There are two Delves in the K’aresh map: Archival Assault and Ky’veza’s Voidrazor Sanctuary. In this article, I will focus on the Archival Assault. Right off the bat, the Delve uses a repurposed Dragon Isles dungeon as a Delve. The Azure Vault dungeon is located in The Azure Span zone. The entrance to the Archival Assault Delve is located in the northern section of the Eco-Dome Primus floating isle. The entrance is one of the Ethereal waygates.
You can watch the gameplay video in YouTube below by clicking the image. Don’t forget to switch to 1440HD via the gear icon in the video.
Some quality of life tweak in K’aresh, and hopefully in future expansions, is that hovering your mouse cursor over the Delve icon in the map shows you the story variant name. This is good for those who don’t know how to keep track of their Delve achievements. Delves usually have 4 story variants with different scenario objectives.
K’aresh Delve: Archival Assault
The K’aresh Delve: Archival Assault rewards players with a variety of consumable items that can be used in Delves only or in Outdoors, currency to upgrade your Reshii Wraps, Runed Ethereal Crests to upgrade your gear, Crafting Materials, Experience, Gold, and Curios among other things.
There might be a few new Curios for Brann Bronzebeard. At least I found a few of them:
There are four story variants tracked in the Delves achievement: Archival Assault Stories:
- Relic Retrieval
- Shadowed Wings
- Smash and Jab
- Waygate Wiles
In the Waygate Wiles story, you must collect Energy Urns and Waygate Parts to reconstruct the vault’s waygate network, disable Field Dampeners to enable the network, and deconstruct the ethereal forces inside who work for Ky’veza. You might remember her. She’s the ethereal we found in the Ner’ubar Palace raid. As for her mysterious patron… it is very likely… (highlight the spoiler name below to find out)
Nexus-King Salhadaar — who we killed in Netherstorm during the Burning Crusade expansion. He is one of the raid bosses in the Manaforge Omega raid.
Storywise, I am not sure how this Delve makes sense. The point of contact is an echo of Spymaster Casnegosa. You would think Kalecgos would come rushing to The Azure Vault, or at least the echo of Sindragosa. There is nothing in the Casnegosa’s dialogues that informs you what’s up with their whereabouts while their sacred place is ransacked by ethereals.
Taking the ethereal waygate in Eco-Dome: Primus takes you to The Arcane Conservatory section of The Azure Vault Dungeo– err Delve. You speak to Spymaster Casnegosa to begin the Delve and must take another Waygate to continue.
In the Waygate Wily story variant, you have to collect Energy Barrels, Energy Urns, and Energy Pyramids throughout the next couple of floors until you reach 100% in the progress bar, and you must also search for Waygate Parts to later assemble them for navigation across different floors or across the chasm.
Sometimes, you might find a treasure chest that pulses with void energy. It might contain a rare elite that drops a special power for your Brann Bronzebeard companion.
There is a Delve mechanic with a spell button hovering on your lower third screen named Phase Cutter: Skim the surface of the Untethered Space, hurling forwards uncontrollably while taking 75% reduced damage and become immune to roots and snares. Creatures you pass through are damaged by the unstable energies. This spell has a 1-minute cooldown, but you can reset the cooldown by stepping through the blue orbs named Phase Cutter Recharge. Enemies drop these when they die.
This spell can be used in creative ways beyond what the tooltip says — especially in this vertical platform dungeon (again — err Delve). Sometimes, you will find treasure chests or special treasure chests located on top of pipes that can only be accessed by jumping down one of the floor rings. For classes that don’t have Blink, Levitate, Divine Shield, or Blessing of Protection this would normally be a problem. You can jump down hundreds of feet and click the Phase Cutter spell to move forward horizontally — breaking the fall with no damage to reach these treasure chests.
There are also treasure chests behind force fields that can only be accessed by pressing the Phase Cutter button to move forward through them.
