Quick Facts

Series

1.	The Black Morass
2.	The Opening of the Dark Portal

Screenshots

Videos

Comments

Comment by 14245

The Black Morass

Strategy

As you enter the instance you will encounter three types of mobs (Spiders, Crocs, and Stealthed Cats) and all of these mobs are non-elites. As you move forward in the instance you will see Medivh surrounded by a red casting effect. The event will start the minute you get near Medivh, so avoid him until your group has cleared a good distance around Medivh of all three types of mobs. This gives you and your party room to move safely about during the event.

Once cleared of crocs, spiders, and cats make sure you are full-buffed and have your consumeables ready. Move close to Medivh to start the event. On the top center of your screen you will see a percentage of remaining shield left on Medivh and a Rift Status Counter. Your objective is to keep Medivh's shield from reaching zero percent and destroy what comes through each of the 18 Rifts.

Rift 1/18 will spawn somewhere in the woods surrounding Medivh. First, an elite Rift Keeper will come out and channel a spell near the Rift to keep it open. As long as the Rift Keeper is alive, the Rift stays open. As long as the rift stays open, more non-elite dragonflight will spawn from the Rift and head towards Medivh. One person in your party is to crowd control the non-elites and prevent them from hitting Medivh. Your main tank is always on the Rift Keeper until it dies. The Rift Keeper is channeling, mind you, so your party moves to each Rift as they spawn and tanks them there. Slay the Rift Keeper and finish the non-elites. There is time to drink between each Rift if you do this efficiently and quickly.

Each Rift will spawn somewhere in the woods surrounding Medivh. Rinse repeat with the elite Rift Keeper and non-elites.

However, there will be Bosses on Rift number 6, 12, and finally Rift 18. Non-elites will continue to spawn from the rifts as these are open so continue preventing them from reaching Medivh. After each boss kill there is a significantly longer time to res dead, drink, or prepare.

Boss explanation

1st Boss - Casts a magical slowing debuff (dispellable). Aoe knockback. Spank and tank.
2nd Boss - Puts a debuff on your main tank (much like Kurinaxx) that reduces healing effects by 10% each stack. Obviously, this is a very heavy dps fight so you burn him as fast as possible. This is the only time when your crowdcontrol does not crowdcontrol and instead does damage to the boss.
3rd Boss - Hits like a truck and uses Time Stop (Much like Chromaggus). If you are a healer, you will get time-stopped and your tank will drop health fast. Shielding when time-stop wears off is efficient and as are HoT's (Heal over Time ). No non-elites come out of the 18th Rift so your crowdcontrol should be dps'ing.

After the 3rd boss is down, you are done with Black Morass. Talk to Medivh, complete your quest, and get your Karazhan key. Good luck.

Comment by Tetris

Each person in your party will also get a Chrono-becon, make sure everyone has one. We saved ours for the bosses. And only had to pop 1 of them around the 10th rift to get mana back up and help cc the mobs. We had a priest, rogue, warrior, shaman, mage. The Rogue and Shaman burned down the elite Rift Keepers, while the mage took care of the assassins. Also the Rift Keepers do reset if you drag them to far from the portals, and I beleive that the Rifts are on a timer so if you take to long on 1 Rift Keeper another portal will spawn no matter what.
Soemthing to note if you fail or wipe during the event and Medivh dies then you can not complete the quest, and you will have to reset the instance in order to complete the quest. Have an order planed out on who will be poping their Chrono-becon at what ever time. If you can save one for the 2nd and the last boss you will have no problem with either of them. The summoned dragons don't last very long but they keep agro very well when they do appear.

Comment by 17777

Insane encounter. My group tonight made it to the 2nd boss...

Group setup: Me (Balance Druid) healing, Prot warrior, rogue, mage and a Feral Druid offtanking.

