Don’t forget that you can upgrade your Legendary gear (and upgrades are starting to get pretty affordable)

As a person who just made his Legendary I often forget this, but please don’t forget that you can and should upgrade your Legendary items in Shadowlands. The base Legendary you craft is ilevel 190, which is pretty good — slightly below Normal Castle Nathria gear. But you can upgrade it multiple times, providing you have enough Soul Ash and a higher ilevel base item to upgrade it.

If you were excited by Legendaries early in the expansion, but were put off by the high effort of leveling professions or the high price of base items on the auction house, prices has dropped significantly since launch day. Rank 1 Legendary base items are extremely affordable at this point, and Rank 2 and 3 aren’t out of reach for the average player, it’s the perfect time to look into upgrades.

So how do you get these upgrades? It’s pretty similar to how you’d craft a Legendary in the first place.

Upgrading your Legendary requires a new base item plus Soul Ash

The base items you need to make and upgrade legendaries come from crafting professions — Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring, and Jewelcrafting. These items come in different ranks (up to 4) which represents their ilevel, and when you initially craft a Legendary it can be of any rank you have the crafting materials for. But if you craft a Legendary at rank 1, you aren’t stuck at rank 1 forever: by bringing a new base item (and some Soul Ash) to the Runecarver, you can upgrade your current Legendary to a higher ilevel.

I don’t want to say it’s simple — unless you’ve maxed crafting on all four professions, you’ll probably have to buy some or all of your base items from the Auction House, which is basically the means that Professions generate income this expansion. But prices on the various items have decreased significantly over the last couple of weeks, to the point where a Rank 2 or 3 Shadowghast piece (as an example) can be as low as 5k gold depending on your server.

Keep running Torghast if you want to upgrade

The main thing you’ll need to upgrade your Legendary gear is Soul Ash from Torghast. Hitting the weekly cap on Soul Ash, you’ll be able to craft a Legendary fairly quickly, but the cost to craft or upgrade a Legendary increases with each rank. We have a list of the costs for upgrading a legendary in our post about Soul Ash, but I’ll reproduce it below for your benefit:

• Rank 1 to Rank 2 (Item Level 210): 750 Soul Ash
• Rank 2 to Rank 3 (Item Level 225): 1200 Soul Ash
• Rank 3 to Rank 4 (Item Level 235): 1950 Soul Ash

So if you’ve already crafted a Rank 1 Legendary, it’ll cost you 750 Soul Ash to get it to rank 2, in addition to the cost of a rank 2 base item.

If you’re thinking of scrimping and saving to start with the highest level base item, we don’t really recommend it. A rank 1 legendary offers a lot of benefits, and you can improve your legendary from there at a pretty minor cost. Start with whatever rank Legendary you can afford so you get the benefit of its power — then move up from there with upgrades.

The Soul Ash cost to upgrade and craft is the same no matter what level you’re making. If you’re going from rank 1 to rank 2, it costs 750 Soul Ash. But if you’re upgrading from rank 1 to rank 3, it costs 1950 Soul Ash, so you won’t save any Soul Ash by skipping over ranks. And with the cost of base items dropping, you won’t save much gold, either.

And that’s basically what you need to know to upgrade your legendary items in Shadowlands. With the amount of Soul Ash it takes to get to rank 4, you’ll need to keep running Torghast every week if you want to max out your Legendary — but even if you’re content to plod along and earn a mere 600 or so Soul Ash a week, you’ll eventually earn enough to upgrade.

Don’t leave your legendary at 190 when you don’t have to, because this is an easy gear upgrade.