The Titan city of Ulduar is located in the north of Stormpeaks in Northrend. There are three main ways to reach it:

1. From Dalaran

Dalaran can easily be reached from the Shrine in the Vale in Pandaria. Mages can teleport and you can buy the Ring of the Kirin Tor so non-mages can teleport there.

Once there you fly north-north-east to Ulduar

On the way keep an eye out for the Time-Lost Proto Drake, although given the way its spawn points are camped that’s a bit of a lost cause!

2. Argent Tournament

Another way to reach Ulduar is the Argent Crusader’s Tabard, costing 50 Champion’s Seals. It teleports you to the Argent Tournament in Icecrown Citadel. From there it is a short flight to the east to reach Ulduar.

3. Engineering

Engineers can use Wormhole Generator: Northrend to teleport to the front door of Ulduar! Select the Stormpeaks option to reach there.

Mimiron’s Head only drops from Yogg-Saron in 25 player mode, with no keepers helping you.Normally this would mean running the entire raid in 25 player mode. With a well geared level 100 it doesn’t take that much longer to run in 25 player mode than in 10. And if you’re chasing the Ulduar Legendary – Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings – the Fragments of Val’anyr only drop in 25 player mode.

However, you can speed things up a little bit by running Ulduar in 10 player mode, only switching to 25 player for Yogg-Saron at the end.

To really speed things up, clear Ulduar until the gate of ancient keepers unlocks – so the keepers have been defeated – and the way to General Vezax is open. You can then use that alt each week to skip most of Ulduar, only doing General Vezax on 10 and then switching to 25 for Yogg-Saron.

Ulduar is the first raid Blizzard started to experient with hard modes – here you had to do something specific to activate the hard mode of the boss. eg:

• Flame Leviathan: talk to Norgannon instead of Brann
• XT-002 Deconstructor: destroy its heart
• Hodir: kill him fast enough so he doesn’t smash the 2nd chest
• Thorim: force him into the arena within 3 minutes of starting the fight
• Freya: don’t kill any of the elders
• Mimiron: press the Big! Red! Button!
• General Vezax: let the Saronite Animus spawn
• Yogg-Saron: don’t ask any keepers to help you

Ulduar is the only place this type of hard mode was put in place – for all the raids after this Blizzard had the explicit heroic mode and then added the mythic mode in Warlords of Draenor.

Since the 7.x Legion pre-patch was released there appears to be a new way to skip the earlier bosses in Ulduar completely!

The first teleporter at the alliance base camp is already active when you enter and has a single option – “Teleport to the Ulduar Tram”

This lets you skip past Flame Leviathan, XT and Kologarn by letting you board the train to the Spark of Imagination where Mimiron is.

Once you’ve killed Mimiron you can teleport back to the Ulduar Tram and then run back through Mimiron’s trash to the other keepers.

The only downside to this method is the way the teleporter locations unlock with boss kills; eg because Flame Leviathan hasn’t been killed the teleports to the base camp isn’t available.

This means that once you’re down in the instance you must hearthstone/similar to get out.

Before going into the bosses, first a word about Ulduar itself.Its a beautiful raid instance. It has a varied design through the raid – each watcher has their own theme – and the Titan theme in general makes for a nice environment to raid in.

Whilst you’re there, take a moment to look around, especially in the antechamber. And always look up – there are some lovely paintings on the ceilings!

There are some awesome stained glass windows
There is even a train – to Mimiron’s area naturally!
There are two of the most awesome doors in the game and a lovely corridor

The walk down to Algalon the Observer – not covered here as you don’t need to kill for the mount – is lovely, with nice views of Azeroth and other worlds; that walk is shown in the bottom right image in the last row above.

The whole feel of Ulduar is epic and I don’t think Blizzard have really matched its aesthetics and scale in all of the raids we’ve had since then.

This is the view you have on entering Ulduar – a staging ground where you can mount, repair, etc. There is an orge on the far right of the staging ground you can repair at.

To the far left you can speak to Brann to activate normal mode Flame Leviathan; if you speak to the more obvious Norgannon you’ll activate the hard mode version of this fight.

