Onyxia's Lair

Onyxia's Lair is a 40-player raid in the Wyrmbog of Dustwallow Marsh, home to Onyxia, broodmother of the black dragonflight and daughter of Deathwing. It was one of the two raids in World of Warcraft at launch, alongside Molten Core. It has a single boss, and each faction needed a long attunement quest chain to enter. Onyxia drops the Tier 2 helmets, and killing her lets the raid hang her head in its capital city.

Background

Onyxia prefers manipulation to brute force. While her brother Nefarian rules Blackrock Spire as Lord Victor Nefarius, she has spent years in Stormwind City disguised as Lady Katrana Prestor, a noblewoman and advisor to the young king's regent, Bolvar Fordragon. From that position she has steered Stormwind's politics, turned the court against the Defias stonemasons and quietly helped her brother's plans.

Her true lair is a volcanic cave in the Wyrmbog, south of Theramore. The entrance is carved to look like a dragon's open mouth, and a short tunnel lined with dragonkin and whelp eggs leads to the round chamber where she sleeps. It's the smallest raid in the game: one hallway and one room.

Attunement

Before patch 3.0.2 nobody could enter without a [Drakefire Amulet] in their bags. Both factions earn it through some of the longest and best-written quest chains in the game, and both end in Blackrock Spire, where the raid must kill General Drakkisath and collect his blood.

Alliance: the Great Masquerade

The Alliance chain begins in Burning Steppes with Helendis Riverhorn at Morgan's Vigil and Dragonkin Menace. It leads through The True Masters, which sends you between Lakeshire and Stormwind Keep, where Lady Prestor brushes off your warnings. Marshal Maxwell then sends you looking for Marshal Windsor in Marshal Windsor, and you find him in the prison of Blackrock Depths. After Jail Break!, a group escort out of the Depths, you meet Windsor again at the gates of Stormwind for Stormwind Rendezvous.

The payoff is The Great Masquerade. Windsor marches through Stormwind, confronts Lady Prestor in front of Bolvar, and forces her to reveal that she is Onyxia. She kills the guards, escapes, and Windsor dies. The chain then continues with The Dragon's Eye and Drakefire Amulet for Haleh in Winterspring, who reforges the dragon's eye into the amulet once you bring back the blood of General Drakkisath.

Horde: the Champion of the Horde

The Horde chain begins with Warlord's Command from Warlord Goretooth in Blackrock Spire. Eitrigg and Thrall then send you to kill Warchief Rend Blackhand in For The Horde!. Thrall's next quest, What the Wind Carries, leads into The Champion of the Horde, where you track down Rexxar (Rexxar) as he walks the roads of Desolace. The Testament of Rexxar takes you to Myranda the Hag in the Western Plaguelands, and Oculus Illusions has you collect 20 Black Dragonspawn Eyes in Blackrock Spire so she can make a disguise. Wearing it, you pose as a black dragonflight recruit, meet the drake Emberstrife in the Wyrmbog, and work through his tests. The final step, Blood of the Black Dragon Champion, has Rexxar send you after Drakkisath's blood.

Bosses

The only other enemies are a pair of Onyxian Warders in the entrance tunnel and the Onyxian Whelps that hatch in the side caves of her chamber.

Strategy notes

Phase one (100% to 65%). The main tank turns Onyxia so her Flame Breath and Cleave point away from the raid, while everyone else stays clear of her tail, which knocks back anyone behind her. Ranged players and healers stand along the sides.

Phase two (65% to 40%). Onyxia flies into the air and circles the room, casting fireballs at random players. Every so often she takes a Deep Breath, a line of fire across the room that kills nearly anyone it hits, so the raid has to read her position and move out of the line. Whelps pour out of the side caves at the same time and have to be picked up and killed with area spells before they swarm the healers.

Phase three (40% to 0%). She lands and fights on the ground again, now with Bellowing Roar, a raid-wide fear, and eruptions from cracks in the floor that burn anyone standing on them when they flare. Priests' Fear Ward and shamans' Tremor Totem were key in this phase. Feared players running into a lava crack or into her breath accounted for many wipes.

The phase-two whelps are behind one of the game's best-known in-jokes. A widely shared voice recording of one guild wiping on this phase, with its raid leader shouting "Many whelps! Handle it!", became so famous that Blizzard used the line as an achievement name in the level 80 version of the raid.

