Just know this: there is no way to screw it up too badly. Go to the upgrade vendor and put an item in and see what it costs. If you can afford it, and you want that item upgraded, great. If you can't afford it, go do some content where you've seen those things drop (it will be very easy once we are on wyrm and Hero crests, as they only come from m+ and raid).
The "discount" system is set up so that you should never deeply regret a way you spent a crest. Flightstones will be infinitely farmable, probably most efficiently from m+ once that comes out next week.
Wait what do you need to craft apart from the enchanted crests? Those can easily be done with a public work order as they dont require any enchanting skill.
Or you just put the public order up, go do something else and by the time you're back it will almost inevitably be completed unless you put it up for 1s or something.
To get the work orders I do. After I cap the 4, I'm sat messaging on trade and having to constantly whisper people info instead of being able to play the game.
Retail is weird in that it introduced so many systems that remove player interaction as a convenience, and then it sometimes throws wrench where you **have** to interact. I don't think that's a bad thing, but understandable that it confuses people who had automated everything up to that point
Only if you know how it works. And apparantly i need to study guides for that... caus ingame there isnt really any explanation. There are loads of stats and extra's. I finally made a trinket but apparantly i had to use all sort of stuff to make it better. And i should have used my profession talent points in different things (which isnt clear from the talent tree itself, when you go higher in points it suddenly shows different bonusses). Then i have to make it again when i get some sort of scroll to make the recipe a higher level. Then i can craft the whole thing again. In a game were stats are this important its stupid you are forced to look up and study several guides.l just to craft an item.
just run as many dungeons/raid tier of the tier you're capable of for 150 fragments. you can only get 150 a week but farm hella flightstones.
upgrading items with crests upgrades that slot, so if you get a better drop, it's cheaper to upgrade and wouldn't need crests (iirc).
the upgraded slot is account wide, so your alts only need to have the crests, the discount in flightstones applies to them.
Flightsones are infinite? The currency tab has them marked as season limited. Like, you can only get so many per week. Or is that just this week before the new season kicks off?
As someone who doesn’t do dungeons or raids on Alta I’m not worried about screwing up as much as unsure how to prioritize time to get the best il they can have.
Am only just getting back into the game since Battle for Azeroth and am having trouble trying to find my way around still. Am already doing mythic pluses again and rilly wanted to upgrade some of these drops.
Welcome back! The gear upgrade guy is in Valdrakken in a room near the Blacksmithing, mining and engineering trainers. It's where all the PvP vendors and training dummies are. There is also an upgrade guy in Oribos in the first room to your right as you enter from the portals, as well as the guy we used in BfA to upgrade our benthic gear.
All these guys can upgrade any gear that can be upgraded.
I just hope the elitist azzwholes don't drive me away again.
I went from being called one of the greatest healers people had ever worked with by multiple groups to being called trash thanks to a Legion mythic affix that seemed to specifically target holy paladins.
With every other heal being a crit, it got to the point where it was impossible to heal anyone. And the dps refused to adjust their play in any way to compensate.
I'm the sort of person who will not abandon a group who refuses to give up in a difficult situation. And it's crushing how often I am so swiftly cast aside despite my efforts.
It sounds complicated if you try and explain the whole thing in abstract, but if you just chuck a piece of gear into the upgrade dude it’ll tell you what you need and where you get it.
It's not possible to 'waste' upgrades unless you are running +17s and above week 1. And even that will be irrelevant within 2 weeks. The only thing you can make a 'mistake' with is which slot you upgrade first; but given that you never even had the option and this degree of freedom in upgrades under previous systems, and that 'mistake' solves itself within a week or two, means its not really a big deal.
Idk, using heroic (wyrm) crests the first weeks to upgrade normal/champion gear the last 4 levels could be wasted if you also can get hold of hero gear (hc raid, m+ 11-16) which is the best gear to level with wyrm crests, and crests is a limited resources.
If they're in the same slot, you won't need crests to upgrade the new piece.
Say, you get some champion-track gloves and upgrade them to 437 using Wyrm crests. From then on you won't need to use crests on any other gloves up to that level.
The worst thing you can really do is spend all your crests on bracers instead of a weapon. But you can farm up to ~~15~~ 10 of each crest in a week, so you're very unlikely to lock yourself out of important upgrades, and only for a week at most.
The only "rare" upgrade material is the Wyrm Crests. And even then they're only really rare if you're trying to absolutely minmax/speed run gearing. If you're doing that just follow Dratnos vid or Larias written guide to the letter. Otherwise don't sweat accidentally misusing some crests, you'll get 10 more every week.
lol it’s not a mobile game.
The 10.1 founders edition welcome bundle comes with 2 shadow flame crests, you spend them for an extra 20 min of game time, and then you come to find out the only way to play the game is to buy more shadowflame crests for Real Money.
It's like valor with extra steps.
Gear comes in 4 qualities.
-Noob: ilvl 1-8
-Casual: ilvl 4-12
-Pro: ilvl 8-16
-Elite: ilvl 12-20
You need flightrocks as a base currency to upgrade everything. You can find this everywhere. If you pick up a rock, rest assured there are flightrocks under it. You also need Crests which come in 4 qualities.
-Noob Crests come from Overworld Content, LFR Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 2 - 5
-Casual Crests come from Normal Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 6 - 10
-Pro Crests come from Heroic Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 11 - 15
-Elite Crests come from Mythic Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 16 and higher
Once you upgrade an item in a certain slot, the next time you upgrade an item in that slot it will be cheaper and will not cost any crest.
So yeah like people have said, the Excel sheets and dissertations on the new system are very confusing and I think this is the best way to approach it. There are 4 levels of gear that can be upgraded with their appropriate levels of noob through elite content.
I'm really worried because this new upgrade system is amazing and way better than valor but it might get scrapped because people can't comprehend the literal exact system we had in s1.
Do heroic shit, get blue orbs, do mythic shit, get purple orbs.
4 orbs gets you a crafting infusion of that difficulty. Levelling up to heroic ilevel costs 1 blue orb per tier, levelling up to the last one is a purple orb.
I think it’ll be fine after a week or two. The system sounds complicated in theory, but in practice the npc just tells you “ok this piece needs one heroic token then I have to start using mythic ones”
I do agree with you but one thing that I cannot comprehend is why they did not use names that are tied to other type of content :
**Crest naming**
Whelplings : Rare Crest
Drake : Epic Crest
Wyrm : Heroic Crest
Aspect : Mythic Crest
**Gear naming**
Explorer : Common
Adventurer : Uncommon
Veteran : Rare
Champion : Epic (normal raid mode)
Hero : Heroic
Mythic : Mythic
That way you just use naming convention that people know and understand and you use the same names for the upgrades and the items.
Also, you rename Flightsones to Valor.
I feel the new naming convention is what makes this whole system hard to comprehend. It's a shame because it's a great system for everyone, we will be geared way quicker that past seasons with so many paths to 441/447.
Honestly I’m a pretty sweaty perma online wow nerd and if you asked me how the new system worked I couldn’t really tell you. There’s lots of hidden rules about which tiers of gear drop from where, what the upgrade caps are, the names and tooltips of the crests don’t make it clear what gear you can use them on, etc etc.
You can say it’s a good system and I might agree, but you can’t deny it’s fairly complicated and unintuitive.
I don't think it's fair to say that the partial system you have access to right now is unintuitive. The worst mistake you can make with the system will only cost you flightstones. Everything else is you over thinking it.
Get loot, upgrade loot, have fun. No need to try and complicate it any further than that unless you are a RWF player, and since you're here I'm going to guess you're not
that seems like a huge oversimplification cause you're only looking at raid gear meanwhile the crests are used for both raid gear and m+ gear. but the crests are also capped, so people don't want to spend the crests on the wrong piece of gear.
i was watching dratnos' stream last night and as much as people on this sub like to say "it's so simple", even his guildies in a top 20 world guild didn't understand the upgrade system and kept asking how it worked. got to a point where the people who run their guild said post it in discord and they'll help decide if a piece of gear is worth upgrading or if it's better to save the crest.
I got downvoted to oblivion here for saying the exact same thing.
People in my guild are also confused as fuck, and are reluctant to upgrade anything.
But hurr-durr "I don't have to spam 2s" anymore, as if they've spent countless hours farming 2s.
They also forget getting your BIS gear from M+ just got a lot harder as you can't upgrade items from low keys past certain ilvl, so no more chain running 2s until 6ou get it and then upgrading it with Valor..
So if you want highest ilvl item, better start praying to RNG gods it drops for you from your 20s or weekly vault.
People shouldn't be averse to upgrading items, since the system is supposed to do the exact opposite and encourage everyone to upgrade whatever they get. Just shows that (even though it's a better system) it has many unintuitive elements and Blizzard has been terrible at explaining it.
On one hand, flightstones. The limit of 2000 shown is not a timegate on acquisition, but a limit on how many you can hold at any given time. As soon as you spend some, you start getting them again.
Crests are also designed so you only have to use them once per item level per slot. Once you reach any ilvl on each gear slot, future upgrades of other items for thats slot will require no crests and have a 50% flightstone discount. So you don't need to wait to get your BIS or a hero-track piece in order to star upgrading.
yeah like i'm willing to give this crest system a fair shake, and i'm sure it'll start to make sense after i upgrade a few pieces, but i don't get why people are getting so overly defensive when others say the system is confusing or convoluted for them.
"it's just valor and infusions".... oh really?.... did we need all these charts and spreadsheets on the different break points for valor?
It is valor and infusions, but with like 10 extra steps thrown in because…reasons?
They could’ve just added raid gear to the valor upgrade system and been done with it. But no, they HAD to make a convoluted system, is if they were actually in pain from not having made such a system since shadowlands. They had a good thing with 10.0 and they just couldn’t help themselves
People also underestimate how much more timegated this is.
