Season of Discovery

SoD Leveling & End-Game Prep Guide

A quick reference for Classic WoW players returning to (or new to) Season of Discovery. Covers new SoD-specific mechanics for quick leveling 1-60 and then at 60, how to gear up and prep for the two end game raids - Naxxramas and Scarlet Enclave.

If you don't like reading, there's a great youtube video that covers the basics in about 12 minutes.

This guide brought to you by Firekittenz(now, with real fire!), come say hi on N.A. Wild Growth!

Leveling 1-60

SoD adds two new leveling boosters with incursions and level-up raids, on top of the Discoverer's Delight buff (+150% XP, +300% quest gold, despite what Wowhead says). This makes it very easy to hit 60 quickly.

You should:

  • Buy your class runes at level 1 in the starting zone for 1 copper each
  • Do the incursion(s) for your level (25/40/50) once a day
  • Do the level-up raid for your level (25/40/50) once per lockout
  • Starting at level 53 do the BlackRock Eruption (BRE) event quests once a day
  • Do normal questing and dungeon runs (may be hard to find for lower levels) in between
The incursions, level-up raids and the BRE event will give you between 1-2 levels each. Be ready to outlevel zones and move on without finishing every quest in a zone.

Paid invasion boosts are also a thing, but you're on your own with that.

Important Leveling Milestones

  • 1 Buy your class runes from the Alliance Rune Broker or Horde Rune Broker in your starting area - they're also in capital cities if you forget.
  • 40 Get your mount! 10g for training, 40g for mount (without faction discount)
  • 40 Buy dual spec from Grendag Brightbeard in IronForge or Orgrimmar.
  • 40 Get the Cozy Sleeping Bag (gives you a 3% XP buff) and Student Fodder (boosts your rested XP) by following the Wowhead Sleeping Bag Guide. You can get this earlier (as early as lvl 14) but it's a lot of running without a mount.
  • 50 Buy a set of lvl 50 blue armor from any incursion vendor (found outside any of the four incursion entrances). This is a great way to get caught up on gear if you're at least friendly (3 pieces) or honored (+3 more pieces) with the Emerald Wardens.
  • 60 Get your mount! 1000g for mount (without faction discount, no new training skill required).

Incursions

The Nightmare Incursions are daily quest hubs and best done in a group, but are partially doable solo (and still worth doing!). They're located by the dragon portals in each of the following zones listed below. Ideally have 15 open quest slots before you arrive so you can grab all the quests in at once. If not, run each monster area, hand in, and repeat.

Questie says you should be five levels higher than actually required - just ignore it.

Level range Zone
22-31 Duskwood
37-45 Ashenvale
47-53 The Hinterlands & Feralas

You'll recognize the pattern after a while - each zone has 3 monster areas, and each area has 5 quest types as follows:

  • Gather Intel - talk to a stealthed NPC.
  • Recover Item - grab an item off the ground.
  • Defeat Mobs - kill X mobs, sometimes elite. Skip solo if you can't handle the elites.
  • Rescue NPC - escort to the world-portal ramp. Anyone in range gets credit, including other groups and the opposite faction.
  • Defeat Boss - group usually required. Skip if solo.

There are also gathering quests for herbalism, mining, and skinning. Skip these unless you've leveled the profession or can buy mats off the AH.

Level brackets per this reddit comment.

Level-up Raids

These are usually good for a couple of levels worth of XP and some decent gear. Join a group if you see one in the #LookingForGroup chat channel. They're usually carried by a bored level 60 or two so don't worry about gear requirements to join.
Level Raid
25-30 Blackfathom Deeps (BFD)
40*-45 Gnomeregan (Gnomer)
50*-55 Sunken Temple (ST)

* - you can enter Gnomer (at 25) and ST below the "minimum" level, just make sure your group has a strong carry as you won't be very effective

Blackrock Mountain Eruption (BRE) Event

Every 2 hours (every even hour, server time) an event is active in Searing Gorge. Head to Thorium Point and pick up the daily quests. You can start doing them at level 53, but you'll need a group to finish all of them. It's usually easy to find someone else in the zone doing the quests and invite them.

The quests are only available to pickup and complete during the one-hour event window. The one exception is the Oh, Shiny! quest which can be completed after the event is over. Completed quests can be handed in after the event is over.

You'll get Firelands Embers as quest rewards. They're mostly for outdated Phase 4 fire-resist gear, but you can buy some valuable mats with them if you collect a lot - talk to Lokhtos Darkbargainer in the bar in BRD.

See more details in the wowhead guide.

You hit 60. Now what?

The goal is to get ready for the two end-game raids: Naxxramas and Scarlet Enclave. The first step is to replace your leveling gear with T1/T2/T2.5 tier gear and then you can start on your Naxx prep.

Tier set bonuses are huge in SoD and can even drastically change your spec's rotation. Check out the Wowhead SoD class guides for suggestions on the strongest set bonuses to aim for

Gearing Up Quickly

A guaranteed weapon

Pick up The Perfect Poison before any AQ20 or ZG runs. After one run of each, you're guaranteed an epic lvl 60 weapon - there's a viable option for nearly every spec.

A guaranteed trinket

You can get one of these from a new quest chain in LHC:

Head to Light's Hope Chapel in Eastern Plaguelands. Inside, talk to Leonid Barthalomew the Revered.

  1. Grab Scarlet Activities.
  2. Do the followup quests and you'll get to the start of the trinket chain with My Old Enemy.
  3. The final leg of the trinket chain starts at The Wrecked Caravan with activities in and around Stratholme.
  4. Continue through to The Right Path for the trinket reward.

Note that for The Culling you'll be sent inside of Stratholme and have do sit through an RP event near the end of the undead side. Do NOT just start it and walk away to join the rest of your group who are off killing monsters! You will fail the quest. If it does fail, just drop it, pick it up outside the entrance, and run back through the cleared instance to restart the RP.

