Every season in World of Warcraft has some challenges and rewards that can only be completed within that season. For a long time this has mostly consisted of raid and dungeon challenges. Things like defeating the current raid and getting a specific rating in mythic dungeons. This season they also added a solo challenge; defeating a boss called Zekvir. It's hard as fuck, and I was able to do it on the very last day of season 1.
Solo challenges in my MMO?
Blizzard has done a lot to make World of Warcraft more accessible to the masses. It's not longer a game you have to no life to be able to enjoy. Content comes in all forms and shapes. You can do raids that takes weeks of preparation and progress to complete. You can do dungeons that take up 20-30 minutes at a time. You can do world content 1-3 minutes outside of the main hub. There's something for everyone.
With the release of the War Within expansion they also added some proper seasonal solo content to the game. Delves let players take on harder solo dungeons that has a chance of dropping heroic raid tier gear. I think it's a great addition to the game that lets people who can't play the game 24/7 also get a chance at building their character to a decent level each season. It wasn't without controversy when it released, though.
Enter Zek'vir
The ultimate challenge for the delve content is defeating Zek'vir on the ?? difficulty. This is a special delve that becomes accessible after defeating all delves up to tier 11. You'll then get access to Zekvir's Lair at ? and ?? difficulty. The question mark in World of Warcraft signals that the enemy is at a higher level than you and is used for most raid and world bosses.
Zekvir can be taken down in a group but the ultimate challenge is to take him down alone. This gives you both an achievement and a mount that is only obtainable during season 1, which ended yesterday. I haven't played World of Warcraft since October and I basically came back to the game to try and beat this challenge before the season ended.
The fight is just crazy. There's so much stuff happening all at once and you basically need to play the fight perfectly to be able to beat him. Being hit by any of his abilities will most likely kill you unless you perfectly time the right kind of defensive cooldown. It's punishing.
In the end it all come down to execution and not damage. I found out that as long as I focused solely on the mechanics of the fight without looking at his health bar that I would eventually take him down. As long as I don't get hit I can stay alive forever and slowly trickle his health down. That's how it ultimately ended. I was so locked in for my last few attempts and the whole fight ended up feeling like a dance. I didn't even notice how low the boss was until he was at 2% health remaining, at which point I popped all my defensive cooldowns and blasted him down.
That took me 44 attempts of frustration. I had him down to 13% several times before that last kill attempt.
I am now a proud owner of the Void skin for the Delver’s Dirigible mount and the achievement Let Me Solo Him. I also love that the achievement is a reference to Elden ring. I also got the title Ascension Breaker which was only available up until today. I'm going to be proudly displaying that for a while for sure.
All images in this post are screenshots taken by me.