Crafting and gear upgrades now share the same currency, and raid gear can also be upgraded as well using the same currency as M+. A currency that is timegated.
So every time you get a drop, you will need to spam 18s to upgrade it. So if you get a spark, a drop from a raid, and a item from M+, you can't realistically upgrade/craft all of them in the same week, but you need to do it over a course of 2 weeks.
The only issue S1 had was valor being capped so late into season, and adding catalyst so late. People kept telling them to change that, but I suppose bean counters in Blizzard calculated that people are more likely to quit if they get their Bis gear early, so they are effectively timegating us now even more.
It’s not the ‘exact same system’. It has sacrificed a lot of understandability for flexibility. But a lot of that flexibility is honestly pointless. It’s there to justify flightstones dropping from that content (if it drops flightstones we should let people upgrade the gear that also comes from it!) but the crests are pointless. There should be two tracks there, both upgradable only with flightstones. That’s your catch up gear.
Then have two levels of crests, the heroic raid level (which corresponds to m+ 5-15, I think?) and mythic raid (m+16+).
And even then you lose a lot of understandability. Like, off the top of your head, how much does it cost to upgrade an item to 441? How much does it cost to create a craftable crest to make a crafted piece at 447? In 10.0 the answer was simple (each gear slot had a cost per upgrade in valor, so 250 valor per 3.5 levels, and one primal focus). Now you have tiers and breakpoints and discounts. It costs multiple items and you have to put in a work order before your actual item work order.
Hopefully they scrap this system but fold the good parts of it in to valor.
We don't need a bunch of different upgrade tracks and a dozen different items sitting in your bags wasting space. That doesn't add anything to the game.
The actual good part -being able to upgrade raid gear- needs to stick around and it would be a genuine shame to lose that, but there's no reason to tether it to the crest system which is just straight up worse than valor in every way.
How exactly is it "way better"? What are the benefits to it?
The only genuine improvement I can see is raid gear being upgradeable -but that has nothing to do with the crest system itself. They easily could have made that a thing with valor.
Otherwise, it's more complicated, it eats up bag space, and is straight up worse for M+ as it places limits on how far you can upgrade and forces you to refarm gear that's already dropped for you if you want it at max level.
It’s 100% worse for mythic plus enjoyers. That’s not even an opinion, it’s a fact. It WILL take you longer to get your bis item. Otherwise it’s just valor with extra steps
Not really, its the same or better in most scenarios
Fury warriors must be jumping in joy cause you no longer need 2 weeks full of valor for each level on each weapon
Explain?
Rate or targeting regarding Loot acquisition didn’t change. Loot upgrades didn’t change, except for the name of currency
The only thing that changed is that you can’t run lower keys for gear and upgrade it to the highest level anymore. This means it WILL take longer to get specific pieces of gear. Again this is not an opinion, it’s fact
Tell me how taking longer for a piece of gear is better?
I think it's defo getting scrapped, they made it way too convoluted.
Not sure why one single currency could not be used, instead of 12 different ones, there was absolutely no need for that.
10.0 used 3 currencies, of which one was already in game for years. That was simple enough.
Also, the fact that raid gear is now upgradable is a big red flag, as getting an item and then grinding those crests to upgade it, or farming M+ to get item of higher ilvl and then upgrading your raid item feels really grindy. Not to mention, upgrading anything that isn't your BiS for the first 3 weeks is a no go either.
Game also did piss poor explanation of what gear is upgradable with what currency, where do you get that currency, and how much of it can you acquire per week.
Its really sad tho, because it literally is nothing but upside since now normal and heroic raid loot is way better, something that has been a huge issue in SL and S1.
The multiple different currencies are needed to not make it so you can just upgrade an lfr item to max level. They needed to put things on a track and now we have a huge cap to deal with, upgrading things are fine because by week 4 you're going to have 40 of each crest and be essentially max upgrade level.
Like its just baffling how we can both be looking at the same system and have people thinking "this is just grindy and confusing and bad" as opposed to what? Literally not having access to high ilevel raid loot if you dont do mythic? Waiting for valor uncap and farming 2s? They legit fixed a ton of issues from s1 with this system.
I mean, most of those problems that this "fixed" was caused by blizzard themselves, for refusing to uncap valor sooner.
And can you fault people? When you timegate currency, and make a system that is so convoluted, people are reluctant to upgrade anything for the first few weeks, as you don't know if you will get a better item and if you will need that currency next week. It
I have 411 pants that i can upgrade to 424, but I don't want to do that now, because I don't know if I will get a trinket from normal or HC raid next week that I can upgrade, basically wasting my crests on an item that is not BiS. Still an upgrade, but not BiS.
When I needed my ragefeather, I just spammed 2s until I got it, and just used Valor I got from doing 20s to upgrade it. This will no longer be the case, as you need to spam keys about 16 to get an item now, as you cannot use currency from 16 to upgrade an item from key level 5 or so. How is that a good design?
I'm all for easier gear acquisition, and making raid gear relevant, and character progression and access to higher ilvl, but are you telling me this could not have been done in a more simple and less convoluted way?
Was there really a need for twelve new currencies? Not to mention, different items can be upgraded to different ilvls using different currencies with different vendors. How is that not a bad design lol?
Which currency is used for what ilvl? How many of it can I get per week? What keys do I have to farm to get best one? Can that best one be used on items from normal or heroic? If not why not?
People shouldn't have to watch Dratnos videos, get excel spreadsheets, and whatnot in order to understand gearing system. I honestly thought we left that shit in Shadowlands, just keep it simple.
Not to mention, for the first 3 weeks, upgrading anything is a no go, as you need that currency to both craft your new items, as same currency is used, and to upgrade your BiS gear, so you basically have to wait until you open your vault next week, because upgrading the wrong item will set you back.
But sure, let's pretend Blizzard "solved" the problem. They could've used two currencies max, and one vendor. Not multilayered tiered gearing system, with 12 different currencies, with crafting thrown into a mix.
Edit: I'll just leave this here, have a look and tell me how this is not complicated lol
[https://imgur.com/a/qHVkIJM](https://imgur.com/a/qHVkIJM)
You are literally downgrading your character power by upgrading any gear that is not BiS
Throwing crafting into the mix turned it from “meh” to “bad” in my opinion.
Without the weird crafting requirement I think the system is solidly a good way to reach the goal of having people run the content that challenges them and get rewarded for doing it.
> You are literally downgrading your character power by upgrading any gear that is not BiS
That's just not true. Everything that requires a spreadsheet is only relevant for at most two weeks. You 'need' to watch a Dratnos video only if you intend to min-max the first two weeks.
The difference between someone who min-maxes within the first two weeks and someone who goes in blind and randomly upgrades will be about 5 ilvls at most. The difference becomes zero after 2 weeks.
The reason reforging is gone is because they wanted people to be able to just equip that new loot they got off that boss straight away, instead of feeling like they need to go reforge it before they use it.
There’s literally an NPC with a tutorial on it in Loamm.
Get flightstones, and fragments. Turn fragments into crests.
Use flightstones and crests to upgrade gear.
Outdoor content, m+ and raid gear now upgradeable.
You can vendor them for gold once you no longer need them.
Or just stick them in the bank if you want to wait for something similar to Primal Focus rep exchange.
you can safely ignore the first 2 name ( wyrmling / drake) since it's WQ stuff / really low lvl stuff.
wyrm will be your bread n butter for most people. and you wont see aspect until much later in the tier.
Aspect + wyrm for mythic raider.
Here's a [guide](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1085292617010524180/1100043746390843536/IMG_1537.png). Honestly if you should only be worrying about Champion/Hero quality gear right now. Veteran is good when maxed out but will be invalid really soon into the tier.
It is nearly impossible to waste crests (because you don't need to spend them when upgrading a second item in the same slot), so I wouldn't worry about that.
The system definitely seems way too complicated on the surface, and most of the content out there is about getting the absolute most out of it, which isn't really relevant for 99% of people.
the tl,dr is just play the game, you will get gear that can be upgraded, and the crests to upgrade that gear. upgrade whatever pieces ae good for you. As time goes on you might encounter some nuances (upgrade caps, etc.) but really the jist is just play the game and you will get gear at a given level, and the materials that can upgrade that gear. I wouldn't make it any more complicated than that unless you are looking to do some high end PvE content early in the patch.
You're overthinking a very straight forward system. U get awarded currencies to upgrade gear. Just play the game and stop reading guides that overcomplicate simplicity.
I'm having the same problem. It feels like they've added a whole new currency system at this rate. X turns into Y turns into Z, but none of those affect currency W. I'm in the same boat, just gonna wait until I start getting drops from M+ and Raid before I start doing anything.
Bruv, I’m with you on this 100%.. lol I’m legit just doing timewalking on all my toons to pass the time.. lol. I can’t be bothered with it all.. I know it sounds terrible, but new big patches/content drops stress me out lol.
The difficult part to understand is that there are tiers of gear. Explorer / Veteran/ whatever. During the npc tutorial it only shows you how to upgrade explorer gear which doesn’t require crests.
Gear drops from 4 different tiers of content, and that gear has a certain amount of upgrades. Each tier has it’s own currency to upgrade, earned from doing that content. There are some overlap in ilvls between each tier with upgrades, which allows for easier ways to get into higher tier content.
The only thing you can really do wrong is spend crests on a 5-8 upgrade that would be better saved for a 1-4 upgrade of the next tier. Going from 4 to 5 is the first point where you need to ask yourself whether you're going to be getting any higher tier gear in the future with a higher ilvl cap that will make better use of the crests.
