Since The War Within launched two months ago in late August, I’ve been quite busy throwing myself headlong back into a new WoW expansion, chasing after the myriad new goals I have for myself and conquering them…well, a lot faster than I expected, to be honest. I still have some big seasonal goals on the docket, but I’ve chipped away pretty fast a lot of them. Today, in a nice short post, I wanted to take a minute to discuss my progress and also talk about how I’ve accomplished some of these things in relatively short order!

Keystone Master – Done x1

Getting KSM on my raiding main was a fairly straightforward process I documented in its own post already. It took me nine days of focused effort, which was nice early in the season since things were a little bit better in terms of overall PUG patience and progress at that time. PUGging keys this season has been a special little slice of hell for a lot of people, since tank changes have been brutal on tanks in high-end keys, DPS slots are even more coveted than before, and healers have had to deal with the same general trajectory that existed in Dragonflight, which makes healing a sort of thankless job that requires the party using personal defensives, which means that high keys are often easier for healers because a DPS that belongs in that range should already be reasonably good at using personals, while lower keys are a hell of accusatory DPS being stupid and then whining that they pay for it.

That all said, I still really enjoy Mythic Plus (maybe I’m a masochist?) and I plan to push at least one full tank alt and one healer to KSM by the end of the season as well. I also need to finish a secondary push on my Monk…

Keystone Hero – Not Yet

Once I hit KSM on my Monk, I stopped doing keys for a bit. I’ve done some alt keys and kept myself fresh, but start of expansion means I have a lot of other goals to spend time on and thus I haven’t been as big on pushing rating at this point. I do plan to before season’s end, even though I find the special effect visuals for this tier’s armor sets to be lackluster. I don’t expect that I’ll stall like I did in Dragonflight Season 2 where I just kind of stopped pushing and let things be, but we’ll see how I feel as the season winds on – especially given this week’s upcoming Anniversary events and the farm for remastered Tier 2 sets.

Immortal Spelunker title – Done!

Immortal Spelunker, the best title this expansion (maybe in tight contention with Anub’) is rewarded for completing a Tier 11 delve without dying. Tier 11 is the third optional tier beyond tier 8, where rewards do not scale up but the challenge scales up exponentially in multiple ways – tighter tuning, more Zekvir empowered packs, named Zekvir lieutenants with insane abilities – and so making it through a full Tier 11 without dying is incredibly challenging. I did this by switching to Brewmaster on my Monk and playing like a chickenshit – single pulling, holding and pooling big defensives for forced multipacks, and generally being prepared with full consumable loadouts including new health potions. It took a few tries to get a clean no wiper done, but it was maybe an afternoon – if you play smart, it’s not terrible – and smart means knowing to skip the named Zekvir lieutenants as often as possible.

Zekvir ? and ?? – Done and Soloed!

Wrote about this delve and the two difficulties it has already, so won’t rehash it here, but this was a pretty fun fight. The challenge for my design brain is that the solo ?? seems pretty unfair to some specs, as it gets exponentially easier if you have both a reliable melee-timer interrupt and a way to remove movement impairing effects from yourself regularly. It wouldn’t matter if the biggest reward of the season, the Void dirigible, wasn’t tied to soloing the delve, but it is and so here we are. I’m hoping the boss next season is designed in a similar way but with better across-the-board solo tuning, because outside of that discrepancy, the Zekvir fight was fun and I enjoyed progging it.

Delver’s Journey Season 1 – Done!

