Bags on B

B now opens your bags like in WoW: one window at the bottom right lists the pieces you looted this run, grouped by slot with the best first (up to eight per slot). A new run starts with "Nothing looted yet this run."; your lobby gear stays on the Gear sheet. Hover a piece for its tooltip and right-click it to wear it mid-run (it then leaves the list); the window says "Equipping..." until the new piece is on. B again or Esc closes it. Clicking a slot on the Character sheet lists that slot's pieces from this run.
Boss focus no longer has a key: Tab already reaches bosses first, and clicking the boss frame or the Boss button still focuses one.

Expansion spells use their real Wrath effects

18 Death Knight, Warlock, Warrior and Druid spells now look and sound like they do in Wrath of the Lich King, instead of borrowing a similar 1.12 spell's look. That covers the cast animation, the effects on the hands and body, the impact, and the cast and impact sounds. Examples: the Death and Decay runes on the ground, the Howling Blast burst, the Obliterate and Blood Strike swings, Death Grip, Mind Freeze, Icy Touch and Army of the Dead.
Tree of Life and Bladestorm use their own Wrath effects too (Bladestorm: the whirlwind spin and the blade storm while it lasts).
Wrath-only effect models now show their particle effects: sparks, blood, mist, swirls and runes. Blood Boil, the Plague Strike impact and the effect it leaves on the target, the Blood Strike and Obliterate impacts, Empower Runeblade and the Howling Blast secondary burst used to show only an animation and a sound, and now draw their full effect. Every other Wrath effect (Death and Decay, Icy Touch, Bladestorm, Hungering Cold and the rest) also gets its particles, and so do the Wrath creatures and props in Northrend zones.

Druid forms

The Druid has four forms to learn: Bear Form, Cat Form, Moonkin Form and Tree of Life. A form lasts 20 seconds and comes back after 30, and you only wear one at a time: taking a new form ends the old one. You turn into the real 1.12 bear, cat, moonkin or treant.
Bear Form: you take 38% less damage, every attacker takes 4 damage back, and your melee spells (Feral Rake, Bash) hit as Maul for 35% more.
Cat Form: you move 30% faster with 15% more critical chance, and every hit makes the target bleed for 8% of the hit each second for 5 seconds.
Moonkin Form: 25% more spell damage, and Starfall strikes every enemy within 8 yards every 2 seconds.
Tree of Life: you take 13% less damage, and you and every ally within 15 yards heal 2% of your maximum health each second.
Your talents decide which forms you are offered: Balance gets Moonkin, Feral gets Cat and Bear, Restoration gets Tree of Life (a Druid without talents can be offered any of them). Your level 5 choice always includes your spec's form until you learn it.
The form you wear shows on your buff bar with its own icon.

Bladestorm

New Warrior discovery: Bladestorm, the Wrath whirlwind. For 6 seconds you spin and strike every enemy within 8 yards once a second (six hits), wherever you walk, and nothing slows you while you spin, not even a carried crate. It comes back after a minute and waits for an enemy in reach before it starts.
It replaces Ravager Cleave as the Warrior's Rare discovery, with the same chance. A Ravager Cleave you already own keeps working.
Bladestorm uses its real Wrath animation and effects where the Wrath data is installed.

Buffs for the whole party

Six classes learn a buff that also reaches every ally within 40 yards: Warrior Battle Shout (15% more damage, 20 s), Paladin Blessing of Freedom (nothing slows you, not even a carried crate, 10 s), Hunter Aspect of the Pack (30% faster, 15 s), Priest Power Word: Fortitude (13% less damage taken, 20 s), Mage Arcane Brilliance (cooldowns 15% faster, 20 s) and Druid Mark of the Wild (9% less damage taken, 20 s).
The Shaman keeps Bloodlust, Heroism and Windfury Totem. Rogues and Warlocks have no party buff in 1.12 and get none.