Meh, will come back with another Prot warrior, a holy priest and uber dps :P

Comment by Bethek

When i tryed this, using the Chrono-becon didn't help in the slighest on the boss fight. Well, it would do, against the spawns, but not directly against the boss. Upon summoning the Dragon, the boss decided to 1-shot it before he turned his attention back onto the tank...

The Chrono-becon does however have a cast radius, much like an AOE spell, so should be placed near to or over Medivh, to prevent the non-elites burning down the sheild...

Comment by ezzy

Simplest to use the beacon when boss fights are stretching or if the adds get out of hand, so you can spare another dps on the boss instead of CC. Just place it near Medivh's dome to the side the adds are coming from. Hunters can CC with frost traps and deal with the adds alone. Whelps need some AOE.

Comment by 24647

completing this event - probably the most fun i had playing the expansion thus far.

my group composed of warrior, healing pally, fire mage, afflic lock, healing druid. druid was the main healer, pally off-tanked and healed as needed while working on adds. mage and lock had full dps on elites, while mage AOEd dragon whelps and lock put up DOTs on adds to help the pally from time to time.

didn't wipe a single time. just requires a good team make-up (right classes, know your role) and teamwork.

having trouble with 2nd boss? *hint* use felhunter as pet if you're a lock.

Comment by MattHock

RE: Beacons at Bosses:

If you're using a beacon to clear trash during a boss so it doesn't get Medivh (a good use for one of them on the second boss), make sure it's out of aggro range of the boss - the bosses can despawn the beacon dragons. However, they can only do so one at a time. Hence, if you spawn all of your dragons simultaneously, you will keep part of them up for a good long time before he manages to despawn them all, giving you a significant advantage in the fight.

Comment by 3693

With a good group, this was the most fun I've had since the warlock epic mount fight in DM West. With a bad group it just gets very painful because there is zero space for people that don't haul their weight. As an affliction warlock it was relatively easy for me to solo all the adds with occasional renews from the priest - just dot and fear, then go back to dpsing the elite. The groups of three whelps were the most difficult because I'd still be scrambling for the third to dot while the first two were on me, then Howl of Terror. Fortunately there are no whelp groups after the 12th portal.

Comment by 39357

This is a VERY fun, yet difficult event. It requires a group that knows how to play their class. I did this quest lastnight with:

Warlock(Two of them, I am a Lock), Hunter, Priest, Warrior.

I put a SS on the priest, and the other warlock put a SS on the Tank(Neither used them though). The hunter was incharge of the adds, I am affliction spec, as the dragons and welps ran by, I would DoT them making it easier for the hunter to kill.

During the bosses, on the 6, 12, and 18th wave - We all ignored the dragons and nuked the boss - after the boss was dead one of us used the beacon to kill the remaining adds.

Overall, If you have a good group - This is not a hard quest to do. I found it fun actually. Personally, I really can't imaging a PUG having the success that we had.

Comment by 42449

Playing as a warlock.. get a sense of the timing of when the whelps come out of the rift. Dump a seed of corruption on the elite (rift lord), and immediately start casting a second seed.

With the elite taking as much dps as it should be, the seed will explode almost immediately, and your second one will wipe out all three whelps easily before they have any chance to cause any trouble.

Worked beautifully for me in our run.

Comment by 59882

You can wait at the 16th rift not taking rift mob and just doing adds until the 18th rift when the 16 and 17 will despawn.

Comment by 60779

Do we receive the Chrono-beacon upon accepting this quest? Because I've accepted the quest but I don't have the beacon.

Comment by 112686

I did Black Morass four times in the same four hours with a different group.

First group: Warlock, warlock, hunter, half-holy spec'd priest, druid tank .
We wiped on the 10th rift. Wiped again on the 8th rift.

Second group: Warlock, hunter, warrior, full-resto spec'd druid, druid tank.
We wiped on the 12th rift at the boss. We then stuck to the plan of "Ignore the adds and put all dps on the boss, then when the boss is dead, use a guardian." And it worked perfectly.

