The best ways to gear up alts in Dragonflight as a solo player

If you play Dragonflight mostly solo, gearing up a character can be tough, whether you’re just finishing your journey to level 70 for the first time, or you’re about to gear up your fifth Warrior alt. Sure, you can go ahead and do a dungeon, but if you’re not about that pug life, there are still lots of options for you to get geared up.

Gear up by earning Renown

Renown is more or less an alternate way of saying Reputation — do things for the four factions we meet in Dragonflight, and they’ll award you with a wide variety of cool stuff. The stuff varies based on the flavor of each faction, though each has a couple slots to fill. Most of them have unique events and activities to keep an out out for, such as the Community Feast event with the Iskaara Tuskarr, which will give you a bag with a chance to drop, among other items, gear that scales from ilevel 350 all the way up to 382, depending on your current item level.

Each Renown faction also offers one piece of 376 gear and one piece of 389 gear in each armor type via vendors. For example, the Maruuk Centaur will give you 376 boots and 389 chests. You may likely breeze through the rest of this guide by the time you get enough Renown to get this gear, but since many activities along the way also get you Renown, it’s good to be aware of early on, especially if a particular character is always lagging behind in a particular slot. For instance, if you, like me, have a hard time finding plate shoulders you’ll want to make friends with the Iskaara Tuskarr.

There are a huge number of ways to grind out your Renown in Dragonflight, but you’ll generally bump into them along the way, so it’s good to be aware of the rewards early.

Gear up with World Quests

This is likely the easiest, most straightforward option, but it comes with some caveats. World Quests rotate on either a weekly or a three day reset schedule, and they scale with your overall item level, ranging from ilevel 340 to 382. This means an item from a World Quest might not be an upgrade until you cross an ilevel threshold, which can be frustrating. But I’ve found them helpful for collecting items like trinkets and rings that are otherwise very hard to get.

One notable World Quest which isn’t technically solo, but you can do outside a group, is the World Boss that spawns every week. In addition to the World Quest associated with it, you also have a shot at some ilevel 395 gear.

You can also get Titan Training Matrixes from World Quests, which are very useful for the next category.

Gear up with crafted gear and item recrafting

By the time my second character was level 70, they had already crafted for themselves a set of ilevel 343 blues that made it possible for them to step into Heroic dungeons. This included weapons. This is in part thanks to the way Recrafting works, allowing me to upgrade a couple of ilevel 300 pieces to 343, while also crafting gear that I could put on as soon as I got to 70. I even upgraded that 343 2h axe to 376 recently with a Titan Training Matrix IV.

Now, I’m not arguing that crafting is perfect or that it’ll serve you perfectly. Most of my crafted gear has since been upgraded with World Quest rewards, Dungeon drops, and even quest rewards from Weekly Quests (plus a nice trinket from a World Boss) but crafting is a significant way to get past the first gearing hurdle. The exact crafting profession you’ll need depends on what armor type your character generally wears — Tailoring for clothies, Leatherworking for your various leather (and in some cases, mail) wearers, and of course Blacksmithing for the clanky crowd. And of course, if you’re looking to make rings and neck pieces (plus cut your own gems) Jewelcrafting is a really nice profession.

The relative scarcity of Titan Training Matrix drops means you won’t be popping all of your gear up, much less the rare materials for the more advanced items that can come with significant materials costs. If you’re trying to hit the item level required to start running Heroics, they can be a real help.

Gear up with PVP Battlegrounds, Arenas, and more

This one really depends on your own personal affinity for and enjoyment of PVP content, but the fact remains, there is gear available here that can serve you well both in and out of fighting other players. There are crafted PVP sets available, the various Crimson Combatant’s gear which ranges up to ilevel 343 — the plans to craft these items drop in the Victorious Contender’s Strongbox, available as rewards for running Random Battlegrounds or  for purchase in Valdrakken from Honor Quartermaster Selthrex. They can also be bought on the Auction House as they are Bind on Equip, and they cover cloth, leather, mail, plate and even ring and necklace slot items.

You can also of course spend Honor or Conquest, gained via various kinds of PVP activities. Victory in quick match PVP offer both Honor and Conquest points (usually significantly more Honor than Conquest, but both are there) while rated offers significantly greater rewards. There are also weekly quests that reward Conquest and Honor points from Malicia, also in Valdrakken not very far from Selthrex.