Preparation

Onyxia was tuned for raids geared from the five-player and ten-player dungeons of the time: Blackrock Spire, Scholomance, Stratholme and Dire Maul. Many guilds killed her before they could handle Molten Core, and smaller guilds sometimes teamed up to field the 40 players. Main tanks stacked fire resistance against her breath, and every player needed a plan for the fear in phase three. Because the attunement chains end in Upper Blackrock Spire, guilds often ran "attunement nights" to bring new members up to date before a kill.

Loot

Tier 2 helmets

Onyxia drops one Tier 2 helmet per kill. Tier 2 is otherwise the Blackwing Lair set, which made her one of the few ways to start a set before patch 1.6. There's one helmet for each class: [Helm of Wrath] (warrior), [Judgement Crown] (paladin), [Helmet of Ten Storms] (shaman), [Dragonstalker's Helm] (hunter), [Bloodfang Hood] (rogue), [Stormrage Cover] (druid), [Halo of Transcendence] (priest), [Netherwind Crown] (mage) and [Nemesis Skullcap] (warlock).

Other drops

• Weapons: the sword [Vis'kag the Bloodletter], the axe [Deathbringer] and the off-hand [Ancient Cornerstone Grimoire].
• [Shard of the Scale], a healing trinket, plus [Sapphiron Drape], [Ring of Binding] and [Eskhandar's Collar].
• [Mature Black Dragon Sinew], which hunters need for the quest chain that ends in Rhok'delar.
• [Head of Onyxia] (Alliance) and [Head of Onyxia] (Horde), always dropped.

The head

Turning in the head through Victory for the Alliance or Victory for the Horde lets you choose a ring, a neck or a trinket: [Dragonslayer's Signet], [Onyxia Tooth Pendant] or [Onyxia Blood Talisman]. The follow-up quests, Celebrating Good Times at Stormwind's Valley of Heroes and For All To See in Orgrimmar's Valley of Strength, mount the head on the city gates. That gives every player nearby Rallying Cry of the Dragonslayer, a large buff to critical strike chance and attack power for two hours. Guilds timed their turn-ins so that the buff landed before their raid nights.

Scale of Onyxia

A skinner can take a [Scale of Onyxia] from Onyxia's corpse. Leatherworkers use it, with the [Pattern: Onyxia Scale Cloak], to make the [Onyxia Scale Cloak]. The cloak protects against Shadow Flame, the breath attack of Nefarian and his drakes in Blackwing Lair. Tanks there had to wear one, so a single Onyxia kill could decide who was ready for the next raid.

Quel'Serrar

Warriors and paladins could take [A Dull and Flat Elven Blade], a rare drop from Onyxia, to Lorekeeper Lydros in Dire Maul. The second part of The Forging of Quel'Serrar needs Onyxia to breathe fire on the planted blade during the fight. After that, the heated blade has to be driven into her corpse before it cools. The reward is the tanking sword Quel'Serrar.

History

Onyxia's Lair launched with the game in November 2004; Blizzard's open beta announcement that year promised players they could see "Azeroth's first true dragon". Her lockout was five days instead of Molten Core's seven, so many guilds killed her more often than they did any other boss. She was also a common first raid boss for guilds not yet ready for Molten Core. Because the fight was short and her loot table included Tier 2, she stayed on raid schedules until The Burning Crusade.

Patch 1.2.2 fixed Onyxia standing on thin air during phase two, and patch 1.3 fixed corpse markers for players who died inside. Warcraft Wiki notes that the dragon on the loading screen isn't Onyxia at all: it's a picture of Alexstrasza from the Warcraft roleplaying book Shadows and Light.

Later history

Patch 3.0.2 removed the attunement. In patch 3.2.2, for the game's fifth anniversary, Blizzard replaced the 40-player raid with a level 80 version for 10 and 25 players, with updated versions of her old loot and a new flying mount. In the lore, the comic World of Warcraft gives the canonical kill to King Varian Wrynn and his allies, who stormed the lair after she kidnapped his son Anduin Wrynn. The original 40-player version came back with World of Warcraft Classic in 2019. There, Rallying Cry became the center of "world buff" culture: guilds timed Onyxia and Nefarian head turn-ins and stacked the buffs with others, such as the one from the Heart of Hakkar, before every raid. Classic later added the Chronoboon Displacer so players could store those buffs.

Sources

• Onyxia's Lair (Classic), Warcraft Wiki
• Onyxia's Lair, Warcraft Wiki
• Onyxia's Lair Attunement, Warcraft Wiki
• Old News 2004, Blizzard Entertainment (archived)