WoW Midnight Season 2 Dungeon: Altar of Fangs

Altar of Fangs is the only brand-new dungeon in Midnight Season 2, and it fits a full run into three bosses across three floors. It sits on the Coiled Isle, the venom-soaked island east of Zul'Aman that Patch 12.1 finally opens, and every fight leans on the same theme: poison, snakes, and an Amani warlord trying to wake something that should have stayed sealed. Rav'i eats. The Writhing Coil splits apart. Zul'jan channels a ritual that ramps until you stop it. Miss the wrong mechanic on any of them and the run ends in seconds.

How to Enter Altar of Fangs

Altar of Fangs is carved into the Vaults of Atal'Utek on the Coiled Isle, the island east of Zul'Aman that opens up with Patch 12.1 on August 11. It is a level 90 dungeon. You reach the isle through the 12.1 campaign, and launch week already runs the place up to Mythic 0. Only Mythic+ waits for Midnight Season 2 on August 18, and from then on a Keystone is the only way in.

Getting there on foot: three gates cut into the Vaults of Atal'Utek from the Coiled Isle surface, and any of them drops you into the complex.

• Gate of the Serpent Eye: 43.3, 44.2
• Gate of the Eastern Fang: 45.4, 65.9
• Gate of the Western Fang: 31.8, 64.9
• Altar of Fangs door, inside the Vaults: 47.2, 67.6

Once you are through a gate the dungeon door sits at 47.2, 67.6, in the southern chamber, and both maps below mark it. The run carries a campaign quest too. The Vaults of Atal'Utek: Altar of Fangs simply asks you to clear the dungeon. Time a +10 once and Path of Venomous Evolution lands in your spellbook, dropping you at the entrance from anywhere and making the walk in a one-time problem. Our Midnight dungeon entrances guide has the door coordinates for the expansion's other dungeons.

It is a compact crawl through four named areas: the Carnage Pit, the Mutation Chambers, the Ancient Burrow and the Sacrificial Approach. Those stack onto three map floors, one boss per floor, so the run climbs steadily from the pit at the bottom to the altar at the top. Three bosses, short trash sections between them. A dungeon this tight rewards group knowledge fast, so learning it early pays off.

Altar of Fangs Boss Order

The three encounters run in a fixed order, and each one tests a different skill. Rav'i is your shield-breaking and floor-awareness check. The Writhing Coil turns into an add fight the moment it splits, and Zul'jan closes the dungeon with beam soaks and a stacking ritual that decides the whole pull. He is also the only boss carrying the mount, so he is where the farm value sits.

One map per floor, in the order you walk them.

Curse of Ula'tek Overview

Altar of Fangs is half a story. The other half is the raid it feeds into, where the creature Zul'jan is trying to free finally shows up as the final boss and the whole Ula'tek thread pays off. For the full picture of the patch around this dungeon, start with the overview and the raid page.

Rav'i Boss Guide

Rav'i is a three-headed hydra that has survived this cursed pit by scavenging whatever dies in it. The fight is a tug-of-war over food. She wants to reach a Carrion Pile and feed; you want to stop her — the second she starts feeding she becomes almost unkillable and grinds the group down. Everything else on the boss is movement around that core loop.

• Fight Style: Single-target built around objects on the floor: piles, meat, falling rock.
• Kill condition: Break her feeding shield fast, and never let her feed on a pile that holds Fresh Meat.
• Lust/Hero: On pull, or saved for the first shield to burn it instantly.

Feeding, Shields, and Carrion Burst

• Feeding is on a timer you can read. Rav'i runs on energy, and the moment it empties she casts Ssscavenging, sprints to the nearest Carrion Pile and gains a shield that absorbs all damage. Watch the bar and you know the shield is coming.
• While that shield is up she applies Carrion Burst to the whole group every 3 seconds. Each application ticks for 9 seconds and they stack on top of each other, so the damage curve bends upward the longer she eats.
• Break the shield as fast as possible. That is the single most important job on the pull, and it is why saving Lust for the first shield is an option.
• The healer should treat a slow shield break as a cooldown moment, because the stacking Carrion Burst is what actually kills groups here.

Fresh Meat and Feeding Frenzy

• Ravenous Stomp sends a quake through the temple that hits the whole group, then shakes stalactites loose from the ceiling. Each stalactite hits everything within 5 yards of the impact and stuns anyone caught under it for 2 seconds, so read the telegraphs and step out.
• Those falling rocks also skewer the flying Twinfangs circling the pit, dropping Fresh Meat into her pit for the piles to soak up.
• If Rav'i reaches a pile that contains Fresh Meat, she skips straight into a Feeding Frenzy instead of a normal feed. Carrion Burst then lands every 1.5 seconds rather than every 3, and she picks up Scent of Blood for 30% extra attack speed.
• The tank's job is positioning. Face Rav'i away from the group, and park her so the closest Carrion Pile is a clean one, because Ssscavenging always sends her to the nearest.

