As more and more players reach the max level in The War Within, it's time to gear up. We do have limited access to gear and upgrades in the first two weeks, but getting the highest item level now will bring you a smooth start in season 1. Luckily, Kelani shared with us a guide to gearing up to ilvl 590+ on his YouTube channel. Let's find out.
How to Upgrade Gear & Things We Need
First, we need to know that almost all gear drops can be upgraded. Take it to an upgrade NPC and drag the gear you want to upgrade. Here, you are able to see what item level it can go up, how many Valorstones you need, and what kind of Crests you need to obtain.
Valorstones are a special in-game currency used to upgrade your gear, which you can get from almost every activity at the endgame. But dungeons are usually one of the better ways to endlessly farm Valorstones if you have a lot of time on your hands. As for the Crests we need, Weathered Crests come from a lot of outdoor world content and Heroic dungeons; Carved Crests come from the weekly caches and events; Runed and Gilded Crests come from seasonal content mostly, including the higher difficulties of raids and Mythic+.
Auction House
If you have some TWW gold, you can go to the auction house to buy good gear. There's a lot of BoE gear around the item level 560 on the auction house, and they're relatively cheap most of the time. The 560 Explorer gear can also be upgraded up to 580 when taken to an upgrade vendor.
Here is a very useful tip Kelani gave us. You can put any BoE gear into your Warband Bank to transfer it across factions and servers. For example, if you are on a low-population realm, and everything costs a lot of gold, you can put some gold into your Warband Bank, make a character on a high-population realm like Area 52, and buy cheaper gear you want on that Auction House and put it in your Warband Bank to transfer it across factions or servers.
Dungeons
One of the easiest ways to farm gear now is dungeons. Normal dungeons are going to give you item level 554 gear, and Heroic dungeons will drop item level 571 gear and 580 when the season starts. The 571 Heroic dungeon gear can be upgraded to 593, but you will need to farm some Valorstones and Weathered Crests. Thankfully, Heroic dungeons will also reward you with a lot of Valorstones and Weathered Crests, so spamming Heroic dungeons is quite efficient if your main goal is gearing up.
Alternative Way to Get 590 Ilvl Gear
There is another way to get 590 ilvl gear with fewer Crests costs. You can trade 30 Weathered Harbinger Crests to an Enchanting Supplies vendor for a Nascent Weathered Harbinger Crest. Then, Enchanters can turn this into an Enchanted Weathered Harbinger Crest. If you're an Enchanter, you can do it by yourself. Otherwise, you can create a crafting order for the Enchanted Crest. You can then add this Enchanted Crest into the optional crafting reagent slot when you craft some blue-quality recipes, and the item level of that piece of gear will be up to 590, depending on the rank. If you can get a rank five crafting result, you can get very easy item level 590 gear that only costs you 30 Weathered Crests and some enchanting materials. Otherwise, you need about 600 Valorstones and 60 Weathered Crests to upgrade a 571 piece of gear to 593.
It's also worth noting that you don't have to get a rank five item crafted the first time; you can settle for a lower-rank craft and then get the item recrafted when you have your Profession better kitted out. Don't fork over tens of thousands of gold just to get a rank five item one week sooner, as when you recraft the item, the expensive materials are no longer required.
Spark of Omens
Spark of Omens is a valuable crafting reagent used to upgrade crafted gear. These sparks are used to fuel the Epic crafting recipes, and if you can get them crafted at rank five, there will be item level 606 pieces of gear, which is huge.
To get a Spark of Omens, you need to collect two Fragmented Sparks of Omens and combine them together with some Valorstones. You can get one Fragmented Spark of Omens from the Call of the Worldsoul Weekly Quest in Dornogal. The quest gives you four options for how to complete it, so you can pick whichever you prefer. With this quest being weekly, we can get one fragment every week, which means we can get one whole spark every two weeks. Remember to complete this weekly quest every week to keep up with the spark acquisition.
But there is also a special quest in Dornogal right next to the Catalyst, which requires you to get one fragment, and the reward is two fragments, but this quest is only available once. So, for the very first fragment you get, hand it in with this quest and get your first Spark of Omens to craft some awesome gear.
During the season, we'll also be able to upgrade this gear to 636 item level, so it's going to be very potent gear with a lot of upgrade potential, which you won't need to replace.
Caches
The Call of the Worldsoul Weekly Quest can also reward you with a cache that can contain some good gear upgrades. The first two caches that you get will contain a piece of gear. For now, they are item level 574 Adventurer gear and can be upgraded to 593 as well. After season 1 starts, these first two caches will give you Veteran gear instead, which should be around item level 584, so these will be worth more when the season starts.
You can also get other caches by taking part in the various weekly events in the new zones, like The Theater Troupe in Dornogal, the Awakening the Machine event in Ringing Deeps, and the Spreading the Light event in Hallowfall. You can then get another cache by taking part in the Pacted feature in Azj-Kahet.
One thing to notice is that the first four caches that you open in a week will give you four Restored Coffer Keys, which are used to get the best rewards from the Delves system. So, you can do four if you are a solo content player. Further caches past the fourth one will also reward you with Valorstones and Carved Crests, so they're still worth doing if you have the time or want to take part in more open-world content.
Delves Are More Worth Doing After Season 1
Delves are endgame activities that can be completed solo or in groups, offering valuable rewards without time limits, making them ideal for both solo players and small groups. At the end of the Delves, you'll find some treasure chests with various items like Valorstones and Weathered Crests. So, if you don't want to spam Heroic dungeons for Weathered Crests, Delves can be a good option.
The Delves by themselves don't seem to be great for gear. The real gear rewards only come from Bountiful Delves, which are special versions of regular Delves that offer extra rewards. Bountiful Delves will have better loot at the end by default, but they also have locked chests that can only be opened with Restored Coffer Keys, which is where the good gear comes from. As we all know, the rewards depend on the tier of Delves we complete, and tier three Delves is the highest tier we can unlock before the season starts, whose reward is only ilvl 571, the same as Heroic Dungeons. So, it's not recommended to spend your keys to do the Delves. It's much better to run Heroic Dungeons for loot right now. Save your Coffer keys for the higher tiers of Delves when Season 1 starts. If you can clear a tier eight Bountiful Delve in Season 1 of TWW, you'll get item level 603 gear from these chests, which is the highest you can get from Delves. Besides, you can also get item level 616 gear in your Weekly Vault when completing tier eight Delves.
World Quests
World Quests can also offer you some gear rewards if you don't want to get into dungeons. Most of the rewards hover around 560 item level, but you can find some rare World quests with 571 rewards. Check your map every day and see which World Quests are active and what their rewards are, and then complete them.
Renown
There are also some high-item-level rewards you can pick from the various Renown rewards we currently have access to. If you can get up to Renown level six with the Severed Threads or Renown level eight with the Assembly of the Deeps, you can purchase some item level 571 or 584 gear, depending on your faction.
