This is currently up-to-date as of Season 1 of the War Within. If there are any notable changes I will update this post as time permits.

I’ll keep things brief

I’m sure you came to a post to avoid a 20 minute video that you have to constantly click through and to just know where, when, and what to do.

So let’s get started.

We’ll assume for the sake of this post that you are playing completely solo, as that drastically affects the efficacy of many gearing paths. I’ll also try to accomodate both the “First 80” crowd and those interested in figuring out how to get their alts up to speed. I will also assume you don’t have much of a gold budget to start with—say about a WoW token’s worth.

Let’s buy some gear

The first thing you should do upon 80 is snag as many cheap pieces off the AH for your character as possible. You can probably get a full or near full set of 560 gear for less than 10k on most servers, which will get you at a decent enough power level to start doing some damage.

Weekly Events

Then, your next focus should be on any weekly PvE events if there are any up. These typically provide the biggest bang for your buck in terms of time efficiency to reward. If it’s Timewalking, especially for a Timewalking era that has a raid out for it (such as Burning Crusade or Wrath of the Lich King), you can quite easily join or start a raid group and acquire very easy 597 loot, with two quests being available to provide a guaranteed 597 piece from Normal Nerub’ar Palace, and a guaranteed 610 piece from the respective Timewalking raid you cleared. It is generally not ever worth it to do the Timewalking dungeons, and I would simply clear the raid for both of the quests.

You can generally acquire the quest for the 610 piece in the same place that you queue for the raid, which can be found as follows:

Burning Crusade - Shattrath City
Wrath of the Lich King - Dalaran (Northrend)
Cataclysm - Orgrimmar/Stormwind where the Cataclysm portals are located(Depending on faction).

Timewalking raids scale all characters down, meaning gear really does not matter at all. You can be a fresh 80 and contribute just as much as someone in full BiS gear for max level, generally speaking. There is more about Timewalking that’s out of the scope of this post, but you should be able to find a group in the Premade Group Finder in the, Raids - Legacy, section, and by searching for the current raid that is out. As of this post, there is no raid for any other Timewalking Era past the above, so there will be no free 610 piece for Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor, and Legion Timewalking. You will need to do 5 dungeons instead to acquire your 597 Nerub’ar Palace raid cache.

For the Mythic Dungeon Event, you simply need to do 4 Mythic or Mythic+ dungeons and you will receive a Heroic (610-623) Nerub’ar Palace piece of gear. As of this post, we have not yet had a Mythic Dungeon event, but the ideal way to complete it would be to simply do the fastest dungeon (likely Ara-Kara, City of Echoes) 4 times on Mythic difficulty, without using a Keystone, resetting after completion. You would not receive any loot after the first clear of the dungeon, but it would allow you to rapidly complete the quest.

You may also choose to simply do dungeons that provide you upgrades, finishing the quest passively.

For the Delve Weekly Event, as of this post, it has still not occurred, but it can be assumed it would likely award a Normal or Heroic piece of gear from the Delve loot pool, and require you to complete X amount of Delves of X level.

World Activities

It would now best serve you to complete four world events, as not only will you be rewarded a piece of Champion gear upon completion of the first 2 world events, but you will also receive a Restored Coffer Key for the first four world events you complete each week.

Note for First Time 80s, to unlock this weekly meta-quest I describe below, you must be Renown 4 with each faction. Completing only the campaign will leave you short of Renown 4 with the Assembly of the Deeps, so you may need to do some side-quests there, fly around the zone and kill rares or collect treasures.

In my opinion, the best way to do this is (if this quest is available), to choose the “Awakening the Machine” option for the weekly Worldsoul quest, which is a “Meta Quest” to complete a world activity of your choosing. I recommend doing “Awakening the Machine”, as it is one of the events you will complete anyways, as it is an easy and quick (if tedious/boring) event to complete.

In the event it is not the Worldsoul Quest to complete an activity of your choosing, simply complete the appropriate activity, but this is the best method as you will also receive a half of a Spark of Omens. More on that later.

Next, you will want to complete (if it is up), the Theater Troupe, which is an event you can complete every hour that has an attached weekly quest at the event site. You simply need to pick up the quest at the Theater Troupe, which is located in the Isle of Dorn just outside of Dornogal, the capital city. In this event, you complete random tasks for a play being held, and it does not require any powerful gear really whatsoever. You need to contribute at least 50 Audience Approval towards the overall event by doing some assigned tasks, but after that you can safely AFK and wait for it to end. Again, this is at the top of every hour, so if it’s not up, go do something else in the meantime.