There's a helpful Wowhead comment that shows the entire chain for these quests

Reals & Tier Gear

Tarnished Undermine Reals (a.k.a. “reals”) are the easiest source of fresh-60 gear. They're a new currency that drops mainly from dungeon and raid bosses. You can buy the full T1 armor set with them, some T2 pieces, a powerful class weapon, and a few other useful items. Spend them with Pix Xizzix in Booty Bay.

Where to get reals

Note that while 5-man dungeons (except for KC) don't have lockouts, the bosses will only drop reals once a day. Groups doing “reals runs” will typically do all sides/wings of a dungeon area.

Daily (5-mans)

  • Strath - 19
  • Blackrock Spire (BRS) - 16
  • Dire Maul - 16 (DM:N guards drop none)
  • Scholo - 16
  • Demon Fall Canyon (DFC) - 12
  • BRD - 11
  • Karazhan Crypts (KC/Kara) - 30 (5/boss × 6)

Weekly raids

  • MC - 30
  • AQ40 - 27
  • BWL - 24

Twice weekly

  • AQ20 - 18
  • ZG - 10
  • World bosses (rare to see groups for these) - 3 each (Onyxia, Azuregos, Thunderaan, Kazzak)

Bonus sources

Solo tier hand-in trick. You need to be inside a raid instance to redeem the tier tokens for MC/BWL/AQ40. Once attuned, MC and BWL let you in solo without being in a raid group - just talk to the NPC or click the orb. To zone into any other raid instance, macro this and spam as you bounce in and out of the instance portal:

/run InviteUnit("notaunit");C_Timer.After(.25,function() ConvertToRaid() end)

Main items and prices at reals vendor

Item Reals
T1 Armor Tokens (full set available) 15-25 each, 160 for all
T2 Wrist / Waist / Hands / Feet 35 each, 140 for all
BWL class weapon (very powerful if you can afford!) 150
Main hand / Off hand / Ring / Trinket 50 each
Idol / Totem / Libram 15-25 each

Other sources of tier

You can buy the full T1 set and half of the T2 set with reals. Outside of the main tier raid source (T1 → MC, T2 → BWL, T2.5 → AQ40), you can get tier tokens from other raids now:
Item Source
T1 (any slot) Onyxia
T2 Belt Thunderaan (drops 2 per kill)
T2 Helm / Shoulder / Chest / Legs Nightmare Dragons
T2.5 Helm / Shoulder / Legs / Feet Nightmare Dragons
Note that the Nightmare Dragons also drop the BWL class trinkets which can be incredibly powerful for certain classes, as well as sought-after crafting recipes for some professions.

Attunements

Three you'll want as a fresh 60:

  • DFC - Demon Fall Canyon. Grab Demonic Deceptions in Felwood. Hint: kill the owlbeasts in the Hidden Grove in NE Winterspring for best drop rate
  • MC - Molten Core. At level 55+, grab Attunement to the Core and do a BRD run. Note you must be lvl 60 to enter MC itself from the front NPC or lava! But if you're lvl 55+ you can enter MC from the portal inside of BRD.
  • BWL - Blackwing Lair. Kill the Scarshield Quartermaster by the entrance to BRS and loot Blackhand's Command to start the attunement quest. Click the orb at the end of a UBRS run to complete it.
Check out Kim's MC and BWL guides for info on the new difficulty mechanics

Optionally:

Later:

  • Naxx - see section below
  • Scarlet Enclave (SE) - none required! But see section below for quest line you'll want to do

Naxx Prep

tl;dr:
  • Farm scourge invasions for Necrotic Runes, Remnants of Valor (note: these are ACCOUNT BOUND), and argent dawn rep
  • At honored with argent dawn, complete the naxx attunement quest The Dread Citadel and grab the followup Echoes of War from the NPC at the head of the table
  • Get yourself 8 pieces of sanctified gear
  • Zone in to naxx for the first time and buy your Rank 7 seal with 3150 remnants of valor
Two gotchas to be aware of:

You need to be honored with the Argent Dawn before you can do the attunement quest The Dread Citadel - Naxxramas See below on Scourge Invasion Farming for a good source of rep.

You can't get tier gear until you complete the quest Echoes of War Don't be a noob and miss this! Grab it right after the attunement quest. You'll complete it during your first naxx run as your group clears all the trash at the start of each wing

To get invited into a naxx raid group, you need three things:

  • attunement
  • 8 sanctified items
  • max rank 7 seal

These are the important currencies for this section and are acquired by farming scourge invasion mobs:

Scourge Invasion Farming

So, how do you actually get those above currencies? First, find or make an "invasion farm" group - some classes/specs can solo these, most can't. You can whittle away at the mobs with just a tank and a healer, but 3+ is preferable.

You need to find a zone with an active invasion - look on the world map for a zone with a purple skull on it. It'll look like this:

Region with Scourge Invasion purple skull

In the zone, look for one of the Naxx flying pyramid things in the sky - it'll be shooting purple projectiles to one or more locations, follow them to find an invasion crystal.

Once you find a crystal - it'll be surrounded by mobs. Do the following:

  • Kill the mobs by the crystal to damage the crystal - once its health drops to 0, 4x Cultist Engineers will spawn
  • Talk to the NPCs one at a time to spawn a Shadow of Doom. You'll need 8 necrotic runes, which you should have gathered from killing the invasion mobs. Kill the shadow.
  • Click the crystal that spawns after the shadow dies to loot a Heart of Doom. Anyone can loot this.
  • Take your freshly-looted heart to Brother Luctus and hand in for 300 remnants. Note: he spawns in (or close to - Swamp of Sorrows) any zone that has invasions. Questie will show his location as a repeatable quest giver.
  • Repeat until all 4 Shadows are killed, looted, and the hearts handed in

These farms are also a great way to quickly earn Argent Dawn rep - each kill gives you some and you're going to kill a LOT of these.

Tip: grab this weakaura to auto-need on the necrotic runes, you'll be seeing a ton of them and the looting gets annoying: https://wago.io/lo6GWhd_D

Full Scourge Invasions Guide

Seal of the Dawn

When you first zone into Naxxramas, talk to Kug Softjaw near the entrance to receive your Seal. Pick the bonus that matches your role (you can swap later): damage, threat+damage, or healing. Upgrade rank by handing in Remnants of Valor to Kug.

