League 4

# League 4: Trials of Azeroth

Watch the League 4 Overview Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5L\_aGhAoVU

# Overview

League 4 is the current league on Project Ascension. It released May 26th, 2023, and focuses on revitalizing the Open World, introducing new Hardcore elements to the game, and experimenting with new systems. League 4 is the first league where you can pay as the Original 9 Classes in Ascension's custom Vanilla+ environment, and is a transition from Classless WoW to the more universal Custom WoW. It also is the first appearance of the new Hardcore Trial system, which serves as Ascension's version of Hardcore WoW.

Read the full article here: https://ascension.gg/news/league-4-complete-overview/410

## Open World Focus

League 4 focuses primarily on the Open World, restoring Azeroth to its former glory and providing new ways to reinvigorate your adventure. As such, heroes can progress entirely by adventuring through Azeroth, leveling up and getting end-game gear through new systems and events:

* Hardcore Trials
* Scourge and Legion Invasions

Additionally, dozens of changes that revitalize the open world arrive with this League:

* Restored the original Health, Damage, and armor of Monsters
* Upgraded Draw Distance and performance settings
* AI Quest Voices
* Level Scaling Zones and enhanced loot based on level
* Gathering and Crafting Overhaul
* Hotspot Upgrades

League 4 invites Heroes to rediscover Azeroth, completing Hardcore Trials, fighting off Invasions, and making their own adventures through interacting with other players in the Open World.

## 3 Ways to Play

League 4 offers 3 unique ways to play:

* Free Pick
* Build Draft
* The Original 9 Classes

### Free Pick

Free Pick allows you to choose your own spells, talents, and mystic enchantments to craft a unique hero and tackle Azeroth's challenges. League 4's free pick features the Ability Gems seen on League 3's Mal'ganis, Build your hero, choose your abilities, and dominate your foes!

Additionally, League 4's free pick arrives with two big additions:

#### Mastery Upgrades

* All spells within a mastery are now 1AE down from 2AE, and Masteries now cost 1 AE.

This opens up more abilities for your chosen masteries, and you’ll have the ability to pick up different options to deal with different situations. This leads to emergent gameplay: those moments where you need to adapt to a unique situation on the fly, rather than tackling every situation the same way.

This is an upgrade for Heroes looking to get multiple spells within the same mastery to deal with unique situations. And if you only want 1 ability within a mastery, the cost is the same as before.

#### NEW ABILITIES

Additionally, Fifteen new spells arrive on Free Pick to enhance your Hero. These will be available on League 4, and will additionally come to Thrall with TBC.

* Flame Ascendance
* Cloudburst Totem
* Divine Star
* Frozen Orb
* Meteor
* Mass Invisibility
* Gloomblade
* Angelic Feather
* Grappling Hook
* Roll the Bones
* Ironfur
* Light of Dawn
* Flourish
* Sundering
* Void Eruption

### Build Draft

Build Draft arrives as a groundbreaking new feature that captures the limitless potential of free pick, allowing you to fully harness it with the click of a button. Build draft streamlines and focuses the progression of building your classless hero: it’s a shift to playing your character rather than setting it up. With Build Draft, you’ll pick a build, get everything you need, and start your adventure immediately.

To start Build Draft, speak to Stony Tark and choose it. Then, select between Tank, Healer, or DPS. Once you do, you’ll pick between three curated cross-class builds. Make your choice, and your adventure begins.

As you level up, you’ll automatically learn both spells and talents, and any Mystic Enchantments you need are applied straight to your gear. You don’t have to find them, or extract them, or apply them: you just get them. And if you get the build to level cap, you’ll automatically unlock all the Enchantments used straight to your collection. This opens up a brand new way to collect entire sets of Mystic Enchantments at once.

When you choose a Build Draft, you’ll know for certain that you’re getting a great build. This lets you jump into the adventure faster and puts the focus on playing. Additionally, it’s a great way to try builds you might never have thought to play knowing that they’ll be powerful and effective.

* The best way to learn new builds and archetypes
	+ Choose between 3 complete, hand curated builds
	+ Pick 1
	+ Start your adventure
* Mystic Enchantments are auto-applied to your gear
	+ Stay even if you swap gear
* Removes friction from starting your adventure
* Try new builds!
* Unlock entire sets of Mystic Enchants in your collection at once.

#### Featured Builds

With the upgraded Featured Builds tab, you can instantly load up a complete build of your choice specifically designed to be played from level one all the way into end-game. Just like Build Draft, you’ll automatically learn all of the necessary spells, talents, and mystic enchants you need as you level up. Additionally, all build draft builds will show up in the featured builds tab, so if you know what archetype you want to play you can pick it directly.

