Blizzard Entertainment released two video previews of the Patch 4.2: Firelands dungeon featuring Ragnaros and the bosses: Anthricyst, Beth’tilac, and others.
The scenes display several flame wardens, fire elementals, flamewakers and firehawk thrash mobs.
The Anthricyst Plateau encounter looks pretty rough in this video. The plateau has a round shape divided in four pie-like pieces. The line dividing these pieces is a path of lava which intensives every few seconds suggesting fire damage happens if you stand near it. The Anthricyst walks slowly, so it can be kited.
Things going on in the Anthricyst event in the video:
- At the beginning of the Anthricyst scene, he launches several fire missiles off the pit beneath its head striking all the party.
- Several Flame Wardens spawn. One seems to be casting Inferno AOE.
- Anthricyst has an AOE ability similar to War Stump, but with fire instead.
- Mini-volcanos spawn? Not sure if they are there already or if they actually spawn similar to those during Black Temple: Supremus encounter.
There is a firehawk boss named Alysrazor in full armor. There was no preview of the fight against this firehawk or against the Beth’tilac spider boss, but you can at least see their idle animations. The Beth’tilac boss looks nice hanging down from what looks like a fire web ceiling.
Surprisingly, at Sulfuron Keep Courtyard is a unsuspecting boss preventing players from reaching Ragnaros. Archdruid Fandral Staghelm has somehow managed to escape, and has been empowered by Ragnaros. The video shows Fandral shapeshifting into a fiery scorpion and a fiery lion.
Within the walls of Sulfuron Keep lies Ragnaros. Two mobs resembling Magmaw stand guarding the bridge to Ragnaros’s platform, and a pit of lava surrounds the ring. It seems Ragnaros doesn’t have legs as spoiled much earlier by some websites.
Ragnaros is half submerged in the inner-ring which suggests this fight is similar to the final boss of the Sunwell Plateau: Kil’jaeden.
The Daily Quest Preview video doesn’t show quest text or anything like that. You will see different scenes of landscapes and mobs. The quests will send you to thin out the Firelands’ outer defenses no doubt.
In a field you can view Mount Hyjal guards fighting fire elementals and revenants. A scene shows the Sulfuras Keep afar, one scorpion mob is seen wandering.
The camera moves forward through the field moving toward the entrance of a cave. Within the cave there’s a massive pits of lava and some paths and bridges which remind me of Ragefire Chasm. Some light-blue runes can be seen on the ground.
Some scenes are intriguing. In the cave is a female tauren druid looking at a floating male night elf druid. The male is radiating a fire aura. It’s unknown if this is Fandral Staghelm prior to the Firelands raid encounter.
Around 1:00 is a scene showing several druid npcs, and a peak behind. On top of this peak is seen a small tree sprouting. The scene changes to show a bigger tree in the same place. Then changes again for a full grown tree with nigh-realistic green leaf foliage. It’s hard to tell or to interpret, but maybe phase technology is used to advance the initial daily quest storyline as you help in the growth of nature? Reminds me of the Worldstone temple which is phased to show progression as you bring the worldstone pieces one by one to the Earthen Ring.
At 1:25 we can see daily quest NPCs. These are night elf druids, and two Wardens — Maiev’s colleagues.
At 1:30 two firehawk mobs fly low, while a third is crawling on the ground.
At 1:40 rock spiders with fiery legs.
The video ends with some sort of ritual. Four night elves are casting fire beams toward a floating lava rock at the center of a massive fire rune. These are likely working for Fandral Staghelm. Are these night elves from the Twilight’s Hammer clan, or are they a new druid faction turned to evil? We’ll have to find out when the PTR 4.2 is deployed.
Blizzplanet is certainly going to embed some videos when PTR comes up.
I was totally surprised that Fandral is going to be a boss in the Firelands. I expected him to be a boss later, in something related to the Nightmare ; with a pet he thought was his son but was actually part of the Nightmare.