Naxx power scales with: Seal Rank × Sanctified Item Count

The bonuses only apply inside Naxxramas, and are throttled by the number of empowered (hardmode) wings active. Most runs are HM3 which takes full advantage of the Rank 7 seal. Some runs will do HM2, where only up to Rank 6 is used - but aim for Rank 7.

You need 3150 total Remnants of Valor to hit Rank 7 from scratch.

A few things to note about the seals:

  • The seal upgrade quest doesn't remove the lower-ranked seals from your inventory. Just destroy them
  • If your class has multiple roles (tank, DPS, heals) don't worry about which seal you initially upgrade, you can buy seals for any spec for free
  • If you're short on bag space, you can apparently turn the seal buff on then destroy the seal itself without losing the buff

Details for Rank 6 and Rank 7 - don't show up with anything less:
# Title Total Remnants
(from scratch)
HM cap Damage Healing Threat Health
6 Champion 2250 HM 2 18.13% 13.13% 7.5% 18.13%
7 Vanguard 3150 HM3+ 21.25% 15% 8.13% 21.25%

Attunement

The attunement quest is The Dread Citadel - and requires Honored with the Argent Dawn plus some mats, depending on your rep. The turn-in costs have been reduced from what they were initially, but be prepared to buy a couple of arcane crystals at least. Invasion mobs and Scholo / Strath runs grant AD rep; you can also hand in AD valor tokens. You'll probably be close to honored from the invasion farming you did to get your rank 7 seal (you do have your rank 7 seal, right?)

I'm going to remind you again - pickup Echoes of War right after you hand in the attunement quest so you'll be able to turn in your T3 gear tokens.

Sanctified Gear

“Sanctified” gear is anything tagged Sanctified or with the blue Scarlet Enclave Scarlet Uniform tag. You need 8 pieces in Naxx. This will wreck your carefully-built T1/2/2.5 set bonuses initially, so be forewarned, but the sanc mechanic is more powerful than any specific set bonus.

Quickest path before your first Naxx run:

  • Buy sanctified gloves from the Argent Outfitter for 30 Necrotic Runes along with the matching BoE bracers from the auction house. There's an appropriate set for any class/spec and their 2-piece set bonus treats your Seal as if you were wearing 2 additional sanctified pieces - so the bracers and gloves alone count as 4 effective sanctified pieces toward your Seal calculation.
    Example pair for leather dps: Handwraps of Undead Slaying and Wristwraps of Undead Slaying
  • Run Karazhan Crypts daily - no attunement needed any more. It has a lot of very strong, and in some case BiS, sanc pieces. BEWARE - this is not a place for undergeared characters, so don't try this unless you have several T1/T2 pieces already.
  • Fill remaining slots with Scarlet Uniform pieces (they count as sanctified).

Echoes of War - do this before your first Naxx

Pick up Echoes of War from Light's Hope Chapel before you ever zone into Naxxramas. You complete it by killing mobs inside the raid - and until it's done, you cannot turn in tier 3 tokens. And this is your 4th reminder in this guide, so don't blame me if you forget it and can't get any tier your first lockout :)

Shoulder Tier Enchants - also very important

Complete Laid to Rest (early part of the Naxx-prep quest chain) to unlock the buyable shoulder tier enchants. These allow you to apply a T1, T2, or T2.5 set bonus to your shoulder. This is a free tier bonus! It's in addition to your normal shoulder enchant. Brother Luctus in EPL sells them.

Argent Dawn Valor Tokens are the currency used to buy the shoulder tier enchants. You can buy them with Necrotic Runes or Remnants of Valor, or get them from Scourgestone hand-ins from the Argent Dawn.

Naxx Hardmode Reference

Here's a quick table showing requirements and loot differences between the commonly-seen naxx hardmodes:
HM Level Min. Seal Tier Pieces Offpieces Splinters Sapph Enchants Tier Rings Mounts
HM2 Rank 6 30 41 13 3 3 0
HM3 Rank 7 44 41 13 3 4 0
HM4 Rank 7 44 41 26 4 4 1mounts Naxxramas mount drops

Scarlet Enclave Prep

No attunement is required to enter SE.

What to work on (details follow below):
  • Start the quest chain for the scarlet enclave bosses. Scarlet Activities from Leonid Bartholemew in LHC kicks things off and sends you off to Tirisfal Glades.
  • Get your scarlet disguise
  • Do the weekly quest for the Jostled Chalice Fragment - this gives FREE T3.5 tier pieces over time.

Scarlet Enclave Quest chain

Your goal here is to get your Hearthstone of the Dawn after your first full clear of the new Scarlet Enclave raid.

There is the quest chain starting at The Scarlet Reclamation from Leonid Barthalomew in LHC. This will lead you to Decapitation Strike which is where you want to be when you head into SE for the first time. There are two followups inside SE - you'll want to visit and return to Lord Maxwell Tyrosus inside the SE jail as you progress.

Once you're in an SE raid, please note while it's safe to hand in and accept quests from the NPCs inside the instance, please DO NOT choose any other dialog options or talk to non-quest NPCs - this can seriously grief the raid by disabling the +25% damage/health raid-wide buff Resilience of the Dawn.

Scarlet Uniform and Disguise

As you're doing these SE quests, you'll eventually get to New Avalon which gives you a Scarlet Insignia. You'll need four pieces of the Scarlet Uniform crafted gear (ex: Scarlet Augur's Hood) then you can use the insignia to make the New Avalon NPCs friendly. There's a set for cloth, leather, mail and plate wearers - but sadly, no dedicated healing set.

They count as both Scarlet Uniform and Sanctified gear.

