If you're about to pay for a raid carry, the single most important thing to understand isn't the price or the loot split. It's the raid lockout. Misread how instance IDs work and you can pay for a run that gives you zero loot, or accidentally burn your weekly kill before the carry even starts. Here's exactly how lockouts and ID sharing function, and what to confirm with a seller before you hand over money.

What a raid lockout actually is

A raid lockout (also called an instance ID or "save") is the game's record that you've entered and progressed a specific copy of a raid during a reset period. In retail (The War Within), most raids reset on the regional weekly reset day. The lockout tracks which bosses you've killed in that copy of the instance for that week.

The rule that matters most: you get loot and weekly credit once per boss per lockout. If a boss is already dead on your ID, walking back in gives you nothing. No loot, no Great Vault progress, no chance at the trinket you actually wanted. This is the trap buyers fall into.

Two completely different lockout systems

Most confusion comes from the fact that retail and Classic handle saves in opposite ways.

Flexible per-boss lockouts (retail Normal and Heroic)

Normal and Heroic difficulty in modern retail use flexible, per-boss lockouts. You're saved to individual bosses, not the whole instance. A group can re-clear bosses repeatedly for other people, and you can join a partially-cleared run as long as the boss you need is still alive. This flexibility is exactly why sellers can push wave after wave of buyers through a Heroic clear in the same week. You don't need a fresh raid; you need bosses that aren't dead on your save yet.

Fixed instance IDs (retail Mythic and all of Classic)

Mythic difficulty retail raids and everything in Classic (Classic Era, Season of Discovery, Cataclysm Classic, MoP Classic) use shared, fixed instance IDs. The entire raid is one locked copy. Everyone in the group is bound to that single ID, and once a boss is down, it's down for that whole ID until reset. You cannot re-kill it on the same save no matter how many times you zone in.

What "ID sharing" means and why it changes the price

ID sharing is when a carry team kills bosses on a fixed instance ID first, then summons the buyer in after some or all bosses are already dead. Because the buyer joins an ID where bosses are gone, they get no loot from those bosses. So why would anyone buy this?

  • Achievements and Cutting Edge / Ahead of the Curve: Some rewards (a mount, a title, an achievement) only require you to be present and saved to the kill, not to personally loot it. ID-share runs are far cheaper because the team isn't gearing you.
  • Curve/title before a tier ends: If you just want the Ahead of the Curve achievement before it's removed, an ID-share is the fast, low-cost option.

A self-play loot run is the opposite: you're in the group from a fresh ID, you fight (or get carried through) every boss live, and you actually loot. It costs more because you're competing for or being handed real gear. Always confirm which one you're buying. "Heroic full clear" can mean a loot run or an ID-share depending on the seller, and the price gap is large.

The mistakes that cost buyers their loot

  • Already saved this week. If you pugged the raid earlier and killed bosses, those bosses are dead on your ID. A fixed-ID Classic or Mythic carry on the same save gives you nothing on those bosses. Buy before you touch the raid that week, or wait for reset.
  • Extending a lockout by accident. In retail you can right-click your raid difficulty portrait and "Extend" a lockout. Handy for progression, disastrous if you extend a fully-looted ID and then try to use it for a carry.
  • Joining the wrong ID. For a self-play loot run you must be summoned to a fresh instance. If the team summons you into the ID they already farmed, you've been ID-shared whether that was the deal or not. Screenshot the agreement.
  • Cross-difficulty assumptions. Normal, Heroic, and Mythic are separate lockouts. Killing a boss on Normal does not lock you out of Heroic. You can legitimately do a Normal run and a Heroic run in the same week for separate loot.

Classic-specific quirks worth knowing

In Classic the whole raid shares one ID, so a guild "selling" a raid spot is literally inviting you into their saved or fresh instance. Two things to watch: raids like the 40-mans reset on their own cadence (some weekly, some shorter in older content), and if you accept a summon into a guild's already-cleared ID you are permanently saved to it for the week. That means you can't then go do a fresh pug of the same raid for loot. One ID per character per reset, full stop.

When a carry is a smart trade and when to just play it out

A raid carry earns its money when the thing you want is gated and disappearing or brutally time-expensive. Chasing Ahead of the Curve before a tier closes, grabbing a removed-soon mount, or skipping weeks of pug-wiping for a Heroic clear when your schedule is tight: those are clean time-for-money trades, and an ID-share run in particular is cheap precisely because it isn't gearing you. If your goal is achievement or title only, ID sharing is the sensible, low-cost path.

Be honest about the other side, too. If you mainly want gear and you have a steady group or a decent pug scene, you'll out-gear a one-time carry in two or three weekly resets anyway, and you keep the practice. Don't pay loot-run prices for an ID-share, and don't buy a fixed-ID run for a week you've already partially cleared. The money only makes sense when the lockout math is in your favor.

Before you pay, ask the seller three things: is this a loot run or an ID-share, am I being summoned to a fresh ID or a saved one, and have I touched this raid difficulty already this reset. Get those answers straight and you'll never pay for an empty lockout.