Spread and Dodge Checks

• Triple Shot hits 3 players with venom that also splashes everyone near them and ticks for 10 seconds. Spread out so the three targets never overlap.
• Regurgitate hurls 3 lines of stomach acid toward a player. Getting clipped deals heavy damage and cuts both your movement speed and your damage done by 50%. Move out the moment the lines appear. The debuff is a Disease, so anyone who can cure one should strip it off the players who ate a wave.
• On Mythic and Mythic+, Messy Eater throws chunks of rotting meat across the pit while she feeds. Each chunk hits everything within 3.5 yards of where it lands, and any chunk nobody catches explodes into another Carrion Burst. Catch them instead of dodging past them.
• Hydrastrike is her three heads hammering the current target. It is a tank hit, so keep active mitigation ready and face her away from everyone else.

The Writhing Coil Boss Guide

The Writhing Coil is a Child of Ula'tek, a knot of snakes bound into one body. It is the most interesting fight in the dungeon because the split only happens when the tethered players go and make it happen. Tethers pull it open, it scatters into individual snakes, and you get a short window to burn or crowd-control them before they fuse back together. Split it well and it ends fast. Handle it badly and a ramping raid-wide rattle catches up to you — and it does not stop climbing.

• Fight Style: Single-target that becomes a burst add fight during each split.
• Kill condition: Complete every split cleanly, then cleave the snakes down so the boss reforms with less health each time.
• Lust/Hero: During the first Uncoiled window, where damage into the snakes carries over permanently.

Writhing Coil Death Rattle and the Split

• Death Rattle is the ramp. Every snake in the Coil rattles, and it adds another application every single second it runs. You do not out-heal that indefinitely.
• The split is how you interrupt it, and you get help setting it up. As the Coil winds up the rattle, Orweyna lashes players to it with Vine Grip, and everyone tethered then runs 10 yards clear to yank the boss apart. Treat the tether as a kick, not a bonus.
• That pull triggers Uncoil, which hits the whole group for a chunk of Nature damage but cuts the rattle off, scatters the snakes and opens the burn window.

Burning the Uncoiled Writhes

• Uncoiled splits the boss into several Uncoiled Writhes, each holding a slice of its health. After 20 seconds they cast Assimilation and merge back into the Coil with their combined remaining health.
• So this is where your damage matters most. Whatever you kill or chip off the Writhes is health the Coil never gets back.
• The Writhes are susceptible to crowd control, which is the part most groups waste. Lock down whatever you cannot kill inside the window and cleave the rest.
• When a Writhe dies it casts Undermining, cracking the ground and knocking anyone above it into the air. Do not stand directly on a snake that is about to drop.
• On Mythic and Mythic+, each Writhe fixates a player with Spiteful Hunt for the whole 20-second window. A Writhe that reaches its target lands Spiteful Venom, a stacking poison that also cuts your damage by 5% per stack. Kite and stun the ones chasing you.

Coil Damage and Venom

• Toxic Barrage loads up three back-to-back casts of Toxic Atrophy, a stacking debuff that saps 20% of your damage done and movement speed per application. Every one of those casts can be interrupted, so rotate kicks through the barrage instead of eating three stacks.
• Synchronized Venom tags the whole group with an upfront hit plus a 35-second poison tick. Save a healing cooldown for the overlap when it lands during a split.
• Burrowing Charge sends the Coil digging in a straight line. Step out of the path.
• Venom Jet is a frontal cone at a target, telegraphed by a 4-second cast. Nobody but that player should be standing in front of the boss when it fires.
• Tail Scythe is the tank hit: a 3-second cast that lands hard, so have mitigation up before it finishes.
• Vindictive Onslaught is a burst of attacks on a single target, instant and with no cast bar to read. Whoever it picks needs to be topped off.

Zul'jan Boss Guide

Zul'jan is the reason the dungeon exists. He has brought the Fang of Ula'tek back to the altar and is channeling the power to free the creature the raid ends on. Mechanically he is a soak fight bolted onto a spinning-axe dodge fight. The ritual is the part that decides your pull: leave it alone and the group melts under stacking Nature damage, so someone has to eat the beams. That trade is the whole encounter — soak now, or pay for it later.

• Fight Style: Single-target with rotating soaks and constant movement.
• Kill condition: Intercept the ritual beams every time so Fang Empowered never runs away from your healer.
• Lust/Hero: On pull, while nobody is carrying Ritual Venom yet.

Ritual of the Fang and the Beam Soaks

• Ritual of the Fang opens with a 4-second cast, then snake heads channel beams into Zul'jan for 8 seconds. If the channel finishes clean, he gains Fang Empowered, a stacking pulse of Nature damage on the whole group that only grows.
• Players intercept the beams by standing in them. That denies the buff, but the beam then ticks Nature damage on the soaker and leaves them with Ritual Venom.
• Rotate who soaks each ritual so no single player eats every beam. Spread the assignments across the damage dealers and the healer, and never let the same person take two in a row.