Once the boss is activated the vehicles become usable; when soloing I prefer to use demolishers as they make short work of the boss. The demolisher abilities are:

1. Hurl Boulder: use often on the mobs!
2. Hurl Pyrite Barrel: save for the boss
3. Ram: use on mobs too close for Hurl Boulder

To reach the boss area, head down the ramp Brann is at the top of and then just keep on going:

You can pretty much ignore the mobs here – just keep on rolling. Don’t bother killing anything yet.

Once you reach the end of the route, turn and kill off the chasing mobs. Followed by the mobs infront of the gate. Killing the pair of Ulduar Colossus will summon the boss.

Don’t be tempted to attack the boss before it activates – you can bug the fight out. Once its up and has targetted you, start to throw pyrite barrels onto it – it’ll die after the 3rd/4th barrel!

XT-002 Deconstructor, the boss with the best emotes which caused a wipe the first time my raid team encountered him, is a giant robot.

XT is a simple right – it has so little health compared to our damage at level 100 it dies in just a hit or two.

Once the boss is dead the teleporter opens up; you need to use it and select “Antechamber of Ulduar”

When you enter the antechamber, run to the end of the corridor and go up the stairs. There you’ll find an impassible chasm, until you walk over the red line in the image below

This summons the boss. Just nuke his body.

When the boss dies, his body becomes a bridge over the chasm.

Once over the chasm, you’ll have this view into the heart of Ulduar. From here you’ll access the keepers – the four beings who control access to Yogg’Saron. Who Loken then corrupted – the quests in Stormpeaks goes over the full story here; its not short, but it is quite a nice tale which is woven. Even if [redacted] and we have to come into Ulduar to make amends!

I tend to use the order:

1. Auriaya
2. Hodir
3. Thorim
4. Freya
5. Mimiron

Whilst not a keeper, Auriaya’s death opens up the teleporter at the entrance to Freya’s room which allows for easy access to Mimiron.

Once you have defeated a keeper and they’re standing around the observation platorm, do not speak to them – if you request their aid in the Yogg-Saron fight the mount will not drop!

Auriaya patrols the walkway around Yogg-Saron’s prison.

Just nuke.

The first of the keepers we’ll face. The route to reach him is shown above.

The trash has some gotchas. The piles of snow spawn ~5-6 worms over time if you go near them. And the packs of elementals need to have the Winter Revenants killed first; when they go into combat they apply a 90% damage reduction shield to the mobs with them.

Hodir himself is just a case of nuking down – you can ignore the frozen NPCs now, unless you’re after achievements.

Thanks to our increased DPS you’ll always have the hard mode loot from Hodir.

Thorim is the next boss up and requires a bit of running to handle! Before the start of the fight Thorim is watching a gaggle of NPCs fight a Jormungar. Unfortunately he isn’t targetable on his balcony – we have to encourage him down.

The fight starts when you spoil Thorim’s fun by killing the NPCs and Jormungar; this part can be a bit buggy, with mobs insta-respawning and the like. Once the mobs are dead and Thorim starts to monologue about remembering you from the mountains, run an pull the lever highlighted below:

You’ll now need to run the route shown below; kill the large mobs at each of the doors to allow you to carry on.

Avoid the center of the corridor when running to Thorim – there are traps which stun!

Hit Thorim once and you’ll send him to the arena. Follow him down and nuke him down. You’ll have likely enabled the hard mode and so get that loot as well.

The entrance to Freya’s room; you can mount up inside so if you’ve got a mount with a vendor on it, now is a great time to clear up bags!

Freya herself is a fairly simple “Just nuke” fight. You can ignore the elders here.

The fastest way to reach Mimiron is to use the teleporter at the entrance to Freya’s room – picking “Spark of imagination“. Ths option will only be available if you’ve killed Auriaya. The next corridor along from Freya’s will take you there as well, going via Trash and other mobs, to a train to Mimiron’s area.

There are two ways to start Mimiron; one is to just tag the boss. The other is to hit the Big Red Button with the “Do not push sign on it; that starts Mimiron’s hard mode where there will be lots and lots of fire.

Phase one, you face a tank; just nuke it.

Phase two, you face a turret. Just nuke it… but dodge the rockets!

Phase three, you face a flying head which has the same model as the mount we’re chasing here. Melee will need a ranged attack to do damage or you should wait until an assault bot spawns, kill it and then use the magnetic attractor it drops.

