Today we are going to talk about the most iconic weapon in Wrath of the Lich King - Shadowmourn. We explain how to get it the quickest way, and if you're really looking to min-max it to the limit, how you might go about doing that.

WoW WotLK Shadowmourne Quest Guide: How to Get Shadowmourne WotLK 2023

Shadowmourne is a legendary two-handed axe in Wrath of the Lich King, has a unique visual appearance and several powerful abilities, making it a valuable asset for any player who could wield it. Shadowmourne was introduced in the Icecrown Citadel raid and required a long and challenging questline to obtain. The questline for Shadowmourne involved collecting various materials and completing difficult tasks, such as defeating powerful raid bosses and gathering rare drops from them. Now if you are finding easy ways to obtain Shadowmourne in WotLK Classic phase 3 2023, this is the guide for you, we list all the Shadowmourne quests in WoW WotLK.

Icecrown Citadel

First, let’s lay out some things about icecrown citadel. When it was first released, only let you clear the first wing on normal difficulty. Four weeks into that release and every two weeks thereafter a new wing opened until finally the frostwing halls and the Lich King were available. Coupled with this was a limited attempts system, each failed poll on a boss costs you an attempt. These started with 10 and over time progressed upwards to 50 total late in the phase. There was also an optional buff that was eventually put into place that increased your raids health, healing and damage output by 5% every month up to 30%. People were raiding this place a long time. Finally, in order to do the heroic difficulty of ICC, you had to have cleared normal at some point which meant you couldn't even start heroic until after all the normal wings were cleared two months into ICC's release. 

WotLK Shadowmourne Quest

The Shadowmourne Quest is a 9 part quest chain starting just inside Icecrown Citadel with Darion Mograine. The quest chain has you do a bunch of different things, but your two big bottlenecks will be collecting 25 primordial saronite, random blue drops from bosses with an ICC and also possibly from the emblem of frost vendor for 23 emblems. The other bottleneck will be the 50 Shadowfrost Shards that you need to collect. 

1. Getting Friendly with the Ashen Verdict

So Darion Mograine, you first have to be friendly with the Ashen Verdict, the reputation associated with ICC. This reputation has a bunch of things associated with it but it primarily will provide a ring that upgrades per reputation and these are all very good. This shouldn't be too hard to do, but you should consider trash farming before the first boss Lord Marrowgar for the reputation as you'll want to preserve your boss and trash for a part of the quest later in the chain. So do about 5 trash clears of the first two rooms on 10 or 25 man to get. 

2. The Sacred and the Corrupt

Now the fun begins, he'll give you the first quest in the chain, The Sacred and the Corrupt. You are to retrieve some stuff on Darion's shopping list to make the first part of the axe, leading to Shadowmourne. 

• This requires Light’s Vengeance, Arthas' mace that he discarded in Favor of the Frostborn. Festergut’s Acidic Blood and Rotfaces’ Acidic Blood epic drops that can only be retrieved once per boss on 25 man and 25 primordial saronite. So Light’s Vengeance is pretty easy, it's just a small event in the cave in Dragon Blade, some undead will spawn and then in the lead, it's super easy.

• Festergut’s and Rotfaces’ Acidic Blood acidic blood will be a bit harder, you'll want to kill up 2 and including them, but not Professor Putricide or any of the other bosses in ICC. Getting a raid to agree to this week one might be difficult but where min maxing here so see what you can do.

• The hard part, 25 primordial saronite. These things originally dropped from ICC bosses both 10 and 25 man. But quickly were put on the vendor for 23 Emblems of Frost. They're going to be on the vendor like a lot of the other mid-faced things Blizzard has added in Classic at the start of each phase. It's going to be very expensive to get these things week 1 if that's your goal. Most people will be looking at finishing this part of the quest in around week 3 or 4, but with some real sweat you can get it done sooner even week 1.