Keystone rewards on the results screen

The results screen now shows the Keystone Runes and Titan Residuum a won keystone room paid.
How to Play and the Codex explain keystones, the Keystone Vendor and both currencies, the Hall of Champions, the bags on B, and the new short contracts with their guide trail.
The "K7" keystone badge is a gold pill beside the item level, the keystone currencies show their icons in the Armory, and the suffix Reroll button greys out when you cannot afford it.

Hall of Champions

New public leaderboard page at /leaderboard (also a "Leaderboard" button on the main screen): six boards (Top Runs, Damage, Healing, GearScore, Endless Survival, Cleanest Victories) showing class, race, GearScore, difficulty (Mythic keystones included), result, zone, party size and date. Hide your hero with the leaderboard_hidden preference.
GearScore no longer reads 0 for a geared hero: a run recorded before GearScore existed (or one finished in a room carried over from that build) now shows the character's current GearScore, and every new run records it when its rewards are saved. A row with no score at all shows "—".

Loot rolls on every drop

With two or more signed-in players every gear drop now opens the Need / Greed / Pass window, like in WoW, even a piece only one class in the party can wear. Before, such pieces went straight to the one player who could use them and a mixed party never saw a roll.
Need is only for classes that can use the piece: the dice button is greyed out for everyone else. Everyone may Greed or Pass.
Win a piece on Greed that your class cannot wear and you get its salvage value in embers instead: chat and the results screen say "Hex won Krol Blade (salvaged for 14 embers)."
"Auto-greed what I cannot use" (on by default) still answers those rolls for you; switch it off to see the window with Need disabled and choose Greed or Pass yourself.
Playing alone, every drop is still yours at once; two tabs of one account still count as one player.

Leaderboard data

Every run now records each hero's race and GearScore (read when the run starts and again when its rewards are saved) and the run's keystone level, ready for the leaderboard.
New public /api/leaderboard for everyone with the realm code, no sign-in: top 25 heroes for best runs (keystone, then difficulty, then victory), damage, healing, GearScore, endless survival and fewest deaths in a victory. It shows name, class, race and GearScore, never account details, and counts only completed runs without owner tuning.
Prefer to stay off it? The new leaderboard_hidden account preference hides all of your heroes.

Party chat (server side)

The server now carries one party chat channel per run: every player in the room sees every line, under the hero's own name (a client cannot pick it). Lines are up to 255 characters, five per ten seconds per player ("Chat: slow down."), and are never written to the server log.
Yellow system lines tell the party when a hero joins or leaves, dies, or is back on their feet.
The protocol is in docs/CHAT.md.

Party chat in the run

Press Enter to open the classic chat box at the bottom left and talk to your party; Enter sends, Escape closes it without sending. Your hero stops while you type, and no key you type casts, targets or opens a window.
Every line shows in the chat window in party colour with the speaker's name, and a chat bubble rises over the speaker (yourself included) in place of the overhead name.
The same window shows the yellow system lines: joins, leaves, deaths, revives, roll winners and realm update notices. Each roll result now shows once (the yellow line), not twice.
The chat window is a little taller (six lines) and up to 400 pixels wide.

Server update notices

When the realm starts preparing an update, everyone in a run or a lobby now reads "The realm will update after this run. New runs are closed until it is done." in yellow; if the update is called off, "The realm update is cancelled; new runs are open again." Before, only people trying to start a new run found out.

Greed rune

New battleground rune, Greed: touching it sends every experience gem and gold coin on the field flying to the nearest living hero, so the whole party shares the haul, and triples the taker's pickup radius for 10 seconds. It joins Restoration, Berserking and Speed; each rune spot holds a different kind, and owners tune Greed's duration, radius and spawn weight in /admin.

Run bar

The bar at the top of a run now shows the difficulty and boss progress next to the clock: "Heroic II · Bosses 3/6", or "Heroic IV · Endless · Bosses 7" in an endless run.