Any tailor / leatherworker / blacksmith can learn the recipes and craft them inside of New Avalon. The recipes and the crafted gear are usually available in the auction house, or from your friendly guild crafters. You'll needIf you progress the quest just far enough to get the temporary 10-minute disguise from the NPC you can use that instead to get this disguise to do jostled chalice fragment quest (see below).

There's a full breakdown at Wowhead

Weekly Jostled Chalice Fragment Quest

Every 3 weeks you are guaranteed a free SE tier piece, even without doing the raid. By doing the weekly Prove Your Worth: quest at Byron Steelblade in New Avalon (disguise required) you earn a Scarlet Junkbox which has a Jostled Chalice Fragment (and a bunch of reals). Three of those turn into a Crusader's Chalice which you can hand in for a tier piece (disguise required). You'll also earn one fragment during an SE run, which combined with the weekly quest gives you two free T3.5 piece every three weeks.

If you're one of the lucky classes who can wield the Corrupted Ashbringer and you don't have one yet, you'll also get a Lighforged Iron - you need 12 of these to make the ashbringer.

The T3.5 Scarlet Enclave tier pieces also count as uniform pieces when you're using your Scarlet Insignia to turn on your disguise

Blood of Heroes Farm

If you're crafting the scarlet uniform blues, you'll need Blood of Heroes for some of them. I used to recommend using Questie's advanced search to show them on the map, but it doesn't cover the ones in New Avalon. Here's a better way:

  • Install the TomTom addon
  • On the Blood of Heroes wowhead page, click any of the pins the map and under "Copy All" select "TomTom Command"
  • In the game, type /ttpaste in chat and paste in the copied coordinates. Click the "Paste" button to close.
  • Now you have (almost) all of the New Avalon blood locations!
  • Run in a loop in New Avalon, they seem to spawn here WAY more frequently than outside in EPL
Dying while looting them? If your class has a way to break movement speed debuffs (druid shape-shift, priest dispersion, pally BoF, etc) use it and run away. Otherwise pop a Free Action Potion before looting.

Reputation

Good news: rep no longer gates most gear hand-ins (e.g., AQ40). There are still certain rep-locked items worth having, like the ZG shoulder enchants, various crafting recipes, and douses for MC.

Zandalar Tribe (ZG)

See the Wowhead Zandalar Tribe SoD guide. Get those Exalted shoulder enchants.

You can also buy Blood-Caked Hakkari Bijous from Mai'zin for 1× Blood-Caked Silver Coin. Coins drop from the STV Blood Moon event - sometimes there are farm groups. With a good farm group you can get 40-50 silver coins/bijous (4000-5000 copper coins). The blood-caked bijous act as normal bijous (and can even be sold on the AH).

pro tip: when destroying a large number bijous for rep, alternate between bijous and resulting honor tokens to avoid the item cooldowns on both. You can macro this with the following:

/use Zandalar Honor Token
/use Blood-Caked Hakkari Bijou
/use Blue Hakkari Bijou
/use Bronze Hakkari Bijou
/use Gold Hakkari Bijou
/use Green Hakkari Bijou
/use Orange Hakkari Bijou
/use Purple Hakkari Bijou
/use Red Hakkari Bijou
#### please note that this exceeds the 255 char macro limit
#### If you have Silver or Yellow bijous, copy the lines
#### below and replace the colors you don't have
/use Silver Hakkari Bijou
/use Yellow Hakkari Bijou

ZG Rep Calculator

How many bijous, gold, Bloodmoon events, or ZG runs to your next standing?

To Bijous Gold Bloodmoon events ZG runs
Friendly
Honored
Revered
Exalted
Calculator assumptions
  • Rep per bijou: 125 (75 from destroying + 50 from the rep token).
  • Full ZG run: 3000 rep.
  • Standing rep: Neutral → Friendly 3000 · Friendly → Honored 6000 · Honored → Revered 12000 · Revered → Exalted 21000.
  • Blood Coin cost: 1 per bijou. AH supply is severely limited.
  • Bloodmoon events: assumes 45 Blood-Caked Silver Coins per event.

Brood of Nozdormu

While this rep is much less important than in the past since it's not required for tier pieces, the rings can be nice, especially for offspec gear

See the Wowhead Brood of Nozdormu SoD guide. An epic ring is granted at Neutral. Weekly AQ20/AQ40 runs will get you to neutral in a few weeks. These rings powered the “Timeworn” mechanic during the AQ40 phase and still have decent stats for some specs.

Tanaris elite-spawn farming groups up to near-Friendly used to be common but are largely a thing of the past. Some classes can solo the elites for 2k+ rep each.

You will need to get this rep to at least neutral to be able to talk to Anachronos to hand in the AQ40 Eye of C'Thun and to be able to complete the Atiesh quest line.

Blackrock Eruption (BRE) Dailies

Useful for completionists chasing Hydraxian Waterlords rep (quintessence for summoning last 2 bosses in MC, water walking boots, azshara teleport) and, of lesser importance these days, Thorium Brotherhood (recipes, MC item upgrades). Turn-ins also grant 46G per run.

BRE Rep Calculator

How many BRE events to reach your target standing with each faction?

Faction Rep / run Current Progress Target Events
Hydraxian Waterlords 1350
Thorium Brotherhood 2450
Calculator assumptions
  • Hydraxian: 1350 rep per run. Thorium: 2450 rep per run.
  • Standing rep: Hostile → Unfriendly 3000 · Unfriendly → Neutral 3000 · Neutral → Friendly 3000 · Friendly → Honored 6000 · Honored → Revered 12000 · Revered → Exalted 21000.

Generic Rep Calc

You can hand in commendation signets to an NPC for almost any faction to gain rep, and buy the signets easily with runecloth bandages:

1x Runecloth → 1x Runecloth Bandage
20x Runecloth Bandage → 10x commendation signetsa
10x commendation signets → 75 rep

See the Buyable World Buffs section for more info on acquiring the commendation signets. And be mindful of the bag space these runecloth stacks will take up when getting the signets. Here is a helpful WeakAura to automate the turn-in of runecloth bandages for commendation signets - just talk to the NPC.

