Chess Event Strategy Guide (Karazhan)

Karazhan Raid Guide

Karazhan Attunement

Karazhan Loot

Attumen the Huntsman

Moroes

Maiden of Virtue

Opera Event

The Curator

Terestian Illhoof

Shade of Aran

Netherspite

Chess Event

Prince Malchezaar

Nightbane

Welcome to our strategy guide for Karazhan’s Chess Event in Burning Crusade Classic! The Chess encounter is the ninth “boss fight” within Karazhan, but serves as only the third required event. The encounter is overall extremely unique, involving a strategic game of special chess rather than engaging in combat. As such, it is insanely simple and only requires a few raid members that understand how to win the game. We’ll go over the best strategy for this fun encounter below!

Getting Started

To find the Chess Event, you’ll need to find the Games Hall hosting the chessboard. You’ll find the Games Hall past trash after Netherspite’s room. You’ll know when you’re in the right spot because the floor will be checkered. There will be game pieces for both horde and alliance players. Speak to the king of your faction to start the game. The Chess Event is entirely safe and requires no preparation, you just need to understand how to win.

Role Summaries

All

• Move pawns out of the way initially.
• Prioritize killing the Bishops and Queen.
• Watch for Medivh’s cheats and move pieces if needed.
• Kill the opposing King to win the match.

Fight Overview

Chess Pieces

Before explaining the strategy for the event, it’s helpful to know what all of the chess pieces in the game do. Each piece has different rules regarding how it can move similar to a real chess game. Furthermore, each piece also has two abilities that can be used on the chess pieces of the opposing faction (Medivh’s pieces). Here’s what each piece can do:

• Pawns are the weakest units in the game with low health, move one tile in any direction, use Heroic Blow/Vicious Strike (depends on faction) to deal 1000 damage to a single target, and Shield Block/Weapon Deflection to absorb 500 damage.
• Rooks are a class up but also have low health, can also move one tile in any direction, use Geyser/Hellfire to deal 3000 damage to all nearby pieces, and use Water Shield/Fire Shield to reduce incoming damage by half for 5 seconds.
• Knights are in the same class but have higher health, can move one tile in any direction or 2 tiles if moving straight, use Smash/Bite to deal 3000 damage to a single target, and use Stomp/Howl to reduce damage of all nearby pieces for half for 10 seconds.
• Bishops are also in the same general class with low health, move one tile in any direction, use Healing/Shadow Mend to heal a piece for 12000 damage, and use Holy Lance/Shadow Spear to deal 2000 damage to all units within 3 tiles in front of the piece.
• Queens are the second-best unit in the game with a good health pool, can move 2 tiles in any direction or 3 if moving straight, use Elemental Blast/Fireball to deal 4000 damage to a piece with massive range, and use Rain of Fire/Poison Cloud to cause 6000 damage to all enemy pieces with massive range.
• Kings are the best piece in the game with a large health pool, can move one tile in any direction, use Sweep/Cleave to deal 4000 damage to any pieces within in a 3 tile arc in front of the king, and use Heroism/Bloodlust to boost damage of all friendly pieces by 50%.

Strategy

As you can see, each piece is unique and useful. However, Kings are the most important and powerful unit in the game. The goal of the event is to kill Medivh’s King. With this in mind, you should use all pieces to focus on killing the other king. Players can control a piece on the board by talking to it, which will allow them to move or use an ability.

As simple as this may sound, Medivh will also cheat throughout the game. His cheats include inflicting berserking status on one of his pieces, spawning a damage spell on the chessboard, and healing all of his units. These only prolong the encounter and often won’t require any special effort to manage beyond moving a piece out of fire.

The main strategy of the event will entail systematically killing pieces until it’s safe to take the king. Specifically, you’ll want to kill Medivh’s Bishops, his Queen, and then his King. Other pieces are relatively insignificant and don’t need to be killed, although it doesn’t hurt to have less enemy pieces on the board. You can and should use your King offensively as he has a lot of health and deals insane damage.

Start the event by moving the Pawns out of the way so your other pieces can move. From here, use your Rooks, Knights, Bishops, Queen, and King to clear through Medivh’s critical pieces. You likely only need a few raid members actually controlling pieces to make this happen. They can begin by controlling Pawns and switching to better pieces after the initial move. If you’re properly prioritizing Bishops, the Queen, and then the King, you should have no problem beating Medivh despite his cheating!