Chess Event

The Chess Event in Karazhan must be solved in order to reach Prince Malchezaar. The raid plays a sort of chess match against Medivh.

Although the analogy to chess is usable (Daemons are "stronger" than Footmen for example), it's not very strict. The pieces from the event behave very differently from real chess pieces, in particular the pieces autoattack enemy pieces they face, automatically cast their spells (but do not move) when not controlled by a player, and the Kings are actually the strongest pieces in the game. In order to start the event, a player has to take control of the King piece of their own faction. The objective is to kill the enemy King without losing one's own King. If the game is won, a Dust Covered Chest appears with loot. If the game is lost, the pieces reset, and another game may be attempted.

After a victory, the pieces are reset and it is possible to play a friendly game within the raid. Whenever a game is going on, there is a silence debuff in the chess room to prevent clearing the trash mobs leading to Prince Malchezaar.

It is possible to reset the event by talking to the Echo of Medivh.

Unlike other bosses, there is no reputation reward.

After the event begins, raid members can control any currently uncontrolled piece of their own faction by talking to it. Upon taking control of a piece the player character is teleported onto a platform at the side of the chess field. The player gains the "control piece" buff, his viewing perspective changes to that of the controlled piece, and their action bar is replaced. It is possible to release control of a piece by removing the control buff (right-click it). This incurs a 15 sec debuff, during which time it is not possible to take control of another piece.

The action bar for controlling a chess piece has the following layout:

• 1: Move: Click on an unoccupied square. Only certain moves are allowed. See piece description for details.
• 2: Rotate Piece: The same for all pieces; click an adjacent square on the board to face toward it.
• 3: Special Ability 1: The piece's first unique ability. See piece description for details.
• 4: Special Ability 2: The piece's other unique ability. See piece description for details.

The abilities can either be activated by clicking on the action bar, or by using keys 1 through 4. It's faster to use the key shortcuts, particularly because the movement controls have a timeout. Each chess piece auto-attacks if it faces an enemy. While pieces can move diagonally, they can only face towards four directions. After a diagonal move, pieces turn 45° clockwise to realign themselves.

Movement and rotation share a common cooldown of 5 seconds, and the special abilities have another shared cooldown of 5 seconds. If an ability has a cooldown of more than 5 seconds, the other ability is only affected by the 5 second cooldown.

Medivh cheats at random intervals during the game. Although on paper the effects look tough, in reality they usually have little effect on the course of the event.

• Healing Cheat: Heals Medivh's king (and possibly all the other pieces) to full HP.
• Damage Cheat: Medivh places a fire AoE on a random player controlled piece.
• Berserking Cheat: One of Medivh's units gains increased size, speed and damage.

The king is quite strong and thus should be used in an offensive way — he is in fact similar to a DPS tank (be cautious though). A reasonable kill order is to deal with the enemy healers first, then drop the queen, and finally the king. If king and queen work together efficiently, and have good support from the bishops, the combats on the remainder of the board are less important. The friendly healers should move only very little, and concentrate on keeping the king and the queen at top health.

One simple strategy is to have each player chose one non-pawn piece which they want to control later. Then, each player moves the pawn in front of their piece as far as needed, releases control and takes over their "real" piece. As soon as holes in the pawn line appear, attack with the player controlled pieces. This is an excellent strategy for higher-levels trying to complete this event in a five-man or other smaller raid. By having a few players concentrate, at the start, on moving pawns and 'unplayed' pieces forward, these pieces are in range to auto-engage combat.

A more sophisticated strategy has four players initially controlling the four central pawns, and four other players on the king, the queen and both knights. The two remaining raid members should take the bishops. This allows to move the offensive pieces more quickly.

This event can be beaten with one person. First, move as many pawns one square ahead as possible, to give the back row of pieces room to move from the fire when the Echo of Medivh inevitably cheats. As soon as fire appears under a piece, control it and move it out of the way. Then play the queen piece and focus on damaging the opponent's king from range. Switch to a bishop to heal the king if necessary.

A macro can be used to gain a slight speed edge over using mouse clicks to gain control of / cancel control of pieces. This is especially recommended for soloing, since multiple pieces will need to be swapped between, and the player will need to react to Medivh's cheating quickly. The following macro cancels control with a modified click / keypress (i.e. with alt, control, or shift), or takes control of a piece that has been spoken to with a simple click / keypress. Players will still need to right-click on a piece they wish to control.

/cancelaura [mod] Control Piece /run SelectGossipOption(1);

Alternatively, a player may split this into two macros. Since the encounter does not involve any traditional combat, players are free to swap macros into their action bar in any convenient location (although the 1-9 keys will still be replaced with the unit's control keys, so should not be used).

• As of patch 2.4, releasing from a piece may cause the player to spawn below the floor of the room, leaving him back in the Curator's hallway. This can prevent the player from looting the chest because running back may take too long before it disappears—use a Warlock summon if possible in this case.
• Taking control of a piece may sometimes result in an near-immediate disconnect. The only way back into the game is to wait some time until the player is removed from the game with a "desertion" like debuff, or by quickly releasing control of the piece before the disconnect actually takes place.

To pass beyond my Hall, you must defeat me in a game of skill! Control your king when you are ready to begin...

• Gossip

• The "Echo of Medivh" speaks at various events during the course of the game.

• Event begins
• yell

• Cheating
• yell
• yell
• yell