WoW Horrific Visions Patch 11.1.5 – Week 1

Imagine stepping into a really, really bad dream that Blizzard made just for you! Horrific Visions are highly replayable, instanced challenges that represent N’Zoth’s twisted versions of capital cities, specifically Stormwind or Orgrimmar, utterly consumed by an ancient corruption spreading. They were a major piece of content during the Battle for Azeroth expansion, designed to challenge players’ sanity and skill. Patch 11.1.5 has brought these horrific visions revisited back for The War Within, offering players who missed them (or just loved the madness) a chance to experience this unique system. The goal isn’t just the challenge itself, but to conquer the unimaginable horrors lie within, gather powerful new gear, crests, cosmetics, and player power upgrades, making them a relevant and rewarding activity in the current game landscape.

To dive headfirst into the madness, you’ll need to head to Dornogal, which serves as the main hub city in The War Within’s Dragon Isles. Look for a specific, rather ominous icon on the bottom-left of the Dornogal map – it marks the entry point! Your initial steps involve talking to Researcher Onermu to start a short questline called “Seeking Knowledge of the Past.” This chain will guide you to Soridormi, a key NPC located at a new basecamp situated on the Coreway Overlook within Dornogal. It is Soridormi who possesses the power to open the Tenebrous Gateway, which acts as your personal portal directly into the Horrific Vision instance chamber, separating you from the mundane world and ushering you into the corrupted cities.

Ah, the ever-present, ever-shrinking purple nightmare – your Sanity Bar! This is your crucial resource in a Horrific Vision, acting as a relentless timer. Sanity drains passively just by being in the vision, with faster rates in tougher zones (tainted and corrupted areas have lower drain than the high-stakes ‘lost’ zones). However, the really painful hits to your Sanity Bar come from specific enemy “Madness” effects, often sanity breaker abilities used by bosses or elites, and from standing in bad stuff on the ground like void zones or pools of ooze blood. To fight back against Sanity Loss, you have a few tools: The absolute primary method is using your Sanity Restoration Orbs, which are granted by unlocking the crucial first talent in the horrific visions upgrade tree – these drop an area on the ground that rapidly refills your sanity. You can also find scattered potions; beneficial ones will instantly grant +100 Sanity (but watch out for the bad color!). Lastly, if you’ve unlocked the Elite Extermination Tribute upgrade, killing elite mob targets will also restore some sanity. Mastering dodging and interrupting enemies’ damaging spells and sanity breaker abilities is just as important as healing sanity, as prevention is key!

Think of the vision potions as a tricky but rewarding little mini-game! In each horrific vision run, you’ll find potions in five fixed colors (red, blue, green, purple, black) scattered throughout the zones. Four of these colors will grant a beneficial effect when consumed – typically a helpful temporary buff or, most importantly, an instant +100 Sanity restoration! However, one of the five colors will always be harmful, causing a significant Sanity Loss if you drink it. The specific color that is harmful changes with each vision run. The key is to identify this dangerous color right at the start! You can do this by finding and interacting with a specific corpse near the entrance in each city – Morgan Pestle in Stormwind’s Cathedral Square or a voidbound Ravager near Thrall’s building in Orgrimmar. This interaction reveals the color of the bad potion for that specific run. Once you know it, simply avoid drinking any potions of that color, and enjoy the benefits of the others!

The horrific visions upgrade tree is your central progression system, housed within the Hourglass of Horrific Visions interface back in Dornogal. It unlocks automatically after you complete the introductory quest chain and enter your first vision. This tree allows you to spend the Displaced Corrupted Mementos you collect from running visions on permanent, account-wide power upgrades. Every point you spend here makes your character stronger, more resilient, or provides new utility specifically for tackling visions. The absolute foundational talent is the Orb Operation Manual, which gives you charges of incredibly important sanity restoration orbs that heal Sanity and can even revive allies. Other talents increase your maximum sanity, reduce incoming Sanity Loss (like Gift of the Titans, which can occasionally spawn a temporary effect preventing drain), make your abilities stronger, or provide other benefits. Farming DCM from every horrific vision run is essential to feed this tree and unlock these vital perks, which are permanent for your entire Warband!

That’s correct, for the initial launch in Patch 11.1.5, the full potential of the horrific visions upgrade tree isn’t immediately available. In Week 1, you will only be able to unlock the talents located in the first row of the tree. Subsequent rows containing more powerful and impactful talents will unlock automatically for all players in the weeks following the patch launch. This timegating means that while you should definitely spend your Displaced Corrupted Mementos to unlock all available talents in the first row as quickly as possible, you won’t be able to acquire every possible upgrade right away. This paces the progression of the system over the first few weeks.