Then we got to the 18th rift, and for this one, you'll need a GREAT healer. At times, my meter went so low you couldn't see any green that I had, but my healer healed me as quickly as freakin' possible. And we made it. :D

Good luck to everybody else. I found this challengeing and frustrating.

Comment by 125647

If you're running this with a kara geared group to attune an alt, after the 2nd boss you can drop a beacon at each portal after it opens and everyone will get a break to get ready to blast the last boss full throttle. Did this today and the last set of portals plus boss took about 6-7 minutes.

Comment by 10395

As a point of interest, this is one of the 9 quests in World of Warcraft that give the most experience in game, as far as I can tell at least.

List available here.

Comment by Darkmanian

This dungeon is reasonably easy on normal mode with any type of geared tank and a few good dps at 70-80.

CC is a big factor though and you want to try and kill the elite guarding the portals asap to prevent more adds hitting Medivh's area.

Basically a tank n' spank event and as long as you have a mage or hunter on babysitting / dps elite guardian duty you'll be fine.

Comment by hpavc

Lol, I would hope so are all the 68 instances easy at 70-80?

Comment by vixis

Counts for Loremaster of Kalimdor.

Comment by 300729

Soloed as 80 ele shaman today (normal mode). I imagine palis and possibly druids could do the same. The 2nd boss is the main challenge since that heal debuff can suck once it gets to 5 stacks. Just be sure you heal a lot when he has his crazy haste buff. You'll probably save bloodlust for this fight. I used my beacon after I finished that guy. 1st and last boss are real easy though.

Normal portals aren't very tough. With enough dps you can get each down with them only spawning one pack of adds per portal. I suggest hitting them with a spell as they emerge so they don't go over to medivh. only time any adds ever got to medivh was on the second boss, so they shouldn't pose too much of an issue.

If you're going for The Keymaster achievement doing the quests for escape from durnholde and the ones here should get you more than enough rep to reach honored (you get 8000 rep from the last quest in the chain).

Comment by 341090

Soloed this this morning as a lvl 80 Death Knight. Was quite... interesting... to do on your own, frankly I'm surprised I made it. It also took nearly half an hour.

That said the only real challenge was right near the end when 2 portals open at the same time and I wondered how the hell I was going to hit both the lords AND keep Medivh alive whilst he opened the last 2 portals (and god does he take his time about it!) I opted for standing near him and hoped that he'd open them before the 2 lords decided to come and be friendly.

I kind of wimped out as the huge dragon appeared right at the end and went for Army of the Dead, taking him out in seconds.

I was really surprised when I got 8800 rep for this as well as a further 250 when I went to speak to the child outside the instance. Nice for levelling my TK rep. Just need to work out how to get the last 24K to exalted now...

Comment by 226817

I just decided that my lvl 80 hunter (mostly Naxx 25 geared) will become Master of elixirs which forced me to do this quest / instance. It is relatively easy if you are extreme solo specced and have the right pet. I used heavy BM build, 62/9/0 - be sure to pick all pet defensive talents and I used crocolisk as a pet (talent tree here ). Also be sure to have these glyphs: Mending and Bestial Wrath

Strat: After pulling The elite at each rift, put down a Frost trap close to an elite mob for case that crocolisk´s Thunderstomp misses some adds. Beware not to put in water. Like this your pet should get a grab of every spawn add and if not, just Misdirect the add to your pet. Burn down the elite, occasionally heal your pet - but you will not have do it often because it heals itself quite a lot. Pop Bestial Wrath and Kill command whenever they are up...

This works for every portal, bosses included.

Comment by 103586

This was a piece of cake as a reasonably well geared (about mostly 200 epics with a few Ulduar pieces thrown in) feral DPS druid. I just positioned myself between the rifts and Medivh and swiped/mangled/mauled the mobs down. With improved LotP I ended most fights at 100% health. The bosses were equally straightforward. The only time the shield took any damage at all was when the final boss spawned right next to it while the 18th rift was still open, but I just shifted my attention to him and there weren't even any non-elite adds during that last fight. No cooldowns, pots or heals during fights were needed.

