A player has discovered the Corrupted Ashbringer in World of Warcraft, led by a Blood Elf. The item has not been available in the game since 2008 – a rarity that only a few can truly appreciate today.
What kind of item is this?
- The Corrupted Ashbringer is a two-handed sword that was dropped in the original version of Naxxramas back in Vanilla. It is among the rarest items in World of Warcraft.
- The sword drops from the Four Horsemen with a low probability. The weapon belongs to Highlord Mograine. Those who wield it occasionally hear whispers from its owner. Additionally, some allied NPCs suddenly become hostile, and enemies friendly.
- Originally, the Ashbringer was a holy weapon of the Paladins, corrupted by the unholy power of the Scourge and Mograine’s resurrection. Tirion Fordring later restored the holy Ashbringer.
Why is the Ashbringer so rare? Naxxramas was the last raid in Vanilla WoW and opened in June 2006. Back then, you had to complete a quest and farm reputation just to enter the necropolis.
However, most players never saw the original Naxxramas from the inside – or at least never completed it. There are several reasons for this:
- Naxxramas was the last and hardest raid of Vanilla, so good equipment was essential.
- Back then, you needed 40 players just to enter the raid – with the appropriate weapons and armor. Only a small fraction of players were even that far.
- Only about half a year later, on December 5, 2006, Patch 2.01 was released and with it the next expansion, The Burning Crusade, which went live in January 2007.
With Patch 3.0.2 in October 2008, the Corrupted Ashbringer was entirely removed from the loot. This patch marked the beginning of Wrath of the Lich King, and Naxxramas moved to Northrend with a new rider – Mograine disappeared.
Even the best players in the world had only a few months to get through the raid. In comparison: Ahn’Qiraj, the direct predecessor raid, was cleared for the first time after about 4 months.
Naxxramas was a whole level harder, and the Four Horsemen, where the Ashbringer drops, were among the more challenging fights. The mechanics there require several tanks and excellent coordination; otherwise, a wipe is imminent.
WoW also has some particularly rare mounts:
“I love seeing those people”
A user on Reddit has now seen the Corrupted Ashbringer “in real life” for the first time ever. Exciting enough for a post with hundreds of upvotes and comments – and some sad stories.
With the release of WoW Classic in 2019, Naxxramas was also reopened. Those who couldn’t obtain the Ashbringer in 2006 got a new chance here. One user recounts:
[Ashbringer] dropped in 2019 during one of our last Naxx runs ever. I won it. But we had this Ret Paladin who was so deeply embedded in the guild, and the Corrupted Ashbringer was his biggest dream. So I gave him the thing. The homie was ecstatic.
And stopped a week later.
By the way, the Corrupted Ashbringer was later brought back into the game, as a hidden artifact skin for the Ashbringer for Paladins in Legion. However, this new version looks newer and quite different. The “original” can now only be obtained in Classic Era, nowhere else.
Many players who currently wield the original Corrupted Ashbringer have likely since quit. One user states: It’s always great to see people with special achievements in the game. The Ashbringer, Ati’esh, or the title Scarab Lord: “We can never have that, but it’s cool to have such awe-inspiring things in the game.”
Despite the legends surrounding the Ashbringer, it is not the rarest item from Vanilla back then. The truly greatest rarity is quite different and rather unknown: The rarest item in WoW Classic is so rare that you probably don’t recognize it
