In TWW, gearing up is a crucial aspect for every player. Whether you're a newcomer or a seasoned veteran, knowing how to increase your item level efficiently is essential. Kelani shared an amazing The War Within Season 1 gearing guide on his YouTube video. So, let's find out what they are and how we can get to item level 635+ efficiently. Meanwhile, if you need some gold for your WoW gearing journey, consider MmoGah, a reliable shop in the market for nearly 20 years.
The Gear Upgrade System
First, let's talk about the upgrade system, as no matter where you get your gear from, you'll need to upgrade it. There are three major parts to the upgrade system: the gear itself, the Valorstones currency, and the various Crests we need to collect. Every piece of gear that drops at the endgame will have a special tag and an upgrade level. For example, this is a piece of champion gear whose item level is 603, and it's currently 3/8 on its upgrade track, which means we can upgrade this item 5 times for a max upgrade level of 8/8. Each upgrade will increase its item level, making the piece of gear more powerful. We have Explorer, Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Hero, and Myth gear tracks. Regarding item levels, there are some overlaps.
For example, Explorer gear ranges from 558 to 580, but Adventurer starts halfway through that track at item level 571. The main reason for these overlaps is that no matter what gear you get or where you get it from, you will always be able to upgrade it at least four times. So, every piece of gear will always have some great upgrade potential. The two exceptions are the Hero track and Myth track, which only have six upgrade stages each. This does mean that your gear will have a cap on how far it can be upgraded, and to get higher item levels, you'll need to source gear from those higher upgrade tracks instead.
Valorstones
We'll also need the Valorstones currency to get the upgrading done. Valorstones are rewarded from almost every type of content in the game, like running dungeons, doing PvP, killing raid bosses, completing Delves, daily quests, or story quests. We can only hold 2k at a time, so if you're getting close to the 2k limit, it's time to start thinking about some gear upgrades.
Crests
The last thing we need is Crests. There are four types of Crests - Weathered Crests, Carved Crests, Runed Crests, and Gilded Crests. Doing higher tiers of content will reward you with better Crests, and the higher the item level of the piece of gear you're trying to upgrade, the higher tier of Crests you'll need. All of your Crests are tracked in your currency tab, so they're easy to keep an eye on.
- You can get Weathered Crests from World Quests, rares, Heroic dungeons, and LFR boss kills.
- Carved Crests are from Weekly Activities, lower tier Delves, Mythic dungeons, Mythic+ dungeons up to +3, and Normal mode raid bosses.
- Runed Crests come from tier 8 Bountiful Delves, Mythic+ Keystone levels 4 to 8, and Heroic raid boss kills.
- Gilded Crests come from tier 8 Bountiful Treasure Troves by using Delve maps, Mythic+ Keystones 9 or above, and Mythic raid bosses.
- You can also buy Carved Crests and Runed Crests from the Weekly Vault vendor if you decide to take Tokens of Merit instead of a piece of gear for the week.
Now, you can only earn a certain amount of each Crest per week. Hovering over the Crest in your currency tab will tell you your current seasonal maximum. As the weeks go by, this increases by 90 per week, so we are limited on how many we can get and how quickly we can upgrade our gear. The good news is that if you cap on a higher tier of Crest, for example, Runed Crests, and continue to do content that would earn you Runed Crests, you will instead get Carved Crests. So it adjusts to the next Crest down on the list, and you'll keep getting rewards.
The best way to see what kind of Crest you need to upgrade your gear is to take your gear to an upgrade vendor and plug it in. You'll see how far you can upgrade that item, what item level it can go up to, how many Valorstones it will cost, and what kinds of Crests you will need.
Catch-up Mechanics
The upgrade system also has catch-up mechanics baked into it. It will track your highest item level piece of gear for each slot. If you upgrade an item below the highest item level for a given slot, you will get a massive discount on your Valorstone and Crest costs. The Valorstone discount even applies to your alts, making playing and maintaining multiple characters even easier.
Gearing through World Quests & Rares & Weekly Events & World Events
World Quests can give you some quick and easy gear upgrades. World Quest rewards are kind of random, but you can get up to item level 571 gear, so look at what the World Quests offer each day and see if there's anything worth picking up.
Rares can also drop some decent gear up to item level 574 in some cases, so it may be worth killing any rares you come across in the world.
