WoW Kings' Rest Boost

Kings' Rest in Season 2 Mythic+

Kings' Rest is a four-boss dungeon from Battle for Azeroth, tucked into Zuldazar on Zandalar, and it is one of the eight dungeons in the Midnight Season 2 Mythic+ pool. Its loot scales onto the current season's track like every other key in that pool, so a Kings' Rest run gears your character exactly as well as a run through any of the other seven. What it has that the other seven do not is a mount on the final boss's loot table. This boost covers the full range: take Mythic 0 for a clean single clear, or push a timed key up to M+12 for the top loot tier and Mythic+ score.

The Tomb Stalker Mount and Where It Drops

The mount is the Tomb Stalker, and it does not drop directly. What drops is the Mummified Raptor Skull, an item that teaches the mount when you use it. The skull has two sources, both inside this one dungeon: King Dazar on Mythic difficulty, and the Challenger's Cache that spawns at the end of a Mythic+ run. That is the whole acquisition path, which is why collectors have kept a steady queue running through Kings' Rest for years.

Two things worth being straight about. Blizzard has never published a drop rate for the skull, so neither will we - the numbers quoted around the internet are player estimates, not data, and the honest answer is that nobody outside Blizzard knows the figure. And no single run guarantees it. What a run guarantees is another roll, which is why this farm is decided by volume rather than by luck on any one clear.

Why the Tomb Stalker Farm Changes in Season 2

For most of the mount's life the farm has been slow for a structural reason rather than a difficulty one. Kings' Rest sat outside the rotation, so the only route to King Dazar was Mythic difficulty, and Mythic dungeons carry a lockout. One roll, then wait for the reset.

Being in the Season 2 pool changes the shape of that completely. A dungeon in the pool can be run on a keystone, and keystone runs carry no lockout at all - the same group can go straight back in and run it again, as many times as you want to keep going. Mythic 0 sits on its own separate lockout, which resets daily. So a mount that used to be a once-in-a-while roll becomes something you can actually push at: a block of keys in one sitting, each one a fresh chance at the skull stacked on top of the gear and the score those runs were already paying you.

That is also the argument for doing it this season rather than the next one. When Kings' Rest rotates out of the Mythic+ pool, the keystone route goes with it and the mount drops back to a lockout-limited grind.

What a Kings' Rest Key Pays Out

Every dungeon in the pool pays out on the same track, so a Kings' Rest key gears you on the Season 2 numbers:

Gear stops improving after +10. A timed +10 is the ceiling for both columns, and keys above it are run for Mythic+ score rather than for loot.

The Great Vault runs off the same clears. Its dungeon row opens one slot at a single completed dungeon that week, a second at four and a third at eight, and what each slot offers tracks the key levels you actually ran. Eight keys in a week is nothing unusual for someone farming the skull, so a full row tends to arrive as a by-product of the mount hunt rather than as a second job.

One thing to be straight about, because most pages selling Vault progress are not: you take a single item out of the Vault. Nine slots can be sitting there across all three rows and you still claim exactly one. Runs four and eight buy you a better pick, not a bigger pile.

Keys pay in Mistcrests as well, the currency that upgrades gear you already have: a Kings' Rest key at +2 or +3 pays Champion crests, +4 through +8 pays Hero, and +9 and up pays Myth.

The Kings' Rest Run, Boss by Boss

Four encounters sit between the entrance and the mount, spread across the Hall of Honored Dead, the Lustrous Apse and the Crypt of the First King.

The Golden Serpent opens the dungeon. Mchimba the Embalmer comes second - the boss that used to end solo attempts outright, until patch 9.1.5 removed his Entomb cast and made the skull noticeably easier to farm. The Council of Tribes is three bosses rather than one: Aka'ali the Conqueror, Kula the Butcher and Zanazal the Wise, fought one at a time. A defeated councilor does not leave the fight - they return to their urn and keep casting as a spirit while the next one steps in, so the damage going out only grows as the encounter runs on.

King Dazar closes the run, and he is the reason most people are here: the Mummified Raptor Skull sits on his loot table. On a keystone the group has to reach him with the timer still alive, and that last stretch is the part a pug tends not to manage.

How Many Kings' Rest Runs to Order

With no published drop rate there is no run count that arithmetic can hand you, so here is how the decision actually gets made. An order starts at a single dungeon and scales from there: take one clear, or a block of keys large enough to give the skull a real number of chances.

Two things push people toward the block. Keys run back to back with nothing locking you out between them, so a booked session moves through several in one sitting instead of one clear a day. And the Vault dungeon row stops counting at eight, so an order of eight leaves you with the mount attempts, a full row of Vault choices and the gear off every run, out of a single booking.

If you are unsure, start small and add runs later - the order can grow as you go, and nothing about the dungeon changes between one booking and the next.

Soloing Kings' Rest vs Taking a Key Group

Plenty of people farm this mount on their own, and it is worth laying out what that actually buys. At max level a well-geared character can walk a Battle for Azeroth dungeon on Mythic without much trouble, and since the Entomb change nothing in the run hard-stops a single player. What you get out of it is one Mythic 0 clear per lockout, per character, sitting at the bottom of the season's loot track - and no keystone at all, because a key needs a full group of five.

A team changes both halves of that. You can take the dungeon at whatever key level you want, which is where the 311 gear and the 318 Vault pick live, and you can go straight back in because keys do not lock you out. If the mount is the only thing you are after, volume is the entire game and a group produces more of it per hour than one character ever will. If you want the mount and a geared character out of the same evening, soloing has no version that competes.