### The Original 9 Classes

In League 4, you’ll be able to choose to experiment with any one of the original 9 classes integrated into Ascension. Warrior, Mage, Rogue, Hunter, Shaman, Priest, Warlock, Paladin, Druid: play your favorite classic class and tackle Ascension’s custom Vanilla+ environment.

The Original 9 Classes have no restrictions to content, however they are experimental. They may not be able to clear late-game content, which is tuned to give Classless Heroes a challenge.

## Hardcore Trials

Hardcore Trials arrive to expand your adventures and provide limitless ways to challenge Azeroth. This new system is Ascension’s take on Hardcore 1 Life mods for Classic WoW, and aims to provide a unique, fresh experience to your adventure whether you’re playing solo or with friends.

Hardcore Trials bring your nostalgic adventures into a new age, imbuing them with new life. Heavily inspired by the current hardcore community and iterating on our Ironman mode introduced 3 years ago in Season 4, Trials are curated sets of rules and challenges that add danger and excitement to your adventure. If you complete this set of challenges, you’ll earn stylish rewards that show off your skill, but if you die, ~~you die in real life~~ your character is dead forever.

There are 3 broad categories of Trials:

* Hardcore
	+ 1 Life Challenges!
	+ This is the same as our previous Survivalist mode introduced in Season 4, but renamed to be more understandable.
	+ Grouping with other hardcore.
* Ironman
	+ Solo Self-Found
	+ No grouping
	+ No help from external sources
* Nightmare
	+ Limited Lives
	+ Increased Difficulty

Once you reach level cap, you’ll complete the challenge, and can either choose to stay in Hardcore Mode, or you toggle off your hardcore mode. But beware: if you die before toggling it off you are *Dead Forever.*

### Trial Architect

The Trial Architect lets you create your own Trials to share with the community. Choose from hundreds of challenges, make the Trial you want and share it with the world! Other Heroes across Azeroth can then attempt to complete your trial, offering a new, unique way for the community to shape the world. Additionally, Players who create the most enticing Trials may find they end up integrated into the curated trial list!

* New Trials to Reinvigorate the World
* Choose your Ideal rules
	+ Group
	+ Solo
* Create your own Trials with the Trial Architect
* Hundreds of New Challenges
* Make the world dangerous

## Scourge and Legion Invasions

Scourge and Legion Invasions are wreaking havoc during League 4! These invasion points spawn all across Azeroth, adding danger and excitement to the open world and creating hotspots for Heroes to flock to. If you overcome them, Invasions offer epic rewards based on your participation. At level cap, these rewards are equivalent to the upgraded Call Board Caches, which offer current tier normal raid epics.

When an Invasion Point spawns, it’ll show up on your map. When it does, head to the location to challenge it. You’ll need to slay the creatures terrorizing the zone, and if you kill enough of them, you’ll spawn a Boss. Slay the Boss for big rewards!

Invasions appear in two brackets:

* 1-59 Flex
* 60

For lower level invasions, the creatures will scale to your level: ensuring all Heroes can participate in them when they spawn. They’ll award relevant loot for your level, and serve as a great way to band together, gear up, and meet new allies.

At level 60, Invasions become a primary means of progression for Heroes. Based on how much you contribute, taking down a Boss will award loot chests equivalent to the upgraded Call Board Caches! This guarantees big loot, and helps Heroes gear up during the League.

Finally, taking down Invasions will also award Argent Dawn Commendations, which you can exchange at their quartermaster for exclusive cosmetic rewards.

* Invasion Points spawn across Azeroth
* Slay hordes of Undead and Demons to summon a boss
* Take the boss down to earn current tier epic loot!
	+ From 60 Invasions
* Invasions are NOT forced PvP, but could be integrated into High Risk during the League.
* Scourge and Legion Invasions coming to Thrall!
* Scourge invasion rewards
	+ Get rewards from the chest
		- Get it based on participation
		- More chests the more you participate
	+ Get argent dawn commendations
		- Spend at the argent dawn quartermaster for cool cosmetics

## Progressing through League 4

League 4 is a two-month league with an expedited timeline, allowing any and all Heroes to leap into adventure and explore at their pace. A faster timeline ensures that content releases quickly, but there are multiple ways to catch up including:

* Personal Loot Caches
	+ These bonus chests drop every time you slay a raid boss, ensuring that every adventure into Raids is worthwhile
* Invasions
	+ Invasions at level 60 drop chests containing end-game loot
* Call Board Quests
	+ Upgraded Call Board Caches have a chance to contain epic loot up to the current tier

## High Risk Upgrades

One of League 4’s goals is to bring back High Risk Leveling and make it better than ever before. New improvements increase the value of the High Risk Open World, make adventuring into it rewarding, and clean up the end-game High Risk experience to make it great. The overarching goal is to ensure High Risk is a net benefit for Heroes who choose to venture into it, as well as simplifying the experience to get back to the core high risk, high reward dichotomy of this game mode.