Contracts: four short, clear quests

A run now offers four contracts instead of seven, each a different kind drawn from the seven. The first opens between 0:40 and 1:30, then one every 2:30 to 4:00 (owner tuning contract_first_min_secs/max, contract_gap_min_secs/max).
Each is built to finish inside a minute: two runes, two crates, two corruption patches, 30 s of Hold the Line, three close escort waypoints, three braziers beside the quest giver.
A gold arrow trail runs from your hero to the next step (the quest giver, the next marker, the crate's destination or the marked champion), with a larger arrow when it is off screen.
Accepting shows a one-line instruction as a banner; finishing shows "Contract complete!", failing shows "Contract failed: <reason>".
Contracts fail only when time runs out (90 s) or Illidan falls. Walking away from Illidan or the braziers no longer fails them. A bounty's escape clock (20 s) starts only once you have found the champion.
Real rewards: rune, crate and brazier contracts leave a free treasure at Illidan; Hold the Line, Escort, Bounty and Cleanse give every hero a free level-up pick. XP, gold, a potion and the barrier stay.

Interrupts

Boss casts can now be interrupted. Every class owns a stun or an interrupt: Warrior Shockwave, Paladin Hammer of Justice, Hunter Wyvern Sting, Rogue Gouge and Kidney Shot, Shaman Earth Shock (now interrupts), and the new Mage Counterspell, Priest Silence, Warlock Spell Lock, Druid Bash and Death Knight Mind Freeze.
An interrupt or a stun that lands while a boss is still winding up cancels that telegraph, and the boss starts no new cast for the lock (4 s for interrupts, the stun's length for stuns). A telegraph that has already gone off plays out. Ordinary enemies are stunned for 1 s.
Interrupts have diminishing returns: after one cancels a cast, that boss shrugs off further interrupts and stun interrupts for 8 s (owner tuning interrupt_dr_secs, 0-30). Your stun still stuns and your hit still hits; the "interrupt" only shows when it really cancels a cast. An interrupt with nothing to cancel no longer locks the boss, so Earth Shock spam cannot keep a boss from ever casting.

Final bosses and new boss casts

On Heroic I and harder the final boss's telegraphs are lethal: the boss whose kill would win the run, any boss still standing after the clock, and in Endless every boss from the fifth on. Its warnings start with "LETHAL:" and its ground marks draw in hot crimson with a double outline. Getting out before the mark goes off still saves you, immunity still ignores it and a shield big enough soaks it; anything else is a one-shot. Normal keeps today's damage, and keystone rooms (Mythic and up) are always lethal.
Every boss has two new casts with longer windups (2.8 s and 3.2 s): a sweep across your spot (step toward or away from the boss) and a closing safe ring whose safe centre at the boss shrinks as it charges (Frostmourne Sweep and Fury of Frostmourne for the Lich King, Blade Dance and Shadow Prison for Illidan, Sanity Well for Yogg-Saron, Hand of Death for Archimonde, and so on). A boss never winds up two casts at once.

Pacing: no two runs alike

Free treasures come at a varied interval (the owner's 150 s ±40%) instead of a fixed clock, and every boss kill drops one or two bonus treasures near the party (treasure_boss_bonus).
Battleground runes come back after their delay ±30%.
Mid-run surprises, once or twice each per run and never in the last 90 s: an Ambush (a banner, then three seconds later a dense pack from one side) and a Windfall (twenty experience gems rain down around the party).

Keystones

Keystone levels past Mythic, unlocked per character: a Mythic victory unlocks Keystone 1 and each keystone victory the next level. A defeat costs nothing and no key item is needed.
Each level adds 35% enemy health and 15% enemy damage on top of Mythic (owner-tunable in /admin, with a highest level of 30). Every member of a keystone room must be signed in and have the level unlocked before the leader can start. Keystone loot comes later.
Pick your keystone in the Difficulty dialog: once your character has one, a Keystone row under Mythic has a -/+ stepper for any unlocked level and shows the extra enemy health and damage. Your last keystone is remembered per account, and the next-run card, party card, run bar, results screen and admin runs all read "Mythic · Keystone N".