Ritual Venom and Bloodletting

• Ritual Venom sits dormant for 50 seconds, then bursts for a heavy Nature hit when it expires. Carrying it is fine as long as your healer knows it is coming, and it is why the soak order matters more than any single soak.
• On Mythic and Mythic+ that venom stacks. A second soak before the first one expires doubles the burst, which is what turns a sloppy rotation into a wipe at higher keys rather than a heal check.
• There is a release valve. Bloodletting makes Zul'jan's Physical abilities strip Ritual Venom off whoever they hit, and the hemorrhage drops a blood pool that ticks Nature damage.
• So the venom clears when his Physical damage lands on you, axes included, and the cost is a puddle. Take those hits near the edges of the arena and keep the center clean.

Axes and Tank Hits

• Boneslicer is a 5-second cast that throws an axe at a player, hitting everyone in its line and leaving an armor-ignoring bleed for 7 seconds. Get out of the path and do not line others up behind you.
• Axegrinder throws spinning axes that ricochet around the arena and shred anyone they clip, armor included. They hit softer as they lose speed, never harmlessly, so keep tracking them for the whole duration.
• Chop Down hacks the tank twice in a row for big physical damage. Face Zul'jan away from the group and mitigate the double hit.

Altar of Fangs Mythic and Mythic+ Differences

No fight here changes shape. Rav'i and the Writhing Coil each pick up an ability that simply does not exist below Mythic, and Zul'jan keeps his kit but sharpens the one debuff that punishes bad soak order. Nothing is taken away to make room for any of it. All three additions hit the same group: the one that stands still and heals through the problem.

Altar of Fangs Loot and the Writhing Brood Mount

Every drop, split by boss. Rav'i has the shortest list; the Writhing Coil and Zul'jan carry five armor pieces each, and both two-handers sit on the Coil. Zul'jan adds the bow, both daggers, a Tailoring pattern and the run's only mount. Item levels climb with difficulty, so the same piece is a Mythic 0 filler on launch week and a Mythic+ target once the season starts; our Mythic+ gear guide covers how those item levels scale with key difficulty.

Rav'i Loot

The Writhing Coil Loot

Zul'jan Loot and Mount

The Writhing Brood is the dungeon's headline drop, a serpent mount that comes off Zul'jan at a low rate, so farming it means killing him and rolling again. Run the farm on Mythic. The mount is expected to sit behind Mythic difficulty, and even if it does not, Mythic 0 and a key both drop it, so a Heroic farm is never the right call. Its own description hands the credit to the second boss, though: the serpents only yield after watching you tear the Writhing Coil apart.

Altar of Fangs Trinkets and Weapon Effects

Four trinkets drop across the three bosses, and only one of them is passive. Two of them turn the dungeon's venom into your own damage, one is a pure stat gamble, and the last is an Amani banner you plant on the floor.

• Coiled Fangstone (Rav'i): on use, three Envenomed Bites centered on your target, splitting Nature damage between nearby enemies and gaining 30% per extra target up to 150%. One-minute cooldown.
• Vile Vial of Volatile Venom (Rav'i): a two-minute gamble. A random secondary stat jumps for 15 seconds, then a random secondary stat drops for the 15 after that.
• Knot of Writhing Serpents (The Writhing Coil): the passive one. Your harmful spells can send a serpent at your target, splitting Nature damage the same way and leaving a 15-second Nature bleed on the primary target.
• Tattered Amani War Banner (Zul'jan): plant it for 15 seconds and fighting within 12 yards of it grants Battle Fervor, a chunk of your highest secondary stat. Kill at least one enemy while it stands and it lasts 5 seconds longer — the cooldown is a minute and a half.

Two weapons carry effects of their own, and Zul'jan drops both. They are the twin Lightwood daggers, and they split cleanly by role.

• Polished Lightwood Channeler: your damaging spells can launch a mote of light at the target for Holy damage, split between nearby enemies on the same 30%-per-extra-target curve up to 150%. A caster dagger that pays out in packs.
• Sharpened Lightwood Slasher: the melee half of the pair. Attacks and abilities can sear the target for Holy damage, one target only, no splitting and no ramp.

Altar of Fangs Achievements

Every achievement here hangs on Zul'jan. The first three sit in the Midnight dungeon category and tick off as you climb difficulties. The last two are Feats of Strength, and one of them is the reason to care: Keystone Hero hands you Path of Venomous Evolution, the teleport to the door.

Altar of Fangs Story and Lore

The ancient Amani sealed the Vaults of Atal'Utek here at the Altar of Fangs, and the Fang of Ula'tek is what they locked it with. Only that dagger reopens it. For most of the expansion the isle handled the problem on its own: anyone who came too close was pushed straight back out by the force coiled around it.

Zul'jan broke it anyway. Still held in the sway of the spirit of Hex Lord Malacrass, he carried the Fang back to the altar chasing lost Amani glory, and what he did along the way left his sister Zul'jarra wounded. He does not know that the dagger driving his ritual is the only thing that can still save her. So you go in after him alongside Orweyna and Lady Liadrin: push through Rav'i and the Writhing Coil, the hydra and serpent-brood the isle's venom has twisted, and reach Zul'jan mid-ritual. Killing him is not the end of it, though. Ula'tek surfaces as the final boss of the Venomous Abyss, which makes this dungeon the front door to the raid's whole story.

Altar of Fangs FAQ