Shadowlands Season 4 Starting Soon!

Shadowlands Season 3 is coming to a close!

Here’s what to expect with the Season 3 end:

Shadowlands Season 3: PvP

The current season of Shadowlands PvP content will end at 10:00 p.m. the night before maintenance in each region (August 1 at 10:00 p.m. PDT for North America realms / 2 August at 22:00 CEST for European realms).
With the season’s end, it will no longer be possible to earn PvP seasonal rewards, titles, or Shadowlands Season 3 rankings.

Shadowlands Season 3: Mythic+

The current season of Mythic+ content will end with the start of regional maintenance on August 2. With the season’s end, ratings that qualify for the 0.1% “Cryptic Hero” title and achievement will be recorded.
The “Cryptic Hero” title will be rewarded during the following weeks after the season ends, so be sure to wait to change factions until after you have received the title.

When is the WoW Shadowlands Season 4 release date?

Shadowlands Season 4 will arrive on August 2 (that’s August 3 for EU), with Season 3 ending at 10 pm server time the night before the weekly reset for all regions. So if you’re still after the Ahead of the Curve or Cutting Edge achievements, you’ve got a week to get them done.

Shadowlands Season 4 raid schedule

Season 4 will introduce fated raids which add a “progenitor-themed affix system to infuse some new mechanical twists” into Castle Nathria, Sanctum of Domination, and the most recent raid, Sepulcher of the First Ones. Fated raids will kick off immediately at the launch of Season 4.

Here is the Shadowlands Season 4 raid schedule:

August 2: Fated Castle Nathria
August 9: Fated Sanctum of Domination
August 16: Fated Sepulcher of the First Ones
August 23: Fated Castle Nathria
August 30: Fated Sanctum of Domination
September 6: Fated Sepulcher of the First Ones

This rotation will continue until the end of Season 4. As stated in Blizzard’s post, the fated raid will only be available on that difficulty for that week, with the other two non-fated raids available on other difficulties.

Fated raid item level increase

All three raids will have an increase in difficulty in Season 4, alongside the affix. When a raid is fated, it will also drop a significantly increased item level on gear. But in exchange reward higher item level loot and new currency called Puzzling Cartel Dinars. When a raid is Fated for the week, all difficulties will be scaled up, including Looking for Raid.

Raid Finder: 265 – 272
Normal: 278 – 285
Heroic: 291 – 297
Mythic: 304 – 311

Fated Gear Vendors and Fated Gear Upgrades

As Fated raids are on a three-week rotation, you might experience increased bad luck when aiming for specific items. To counteract this, Blizzard is experiencing with specific loot vendors, that will sell Trinkets and Weapons with Puzzling Cartel Dinar. In addition to this, you will be able to upgrade Fated items via Cosmic Creation Impetus and Sacred Creation Impetus. How the system works as of the PTR build on May 4th, 2022:

There’s a 3-part questline in Shadowlands Season 4.
- The current objectives are to kill 30, 20 and 10 Fated boss kills.
- The Rewards are a currency in which you can buy the exact piece of Normal raid gear that you want.
- Once you buy 3 items, the vendors leave.
- This is to curb the extreme bad luck that players may experience.
Heroic and Mythic gear updates will drop by combining a certain number of shards (currently 20%).
- Shards have a 100% drop rate.
- These items work on any Fated item, including those bought off the vendors.

Fated raid affixes

The affixes in fated raids work in a similar way to Mythic Plus dungeon affixes, though, unlike Mythic Plus, only one of a possible four affixes will apply to these raids.

Here are the Season 4 fated raid affixes:

Chaotic Essence

Summons a Chaotic Essence which casts Chaotic Destruction, inflicting 799 Cosmic damage to all players if successful.

Upon interaction, the essence becomes hostile and instead continuously manifests Chaotic Motes. These motes channel three Cosmic damage into targeted players every half a second for three seconds. When defeated each mote splits into additional motes.

After 15 seconds the Chaotic Essence dissipates, granting all players 2% increased damage done, 2% increased healing done, and 2% absorbs done for 25 seconds. This effect stacks for each Chaotic Mote slain.

Creation Spark

Charges a player, inflicting three Cosmic damage every one second. for 30 seconds. This effect stacks.

Upon removal this charge jettisons Creation Sparks to nearby locations, infusing players within zero yards of the impact location, increasing the flow of time by 15%, increasing casting, attack speed, cooldown recharge rate, and periodic tick rates and additionally increasing movement speed by 45% for 20 seconds. This effect stacks.

If a Creation Spark impacts the ground with no player present to infuse the Creation Spark explodes, inflicting 10 Cosmic damage every two seconds for 20 seconds. This effect stacks.

Protoform Barrier

Empowers the caster, inflicting one Cosmic damage to all players every three seconds.

Upon removal this barrier manifests as one attackable enemy, casting a shared 400 absorb shield with all other enemies for 15 seconds. A second unit manifests that also can be healed to reduce the shared shield.

