Lord Kri

Lord Kri is a giant silithid beetle and one of the three bugs of the Silithid Royalty, an optional encounter in the Temple of Ahn'Qiraj. He is always fought together with his siblings, Princess Yauj and Vem, and players usually call the fight the Bug Trio, the Bug Family or the Three Bugs. It was one of the first encounters in World of Warcraft where the order in which a raid killed the bosses changed the loot, and killing Kri last was the hard way to do it.

Background

The Silithid Royalty are the nobility of the temple's insect swarms: three huge beetles that live in a chamber off the main path, shortly after The Prophet Skeram. The game says little about them beyond their titles. Kri is the orange lord, Yauj the blue princess, and Vem the dark red one. Like all silithid in Ahn'Qiraj, they serve the qiraji and, through them, the Old God C'Thun. Their chamber is optional, so a raid can walk past it to Battleguard Sartura and come back later.

Abilities

Lord Kri

• Cleave: hits the tank and players next to him.
• [[forever:spell:25812]]: a poison volley that hits everyone near him for nature damage and leaves a stacking poison that can be cured.
• [[forever:spell:25786]]: when Kri dies, his corpse leaves a cloud of poison that deals heavy nature damage every second to anyone inside it.

Princess Yauj

• Fear: every 20 seconds or so, Yauj fears everyone near her and wipes her threat. Fear Ward and similar effects don't stop the threat loss.
• Great Heal: she heals herself, and Warcraft Wiki's strategy notes say a later patch let her heal her siblings too. It has to be interrupted.
• When she dies, a brood of small bugs bursts out of her.

Vem

• Charge and Knock Away: Vem rushes at players and knocks them back. He hits tanks lightly but hurts cloth wearers badly.
• When Vem dies, the other two enrage.

When one of the three dies, the others can devour its body to grow stronger. The whole encounter also has a hard enrage after about fifteen minutes.

Strategy

The usual kill order was Kri, then Yauj, then Vem. Each of the three gets a tank team at the start. Yauj is dragged far from the raid by two tanks who trade her back and forth: when she fears one, the other uses Berserker Rage to stay unafraid and taunts her. A spare tank waits in the middle of the room in case she runs somewhere unexpected.

Kri dies first because of his volley. Shamans drop poison cleansing totems, druids and paladins cure poison, and hunters keep up Aspect of the Wild for nature resistance. When he dies, everyone moves away from his body at once. Guides of the time also advised keeping Vem closer to Kri's body than Yauj, so that Vem devours him instead of Yauj, which helps stop Yauj's healing.

Yauj is next. Rogues and warriors interrupt her heals, and mages and other casters kill the bugs that spill out when she dies. Vem comes last and is easy on his own.

Killing them in another order changes the loot (below) but makes the fight much harder, mostly because Kri's volley stays up longer. Raids that wanted Kri's items left him for last and brought nature resistance gear for it.

Loot

Only the bug that dies last drops loot, and each has its own items. A few items are shared. From our database (patch 1.12):

The [[forever:item:21680]] was a top leather chest for rogues and feral druids, with 41 agility. The [[forever:item:21685]] grants 100 spell resistance that wears down as spells hit its wearer. Kri's items are a few item levels above Yauj's and Vem's, which is why some guilds took on the harder Kri-last order. The encounter gives only one [[forever:item:21229]] per player, whatever the order.

Sources

• Silithid Royalty, Warcraft Wiki
• Lord Kri, Warcraft Wiki