At this point, you should now head to the Ringing Deeps and complete the Awakening the Machine activity. It is located in Gundargaz, and you should see an NPC called Speaker Kurdas. You simply need to speak to him to queue up for the activity. Make certain to acquire the quest, “Gearing up for Trouble” first from a kobold in one of the buildings nearby, as this is what actually awards the Restored Coffer Key if it is one of the first four weekly events you complete, and provides you a piece of gear, if it is one of the first two weekly events you complete.

In this event, you simply defend an NPC from 20 waves of adds, each with varying abilities. It is fairly simple to complete, so I won’t detail how to clear the event here.

Next, you will go to Hallowfall, and complete Spreading the Light. This is the quickest weekly event to complete, as you simply need to light 4 Lesser Keyflames in the Northeast side of the zone. To light one of these keyflames you need a Radiant Remnant, which can be acquired by killing mobs in that area. If you do not have any Radiant Remnants, simply kill mobs until you have 12, at which point you can simply fly around and light each Keyflame. You do not need to complete the weekly quest that will appear shortly after lighting each Keyflame.

After that, depending on if the weekly meta-quest in Dornogal was for choosing an activity, you can choose to do a “Special Assignment”, which is a varying emissary style mission available in rotating zones throughout the week. It may be in any one of Isle of Dorn, Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall, or Azj-Kahet, you must simply look at your map to find out which zone it is currently active in. You then go to that zone and complete 3 world quests to “unlock” the Special Assignment, and then complete the now available world quest to receive your cache.

If you do not wish to do that, then you may instead choose to travel to Azj-Kahet and complete the Forging a Pact weekly, which requires you to do either 5 world quests, or a mix of rare-killing, world quests, treasure looting, or rumor completion. This is a more convoluted option, and I don’t recommend doing so if you can help it.

With the weekly events out of the way, you are now ready for your next challenge.

Delves

With four Restored Coffer Keys in hand, you are now ready to really acquire some strong gear. Restored Coffer Keys unlock chests at the end of a Bountiful Delve, which is simply a random Delve in each zone every day. Completing a Bountiful Delve does “consume” the Bountiful status, so it is essentially a daily lockout.

The caveat here is that Delves have tiers, starting from Tier 1 and going until Tier 11. Gear for your character however is capped at Tier 8, maxing out at 603 base iLvl. So, you want to use your limited supply of keys on a Tier 8 Bountiful Delve ONLY, and not anything lower or more.

However, if you are a “First Time 80”, you will need to actually unlock this 8th tier. To unlock a tier, you simply need to complete the tier immediately before it. So, to unlock Tier 3, you need to complete a Tier 2 Delve. To unlock Tier 4, you need to complete a Tier 3 Delve, and so on. FOR FIRST TIME 80s, YOU ALSO NEED THE ENTIRE LEVELING CAMPAIGN COMPLETED TO GO PAST TIER 3, SO MAKE SURE THAT IS DONE.

You can do this entirely solo or by joining a group in the Premade Group Finder, but it is likely you will have to complete these beginning unlocks solo. It is not difficult however, and you can choose whichever Delve you find easiest and simply spam that one to Tier 8, as it is not required that you do a Bountiful Delve until you hit Tier 8, and I actually recommend avoiding doing Bountiful Delves until then, as again, doing a Bountiful Delve will consume it for the day and you will need to wait until tomorrow. Again, consuming the Bountiful Delve status does not mean you lose a Restored Coffer Key, as that is tied to the locked chest at the end of a Bountiful Delve. Confusing, yes, I know.

TL;DR - Do regular Delves until Tier 8. Do Bountifuls and spend keys after that.

You will be undergeared and your Brann will likely be underleveled when you begin doing these Tier 8 Delves, which are not mechanically difficult but quite gear reliant, so I recommend finding a group to do them with. Simply start your own group and you should have no problem filling. I’d recommend a standard composition of 1 Tank, 1 Heal, 3 DPS for maximum safety.

If you are a class that can tank, it is also fairly easy and relaxed to complete Tier 8s as a tank, at the moment, even when undergeared.

Crafting

If you haven’t already, you should now complete the first chapter of the max-level campaign. It takes perhaps all of 5 to 10 minutes, and allows you to then now complete a quest chain that will help you craft a 619 piece of gear.

Once the first chapter is complete, you should head to Azj-Kahet and go just outside of the Nerub’ar Palace raid entrance. In the courtyard preceding the entrance, you should see a quest available from an NPC called Webster. Accept that quest and complete the subsequent quest chain, which should take perhaps another 10 minutes of your time, and you will be given a quest to slay Queen Ansurek. You may complete this on any difficulty, and if you track the quest you are given the option of completing this task on Story Mode, which is a solo raid experience with AI that guarantees a kill. Complete that and you will be provided with a wealth of Valorstones (more on that later) and an Enchanted Runed Harbinger Crest.