Comment by DukeFireBird

soloed normal mode as a 80 Retadin, first boss, burned the chrono-beacon, 2nd boss burned LoH, 3rd boss, just kept my health up and burned him down, was ready with my bubble. Kept a mana potion avaliable to keep my mana up, since im using my Judgment of Light to keep me alive. quite easy now that I think about it.

Comment by azinja

For you boys n girls trying to solo it, I thought I'd share my go at it:

Level 80 Feral Druid - Unbuffed: approx. 23k armor, 26k HP, 31% crit, 3,4k Attack power. No previous experience of this instance.

Equipment: Mainly Eviscerator set, few puny purples, lowbie trinkets, etc, so nothing fancy (which is the purpose of this post - to show that even without awsome gear you can still get your key ;).)

Buffs: Self buffs (MotW + Thorns) and nibbled some delicious turkey (80AP, 40Sta).

I had no trouble on rifts 1-15 nor on the two first bosses. The few times I left a fight below ~80-90% HP I'd either eat or heal up. Then there are two simultaneous openings which I didn't notice until I saw some fiendish looking dragons messing with Medivh, which hadn't come from the rift I was standing by.

So while running around with a Rift Keeper and his minions in my back to find the other opened rift, my HP went quite low, forcing me to use my CDs. During this time I didnt have the time and health to fetch up all the dragons going after Medivh, so they managed to get his shield down to 19% before the end boss spawned.

Last boss was, well, kinda painful but doable. Took him with a few non-elites that were messing about. The fight would have gone better, obviously, if I had been at full health when engaging, and if I hadn't have my berserk, survival instincts and frenzied regen on cooldown. As it was, I was certain he would kill me someway half through, but I'm guessing Savage defense kept me alive long enough to pop Frenzied regen. I got real low on health prior to that though, with only 1-2k left.
Note to self: Don't forget potions.

Fiddling through my backpack later I saw I still had my Chrono-Beacon (I had even dragged it to the toolbar, but in the heat of the moment that was the last thing on my mind). Doh! Im guessing it would have helped a little bit at least :)

So doable solo even if your gear isn't from , but I'm glad it's done ;)

Comment by irspud

Tell me how are you able to solo it when you have to be in a group to get in?

Comment by AntiFrizzz

but from which lvl it is available with the LFG system?

Comment by Dragonsomething

Solo'd it with my unholy DK at level 80. It was a bit of a chore to have to heal so fast between rifts but the long pause inbetween the bosses and the next set of mobs really helped. *One trick, mount up after each rift keeper, boss and adds are dead, then run towards the next one. This made things quicker as the rift keepers are pretty far apart. You can usually heal using some sort of food or potion at these times but you might not get that far before the rift keeper starts sprouting those annoying mobs from their rifts. I think I used just about every type of selfhealing buff, potion and spell on myself including that neat little trinket you get when accepting the quest not to mention the 6 dalaran brownies I munched down inbetween bosses and mobs.

Comment by 656083

I have a bit of a problem with this stuff i did get achivment for it but im still missing some item for the quest i need to get 10
During the fight i only got 6 but i abandon the quest but the event doesnt start
I need help with finding where i can get them or what i shall do with this problem ! anyone out there !

Comment by Esploratore

Thanks to all who posted comments about how to solo this instance.

I found your tips particularly useful, and I will illustrate here my experience.

Level 85 arms warrior, 103k hp, 18k armor, 319 average item level.

For these reasons, I had no power problems at all, I just found difficulties being alone initially.

Following some of the tips listed here, I cleared of all of the mobs I found (crocolisks, jaguars and spiders), or almost all of them.

Then I went to medivh and as soon as the first rift keeper appeared I went there and killed him; just 52k something hp, so it took me just a few seconds to do it, just using abilities like colossus smash, slam, overpower and sometimes bladestorm.

I continued looking for rift keepers as soon as they appeared, and in case any attacker monster went to medivh, I followed them and killed them.

