Molten Core LFR may test your patience, but look at this mount

WoW's 10th anniversary celebration started today, and with it came what is now my favorite mount in the game. This Core Hound one of those mounts you have to see to believe. There's something incredibly cool about stomping around on one of these bad boys, especially with my matching hunter pet and battle pet in tow. I also snagged a ilvl 640 epic helm out of it. Everyone who kills Ragnaros will be guaranteed the helm and the mount. The rest of the bosses simply drop gold for everyone (around 25g each) which should hopefully pay for the repair bill you will rack up doing this right now.

In order to queue for Molten Core LFR you must have an item level of at least 615. If you're not level 100 yet, don't fret. This event is ongoing until January 5, 2015 and I suspect many will continue to farm it for chances at Hatespark the Tiny and Flames of Ragnaros, both of which are not guaranteed drops.

I'll admit that when I first went in, I expected this to be a complete pushover. However, I forgot how hard it is to organize a group of 40 people. Almost everyone inside is just barely making the ilvl 615 requirement to boot. People are used to soloing this for transmog gear and it can result in many wipes. It took my group nearly 2 hours to clear the whole raid. My first group didn't even make it past the first boss.

Tips and tricks

• There are 4 tanks in a 40-man LFR. Try to get your group to assign one tank as the main puller to avoid different tanks pulling different things.

• Take your time. You don't need to pull everything in line of sight at once.

• Allow your healers time to drink between large pulls if they need it. This was a persistent problem in my groups.

• Kill Firelords first as they spawn additional adds.

• The Core Hound packs between Lucifron and Magmadar need to die at the same time or else they will resurrect.

• There is a ridiculous amount of stuff to dispel/decurse in here (welcome to vanilla WoW!). It's helpful to group up for Mass Dispels.

• Wowhead has a guide up with details on all of the boss abilities.

• There are currently some technical issues related to Molten Core that Blizzard is working on.

Just remember that you've got a long time to get this stuff done. Things will get easier as people learn the fights and start to gear up. The raid itself is not difficult. Organizing 40 strangers is the hard part. Good luck and enjoy your mount!