There are also various weekly events and activities that you'll want to get done. There's one big weekly quest in Dornogal that rewards you with a pinnacle cache, and you can complete the Theater Troupe event in Dornogal, the Awakening the Machine event in the Ringing Deeps, or the Spreading the Light event in Hallowfall to earn a cache for each. You can also complete the pact weekly quest in Azj Kahet for another cache, and then there are two special world quests every week called Special Assignments to earn you a cache as well.
The first two caches you open in a week will reward you with item level 584 gear, with some great upgrade potential. So, you can get two easy pieces of gear every week by completing these weekly events. The first four caches you open will also give you a Restored Coffer Key, which you can use to increase your rewards from Delves. Most of these activities will also contribute to your world weekly vault row - so you can even get weekly rewards on reset day by doing these weekly events.
And then, we also have all new world bosses to take down. You can find them by looking for the skull icon world quest on your world map. Each world boss has a chance of dropping item level 603 gear, which can be upgraded all the way to item level 619, which is huge. You can kill the world boss once per week per character.
Gearing through Crafting
Another very powerful gearing option for everyone is crafted gear. There are two tiers of crafted gear - the lower tier, which caps out at item level 590, and the higher tier, which can go up to 636.
Lower Tier
To craft the lower tier of gear, you need to get an Enchanted Weathered Harbinger Crest, which is created by Enchanters, so if you have enchanting, you can make them yourself. Otherwise, you will need to place a crafting order for them. The component needed to craft it is a Nascent Weathered Crest, which costs 30 Weathered Crests and can be purchased from an enchanting supplies vendor.
To use this Enchanted Crest to make some gear, you need to find the blue recipes, either in your Professions or in the crafting order menu, then pop the Enchanted Crest into the optional reagents slot when you go to get it crafted. If you get these items crafted at rank 5, they will be item level 590. It's one of the best ways to quickly gear up without spending too many Crests or Valorstones.
Higher Tier
The higher tiers of crafted gear are more complicated. We need to get our hands on a Spark of Omens. There's only one way to get a Spark of Omens - to collect two Fractured Sparks of Omens and combine them. To get a Fractured Spark, you need to complete the important weekly quest in Dornogal. This seems to change every week - but you're looking for the big blue spikey quest that rewards you with a pinnacle cache. After completing this quest, you'll get one Fractured Spark. So, it's going to take two weeks to get a full Spark that we can use for crafting.
With your Spark in hand, it's time to get some gear crafted. If you have your own Professions leveled up, you just need to find the epic recipe you want to craft, collect all of the materials, plug in your Spark, and craft away. If you don't have the Professions, pop on by the crafting order clerks, find the gear you want to craft, gather all the materials you see, and pop in your Spark and send the order out when you're ready.
If you use a public crafting order, you won't have any control over the resulting quality, so finding a crafter in trade chat who can guarantee a rank-five result is more recommended. Any gear created with a Spark can go up to item level 606 when crafted at rank 5. Getting a new Spark every two weeks means we can get a new piece of 606 gear every two weeks, which is crazy.
But this gear's true power and value come into play when you add in the Enchanted Runed and Gilded Crests. Enchanted Runed Crests can take this gear up to item level 619, and Enchanted Gilded Crests go even further up to 636 – the highest item level available for this crafted gear.
You can also add Embellishments to most crafted pieces of gear, giving them special or unique effects. But remember, you can only equip two items with Embellishment effects. And don't forget you can always choose the stats on your crafted gear by using a missive in the optional reagents slot as well. That means crafted gear always has your best stats on it, making it even better.
Gearing through Delves
You can also gear up through the Delves system. Delves are like mini-dungeons or scenarios that you can play all by yourself. You can see Delves on your world map, which are very easy to locate.
You'll need to pick a tier or difficulty when you approach the entrance. Everything gets harder as you go up in difficulty, but you can also get much better rewards. To unlock the higher tiers of Delves, you need to complete your current tier and have revives remaining. The tier unlocks are for every Delve, so you only have to unlock each difficulty once. Every Delve you run will reward you with various currencies and exp for your Delve companion.
The big gear rewards only come from Bountiful Delves. Every day, four of your Delves will be bountiful for each zone. They have a glowing icon on the world map, so they're easy to locate. These Bountiful Delves will have a special locked chest at the end of your run that can only be opened with a Restored Coffer Key. These are the keys that come from the open-world weekly caches. The first four you open will give you a key, so if you're interested in doing Delves for gear, you need to get four caches per week from any of those weekly sources we went over to get your four keys per week. Rewards for Delves cap out at tier 8. Tiers 9, 10, and 11 are mainly for the challenge and seasonal rewards, so if you can get to tier 8, you'll be getting item level 603 gear from those bountiful chests, which is huge for solo content. You will also get Runed Harbinger Crests, which will unlock so many other upgrade paths for you.
