Blackwing Lair Guide

(last updated 9/29/24)

BWL is a weekly lockout (resets Tuesday). It’s tuned for 20 players, but accepts up to 40 players. Loot does not change based on player count, which means the more players you bring, the more likely you are to kill each boss, but the less loot each player will receive on average.

In SoD, BWL has five additional difficulty modifiers you can enable. Once enabled, they can be disabled in that lockout, but if you disable one that you’ve enabled, you cannot enable it again for the rest of that lockout.

These difficulty modifiers are ‘Trials’ of the 5 dragonflights: Red, Blue, Green, Bronze, and Black. Most of these modifiers add an additional mechanic to each encounter that is the same across all encounters. These trials can be enabled by talking to Victor Nefriendius at the start of the raid.

  • Red: Every time you get hurt, small chance to gain a stacking debuff. “When injured, burn for 400 fire damage every 3 seconds until healed above 90% of your maximum health. Direct heals remove 1 stack.” Basically, just make sure you keep your raid topped up with Efflorescence, Vampiric Embrace, etc.
  • Blue: “Randomly afflicted with Arcane Bomb, which will deal heavy damage split among all those affected.” AoE bomb, needs to be soaked by having players run to the target.
  • Green: “Randomly affected by powerful nature magic, dealing damage to nearby players and leaving a pool of poison.” Chosen player runs out of the raid, drops it away from raid, then returns.
  • Bronze: “Time will randomly slow down and speed up”. Affects movement speed. This can be meaningless, or it could kill you at critical moments on some fights, when combined with other trials.
  • Black: Enables additional boss-specific mechanics, see Black Changes sections in boss guides below.

Each week, there will also be a specific trial that is considered the ‘bonus’ trial for that week. Having it enabled for all fights will give you additional rewards (on top of the per-trial bonus) once you kill Nefarian.

Upon killing Nefarian, up to three additional chests may spawn, alongside Nef’s loot:

  1. Chromatic Stash/Supplies/Hoard: If you have at least 1 trial active, this chest will spawn with 2, 4, or 5 items depending upon if you had 1, 2, or 3+ trials active for all fights in the instance. There is no additional reward in this chest for having 4 or 5 trials active. If you have 3+ trials active, weapons in this chest will also have the Shadowflame cosmetic appearance.
  2. Shadowflame Cache: If you have the weekly bonus AND 3+ total trials active, this chest will spawn with 4 items and some Elementium Ore. Weapons in this chest will also have the Shadowflame cosmetic appearance.
  3. Favored Riches: If you have the weekly bonus trial active, this chest will spawn with 2 items.

So for instance…

  • If the weekly trial is Blue and you have Blue, Bronze, and Black enabled for the whole instance, you will get all 3 chests, and the first chest will have the maximum of 5 Shadowflame items in it.
  • If the weekly trial is Blue and you had Blue, Bronze, and Black enabled for most of the instance, but turned off Blue for Nefarian, you will only get the first chest, and it will only have 4 non-Shadowflame items in it.
  • If the weekly trial is Blue and you have Red, Green, Bronze, and Black enabled for the whole instance, you will only get the first chest, which will have the maximum of 5 Shadowflame items in it.

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