by Hald Twinpack

December 20, 2022

Tips & Tricks for Gearing up in Dragonflight

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With the start of the first season of the new expansion, more and more players are looking for ways to upgrade their gear. All the changes brought to the game provide many opportunities for it. You’ll learn a few of them in this short Dragonflight gearing guide.

Basics

First of all, you must know about the actual item level you need for different purposes. And where the items with that ilvl are usually received from. As usual, the most popular way to gear up is dungeon farming. Here’s the list with ilvl depending on the dungeon’s difficulty:

No severe changes in the rules of the loot drop too. At level 70, you can endlessly farm WoW Dragonflight’s Normal dungeons to improve your item level. Heroic ones have a slight restriction — each can be farmed only once a day. And every boss of Mythic instance can drop a piece of equipment only weekly.

Only Heroic instances have an ilvl restriction — to enter them through the LFG, you must have ilvl 342. The Mythic ones don’t have an official limitation, but since you can loot 372 there, you’d probably prefer to have about ilvl 355-360. Finally, the minimum ilvl to enter the expansion’s first raid, the Vault of the Incarnates, is 359 via LFR. Thus, you need to gear up to about ilvl 360 and start farming Mythics to prepare for the main challenges in Dragonflight.

Factions, World Quests and Events

There are a lot of other activities to be done for the gearing up purpose. And many of them are done almost automatically, as you farm Renown with the factions of the new continent. It’s a long road to the proper equipment because these items can be purchased only on higher ranks of Renown. But a long road is a road nonetheless. Especially considering the fact that Dragonflight faction gear rewards are better than what Mythic Zero Dungeons offer.

Factions

For instance, at rank 16, you can buy Valdrakken Spellweaver’s Cord and other ilvl 376waists from the Provisioner Thom vendor of the Valdrakken Accord. And at rank 22, he will sell you Expedition Researcher’s Hood and other 389 helms.

But Arvik from the Iskaara Tuskarr sells ilvl 376 wrists at rank 14 and 389 shoulders at rank 22. The same is with other factions: at some lower rank, they suggest you buy 376 equipment, and at some higher — 389.

The Maruuk Centaur vendor will sell boots at rank 11 and chests at 24. The Dragonscale Expedition sells gloves at rank 12 and pants at 18. Besides, all these factions also sell recipes which can be used in crafting.

Improving relations with the Cobalt Assembly will reward you with a 389 ring. There are different rings for DPS, Tank and Healer. All three can be bought only when you have a High reputation with the faction. But as the rep farm with this faction is about just slaying packs of mobs, it may be the easiest option to get a good item. And a much harder rep farm with Wrathion or Sabellian can give you the ilvl 389 Obsidian Collar neck at Friend level and the 398 Obsidian Cape back at the True Friend rank.

World Quests and Events

There’s a perfect example to finish talking about how your Dragonflight gear can be upgraded with the reputation items and start talking about World Quests and Events. That’s the Aiding the Accord task, which rewards you with Valdrakken Treasures when you complete it. And to complete it, you simply need to farm 4000 rep with the Renown factions. You can do it every week. However, the loot is scaled to your gear level when you get the Treasures. That can have both pros and cons. But the trinkets like Lifeflame Ampoule are definitely good enough to upgrade your equipment.

The level of items got for completing World Quests and events also scales to your current gear. So that you may receive equipment with ilvl 378 and higher (up to 382 in case of specifically WQ). The usual exception is the World Bosses, who drop the 389 equipment.

The normal rares won’t drop anything with an ilvl higher than 378. But Dragonflight has also brought a kind of “Super Rares” to the game. As the normal ones, they also drop loot daily, and their level can reach 385. These are such dangerous creatures as the Ancient Protector or the Battlehorn Pyrhus.

But beware: judging by the loot they drop and the threat they pose, they may be only slightly less dangerous than World Bosses. And even starting a fight with such creatures may be quite difficult. Like in the case of the Ancient Protector: to summon this mob, you need to collect particular items in a party and use them in a certain way. But despite the type of Rares you hunt, be sure to use the Handynotes addon for WoW Dragonflight to get the best gear they may hide.

Last but not least is the Siege on Dragonbane Keep. It takes place on the Walking Shore and almost doesn’t have a cooldown on loot lockout. It means that, in fact, you can complete the event infinitely and still get the rare chest, in which you may find a piece of equipment with a small chance. But the Dragonbane Keep Strongbox with a high chance of the item drop is received only weekly.

PVP

An essential tip on Dragonflight gearing up would be not to neglect the PVP, even if you’re aimed only at PVE success. Buying equipment for Honor and purchasing Conquest gear has always been a way to boost gear quality. But now you can also buy a special War Mode equipment. It’s bought for the Bloody Tokens currency earned by doing PVP quests and other ways of participating in World PVP on the Dragon Isles. Fieldmaster Emberath in Valdrakken will gladly change it for 366-level equipment (which becomes 408 during the PVP activity due to the updates of the PVP system in the new expansion).

Mythic+ and Raid

But if you’re getting yourself prepared for the hardest challenges, the proper WoW Dragonflight gear guide must inform you of the Mythic+ and Raid equipment too. It’ll be shown in the two tables below.

The Vault of the Incarnates loot differs, as the first four bosses drop worse equipment than the next two, and the final bosses drop even better items. The level of special and Tier equipment you can get from the same bosses is usually different and will be put into brackets, excluding Tier pieces for now. And don’t forget about the upgrades that can be done with Valor!