How to Gear Fast and Reach Item Level 289 for Midnight Season 1

World of Warcraft Midnight Season 1 releases March 17th (18th in Europe) and Mythic+ Dungeons one week later. To help players understand how to optimize gearing in Midnight, we will go over some of the key changes going into Midnight, what to do before Season 1 and how to get the highest item level for your character in Midnight Season 1.

How to Prepare for Midnight Season 1

Midnight’s first season will take three full weeks to release Mythic difficulty Raids and Mythic+ Dungeons. So you’ll want to optimize the time you invest playing the game to actually be ready for the season.

Here are the most useful things you could do:

• Farm Renown: Do this through the main story quests, side quests and achievements like Lore Hunter, Highest Peaks, Treasures, Weeklies and Prey. This unlocks 246 item level Champion Gear between renown 7-9 from the 4 main factions.
• Do Delves until you reach Tier 8: This doesn’t achieve a lot immediately, but sets up your delves for Season 1.
• Do every dungeon once in Mythic 0: This resets each week, do them twice before Season 1 and in the first week of Season 1 if you’re still missing gear.
• Do every weekly event: The 4 Weekly events are The Abundance t which can appear in any region, Legends of the Haranir in Harandar, Stormarion Assault in the Voidstorm and Saltheril’s Soiree in Eversong Woods.
• Complete 4 Preys in Hardmode: This will award a good chunk of renown but more importantly 233-243 Veteran Gear.

You can also use your time to level up your alts (while farming renown through side quests for example) and level up your professions to be as self-sufficient as possible during Season 1.

Renown Rewards

The most important rewards from Midnight Renown Quartermasters are the Champion Gear pieces you can get once you reach a certain renown rank.

The table below shows the Renown locked early Gear rewards and renown level required to unlock them.

The best way to get Renown is to do side-quests while leveling alts. In the pre-season, this will allow you to both discover the game & prepare for the endgame with less pressure.

Below is as list of the Renown Vendors and their locations:

There is no gear reward after these renown levels.

Weekly Activities

Content in the Open World is still very important in Midnight, with weekly activities rewarding you with a few pieces of gear but most importantly a few crest and Restored Coffers Keys, which you will need to complete Bountiful Delves, especially early in the season.

The renown boost is also nice if you are struggling to reach the important renown thresholds. You’ll need to do all 4 of them every week until Mythic+ is released or when you don’t need gear lower than 259 ilvl, as Delves will become less relevant at this point.

How to Gear Fast in PvE in Midnight Season 1

Now that we’ve seen some basic and general activities, let’s see how you can optimize every source of gear to get to 289 in the best way, and see how they work. Gear from PvE will go from 220 item level to 289. Each activity will award items in this item level range, scaling with difficulty.

Prey

Prey, the new system coming with Midnight is similar to Delves, it’s a solo activity rewarding entry level gear. It’s a bit weaker, as there are no Maps for Hero Gear, but completing hard enough Preys will reward a good chunk of Renown and Champion Gear. Champion Gear will range from 246 ilvl to 263, and Preys will only drop the lowest item levels in this range.

You need to unlock the Nightmare difficulty to actually get Champion Gear. That’s why it’s very important to complete Normal and Hard Preys to level up the renown track exclusive to Preys.

Preys will be a decent source of gear until you don’t need Champion gear anymore. After the first few weeks, this activity shouldn’t be your priority as Mythic dungeons will grant you 259 ilvl Hero gear as soon as Mythic +6. When Dungeons in this range are easy for you to farm efficiently, Preys shouldn’t be considered for gearing purposes.

Delves

Delves are quite similar to how they were in The War Within. They are still a great choice for solo players. Tier 8 is still one of the best ways to get a full set of Champion Gear and the Delver’s Bounty Maps you can find and use in this tier will award Hero Gear, making Delve the easiest way to find Hero Gear. Only do Bountiful Delves when you can use a Restored Coffer Key.

Prey, Delves and Mythic 0 Dungeons are the “starter set” to get you going in harder difficulties. Those should get you around 240 to 250 ilvl (or even higher) which is great to start Mythic+ Dungeons.

Mythic+ Dungeons

Mythic Dungeons will be the best source of gear in PvE as they are efficient, fast and repeatable, making their rewards farmable and more accessible.

The first step will be to do a few M0 World Tours, completing every dungeon in Mythic 0 in the first 2 to 3 weeks after Midnight Release or on a new alt if you don’t have people to carry you in Mythic keys. The important thing to note is that M0 dungeons before Midnight Season 1 are rewarding Veteran item level gear; we have to wait for the season for M0 to give Champion gear (246 item level).

Doing this should award you a few Champion Pieces. Pairing this with Bountiful Delves, Nightmare Preys and Renown Items will give you a nice base set of items to push into Mythic+ Dungeons or Normal / Heroic Raids.

