically for the next boss we will talk about you will also want to invest in Frost Oil.
Viscidus
This is an optional boss in AQ 40 which has a pretty unique mechanic that requires you to hit him with frost attacks to freeze him first then continue physical damage to shatter him in order to defeat him. One important thing to note is the amount of damage being done by frost is not what matters but the amount of frost attacks is what is most important. Any frost wands or weapons are a huge help; one that is easy to farm is the dagger from Razorfen Downs dungeon Coldrage Dagger. Some other other options are a BOE world epic Hammer of the Northern Wind, Scholomance quest chain item Darrowspike, and if you are Horde you also have the option with AV rep Glacial Blade (Horde only).
Rep Grinds
With the launch of AQ there are 2 reps that start to become more important, which are The Brood Nozdormu and the Cenarion Circle. Cenarion Circle rep is all farmed by farming mobs for Twilight Encrypted Text which can be turned in for rep. You can also get other tokens in the zone from different mobs that allow you to summon bosses which will drop gear and tokens that get turned in for rep. You will want to grind this rep at least on Leatherworkers in your guild as they sell patterns for nature resist gear, which is super important for the raid as well as they go for quite a bit of gold. There are also patterns for Blacksmiths and enchanters as well (all nature resist related), and a trinket that are BIS for Rogue and hunter into Phase 6. Lastly there are bracers that are good for mage, warlock, and balance druid at revered.
The Brood Nozdormu rep has ring rewards which are great for Shadow priests, Feral (cat) druids, and Ret and Prot Paladins. You can farm this rep by killing mobs within AQ 40 as well as there are token hand ins and quests within the raid that can give you rep.
Summary
Hey thanks for reading my article I hope you feel prepared to break through the gates of AQ and defeat the old god C’thunn!!! My name is Chaosfiends and you can look forward to more articles from me here on Thegamecrater.com!!