How to Upgrade WoW Gear
Let’s face it, World of Warcraft has always revolved around Epics and Legendaries. Subsequently, many players are wondering how they can upgrade their gear in WoW and what the most efficient way to do it is. Well, since we’ve officially entered into the four-digit (1000) realms for Gear Level, it’s only logical for you to want some revealing info on how to get your gear to level 1000 and beyond to stay relevant. After all, with future expansions set for release, it’s only a matter of time before we reach the five-digit Gear Levels. Luckily, you’re in safe hands because our post is entirely concentrated on one thing – helping you to improve your gear so that you can enjoy your favorite game even more.
How to Upgrade Your Gear
Assuming that you have a level 110 character and have Legendaries to upgrade, here’s the simple 3-step process of giving more oomph to your gear.
1. Wakening Essence
Wakening Essence is the first thing you need to get your gear to level 1000. You don’t need to complete a specific quest (i.e., A Titanic Effort) or anything to be able to gather this essence, so here’s where you can obtain it from:
- Killing bosses in Antorus
Wakening Essences awarded: x18-36 (per boss kill) or x198-396 weekly
- Emissary caches
Wakening Essences awarded: x24-46 or 168-294 weekly
- Any daily heroic instance (has to be the first one for the day)
Wakening Essences awarded: x30 or 210 weekly
- Any daily BG win (has to be the first one for the day)
Wakening Essences awarded: x30 or 210 weekly
- Winning the daily PvP brawl (has to be the first one for the day)
Wakening Essences awarded: x30 or 210 weekly
- Completing any of the three weekly PvP quests
Wakening Essences awarded: x42 or 126 weekly
- Mythic + weekly chest
Wakening Essences awarded: x120 or 120 weekly
Note that you can’t exploit the system by trying to collect more essences by killing the same bosses, but in a different difficulty setting, which makes running the same dungeon on various difficulties in the same week utterly worthless – if you’re farming Wakening Essences that is.
Also, the ones you acquire through winning the first daily PvP brawl are entirely separate from the essences you earn from your first BG win of the day.
Lastly, there’s a maximum amount of that currency that you can get per week, and depending on your efforts (whether or not you take advantage of all of the activities mentioned above), you could acquire anywhere from 1.032 to 1.566 (or 1.299 on average) Wakening Essences in only one week.
2. Find the NPC That Sells Awoken Titan Essence
After you’ve gathered yourself some Wakening Essences, it’s time for you to visit a Blacksmithing trainer in Dalaran, known as Arcanomancer Vridiel. This Blood Elf gentleman is located in the Magus Commerce Exchange part of the city, in the first house to your right – exact coordinates are 45.2, 28.6.
When you right-click on this NPC, you’ll find out that he only sells two things:
- Awoken Titan Essence – upgrades any Legendary item in Legion to item level 1000.
Cost: x300 Wakening Essence
- Purified Titan Essence – gives you a random Legendary item that suits your loot specialization.
Cost: x1000 Wakening Essence
Right off the bat, it’s apparent that we’re interested in the first kind of essence – the one that can upgrade an item of your choosing. And now that you’ve found your guy, it’s time to exchange!
3. Exchange Your Wakening Essences for Awoken Titan Essences
This is arguably the most straightforward and most satisfying step in this guide. Simply turn in the Wakening Essences you’ve collected and then grab your Awoken Titan ones, by which you can upgrade your gear. All that’s left is for you to right-click on an Awoken Titan Essence and then click on the item whose level you’d like to see skyrocketing to 1000.
Voila, you now have a Legendary piece of gear that’s currently reached the maximum item level in the game. Generally, you should be able to get around 3 or 4 items upgraded each week if you’re serious about farming Waking Essences, of course.
And because there are a lot of fallacies and misconceptions when it comes to where you can get the Wakening Essences from, let’s have a look at the places where you CAN’T get it.
Quests and Runs That Will NOT Grant You Wakening Essences
Here are all the quests and missions that will not give you Wakening Essences (Post Patch 7.3.5) in no particular order:
- Any of the Class Hall missions
- Caches related to Paragon rep.
- Mythic dungeon runs
- Invasion points
- World bosses
- Rare mobs
- Random chest spawns
Ever since patch 7.3.5 was released, Blizzard also tweaked other aspects that directly affected everyone’s gear-upgrading potential, such as:
- Any activities associated with obtaining Wakening Essence now give you x6 more of that essence (as opposed to the previous patch).
- Awoken Titan Essence’s price went up from x50 Wakening Essences to x300.
- The same thing happened to the Purified Titan Essence, which now costs 1000 Wakening Essences instead of 175 previously.
The fact that you’ll be earning more Wakening Essence per week means that this inflation is pretty much smoke and mirrors since 7.3.5 lets us all receive more essences per activity, as opposed to the drop rates in 7.3.2.