The portal shield went down to 88% for a mistake of mine in following escaping monsters at the begin.

The bosses weren’t a problem, neither with the second one there were escaping mobs.

The third one headed directly to medivh, so I feared he’d have destroyed the shield, but when I attacked it he turned towards me and I easily defeated him; he had about 150k hp.

Then I got a double achievement: opening of the dark portal and outland dungeonmaster.

Total time: about 20 minutes, or a bit more.

Particular notes: at every boss wave, there were 2-3 minutes of pause before the next rift keeper came.

Comment by Tinuvielle

I solo'd this instance on my lvl 80 well-geared Blood DK (going for rep and the key) and was disappointed when I failed the quest. I literally had a look on my face of "what? that's it?". I never had to heal myself once during the fights, and a couple Blood-Boil's takes care of most the whelps that annoy. But the last 6 rifts came in so fast that I didn't keep up with Medivh, and I had used my chronobeacon around rift #4 (to help with adds). Oooops.

I will be going in for solo-round #2, and this time using the chronobeacon toward the end of the rifts.

It's not the quality of the mobs that are a challenge toward the end, it's the quantity of them in short succession toward the end, draining Medivh of his energy as you're taking care of bosses from each rift. The bosses won't group together to tank and spank, though the adds will. DnD and BB pretty much takes care of the adds. The bosses make a little fuss though and stubbornly stand their ground.

Comment by Enaer

1g 53s XP->G compensation at 85.

Comment by Sephowa1

Obviously, this is stupidly easy to solo now at 85. I'm at 14k/21k revered, and grinding normal mode now to hopefully get my 40 Reps this evening.
One thing I have noticed is that I am not getting the 2/3 rep per small add kill (crocs/spiders etc) I guess this has been stealth nerfed at some point in the past.

For anyone using this instance to grind KoT rep, the worst part I would say would be the wait between waves 6&7 and 12&13.

Time to complete this instance is around 15 minutes with the long periods of downtime.

Good luck to anyone grinding KoT rep. Perseverance is a necessity XD

Comment by 1030147

Solo'd in 20 minutes on a Prot Pally level 85 nearly 393 ilvl. Easy Peasy. Entrance is in caverns of Time in Tanaris go down and enter to the far left Entrance.

Comment by THRobinson

I was a bit confused at first, didn't know where the guy was so just wandered about a bit... he's located at 48.8,72.5. Solo'd easily at lvl90 Hunter, biggest issue was waiting SO LONG for each portal to open.

Comment by 990549

How much time is supposed to pass between 16 - 18? I went AFK and even got logged out as I was waiting. *Soloing as a Lvl 90 Blood DK.*

Comment by TheRealSaiph

If you're soloing this, having one of the Water Strider mounts makes it a lot easier to move around efficiently. You can clear trash, chase adds and get to the portals to kill the rift keepers much more easily.

Links

The Opening of the Dark Portal

Sa'at inside the Black Morass of the Caverns of Time has tasked you with defending Medivh until he succeeds in opening the Dark Portal.

Return to Sa'at should you succeed in your task.

	The Dark Portal Opened (1)

Provided item:

	Chrono-Beacon (1)

Description

Beyond this timeway the Guardian, Medivh, feverishly works to open the Dark Portal.

Scattered across the morass, rifts will materialize. Infinite will pour out of the rifts and attempt to destroy Medivh's shields and, ultimately, Medivh.

Kill their rift lords and leaders! Do this until Medivh succeeds.

Progress

Completion

Rewards

You will be able to choose one of these rewards:

	Band of the Guardian			Time-Bending Gem
	Keeper's Ring of Piety

You will be able to choose one of these rewards:

	Andormu's Tear

You will also receive:

Gains

Upon completion of this quest you will gain:

500 reputation with Keepers of Time

See if you've already completed this by typing:

/run print(C_QuestLog.IsQuestFlaggedCompleted(10297))