WoW Dragonflight is swooping dramatically overhead, ready to make its landing in the world’s best MMORPGs at an as yet unconfirmed date.
A new expansion is an exciting time in WoW, bringing with it new challenges, and new headaches. One particular headache will be familiar to any veteran. Once you ding to max level, you can stop grinding for XP at last, but now it’s time for a new grind – the gear grind.
In previous expansions, the leap from levelling to Heroics/Mythic dungeons was an awkward one. A process of cobbling together your least bad quest reward kit and whatever you can convince your guildies to help you craft. Thankfully the pipeline from scrub to raider is a little easier these days, and in Dragonflight your primary tool will be Primalist Invasions, which have just been introduced to the alpha.
Two zones in the Dragon Isles will get hit with these invasions once every six hours, lasting for two hours. The world events will dump a whole load of Primalist mobs in the area, themed around one of the four elements – Earth, Water, Fire, Air. These elemental powers will also affect other regular mobs in the vicinity, and corrupt the land itself. Grinding mobs in the area will grant you Elemental Overflow, a currency that allows you to buy item level 382 gear for between 200 and 800 currency a pop.
These events will also grant Storm Sigils, a much rarer currency that you can only gain once per invasion, for a total of four each week. These allow you to purchase item level 395 gear, only a little less potent than the gear you’d be getting from the first raid, Vault of the Incarnates, on Normal. The gear currently costs between 5 and 13 Sigils each.
While Dragonflight isn’t the first expansion to allow you to grind max level gear outside of dungeons and raids, it is rare to be able to get almost as well geared grinding solo as you can raiding with your guild. Previous expansions have a clear pipeline, from questing/normal dungeons, to Heroic dungeons, to Mythics and raids; thus this is something of a deviation from the norm.
For the full rundown of the all the gear available, check out WoWhead’s post. For more of the latest news, check out our rundown of the latest WoW Dragonflight alpha patch notes. Alternatively, you can check out all of the best WoW addons to make your Dragonflight journey a even smoother.