In the final stage all of the previous parts come together to make V0-L7R-0N. Each part has its own health bar and you’ll need to kill all three parts within ~10 seconds otherwise they’ll regenerate.

Once Mimiron is dead head back to the teleporter and go to the “Shattered Walkway”

Once you’ve seen the zonewide emote along the lines of “The gate of ancient keepers unlocks” the way to General Vezax and Yogg-Saron will be open! The corridor to use is behind Freya.

The trash can be handled easily; the faceless ones next to General Vezax will start to walk towards you once the trash pack roughly in front of each has been killed.

And now for the main event, Yogg-Saron. This is an execution fight, with your sanity as a key resource – go insane and its game over! If you’re on 10 player mode, the first job is to change to 25 player mode.

1. Use the teleporter after General to go back to the base camp
2. Leave the instance, set to 25 player
3. Go back in and teleport back to the prison of Yogg-Saron

The fight starts once you enter the room where Sara is standing

To get out the first phase we need to bring Sara’s health down to zero – tricky given she’s friendly to us!

We have to kill the Guardians of Yogg-Saron on top of Sara; they explode on death and reduce her health. They respawn at set times, but you can increase their spawn rate by running through the clouds of green gas which are floating around.

Once Sara is “dead” phase two starts and we get to see Yogg-Saron itself, but with a immunity shield. We’ll also have a few tenticles this phase to handle.

The most important mechanic in phase 2 is sanity; it is a debuff you’ll get when the fight starts. It starts at 100 and mechanics in the fight reduce the stacks. If it reaches zero you’ll be mind controlled by Yogg-Saron – for soloing that means the fight is over.

If you have to wipe then getting your sanity to zero is the fastest way to do so; easiest when the brain room is accessible.

• Kill the corruptor tenticles as fast as possible – the debuffs they put on you are nasty!
• Constrictor tenticles grab you; you’ll need an instant cast spell to kill them
• Crusher Tenticles reduce the damage you do so should die

The only way to leave this phase is to go into Yogg-Saron’s brain and get it below 30% health. The portals to the brain room spawn every 1½ minutes or so, with Yogg-Saron giving the emote “Madness will consume you!” when the portals open.

Whilst you’re waiting for the portals to spawn, run around and kill an tenticles which spawn. You’ll find that a Constrictor tenticle will spawn just before the brain portal does so have something ready for that.

In the brain, you can spawn in one of three historical events:

• The assassination of King Llane
• The forging of the Demon Soul
• The torture of Bolvar by the Lich King

To escape the brain room you have to kill all of the yellow NPCs and then go back to the brain to nuke it down. The layout of all three events is shown below; the brain is in the center and is always at your back when you spawn in the room.

In the forging of the demon soul the mobs are dragons. In the torture of Bolvar they are groups of cultists. In Stormwind for the assassination of King Llane the mobs look like guards:

Whilst killing the NPCs you must watch out for the skulls in the room – especially if your sanity is getting low. If you face the skulls you’ll quickly loose sanity. The image below is from when I was using this mechanic to go insane after going AFK and finding one too many tenticles up!

Once the yellow mobs have been defeated you can go back into the brain room – basically head back to where you spawned and keep going! The view into the brain room is:

In the unlikely event you have to escape the room before the 60 second induce madness cast is completed, there is a portal:

Once you get the brain below 30% phase three will start and you’re in the brain room at the time – which, if solo, you will be – you’ll be ejected out into the main area; just nuke Yogg-Saron down.

The only mechanic to be aware of is Lunatic Gaze which takes a lot of sanity off if you’re facing the boss as its channeled. However you’ll kill Yogg-Saron its likely you’ll not even see a cast of it.

It is in this final phase you can put the fragments of Val’anyr into Yogg-Saron when the deafening roar is cast – this happens a bit into the fight so if you’re trying to complete Val’anyr you’ll need to not DPS the boss and avoid the Lunatic Gaze.

I should note that things can get interesting if you let the tenticles build up; the below was taken when I was called away from the game during the fight. I came back to my character shrunk down to a tiny size and ended up having to make myself insane to reset the fight!

Good luck with getting the mount!