Patch 12.1 OverviewThe Tidebound Grotto Lair
We’re in the process of correcting this and you should see the update in the article “soon”. World difficulty is available (it’s in the drop down options) on August 11 and all other difficulties are available on August 18.
Week of August 11
Lair: The Tidebound Grotto - World Difficulty
Week of August 18
Lair: The Tidebound Grotto - Normal, Heroic and Mythic (Flexible-Scaling) Difficulties
The original release indicated that all difficulties of The Tidebound Grotto lair would be available as soon as Patch 12.1 went live on August 11th, allowing players access to Mythic raid gear a week before Season 2 formally began, which obviously would have conferred a major advantage, particularly for high-end guilds doing raid splits.
Original Release
According to Blizzard's unlock schedule, the new Tidebound Grotto raid lair will be available on all difficulties as soon as Patch 12.1 goes live on August 11th, allowing players access to new Mythic loot a week before Season 2 formally begins!
Season 2 Unlock Schedule
Week of 12 August
Lair: The Tidebound Grotto - Normal, Heroic, and Mythic
Face a new World Boss—Nymrissa Wavecaller—in an instanced encounter.
New Dungeon: Alter of Fangs
Midnight Dungeons - Heroic and Mythic
Fresh Dungeon Rotation - Altar of Fangs (New Dungeon), Murder Row, Den of Nalorakk, The Blinding Vale, Voidscar Arena, Kings' Rest (Battle for Azeroth), Temple of Sethraliss (Battle for Azeroth), and Ruby Life Pools (Dragonflight)
Prey Season 2 - Normal and Hard Modes
Delves Season 2 - All Tiers, No Bountiful
Training Grounds: Arenas
Unless this is a typo, it comes as a major surprise, as the PTR originally indicated that the Tidebound Grotto would become available the week of August 18th, which would land alongside the rest of Season 2. If it indeed releases early, this could become a noticeable advantage for early groups, particularly race guilds, which are prone to running numerous split groups in order to gain every advantage they can find!
What's a lair boss?
As a reminder, lairs are Blizzard's new moniker for world bosses, which began with the release of Rotmire in Sporefall in Patch 12.0.7. For all intents and purposes, they are standalone single-boss raid instances, though narratively they are world bosses contained within their own instances instead of the open world, which allows them to be fought on multiple difficulties with flexible 15-25 player group sizes, even on Mythic difficulty!
