Midnight Gearing Guide

Midnight gearing Guide Quick Summary:

• Valorstones were removed, and the new crest currency for Midnight is called Dawncrests
• Dawncrest naming reflects the gear track: adventurer, veteran, champion, hero, myth.
• Source of gear includes: Prey, Delves, Great Vault, Dungeon Chest, Rare Drops, Raid Bosses
• Dawncrest's weekly cap is 100 for each type.
• Important Season 1 dates for chasing gear are: March 17, 24, and 31.

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Midnight Gearing Explained

Added back in the Dragonflight expansion, the gear upgrade system has seen some “upgrades” (sorry!) throughout the War Within and is now being improved in Midnight.

At max level, you get gear that can be upgraded to increase its ilvl and boost those item stats by way of using specific currency. However, previously, you had too many of those to keep track of, and Midnight is making the change to reduce that amount.

You used to have two types of currencies to do this with - Crests and Valorstones, but in Midnight, Valorstones have been removed and replaced by gold. So, now if you want to upgrade the Champion piece of gear to the sixth tier, it will cost you 150 gold.

The endgame gear is divided into the so-called tracks, each of which has its own Dawncrest currency to upgrade with. Here’s the correlation:

This parity makes it easier to keep track of which currency is used to upgrade which gear it is used on.

Another thing to keep in mind is that each gear track has 6 levels or tiers of upgrades. As for the cost, each new rank is going to cost you 20 Dawncrests more than the previous one. But that cost can be reduced. More on that next.

Dawncrest Discounts in Midnight

Yes, you can actually lower the cost of upgrades, but that will only work for your alt characters. Your main will have to “pave the way” for them by way of earning achievements tied to gear upgrades. Let me explain.

Upgrade Achievements & Discounts

There’s a series of achievements that you will earn when your average ilvl becomes higher than the maximum ilvl range of the specific gear track. Let me give you an example.

Let’s say your current average ilvl is 240, which is higher than the Adventure gear that has an ilvl of 224–237. This will earn you the achievement - Adventurer of the Dawn and will make the upgrade cost for this gear track cut by 50% on other characters on your warband.

The same thing happens for all the rest of the gear tracks as each has its own achievement for surpassing it:

• Adventurer of the Dawn
• Veteran of the Dawn
• Champion of the Dawn
• Hero of the Dawn
• Myth of the Dawn

With Valorstones removed and the upgrade system now centered around Dawncrests and gold, these achievement-based discounts are one of the biggest quality-of-life changes for players who enjoy multiple specs or characters.

Another Type of Discount

There’s another type of discount that you can get for your main that actually makes the upgrade free.

The way it works is this: when you upgrade your gear to a certain level, upgrading another piece of gear (in a different slot) to the same level will cost you fewer Dawncrests.

Simple example:

• You upgrade a chest piece to Champion 4/6.
• Later, you get a new helmet at the same track.
• Bringing the helmet up to that same level costs less because your character has already unlocked that upgrade tier.

This makes it easier to raise your overall ilvl by raising the upgrade level on each slot to the same value. It’s nice!

Where to Get Gear in WoW Midnight

You must be wondering where you are supposed to get the different gear tracks from? Especially, new players will have no idea where different gear tiers come from. Use the table below as a quick map for where things come from.

If you noticed the ilvl overlap between different gear tracks its done so that it's easier to grind higher difficulty content.

If you want to target specific raid pieces instead of relying on random drops, this part of the Season 1 info is useful because it calls out which bosses are tied to Tier slots and very rare jewelry.

So, now you know where everything comes from. The only problem is content availability. Raids are time-gated behind Season 1, which comes some time after the Midnight release.

Season 1 Content Schedule

As you may know, the pre-season is the time when players will be leveling. The real gear-chasing begins after the expansion release. Higher difficulty content will be available throughout the coming weeks, so if you want to plan out your gear progression by day or week, you’re going to want to memorize the following dates.

March 17 – Season Launch

Season 1 start a week and a half into the expansion release on a regular Tuesday reset. Here’s what will become available then

• Normal and Heroic Voidspire + Dreamrift open
• Seasonal dungeons open (Normal, Heroic, Mythic 0)
• PvP Season starts
• Prey system unlock
• All Delve tiers unlock

Max gear you can reach this week: up to Hero track gear, which upgrades to 276 at 6/6.

March 24 – Mythic Difficulty Unlock

This reset will add the mythic difficulty to raids and other activities.

• Mythic Voidspire + Dreamrift open
• Mythic+ becomes the main dungeon progression path
• Nightmare Prey unlocks

Max gear you can reach this week: up to Myth track gear, which upgrades to 289 at 6/6.

March 31 – Full Raid Access

This reset opens the new raid on all difficulties. So, more gear for you to chase:

• March on Quel’Danas opens on all difficulties

Max gear you can reach this week: still up to Myth 6/6 at 289.

Read our other WoW guides:

• Midnight Leveling Guide
• Best DPS Rankings
• Best Addons
• Gold Farming Guide

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