How to maximize your Torghast score for a perfect five-Gem score

With Shadowlands patch 9.1 live, Torghast has gotten some big changes. There’s a new scoring system, with points that the game displays as Gems, and getting a good score is now how you progress. Layer 9 was unlocked immediately on patch day, but to open Layer 10, players needed four Gems — or a score of 160+. And once players have enough Tower Knowledge to unlock Adamant Vaults, players will need a “Flawless” five Gem run — or a score of 200+.

If you’re jumping into Torghast post-patch, the new system takes some getting used to. How are these points earned? And how does someone make the most of the new scoring system? Let’s take a look at where the points come from and how to earn them so you can get the best Torghast scores.

Most of your Torghast score comes from killing everything quickly

There are three main scoring categories for Torghast: Completion, Empowered Bonus, and Time. Focusing on these three and successfully maximizing these will hit 160 points right there, no extra activities required. Of course, that’s easier said than done.

Completion is the easiest and most straightforward way to earn points. This is a percentage based how much you’ve done in the run. That includes:

• Killing mobs and bosses
• Destroying Ashen Phylacteries (so smash all of those pots!)
• Freeing the Soul Remnants (which also conveniently give you a main stat buff)

One percent Completion equals one point, for a maximum of 100 points. Do everything, don’t let a single maw rat escape, and you’ll max the points for this category. When leaving a floor for the next, it will show you how much of the floor was completed, for an overall sense how the run is going.

Empowered Bonus is a new mechanic, and it can be a great buff to help you finish Torghast when used correctly. You’ll see a bar to the right that fills up as you progress, and at a certain point, a button appears in the middle of the screen. Press the button and the entire party receives a buff granting bonus Leech and Haste for 30 seconds. During that time, any points you earn are doubled, so you can really bump up your score. If a point is earned due to percentage completion, there’s now another point earned as an Empowered Bonus. If there’s a point earned as bonus category — more on that later — it’s also another point here. The way to maximize this is to have a tank gather up a whole lot of mobs, have the group soften them up, then hit Empowered and kill the whole group while destroying Phylacteries. Then grab and kill another group within the seconds left. Doing this every Empowered period will add big numbers to your score.

Time is a tricky category. Basically, you gotta go fast. There’s a par time for each floor, but this varies. Par time is based on the size of the floors, the Layer, and the number of elites, which can change because the floors are randomly generated. The par time isn’t stated until the run is completed, so it’s a bit of a guessing game. Hitting the par time earns 30 Points, and beating it earns extra points (up to a maximum of 50 points). Going over Par time earns fewer points, to a minimum of 0 points. Expect an average par between 17 and 26 minutes — aim for about 20 minutes per floor to maximize your time score.

Buff up your Torghast score with these bonus categories

While the above are the primary ways you’ll earn points, there are quite a number of ways to earn extra points in a Torghast run. If every possible bonus point was earned, it would add an extra 155 points to your run, so there’s plenty of opportunity to max out your score and snag all five Gems.

Each bonus category adds 5 to 20 points, but each category is also all-or-nothing. Either you earn them or you don’t — you won’t get partial credit. These points won’t show up during a run, only on the final scoring screen. If you click for more details, it will show which bonus categories you received and how many points. Mousing over the category name will tell you what you did to earn the points. The categories are:

• Annihilator — Floor 5 boss killed in under 20 seconds — 20 points
• Collector — Collect at least 30 Anima Powers — 10 points
• Daredevil — Defeat 2 Elites within 10 seconds of each other — 10 points
• Executioner — Floor 5 boss killed in under 40 seconds — 10 points
• Highlander — No duplicate Anima Powers — 15 points
• Hoarder — Defeat the floor 5 boss with at least 500 Phantasma remaining, this scales up with the size of your party — 10 points
• Hunter — No elite enemies reached 4 stacks of Unnatural Power — 15 points
• Pauper — No epic Anima Powers — 10 points
• Pillager — 90% of Ashen Phylacteries destroyed, need this for the 100% Completion anyway — 5 points
• Plunderer — Open treasure chests, chests aren’t always available though — 5 points
• Reinforced — Collect at least 5 Obleron Armaments of the same type — 10 points
• Rescuer — Assisted a denizen of Torghast, these champions aren’t always available though — 10 points
• Robber — Robbed a Broker, use of a Ravenous Anima Cell on one of the vendors — 5 points
• Savior — All Soul Remnants freed, need this for the 100% Completion anyway — 10 points
• Trapmaster — No trap damage taken, can earn this if there were no traps in the run — 10 points

Other tips for maximizing your score in Torghast

Don’t die! Blizzard may have removed the death counter and the Tarragrue, but each death deducts 20 points from your final score. You could potentially earn a score of 0 with enough deaths. Though the Vessel of Unfortunate Spirits purchased from Ve’nari does ensure a player’s first death doesn’t count against the score, you should still play with care. Going a little slower may mean you lose points on time, but ensures you don’t lose these 20 points from a dearth (or repeated deaths).

Level up your Box of Many Things. The Box of Many Things is a talent tree to help you out. It offers perks that can make the run faster, reduce Torments, increase Empowered time, and more that will help you do better and earn a higher score. There’s no reason to aim for five Gems until you’ve unlocked Adamant Vaults, which is in Row 3 of the Box of Many Things — so you don’t have to rush for a top score right away.

Run with friends. Or if you don’t have friends that want to run Torghast (or none of them are online), hit up the Group Finder. Especially early on in the Chains of Domination patch, a lot of players are queuing up. Depending on class, spec, and familiarity with Torghast, it may be easier or harder for you — but generally a group is an asset. A tank is great for rounding up mobs, especially to kill two elites in rapid succession for the bonus. However, if you want to burn the boss down within 20 seconds, you need a lot of DPS. While it’s flexible, for group size or solo, Torghast seems to benefit from the standard tank/heals/3DPS dungeon group.

Maximizing your Torghast score basically comes down to: keep moving, destroy everything, and play enough that you’re familiar with level layouts to help you speed through. And though there are a lot of bonus points on offer, you can get the easiest bonuses by having a good way to avoid traps, not duplicating Anima powers, not taking epic powers, and try not to spending your Phantasma. It can be difficult not to spend Phantasma on the newly added transmog shoulders, so it may be worth losing those ten points to walk away with a couple pairs of those. Doesn’t looking better help you play better? We think so.

With this advice in mind, hopefully u’ll be able to head into Torghast for a full five Gem run.