• Random Battlegrounds offer 300 Honor and 70 Conquest per win, with a 50% bonus if there’s an Enlistment Bonus for your faction, so 450 Honor and 105 Conquest per win.
• Random Epic Battlegrounds give 450 Honor and 110 Conquest, Enlistment Bonus increases to 675 Honor and 165 Conquest.
• Arena Skirmish wins offer 160 Honor and 25 Conquest.
• The weekly Brawl offers 160 Honor and 15 Conquest, with an Enlistment Bonus bump to 240 Honor and 22 Conquest.
• Being victorious in a Rated Solo Shuffle match rewards 600 Honor and 200 Conquest. Unlike all other forms of Rated PVP. you can queue for these without a group, making them the primary way to pursue Rated PVP solo.
• 2v2 Arena matches, despite only rewarding 200 Honor and 60 Conquest, are a quicker way to farm both as they are significantly faster than a Solo Shuffle.
• 3v3 Arena matches offer 250 Honor and 85 Conquest, still likely faster than Solo Shuffle.
• Finally, rated 10v10 Battlegrounds reward 850 Honor and 260 Conquest.

In addition to spending Honor and Conquest to purchase gear, it can also be upgraded. Honor gear begins at ilevel 340 and can be upgraded 5 times to a PVE ilevel of 366 (but upgrades to ilevel 411 in PVP automatically and cannot be increased over that level) while Conquest gear starts at ilevel 382 and can be upgraded 9 times, also using Honor. This also only affects the item’s ilevel in PVE content — it remains fixed at 424 in PVP.

Finally, if you level using War Mode, there’s a set of gear available from Fieldmaster Emberath, standing right next to Malicia in Valdrakken, that rewards ilevel 366 gear at level 70 that scales up to 408 in Arenas and Battlegrounds. This gear is purchased using Bloody Tokens, available via killing other players and completing Weekly Quests while in War Mode. Then, if you want to scale up your gear for more power, Malicia herself sells the ilevel 385 version, scaling up to 421 in Arenas and BG’s, which will be competitive even against Conquest PVP gear. Unlike the Honor/Conquest gear, these do not have purchasable upgrades for PVE level — you get the 386 version by using your 366 gear and Trophy of Strife from a Weekly Quest given by Seknar, also close by Malicia.

The pros and cons of gearing through PVP in this fashion are pretty explicable — they require you to enjoy PVP enough to engage in it regularly, and getting the best possible gear out of it will require a fairly significant time investment (as well as at least reasonable skill at it). But you can get gear for every slot, and even improve the War Mode, Honor, and Conquest versions to be stronger in PVE content, so getting a few supplementary pieces via PVP for an alt is definitely an attractive option. Especially since a lot of this — random BGs, War Mode and even Rated Solo Shuffle — can be pursued entirely solo, meaning you’re not at the mercy of anyone else’s schedule to reap the rewards.

Gearing up with Primal Storms events

We’ve talked about Elemental Storms already, but it bears repeating in the context of gearing up your alts. Similar to the War Mode gear and its upgraded version, Primal Storm gear is purchased from Mythressa in Valdrakken at ilevel 359, and then an upgraded ilevel 385 version can be purchased from Rethelshi in the same location. The ilevel 359 gear costs Elemental Overflow farmed from mobs during the Primal Storm events, while the ilevel 385 gear comes from Storm Signets, gained via quest turn-ins from items dropped by random mobs during the Elemental Storms.

Elemental Storm 359 gear

• 200 Elemental Overflow for Bracers, Belts and various Cloaks.
• 350 Elemental Overflow for Shoulders, Boots and Gloves.
• 500 Elemental Overflow for Helmet, Breastplate and Legs
• 300 Elemental Overflow for Shields and Off-Hand Items
• 400 Elemental Overflow for 1h weapons like Warglaives, Axes, Maces, Daggers and so on — there are Int and Agi Weapons, so don’t panic, Shaman and Agi folks.
• 800 Elemental Overflow for 2h Weapons, including a gun for Hunters, caster staves, and a 2h sword with Int for you Holy Paladins out there.

Elemental Storm 385 gear – Please note, you will have to trade in the original ilevel 359 item to them, as well as the following cost in Storm Sigils

• 5 Storm Sigils to upgrade Bracers, Belt and Cloak items
• 7 Storm Sigils to upgrade Shoulders, Boots and Gloves
• 10 Storm Sigils for Helmet, Breastplate and legs
• 5 Storm Sigils for Shields and Off-Hand items
• 7 Storm Sigils for 1h weapons
• 14 Storm Sigils for 2h weapons (yes, even that sweet caster sword for you Holy Pallies, and maybe Windwalker Monks)

Using one or indeed several of these methods — or all of them, if you have the time — you can easily hit ilevel 342, the benchmark allowing you to queue for Heroic dungeons. Given the sliding ilevel nature of many of these rewards, it could even carry you to the minimum ilevel for Vault of the Incarnates LFR, 359. Whatever your next step is, hopefully you found this helpful.