Ulduar (instance)

Unknown
File:Ulduar Raid loading screen.jpg
Location	Ulduar, Storm Peaks
Instance info
Type	Raid
Advised level	80
Player limit	10/25

The Siege of Ulduar
Flame Leviathan Ignis the Furnace Master Razorscale XT-002 Deconstructor	(lore) (lore) (lore) (lore)
The Antechamber of Ulduar
Assembly of Iron Kologarn Auriaya	(lore) (lore) (lore)
The Keepers of Ulduar
Mimiron Freya Thorim Hodir	(lore) (lore) (lore) (lore)
The Descent into Madness
General Vezax Yogg-Saron	(lore) (lore)
The Celestial Planetarium
Algalon the Observer (summoned)	(lore)
Other Ulduar instances
Halls of Stone (5) Halls of Lightning (5)

"For countless millennia, Ulduar has remained undisturbed by mortals, far away from their concerns and their struggles. But since its recent discovery, many have wondered what the structure's original purpose may have been. Some thought it a city, built to herald the glory of its makers; some thought it a vault containing innumerable treasures, perhaps even relics of the mighty Titans themselves. They were wrong. Beyond its gates lies no city, no treasure vault, no final answer to the Titan's mysteries. All that awaits those who dare set foot in Ulduar is a horror even the Titans could not, would not destroy, an evil they merely... contained.

Beneath ancient Ulduar, the Old God of death lies, whispering.... Tread carefully, or his prison will become your tomb. "

"Ulduar Raid" is the currently unnamed raid wing of the ancient Titan complex Ulduar, located deep within The Storm Peaks. The wing has a lot of lore closely tied to it and is planned to be released in patch 3.1.0, the first content patch in the Wrath of the Lich King.

In a BlizzCast interview, Jeff Kaplan implied that the Ulduar raid zone will be one of those considered to be one grade in difficulty above the entry-level raid Naxxramas.

Siege vehicles will also play a role in the dungeon.

For more information see the notes on the official website.

Bosses

• Mimiron
• Fire Leviathan
• Freya
• Thorim
• Hodir
• The Iron Council

There will be multiple encounters in the Ulduar raid. Currently, 11 out of the 14 encounters have a hard mode, like Sartharion with 3 drakes, and a single encounter that will be only hard mode but will be optional. These hard modes will increase the difficulty and reward level of the encounters, along with having their own achievements. The hard modes are confirmed to be separate from the normal 10 and 25 man split.

Re: Blizz, do NOT make Ulduar available on PT | 2009-01-02 20:57 |  Daelo

Followup time!

I think it's safe to say that Ulduar will be a bit more difficult overall than Naxxramas, even without the hard modes. We're still going to tune the zone for accessibility^*, but a raid group that's done Naxxramas, Malygos, and Sartharion and obtained the gear from those encounters should be well prepared for Ulduar. Not only is the raid's gear better, but players should now have some raiding experience under their belts. We also have a much more accurate picture of what guilds are capable of from a healing, damage, and tanking perspective then when WotLK first went live. If Naxxramas was the introduction to raiding 101 class for players who have never raided before, think of Ulduar as the second year class.

^* There will be one optional encounter that is only tuned as a "hard mode" encounter.

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It is possible that the final boss will be Yogg-Saron, or possibly Mimiron, known as Ulduar's "new master".

Gear

From an interview with Tom Chilton, Co-Lead Designer at [Blizzard] and Kaplan:

Well, it'll start off at like tier 7 quality gear, or tier 8. It depends on whether or not you consider Sunwell to be sharing another tier of gear, and then Ulduar beyond that will be another tier of gear. There are even tiers within that for the 10 and 25-person, so while the art is shared between the 10 and 25-person instances, there are color variants of it, so for example you'll be able to see the difference, but thematically it's the same. Also the sets within that tier, within that instance, work with each other. So a lot like right now the Season 1 Gladiator, Season 2, Season 3 are all part of the same armor set, you can mix and match the pieces and still get the set bonuses. That will be the case for 10 and 25 man instances, so with Naxxramas 10 and 25, if you have the leggings from the 10 man zone and the chest piece from the 25-person zone, you'll be able to wear them together and get the set bonus.

Re: Blizz, do NOT make Ulduar available on PT | 2009-01-02 20:57 |  Daelo

The reward for completing the hard modes are not going to be just achievement points, titles, or mounts, but improved, additional item rewards.

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PTR

The Ulduar raid will be available in the PTR, however, the entire raid will not be able to be tested at the same time. Blizzard GMs will have tight control over which part of the raid will be tested at a certain time.

Here is the original post:

Re: Blizz, do NOT make Ulduar available on PT | 2009-01-01 17:00 |  Daelo

Ulduar will be on PTR in the future, but we're going to have tight controls in place on what can be tested at any given time. Ulduar will also not be up permanently like Naxxramas was in the WotLK Beta. If we have something to test, we'll make the zone and encounter available. If we don't, we'll disable the zone. That being said, there's going to be a LOT of encounters to test in both 10 and 25 player modes. There will also be a whole lot of "hard modes" and achievements to test. We're shooting for most all of the encounters to have "hard modes" that allow raids to increase the challenge and reward level if they're up to it. We're pretty pleased with how Sartharion and his drakes worked, and we're going to expand on that idea extensively in Ulduar and future raids.

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Images

• 

  The instance portal.