I’m working on attempting to unlock the vanilla Naxxramas in Stratholme, following the known instructions to get a Ward from an Eye of Naxxramas and then go use it in front of the cathedral by the service entrance. The Dread Ward is not spawning for me despite trying nearly every path and skipping every boss on live side on the way here. I am at instance cap resetting attempting to get this thing to appear and continue.
Please look at why this isn’t appearing for everyone.
20 resets down and I can’t get this to spawn. My suspicion is that something with having unlocked the original Argent Dawn Commission as well as Naxx attunement in vanilla is interfering with my ability to progress this secret.
For testing’s sake, I brought an alt that wasn’t even created until Naxx moved to Northrend and whose only exposure to Argent Dawn was the free revered rep from the Cata version of the EPL. However, due to the account-wide nature of the scourgestones unlock I’m not able to test “from scratch” as the cracked commission is no longer available in old Scholo on any character.
Unfortunately the Dread Ward will still not spawn regardless of which character I use the Ward on in Strat. This makes me think there is an issue at an account level that got set by attempting it first with my from-vanilla character.
Having this issue as well. I have the original AD commission but was never attuned to the old Naxx. Ran it a few times without killing any bosses on the live side. Dread warden just isnt there after killing Rivendare.
if you kill any of the 3 bosses to unlock rivendare before doing it, it wont spawn just a FYI
I want to clarify something about this thread. The “Dread Ward of Naxxramas” is the crystal-portal thing you have to destroy with the Stratholme Holy Water. This step has to happen before you ever open the Gauntlet Gate to the rest of the undead side. The point of my thread is that the crystal does not appear after using the Ward item dropped by the Eyes.
Unfortunately if you are doing the steps correctly, getting the 5-minute gauntlet debuff, and the NPC isn’t there for you to kill after killing Rivendare…that is a separate bug. That NPC is named “Hand of Naxxramas”.
I am also having the same issue, and unlocked Naxx in vanilla as well
No fix today so far. I was really hoping they’d have this fixed by the weekend so I could farm up the patterns at least.
EDIT: Confirmed still not working for me after today’s hotfixes were posted. No surprise since it wasn’t listed, but the other fixes are surprising because I’ve not heard of anyone with those issues.
I’m really hoping this is just some kind of complex issue and that’s why we still haven’t seen a fix yet. Sucks that I might be going in to the weekend completely unable to participate in this content at all unless I made an entirely new account. 
Bizarrely, the hotfixes tonight include a fix identical to one posted last night. No fix for the show-stopping issue from this thread unfortunately (tested and confirmed with two characters on my account).
Try going in and not killing anything at all on the dead side. Just go in the living side main entrance, go right for the cathedral and use the item there. The first portal won’t spawn if anything is killed on dead side or you go through the side entrance.
I’ve tried this and it unfortunately doesn’t work. I’ve tried numerous combinations of actions, actually, and am kind of tired of feeling like I am doing Blizzard’s QA for them.
And probably a whole lot of other combinations. It’s simply broken for all my characters unfortunately.
i was infuriated by this for a bit over an hour. but the cathedral at the beginning of the undead side, near the service entrance? that damn thing is the wrong place. you want to go in the instance, get your ward-revealer item, and hug the left wall. go past forresten and timmy - leave them alone. keep hugging the left wall til you see the gate at the left side of Crusader’s Square that’s where you want to use the Ward. splash the thing, then good luck! the 5 min timer is tight as hell - i had literally one second left on it when i finished the cast to kill the necessary mob.
you have to run from the Square where you splashed the Ward, all the way through the living side (it doesnt matter if you kill bosses on your way past) then through the undead side, killing the three ziggurats’ mobs to open the gate, kill ramstein’s trash, kill ramstein, kill the little swarm of undead, kill the elites that come out the gate, then finally you can kill Rivendare, and desperately run back outside and jet to the right hand side (as you’re coming out of the boss’ ziggurat). down that little corridor is the bastard, lurking behind a gate we can’t open. get close to the gate and use the extra action button that pops up. cast time is 2-3 seconds i think?
good luck!
Ugh if this is really it, oof. I see Wowhead has since amended their article to explicitly say “Crusader’s Cathedral” now. It wasn’t like that when it first went up unless I just imagined something completely different.
no, you didnt imagine anything ><, the guides (or the earliest ones at least) were a bit ambiguous, in that they just said “the cathedral”, and i think most people familiar with stratholme would think of the little one in the undead side first, over the one in the living side, since the former is a quest hub. (or at least it once was). now that i think on it though, i guess the one in the undead side is probably more of a church, since its smaller, and the living side is a huge building so it’s a cathedral. ugh. if only i’d realised that before i spent so much time faffing about.
Yeah the main reason I assumed it was referring to Alonsus Chapel is because it’s right by where the original timed Baron run begins (when clicking the nearby first Gauntlet Gate). I didn’t realize the 5-minute run included an initial leg from the live side as well. All good now though.
<.< to be fair, that five minute ‘timer’ would be trivial if we started the run on the dead side. and blizz does like to put us in pain. 
glad you’ve got it sorted out though.
Have both on my lock and did it on him just fine. Wasn’t that.
That’s a chapel. I don’t recall another cathedral in the instance. That’s like calling a shack a skyscraper
Well this this is either bugged, or its just trash. I got the naxx thing, go to the mob before the 5minute timer, used my extra action button and killed it. I then had to step away from my pc, while i was still in the dungeon, until it logged me out. Now, im not getting anymore items from the Eye of Naxxramas, i cant see archmage angela to continue, and theres no way for me to progress… please tell me im missing something