How to get and upgrade gear from Korthia daily quests

I’ll say this up front — I hope you end up liking the Archivist’s Codex and their new resource, Catalogued Research, because you’re going to be spending a lot of it in patch 9.1, thanks to the incoming catch up gear mechanics that will be coming from Korthia in the upcoming patch. Not only can you acquire the gear by spending Stygia on a special token, you can also upgrade the various armor pieces from ilevel 200 (where they start) to ilevel 233 by spending Catalogued Reseatch. Of course, this requires not just ever-ascending amounts of that currency, it also requires you to progress in the Korthia storyline and increase your Renown — nobody gives away gear for free in Shadowlands.

While it is time consuming, ilevel 233 gear is the level of gear that normal Kel’Thuzad and Sylvanas drop in the Sanctum of Domination raid, which is fairly respectable for gear that’s intended for players who are either catching up after time away, or who never intend to raid in the first place. So how do you get it?

• Your War Chests from completing Covenant Assaults do have a chance to drop a piece of gear.
• Buy Korthian Armaments for 1000 Stygia from the Quartermaster of the new Death’s Advance faction, Duchess Mynx. You have to be friendly with them for this.
• Do the Weekly Quest for the Death’s Advance, Shaping Fate — it rewards a Death’s Advance War Chest, which always contains a piece of gear.
• There’s a chance the Daily Quests in Korthia will reward a piece of gear.

So we know how to start. But that just gets us ilevel 200 gear, and I know we all want to know how to upgrade that gear to ilevel 233. Well, it won’t come cheap.

Adding up the cost of Catalogued Research

First off, as I said before, it costs Catalogued Research from the Archivist’s Codex, in ascending costs — going from ilevel 200 to ilevel 207 gear costs you 500 Catalogued Research, ilevel 207 to 213 costs 750, ilevel 213 to 220 costs 1500, ilevel 220 to 226 costs 2500, and ilevel 226 to 233 costs 4000 CR.

That’s per piece. A fully upgraded piece of gear will cost you 9250 Catalogued Research in total. So again, I really hope you like Catalogued Research.

However, in addition to the CR cost, you will also have to progress in the Archivist’s Reach storyline. The first three tiers, up to 4/6 upgrade, will require you to finish the Interrupt the Interrogations questline for Scholar Roh-Sur. F9r ilevel 226, upgrade level 5/6, you will have to be at 61 Renown, and get a Research Report: Adaptive Alloy from good ol’ Scholar Roh-Sur. Finally, at upgrade level 6/6, item level 233, you need 75 Renown and Scholar Roh-Sur’s help again as you need a Research Report: First Alloy.

So while this is certainly something you can do, we aren’t going to be seeing people rocking full 233 from Korthia catch-up quests in the first week of patch 9.1. Raiding and Mythic+ dungeons will be a lot faster than the catch up in terms of getting higher level gear, and they’ll reward higher ilevel pieces — the Korthia pieces max out at 233, normal mode’s highest ilevel pieces.

Still, getting a bunch of ilevel 200 pieces through solo play as a catch up isn’t bad, and granting ilevel 233 with significant effort gives us non-serious raiders something to do for a while.