How to get and upgrade the Onyx Annulet ring in patch 10.0.7

So it’s Dragonflight patch 10.0.7, and you’ve learned how to get to the Forbidden Reach, you’ve pored over the pets and mounts of the Reach, and you’ve learned both what and where the Zskera Vaults are, as well as how to get keys to sneak in and loot the place. But there’s one thing that really makes most World of Warcraft players’ eyes really light up: loot. Sweet, sweet loot. There’s no denying that the Onyx Annulet (that’s annulet, a term for a small ring in heraldry, not amulet) and its customizable series of Primordial Stones, all of which can collectively go up to item level 424, are a tempting reward for exploring the Forbidden Reach.

But how exactly do you get the ring and its stones, and how do you upgrade them?

The Onyx Annulet comes from an early Zskera Vaults quest

You’ll visit the Zskera Vaults fairly early into your trip to the Forbidden Reach as long as you’re following the quests. Once you finish the quests that unlock daily quests and world quests on the Forbidden Reach, look for the quest Helping Hand and Claw. The end of this chain will see you visiting your first Vault. Inside that Vault, Az, you’ll find an Unusual Ring lying on the floor. Pick it up to start the quest The Forgotten Ring, which will both reward your Onyx Annulet as well as giving you the follow-up quests that unlock facilities in Morqut Village that allow you to manipulate your Primordial Stones — unsocketing them from your ring and destroying unwanted ones for Dormant Primordial Fragments, specifically. Besides their uses for buying additional stones and upgrading existing stones — more on that below — you can also buy extra Onyx Annulets from Researcher Imareth in Morqut Village for 10 Dormant Primordial Fragments, so that you can set them up for different specs (one for healing, one for damage, for example) or different focuses (like doing area of effect damage instead of single target damage).

Primordial Stones come from events, vendors, and vaults

Now that you’ve gotten your Onyx Annulet, you’ve no doubt noticed that it only has Stamina on it — plus three empty sockets that will only accept Primordial Stones. But where do you get those? It turns out there’s quite a few options.

All Primordial Stones are in an elemental family — for example, Harmonic Music Stone and Obscure Pastel Stone are both Arcane stones, while Entropic Fel Stone and Raging Magma Stone are both Fire stones. Most of your stones will come from Condensed Magic items; while Condensed Arcane Magic won’t let you directly pick one of the four Arcane stones, it will have a 25% chance of turning into one of the Arcane stones — and if it’s not the right one, you can break it into Dormant Primordial Fragments.

One way to get Condensed Magic is by doing events in the Forbidden Reach. One type of event occurs every few hours and is called an Evolved Storm event, and if you’ve done any of the storm-related events in the Dragon Isles in 10.0 so far you’ll be used to the format of these. They always occur in front of the Froststone Vaults on the Forbidden Reach; help kill 5 elite elementals in the area, followed by a boss elemental, and you’ll receive rewards — Elemental Overflow, Leftover Elemental Slime, and one of four Condensed Magic items — Condensed Nature Magic from an air storm, Condensed Earth Magic from an earth storm, Condensed Fire Magic from a fire storm, and Condensed Frost Magic from a frost storm.

A second event that rewards Condensed Magic is the once-per-week Trial of Storms. If you’ve done the Trial of the Elements or Trial of the Flood in 10.0, you’ll be familiar with the concept — a chest spawns in the Frosted Spine of the Forbidden Reach, an event takes place a minute later, and if you succeed you get to open the chest. It’s only a little more involved than the 10.0 trials; you’ll need to kill Charged Drakelings and Charged Stormcrows to gain stacks of Electrical Charge, then use your extra action button to dump that charge into four Lightning Rods in the area, fully activating them at 25 stacks. This then summons a boss that, when defeated, opens the chest. The chest contains Elemental Overflow, a Zskera Vault Key, and a Condensed Magic stone.

Once you’ve started accumulating stones you don’t want, you can take them to Morqut Village and break them into six Dormant Elemental Fragments apiece. These have two uses; one of them is that Researcher Imareth in the village will take 10 of them off your hands for a Condensed Magic stone of your choice. If you want some of the non-element ones like Condensed Arcane Magic or Condensed Shadow Magic, this may be your easiest option.

Last but not least, you can find Primordial Stones by opening doors in the Zskera Vaults. Talking to Pathfinder Jeb will grant you access to the Vaults, where you can use all those keys you’ve been accumulating to pick up Primordial Stones — actual stones, not just Condensed Magic — and more Dormant Primordial Fragments. You could always strike it lucky and find exactly the stone you need in here!

Upgrading Primordial Stones requires Dormant Primordial Fragments and a lucky Jewelcrafter

Your basic Primordial Stones are item level 411. They can be upgraded twice to a max of item level 424 by using Unstable Elementium, a new Jewelcrafting pattern added in 10.0.7, and upgrading your gems will not only increase their effects, it will also raise the item level of your Onyx Annulet. Unstable Elementium is made from 10 Dormant Primordial Fragments as well as 25 Silken Gemdust, a byproduct of Jewelcrafting’s normal activities. You can just use the Elementium directly on a stone to upgrade it; note, however, that if you’ve already socketed it into your Annulet, you’ll have to use the facilities in Morqut Village to pluck the stone you want to upgrade back out of the ring first. Upgrading a stone that’s already in a socket doesn’t seem to work.

The pattern for Unstable Elementium requires 50 points in Dragon Isles Jewelcrafting and drops from Amephyst, a summonable rare on the Forbidden Reach. To summon Amephyst you’ll need a Crystal Tuning Fork, an item that also requires 50 points in Jewelcrafting; the pattern for this one can be purchased from Trader Hag’arth near the docks in Morqut Village for a whopping 10 Artisan’s Mettle. This item only requires a single reagent, a Crystal Fork, and here’s where your upgrade plans could hit a snag: the Crystal Fork is bind on pickup and can drop from anything in the Forbidden Reach. Depending on drop rates, getting this might be the bottleneck for being able to get to the Unstable Elementtium pattern.

Still, once you know (or are) a Jewelcrafter who has the ability to make Unstable Elementium, the loop becomes easy: get Primordial Stones, keep the ones you like, smash the ones you don’t, and use the fragments to either buy the stones you want or upgrade the ones you have. Upgrading the stones upgrades the ring. Easy as pie!

Should I still be using the Onyx Annulet in patch 10.1?

Maybe. For some classes, the Annulet is powerful enough to outshine almost anything you can get this tier. For others you’ll want to replace it as soon as you get a decent ring at a similar ilevel. We have a writeup on who should replace their Annulet when to give you more specific guidance.

Originally posted March 21, 2023. Updated June 9, 2023.