How to get Dreaming Crests for gear upgrade in patch 10.2

The gear upgrade system is back for players again in World of Warcraft‘s patch 10.2, and Blizzard has applied several quality of life upgrades to it this time around — most notably, Dreaming Crests, the new items you’ll need alongside Flightstones to upgrade gear, are a currency instead of an item. You also will be capable of trading Crests upwards (say, from Drake’s Dreaming Crests to Wyrm’s Dreaming Crests) once you hit certain gearing thresholds that indicate that the older Crest is of no use to you, meaning that a broader range of activities will still remain at least somewhat relevant, no matter what your gear level is — as opposed to patch 10.1, where sometimes those Whelping Crest Fragments just kept taking up a slot in your bag, no matter how much you’d outgrown the gear they could upgrade. Last but not least, there are no more Fragments — you’ll now receive whole Crests, although in greater numbers; instead of receiving 15 Fragments that you have to combine into a Crest, you’ll just get 15 Crests. Easy as pie!

• Whelpling’s Dreaming Crests, the lowest tier of Crest, can be obtained from the Amidrassil raid on Raid Finder difficulty, Mythic+ dungeons up to +5, and according to the tooltip, “many outdoor activities.” This likely means that, much like in 10.1, Whelpling’s Dreaming Crests will be the default reward for world quests and may drop from some of the same sources that drop them now, such as the Aiding the Accord weekly quest or digging in the dirt.
• Drake’s Dreaming Crests, the second tier of Crest, can be obtained from Amirdrassil on Normal difficulty, Mythic+ dungeons from +6 to +10, and “some outdoor activities.” That likely refers to the new weekly reputation quest, A Worthy Ally: Dream Wardens, which has 15 Drake’s Dreaming Crests in the bag of rewards for its completion. On the 10.2 PTR, they also seemed to be found in paragon rewards, the bags of goodies that you obtain for contining to obtain Renown with Dragonflight factions even after maxing out your Renown track, such as the Brimming Dragonscale Expedition Supply Pack. Finally, once you’ve reached an item level of 450 in every gear slot and obtained the Dreaming of Drakes achievement, you will be able to spend 90 Whelpling’s Dreaming Crests to buy 15 Drake’s Dreaming Crests from Vaskarn in the Emerald Dream.
• Wyrm’s Dreaming Crests, the third tier, can only be obtained from a few places — Amirdrassil on Heroic difficulty, or Mythic+ dungeons from +11 to +15. However, much like with Dreaming of Drakes, once you reach an item level of 463 in every gear slot, you will be rewarded with Dreaming of Wyrms and the ability to spend 90 Drake’s Dreaming Crests to buy 15 Wyrm’s Dreaming Crests.
• Aspect’s Dreaming Crests are the highest tier of Crest in patch 10.2 and are rewarded from the highest tier of PVE activity in WoW — they’re obtainable from Mythic difficulty Amirdrassil, as well as Mythic+ dungeons from +16 on up. There’s also a trade-up mechanism, just like the lower crests; once you hit an item level of 476 in every slot, you’ll be officially Dreaming of the Aspects and able to trade 90 Wyrm’s Dreaming Crests for 15 Aspect’s Dreaming Crests.

One thing worth noting is that there is a seasonal cap on the number of Crests that you can obtain. This cap will go up each week — so if you miss out on one week, you don’t have to worry about losing out on overall power compared to someone who had more time to play — but it also means that no one can burn themselves out grinding Crests early on for item level gains. However, the trade-up mechanism after you reach each high-water item level mark ignores that cap; you can be fully capped on Wyrm’s Dreaming Crests for the week, for instance, and still be capable of spending Drake’s Dreaming Crests to buy more.

Lastly, while we don’t have hard numbers like we do with the Mythic+ cutoff levels for each Crest, Blizzard has confirmed that PVP players will also be using the same upgrade system in 10.2, and as a result both Flightstones and Dreaming Crests will drop from rated PVP activities, with higher-rating activities rewarding higher-level Crests.