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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
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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.)
Above: Moooooooose.
Hate farming Cataclysm expansion raid dungeons? Move up to Mists and Legion
Players stockpiling in-game gold have made the trudge out to clear Heroic raid dungeons from the Cataclysm expansion every week. They were a quick source of money, even though they were placed at the ends of the (in-game) earth and frankly boring to complete after a while.
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While Blizzard Entertainment reduced the gold from Cataclysm raids today — about time, given that Cataclysm launched three expansions ago — developers increased gold from raids in Mists of Pandaria and Warlords of Draenor. That means you can farm wherever you choose, including Siege of Orgrimmar and other raids that are helpfully located right next to major capitol cities.
One other raid change: The Ruins of Ahn’Qiraj, the smaller of the two Ahn’Qiraj raid instances introduced way back in patch 1.9, is now reset daily. That means if you’re missing any of the armor pieces there, or want to try your luck at farming some of the more valuable auction-able transmog armor pieces in-game, you’ve got a daily chance to win.
Finish that Legendary ring and go nuts crafting gear
If you haven’t started the Legendary ring quest, it’s too late now. But if you’ve begun it on any character, you can still attempt to complete the series by the time Legion starts. Realistically, players who have just begun will find it difficult to make it all the way through in time, but if you’re like me and have an alt or two plunking along in mid-quest, you should be able to wrap things up before August 30.
While the “on-use” effects of the rings will diminish in power for Legion, they’ll still carry the highest stats of any ring you could wear while leveling up in September.
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In addition, now’s the time to go nuts crafting gear for all your characters, for three reasons. One, the restriction on how many pieces of crafted gear you can wear has been lifted, allowing you to fully gear out even brand-new level 100 characters if you have enough time, crafting materials, or gold to use at the auction house. (This is also a useful way to up the item level of characters for hunting those mounts at Archimonde).
[Ed. Note: We checked with Hazzikostas after the patch launched and he said that this change was not made as planned.
“It was the intent, but we ended up not being able to do it cleanly without breaking things. It’s changed for Legion crafted gear, but not retroactive for Warlords stuff,” he said.
Our thanks to Steve Clarke for pointing out the issue.]
Second, those Savage Bloods you’ve been stockpiling won’t be worth anything come Legion.
Finally, you’ll want to max out your profession skill levels before the expansion begins. Every profession has some kind of new quests and content in Legion, and some of that material and those patterns will not be available if you’re not at the appropriate skill level. This marks a distinct contrast to Legion, where players could make almost anything available right at the start of the expansion.
Scribes, trade in your Warbinder’s Inks now. Those materials aren’t used in Legion, so you’ll want to trade them for older inks while you still can (before only the newest inks can be traded down). In addition, glyphs largely left the game altogether today.
And all crafting profession holders, don’t forget that right now is the best time to drop some serious crafted transmog pieces on the auction house. (Don’t forget shirts!) And now is probably your last chance to auction house consumables like potions, enchants and the like from this expansion for more than a few silver.
Above: Transmogrification allows players to make their paladin’s armor look like this. (Don’t judge me.)
Get to gathering
If you’re one of the many who discarded their gathering professions during Draenor (mining, herbing, skinning) in favor of two crafting professions, you may want to rethink that decision or stockpile a ton of gold to buy gear. Each crafting profession will require materials from some or all of the gathering professions come Legion, and while you can complete the quests by buying the materials from the auction house, we all know what those rates are going to be like.
More troubling, the Blood of Sargeras crafting material needed to upgrade top-level gear will come from a number of sources, but the most reliable based on the beta tests was from gathering professions — and it’s bind on pickup. Skip the grinding to level those gathering professions now and you’ll suffer at the auction house later. Yes, Bloods will likely become tradeable at some point in the future, based on similar past materials. But that will be long after they’re truly useful.
Players are guaranteed to complain about the change once it becomes universally known, but developers have given no indication they plan to alter this structure. (Ironically, your dual-gathering-profession alts, so useful in previous expansions, may now be overloaded with Bloods they cannot use, except for a few Artifact-weapon related quests).