Generic Rep Calculator

How much runecloth, bandages, signets, and gold to your next standing with any faction?

To Runecloth/Bandages Signets Gold
Unfriendly
Neutral
Friendly
Honored
Revered
Exalted
Calculator assumptions
  • Chain: 1 Runecloth → 1 Runecloth Bandage · 20 bandages → 10 commendation signets · 10 signets → 75 rep.
  • Works out to 3.75 rep per runecloth (20 runecloth → 75 rep).
  • Stack sizes: runecloth/bandages stack in 20s, commendation signets in 100s.
  • Standing rep: Hostile → Unfriendly 3000 · Unfriendly → Neutral 3000 · Neutral → Friendly 3000 · Friendly → Honored 6000 · Honored → Revered 12000 · Revered → Exalted 21000.
  • Gold assumes you buy runecloth at the AH price above and craft the bandages yourself (requires Tailoring).

SoD Travel Shortcuts

SoD added a lot of new ways to move. Engineering has its own teleporters (not listed here); these are the ones generally available.

  • Lvl 40 profession quest. If you did the Phase 2 epic crafting quest chain, the teleporter in Booty Bay drops you in Feralas near Dire Maul.
  • Emerald Ring Get this at friendly rep with the Emerald Wardens (the incursions people). Teleport (aka "Enter the dream") to anyone in any incursion zone (Duskwood, Ashenvale, Hinterlands, Feralas).
  • Shiny Archaic Vestige A second hearthstone - account-bound, so mail it to whichever character is currently active. The Khonsu and Secret Agents quests are one of the most fun and challenging things to do in SoD, highly recommend trying! And you can actually run the last part repeatedly (stand on the lvl 1 character spawn) and get as many of these as you want, so all of your toon can have one!
  • Light's Hope Chapel teleport. Complete the SE quest chain for a teleport to LHC with Hearthstone of the Dawn
  • Hydraxian teleport. Earn revered with the Hydraxian Waterlords for an Azshara teleport in the form of Beacon of Hydraxis
  • Horde can enable teleporting from Booty Bay to gnomer with a Goblin Transponder. While this teleport existed in classic, it's extra useful now due to Gnomer's new status as a level-up raid. Horde need to grab the quest Chief Engineer Scooty in Orgirmmar from Sovik then head to Booty Bay to complete it. If the quest is unavailable, try grabbing the quest Rig Wars from the same NPC first.

Cool SoD Things

New Dungeons

There are two new lvl 60 dungeons available:
  • Demon Fall Canyon (DFC) - requires an easy attunement, has some good weapons, rings, and trinkets. The first boss drops one of the items required for KC attune, and a later boss is part of the Pally class weapon quest.
  • Karazhan Crypts (KC) - attunement optional (bonus loot), a MUST EXPERIENCE for new SoD playersI always encourage my groups to let the first-time KCers loot the chests, not for undergeared playersOne of the fights in particular has a timer, so a minimum overall DPS level is required, has some class BiS items, very strong sanctified items, and a bunch of enchanting recipes.

Water Walking Boots

Earn honored with the Hydraxian Waterlords (see BRE event) and grab the Water Treads from Duke Hydraxis. These also let you use your mount on the water, so they double as Water Riding boots too!

Learn All Alchemy / Blacksmithing / Engineering / Leatherworking Specs

Alchemists can get both mixologist (potion/elixir/flask) and transmute specializations for extra output.

After level 55 you can train all specs for blacksmithing (armorsmithing and master sword/axe/hammer-smith) and leatherworking (dragonscale, elemental, and tribal) - no choice required. You do however still have to complete each spec's different quest.

For engineering, you can use Engineering Exchange Tickets to buy recipes from the other spec.

See the Professions section below for more details on all of these.

Buyable World Buffs

While queueing up outside of Dire Maul for the tribute buffs was an iconic part of Classic, SoD has replaced the drudgery of traveling all around the world for buffs with purchasable consumable versions.

The most common way to acquire these is handing in 20 runecloth bandages for 10 commendation signets, and using those to buy the buffs.

For Alliance - talk to Keeper Moonshade in Ironforge to get Alliance Commendation Signets and buy the buffs from Ironforge Commendation Officer.

For Horde - talk to Stoneguard Clayhoof in Orgrimmar to get Horde Commendation Signets and buy the buffs from Orgrimmar Commendation Officer

Cost Buff Duration Effect
5 Spirit Conch 2h ZG buff - +10% movement speed, +15% stats
5 Firewater Cauldron - Replacement for Winterfall Firewater (that's why they're so cheap now in the AH).
5 Overseer's Anvil 1h Rend buff - +300 HP, +15% melee haste, +10 mp5
5 “Defective” Magic 8-Ball 2h DM Faire buff - +10% damage
5 Songflower Seed 1h Felwood Songflower - +5% crit (all), +15% stats
5 Shimmering Globe 2h DM Tribute - +200 AP, +15% stam, +3% spell crit
5 Horn of the Dawn 2h Ony/Nef head - +10% spell crit, +5% melee/ranged crit, +140 AP

That's 35 signets, or 70 runecloth bandages, or 3.5 stacks of runecloth for a full rack of buffs.

Onyxia Attunement is Account-Bound

Once one character has completed Ony attune, talk to Squire Rowe (Alliance) or Eitrigg (Horde) to buy a Chipped Drakefire Amulet for your alts.

Nitro Boosts (No Engineering Required)

Engineering is no longer mandatory for the belt-speed enchant. Non-engineers can buy a consumable Tinkerbox: Nitro Boosts and rejoice.

Visit old IF

There's a great toy item that used to drop in gnomer but is now available for reals - Aragriar's Whimsical World Warper. It'll take you to random places around the world (make sure your hearth is up first), and one of the places is Old Ironforge, which is usually inaccessible underneath Ironforge. Bubbles the toy vendor in Booty Bay sells it.

