How World of Warcraft players solved a wild puzzle to unlock Legion’s rarest world boss

It all started because players desperately wanted to find a new mount. A big pink bird, to be more specific.

As in every new expansion, World of Warcraft: Legion has introduced a whole army of new mounts that players can collect and show off as they zoom around the world of Azeroth. One mount in particular — the Long-Forgotten Hippogryph — got a certain batch of hardcore players especially excited.

See, this mount was originally revealed via players digging into the game’s code way back in 2007. It’s not unique — just a pink reskin of the hippogryph mount, of which there are around half a dozen already in the game. But as the Long-Forgotten Hippogryph continued to elude World of Warcraft players who knew it was in the code waiting to be added, its legend grew. Where was this hippogryph? What was Blizzard waiting for?

Further datamining with the launch of Legion revealed that the Long-Forgotten Hippogryph would seemingly, finally make its appearance for players to earn. But now, over a week after launch, it’s still not clear where or how players obtain this long-awaited addition to their stables.

It was while searching the new Legion zones for this hippogryph that a small group of extremely hardcore players stumbled across another secret entirely: The Broken Shore area was full of bizarre, well-hidden caves. Here’s a quote from the full account by Reddit poster drflevel:

To give you an idea of how hidden these caves were one is in a broken ship in the middle of the ocean south of Eye of Azshara, through a crack, and then hidden behind kelp, basically three layers of secret you have to find. Another is a hidden cave that has another hidden cave near the entrance that actually has the orb.

After puzzling over these caves for a while, the players discovered another surprise. There’s an orc non-player character named Drak’thul in the Broken Shores zone. Drak’thul is standing next to a table. On that table? A makeshift map of all the zones of the Broken Isles, with markers revealing the locations of yet more hidden caves.

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The players eventually discovered that Drak’thul must be given a relic hidden nearby, after which the players who gave him the relic will be able to interact with the orbs they were finding hidden in these caves. Then they tested planting players in each cave and interacting with the orbs in different orders until they happened across the correct order.

When they did, a server-wide announcement rang out for all players to see:

Azeroth itself recoils as unleashes an ancient evil. Kosumoth the Hungering walks the land once more...

Evalyn was the final player to interact with an orb. They hadn’t unlocked a secret path to their desired mount. Instead, they had spawned a powerful world boss that groups of players could now attempt to take on.

"it's hard to imagine what's hidden still"

It’s not all bad news for mount lovers. It turns out that Kosumoth has two unique drops: a tiny tentacle pet and a creepy octopus-esque mount called the Fathom Dweller. And now that Kosumoth has been unlocked, he remains in the world, respawning every five minutes or so for new sets of adventurers looking to take him on. No more need to run around delving into supremely hidden caves and clicking on orbs just for your shot at this monstrosity.

The way that players banded together to figure out this mystery is a cool story that demonstrates just how awesome a sinister, hidden piece of content in a massive game like World of Warcraft can be. Could there be more secrets like this in the expansion? The Reddit poster who shared this tale is skeptical:

If the Long-Forgotten mount is actually in the game right now without needing to be activated than it's actually going to be something even more insane then this. We had people just walking up and down every hill trying to find caves, it's hard to imagine what's hidden still.

But who knows? It’s a wide World of Warcraft out there, and now we have evidence that Blizzard has put in at least one devious secret for players to uncover. Let us know if you stumble onto any more.