WoW Shadowlands Alpha - Torghast Explained
Torghast, Tower of the Damned is a new gameplay activity in the upcoming Shadowlands expansion for World of Warcraft. It is essentially a dungeon that gets increasingly difficult as you move up in floors and is available for solo or group play.
It is still early in alpha, so things are bound to change by the time Shadowlands launches, but I want to do a quick overview of how this activity works based on my recent testing.
Enter the Tower
Currently there is an npc near the first flight point in Bastion that lets players access Torghast, but normally it is a max level activity in the Maw zone of Shadowlands. For the purposes of testing, all players are set to level 60 with item level 170 and the two Kyrian covenant spells.
When players queue up, either solo or in a party, and enter the tower, there is an orb that players must click to choose which version and difficulty they want to play. At time of writing there were two quest options and three random dungeon options.
Different Difficulties
The quest mode goes from floors 1-6 and offers a boss with loot at the end. There is currently no quest to go along with it so this will most likely be added later. The boss loot is also placeholder and offers nothing currently but expect some decent equips to drop from these bosses.
The random mode offers three difficulties, easy, normal, and heroic. Each difficulty starts off at a different floor, the higher the difficulty, the higher the starting the floor.
Easy – Floors 1-12
Normal – Floors 13-24
Heroic – Floors 25 -??
I have not finished heroic, so I do not know how high it goes, but I believe it is at least 50. No matter which floor players start on, they will still only get one anima power to start with, so let me explain those.
Anima Power
This is the bread and butter of Torghast and what makes it stand out as a fun and challenging activity.
There are red anima orbs players can collect throughout their journey up the tower and when you do, they offer a new temporary power or buff. There are a wide range of them, and many are not only class, but spec specific.
For example: As an arcane mage, I got a power that increased the damage of arcane blast by 2,000% when used from Invisibility, and it stacked. This allowed me to instantly kill the floor 12 boss on easy when I used my cooldowns and had 2 stacks of the anima power.
This is just one example of one power, but you should be able to imagine the kinds of things you might see for each class. Other abilities included passives that increased secondary stats, healing from killing certain enemies, and more.
It is important to remember that these powers are only used in Torghast, and only on the current run. When players leave the tower, all anima powers are wiped and players will start over again when they enter the next time.
Each power comes in one of three categories and has a symbol to let players know which it is:
Attack – Swords icon. Involves increasing your damage in some way.
Survival – Heart icon. Helps keep you alive either through healing, increasing health, or defensive in some way.
Utility – Lightning bolt icon. Gives players a bonus or advantage that does not fall into the above categories.
Examples: Increasing movement speed, amount of phantasm received, increasing effectiveness of a class utility ability, etc.
Another thing to note is that each anima power has a rarity attached to it, much like gear. Green is uncommon, purple is epic, etc. This doesn’t always mean the higher rarities are better, but it does mean they will be more unique and game changing.
Most of these powers stack and as players collect more and more, they will get significantly stronger. This greatly helps because the tower gets stronger each floor. Starting off is rough, especially if normal or heroic is chosen, but after collecting a few key powers, things get easier and a lot more fun. Refer to my header video for a visual explanation and to see them in action.
Phantasma and Freed Souls
Whenever players loot enemies or destroy objects in Torghast, they receive a temporary currency called Phantasma. This is only gained in Torghast and is destroyed once players leave, so spend it all before leaving.
So, what can it be spent on? An extra anima orb is one of the choices, and one I almost always choose if I have enough Phantasma. Others include minor powers, such as increasing secondary stats, potions, and items that allow players to stealth past enemies.
Freed souls are npcs that players can click on to free while in Torghast. These are a semi-permanent currency that works in two ways:
Used to advance your chosen covenants sanctum
Receive a buff called, Soul’s Blessing, which increases main stat while in Torghast by 1% for each soul
The second effect is based on how many you freed in your current run, not your overall. My priest, for example, has 25 freed souls, but only freed 6 in my current run, so I only have a stack of 6 to increase my intellect by 6%.
Bonus Objectives, Chests, and Puzzles
There is more than simply killing enemies and moving through the tower, there are extra objectives and puzzles you can complete for more anima rewards.
Some floors will have npcs, other than the freed souls, that you must help in a bonus objective. So far, they involve either taking them to save another npc, or finding an item on the ground somewhere on that floor. When you complete these, you will get another anima power.
There are often chests that will also contain anima powers, but sometimes they are locked. To unlock these chests, you will either have to find various keys scattered around the floor or complete a puzzle to unlock them.
Death and Ending a Run
Players can die a maximum of three times per floor. The death count is reset each time players reach a new floor. After the third death, there will be a short count down before the Tarragrue spawns. This is a massive boss enemy that instantly kills players when they get close enough. When it spawns, players must quickly reach the next floor before the Tarragrue reaches them.
If players want to leave early, they can click on the portal at the start of each floor, or simply leave instance group.
Final Remarks
Even though this is an early look, Torghast was a blast to play and has a solid foundation for an activity that many players will want to do repeatedly. There is a bit of balancing of course, and not all classes can test it yet, but the general idea of how this activity works is fantastic.
I can’t wait to try out more classes as they are added and can see myself spending a lot of time in this activity when the game officially launches.