September 18, 2023

How to Transmog — A Guide for Beginners

Have you ever wanted to wear a visually matching set of armor in WoW, yet the useful gear makes you look short of hideous? —Worry not, as WoW has a whole system revolving around your character’s look, and its name is transmogrification (or transmog, for short).

Sure, the word may be difficult to pronounce at first, but its general idea is very simple.

What is transmogrification?

Transmogrification is a system in WoW that allows you to change the appearance of your armor into something completely different for a small fee. Keep in mind that the stats and bonuses of your armor will stay untouched, and the only thing that is changing is the look of it.

Where do I Transmogrify?

There are actually a whole bunch of people providing transmogrification services throughout World of Warcraft, but let’s presume you are a complete beginner. You can actually find two transmogrifiers in your faction’s capital! The easiest option is to visit the trading post (you will be guided there constantly, so you can’t really miss it), and find the NPC right then and there.

What do I need to apply a transmog to my armor and weapons?

Not much, really. All you need is to have the desired appearance unlocked in your collection and a few hundreds of gold coins. To see your collection press SHIFT+P and go to the ‘Appearances’ tab.

What is my transmog collection?

Your appearance collection is all the armor and weapons you came by and wore in your travels. The greatest thing about your collection is that it is account-bound, meaning it is shared across all of your characters. However, there are some rules on how it works and we will lay them all before you:

Items of all rarities can be added to your transmogrification collection — from trash gray and common white, all the way to legendary orange, and Legion artifacts.

Grey Item needs to be equipped to be added to the collection

Bind-on-pickup items are added to your collection as soon as they are in your inventory, and bind-on-equip gear requires you to soulbind (equip) it first, in order to be added to the collection.

You can only add your class’ armor type appearances to your collection. Let’s say you are a hunter, therefore you can wear cloth, leather and mail with the latter being your main armor type. All the cloth and leather you may find and be able to wear will not be added to the collection, only mail armor will.
Restrictions still apply. Class specific sets (raiding tier sets and PvP sets) will only be shared across your characters of that class, meaning all of your hunter characters will be able to use hunter tier 1 set appearance, but you shaman characters that also use mail armor won’t.
Weapon appearances are a whole other story — you will be adding all weapon types to your collection, as long as your class can equip them. Meaning warrior is the best class, when it comes to hunting weapon appearances, as they can use most of the weapon types in game, including even staves, bows, guns and crossbows.
All usable quest rewards will be added to your collection on completion. When a quest features multiple reward choices you don’t need to pick the one you like the looks of, because you will add all the appearances to your collection, despite only receiving 1 ‘physical’ item. Sometimes you will even be getting appearances that were not featured in the rewards screen!

Where do I find items for my collection?

The short answer is — everywhere. If you’re just starting practically anything you will do will get you a new appearance to add to the collection. But let’s say we want to actually look epic, a good start for your journey would be to visit some legacy raids. Legacy raids are very easy to solo (unless they are from the previous expansion) and shower you in rewards. A couple of resets later you will complete your first raid set and will be able to transmog into it with a simple click of a button.

Another source of good appearances is PvP. Grinding out PvP brawls usually generously rewards you with [Marks of Honor], — a token-type item, where a number of those (usually 12) can be traded for a full set of PvP transmog appearance from a PvP vendor at the expansion’s capital, a.e. — for Legion sets you’d want to visit the Broken Isles Dalaran etc.There’s also an option to get some epic gear extremely easily and try out the system. You can visit these NPCs in Orgrimmar, above the Grommash Hold,

or these NPCs in Champion’s Hall, which is in Stormwind’s Old City district, to simply buy old raiding gear for gold. They do not sell full sets, but their goods will be more than enough to get you started on your fashionista journey.

General Transmogrification Tips & Tricks:

You can hide gear (make it invisible) at transmogrifiers free of charge! You can hide everything except for pants and your weapon.

There’s an official transmog competition event in WoW. It is called the Trial of Style, and it is very fun to participate in. Check your calendar to see when the next one is coming up and make sure to give it a try, once it is around. Oh, and the best part? — Free transmogrification during the week of Trial of Style for everyone!
Check Trading Post monthly for unique transmog appearances. There is some seriously great stuff in there from time-to-time.
Mix and match your gear to come up with an amazing unique look!

Try to look for new appearances in the newest content. Technology advances, and the more modern transmog sets feature truly unique models.

Get the heritage armor for your chosen race! Heirloom armors are some of the best in game and most of the races have them. You’ll just need to reach level 50 and complete a short questline in order to get an amazing set of armor that is applicable to all classes.