Battle for Azeroth Season 4, January 2020
This is a historical Patch 8.3 reference. Battle for Azeroth Season 4 began with regional maintenance on January 21, 2020 in North America and January 22 in Europe. It introduced the Awakened seasonal affix and brought Operation: Mechagon into the Mythic Keystone rotation as two separate dungeons.
The dates, item levels and weekly chest described here belong to that original season. They are not the current Mythic+ reward schedule. Blizzard’s three-week transition announcement also confirms that the January 14 patch launch came before the season change.
Awakened Made the Obelisks Part of the Route
Interacting with an Awakened obelisk took the party into a shadowy realm associated with Ny’alotha. Each obelisk’s lieutenant presented a routing decision: defeat it there, or leave it alive and face it alongside the dungeon’s final boss.
After killing the lieutenant, the group returned to the normal dungeon at its current location. The exit position therefore mattered as well as the fight itself. A route could use that movement to pass enemies in the normal realm; postponing a lieutenant instead moved its combat cost into the final encounter.
That is the central tradeoff documented in Blizzard’s Season 4 overview. An old route built around these obelisks cannot be assumed to work in a later seasonal version of the same dungeon.
Mechagon Became Two Keystone Dungeons
The Visions of N’Zoth update notes split Operation: Mechagon into Mechagon – Junkyard and Mechagon – Workshop for its entry into the Keystone system. They also document encounter tuning intended to bring the former mega-dungeon into line with other Keystone dungeons.
For historical run lists and completion records, treat Junkyard and Workshop as separate entries. The original full mega-dungeon, a Heroic queue and a timed Keystone wing are different forms of the instance, even though they share the Mechagon setting.
Why the First Week’s Loot Looked Different
Season 4 did not immediately give every chest its final reward level. This timeline follows Blizzard’s North American maintenance dates; Europe’s reset followed its regional schedule.
| North American reset | End-of-run rewards | Weekly chest |
|---|---|---|
| January 14, 2020: Patch 8.3 | Season 3 Keystone affixes and rewards continued for the week. | The season had not yet switched. |
| January 21: Season 4 begins | Capped at item level 445, reached at +6. | Still reflected the previous week’s Season 3 runs. A +15 this week earned a 475 reward for the following reset. |
| January 28: second week | Scaled up to item level 465 at +15. | Season 4 rewards became available, up to item level 475. |
Blizzard also downgraded existing Keystones by four levels at the season transition and increased Heroic/Mythic dungeon difficulty. Compare old keys within that transition rather than assuming the same number represented the same challenge before and after the reset.
Historical scope: original Battle for Azeroth Season 4. Reviewed October 24, 2026 against Blizzard’s contemporary announcements; current seasonal routes and rewards require current documentation.
