Everything you need to know about playing World of Warcraft: The War Within

World of Warcraft’s new expansion The War Within kicks off the three-expansion Worldsoul Saga, and while it will take a while to reach the end of this trilogy, The War Within expansion is now live, and Season 1 has just begun unlocking the game’s first big stretch of content.

Whether you’re just getting started or need more information on the expansion’s features, here’s what you need to know about The War Within.

Where to find things in Khaz Algar

A new continent means a new place to explore… and a new place to get lost. We’re spending the expansion in Khaz Algar, starting on the Isle of Dorn where the capital city of Dornogal is located. From there, we’ll be headed underground into the Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall, and Azj’kahet. While these zones are underground, they don’t feel as claustrophobic as Zaralek Caverns. Blizzard has knocked it out of the park with environmental design, creating underground zones that feel like vast worlds.

To help you navigate this new continent, here are some pointers on getting around:

• How to get around Dornogal
• Where to find Stormwind and Orgrimmar portals in Dornogal
• How to find and unlock fast travel points and portals around Khaz Algar
• Where to find Renown Quartermasters
• Where to find all Delves
• Where to find Pet Battle Masters

How to fly in Khaz Algar

Skyriding is what we’ll be calling Dragonriding moving forward, and it will be available everywhere using existing flying mounts. (Most, but not all, flying mounts are available for Skyriding.) You can toggle between traditional flying and Skyriding at any time from your mount collection panel (which is also where you’ll find your Skyriding talents, most of which carried over from Dragonflight).

You’ll have access to Skyriding almost immediately after arriving in Khaz Algar: just complete the introductory quests, and shortly after you land on the Isle of Dorn you’ll be able to take to the skies, without any additional unlock requirements. But regular flight — now called “steady flight” — will require you to complete a new Pathfinder achievement. Fortunately for people who don’t enjoy Skyriding, this is pretty easy to complete, but you’ll still have to spend a fair amount of time Skyriding before it’s available

How to do Delves in The War Within

Delves remind me of Torghast: they’re instanced content with 11 tiers of difficulty, and you can play them solo or in small groups of any composition. They’re relatively quick to complete at 10 to 15 minutes each, and they’ll offer meaningful rewards — with special Bountiful Delves offering even more loot. Delves will reward you with gear and loot similar to what you would get by doing dungeons or PVP, with rewards improving based on the difficulty tier — and they’ll unlock slots in the Great Vault, the first time this type of solo content has had rewards of this caliber.

You can check out the first three tiers while you’re leveling — I didn’t have much trouble with them, though Tier 3 took a little work as I geared up — but tier 4 and up are reserved for end game. Tier 4+ Delves are available now as part of Season 1 and give additional rewards with Undercoins, which can purchase a variety of rewards from Sir Finley in Dornogal.

There are 13 different Delves across Khaz Algar — here’s where you can find them — and you can venture into them with your friend Brann Bronzebeard. Every season, we’ll have a new companion to explore with, and who better to kickstart our adventures than Brann? As you progress, Brann will level up and learn new skills to help you through your Delves, and his level and abilities are account-wide.

And if none of that piqued your interest, Delves will also reward you with a custom dirigible mount.

Weekly events in The War Within

Perhaps one of the best things about The War Within is that you don’t have to do everything every week: instead, pick a couple of activities you like. You’ll get epic caches from the first two big events you complete a week, and smaller caches after that, so you can dedicate less time to the ground (and focus on the ones you find fun). Here are the major weekly events:

• Join a theater troupe at the Proscenium on the Isle of Dorn (it’s more tragic than it sounds)
• Awakening the Machine in The Ringing Deeps
• Spreading the Light in Hallowfall
• Chase rumors (and do world quests) for your favorite spider-friend in Azj-Kahet

There are a few other events, too, that don’t fall into the same rewards category:

• Hallowfall has a Fishing Derby every Saturday, if that’s your thing
• Worldsoul Memories, which you can find on the map after picking up a Radiant Echo from a Bountiful Delve
• Weekly Patron Crafting Orders as well as weekly profession quests (you can also get a few extra profession points once a month at the Darkmoon Faire)
• Special Assignments, world quests that unlock to offer extra rewards after you complete three World Quests in a zone with a Special Assignment available.