Once you’ve reached full Champion gear, it’s time to reach for Mythic +7 keys. At the end of M+7 Dungeons, you’ll get a Hero Track item and mythic crests. It’s not the most efficient, Mythic +10 is the best difficulty to farm, but aiming for +7 is a good start. Once you’re full on Mythic Crests, you will automatically receive Hero Crests.

And when you feel strong enough, it’s time to go into Mythic +10 keys. There is no reason to go beyond Mythic +10, as M+11 and M+12 are just giving more Mythic Crests, which we will have more than enough of. The end of the Dungeon reward is the same (item level 266), and the Vault Reward will also be the same (item level 272).

If 7 is a bit too hard, we would advise to try M+6, but not very much lower. Mythic dungeons lower than 6 aren’t very efficient, as they only award Champion Track items.

To get strong enough to reach for 7 or 10, you’ll want to spend all your Veteran and Champion Crests before heading into Raid or Mythic+.

How to Get Mythic Track Items

The last stretch involves getting Myth Track Gear. There are only 2 ways for this: the Vault or Mythic Raiding. These are rather inconsistent and rely highly on your luck or on how your guild manages loot distribution.

Try to always have at least 3 Mythic +10 cleared each week.

How to Utilize Crafted Gear

Every week, you’ll get 1 spark. You need 2 of them and 80 Mythic Crests to craft yourself 285 item level Gear or a One-Handed Weapon. A Two-Handed Weapon requires 160 Mythic Crests and 4 Sparks.

Crafted items are very important as they are the only items with embellishments, effects that add damage or healing. You can only equip 2 embellishments at a time.

There are two ways to think about crafted gear:

1. For a quick boost of power early in the season, you can craft an item level 285 Two-Handed Weapon. However, this delays your second embellishment and locks your weapon at 285 item level.
2. A long term power boost for 2 items in weak armor slots like bracers, belts or cloak. You will get 2 item level 285 pieces pretty early on, and keep your weapon slot open for a Myth Track Weapon (289 ilvl). But this is heavily reliant on your luck in raids/vault to loot a Mythic Weapon. This is weaker in the early weeks, but in theory better long-term.

Some of this decision comes down to how well certain embellishments are simming for your Spec. The Class Discords and Class Guides will help you in making that decision.

Both are fine, depending on what your needs are. After the first few weeks, treat crafting as a way to fight bad luck: If you can’t find a Mythic Piece in one particular slot, just craft a Mythic item in replacement to still gain power week-to-week, even without upgrades from Raids or the Vault.

How to Use Crests Efficiently in Midnight

Upgrading Items has changed in Midnight from The War Within. Item Tracks are different, and upgrading costs are also changing. Crests are the only upgrade currency, Valorstones are gone, and upgrading costs a little amount of gold.

During the first weeks, keep all the Crests you find. Ilvl isn’t relevant until the season starts, so you don’t want to spend crests on a piece that you will replace. Take your time, farm items in M0, Prey and Delves, and spend Crest before going into Mythic+ and Raids.

You’ll want to spend every Veteran and Champion Crest at the start of the season, but hold onto your Hero Crest for at least a week to see what you loot. Spending all your Crests on a Piece to loot its Mythic counterpart the week after will feel pretty bad. And if you wait a bit, you will save Mythic Crests: Getting a Hero Gear from 5/6 to 6/6 will apply the discount on any Mythic Piece when trying to upgrade it from 1/6 to 2/6.

Tier Sets & The Catalyst

The last part to consider are Tier Sets. You’ll want to gather your 4-set quickly, and you should run LFR (Looking for Raid) for that purpose until you find all 4 pieces. Then, you can use the Catalyst to convert a regular item into a Tier Set piece of the same slot. Everyone gets 1 Charge at the start of the season, and then 1 new charge every two weeks.

There are 2 ways to get extra Catalyst charges:

1. Defeating the last boss of March on Quel’Danas in Heroic or Mythic difficulty, getting 2000 Mythic+ Rating or 1600 rating in PvP ranked modes.
2. Getting 4 pieces from your set to unlock the Midnight Season 1: Catalyst Unbound achievement, which means Catalyst Charges can drop from different content.

Don’t use your charge until the end of the week / weekly reset to be safe; you don’t know what will drop in the vault, so don’t push your luck and accidentally convert an item into the same tier your vault might reward you.

It’s possible that it could be worth using your charge regardless if it will get your 4 Set and unlock the Midnight Season 1: Catalyst Unbound achievement. With this achievement you may be able to farm back more charges, but how many you can realistically get is still unknown, so personally I would wait until you see your vault.

For more Midnight guides and content, check out Method’s full list of Midnight Guides, including Class Guides, Boss Guides and more!