World of Warcraft: Season of Mastery is now live and players can begin playing through the Vanilla experience one more time.
One of the most popular features this time around is the addition of the Soul of Iron buff, which shows the buff "Never Known Defeat" to prove they have not died on that character.
While it is not the most advanced system for hardcore players, it is indeed a step in the right direction and the community has embraced it creating many events based on this new buff.
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Players obtain the buff from two new High Elf Watchers in Ironforge and the Undercity, depending on their faction called the Soul of Iron.
Alliance players can visit Chronicler Fero in the Library in Ironforge, and Horde players can travel to the Undercity and speak with Chronicler Morta who resides in the Apothecarium.
Since players need to venture to these cities to gain the buff, the question is asked if the system can be cheated by not accepting the buff until a later level, although this is not the case as any death prior to receiving the buff will still fail the challenge once it has been accepted.
Upon dying, the buff will change to a debuff called "Tarnished Soul" which leaves the player with -1% stats and test to let other players know they have been defeated.
Many hardcore players simply delete their characters upon death, although if people wish to keep playing that character, they can simply return to the NPC that gave them the buff and they can have it removed.
We hope to see more hardcore support in the second season of WoW Classic, including the addition of hardcore specific servers that enforce the rules created by the community over the years, which hopefully is one of the benefits of the Community Council.