I
Forge a hero
On the menu, Create Character: any of eight races for any class, with the client's own faces, hair and markings, or Randomize. A player
keeps up to ten characters, and each sets out in a set of Westfall greens.
There's no levelling to grind. Everyone fights at level 60; what grows is your gear, your keystone and, inside a run, your boons.
II
Muster at Sentinel Hill
Enter Player Hub and you stand inside the palisade on Sentinel Hill. Other players are there too: whisper, invite, trade stories. The quartermaster, the blacksmith, the
enchanter and the boon trainer wait for you, all with a right-click or a tap.
A new hero is offered a narrated tour of the hill first. The rail on the right edge holds your bag, your shards, your keystone and your score.
III
Touch the Meeting Stone
The stone lists every dungeon open to you, with your best key in each. Alone, press Enter. Leading a party, start a Ready check: once everyone is ready, all of you go in
at the leader's keystone.
Three dungeons are on its list, the Deadmines, Shadowfang Keep and Zul'Farrak, and more are on the way.
IV
Take a kiss, and its curse
At the entrance the leader is dealt three of fourteen pacts. Each gives you a kiss and the run a curse, and adds 15 to 25% to the shards everyone brings home. Take any of them, or
none, and press Begin.
The offer closes on its own when the first fight starts.
V
Into the dungeon
Packs stand and patrol, call for help and run at low health, and here they don't give up the chase. Each dungeon keeps its own events: the Defias Cannon blows the Deadmines' Iron
Clad Door, Shadowfang Keep's levers open its cells, and in Zul'Farrak you free Sergeant Bly's crew and hold the pyramid's stairs against three waves of trolls.
A red ring on the ground is an enemy's area spell: step out of it.
VI
Choose your boons
Every level-up, every boss and the odd elite's drop offers three boons. Pick one: it lasts the rest of the run, through deaths too. Now and then a card glows: an Echo of the
Future, a spell from today's World of Warcraft, yours for the run.
The fight goes on while you choose, so choose quickly.
VII
Fell the last boss
Edwin VanCleef on his ship in the Deadmines, Archmage Arugal in his lair in Shadowfang Keep, Chief Ukorz Sandscalp in Zul'Farrak. The last boss's death clears the dungeon; you
don't have to kill every pack on the way.
Dead heroes stay down until someone resurrects them or they Release Spirit back to the entrance.
VIII
Open the chest, raise the key
The chest holds five items and a piece of jewellery for each of you, uncommon or rare and now and then epic, sometimes an enchanting formula and
reagents too, and you can give yours to anyone who was there. Clear with deaths to spare and the leader's keystone climbs by up to three.
Then Return to Sentinel Hill, spend your shards and go again, deeper.