Unlimited* Noggenfogger

* - not actually unlimited, has 200 charges

You can get a Bottomless Noggenfogger Elixir (great for proc'ing featherfall) by completing the The Thirsty Goblin quest chain in Tanaris, buying 200 regular Noggenfogger Elixir then going to Bubbles the toy vendor in Booty Bay.

Facilities in New Avalon

The New Avalon location in EPL isn't just a new questing and crafting area, it also hosts some useful facilities (Scarlet Insignia or tabbard disguise required):
  • a mailbox - scrolls in cart by main archway entrance
  • a bank - boxes in keep to left, opposite of where weekly quest is
  • an alchemy bench - alchemists rejoice! in basement of keep
  • neutral AH - sometimes Captain Bloodcoin will be up down at the docks

Level 1 Head Gear

Wish you didn't have to wait to get a helm while leveling? Now you can get one at level 1! Why is this important? Runes! Check the AH for a Twill Mask - this is a reward from the secret agent quest line. If none are available in the AH, anyone who has completed the secret agent quests can get another! They just need to go back to the new character spawn location and repeat the very last part of the quest line.

Oh yeah, there's the sword

Kinda forgot about this, 'cause like everyone has it already and it's No Big Deal, but there's a new sword you can get in SoD. The best part is it's orange, like FIRE CAT. Collect your 12x Lightforged Irons from the weekly quest and from Scarlet Enclave bosses, win a Ruined Lightforged Blade, do a quest or two, then BAM The Ashbringer is yours. Full wowhead guide here.

Class Specifics

Paladin

BWL Class Weapon

2H Truthbearer and 1H Truthbearer

Squire

Get a squire! Dalton's Horn. Do the R.V. Rune quest and talk to the squire afterwards.

Pally Power

Pallies - make sure you get the Pally Power addon or you will be mercilessly mocked in raids.

Truthbearer Enchant

Wondering what happens if you put a 2H enchant on your brand new Truthbear and transform it to 1H mode? Good news! You don't lose the 2H enchant. But if you put one of the newer 2H enchants (ex: Grand Arcanist) on it, it'll behave like the 1H equivalent (ex: Grand Sorcerer)

Thanks Sethmilchick for testing!

Leg rune - don't forget to CAST IT

So, this is really embarassing - for the longest time on my pally I thought the leg rune that breaks fear and sleep Inspiration Exemplar didn't work. Turns out, just having the leg rune on isn't enough - it gives you an ability you have to CAST.

Priest

BWL Class Trinket

Cassandra's Tome - this is end-game BiS for shadow priest

Fear Ward For All

Of any race - pick up an additional racial. Fear Ward for everyone! Talk to the Divine Apprehension in the chapel by Karazhan when someone announces "the light is on" in global chat.

Druid

BWL Class Weapon

Glas'sir and Rae'lar

FIRE CAT

I cant't believe I forgot to mention FIRE CAT. Get a Eye of Sulfuras to drop from rags in MC, win the roll for it, make a Sulfuron HammerEasy, right?, use with the eye, then equip Sulfuras. You can FIRE CAT even without having the hand equipped with Refined Eye of Sulfuras. First, go to the bar in BRD with a Sulfuron Ingot and hand it in to complete A Binding Contract. You don't need to be a blacksmith. Then go to Rix (lost+found vendor) in BB to buy the refined eye.

Wolfshead Helm

Feral druids no longer have to farm Gnomer endlessly and wear a lvl 45 helm! Get catnip and your Wolfshead Trophy helm enchant from any incursion vendor (by dragon portals).

Mage

BWL Class Weapon

Staff of: Order (arcane) / Inferno (fire) / Rime (frost)

Resurrection Scroll

Be the group hero and resurrect the dead! Scroll of Reintegration.

Get the good water

Buy a Tome of Conjure Water VIII from Lyranne Feathersong in Winterspring (ALLY) or Kurll in Azshara (HORDE) to be able to make Mountain Spring Water

Warrior

BWL Class Shield

Suzerain

Mini-Onyxia Buff

You can give your group a mini-onyxia buff after reading Handbook of Valor of Azeroth

How to get it: have any character (yay!) complete the Onyxia attunement chain (boo!) then they can buy the account-bound book from Squire Rowe in Stormwind.

Hunter

BWL Class Weapon

Kestrel and Peregrine

DMT Tribute Guide

Excited about getting your SE weapon, but never solo'd a DMT before? Here's a great youtube DMT guide to follow that should help with Crafty the Crafter

Core Hound Pets

Always thought that the core hounds in MC would make the perfect pet? Now they can be! Do the The Burning Beast quest for a Infernal Lasso and the ability to tame the core hounds that have escaped from MC.

Pridewing Pets

Want more new pets? Get a Wyvern Taming Wand from the quest Wild Wyvern Wrangling and get yourself a Young Pridewing

KC Flare

Tired of switching to melee in Kara Crypts, or standing back in the dark and griefing your healer? You can get an upgraded version of flare via Tome of Enchanted Flare that counts as a light source! Look for a scroll on a table in one of the rooms by the apprentices.

Warlock

BWL Class Weapon

Scythe of Chaos

Neverending Soul Vessel

Grab a Neverending Soul Vessel to help with the soul shard grind. You'll need to complete two rune quest lines to get it - Metamorphosis Rune and the Grimoire of Synergy Rune

Demon Wings

The new demon form is cool and all, but what's better than a tiny little gnome with wings main-tanking raids? At 60, follow the wowhead guide on getting your wings.

Rogue

BWL Class Weapon

Dream Eater

BWL Class Weapon Quest Share

In a BWL with a few other fresh rogues and the Intelligence Findings drops? Just trade it amonst all the rogues and everyone can start the class weapon quest

Shaman

BWL Class Shield

Terrestris (offense) and Terrestris (defense)

Professions

The biggest change to professions in SoD is the ability to learn all specialiations for any given profession. For example, you can learn both gnomish and goblin engineering recipes. There are also a ton of new recipes for all professions. I'm just going to list the new recipes that are commonly used at lvl 60 here.

The WoW Classic Professions Guide website have fantastic references for leveling all of the classic professions.