### High Risk Leveling

* High Risk is now available at level 15
	+ Letting you play the way you want to play sooner
	+ Getting more in alignment the forking point between doing Battlegrounds, Dungeons, or playing in the Open World.
* High Risk now grants 10% bonus experience.
* High Risk victims while leveling will now drop gear again
	+ While leveling there is no Tier system for loot drop, this will only apply to max level, as gear permanence starts to matter more.
* You can now swap between Risk Modes in 10-20 towns

### END GAME HIGH RISK:

* No More Events: they are just always active
	+ Pivoting back to more of what worked in S7
* Drop rates are drastically increased
* Uncommon materials now stack up to 200 and are not lost on death
	+ This guarantees every adventure into the open world has a reward that matches the risk
* \*NEW\* High Risk Recipe Merchants
	+ Secret Merchants now reside all over Azeroth
	+ Sell Rare and Epic High Risk Recipes
	+ This is in addition to the existing ways to farm them (PvE)
* Greedy Demons have had a complete automated loot rework and now have improved loot that evolves during the progression of the realm.
* Crow’s Cache progression has been more seamlessly automated to ensure it always has great progression relevant drops.

New Merchants hidden throughout the world offer High Risk recipes to adventurers who find them! This helps Heroes get their hands on these essential High Risk recipes in a new way, providing more opportunities to engage with High Risk and further weave the game mode into the economy of Ascension.

### BLOODY JAR CHANGES

* It now costs Gold to convert items to Bloodforged

With the addition of new gear acquisition methods for PvE, there was a lack of balance between Soulbound and Bloodforged. This change aims to increase the value of the High Risk Open World.

Over time, there has been a significant increase in the volume of gear obtained from PVE, this had the downstream consequence of all unneeded gear being bloodied and then sold for incredibly small amounts and nullifying the open world. This change to the Bloody Jar seeks to fix this.

Finally:

* Disenchanting a High Risk item now ALWAYS results in a High Risk enchanting material

## Mythic+ Upgrades

League 4 brings two huge Mythic+ updates to Vanilla WoW:

* Upgraded Affixes
	+ Making Mythic+ Affixes balanced across multiple weeks, and make sure no week is overly punishing
* New: Mythic+ Vanilla Leveling Dungeons
	+ Your favorite Vanilla leveling dungeons can now be accessed as Mythic+ versions.

These dungeons have been tuned up to max level and feature both affixes and Mythic Champions!

Additionally, they don’t bloat the item pool with new items. This is to prevent it from being too hard to get the item that you want, keeping your Mythic+ itemization experience the same, but with new dungeons to explore. That said, you can get Heroic and Mythic 0 Versions of your favorite vanilla dungeon items, so there are a few interesting things to check out!

Mythic+ levels will be uncapped in this League. You will be able to *attempt* to progress up to Mythic+ 255 from the very first release. Although gear will remain capped relative to current progression (see the timeline to find when different levels of Mythic+ Unlock), Heroes interested in challenging themselves can push for 255 from the very beginning of the league!

Check out the League 4 article for full details: https://ascension.gg/news/league-4-complete-overview/410

## Legacy Mystic Enchantment Upgrades

In the spirit of revitilizing past glory and bringing it into the new age, League 4 brings updates to tons of Legacy Mystic Enchantments. It's too much to list here, but you can find the specific changes on the overview article.

https://ascension.gg/news/league-4-complete-overview/410

## Experimental Woodcutting

Finally, League 4 introduces the first sneak peek of the new Woodcutting Profession, which will be used for--

" Welcome to the World of Woodcutting! As a budding lumberjack, your mission is clear-cut: venture into the verdant forests and unleash your inner timber titan. Armed with an axe, you'll embark on a tree-mendous adventure, chopping down mighty oaks, towering pines, and gnarled elders. Harness the power of nature's bountiful resource and convert it into precious lumber, the lifeblood of craftsmen and builders alike. With every swing of your trusty tool, you'll harvest a treasure trove of wood, unlocking the potential for glorious rewards. From crafting materials to architectural marvels, your endeavors will shape the landscape and carve your path to greatness. So, prepare to branch out, embrace the call of the wild, and let the forest be your arboreal playground. It's time to leaf your mark on this arboreal escapade! "

* This is EXPERIMENTAL WOODCUTTING
	+ It is NOT finished, and is mostly proof-of-concept exploratory
* A new Woodcutting skill is available
	+ Every small and medium sized tree is Azeroth can now be CHOPPED
* In absence of a crafting profession to match, there will be Callboard Profession quests available to *turn wood into epic loot*.
	+ Welcome to League 4: Lumber of Azeroth