Below is our weekly WoW advice for January 14-21. For the week starting January 21, visit the previous page.
Finish the lengthy intro quest
Your first priority is starting the new 8.3 questline, which begins automatically and sends you to Stormwind for Alliance and Orgrimmar for Horde. At 2-3 hours, it's the longest questline I've ever seen for a regular patch. It took me considerably longer than the intro for the Battle for Azeroth expansion pre-quests as a whole in patch 8.0, so leave yourself time to complete it.
For all new patch content you must:
- Have a level 120 character
- Have unlocked the Nazjatar zone
- Completed the A Way Home quest with Magni Bronzebeard
- Activated the Heart Forge
- Unlocked essences for your Heart of Azeroth neck piece
Witness as many Horrific Visions as possible
As part of the new patch 8.3 questline, you'll receive your legendary cloak, complete a Lesser Vision of N’Zoth, see a Horrific Vision, and do some assault work in Uldum and Vale of Eternal Blossoms. Horrific Visions is a major new mode for 8.3 where one-to-five players tick off various objectives to drive away the corrupted visions that threaten to envelop Stormwind and Orgrimmar.
If you're a crafter, you should see a drop that lets you craft a Void Focus. Use this immediately, as your crafted item patterns will not drop if you haven't (and will drop like candy if you have). Start gathering the materials to craft that new gear, though most sources of Shreds of Insanity you’ll use to make it aren’t available until next week.
Complete as many full Horrific Visions as you can this week, which you can access directly from the Heart Chamber after doing the opening quest and gathering enough Coalescing Visions to buy the Vessel of Horrific Visions item to get you in. Most folks are going to want to play it safe by simply completing the objective and heading straight for the final boss. You get a couple of freebies this week, so you can get a strong start on leveling your cloak and unlocking its ability to combat the Corruption you'll begin to see on gear.
Each day this week, you can also complete a lesser Horrific Vision by obtaining the daily quest outside the Lesser Vision. Then do the daily objectives, rare kills, pet battles, and quests in assaults for reputation, Coalescing Visions, and Corrupted Mementos. New assaults spawn every Tuesday and Friday (on North American servers), but quests reset daily.
Start using Corrupted Mementos you’re collecting from killing mobs to do research in the Titanic Research Archive, also in the Chamber of Heart, which will assist your ability to complete Horrific Visions.
Start stockpiling Azerite again
If you've been capped at level 70 on your Heart of Azeroth neck for a while, this is the week to restart all those Azerite-farming activities: daily emissary quests, islands, warfront turn-ins and quests, and boat missions. You'll earn Azerite from existing raids, but the new Ny'alotha raid doesn't until next week.
If you saved up 19,999 reputation after Exalted with each of the BfA factions, this is the week to pick up the first set of Paragon caches and enjoy that Azerite bump. If you want to really min-max using Azerite knowledge boosts, save the second Paragon caches for next week while earning another set.
This week in gear
Gear farming is limited this week. Horrific Visions scale from item level 420 to 470 for a full clear with five masks active, but that's a really tough line at the moment, and challenging yourself anywhere near that much risks losing your cloak bonus after you've successfully completed the Vision.
Blizzard has announced that cloak upgrades will work a bit like filling the conquest bar, so if you fail to max out this week, you can catch up in future weeks. But it's quite a bit of grind to do so, and I wouldn't recommend it.
No titan residuum will drop at all this week from any source, so you won't be working towards buying those sweet new higher-level epic armor items from that vendor until next week.
Doing the daily quests, pet battles (a combination of Unborn Val'kyr and Ikky or Unborn Val'kyr and any of the Zandalari Kneebiters/Anklerenders still works well for those) and other objectives in Assaults and Minor Visions each day earn you reputation with the new factions, Rajani and Uldum Accord, which you very much want.
To maximize the gear you get from the weekly Mythic+ dungeon chest when the new season starts next week, complete a key on +20 difficulty this week. Key levels will drop by four on the 21st, so that gives you a 16 key from the chest to start with next week (and a 15 the week after), which will be a big help as people learn the new Corrupted dungeon affix.
Gear from the weekly chest now scales up to 475 for dungeon level 15, so it's important to try and hit that each week as soon as possible. Your first potential 475 reward won't happen until you can open the chest on January 28, but Blizzard has announced double the usual Azerite reward from the chest on January 21, so it's very important to get a key in this week. (It makes up for the fact that the January 21 chest will contain no residuum).
New races, auction house revamp, and more
If you play a goblin or a worgen, your quests for your heritage armor are available this week, and require being level 120 and having Exalted reputation with your associated factions.
If you have Legendary weapons you earned in the past and would like to use their appearances, most are now available for transmogrification.
Mechagnomes and Vulpera open this week as allied races for the Alliance and Horde factions, respectively, and if you have exalted faction with Rustbolt Resistance or Voldunai, you can do the quests to unlock them (coincidentally, race and faction changes are currently on sale). Allied races and Pandaren can now be Death Knights, for more race-swapping fun.
The fancy new auction house is now live, so if you had consumable items posted for auction (basically, anything that stacks), you’ll need to repost them.
Finally, start the quest for the Shadowbarb Drone wasp mount, which gives you a toy, a pet, and the mount over 30 days. You begin the quest by unlocking Uldum Assaults (which you'll do as part of that intro quest), then interacting with the Voidtouched Egg during an Aqir assault of Uldum.