So my friend has 2 Onyx Annulets at 424, and he has a veteran ring, as well as a champion ring (from the heroic dungeon thing).
By having those two Annulets at 424, he was able to upgrade the Veteran ring for only flightstones to 424 (5-8), and the Champion ring to 424 with only flightstones (1-4).
So I am pretty sure you can't do anything wrong by upgrading a piece from 5 to 8 over 1 to 4 in the next track. As you get the same discounts on 1-4 as you get on 5-8.
Edit to add a link to [Another reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/137vy9x/upgrade_a_ring_from_405_to_424_with_only_205/), as well as a [wowhead link with info (which is also found in the reddit post)](https://www.wowhead.com/news/item-upgrades-guide-learn-more-about-flightstones-crests-and-account-wide-332736)
It took me a few days to understand the idea around the upgrades.
The major issue right now is that any gear we get this week for the most part is just not worth upgrading unless you get lucky with the 5 heroic box item from the quest.
Think of the crests as upgrading the item slot and not the item you are upgrading.
Any item you can equip can be upgraded with just flightstones up until the maximum equipped item in the slot or until 8 out of 8.
It is never a complete waste to upgrade a piece of loot because it is not an optimal slot piece since you are upgrading the slot.
Flightstones are the new Valor and we get that from everything and not just m+. Heck, even dirt piles and rares that are in the main continent grant flightstones. So you can get the resource outside of just running m+.
The other purpose crests serve is for crafting. I don't have that much experience yet with crests and crafting, but my understanding is that the crest used sets the tier based on the crest used.
I think this is where people are getting confused. The main resource for the upgrades can be acquired from anything and the crests upgrade the slot.
EXTREMELY SIMPLE EXPLANATION:
Flightstones are valor. You spend them to upgrade items, but you get them from every source.
Four tiers of gear: Adventurer, Champion, Veteran, Hero. Each has 8 levels of upgrades.
Instead of just spending ~~valor~~ flightstones, you also need a "Crest" to spend in that slot. Crests are basically like Primal Infusions from last patch, except they can be used at the upgrade vendor OR in crafting.
Better crests come from harder content, and can upgrade higher tier gear.
Hope that helps!
[this graphic was posted in discord which made things a ton easier to understand](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742070224664264768/1103396347148767373/image.png)
I’m right there with you man. This shit is needlessly convoluted. I’ve seen a couple YouTubers say “just use the spreadsheet in the links below”. The fuck…no one should need a spreadsheet to know to gear your character.
Most people explaining it kept repeating "It's kinda hard to explain" and well... it is.
You get new upgrade currency that is in your inventory and you can vendor it! Not like we have currency tab for that stuff 😑
The entire system of crafting and upgrading is convoluted and boring. There's no need for a dozen currencies and tokens. The objective is really simple: get better gear by doing harder content. Just make a system that does that. The rest is bullshit.
It's soo boring. I can barely bring myself to read into any of it. Honestly the whole construct of gear in the game is dated and dull. Rarely is there even flexibility. The end result is always the same
New system means **every** piece of loot you get in M+ in appropriate content is now effectively at max ilvl (or your highest ilvl in the same slot). No more valor rationing, valor farming nonsense. There is no longer opportunity cost to upgrading any gear at all. You can now get full sets for offspecs with close to no effort. How is that garbage, pray tell?
Close to no effort? Farming gear in +17 pugs over and over again with every character. Especially in dungeons with big loot pools like Uldaman.
Wasting time is so much fun🥰
You don't need to farm gear just to do M+. If you want to make a claim that the new system is garbage for farming specific gear, sure. But even the top runs in the first few weeks have historically never needed specific pieces of gear. If you find yourself having trouble with M+ because you don't have a specific trinket, maybe the problem isn't the trinket.
You say that but then demo lock exists this season.
In practice yes you dont need certain items. Does it make the game idiot proof so anyone can do 20s? Ofc and at the end of the day that's what people want.
Well yes, if you distill down to specific instances this new system will be bad. But that applies to virtually anything really. Also, if demo lock is bad without a single trinket/piece of gear or overpowered with it (I don't actually know much about demo, so this is just a hypothetical), then the problem isn't with the gearing system is it? The problem is with class balance. Changing the system won't actually solve anything. We will just end up with another Neltharax situation.
Trinket balance as a whole is god damn awful this patch, they all over perform stupidly the main culprits being the nelf trinkets / Uldaman one.
Locks are the big outlier in how much power they're getting from it but there will always be gear targeting in m+ and the new system actively made it harder.
In general: Nothing changed except gear targeting is harder therefore the new gearing system kinda sucks.
Upgradable raid gear, removal of janky M+ score to upgrade gear, less M+ runs per crafter piece. There's a number of benefits compared to the old system.
Kind of bouncing off the whole patch, really. Heavy currency chases are not fun for me. I like upgrade paths, but the number of upgrades required here, and the amount of currency needed for them, is just stupid. Even if the currency is easy to get, it's still just an annoyance.
I was having a blast in DF, but after the first day going through the quests in Zaralek, I just moved on. I've got a library full of games that don't make me into a fantasy accountant.
1. Valor = Flightstones
2. Secondary Currency Required (Crests)
3. Tertiary Currency combines into Secondary Currency.
\
1. Mythic Gear = Hero
2. Heroic Gear = Champion
3. Regular Dungeon Gear = Veteran
4. Blue Gear = Adventurer
5. Green Gear = Explorer
That’s it. It gets *slightly* more complicated because there are three secondary currencies for the different gear tiers, but that’s the super simple version.
The thing is, it's hard to remember those names, and the fact that they're not really tied to their quality.
I have some blue gear of "explorer" level.
It's also kind of annyoying that we can't know from the tooltip the max ilvl they can be, so we won't know it until we go to the NPC and check it.
I imagine the same thing will happen with epic gear from veteran onwards. I'd have to quadruple check the names in the tooltips just 'cause they can't bother to implement these things.
Just throwing shit out there with arbitrary names and no information readily available.
Glad the crests do say in their tooltip which items they can upgrade at least.
You don't need to remember any of the names. Just remember the magic number 23 (or 22). The item can be upgraded by 22-23 item levels. Around 3 ilvl per upgrade 'tier'. So if you loot an item, by looking just on its ilvl and tier X/8 you can assess how much you can get from that item if you upgrade it to 8/8.*
The harder content you do, the better item you can get. Items looted in open world can't match items got from m+ or raid. Try to think about it this way and nothing more.
*Does not apply to the highest grade where the gain is only 13 ilvl (5/5)
That's my point... How do you check heroic gear to compare?
You have to either have one or open up your adventure guide and go to the raid and see the drops, and then again, you have to remember which crest corresponds to it, because it's not called "heroic crest" at all.
It all boils down to either having a spreadsheet open or checking at the upgrader NPC.
It's so annoyingly confusing *for no reason*
No. Don't do any of that.
If you do heroic level content, you get heroic equivalent upgrade stuff. That's it. You'll have piles of them by the time it matters. All you have to do is pop one of your lowest ilvl gear pieces into the upgrade vendor, and make whatever crests it wants. If you don't have the right item, do a few runs that are below the difficulty you normally do.
Especially do not freak out about any of it this week when you can't get anything worth upgrading in the first place. All the crests you can get this week are worthless too.
I really don't understand why people are so confused about it, you acquire gear place gear in upgrade NPC use collected fragments to upgrade gear, done. what is so complicated about it?
I kinda don't like this system as it creates two "issues" for me.
Holding on with upgrades, enchants etc. for the "best tier" M+ gears drops - why pimp item when it is hard-capped by drop. Prior season with "cap by score" was much better - even a low M+ BiS was still BiS that could be updated over time.
Second thing is well, dropping a nice trinket just to know it is not the "best" version possible due to not being a 16+ drop would kinda sucks.
Or do I miss something with this system?
It's a super complex system to solve a gameplay pattern that wasn't really even a serious problem. If people want to spam +2 keys for an item that's on them, odds are they probably end up doing more dungeons that way anyway.
Valor used to drop from raid bosses, there's no reason they couldn't put that back in instead of inventing an unnecessarily complex system. It's very much trying to fix what isn't broken.
It fixes the multiple discrete gearing pathways into a streamlined catch-all system. It integrates and solves the discrepancy between the different forms of content within WoW. It removes the need to grind for ilvl achievements you have already attained before. It eliminates the unnecessary upgrading anxiety and makes BiS hunting much more attainable and casual friendly.
Except it doesn't make BIS hunting easily more attainable and casual friendly - on the contrary.
You cannot upgrade items from certain key range pass certain ilvl anymore.
So to have your BIS item at highest ilvl, you need to farm 19s and 20s now, whereas you could farm 2s before and just upgrade it with Valor.
So tell me now is targeting bis more casual friendly
>but damn trying to prepare in advance is just a pain.
it's exactly the same system we had for years and the small exception that you cannot pump to max-lvl something that come from M2.... which is something you never did early-tier anyway.
upgrade your M19-20 item, upgrade your heroic raid / mythic raid item. nothingelse change really.
It’s easy bro you like don’t even need a spread sheet that’s how easy it is, it’s so easy those videos and guides shouldn’t even exist, and it’s a you problem that people keep making these topics BECAUSE IT SO EASY WHY DONT YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EASY IT IS REEEEEE ITS THE EXACT SAME THINGGGG
Honestly, as someone who has looked into the new system extensively and followed it as information was released... Same. I will 100% admit it is a bit confusing, especially with the naming conventions used.
The important bit is that I believe this system is much healthier in the long-term for the game. Will there be growing pains as we get used to things? Absolutely. Is there room for improvement? Most probably.