Alchemy

Learning Specializations

Complete the quests Mixology For Fun and Profit and Master of Transmutation given by Crimeon Lablade in Steamwheedle Port in Tanaris to double (or if you're lucky even 3x/4x/5x) your output. Check the required turn-ins for each quest before you go so when you head out there you'll be able to complete the quests right away.

Flasks

You can get the recipes for these new flasks from running Nightmare Dragons, AQ20, and AQ40. The new flasks all require the original flasks as reagents, and you can by all of the original flask recipes with reals. There's an alchemy bench in the basement of the New Avalon fort (where the weekly quest giver is).

New flasks:

Elixirs and Potions

You can buy all of the new elixir recipes once you're honored with the Cenarion Circle. An easy way to get this rep is to just run AQ20 and AQ40. The mobs in AQ20 give CC rep, and the bosses in both drop Qiraji Lord's Insignia which gives 100 CC rep per turn-in. You can also use runecloth for rep.

New elixirs:

The Mildly Irradiated Rejuvenation Potion from Phase 2 is still useful. You'll have to complete the Gnomer Crafting quest chain to be able to craft them however.

Blacksmithing

Specializations

Starting at level 55 (I believe), you can pick up any specializations you didn't choose initially. This means you can get all of these:
  • armorsmith
  • weaponsmith
  • master axesmith
  • master hammersmith
  • master swordsmith
The Warcraft Tavern Blacksmith Specialization Guide has a breakdown of all of the quests.

Useful Craftables

The scarlet blue plate set is always in demand by people handing in Crusader's Chalice for T3.5 gear. The Phase 6 (AQ) obsidian weapons are nice, but very, very expensive and are quickly outclassed by Naxx gear.

See the Warcraft Tavern SoD Blacksmithing Guide for a complete list of recipes.

Razorspike Set and Boosting Sword

The razorspike set is sometimes used by pallies for invasion farming/boosting, so these are worth running Nighmare Dragons / AQ20 / AQ40 for:

The Hardened Frostguard is also used by invasion farmers. The recipe is a rare drop off of Onyxia / Azuregos / Lord Kazzak (lol, you're not finding groups for those) and even rarer off Scholo/Strath/UBRS end bosses. It's BoE, so look for it in the AH.

Consumables and Crafting Mats

Two other items that might be worth crafting are the Elemental Sharpening Stone and the Obsidian Grinding Stone. The sharpening stone recipe originally comes from Molten Core and now the Nightmare Dragons will also drop it. The grinding stone recipe is sold by Vargus in Silithus and requires Friendly rep with the Cenarion Circle.

Cooking

There is a new set of food buffs, including two identical raid-wide (but weaker than individual food) feasts, that make most earlier foods obsolete. To learn the new food recipes, you'll need to complete the New Avalon Cooking Quests.

Individual Foods

Note that Dirge's Kickin' Chimaerok Chops remains the best pure stamina food giving +25.

Feasts

The two new feasts are identical in terms of stats, which one you choose is up to ingredient price and/or taste:

Enchanting

There are a TON of new enchants and craftable items in SoD, many of which are used in the end-game. You'll want to run Karazhan Crypts for a bunch, do the New Avalon Mage Tower activies, and run AQ20, AQ40, and Nightmare Dragons to collect'em all.

The Warcraft Tavern SoD Enchanting Guide has the full list.

Trinkets

The main four craftable trinkets are worth listing, but see the Warcraft Tavern guide above for the full list of druid idols / pally librams / shaman relics you can craft. These formulas are all AQ20 / AQ40 / NM Dragon drops.

Consumables

There are two good consumable items you can craft, the Enchanted Repellent is a weapon+shield "oil" and the Scroll: Wrath of the Swarm is a raid buff you can provide. The formulas for both are sold in Silithus at Friendly Cenarion Circle Rep.

Useful End-Game Enchants

Here's my take on the end-game enchants that you might be asked to do as an enchanter:

Slot Enchant Source Effect
Weapon Grand Crusader N.A. Mage Tower proc: +120 str / ~400 heal
Grand Sorcerer N.A. Mage Tower proc: +70 sp / ~400 mana
CrusaderThis is still popular as cheaper alternative to the new enchants mob dropWho hasn't farmed this at one point or another? proc: +100 str / ~100 heal
Healing Power MC +55 heal
Mighty Intellect TB rep +22 int
Spell Power MC +30 sp
2H Weapon Grand Inquisitor N.A. Mage Tower proc: +200 str / ~400 heal
Grand Arcanist N.A. Mage Tower proc: +140 sp / ~400 mana
Spellblasting KC +65 sp
Agility Furbolg Friendly +25 agi
Offhand Superior Intellect KC +9 int
Shield Excellent Stamina KC +12 sta
Law of Nature Furbolg ReveredEwww, be prepared to spend thousands on runecloth or days grinding +30 sp / +55 heal
Lesser Block world dropThis is an incredibly rare drop off of mainly lvl 40-ish elites. Good luck getting it +2% block
Cloak Agility KC +5 agi
Dodge AQs +1% dodge
Greater Resistance ST +5% resist all
Stealth AQs bonus stealth
Subtlety AQs -2% threat
Chest Living Stats AQs +4 stats, +15 NR
Bracer Greater Spellpower KC +16 sp
Agility AQs +9 agi
Superior Strength mob dropThe ogre warlocks in Deadwind Pass drop it +9 str
Healing Power AD rep +24 heal
Gloves Superior Strength KC +15 str
Superior Agility AQs +15 agi
Arcane/Fire/Frost/Holy/Shadow power AQs +20 sp of that type
Healing Power AQs +30 heal
Minor Haste trainer +1% haste
Boots Greater Agility world drop +7 agi
Greater Stamina world drop +7 sta
Minor Speed trainer run speed

Engineering

Specializations

Engineering cross-spec recipes are accessible, but in a slightly different way than the other profesesions. After completing a quest, you get a weekly Engineering Exchange Ticket from Maximillian The Greaser (goblin schematics) or Fizzbizz Coppercoil (gnomish schematics) and can use it to buy the opposint faction schematics.

