World of Warcraft Content Patch 4.1 "Rise of the Zandalari" Guide

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm has been out for almost five months and developer Blizzard is releasing the first major content patch, Patch 4.1 "Rise of the Zandalari" on Tuesday to add tons of new features, balance changes, dungeons, items, and achievements. With the help of MMO-Champion we've digested all of the information for you in this handy guide, but first check out this trailer for the Patch 4.1 featuring Trolls from the Gurubashi and Amani tribes finally working together to form an empire that will wreak havoc upon Azeroth.

Be sure to check after the jump for our breakdown on the class changes, dungeons and raids, guild changes, items, professions, PvP changes, and user interface additions coming on Tuesday for the World of Warcraft: Cataclysm 4.1 content patch.

New Dungeon Call To Arms Mechanic:

When looking for a group for a dungeon, damage dealing classes oftentimes will have to wait for a very long time in a queue for a healer or tank to look for a group as well, as there are less people playing tank and healing classes than those playing damage dealers.

This new mechanic, according to Blizzard is, "a new system intended to lower queue times. Call to Arms will automatically detect which class role is currently the least represented in the queue, and offer them additional rewards for entering the Dungeon Finder queue and completing a random level-85 Heroic dungeon."

When queuing, a gold circle will appear around roles that have the "Call To Arms" and if you queue for that role then you will receive a Satchel of Exotic Mysteries after completing the dungeon. The Satchel includes gold, "a chance at a rare gem, a chance at a flask/elixir, a good chance of receiving a non-combat pet (including cross faction pets), and a very rare chance at receiving a mount. The pets offered come from a wide variety of sources, and include companions like the Razzashi Hatchling, Cockatiel, and Tiny Sporebat, but the mounts are those specifically only available through dungeons (not raids), like the Reins of the Raven Lord from Sethekk Halls, Swift White Hawkstrider from Magister's Terrace, and Deathcharger's Reins from Stratholme."

While DPS may feel like they're getting snubbed by not having access to these rewards, this will most definitely cut down on their queue times that can last up to 30-40 minutes.

Daily Heroic Dungeon Changes -- Valor Point Gains Are Now Weekly Instead of Daily:

One major change of the patch allows players to queue for heroic dungeons and reap Valor Points seven times in a row per week instead of how it is now where you can just get the 70 extra VP just once a day, thus adding flexibility to a very rigid system. As it stands now, whenever you do your first heroic of the day you're rewarded with 70 VP, but in Content Patch 4.1, you'll be rewarded with 70 VP for seven Heroic dungeons in a row and 140 VP for doing the new Zandalari dungeons up to seven times on Heroic allowing 980 VP exclusively from Heroic Dungeons per week. You can still do just one Heroic dungeon per day, or you can get all of them out of the way let's say on a Saturday and not miss out on any of the extra VP you would have missed if you hadn't been able to login for a day.

Two Updated Heroic Dungeons: Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub:

Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub are not new dungeons to World of Warcraft. They've been around since The Burning Crusade expansion but Zul'Gurub was taken out of Cataclysm to add more questing room to the Stranglethorn Vale zone. Now they've both been updated, received a Cataclysmic makeover, and put back in to the game as Heroic-only five man dungeons. Here's a video guide to each dungeon from OFMGCata and Yogscast.

Zul'Gurub Video Guide from OMFGCata:

 Zul'Aman Video Guide from Yogscast:

Guild Challenges:

Content Patch 4.1 will also feature guild challenges which, "will be weekly tasks guild groups can tackle for additional guild experience, achievements, and gold," according to Blizzard. There will be three different challenge categories: Dungeons, Raids, and Rated Battlegrounds and a fixed number of challenges can be completed per week for each category. Guild groups mean that in a party of five, three players must be in the same guild, in a raid of ten, eight players must be in the same guild, and in a group of 25, 20 players must be in the same guild.

Guild challenges include things like killing raid bosses within a guild group or winning a rated battleground in a guild group. For completing challenges guilds will accrue experience and gold to the guild bank. Even if a guild has reached the maximum amount of experience for the day, they'll still get experience for completing the challenges which will give certain guilds a leg up over others. Also, once a guild has reached max level the amount of gold for completing challenges will go up substantially.

Other New Features:

There are quite a lot of other new implementations but they're somewhat minor. Here they are:

• New Heirloom tanking items introduced. These items can be purchased by level 85 characters and traded to low level characters to help expedite leveling.
• Conversion of Justice Points (PvE) to Honor Points  (PvP) and vice versa.
• New archaeology rewards including two pets.
• New underwater mount Poseidus
• NPCs you target will now appear on your minimap for easy tracking purposes (finally!!).
• New cooking and fishing daily quests

And there you have it! A lot of pretty cool stuff coming for World of Warcraft: Cataclysm's first big 4.1 content patch. Sure The Firelands raid that Blizzard said would be in Patch 4.1 isn't coming out yet, but the two "new" heroic dungeons sound neat enough. For a list of all of the class and dungeon balance changes you can visit the official World of Warcraft patch notes website.

Special thanks to MMO-Champion.

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