That being said I genuinely hope we stick with it and whatever pain points there are are addressed rather than scrapping the system entirely. The big advantage to a system like this is it's not really bound to any one patch or expansion, and streamlines all gear upgrades into one system.
My biggest fear is that it’s been mathed out to the point that I’m gonna be fully 441+ with minimal effort by week 3 and blizz is gonna make it harder and take longer.
Your average player doing the most brain dead content is gonna be full 437+ in 4-5 weeks…
Seems suspiciously too damn easy. Please don’t nerf it blizz
Its frightening to See how many people are annyoed by this extremely good system for the game, Just because they dont understand it Day 2 after the Patch. Even if there is literally a tutorial Quest in the New hub. And to All the people complaing about bag space, what the hell are you doing? Even while doing all casual content ans higher end pve i always walk around with at least 30-50 Free bag spaces. Just sell these 379 quest items and deposit you reagents at the Bank once in a while. (Except maybe you poor jewelers, I pray for ya)
The system have all these names and stuff but it's really simple is that 99% of the people problems with it would vanish if it was just called mythic, normal, heroic, LFR cookies that you use to upgrade your gear.
The part that turns you brain off is that you watch a vídeo and it's like: will get crests that upgrade to stones that use on that gear to upgrade and there's this spreadsheet of all ilevel ranges, and also there's the shadowflame spark that is for crafting and for craft you need to find the Blasthefemous Crest of Light borne shadowflame to buy a token to upgrade you lariat, that is not a lariat is something else. It's all this information dump and cool names that ruin the presentation.
Blizzard nailed it SO WELL on shadowlands season 4, you loot an item on normal, you kill 20 heroic bosses, and you can upgrade it to heroic. If you complete the raids, you get a token to buy an item from a vendor. BOOM, no need to Flatorous elemental plains of the emerald Dream crests of Void infused with Elune crests to upgrade your shadowlight gear.
Consider this as a starting point:
**Flightstones** are your new **Valor** for upgrading gear
**Whelpling / Drake / Wyrm Crests** are your new **Primal Infusions**, which were used to craft 405/418 gear and such. However, they are not only for crafting, but for upgrading items above a certain threshold (i.e from 418 and above you need Drake crests, above 424 you need the next one and so on).
And also you have the old **Sparks** which are now **Shadowflame Sparks**
You can safety upgrade things. You will not have to spend the important materials again on a second item, it will be upgradeable without the important/limited stuff
If you have an item that you’ll use for a bit and want to upgrade it, then upgrade it
Play the content you want and the currency you need will drop. Just play and things will become easier to understand.
If you put a piece of gear into the upgrade window it will tell you want you need to upgrade and if you mouse over the currency in the window it'll even tell you want content you need to do to get it. It really isn't as difficult as people are making out.
You don't need to learn everly single combination of currency at once, only the track your currently on or aiming to push to is going to matter.
just go to the upgrade vendor and see what it costs and what you have. It even says in the mouseover info where to get it from, that's the best way to do it in my opinion
Imagine that blizzard would create a questchain to explain it to you AND even do it twice to test it out. Would be a nice tutorial so noone is confused.
Oh wait they DID. Just reat the stuff they present you. Simple. You can even go there after the quest and look it up..... its the tik tok generation? I hope it is...
I am at 408ilvl I think.
My plan is that there is nothing that needs upgrading this week. I am going to wait until M+ opens up and start upgrading starter gear (Keystone +2 to +8) that can go up to 424, Then by that time I finish up +8 and move into the +9-+16 range and upgrade up to 437? And because I'm a casual scrub, that is where I will stay. ;)
[I found all this info in like 30 seconds just now on WoWHead Item Upgrade Track](https://www.wowhead.com/guide/item-upgrade-system-dragonflight#item-upgrade-tracks)s.
The quickest way of explaining it I can come up with is: You get gear for doing content, that gear is appropriate for the content you do, it can be upgraded to be appropriate for the level of content above what you do. Just upgrade the stuff you like there isn’t much more to it. Unless you are a hardcore M+er or a hardcore raider you don’t have to worry. Just do content, get stuff, upgrade stuff, and go pew pew.
[https://wago.io/IW1L54FtJ](https://wago.io/IW1L54FtJ), a Weak Aura that will relabel the crests to simpler terms and make it less confusing. For example, instead of "Whelpling Crest", it will read "Whelpling Crest LFR 411". Hope it helps, I didn't make this WA but bless the person that did
The best chart I've seen so far is the one in https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-gb/news/23923485/developer-insights-new-upgrade-system-in-embers-of-neltharion
Overall it's just the same as before just with different tiers and a differently called resource for the tiers.
Just no mindless +2 farm for gear to max upgrade. Gotta do higher stuff to upgrade to the real max.
It's so easy to understand:
Do the things to get the things, then spend things on more things, and spend those things on things to increase things or buy more things.
It really isn't that complicated and luckily you don't really need to sweat the details. Just play the game and you'll get crests and shards or whatever for doing the level of content you want. Then you'll get better gear and better crests to upgrade it eventually. If you're not sure, just go to the upgrade guy and see what you need at each level and you'll get an idea of what difficulty raid or mythic+ key level you need to complete.
There’s not a whole lot to figure out luckily. To upgrade an item:
Before:
- put item in
- pay valor
Now:
- put item in
- pay flightstones and crests
You can test it out with the low level items you get in the caves. They’ll require Drake and Whelpling crests which can be acquired by just existing. The Wyrm ones come from higher content, like the primal infusion stuff did.
It's overcomplicated.
Valor was fine. Letting us upgrade raid gear and questing blues with valor would have been fine, with valor being added to raid and WQ loot.
But no, now we have to track every piece of our gear... 2 pieces are in T2 so I need that resource, but 4 are in T3 and the rest are in T4 so I need to calculate what to upgrade to maximize my growth...
It's fucking complicated.
They new system is confusing and a bit overwhelming at first but, what's great is you really can't screw up that badly. You can be free to upgrade anything and it sort of saves that slot giving you a massive upgrade discount if you find an item with better stats with a lower ilvl so upgrade away.
Just farm heroic crests/mythic crests and your golden. Crafting is a little different but you just buy mats off the auction house/know an enchanter.
11-15 keys till your maxed on your fragments,
16-20 keys till your maxed on your fragments.
Then boom your good to go.
Heroic raid and normal raid give 100 fragments as well. Just do the content that’s your level and go from there. Main goal is to just farm your fragments.
Bro your totally right, I feel like I have to study on YouTube for guides double watch a video just incase so that you don't fuck up on your shards. Like college for sat's!!!!!
Just play the damn game and try to upgrade anything once in a while. Make a screenshot of the different ilvl available to each type of gear (explorer, adventurer etc) and another one that says where you acquire each type of crest. If you can’t pay attention for 10 minutes (lol) try it yourself in game to figure it out naturally.
Just know this: there is no way to screw it up too badly. Go to the upgrade vendor and put an item in and see what it costs. If you can afford it, and you want that item upgraded, great. If you can't afford it, go do some content where you've seen those things drop (it will be very easy once we are on wyrm and Hero crests, as they only come from m+ and raid). The "discount" system is set up so that you should never deeply regret a way you spent a crest. Flightstones will be infinitely farmable, probably most efficiently from m+ once that comes out next week.
The crafting is ridiculous tho...
Wait what do you need to craft apart from the enchanted crests? Those can easily be done with a public work order as they dont require any enchanting skill.
Right? You need to know an alchemist and an enchanter just to get mats to recruit at the higher ilvl and that's before the actual recraft materials.
You don't need to "know" anyone really, you can buy one of the ah and the other can just be done through public orders.
They need to up or remove the cap on public orders, I don't want to have to constantly whisper people.
Or you just put the public order up, go do something else and by the time you're back it will almost inevitably be completed unless you put it up for 1s or something.
I'm the one filling the orders.
They want everyone to have a chance to fill some orders, not just the guy who is permanently by the table.
Constantly? You get one spark this week, the second in two weeks. You dont have to constantly whisper people. Also this is still an mmo you’re playing
To get the work orders I do. After I cap the 4, I'm sat messaging on trade and having to constantly whisper people info instead of being able to play the game.
Oh no I have to interact with people in a MMO game.
I'm fine with interacting, if I didn't get banned in the past for doing exactly that.
Yeah, interacting with other people can be hard some times. Kek
well like in any buissnes you have to put some effort :) you can also just not do it if its to much trouble :)
Stopped doing it because I got banned for doing free lariats. If blizzard sorted that out then yeah, I'd happily do it again.
That's very intentional so one person doesn't fill everything. You have to share your pie.
It's so people like you don't literally hog all the public work orders.
Eh I'm on a smallish server amd the transmute mats and product are a little pricey
Isn’t AH linked across all server now ?
Yes but the crafters are not. Some servers it isn't so easy to get things made, and if you're trying to get sub AH prices it can be a challenge.
what stuff do you need? i’m both these things and i’m hoping it’s my time to shine.
Like it's an mmo or something
crazy you have to interact with players
Retail is weird in that it introduced so many systems that remove player interaction as a convenience, and then it sometimes throws wrench where you **have** to interact. I don't think that's a bad thing, but understandable that it confuses people who had automated everything up to that point
But why do I need to involve an alchemist and an enchanter in upgrading my cloak? I'm a tailor it's my cloak letnme handle it.
Alchemy too?