Delver’s Journey is a progress bar that fills slowly every time you finish a Bountiful Delve, and you get more journey for higher-tier delves as well as for completing extra objectives like taking out Zekvir packs or the big bad himself invading. It requires 42,000 total Journey earned in increments of around 150 – so yeah, an excruciating grind. You can gain this for your first 28 bountifuls a week, which is a fucking weird number but makes sense given it’s the maximum number of bountiful delves a single character could do per week. Given how hard it would be to kit a character out with that many keys reliably, the easier answer is alts – at the point you have 7 characters pushing Tier 8 bountifuls, your progress is going to end up substantially faster, and while you’re still capped on weekly gains at 28 bountifuls account-wide, well, that is a hell of a lot easier to hit with 7 characters, given that you have an easy 4 Bountiful keys guaranteed per week for weekly event quests. I capped mine out relatively quickly after two weeks of leveling and running alts through Tier 8s for gear, and the benefit so far has been mostly in gear – there’s a late-journey milestone that allows you to use the Undercoin currency from delves to buy 580 gear that is Warbound, and while the gear sucks (it starts at 4/8 upgrade track, so it maxes out at 593 item level and the cost per slot in Undercoin is pretty high for what you get out of it), it’s an effective stopgap on your way to gearing a fresh alt. In-game, the mechanic is pretty obtuse – there’s no listed progress in the game UI so you have to just guess and the reward tracks are kind of inverted in my opinion – I’d put the armor rewards very early into the progression and then have the cosmetics later, with the ability to buy bountiful keys being about where they are now.

As a thing to do, the Journey wasn’t terribly interesting to me until I closed in on the bigger reward tiers, at which point my motivation increased, especially once I realized that alt gameplay was expediting it a lot (I was typically about 2x ahead of most of my guildies because I was pushing so many characters through the system). My fear for Season 2 is that Blizzard is going to throttle this harder and make it less rewarding – it’s already not terribly rewarding in the first place, but I could see a Blizzard-brained move being to pull this down in efficiency a bit.

Brann Leveling – Almost There!

Brann, the Season 1 delve companion, tops out at level 60. My Brann is currently level 58.

Leveling Brann has some of the same guardrails as the Journey – only levels in Bountifuls past an early level, can only get experience from the first 28 Bountifuls you do a week, but where the Delver’s Journey path is equal levels of 4,200 Journey a piece, Brann’s experience curve is…well, an experience curve. It goes up sharply in the late 40s and then in the 50s, it increases massively between levels while experience gain is relatively flat. Enemies give Brann between 20-300ish experience (a casual observation, not hard fact), and the Delve completion bonus is around 45,000 experience, which is fine until level 58 requires 800,000 experience and you’re fighting for a single run to give you just 5%, which means it can take almost a full week of Bountiful maxing to get 1 level.

Leveling Brann has been one of the biggest relief points for taking fresh alts straight into Tier 8 delves without much concern. At low levels, you have to contend with his awful randomly placed ground abilities, but by the end of his curve, he’s got some big tools to help a run smooth out a lot, like DPS mode executions of enemies and the Emergency Kit for healer Brann that can save you from death once every 3 minutes. It’s gotten to the point with my Brann that a fresh alt in 570ish gear can roll right into a Tier 8 and immediately start gearing – with careful play and smart pulling, but still, a high level Brann makes it easy. At this point, I’m less focusing on his level as a goal and more just doing it organically by pushing more alts into level cap and straight into delves from there. He’ll be level 60 in a week or two and then that’s one less bar I can track and review!

Raiding Goals – Normal Done, AOTC In Progress

The normal raid of Nerub’ar Palace was a weird difficulty curve due to the wall that Silken Court was for my group at launch. With the nerfs (which came after our first kill, thankfully), reclears are easy enough and now attention starts to turn to Heroic. Heroic is a bit more difficult, as harder fights like Nexus Princess and Broodtwister Ovinax require more accurate play from the full raid at an individual level, which is always something my team struggles with. We’re slowly grinding our way there, and I have confidence we’ll get AoTC – as we should given that there’s likely another 3 months in the season at a minimum!

Overall, my impressions of this tier haven’t changed much from my normal clear post – it is a fine enough raid, but I don’t think at the level I play at that I am going to have a soft spot for it in a few months or even a few years time.

Alt Leveling – 15/39 Done!

