A while back, I was informed via Twitter that it was possible to share legacy raid lockouts between characters on the same account. At first, I was perplexed. With the way shared raid lockouts work, you would need to have one character on your account invite another character from that account to a party. Meaning, you'd have to have two characters of the same license online at the same time.
Enter the Group Finder.
Because of how the Group Finder works (and whose inner workings I profess to know nothing about), players can invite their alts to parties they've created with a little bit of work. It's not exactly straightforward, and it might annoy your guildies if you're farming with multiple characters due to the logon/logoff spam (which you'll understand shortly), but it translates to a significant amount of time saved each week. This, of course, assuming you are running this content with multiple characters.
We'll use the Lich King 25-H as an example---these steps must be followed exactly.
1. First, you'll need the lockout. Clear ICC through Sindragosa with any character---I chose a lower level toon who could handle 10-N but couldn't actually kill the Lich King on 25-H without assistance. I'll explain why shortly. Notably, the lockout can be secured on either difficulty mode at either raid size. 25 will afford more rewards in terms of take-home gold, while 10 while take slightly less time to clear.
2. Start a Legacy content group with your lockout character in the Group Finder for Ice Crown Citadel - 25H. Name this group whatever you'd like---I generally go with "Private," though that won't prevent you from receiving random invite requests. Once the group is listed, log out of the game and onto an alt you'd like to share the lockout with.
3. Now on the second character, open the Group Finder and search Legacy groups. The group started by your first character will be right at the top of the list, as it takes a few minutes for the group to be removed from the system after the group leader goes offline. Request an invite, log out of the game and back in with the lockout character.
4. Once back on the lockout character you will hear that familiar ping indicating you have an invite request. Now who could that be? Invite your alt, immediate log out and back onto your alt.
5. Upon logging in with the alt, you will receive a group invite. Accept the invite and wait a minute or two for the game to pass you Group Leader. Once this happens, reset all instances and set Raid Difficulty to 25-N. Enter Ice Crown Citadel---you'll get a warning that 10/12 bosses have been defeated (or 11/12 if you did the Valithra encounter). Now inside, set the Raid Difficulty to Heroic and voila! Head on up to the Lich King. Killing the Lich King will not affect the lockout of the character who initially cleared the instance.
6. For multiple alts, log on to the next alt and go back to step 3!
Now, to preserve the lockout week to week, simply never defeat the target boss with the original character who got the lockout. After server reset, simply toggle the Raid Info tab in-game on that character, select your Ice Crown Citadel lockout, and click Extend. I currently have four level 100 characters that I try to run through each week. To secure the initial lockout, I used a level 87 Death Knight on 10-N mode and now share her lockout with alts each week.
This method should work for any legacy content you'd like to farm---Ulduar, Mogu'shan Vaults, Firelands and the like---happy hunting!
Thanks to @Shapingus for this tip!
Thanks to @Shapingus for this tip!