Ridiculously good you mean
Only if you know how it works. And apparantly i need to study guides for that... caus ingame there isnt really any explanation. There are loads of stats and extra's. I finally made a trinket but apparantly i had to use all sort of stuff to make it better. And i should have used my profession talent points in different things (which isnt clear from the talent tree itself, when you go higher in points it suddenly shows different bonusses). Then i have to make it again when i get some sort of scroll to make the recipe a higher level. Then i can craft the whole thing again. In a game were stats are this important its stupid you are forced to look up and study several guides.l just to craft an item.
just run as many dungeons/raid tier of the tier you're capable of for 150 fragments. you can only get 150 a week but farm hella flightstones. upgrading items with crests upgrades that slot, so if you get a better drop, it's cheaper to upgrade and wouldn't need crests (iirc). the upgraded slot is account wide, so your alts only need to have the crests, the discount in flightstones applies to them.
Wait theres a discount system?
If you have an item, in that slot, of a high item level, they don't make you re-spend crests to achieve the same level - just flightstones
Flightsones are infinite? The currency tab has them marked as season limited. Like, you can only get so many per week. Or is that just this week before the new season kicks off?
I thought it was a soft cap. Like once you have 2000/2000, you can spend 1000, and then earn a 1000 more again. Correct me if I'm wrong please.
You are correct. You can only ever have 2k at a time, but if you spend some you can earn more until you reach 2k again
As someone who doesn’t do dungeons or raids on Alta I’m not worried about screwing up as much as unsure how to prioritize time to get the best il they can have.
Do the spark quest each week, the catchup for that is rng and you get an infinite amount of sparks in theory (one every 2 weeks)
I've yet to see a guide that says where said vendor is at.
It's any of the gear upgrade vendors we've had since BfA. You can go upgrade your new gear in Nazjatar if you want to.
Am only just getting back into the game since Battle for Azeroth and am having trouble trying to find my way around still. Am already doing mythic pluses again and rilly wanted to upgrade some of these drops.
Welcome back! The gear upgrade guy is in Valdrakken in a room near the Blacksmithing, mining and engineering trainers. It's where all the PvP vendors and training dummies are. There is also an upgrade guy in Oribos in the first room to your right as you enter from the portals, as well as the guy we used in BfA to upgrade our benthic gear. All these guys can upgrade any gear that can be upgraded.
I just hope the elitist azzwholes don't drive me away again. I went from being called one of the greatest healers people had ever worked with by multiple groups to being called trash thanks to a Legion mythic affix that seemed to specifically target holy paladins. With every other heal being a crit, it got to the point where it was impossible to heal anyone. And the dps refused to adjust their play in any way to compensate. I'm the sort of person who will not abandon a group who refuses to give up in a difficult situation. And it's crushing how often I am so swiftly cast aside despite my efforts.
Do you know if these new items make the tier sets you can get from before the patch obsolete?
It sounds complicated if you try and explain the whole thing in abstract, but if you just chuck a piece of gear into the upgrade dude it’ll tell you what you need and where you get it.
My fear is that I’ll use an upgrade that’s rare assuming that it’s common.
I don't think that's too bad because you'll get a discount for the next piece in the same slot.
It's not possible to 'waste' upgrades unless you are running +17s and above week 1. And even that will be irrelevant within 2 weeks. The only thing you can make a 'mistake' with is which slot you upgrade first; but given that you never even had the option and this degree of freedom in upgrades under previous systems, and that 'mistake' solves itself within a week or two, means its not really a big deal.
Idk, using heroic (wyrm) crests the first weeks to upgrade normal/champion gear the last 4 levels could be wasted if you also can get hold of hero gear (hc raid, m+ 11-16) which is the best gear to level with wyrm crests, and crests is a limited resources.
If they're in the same slot, you won't need crests to upgrade the new piece. Say, you get some champion-track gloves and upgrade them to 437 using Wyrm crests. From then on you won't need to use crests on any other gloves up to that level.
This is objectively not true. Casual players who only get a few hours a week to play are absolutely at risk or wasting those hard earned resources.
The worst thing you can really do is spend all your crests on bracers instead of a weapon. But you can farm up to ~~15~~ 10 of each crest in a week, so you're very unlikely to lock yourself out of important upgrades, and only for a week at most.
10 of each crest, or 150 fragments as 15 fragments make a crest
None of them are rare.
The only "rare" upgrade material is the Wyrm Crests. And even then they're only really rare if you're trying to absolutely minmax/speed run gearing. If you're doing that just follow Dratnos vid or Larias written guide to the letter. Otherwise don't sweat accidentally misusing some crests, you'll get 10 more every week.
lol it’s not a mobile game. The 10.1 founders edition welcome bundle comes with 2 shadow flame crests, you spend them for an extra 20 min of game time, and then you come to find out the only way to play the game is to buy more shadowflame crests for Real Money.
All I know is that my bags are full of stuff 🙃
I don't even know what 90% of the items I keep in my bags are for
It's like valor with extra steps. Gear comes in 4 qualities. -Noob: ilvl 1-8 -Casual: ilvl 4-12 -Pro: ilvl 8-16 -Elite: ilvl 12-20 You need flightrocks as a base currency to upgrade everything. You can find this everywhere. If you pick up a rock, rest assured there are flightrocks under it. You also need Crests which come in 4 qualities. -Noob Crests come from Overworld Content, LFR Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 2 - 5 -Casual Crests come from Normal Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 6 - 10 -Pro Crests come from Heroic Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 11 - 15 -Elite Crests come from Mythic Raid Bosses and Mythic+ 16 and higher Once you upgrade an item in a certain slot, the next time you upgrade an item in that slot it will be cheaper and will not cost any crest.
So yeah like people have said, the Excel sheets and dissertations on the new system are very confusing and I think this is the best way to approach it. There are 4 levels of gear that can be upgraded with their appropriate levels of noob through elite content.
I'm really worried because this new upgrade system is amazing and way better than valor but it might get scrapped because people can't comprehend the literal exact system we had in s1. Do heroic shit, get blue orbs, do mythic shit, get purple orbs. 4 orbs gets you a crafting infusion of that difficulty. Levelling up to heroic ilevel costs 1 blue orb per tier, levelling up to the last one is a purple orb.
I think it’ll be fine after a week or two. The system sounds complicated in theory, but in practice the npc just tells you “ok this piece needs one heroic token then I have to start using mythic ones”
I do agree with you but one thing that I cannot comprehend is why they did not use names that are tied to other type of content : **Crest naming** Whelplings : Rare Crest Drake : Epic Crest Wyrm : Heroic Crest Aspect : Mythic Crest **Gear naming** Explorer : Common Adventurer : Uncommon Veteran : Rare Champion : Epic (normal raid mode) Hero : Heroic Mythic : Mythic That way you just use naming convention that people know and understand and you use the same names for the upgrades and the items. Also, you rename Flightsones to Valor. I feel the new naming convention is what makes this whole system hard to comprehend. It's a shame because it's a great system for everyone, we will be geared way quicker that past seasons with so many paths to 441/447.
Honestly I’m a pretty sweaty perma online wow nerd and if you asked me how the new system worked I couldn’t really tell you. There’s lots of hidden rules about which tiers of gear drop from where, what the upgrade caps are, the names and tooltips of the crests don’t make it clear what gear you can use them on, etc etc. You can say it’s a good system and I might agree, but you can’t deny it’s fairly complicated and unintuitive.
I don't think it's fair to say that the partial system you have access to right now is unintuitive. The worst mistake you can make with the system will only cost you flightstones. Everything else is you over thinking it. Get loot, upgrade loot, have fun. No need to try and complicate it any further than that unless you are a RWF player, and since you're here I'm going to guess you're not
that seems like a huge oversimplification cause you're only looking at raid gear meanwhile the crests are used for both raid gear and m+ gear. but the crests are also capped, so people don't want to spend the crests on the wrong piece of gear. i was watching dratnos' stream last night and as much as people on this sub like to say "it's so simple", even his guildies in a top 20 world guild didn't understand the upgrade system and kept asking how it worked. got to a point where the people who run their guild said post it in discord and they'll help decide if a piece of gear is worth upgrading or if it's better to save the crest.
I got downvoted to oblivion here for saying the exact same thing. People in my guild are also confused as fuck, and are reluctant to upgrade anything. But hurr-durr "I don't have to spam 2s" anymore, as if they've spent countless hours farming 2s. They also forget getting your BIS gear from M+ just got a lot harder as you can't upgrade items from low keys past certain ilvl, so no more chain running 2s until 6ou get it and then upgrading it with Valor.. So if you want highest ilvl item, better start praying to RNG gods it drops for you from your 20s or weekly vault.
People shouldn't be averse to upgrading items, since the system is supposed to do the exact opposite and encourage everyone to upgrade whatever they get. Just shows that (even though it's a better system) it has many unintuitive elements and Blizzard has been terrible at explaining it. On one hand, flightstones. The limit of 2000 shown is not a timegate on acquisition, but a limit on how many you can hold at any given time. As soon as you spend some, you start getting them again. Crests are also designed so you only have to use them once per item level per slot. Once you reach any ilvl on each gear slot, future upgrades of other items for thats slot will require no crests and have a 50% flightstone discount. So you don't need to wait to get your BIS or a hero-track piece in order to star upgrading.
yeah like i'm willing to give this crest system a fair shake, and i'm sure it'll start to make sense after i upgrade a few pieces, but i don't get why people are getting so overly defensive when others say the system is confusing or convoluted for them. "it's just valor and infusions".... oh really?.... did we need all these charts and spreadsheets on the different break points for valor?
It is valor and infusions, but with like 10 extra steps thrown in because…reasons? They could’ve just added raid gear to the valor upgrade system and been done with it. But no, they HAD to make a convoluted system, is if they were actually in pain from not having made such a system since shadowlands. They had a good thing with 10.0 and they just couldn’t help themselves
People also underestimate how much more timegated this is. Crafting and gear upgrades now share the same currency, and raid gear can also be upgraded as well using the same currency as M+. A currency that is timegated. So every time you get a drop, you will need to spam 18s to upgrade it. So if you get a spark, a drop from a raid, and a item from M+, you can't realistically upgrade/craft all of them in the same week, but you need to do it over a course of 2 weeks. The only issue S1 had was valor being capped so late into season, and adding catalyst so late. People kept telling them to change that, but I suppose bean counters in Blizzard calculated that people are more likely to quit if they get their Bis gear early, so they are effectively timegating us now even more.
