With a final raid on Onyxia’s Lair, the Twitch guild Sauercrowd said farewell to WoW Classic Hardcore last weekend. HandOfBlood had his hands full once again.
What was planned for the finale? After the two successful raids in Molten Core, the guild leadership of the Twitch project Sauercrowd had considered one last official event: On March 1, 2026, they planned to challenge the dragon lady Onyxia in her lair.
The 40-player challenge is considered very easy, but complications can arise quickly:
- Each participant must complete a long questline to even enter the lair.
- In the fight against Onyxia, there is an intermediate phase where the dragon lady flies through the air and small whelps flood into the room. If damage is too low and the phase lasts too long, Onyxia can unleash a deadly dragon breath that takes up nearly the entire combat area.
- Positioning and aggro management are crucial. If a character is thrown by the tail into one of the side areas and breaks the eggs there, the raid will also have to deal with numerous adds. Additionally, Onyxia must never look at the raid, as her fire breath can quickly send people to the spirit healer.
Onyxia is thus again a typical WoW Classic content: If everything goes smoothly, it’s easy. If not, characters can quickly die.
Just like the motto: Yolo!
How did the finale go? “Everyone is hyped. No one cares about what happens to their character. Metashi is playing naked in real life. Hänno is playing naked in-game. We have Naguura with her paladin as the main tank. This will be exciting.” With these words, WoW veteran and Sauercrowd member Sieglinde started the Onyxia raid.
The colorful chatter of the Twitch guys in the background immediately emphasized that the last raid was taken much lighter than the visits to Molten Core. Nevertheless, there was quickly the first success: All 40 raid participants had actually completed the necessary pre-questline.
After clearing the trash groups, the next highlight followed: HandOfBlood invited to an art lesson and explained the fight against Onyxia by live drawing the most important mechanics. The entire boss explanation was supposed to last more than 10 minutes.
You can watch the Sauercrowd finale for example as follows or on the YouTube channel Mehr Sieglinde:
Despite numerous interruptions and questions (some also in combat), apparently enough raid participants had listened to their guild leader. Naguura grabbed the aggro from Onyxia, the raid split at her flanks and damage was initially dealt cautiously.
No minute later, the intermediate phase already started. Onyxia went into the air and the whelps came from the side areas. The raid activated their DPS cooldowns, bombed the whelps away, and melted the flying dragon’s health points to zero.
During the last phase transition, it got temporarily exciting: Onyxia landed and immediately cast her fear spell. Those who could reset their threat or hide in an ice block. First, Gucci got the boss’s attention, but Onyxia broke out again and looked at the raid. Dangerous!
The health points of various characters dropped to a threatening level. HandOfBlood escalated his announcements to drown out the comments of the other streamers: “DAMAGE-STOP, DAMAGE-STOP, DAMAGE-STOP. FALGAN TANKS. AT THE STOMACH. AWAY FROM THE LEGS. AT THE STOMACH.”
The experienced Classic player had safely taken the aggro from Onyxia and brought calm to the fight. However, due to harmful fire effects, some health bars still fell to threatening depths. In the end, however, there was not a single hardcore death in Onyxia’s Lair.
Sieglinde later commented: “Wow, I used everything.” With emergency spells like Lay on Hands and Hand of Protection, he saved the heroic behind of several comrades.
In the end, everyone was very happy. There was still the obligatory group photo. Afterwards, the guild did not miss the chance to turn in Onyxia’s head in Stormwind to place their first World Buff. We congratulate all participants on the great event! If you want to look back on the events of the past weeks, check this out: The most important Sauercrowd highlights of the last days in overview