Tributes are another layer of permanent power that applies to your entire Warband! Think of them as passive bonuses you earn simply by performing certain actions or meeting objectives within horrific vision runs. They are unlocked automatically based on your activities – for example, killing a certain number of elite mob targets might progress one tribute, while clearing a certain number of zones might progress another. You don’t spend Displaced Corrupted Mementos on Tributes; their progress fills up as you play. Key Tributes include Clear Sight (which allows you to see and loot hidden loot treasure chests, potentially containing a dark trove!), Vision Hunter (giving you stacking speed and haste by defeating enemies), and the very useful Elite Extermination Tribute upgrade (which awards sanity whenever you kill an elite mob). Checking your Tribute progress in the hub shows how far you’ve come, and these passive buffs make every subsequent horrific vision run slightly easier, rewarding consistent play and objective completion by killing N’Zoth’s elite minions.

Faceless Masks are key to pushing the difficulty and rewards of Horrific Visions. They are special items you can choose to equip in the safe room before starting a run. Each equipped mask acts as a difficulty modifier, significantly increasing the health and damage of all nearby enemies and vision inhabitants (a flat +25% per mask!). However, the payoff is huge: using masks dramatically increases the amount of Displaced Corrupted Mementos obtained from enemies and chests, and also boosts the item level and Crest tier of the gear you receive as horrific visions rewards. There are eight masks in total to unlock, including iconic returning faceless masks like dark imagination and burned bridge (which adds the annoying “moving causes void zones” effect!). You definitely do not need to use masks on your very first runs! Focus on unlocking talents and getting comfortable first. Start adding one Faceless Mask or more later when you feel strong enough to handle the extra challenge for exponentially better rewards.

Unlocking more Faceless Masks requires you to complete horrific visions with specific objectives met. The first mask you unlock, “Long Night,” requires you to clear all side objectives in a single vision run (meaning all four side zones, not just defeating the main boss). Other returning faceless masks and the new ones introduced in Patch 11.1.5 are unlocked by completing specific challenges while you already have at least one Faceless Mask (or sometimes multiple masks) active. For example, the burned bridge mask is unlocked by completing a vision while under the effect that moving causes void zones. You can find a full list of unlock criteria by checking community resources like Wowhead or the official Warcraft Wiki; they detail the specific conditions for each of the eight masks. Unlocking faceless masks vendor unlocks for better gear also ties into achieving milestones with masks active.

The horrific visions rewards are quite enticing and cover several categories! The most straightforward are the gear pieces you get from chests at the end of your run; the item level of this gear scales based on how many areas you cleared and how many Faceless Masks you had active, going from Veteran-quality (around 626 ilvl) for just killing the boss, up to Heroic-quality (658 ilvl) for full clears with 5 or more masks complete. You also earn Undermine Crests (used to upgrade gear in Season 2) with tiers based on mask usage (Weathered, Carved, Runed, Gilded). Cosmetics are available from the horrific visions vendors in Dornogal, including new transmog sets, pets, and some really cool mounts like a Corruption-themed dragon or gryphon – originally gated, you can now purchase all cosmetics immediately if you have enough Displaced Corrupted Mementos! Lastly, there are powerful “Corrupted Runes” (head enchants) unlocked via quests and purchased from horrific visions vendors for DCM, which provide significant power boosts, including effects like echoing void or reminiscent of the old dark imagination buffs. You can even find hero weapons reeking of void energy available from vendors at higher progression levels.

Yes, and this is fantastic for players who like to play multiple characters! Almost all of the major progression systems in Horrific Visions are indeed Warband/account-wide. This means that once you unlock a talent in the horrific visions upgrade tree, gain progress on a Tribute, or unlock a Faceless Mask, that progression applies to every character on your account. Your Displaced Corrupted Mementos obtained are also stored as a warband-transferrable currency, allowing you to farm DCM on your main and send it to an alt to purchase upgrades or gear from the horrific visions vendors. Even the Corrupted Runes you purchase from Augermu are Warbound. This system is explicitly designed to be alt-friendly, with higher-level masks complete unlocking vendor kits that make dropped gear Warbound, perfect for sending to your alts to help them catch up.

These zone labels categorize the difficulty and danger level within a horrific vision. The tainted and corrupted areas are the outer zones and represent lower difficulty with more manageable enemies and slower passive Sanity Bar drain rates (6 sanity/sec in Tainted, 8 sanity/sec in Corrupted). ‘Lost’ zones, found deeper within the vision (like Old Town and the Mage Quarter in Stormwind), are the highest difficulty areas. They feature much tougher unimaginable horrors lie within, more challenging mechanics, more intense “Madness” effects, and a significantly higher passive Sanity Bar drain rate (a hefty 12 sanity/sec!). These are generally the zones you tackle later in a successful run, armed with talent upgrades and possibly a mask active, to complete objectives and earn higher rewards from killing bosses and elite mob targets.