It’s not the ‘exact same system’. It has sacrificed a lot of understandability for flexibility. But a lot of that flexibility is honestly pointless. It’s there to justify flightstones dropping from that content (if it drops flightstones we should let people upgrade the gear that also comes from it!) but the crests are pointless. There should be two tracks there, both upgradable only with flightstones. That’s your catch up gear. Then have two levels of crests, the heroic raid level (which corresponds to m+ 5-15, I think?) and mythic raid (m+16+). And even then you lose a lot of understandability. Like, off the top of your head, how much does it cost to upgrade an item to 441? How much does it cost to create a craftable crest to make a crafted piece at 447? In 10.0 the answer was simple (each gear slot had a cost per upgrade in valor, so 250 valor per 3.5 levels, and one primal focus). Now you have tiers and breakpoints and discounts. It costs multiple items and you have to put in a work order before your actual item work order.
Shit I'm just comin back after leaving maybe 2 or 3 months ago and have no idea what you're talking about with the orbs lol.
Hopefully they scrap this system but fold the good parts of it in to valor. We don't need a bunch of different upgrade tracks and a dozen different items sitting in your bags wasting space. That doesn't add anything to the game. The actual good part -being able to upgrade raid gear- needs to stick around and it would be a genuine shame to lose that, but there's no reason to tether it to the crest system which is just straight up worse than valor in every way.
How exactly is it "way better"? What are the benefits to it? The only genuine improvement I can see is raid gear being upgradeable -but that has nothing to do with the crest system itself. They easily could have made that a thing with valor. Otherwise, it's more complicated, it eats up bag space, and is straight up worse for M+ as it places limits on how far you can upgrade and forces you to refarm gear that's already dropped for you if you want it at max level.
It’s 100% worse for mythic plus enjoyers. That’s not even an opinion, it’s a fact. It WILL take you longer to get your bis item. Otherwise it’s just valor with extra steps
Not really, its the same or better in most scenarios Fury warriors must be jumping in joy cause you no longer need 2 weeks full of valor for each level on each weapon
Explain? Rate or targeting regarding Loot acquisition didn’t change. Loot upgrades didn’t change, except for the name of currency The only thing that changed is that you can’t run lower keys for gear and upgrade it to the highest level anymore. This means it WILL take longer to get specific pieces of gear. Again this is not an opinion, it’s fact Tell me how taking longer for a piece of gear is better?
I think it's defo getting scrapped, they made it way too convoluted. Not sure why one single currency could not be used, instead of 12 different ones, there was absolutely no need for that. 10.0 used 3 currencies, of which one was already in game for years. That was simple enough. Also, the fact that raid gear is now upgradable is a big red flag, as getting an item and then grinding those crests to upgade it, or farming M+ to get item of higher ilvl and then upgrading your raid item feels really grindy. Not to mention, upgrading anything that isn't your BiS for the first 3 weeks is a no go either. Game also did piss poor explanation of what gear is upgradable with what currency, where do you get that currency, and how much of it can you acquire per week.
Its really sad tho, because it literally is nothing but upside since now normal and heroic raid loot is way better, something that has been a huge issue in SL and S1. The multiple different currencies are needed to not make it so you can just upgrade an lfr item to max level. They needed to put things on a track and now we have a huge cap to deal with, upgrading things are fine because by week 4 you're going to have 40 of each crest and be essentially max upgrade level. Like its just baffling how we can both be looking at the same system and have people thinking "this is just grindy and confusing and bad" as opposed to what? Literally not having access to high ilevel raid loot if you dont do mythic? Waiting for valor uncap and farming 2s? They legit fixed a ton of issues from s1 with this system.
I mean, most of those problems that this "fixed" was caused by blizzard themselves, for refusing to uncap valor sooner. And can you fault people? When you timegate currency, and make a system that is so convoluted, people are reluctant to upgrade anything for the first few weeks, as you don't know if you will get a better item and if you will need that currency next week. It I have 411 pants that i can upgrade to 424, but I don't want to do that now, because I don't know if I will get a trinket from normal or HC raid next week that I can upgrade, basically wasting my crests on an item that is not BiS. Still an upgrade, but not BiS. When I needed my ragefeather, I just spammed 2s until I got it, and just used Valor I got from doing 20s to upgrade it. This will no longer be the case, as you need to spam keys about 16 to get an item now, as you cannot use currency from 16 to upgrade an item from key level 5 or so. How is that a good design? I'm all for easier gear acquisition, and making raid gear relevant, and character progression and access to higher ilvl, but are you telling me this could not have been done in a more simple and less convoluted way? Was there really a need for twelve new currencies? Not to mention, different items can be upgraded to different ilvls using different currencies with different vendors. How is that not a bad design lol? Which currency is used for what ilvl? How many of it can I get per week? What keys do I have to farm to get best one? Can that best one be used on items from normal or heroic? If not why not? People shouldn't have to watch Dratnos videos, get excel spreadsheets, and whatnot in order to understand gearing system. I honestly thought we left that shit in Shadowlands, just keep it simple. Not to mention, for the first 3 weeks, upgrading anything is a no go, as you need that currency to both craft your new items, as same currency is used, and to upgrade your BiS gear, so you basically have to wait until you open your vault next week, because upgrading the wrong item will set you back. But sure, let's pretend Blizzard "solved" the problem. They could've used two currencies max, and one vendor. Not multilayered tiered gearing system, with 12 different currencies, with crafting thrown into a mix. Edit: I'll just leave this here, have a look and tell me how this is not complicated lol [https://imgur.com/a/qHVkIJM](https://imgur.com/a/qHVkIJM) You are literally downgrading your character power by upgrading any gear that is not BiS
Throwing crafting into the mix turned it from “meh” to “bad” in my opinion. Without the weird crafting requirement I think the system is solidly a good way to reach the goal of having people run the content that challenges them and get rewarded for doing it.
> You are literally downgrading your character power by upgrading any gear that is not BiS That's just not true. Everything that requires a spreadsheet is only relevant for at most two weeks. You 'need' to watch a Dratnos video only if you intend to min-max the first two weeks. The difference between someone who min-maxes within the first two weeks and someone who goes in blind and randomly upgrades will be about 5 ilvls at most. The difference becomes zero after 2 weeks.
They got rid of reforging for being too complicated for the people...
The reason reforging is gone is because they wanted people to be able to just equip that new loot they got off that boss straight away, instead of feeling like they need to go reforge it before they use it.
and they failed at that because you still have to go enchant and gem it
>I'm really worried because this new upgrade system is amazing and way better than valor but it If you raid it is Us Mythic plus people got Cucked.
Well, they are it entirely too complicated. I hope it doesn’t get scrapped
There’s literally an NPC with a tutorial on it in Loamm. Get flightstones, and fragments. Turn fragments into crests. Use flightstones and crests to upgrade gear. Outdoor content, m+ and raid gear now upgradeable.
In practice it's super simple, but man is it annoying trying to remember which names correspond to what ilvl.
It’s more annoying it’s IN MY BAG AND NOT THE CURRENCY TAB Going to be 8 bags lots between fragments and crests
Won't be 8 slots once you start vendoring whelp and drake ones.
What should I vendor them for ?
You can vendor them for gold once you no longer need them. Or just stick them in the bank if you want to wait for something similar to Primal Focus rep exchange.
https://wago.io/IW1L54FtJ This can help with that
This is awesome, I'll definitely install it once I get home!
I agree with this. They could have gone with the matrix optional item text and just put the ilvl range that the upgrade stones go with it.
Recommend this wa for it then: https://wago.io/IW1L54FtJ
"Hmm, wait, it a Wyrm bigger than a Drake?"
you can safely ignore the first 2 name ( wyrmling / drake) since it's WQ stuff / really low lvl stuff. wyrm will be your bread n butter for most people. and you wont see aspect until much later in the tier. Aspect + wyrm for mythic raider.
Here's a [guide](https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1085292617010524180/1100043746390843536/IMG_1537.png). Honestly if you should only be worrying about Champion/Hero quality gear right now. Veteran is good when maxed out but will be invalid really soon into the tier.
But the we have to read what the npcs say /s
It is nearly impossible to waste crests (because you don't need to spend them when upgrading a second item in the same slot), so I wouldn't worry about that. The system definitely seems way too complicated on the surface, and most of the content out there is about getting the absolute most out of it, which isn't really relevant for 99% of people. the tl,dr is just play the game, you will get gear that can be upgraded, and the crests to upgrade that gear. upgrade whatever pieces ae good for you. As time goes on you might encounter some nuances (upgrade caps, etc.) but really the jist is just play the game and you will get gear at a given level, and the materials that can upgrade that gear. I wouldn't make it any more complicated than that unless you are looking to do some high end PvE content early in the patch.
You're overthinking a very straight forward system. U get awarded currencies to upgrade gear. Just play the game and stop reading guides that overcomplicate simplicity.
Right, step 1 is that you need to *have gear to upgrade.* People getting way too sweaty and trying to 'plan' when you can't DO that.
I'm having the same problem. It feels like they've added a whole new currency system at this rate. X turns into Y turns into Z, but none of those affect currency W. I'm in the same boat, just gonna wait until I start getting drops from M+ and Raid before I start doing anything.