3. Shadow’s Edge + A Feast of Souls

Darion will now fuse these four ingredients (Light’s Vengeance, Primordial Saronite, Festergut’s Acidic Blood, Rotfaces’ Acidic Blood) together into Shadow's Edge, pretty great axe on its own that you're going to be using for a while. Once it's complete, you'll be offered the quest “A Feast of Souls”. Use Shadow's Edge to slay 1000 of the Lich King's minions and collect their souls. This quest is pretty simple if a bit grindy, every mob you hit in ICC will be debuffed with something called “Shadow's Fate” that enables you to collect 1 soul from it upon its death. This works for both 10 and 25 man stuff in ICC and trash counts just as much as bosses, just because Sindragosa is a big mother, doesn't mean she's got any more than one soul on her. 

This is where farming trash comes back into the picture, you'll likely be able to find lots of people farming trash for rep, but either way you're going to want to get your closest friends insert yes honey meme and do some trash resets in 10 or 25 man. If you've been pushing to get as far in the quest as you can week one, that means 10 man as your 25-man instance will be cleared pretty far already. This first area before Lord Marrowgar has about 50 mobs that you can clear. Do that, then reset the instance and do it again. Do this about 20 times and you've satiated the blades hunger for souls. Also, there's some nifty voice lines that Arthas whispers at you during this quest. 

4. Infusion Quests

• Return to Darion again and begin the first of three infusion quests starting with Unholy Infusion. Infuse Shadow's edge with unholy power and then slay professor patricide. Ideally, you saved putricide and the other final wing bosses for this part of the quest, putricide is a fun asynchronous fight that requires 1 person to brave his table of potions and drink one, turn it into a monstrous abomination and giving you the ability to hoover up the green slime pools he leaves on the ground, so that your raid has enough room to move around safely. If you're on this quest however, you also get a fourth ability, you channel a spell that converts it into unholy power into your newly minted Shadow's Edge. After you've done that, finish the fight and down patricide. 

• Back to Darion and pick up the second Blood Infusion. You clear the princes and then move up the ramp around to Blood Queen Lana'thel. A vampiric Darkfallen that the Lich King felt he needed to raise up as his Citadel was a little too masculine. So this is a specific position fight with lots of individual raider responsibility that everyone will do perfectly right the first time. But what you're looking to do as the Shadow's Edge wielder is be afflicted by bloodmirror and bloodthirst. From there, you're going to want to go around and give your three best friends a little bite, spreading your love around and infusing Shadow's edge with blood energy. 

• Then on to the final of the three Frost Infusion. Let Sindragosa breath you four times in one fight without dying. Just stand in front of her, each breath slows you which can complicate the fight. So keep fiddling with it until you get it right. Once she does go down and you've got 4 stacks. This quest may only be completed in 25 person difficulty of Icecrown Citadel. 

5. Shadow Shards/Splintered Throne

Now that you’ve done all the infusions, it’s time for the most painstaking and time-consuming part of the questline, the Splintered Throne. This quest is the one that you've been rushing as fast as you can to reach because it's the true bottleneck for this questline. Collect 50 Shadowfrost Shards, these only drop off of bosses in 25 man and have a higher chance on heroic than normal. Heroic has about a 75% chance to drop them while normal between 25 and 50. If you're full clearing heroic, you're looking at about 6 weeks to finish this quest. And if you've completed the entire WotLK Shadowmorne questline up to this point week 1, you can actually get your very first Shard from the Lich King week 1. And Shadow’s Edge will transform into Shadowmourne. 

6. Shadowmourne Obtain from the Lich King

Return to Darion and present Shadow Shards to him or he'll take your Shadow's Edge and infuse it with the shards and reward you with Shadowmourn. 

There's more, you'll receive a final quest to defeat the Lich King and once doing so, you'll be able to salute a sealed chest from Arthas himself that starts a quest. Return it to Darion or he'll unseal it for you and you're given a bunch of items, Tabard of the Lightbringer, Jaina’s Locket, Reins of the Crimson Deathcharger, Sylvana’s Music Box, and Muradin’s Favor.