For players starting out or those not aiming for a full clear with many masks complete, a common and effective strategy is to prioritize clearing the easier Tainted and Corrupted areas first. These zones have lower passive Sanity Bar drain, allowing you to spend more time inside them safely. Focusing here lets you complete objectives, defeat more enemies (including elites and bosses) to collect displaced corrupted mementos, progress Tributes by killing N’Zoth’s minions, and potentially find useful potions or odd crystals. You save the higher-drain ‘Lost’ zones for later in the run, if you have enough Sanity remaining (and perhaps talent upgrades like sanity restoration orbs) to comfortably tackle them and secure the chests from their objectives. This maximizes your rewards per horrific vision run without risking hitting zero Sanity too quickly.

Absolutely! Horrific Visions are designed to be tackled solo or in a group of up to five players. They are generally considered significantly easier when played in a group. More players mean more collective power to quickly dispatch more enemies, including those tough elite mob targets and bosses. Crucially, a group provides multiple sources of interrupts for dangerous sanity breaker abilities and damaging spells from bosses like Alleria or Thrall. You also have more crowd control options for managing nearby enemies. Furthermore, groups can strategically split up to complete objectives in different zones simultaneously (though communication is key!), and the ability for nearby allies to potentially revive a downed player (especially if someone has the Orb talent or is the Construct companion) provides valuable safety nets that you don’t have when solo. If you’re struggling, finding a group is highly recommended!

Unfortunately, if your Sanity Bar depletes to zero, or if your character dies without any active resurrection mechanics available (like a charge from your Orb Operation Manual talent or assistance from the Construct companion), your current horrific vision run is considered a failure and immediately ends. You will be ejected back to the hub room in Dornogal. The good news is you do keep any Displaced Corrupted Mementos obtained from enemies and chests you looted before the run ended. However, you lose access to the loot chests from any objectives you hadn’t completed yet in that specific run, and if you were attempting to unlock a Faceless Mask or meet other specific criteria for progression, failing the run means you don’t get credit unless you completed the unlock condition beforehand. So, hitting zero sanity or dying without backup is definitely the end of the road for that particular foray into the madness!

It’s a quick but essential step at the start of every horrific vision run to avoid nasty Sanity Loss from potions! The method varies slightly depending on whether you’re in the horrific vision of Stormwind or the horrific vision of Orgrimmar. In Stormwind, immediately upon entering, look for the corpse of a character named Morgan Pestle, typically found in the Cathedral Square area – interact with this corpse to find an item that reveals the harmful potion color for that specific run. In the Orgrimmar vision, you’ll need to find the corpse of a voidbound Ravager near Thrall’s building and interact with that one instead. Always make identifying the bad potion color one of your first actions before you start exploring and potentially drinking any of the scattered potions!

Corrupted Runes are new, powerful head enchants that socket directly into your helm slot, providing significant combat buffs that are reminiscent of the old Corruption effects from Battle for Azeroth. You begin unlocking these through a quest chain initiated by talking to Augermu in Dornogal. The first quest, “Borrowing Corruption,” requires you to gather 500 Displaced Corrupted Mementos and collect some Black Blood Residue materials found in vision chests; completing this quest lets you choose a Lesser Rune (lesser runes complete this initial stage). You can then purchase additional Lesser Runes from Augermu using DCM. To get the stronger Greater Runes, including highly sought-after effects like Echoing Void, you’ll need to complete later quests like “Enhancing Corruption,” which require more DCM and materials like Black Blood Coagulate, typically dropped from clearing Lost zone objectives while masks complete. These Greater Runes provide more potent effects, such as occasionally spawning void zones or causing significant damage/effects to nearby enemies.

Yes, there are two distinct Horrific Vision maps available in Patch 11.1.5: the horrific vision of Stormwind and the horrific vision of Orgrimmar. These maps rotate on a weekly basis, swapping out after the standard server reset. So, for one week, you’ll be navigating the corrupted streets of Stormwind, learning its layout and objectives, and the next week, you’ll be challenged by the nightmares within Orgrimmar’s corrupted zones. This weekly rotation means you can only attempt a specific city’s vision during the week it is active, adding variety and ensuring you experience both unique layouts and challenges.

Unfortunately, yes, at the launch of Patch 11.1.5, there is a known bug affecting the objective within the Stormwind Mage Quarter zone. This objective typically involves closing void portals. Reports from players indicate that the final portal required to complete this objective may not reliably activate, particularly if you run out of sanity or potentially die within the zone. This bug can prevent you from completing that specific area’s objective and getting its rewards. Because of this, it’s currently advisable to approach the Stormwind Mage Quarter with caution or potentially even avoid clearing it entirely for now until Blizzard implements a fix. Always check recent community guides or forums for the latest status on vision bugs before heavily investing time or Sanity into potentially broken objectives!