If you're a gnomishing engineer, I strongly recommend buying the Goblin Rocket Helm and Goblin Construction Helemet (needed to craft the rocket helm) schematics so you can craft the New Avalon Teleporter which requires 2 goblin rocket helms. The construction helms are BoP, so you need to craft them yourself. The teleport itself is BoE.
See the wowhead engineer questline guide for details.

Useful Craftables

The New Avalon Teleporter gives you yet another way to get to EPL, and might be handy if you haven't competed an SE run for the LHC teleport.

The Tuned Force Reactive Disk (recipe from aq20/aq40/nm dragons) is used by boosters for its AoE on-block effect - note it takes a Force Reactive Disk to craft (recipe MC/nm dragons). The Tinkerbox: Nitro Boosts are usable by anyone and great for non-engineers. You get the schematic for these from the New Avalon Engineering Quests.

Belt Enchant

As an engineer, you can enchant your belt with a permanent nitro boost with Tinker Nitro Boosts. This is learned via Fizzlefuse's Tinker Manual and is part of the N.A. engi quests mentioned above.

Firemittenz the gnome mage engineer

Hi, I'm Firemittenz, and I'm an engineer. My favorite engineering item is the Gnomish Shrink Ray. Why? It works on raid bosses! Mini-Onyxia is soooo cute

Leatherworking

Useful Craftables

The scarlet blue Scarlet Infiltrator and Scarlet Huntsman sets are always in demand. The huntsman mail set demands a premium due to its unfortunately use of the relatively rare Heavy Scorpid Scale as a reagent. You can learn to craft a Scarlet Ammo Pouch and Scarlet Quiver in New Avalon, but these don't seem to sell well at the AH.

The Warcraft Tavern SoD Leatherworking Guide has a complete list of all recipes.

Crafting Mats

Cured Rugged Hides are always in demand by crafters and as a T3 tier turn-in requirement, so get your Salt Shaker and make (or buy from the AH) the Refined Deeprock Salts used to make the cured hides.

Razorbramble Set

The 3-piece razorbramble set is in demand by boosting bears. The recipes are found in AQ20/40/NM Dragons.

Armor Kits

The Glowing Chitin Armor Kit for spellcasters and the Sharpened Chitin Armor Kit for boosters/tanks are widely used. The patterns for these drop in AQ20/AQ40/NM Dragons. You'll also want to pick up a Pattern:Core Armor Kit from MC or the NM Dragons to be able to make the core armor kits as they're reagents for the more advanced ones.

Mining

You'll want to grab an Advanced Mining enchant on a spare set of gloves for running AQ20/40 so you can mine the obsidian piles that drop.

And once you're honored with Cenarion Circle, be sure to pick up a Manual: Smelt Obsidian-Infused Thorium Bar. It also helps if you have an enchanter who can make the Enchanted Thorium Bars that are used in smelting the Obisdian-Infused Thorium Bars.

Tailoring

Useful Craftables

The main Scarlet Augur blue cloth set is used by several cloth classes, and the Glacial Cloak has 2% hit, frost resist, and counts as a sanc piece so it's situationally useful.

The Warcraft Tavern SoD Tailoring Guide shows all the recipes from each phase.

Bags

The New Avalon bags outclass all previous crafted bags:

Qiraji Cloaks

These four cloaks are quite good and relatively inexpensive. The recipes come from AQ20/AQ40/NM Dragons.

End-Game Resources

SoD-Specific Addons

These addons have SoD-specific elements to them (in addition to their general awesomeness):

Almost Mandatory

These addons are almost mandatoryYeah, well, you know, this is just, like, my opinion, man - to paraphrase The Dude. And I did say almost. to play WoW right now:
  • Gargul - nearly every group uses this for loot and it makes things a ton easier
  • ItemRack - between dual-spec and sanctified gear, you'll probably find yourself swapping gear somewhat frequently. note: this hasn't been updated in years, but still seems to work. There are other gear set addons too - find one you like.
  • WeakAuras - this enables so many small QoL, shareable in game, utilities at a minimum - and for more advanced users, customized class UIs to help maximize performance

Other Personal Favorites

I also find all of these incredibly useful:
  • Auctionator - don't auction without it
  • Attune - usefull initially to track attunes, disable when done
  • Baganator - bag mod of choice, allow searching and sorting
  • Bartender 4 - UI bar customizationThis has a bad reputation for performance, but it's actually fine. It gets flagged by profilers because it sorts to be the first addon using Ace libraries and takes the blame for all other poorly-performing Ace addons.
  • ChatCopyPaste - quickly copy links and other text from chat
  • Decursive - if your class has a dispell, you need this
  • Details! Damage Meter - for you pumpers
  • Enhanced Raid Frames - lets you resize default blizz raid frames
  • Extended Character Stats - shows extra melee/spell stats missing from base UI
  • Leatrix Maps - extra map info like all access points for zones
  • Skillet Classic - good crafting helper, WARNING:DISABLE IN RAID
  • Taco Tip - shows gear score and player talents
  • Titan Panel - quick status bar I use for showing bag space, durability, loot type, performance, and more
  • TomTom - map waypoints
If the built-in raid frames too big for you and you don't want to use an addon, you can make them smaller with:
 /run CompactRaidFrameContainer:SetScale(0.8)
Adjust the scale number "0.8" (80%) as needed.

About this guide

This guide assumes you know Classic WoW. It focuses on what's SoD-specific: new mechanics, currencies, attunements, and the path from a fresh 60 to a Naxxramas raid spot and on into Scarlet Enclave.

References and inspiration:

Feedback & gaps

If you spot something wrong or missing, open an issue on the project repo at https://github.com/Lornath/WelcomeBackToSod/issues or drop a comment on this reddit post

firekittenz sitting on throne Thanks!
-Firekittenz

welcomebacktosod.com - a community reference for World of Warcraft Classic: Season of Discovery. Not affiliated with Blizzard Entertainment.

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