Another fun fact about this Delve is that you might find tombstones throughout the dungeon with the name of a random player in The Azure Span who died? Or you might find ghosts with a server name. I don’t think these are actual players you played with in The Azure Vault dungeon. This ghost is named Hotguysixpac-Fyrakk. There is no Fyrakk or Raszageth realm server in US, Brazil, Latin America, Oceania, Taiwan, Korea, or Europe at the moment this article was published. Yes, I looked them up here in the official World of Warcraft realm status page.
After collecting all the Waygate parts and Energy urns required, a door is opened to access the Lower Chamber. This is the last ring of The Azure Vault, before the bottom pit where you usually would fight the dragon boss Umbrelskul. You have to use the waygate parts to assemble a waygate that sends you across the balcony to the lower ring. First, talk to Spymaster Casnegosa.
Once you clear all 6 Field Dampeners in both rings, you gain access to the waygate network to confront the Delve’s boss: Portalmaster Halsan.
Before you leave the Delve, I recommend to check this area in The Arcane Conservatory. You need to take a waygate to jump across the chasm to this area. You might find a Flickergate with Void energy. This drops crafting materials or reagents you can use or auction, Undercoin x 70-83 (Warband Transferable), Resonance Crystal x 45, and some sort of Buff consumable such as the one shown below which grants you 20% movement speed outdoors for 1 hour. However, sometimes, a Ky’veza clone rare elite might spawn when you click that Flickergate. I also recommend to check that entire hallway marked in the map below and go to the end of that stairway — as there might be a hidden Sturdy Chest there for the 4 Treasure Chests achievement or a Mislead Curiosity with Resonance Crystals or other stuff.
The Flickergate might appear in different locations of the Delve, though. In another run, I found it in the Lower Chamber on the stairway.
Why are the K’aresh Delves important to run? Well, these Delves are a good source of Runed Ethereal Crest which you need in Season 3 to upgrade items up to iLevel 694-704 when you complete a Delve Tier 8-11, and you might be rewarded an Ethereal Strands, or one of the new Curios for Brann Bronzebeard.
Why are Ethereal Strands important? Well, you need 3 of them to unlock the next Phase Dive upgrade. Talk to Hashim to upgrade your Reshii Wraps cloak — at /way 50.3 36.3 in the Overlook Zo’Shuul. A small island floating north of the Eco-Dome: Primus.
Reshii Wraps Upgrades
You need the Ethereal Strands currency that drops from the Delve’s Boss caches to unlock each of the Reshii Wraps upgrades. Each upgrade requires Ethereal Strands x 3.
Boon of the Reshii: Imbue more energy into your Reshii Wraps, enhancing its power. Unlock the power for the wraps to attune to your specialization granting you Ethereal Reaping: Your harmful spells and abilities have a chance to focus latent energies around you to inflict Arcane damage split between your target and nearby enemies. Enemies below 35% health take 20% additional damage.
Secrets of the Depths: Imbue more energy into your Reshii Wraps, enhancing its power. An ethereal presence now lingers in Khaz Algar Delves, revealing secret rooms. You may now find phase orbs that increase your primary stat while Phase Diving. Phase orbs have a chance to recover a Phase-Lost appearance.
Orbs of Power: Imbue more energy into your Reshii Wraps, enhancing its power. Enemies killed while Phase Diving now have a chance to phase orb that increase your primary stat. Phase orbs have a chance to recover a Phase-Lost appearance. You may now ride Phase-Lost Slatebacks when Phase Diving. (The tooltip doesn’t mention how. Just click your Mount icon — whichever you use to fly or ride and it spawns instead of your regular mount. It’s a ground-only mount.)
What Lies Beyond: Imbue more energy into your Reshii Wraps, enhancing its power. You can now see treasures in K’aresh while Phase Diving.
Regalia of the Reshii: Imbue more energy into your Reshii Wraps, enhancing its power. Unlock the appearances of the Reshii Cowl and Reshii Scrolls.