So, now let me try to cover how professions and the crafting system works without overloading you with information.

Crafted gear is a piece of gear made by another player with the appropriate profession. For example, a player with Blacksmithing might be able to make plate gear or most weapons in the game, a Tailor can make cloth gear, so on and so forth.

This gear can max out at 636 iLvl, which is just 3 short of the max iLvl available from Mythic raiding, making it a very powerful way to acquire gear without actually having to do a raid, as the materials from crafting exist out in the world and are player-made.

However, the “good” crafted gear is limited world-wide by the amount of Sparks of Omens, which is a time-gated resource. We get HALF a Spark of Omen a week from the weekly meta quest I mentioned earlier in World Activities, and there is catch-up provided to everyone in the form of Sparks being able to also drop naturally from pretty much most content in the game. Again, you need a whole Spark of Omens for 1 crafted piece of armor, or a one-handed weapon, and you need 2 Sparks of Omen for a 2-Handed Weapon. This is to make it so you do not essentially save a Spark by crafting a 2-hander. Annoying, I know.

Now, Sparks are obviously only one part of the equation. To make a piece of gear, you also need the right materials and reagents to craft it. These are more along the lines of what you might expect—cloth gear requires cloth materials, bolts and thread and the like. Plate requires steels and alloys and whatnot, yadda yadda. This will not be cheap depending on what you’re crafting, especially for weapons, so this will take up most of your budget.

One thing to note is that there are ranks and quality attached to the crafting system. The short and simple explanation is that lower quality materials will produce lower quality gear. If you buy 1-star (which is the quality system for materials and actual crafted goods alike, on a scale of 1 to 5 stars) materials, you will likely get a lower quality piece of gear. Lower quality means lower iLvl, so you must balance your budget with the gear power you desire.

For actually crafting the piece of gear, you will need to submit a Crafting Order. This can be done in Dornogal at the Crafting House, which you can ask a guard directions for if you cannot locate it yourself.

You may choose to submit a Personal, Public, or Guild Order.

A personal order is made directly to a player and requires their name to be submitted. The order will accordingly only be available to them and it is up to them whether or not to complete it.

A public order is available to anyone who is looking at the available orders for their profession. This means you have very little control over what quality they might make that piece, since crafting requires a resource called Concentration. I won’t explain the intricacies of that, but just know that Concentration is a scarce resource, so a crafter is only incentivized to use it when it can net them a good profit. Putting up a public order and then providing low quality materials and a low commission fee (basically a tip to the crafter) is an easy way to get absolutely screwed out of your gold and receive a low quality item. I recommend just finding someone in Trade chat or spamming for a little bit.

A Guild order is similar to a public order, in that it is not submitted directly to an individual, but only players in your guild can see the order. Generally, if there’s a friendly/charitable crafter in your guild, this isn’t a bad path either.

Now, one more thing. Because it would be kind of weird if you could just acquire mythic quality loot without doing any actual challenging activity, to increase a Crafted piece of gear’s iLvl further, you need an Enchanted Harbinger Crest. These are available in the following qualities:

Enchanted Weathered Harbinger Crest - A R5 craft producing a 590 piece of gear. THIS DOES NOT REQUIRE A SPARK, AND CAN ONLY BE USED ON CRAFTED GEAR THAT DOES NOT REQUIRE A SPARK TO BE MADE
Enchanted Runed Harbinger Crest - a R5 craft producing a 619 piece of gear
Enchanted Gilded Harbinger Crest - a R5 craft producing a 636 piece of gear

Obviously, you have already acquired an Enchanted Runed Harbinger Crest if you have been following along, so you have no need to acquire them, but I will tell you how just so you know for future pieces.

To acquire these Enchanted Crests, you simply need a varying amount of the regular Crests themselves.

At that point, you take them to the Enchanting Supplies vendor in Dornogal, in the Forgegrounds, and trade them in for a Nascent crest.

A Nascent Weathered Harbinger Crest requires 30 Weathered Harbinger Crests

A Nascent Runed Harbinger Crest requires 45 Runed Harbinger Crests

A Nascent Gilded Harbinger Crest requires 90 Gilded Harbinger Crests

Then, you will need to give this Nascent crest to a player with Enchanting, and have them turn it into the Enchanted version. This requires a varying amount of materials, and is a little expensive in and of itself. Most enchanters will do it for free or for a very small tip, and you will need to submit a crafting order for these as outlined above.

Now, you are finally ready to submit the crafting order for your weapon. But wait!. Just two more things. You will (and this is optional), need an Algari Missive to force the weapon/crafted piece to have your desired stats. Otherwise, it is simply random what stats you will get. If you want to save a bit of gold and don’t really care about what secondary stats you get, you can skip this, as it is an optional reagant.

