World of Warcraft’s next expansion, Legion, launches August 30. But today marks the beginning of the in-game events leading up to the release for the long-lived online role-playing game. It’s also your last chance to check out a lot of content that’ll be gone forever once Legion hits.
Yes, we know all you want to do today is collect every last equipment style for the new transmog system, enabling all your characters’ armor to look like almost any other piece in-game. And we feel your delight over the prospect of finally having all that inventory space back that the actual armor pieces used to occupy.
But priorities, people. You’ve got work to do before Legion lands.
GamesBeat has compiled a list of what you need to do to be prepared for the newest chapter in this massively multiplayer online RPG, including items that are going away, launch event goodies you won’t want to miss, and prep work you’ll want to finish before Legion launches. The Brawler’s Guild, Challenge Modes, and the weekly Stranglethorn Fishing Tournament have already left until Legion hits, but you still have much to accomplish.
Get those super-powerful heirloom trinkets
Players who have been around since the end of the last expansion, 2012’s Mists of Pandaria, will remember that end boss Garrosh Hellscream dropped nifty heirloom-class weapons that any of your characters could use, which grew in power as you leveled up. They provided powerful tools for questing, for both main and secondary characters. But when Mists finished, the weapons stopped dropping.
Heirloom trinket drops from mythic-difficulty 5-person dungeons have taken their place in the current 2014 Warlords of Draenor expansion. The first one you get on each character is loosely tied to their spec, and subsequent drops are random. But like the weapons from Mists of Pandaria, when the next expansion launches, those drops will be gone.
“The scaling trinkets work like Garrosh’s weapons did. They will continue to be available from Mythic dungeons during the pre-expansion 7.0.3 period, but then will no longer drop once Legion officially launches on August 30,” lead game designer Ion Hazzikostas confirmed for us.
That said, all trinkets from Warlords are being nerfed, so double-check stats on what you’re wearing when you log in. You may find that an heirloom trinket would be better (or worse) than what you have on.
If you want to be a demon hunter early, order Legion
Today’s patch does not include the Broken Shore prelaunch event or the option to make demon hunter characters. Those are waiting a couple of weeks to be sure that the changes to current classes and interfaces are stable, Hazzikostas said.
So if you want to make your new demon hunter (Legion’s new class) before the expansion begins, or you want to see the new Broken Shores event, which offers a fairly dramatic lead-in to the events of the new pack, now’s the time to preorder your copy. Unlike other launch events, only those who have purchased Legion will be able to see the new class and event early.
Above: Demon hunters are World of Warcraft’s newest melee class, and they’re coming in the Legion expansion pack.
Cuddle your favorite major figures in the Horde and Alliance factions
We won’t spoil the Broken Shore event for you if someone hasn’t already, but we will tell you that all your favorite characters do not make it out alive. The climactic battle against the forces of the Legion demon invasion claims major casualties on both sides.
Not only does this mean that you should visit, take screenshots with, and generally get misty and nostalgic over your favorite big names in both factions, but it also means that the quests that used to start and end with those characters will now be delivered by other NPCs.
These aren’t minor players we’re talking about here; if by some chance you haven’t seen the data-mined results of Broken Shore, you’re going to be surprised at how big these deaths turn out to be.
Get started collecting Marks of Honor and try out PvP
Honor and conquest points that used to buy gear for player-versus-player combat go poof today. Instead, you’ll be collecting Marks of Honor, the new currency for that gear. Blizzard is completely revamping PvP for Legion, and the concept of PvP versus PvE gear will no longer exist.
That doesn’t mean you won’t have the ability to earn specific PvP looks, though (even more important with that new transmog tab), or powerful gear solely by competing against other players. That’s where Marks come in; you get them simply by completing battlegrounds, arenas, and skirmishes.
As a side note, if you’re a player with high-level PvE gear who wants to dabble in PvP, now’s a great time to start. Stats from gear and trinkets are wiped out when you step into skirmishes, battlegrounds, arenas and PvP areas including Ashran. When Legion truly launches, the power of your Artifact weapon will remain; but everything else is equalized based solely on your gear’s item level (its overall power), regardless of whether it’s from PvP or PvE.
On top of that, the bonus granted for that item level is fairly tiny, so even if you’re a new 100, you should still be able to compete if you’re skilled but just setting foot in competitive areas. Give it a shot now before players begin leveling up in the new PvP Honor Level system, which provides talents and other rewards.
That Honor Level won’t reset between seasons, so if you decide you want to get into PvP in earnest, you’ll want to figure that out now, before you once again have to grind to get where the top players are (just in level instead of in your weapon and armor’s power).
Go get your fancy Archimonde mounts
Today the damage done by creatures in all difficulties of the Hellfire Citadel large-group raid dungeon drops by 30 percent. But the quest item for the moose–who doesn’t want a moose?–from end boss Archimonde on Heroic mode, and the one-per-raid Felsteel Annihilator mount from Mythic mode, remain 100 percent drops until Legion actually launches.
You know what that means. Go forth, find yourself a group, and give it one last-ditch effort to pick up two very cool new rides for your characters. Moooose. As a bonus, just think of all those new looks for your transmog tab.
(The Ahead of the Curve achievements for killing Archimonde before the nerf are, alas, now gone.)