You can stop Garrison farming now
Virtually every way that you used to make gold from your character’s Draenor home-base Garrison disappeared today. Mission rewards dropped. Equippable items from salvage boxes that you used to be able to sell on the auction house are gone. You name it, and it’s been taken out. People playing the trading post game of obtaining materials to sell on the auction house may be spared for a bit, but those materials will become steadily less valuable over time (other than a bump when all those unprepared players realize they have to level up their skills in Legion).
The good news is that the changes mean the end of having to log into each and every alt, every day, to maximize your income from your garrison and its resources.
Above: A Draenei hunter hangs out in her (regrettably) Alliance-faction garrison.
Check your game settings
Were you one of the lucky ones playing on the Ultra graphics setting? If so, check your video settings and see if you can boost it even more. Developers made a pile of tweaks to the display of the game, making it run better on powerful rigs in the beta, and created three additional levels of display quality above what used to be top of the line. It’s quite pretty.
In addition, the ability to remove the “zoom-out” restriction that players could get around with a keyboard command disappeared, but your native ability to zoom out increased, so you may need to tweak where you want your camera placed.
Collect those Karazhan looks now
Once invasion events start (more on that in a minute), the historic raid dungeon Karazhan becomes a center of activity and changes its nature. That means any screenshots, loot looks you can’t live without, or other Karazhan goodies should be snapped up now.
If you haven’t gotten the Fiery Warhorse mount from Attumen the Huntsman yet, it appears it’s still in the game in Legion. But it’s unclear whether it’ll still come from Karazhan or just from the Black Market Auction House. If you want to be safe, do some extra farming for it now.
Collect those Invasion Event goodies
Today’s patch doesn’t yet include the demon invasion event, Hazzikostas said. That’ll arrive in a couple of weeks with the advent of demon hunters and the Broken Shore event (for preorderers). But when it does, you’ll only have a few weeks to collect everything before Legion itself launches, ending the event. All accounts, whether they have upgraded or not, will be able to participate in the demon invasions.
For starters, there are two achievements for completing invasion-related events: one for simply making it through a single event, and the other for completing all six attacks. These will become Feats of Strength after the launch of Legion: achievements that are no longer available.
Completing invasions will give you Nethershards, which are used to purchase cool invasion-only goods and gear. There is a complete transmog set for each armor class on the Nethershard vendor, as well as potions, other buffs, a felbat pet, and several pieces of item level 700 gear to catch up players that might be behind in collecting higher level armor. These looks will only be available during the invasion, so snatch them while you can.
Chests from the events also award an even dozen weapons with unique looks, which you’re going to want to collect for transmog. With upgrades, they can hit a cool 725 item level. Additional item level 700 weapons will drop that you can trade to alts or sell on the auction house (or buy, if you’re not lucky enough to find one). The models for these are lovely (though many players in Legion will choose to stick with the look of their new, super-flashy Artifact weapons).
You also have the opportunity for just this limited time to pick up a Pocket Fel Spreader toy.
Above: Demons invade the world (of Warcraft) in a couple of weeks.
Talking with new Doomsayer NPCs in Stormwind and Orgrimmar will give you the chance to collect 12 pamphlets and an invasion-only achievement.
The best — or worst, depending on your outlook — part is likely to be the “Frail Mind” debuff mechanic. In Stormwind and Orgrimmar, random players will receive this debuff, which allows them to turn other players hostile (and be killed themselves by players and guards of the same faction). Keep doing it and you can turn into a Dreadlord. Much like the contagious scourge invasion mechanic with the launch of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, this is likely to spread quickly and result in some hilarious chaos in the major cities. If you don’t find that chaos hilarious, it may be a good time to patronize other major cities instead.
Finally, a new quest series only available in the pre-patch will walk you through some of the lore, starting at the relocated floating city of Dalaran, now hovering over the Karazhan raid dungeon in Deadwind Pass.
Correction, 1:01 p.m. Pacific: This story has been updated to correct that the limit on crafted gear will not be lifted until Legion’s launch.