Crafted gear can also have embellishments. You are limited to two of these embellishments per character, and if you try to equip gear with embellishments past this limit it will simply not allow you to use that gear until you remove a conflicting gear piece. Embellishments are what really make crafted gear strong, so you will want to purchase them. As of this post, the Darkmoon Sigil: Ascension embellishment is universally ahead for pretty much every class, so you can safely buy that at whatever quality you desire and include it as an optional reagant.

For your second embellishment, it can vary and you should likely sim what is best, but the Writhing Armor Binding is generally a good accompaniement and needs to be included as an embellishments on a piece of armor, not another weapon.

Once you have these last two pieces of the puzzle, simply submit a crafting order in whatever avenue you desire, and you will receive your gear in the mail once they have finishing creating it.

Can…can I finally raid?

No. Haha.

At this point, you also have another option now that you are familiar with the crafting system. You can choose to win one Epic Battleground, at which point you will be given a quest to turn into Dornogal that will award you with 9 Forged Competitor’s Heraldries. These heraldries can be used on the crafted PvP gear for your armor type and jewelry as well to increase it from 551 base to 610 iLvl. Thus, this is another very easy way to acquire some very powerful gear, and with the Missives I mentioned before you can also target your stats. These do not require sparks and are generally much less expensive than “real” Crafted gear, and you will submit the crafting order the same way. It can be a little expensive however to pursue this avenue, so only go this path if you have the excess gold.

Now, if you’re still not 600 iLvl by this point, it’s not a bad idea to start doing some Mythic dungeons. I don’t actually recommend doing Mythic+ yet, as it’s not that great for gear without stacking the same people of your armor type/role. Mythic dungeons are available on a daily lockout and have a much higher drop-rate for gear, so it’s very likely you’ll leave with at least one upgrade. Do a world tour at this point if you can, or otherwise target the dungeons with the largest benefit to you.

Do this, as well as every other activity mentioned, until you are about 595-600 iLvl.

Hey, didn’t you say something about…Valorstones?

Yeah…

So, you may notice that your gear has a “ranking”, out of 8. This is the current upgrade level of your piece of gear.

To upgrade a piece of gear, depending on its iLvl band, you will need Valorstones and varying types of Crests, the same crests we mentioned before.

These come in different “tracks”. Further explaining all of this could be its own post, so here’s an image courtesy of Gandalin.

Ok, NOW you can raid

At this point, it is likely that, as a “First Time 80” with no experience, you will actually be invited into a normal PUG group. I always recommend just joining a guild, but if that’s not an option for you it is time for the PUG life. If you have the option, and you’re comfortable doing so, I recommend just tanking/healing to get into groups easier. The role of a tank/healer is often much easier in a normal raid than everything else, and you are much harder to replace if you’re not that great at your class out of the gate. For a normal run, I wouldn’t recommend enchanting and flasking and all of that just yet. Save the gold.

Look up the fights and do your research and start applying, or make your own group if you are comfortable doing so.

For alts, you should know the score by now. Just hop in and start blasting.

”Is LFR worth my time?” - Yes. You can get tier and pretty powerful trinkets that you can upgrade if you’ve been unlucky. I would do a sweep if you have the time. Just prepare for it to potentially be rough.

So…can I do keys?

Yes. If you are capable of it, you should start farming 9s as soon as possible for not only the best gear, but for the Gilded Harbinger Crests, which will let you craft the best gear possible. Even if you already crafted, you can always re-craft, which does not require a new Spark, just any new optional reagant. So, if you want to change the stats, add/remove an embellishement, or upgrade the iLvl with a new crest, you can just re-craft and save gold and the Spark instead of making a whole new piece.

For climbing the dungeon scene, that’s an entirely separate post I will make at some point, so GLHF on that.

A note on the Great Vault

Every week, on reset, you can choose one piece of gear from up to 9 options from the Great Vault, located in the back of the bank in Dornogal.

This vault has 3 rows—one for Raids, Dungeons, and World Activities.

For a lower geared character, by far, the best bang for your buck is to completely fill up the Delve row with all 3 options. This will let you select a 616 piece for very little effort. It might be tedious, but this, especially for alts, is the best way to passively acquire gear. As time permits, of course, complete as many raid bosses and dungeon clears on as high of a difficulty as you can, but I would always prioritize the Delve vault until you outgrow its iLvl band.

Anything Else?

Nope. That’s pretty much it. Just keep doing whatever can still provide you upgrades in a cycle and hope you don’t get screwed.

I hope this helped, and good luck out there.

Peace!