At this point, I’ve leveled one of every class to level 80, and then leveled my second Druid and Paladin. I didn’t finish my pre-TWW goal of having all 39 specs at level 70 prior to launch, so I have some characters still grinding through now, but with the new experience curve and two months of experience buffs for the Anniversary event, I anticipate being able to finish up all 39 plus some extra alts before Season 2 begins. All of my alts have done Tier 8 delves and received the Undying Caver achievement solo for deathless runs. Alt gameplay has been pretty satisfying as a passive enjoyable activity, since there’s really no wrong answers to leveling the 70-80 curve. I’ve done questing, I’ve done gathering and crafting, I’ve done some mix plus using Delves and Delver’s Call quests to push 5 levels of experience easily, I did chain queue Timewalking dungeons, chain queue TWW dungeons, and all of them feel somewhat similarly effective. That being said, using quests and gathering while queueing TWW normal dungeons so far has been the fastest leveling for me, and it’s fun practice for specs you might not have played as much.

Bonus – A Miniguide To Gearing a Fresh Level 80 In Season 1 The War Within

So, you just had an alt hit level 80. How do you gear up efficiently to do the things you want to do?

First priority – Renown Gear

Between the 4 major factions, you can cover a total of 7 item slots with epic gear on a fresh alt immediately, provided you’ve reached the correct rep levels. Unlike some past expansions, these slots are consistent across armor types and useful! The Council of Dornogal rewards 584 Shoulder armor at Renown 7 and 597 boots at Renown 16, Assembly of the Deeps rewards a 584 helm at Renown 8 and a 597 belt at Renown 19, the Hallowfall Arathi rewards 584 chest armor at Renown 7 and 597 bracers at Renown 18, and lastly the Severed Threads offer the same trinket at multiple item levels based on Renown rank, with a 571 version at Renown 6, 584 at Renown 11, and a 597 version at Renown 19. The trinket can be customized with two secondary stats of your choosing by purchasing socketable Pheromones from vendors in Azj-Kahet, with the Renown vendor selling a Versatility option and other vendors in the City of Threads overworld area selling the remaining secondary stats. These are easy rewards from just playing and playing an alt army means you should accrue enough of the currencies involved (Resonance Crystals and Kej) that you can transfer to a fresh 80 and purchase these on the spot once you ding. With all 7 options unlocked, you will have a good baseline item level.

Second priority – Weekly Cache gear

Doing your first two weekly events (any of them that specify gear can drop from the cache) rewards epic gear on the Veteran upgrade track, which means epic and at least 584 item level. The easiest options would be the Theater Troupe event and either Worldsoul or Archives from Dornogal. These can be any slot, so it’s best to gamble these before any purchases are made for gear so you don’t waste any limited resources on something you immediately replace. On weeks with PvE weekly events like Timewalking or TWW dungeons, do those too for another shot at gear – gear from those events are raid level (597-606 for TW and 610-619 for TWW dungeons event) and far less likely to be outshined by other sources as you start grinding up item level more.

Third Priority – Crafted Gear

Crafting in TWW is a similar process to Dragonflight, meaning you can quickly spin up an alt with some crafting if you play your cards right. The top-level gear is with Sparks of Omens, which can be farmed up to a current seasonal cap that increases by a half-spark per week (currently as I write this it’s 4.5 sparks with a new half spark coming on reset). Sparks are earned from any endgame activity and the further behind you are on a character, the more chances there are for them to drop. Outside of Spark crafting, the blue gear recipes can also be easily crafted to Epic quality and item levels as high as 590 with the use of Enchanted Weathered Harbinger’s Crests, which you can have made by an enchanter with a relatively light cost in Enchanting materials and a small amount of Weathered Crests. Once you have enough trade alts rolling, you should be able to produce the upgraded blue gear self-sufficiently which is a very nice boost!

Fourth Priority – World Quest Gear

World Quest gear drops around 554-571 item level and is deterministic to a point – when a quest is up for a given gameplay session, you can see the slot it will be ahead of time and make a choice to farm specific WQs for that gear. It’s a bit stingy, but not terrible!

Fifth Priority – Normal and Heroic Dungeons (Mostly Heroic)

Normal dungeons drop 554 item level gear that cannot be upgraded – so they suck mostly, but can help you get some slots fleshed out. Heroic dungeons drop gear at 580 on Adventurer 4/8 upgrade track, so it can be maximum upgraded to 593. If you meet item level requirement to queue Heroics, they are a pretty quick source of gear, and they’re not terribly hard. The big issue is randomness – you never quite know what slots you’ll get and each dungeon has enough variety to be a bit of a challenge at trying to farm specific options.