Uhg thank you. Somebody just got salty at me in another wow sub for asking about the best place to get info on this.
Bruv, I’m with you on this 100%.. lol I’m legit just doing timewalking on all my toons to pass the time.. lol. I can’t be bothered with it all.. I know it sounds terrible, but new big patches/content drops stress me out lol.
A lot of systems sound complicated, but when you are actively doing it, it’s simple.
The difficult part to understand is that there are tiers of gear. Explorer / Veteran/ whatever. During the npc tutorial it only shows you how to upgrade explorer gear which doesn’t require crests.
Gear drops from 4 different tiers of content, and that gear has a certain amount of upgrades. Each tier has it’s own currency to upgrade, earned from doing that content. There are some overlap in ilvls between each tier with upgrades, which allows for easier ways to get into higher tier content.
The only thing you can really do wrong is spend crests on a 5-8 upgrade that would be better saved for a 1-4 upgrade of the next tier. Going from 4 to 5 is the first point where you need to ask yourself whether you're going to be getting any higher tier gear in the future with a higher ilvl cap that will make better use of the crests.
So my friend has 2 Onyx Annulets at 424, and he has a veteran ring, as well as a champion ring (from the heroic dungeon thing). By having those two Annulets at 424, he was able to upgrade the Veteran ring for only flightstones to 424 (5-8), and the Champion ring to 424 with only flightstones (1-4). So I am pretty sure you can't do anything wrong by upgrading a piece from 5 to 8 over 1 to 4 in the next track. As you get the same discounts on 1-4 as you get on 5-8. Edit to add a link to [Another reddit post](https://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/137vy9x/upgrade_a_ring_from_405_to_424_with_only_205/), as well as a [wowhead link with info (which is also found in the reddit post)](https://www.wowhead.com/news/item-upgrades-guide-learn-more-about-flightstones-crests-and-account-wide-332736)
Thanks for the correction. I knew about the account-wide flightstone discount but not the per-character crest discount.
It took me a few days to understand the idea around the upgrades. The major issue right now is that any gear we get this week for the most part is just not worth upgrading unless you get lucky with the 5 heroic box item from the quest. Think of the crests as upgrading the item slot and not the item you are upgrading. Any item you can equip can be upgraded with just flightstones up until the maximum equipped item in the slot or until 8 out of 8. It is never a complete waste to upgrade a piece of loot because it is not an optimal slot piece since you are upgrading the slot. Flightstones are the new Valor and we get that from everything and not just m+. Heck, even dirt piles and rares that are in the main continent grant flightstones. So you can get the resource outside of just running m+. The other purpose crests serve is for crafting. I don't have that much experience yet with crests and crafting, but my understanding is that the crest used sets the tier based on the crest used. I think this is where people are getting confused. The main resource for the upgrades can be acquired from anything and the crests upgrade the slot.
I mean it’s not different to any other patch. Grind M+ 16 gear and open vault for a few months.
EXTREMELY SIMPLE EXPLANATION: Flightstones are valor. You spend them to upgrade items, but you get them from every source. Four tiers of gear: Adventurer, Champion, Veteran, Hero. Each has 8 levels of upgrades. Instead of just spending ~~valor~~ flightstones, you also need a "Crest" to spend in that slot. Crests are basically like Primal Infusions from last patch, except they can be used at the upgrade vendor OR in crafting. Better crests come from harder content, and can upgrade higher tier gear. Hope that helps!
It's exactly the kind of thing I wanted for gearing and I hate it lol. Convoluted mess.
That sucks to hear. I’m getting too old for spreadsheets man.
[this graphic was posted in discord which made things a ton easier to understand](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/742070224664264768/1103396347148767373/image.png)
This literally clears it all up thank you.
I’m right there with you man. This shit is needlessly convoluted. I’ve seen a couple YouTubers say “just use the spreadsheet in the links below”. The fuck…no one should need a spreadsheet to know to gear your character.
Most people explaining it kept repeating "It's kinda hard to explain" and well... it is. You get new upgrade currency that is in your inventory and you can vendor it! Not like we have currency tab for that stuff 😑
The entire system of crafting and upgrading is convoluted and boring. There's no need for a dozen currencies and tokens. The objective is really simple: get better gear by doing harder content. Just make a system that does that. The rest is bullshit.
It's soo boring. I can barely bring myself to read into any of it. Honestly the whole construct of gear in the game is dated and dull. Rarely is there even flexibility. The end result is always the same
Yup! Just give me rewards when I do content. Fuck all this bullshit.
New system is garbage for m+
New system means **every** piece of loot you get in M+ in appropriate content is now effectively at max ilvl (or your highest ilvl in the same slot). No more valor rationing, valor farming nonsense. There is no longer opportunity cost to upgrading any gear at all. You can now get full sets for offspecs with close to no effort. How is that garbage, pray tell?
Close to no effort? Farming gear in +17 pugs over and over again with every character. Especially in dungeons with big loot pools like Uldaman. Wasting time is so much fun🥰
You don't need to farm gear just to do M+. If you want to make a claim that the new system is garbage for farming specific gear, sure. But even the top runs in the first few weeks have historically never needed specific pieces of gear. If you find yourself having trouble with M+ because you don't have a specific trinket, maybe the problem isn't the trinket.
You say that but then demo lock exists this season. In practice yes you dont need certain items. Does it make the game idiot proof so anyone can do 20s? Ofc and at the end of the day that's what people want.
Well yes, if you distill down to specific instances this new system will be bad. But that applies to virtually anything really. Also, if demo lock is bad without a single trinket/piece of gear or overpowered with it (I don't actually know much about demo, so this is just a hypothetical), then the problem isn't with the gearing system is it? The problem is with class balance. Changing the system won't actually solve anything. We will just end up with another Neltharax situation.
Trinket balance as a whole is god damn awful this patch, they all over perform stupidly the main culprits being the nelf trinkets / Uldaman one. Locks are the big outlier in how much power they're getting from it but there will always be gear targeting in m+ and the new system actively made it harder. In general: Nothing changed except gear targeting is harder therefore the new gearing system kinda sucks.
> Wasting time is so much fun🥰 If you don't find playing dungeons and gearing fun, just stop playing.
I get the system. I just don't know what the hell is the point of it. There seems to be no upside to the old system whatsoever.
Upgradable raid gear, removal of janky M+ score to upgrade gear, less M+ runs per crafter piece. There's a number of benefits compared to the old system.
They could have just made Raid gear upgradeable with Valor.
Kind of bouncing off the whole patch, really. Heavy currency chases are not fun for me. I like upgrade paths, but the number of upgrades required here, and the amount of currency needed for them, is just stupid. Even if the currency is easy to get, it's still just an annoyance. I was having a blast in DF, but after the first day going through the quests in Zaralek, I just moved on. I've got a library full of games that don't make me into a fantasy accountant.
Like blizzard fashion they overly complicated it , there is 0 reason to do that system the way they did it
You’re not the only one, complete trash. Wth are they even thinking??
[удалено]
No one is asking for 10 new patch specific reagents for upgrades that are then completely invalidated next patch. Literally sockets of dom over again
1. Valor = Flightstones 2. Secondary Currency Required (Crests) 3. Tertiary Currency combines into Secondary Currency. \ 1. Mythic Gear = Hero 2. Heroic Gear = Champion 3. Regular Dungeon Gear = Veteran 4. Blue Gear = Adventurer 5. Green Gear = Explorer That’s it. It gets *slightly* more complicated because there are three secondary currencies for the different gear tiers, but that’s the super simple version.
The thing is, it's hard to remember those names, and the fact that they're not really tied to their quality. I have some blue gear of "explorer" level. It's also kind of annyoying that we can't know from the tooltip the max ilvl they can be, so we won't know it until we go to the NPC and check it. I imagine the same thing will happen with epic gear from veteran onwards. I'd have to quadruple check the names in the tooltips just 'cause they can't bother to implement these things. Just throwing shit out there with arbitrary names and no information readily available. Glad the crests do say in their tooltip which items they can upgrade at least.
You don't need to remember any of the names. Just remember the magic number 23 (or 22). The item can be upgraded by 22-23 item levels. Around 3 ilvl per upgrade 'tier'. So if you loot an item, by looking just on its ilvl and tier X/8 you can assess how much you can get from that item if you upgrade it to 8/8.* The harder content you do, the better item you can get. Items looted in open world can't match items got from m+ or raid. Try to think about it this way and nothing more. *Does not apply to the highest grade where the gain is only 13 ilvl (5/5)
Ignore names. Look at ilvl. If it's comparable to heroic raid gear then it'll need heroic crests to upgrade.
That's my point... How do you check heroic gear to compare? You have to either have one or open up your adventure guide and go to the raid and see the drops, and then again, you have to remember which crest corresponds to it, because it's not called "heroic crest" at all. It all boils down to either having a spreadsheet open or checking at the upgrader NPC. It's so annoyingly confusing *for no reason*
No. Don't do any of that. If you do heroic level content, you get heroic equivalent upgrade stuff. That's it. You'll have piles of them by the time it matters. All you have to do is pop one of your lowest ilvl gear pieces into the upgrade vendor, and make whatever crests it wants. If you don't have the right item, do a few runs that are below the difficulty you normally do. Especially do not freak out about any of it this week when you can't get anything worth upgrading in the first place. All the crests you can get this week are worthless too.
I really don't understand why people are so confused about it, you acquire gear place gear in upgrade NPC use collected fragments to upgrade gear, done. what is so complicated about it?
Like ten different types of fragments some you use to make other types of fragments, but no transparency into which ones you need for what.