Keystone gear

Gear that drops in a keystone room drops at the Mythic band cap and carries its keystone level, shown as a green "Keystone 7" tooltip line and a "K7" badge beside the item level on the gear sheet.
Each level adds power, so keystone gear is the new top of the ladder: a Keystone 1 epic (about 1.08 per rank) already beats a raid piece (1.0), Keystone 4 (1.26) passes Tier 2 (1.25) and Keystone 8-9 (1.50-1.56) matches a legendary (1.5); Keystone 10 reaches 1.62.
A copy from a higher keystone replaces a lower one of the same item, keystone pieces salvage for more, roll windows compare them by their real item level, and the gear sheet's GearScore maximum follows the highest keystone the character has unlocked.
Owners tune it under Loot rules > Keystone power (Keystone 1 power 1.16, extra per level 0.065).

Keystone currencies

Two new currencies drop only in keystone rooms: every won keystone room (Keystone 1 and up) pays Keystone Runes (1 + 0.34 per level, rounded down: K1 1, K3 2, K6 3, K10 4) and Titan Residuum (10 + 5 per level: K1 15, K10 60). Mythic without a keystone and defeats pay none.
Both are saved per character like embers and show in the Armory's currency strip once you have a keystone unlocked. Runes reroll gear suffixes; Residuum is for the keystone vendor.
Owners tune the four amounts in /admin (Progression) and can grant both from the account page.
Keystone Runes reroll gear suffixes: a "Reroll (N Runes)" button on every blue or epic world piece with a suffix (worn or in the bag) rolls a new random suffix after a confirm. The first reroll of a piece costs 1 rune, each further one on that piece 1 more, up to 5; the item, its spell line, proc, band and keystone level stay. The new suffix shows on the row at once.
Titan Residuum buys gear at the new Keystone Vendor (a button on the hero card once you have beaten a Mythic run): pick a slot and get a random world piece for your class at your highest unlocked keystone level, 25 residuum a piece and 40 for a weapon. Odds 55% uncommon, 35% rare, 10% epic; a duplicate that is not a better roll salvages into embers. Owners tune prices and odds under Loot rules > Keystone Vendor.

Targeting feel

Left-clicking an enemy now focuses it reliably: a quick click counts even when the mouse twitches or was still moving onto the enemy, exactly like the click that draws the red ring. Before, most clicks drew the ring for a moment and then lost it because the focus was never asked for.
Switching from one focused enemy to another plays the WoW target-select sound.
The minimap arrow now points where your hero faces, not where the camera looks (north-up, as in WoW with Rotate Minimap off).
Accepting a contract plays the WoW quest-accepted sound and completing one plays the quest-complete sound; reconnecting into a contract already under way stays silent.

Hunter pet

Every Hunter now fights beside a pet for the whole run. It follows you, runs to the enemy nearest it and bites once a second, harder as you level. Beast Mastery hunters bring a wolf, Marksmanship a nightsaber, Survival a boar.
Enemies crowding it wear it down: twelve hits within ten seconds and it limps off, coming back to your side eight seconds later.
New Hunter spells: Kill Command (your pet's next three bites deal 250%) and Mend Pet (heals its wounds, five seconds untouchable, brings a downed pet back at once). Bestial Wrath also sends your pet into a frenzy: double damage for ten seconds, once a minute.
New Beast Mastery talent Unleashed Fury: your pet bites 5% harder per rank (three ranks).

Shaman totems and Heroism

Windfury Totem: you and allies within 20 yards recover cooldowns 20% faster while it stands.
Earthbind Totem: every enemy within 10 yards moves 60% slower.
Healing Stream Totem: you and allies within 20 yards heal 2% of maximum health each second.
Heroism: 30% faster cooldowns for 20 seconds for every living hero in the arena, wherever they stand.

Mirror Image

Mirror Image now conjures three copies of your mage, each casting its own Frostbolt and spreading their fire across different enemies.