Sixth Priority – Delver’s Undercoin Gear

If you are far enough along in your Delver’s Journey, buying the Undercoin Warbound gear is a reasonable boost that can be cheap to fill in slots between Renown gear and cache gear. It starts at 580 item level and can be upgraded cheaply to as high as 593, so it’s not long-term value gear, but as a quick shot in the arm to start an alt farming, it will work well. One upgrade pushes it to Epic quality, which makes it a fun way to quickly push a new character to the TWW Epic gear achievement! Undercoins are a tough commodity to farm in volume so definitely hold off on buying these until you’ve exhausted other reliable sources of gear.

Seventh Priority – Bountiful Delves

Why are delves all the way down here?

Well, my easy answer is this – in my experience, if you use the first six methods here, getting to 580 item level is pretty easy, and once you reach that with a well-leveled Brann, you should be able to push Tier 8 Bountiful Delves without excessive burdensome difficulty. Saving your Bountiful keys for Tier 8 is ideal, given that it ensures high level rewards and gives a progression path to your characters. Having said that, if you really want to gear up a little higher and start running out of options, doing lower tier Bountiful delves can offer some rewards and upgrades at the cost of keys, which naturally get easier over time (at Renown breakpoints, all of the four factions will give you free keys on fresh alts so you can get a full 8 keys to start an alt just for hitting 80, talking to the Quartermasters, and doing a round of weekly cache activities). I wouldn’t recommend it unless you really need the boost after all the prior options, but its there!

Last Priority/Unpredictable Sources – World Bosses, Warbound Until Equipped Gear

World bosses…exist. They drop 603 gear which is great and it has raid appearances you can collect…but good fucking luck getting anything to drop. The world bosses are as stingy as ever and when combined with delves, just really not worth it. Try them for sure – see if your luck aligns, but don’t expect much!

Likewise, all sources of dropped gear in TWW have a chance to reward a piece of Warbound Until Equipped gear which is usually one tier lower than the rewards for the content you are doing. This gear is a bonus that does not count against any other loot you might be able to get, and it is untradeable – but can be dropped into your Warbank and given to any character of your choosing on your accounts. If you do a reasonable amount of endgame gameplay, you’ll get a few pieces of this gear and it can be useful…however, it is unpredictable to a fault. The gear can be anything from the loot table of the activity you just did, which means it could theoretically drop for a class or spec you don’t have or it could be bad gear (delve greens at 554 item level, a lower item level shield than your shield-bearing alt can benefit from, etc). You’ll get a decent amount with regular play (I’ve had like 25 pieces drop at this point), and with luck it will align to be useful to you! Don’t count on it and it isn’t really farmable in a targeted or specific way, but it can be a boost!

What Is Realistically Attainable?

My experience with alts is that I can get a fresh level 80 to around 595 item level in about 4 hours of effort after level capping. Renown gear, Undercoin gear, quick crafts from the alt stable, and then a couple of quick Tier 8 bountiful delves and my gear on a fresh level 80 ends up in a pretty good place, all told. Some is luck dependent – if your runs at Tier 8 delves don’t give good items that are upgrades each time, you might be a little shy of 595, and if you are exceptionally lucky, you can hit 606 like my Outlaw Rogue did thanks to a chain of Hidden Cache maps (literally picked up 4 of them in 3 Delves!), but at least 590 is very easy to hit with a modicum of effort. You can, of course, optimize further – stuff like optimizing your crafted gear or even just waiting on a Vault day to get something else even better is obviously doable – but if you want to kit out an alt in the shortest amount of time to do content, this is a good pathway to take. If you’ve got time on your hands and patience, you can of course do things the long way too – farm the raid on multiple difficulties, chain-run dungeons, etc, but I find that ripping my way to 580 quickly and then doing Tier 8 Bountiful Delves is the easiest option and the best overall return on investment of time.

But this does help to get you on a track towards endgame activities and make playing those alts enjoyable, as well as giving them more power for things like old raid soloing, as well as a means to start collecting current tier transmogs through the Catalyst (and the more characters of a single class you have, the easier that is too!).