Upon expiration the barrier explodes, inflicting 50 Cosmic damage and an additional five Cosmic damage every one second. to all players for eight seconds.

If broken this effect backfires, inflicting all damage done to each enemy during the barrier as Cosmic damage, and additionally grants all players up to 25% increased damage done, 25% healing done, and 25% increased absorbs done for 40 seconds.

Reconfiguration Emitter

Manifests an attackable enemy which continuously casts. This enemy remains immune to damage until the first successful cast or interrupt. Successful casts inflict 30 Cosmic damage to all players. Every five seconds. the emitter gains 0% increased damage done. This effect stacks.

When successfully interrupted the emitter radiates, inflicting five Cosmic damage to all players.

Upon defeat this enemy infuses all players with power based on the energy level of the emitter, increasing mastery by up to 10, critical strike chance by up to 10%, versatility by up to 10%, and avoidance by up to eight.

There are also meta achievements for completing all three Shadowlands raids while they’re Fated raids:

Fates of the Shadowlands Raids: Complete all three Fated raids in Shadowlands Season 4. Mount Reward: Jigglesworth Sr.
- Jigglesworth Sr. is the Gooey Slimesaber mount, one of the mounts that did not win the free mount poll at the beginning of Shadowlands.
Heroic: Fates of the Shadowlands Raids: Complete all three Fated raids on Heroic difficulty in Shadowlands Season 4. Title Reward: %s, Hero of Fate
Mythic: Fates of the Shadowlands Raids: Complete all three Fated raids on Mythic difficulty in Shadowlands Season 4. Reward: Shadowlands Raid Teleports
- Completing this achievement grants the teleport spells Path of the Sire, Path of the Tormented Soul and Path of the First Ones.

Shadowlands Season 4 Mythic+

Blizzard is doing a remix in Shadowlands Season 4, with new twists to dungeons in addition to the usual new stuff in a regular Mythic+ season.

Season 4 Affix: Shrouded

The new Mythic+ seasonal affix for Shadowlands Season 4 is Shrouded. This affix has you hunting dreadlords through dungeons to gain stacking secondary stat bonuses that last for the duration of the dungeon!

At the beginning of each dungeon, an NPC from Cartel Ta will show up offering a bounty to kill dreadlords through the dungeon:

Bounty: Critical Strike – 2% Crit per stack
Bounty: Haste – 2% Haste per stack
Bounty: Versatility – 2% Vers per stack
Bounty: Mastery – 69 Mastery per stack

Through the dungeon, certain normal mobs will be replaced by disguised dreadlords, identifiable with a dark aura and the Disguised buff. The dreadlord mobs have less health than traditional mobs and have a couple of new abilities, but can for the most part be cleaved down together with the rest of the trash pack. Once a dreadlord is defeated, a Cartel Ta associate will show up to capture it, granting you a stack of your chosen bounty buff as well as a health/mana regeneration buff in Bounty Payment for 5 seconds.

At some point in the dungeon (likely in set locations), a Dreadlord miniboss, Zul’gamux, will show up instead. This Dreadlord has more health and abilities that you need to watch for, such as a Blood Barrier that heals Zulgamux while the barrier holds and needs to be burst down before Zulgamux finishes casting Shadow Eruption, as well as summoning Hypnosis Bats that casts a pseudo Mind Control with Hypnosis (and will likely become a priority target). Killing a bigger dreadlord awards bigger rewards, though: Killing Zulgamux grants three stacks of your chosen bounty buff, as well as a full health/mana regen buff with Restoration.

New Mythic+ Dungeon Pool

The Mythic+ Dungeon pool is changing with Shadowlands Season 4. Instead of the usual 10 dungeons from the expansion, Shadowlands Season 4 will have a pool of dungeons from past expansions. The first 6 dungeons are both wings of the megadungeons released in past expansions (Tazavesh from Shadowlands, Operation Mechagon from Battle for Azeroth and Return to Karazhan from Legion), as well as two dungeons from the Warlords of Draenor expansion that were voted by the playerbase.

Below, we have a list of the dungeons that will be available in the Mythic+ difficulty for Shadowlands Season 4:

Tazavesh: Streets of Wonder (Shadowlands)
Tazavesh: So’leah’s Gambit (Shadowlands)
Operation Mechagon: Junkyard (Battle for Azeroth)
Operation Mechagon: Workshop (Battle for Azeroth)
Return to Karazhan: Lower (Legion)
Return to Karazhan: Upper (Legion)
Grimrail Depot (Warlords of Draenor)
Iron Docks (Warlords of Draenor)

Season 4 Keystone Master Mount Reward: Restoration Deathwalker

The Shadowland Season 4 Keystone Master reward mount is the Restoration Deathwalker, a purple and gold recolor of the Deathwalker mounts offered for the same achievement in previous Shadowlands seasons!