Delves will also contribute to your world weekly vault row - the higher the tier you complete, the better the rewards will be, up to item level 616 when you complete tier 8 Delves.
While clearing your Delves, you can also find Delver's Bounty. Using this map will guarantee that your next high-tier Bountiful Delve run will have an extra treasure trove waiting for you at the end, which contains 610 item-level gear and some Gilded Crests.
Gearing through Raids
Season 1 also introduces the Nerub-ar Palace raid, and as per usual, the raid can offer you some of the best gear available in the entire game. As you work through the raid, the rewards also get better, so the end bosses always drop better loot when compared to the first few bosses, which should help you move up to the next difficulty.
- For LFR, gear starts dropping at item level 584, with the end boss dropping item level 593 loot.
- In Normal mode, we start out at item level 597, with the last boss dropping item level 606 gear.
- In the Heroic mode, the rewards start at item level 610 and scale up to 619 from the last bosses.
- On Mythic mode, we're getting item level 623 from the first bosses, working up to 632 from the last boss.
The raid is also the only place you can reliably get tier-set gear tokens, which drop from specific bosses in the raid, so the raiders will usually have their full set before everyone else.
The last boss also drops a web-wrapped curio, which can be handed in for any piece of tier set gear. So you can use this to fill in your gaps quite nicely and get your full 4-set bonus in record time. Killing raid bosses on any difficulty will also be filling up your raid weekly vault row. You'll need two kills, four kills, and six kills to unlock the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd rewards, and the vault will give you a random piece of raid gear from the highest difficulty you killed the bosses on, which includes both rare items and tier set gear.
Gearing through Dungeons
In TWW, you can run Normal dungeons for item level 554 gear. You can do it with others by queueing or complete it with NPC followers by queueing for a follower dungeon, allowing you to go at your own pace. You can also do random Heroic dungeons, which drop item level 580 gear. In the TWW, the Heroic dungeons will be the seasonal dungeons now, so you can use Heroic dungeon queues to learn the seasonal dungeons, which is a nice change.
Mythic dungeons will drop item level 593 gear, but you can only complete each dungeon on Mythic difficulty once per day. The Mythic+ Keystone system is where the big dungeon loot rewards come from.
Running a +2 key will reward you with item level 597 gear, which is from the chest at the end of the run. The rewards scale all the way up to key level +9, which drops item level 613 gear. Mythic+ dungeons are also one of the best repeatable sources of Crests for upgrading your gear. The higher the key level you do, the higher tier of Crests you will obtain.
Completing any dungeon on Heroic mode or above will also contribute to your dungeon weekly vault row. The higher the difficulty of the dungeon you complete, the better the rewards you're going to get. These rewards cap out at item level 623 from running a keystone level 10 dungeon, so there's huge upgrade potential in the weekly vault as well.
Gearing through PvP
As for PvP, gear works a little differently because it has a PvE item level and a PvP item level. This ensures that your PvP gear is always better in actual PvP situations. You can get item level 558 gear from the honor vendor, which has a PvP item level of 626. Honor can be earned by participating in unrated PvP activities like random battlegrounds and brawls. The conquest gear starts at item level 597, with a PvP item level of 639. Conquest can be earned by participating in rated PvP content or from various first wins of unrated PvP. And then there's a War Mode vendor selling item level 593 gear, which has a PvP item level 636. To purchase this gear, you'll need to obtain Bloody Tokens, which can be obtained from special Warmode-only world quests or by killing players out in the world.
The Catalyst
The Catalyst allows you to turn a piece of seasonal gear into tier-set gear, giving you access to your 2-set and 4-set bonuses. You can find it in the middle of Dornogal. To use the Catalyst, you will need a piece of seasonal gear and a Catalyst Charge. The piece of gear can come from any endgame seasonal activity, like weekly activities, the new world bosses, Delves, Dungeons, or the raid. As for charges, we start with one charge and get one more charge every two weeks, meaning we can turn another piece of gear into tier-set gear every two weeks.
Guaranteed Tier Tokens
Spelunker Supreme Achievement will reward you with a token you can trade in for a piece of Heroic item level tier set gear, which is very lucrative. To earn this achievement and the gear token, you need to get a 1600 rating in rated PvP content, a 2000 Mythic+ score in the Mythic+ Keystone system, or clear the raid on Heroic mode or higher.