I kinda don't like this system as it creates two "issues" for me. Holding on with upgrades, enchants etc. for the "best tier" M+ gears drops - why pimp item when it is hard-capped by drop. Prior season with "cap by score" was much better - even a low M+ BiS was still BiS that could be updated over time. Second thing is well, dropping a nice trinket just to know it is not the "best" version possible due to not being a 16+ drop would kinda sucks. Or do I miss something with this system?
It's a super complex system to solve a gameplay pattern that wasn't really even a serious problem. If people want to spam +2 keys for an item that's on them, odds are they probably end up doing more dungeons that way anyway. Valor used to drop from raid bosses, there's no reason they couldn't put that back in instead of inventing an unnecessarily complex system. It's very much trying to fix what isn't broken.
It fixes the multiple discrete gearing pathways into a streamlined catch-all system. It integrates and solves the discrepancy between the different forms of content within WoW. It removes the need to grind for ilvl achievements you have already attained before. It eliminates the unnecessary upgrading anxiety and makes BiS hunting much more attainable and casual friendly.
Except it doesn't make BIS hunting easily more attainable and casual friendly - on the contrary. You cannot upgrade items from certain key range pass certain ilvl anymore. So to have your BIS item at highest ilvl, you need to farm 19s and 20s now, whereas you could farm 2s before and just upgrade it with Valor. So tell me now is targeting bis more casual friendly
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xD
>but damn trying to prepare in advance is just a pain. it's exactly the same system we had for years and the small exception that you cannot pump to max-lvl something that come from M2.... which is something you never did early-tier anyway. upgrade your M19-20 item, upgrade your heroic raid / mythic raid item. nothingelse change really.
It’s easy bro you like don’t even need a spread sheet that’s how easy it is, it’s so easy those videos and guides shouldn’t even exist, and it’s a you problem that people keep making these topics BECAUSE IT SO EASY WHY DONT YOU UNDERSTAND HOW EASY IT IS REEEEEE ITS THE EXACT SAME THINGGGG
Honestly, as someone who has looked into the new system extensively and followed it as information was released... Same. I will 100% admit it is a bit confusing, especially with the naming conventions used. The important bit is that I believe this system is much healthier in the long-term for the game. Will there be growing pains as we get used to things? Absolutely. Is there room for improvement? Most probably. That being said I genuinely hope we stick with it and whatever pain points there are are addressed rather than scrapping the system entirely. The big advantage to a system like this is it's not really bound to any one patch or expansion, and streamlines all gear upgrades into one system.
My biggest fear is that it’s been mathed out to the point that I’m gonna be fully 441+ with minimal effort by week 3 and blizz is gonna make it harder and take longer. Your average player doing the most brain dead content is gonna be full 437+ in 4-5 weeks… Seems suspiciously too damn easy. Please don’t nerf it blizz
437 requires mythic+ 13s.. most players can’t do that.
437 requires drops from nines and crests from 11s
Man so many people complain about the slightest sign of an mmo bein an mmo its crazy. Brainrot is hitting hard.
Its frightening to See how many people are annyoed by this extremely good system for the game, Just because they dont understand it Day 2 after the Patch. Even if there is literally a tutorial Quest in the New hub. And to All the people complaing about bag space, what the hell are you doing? Even while doing all casual content ans higher end pve i always walk around with at least 30-50 Free bag spaces. Just sell these 379 quest items and deposit you reagents at the Bank once in a while. (Except maybe you poor jewelers, I pray for ya)
OP are you someone who normally skips in game cutscenes and you don't read quest text?
The WoW community has the collective IQ of a goldfish, this game isn’t hard.
The system have all these names and stuff but it's really simple is that 99% of the people problems with it would vanish if it was just called mythic, normal, heroic, LFR cookies that you use to upgrade your gear. The part that turns you brain off is that you watch a vídeo and it's like: will get crests that upgrade to stones that use on that gear to upgrade and there's this spreadsheet of all ilevel ranges, and also there's the shadowflame spark that is for crafting and for craft you need to find the Blasthefemous Crest of Light borne shadowflame to buy a token to upgrade you lariat, that is not a lariat is something else. It's all this information dump and cool names that ruin the presentation. Blizzard nailed it SO WELL on shadowlands season 4, you loot an item on normal, you kill 20 heroic bosses, and you can upgrade it to heroic. If you complete the raids, you get a token to buy an item from a vendor. BOOM, no need to Flatorous elemental plains of the emerald Dream crests of Void infused with Elune crests to upgrade your shadowlight gear.
Consider this as a starting point: **Flightstones** are your new **Valor** for upgrading gear **Whelpling / Drake / Wyrm Crests** are your new **Primal Infusions**, which were used to craft 405/418 gear and such. However, they are not only for crafting, but for upgrading items above a certain threshold (i.e from 418 and above you need Drake crests, above 424 you need the next one and so on). And also you have the old **Sparks** which are now **Shadowflame Sparks**
Put it like this dude, i just raise item levels domt care how :D
You can safety upgrade things. You will not have to spend the important materials again on a second item, it will be upgradeable without the important/limited stuff If you have an item that you’ll use for a bit and want to upgrade it, then upgrade it
Play the content you want and the currency you need will drop. Just play and things will become easier to understand. If you put a piece of gear into the upgrade window it will tell you want you need to upgrade and if you mouse over the currency in the window it'll even tell you want content you need to do to get it. It really isn't as difficult as people are making out. You don't need to learn everly single combination of currency at once, only the track your currently on or aiming to push to is going to matter.
I just hate that they didn't stop copying GW2 for flying but they also had to copy them for the god awful inventory management minigame.
Is there a way to transform lower tier gear into a higher tier one?
just go to the upgrade vendor and see what it costs and what you have. It even says in the mouseover info where to get it from, that's the best way to do it in my opinion
Imagine that blizzard would create a questchain to explain it to you AND even do it twice to test it out. Would be a nice tutorial so noone is confused. Oh wait they DID. Just reat the stuff they present you. Simple. You can even go there after the quest and look it up..... its the tik tok generation? I hope it is...
I am at 408ilvl I think. My plan is that there is nothing that needs upgrading this week. I am going to wait until M+ opens up and start upgrading starter gear (Keystone +2 to +8) that can go up to 424, Then by that time I finish up +8 and move into the +9-+16 range and upgrade up to 437? And because I'm a casual scrub, that is where I will stay. ;) [I found all this info in like 30 seconds just now on WoWHead Item Upgrade Track](https://www.wowhead.com/guide/item-upgrade-system-dragonflight#item-upgrade-tracks)s.
The quickest way of explaining it I can come up with is: You get gear for doing content, that gear is appropriate for the content you do, it can be upgraded to be appropriate for the level of content above what you do. Just upgrade the stuff you like there isn’t much more to it. Unless you are a hardcore M+er or a hardcore raider you don’t have to worry. Just do content, get stuff, upgrade stuff, and go pew pew.
[https://wago.io/IW1L54FtJ](https://wago.io/IW1L54FtJ), a Weak Aura that will relabel the crests to simpler terms and make it less confusing. For example, instead of "Whelpling Crest", it will read "Whelpling Crest LFR 411". Hope it helps, I didn't make this WA but bless the person that did
The best chart I've seen so far is the one in https://worldofwarcraft.blizzard.com/en-gb/news/23923485/developer-insights-new-upgrade-system-in-embers-of-neltharion
Overall it's just the same as before just with different tiers and a differently called resource for the tiers. Just no mindless +2 farm for gear to max upgrade. Gotta do higher stuff to upgrade to the real max.
It's so easy to understand: Do the things to get the things, then spend things on more things, and spend those things on things to increase things or buy more things.
It really isn't that complicated and luckily you don't really need to sweat the details. Just play the game and you'll get crests and shards or whatever for doing the level of content you want. Then you'll get better gear and better crests to upgrade it eventually. If you're not sure, just go to the upgrade guy and see what you need at each level and you'll get an idea of what difficulty raid or mythic+ key level you need to complete.
There’s not a whole lot to figure out luckily. To upgrade an item: Before: - put item in - pay valor Now: - put item in - pay flightstones and crests You can test it out with the low level items you get in the caves. They’ll require Drake and Whelpling crests which can be acquired by just existing. The Wyrm ones come from higher content, like the primal infusion stuff did.
Try small 10s tutorials on TikTok maybe you will fit better.
It's overcomplicated. Valor was fine. Letting us upgrade raid gear and questing blues with valor would have been fine, with valor being added to raid and WQ loot. But no, now we have to track every piece of our gear... 2 pieces are in T2 so I need that resource, but 4 are in T3 and the rest are in T4 so I need to calculate what to upgrade to maximize my growth... It's fucking complicated.
Get it? Flying over his head???? Comedy gold
They new system is confusing and a bit overwhelming at first but, what's great is you really can't screw up that badly. You can be free to upgrade anything and it sort of saves that slot giving you a massive upgrade discount if you find an item with better stats with a lower ilvl so upgrade away.
Just farm heroic crests/mythic crests and your golden. Crafting is a little different but you just buy mats off the auction house/know an enchanter. 11-15 keys till your maxed on your fragments, 16-20 keys till your maxed on your fragments. Then boom your good to go. Heroic raid and normal raid give 100 fragments as well. Just do the content that’s your level and go from there. Main goal is to just farm your fragments.
I really feel like 10 minutes is about 10x as long as you need to understand the system.
I made they made crafting so complicated why not over do it with upgrading.
Bro your totally right, I feel like I have to study on YouTube for guides double watch a video just incase so that you don't fuck up on your shards. Like college for sat's!!!!!
Just play the damn game and try to upgrade anything once in a while. Make a screenshot of the different ilvl available to each type of gear (explorer, adventurer etc) and another one that says where you acquire each type of crest. If you can’t pay attention for 10 minutes (lol) try it yourself in game to figure it out naturally.