The War Within Season 1 has begun!

The War Within Season 1 started on September 10 with the new Nerub-ar Palace raid in Normal and Heroic difficulty, with Mythic difficulty following a week later. If you prefer smaller group challenges, Mythic dungeons — as well as heroic versions of the latest dungeon rotation — are also open, with Mythic+ next week.

The first wing of LFR also opens on September 10, with a new wing opening every week — it’s the fastest Blizzard has ever rolled out LFR, and should be a great way for players to check out the new raid. If you don’t want the hassle of LFR, however, the new Story Mode difficulty unlocks on September 17 for you to see the story of the raid without any of the challenges (or the people).

The World Boss rotation has also started, with one boss per zone, switching every week:

• Aggregation of Horrors (Ringing Deeps)
• Kordac the Dormant Protector (Isle of Dorn)
• Shurrai, Atrocity of the Undersea (Hallowfall)
• Orta, the Broken Mountain (Azj-Kahet)

The Matrix Catalyst is now live as well, and you can start converting gear to tier immediately (you have one charge as of September 10, with an additional charge every two weeks).

We have some advice on gearing up for casual players, as well as a full rundown on when content launches in Season 1.

The spider-filled Nerub-ar Palace is now open

The first raid in The War Within is Nerub-ar Palace, an 8-boss raid in Azj-Kahet, which will culminate in an encounter with Queen Ansurek. This will mean a lot of spiders, but The War Within also has an arachnophobia mode that will turn these spiders into much friendlier crabs.

This will be the first raid with the new Story difficulty. This lower difficulty level will allow players to tackle simplified raid encounters in small groups just to see the story. There’s no word on it coming to other raids (yet), but hopefully it will continue in future raids.

Nerub’ar Palace is now live in Normal, Heroic, and LFR (wing 1), with Mythic difficulty, Story difficulty, and LFR wing 2 following on September 17. The last wing of LFR releases the week after that, making for a super speedy LFR launch. We have details on the item level you’ll need to get in, the consumables you should stock up on, and where the raid entrance is.

And if you find the raid too challenging in these early days, all you have to do is keep at it. The Severed Strands buff gives you a power boost every week to help you conquer the new raid.

We also have a rundown of where to watch the Race to World First when it starts on September 17.

Updated Mythic+ system in The War Within

As always, the expansion will include changes a new dungeon rotation — with old dungeons that will also become available for Heroic difficulty — and a new Affix system. Here’s the dungeon rotation for The War Within Season 1:

• The Stonevault (new)
• Ara-Kara, City of Echoes (new)
• The Dawnbreaker (new)
• City of Threads (new)
• Siege of Boralus from Battle for Azeroth
• Mists of Tirna Scithe from Shadowlands
• The Necrotic Wake from Shadowlands
• Grim Batol from Cataclysm

Most of the Affixes we know and (maybe) love are going away: only Fortified and Tyrannical will remain. In their place are some interesting Xal’atath-themed Affixes.

Warbands are making most things account-wide

Almost everything is going account-wide in The War Within: all characters on your Battle.net account will be part of your Warband. These went live with pre-patch, but they’re going to come into their own during the expansion, letting us freely swap between characters for the first time.

Your characters will share:

• Most reputation; all Dragonflight and War Within reputations will be account-wide, and many older reputations will be gradually added to the Warband system. Here’s a rundown of the new factions in The War Within.
• Banks, via a new cross-character Warband Bank — though we’re just calling them Warbanks. You’ll be able to craft directly from the materials in your Warband Bank, making it easier than ever to do cross-character professions.
• Currency, with ability to transfer most currencies between characters.
• Some gear, which will be labeled Warbound Until Equipped. It’s a lot like the current Bind on Account system, but easier to use because you can simply drop it in your Warband bank.
• Delve progress; all progression you earn for Brann is account-wide, as is the progression on Delves themselves. This will give alts a boost, letting them tackle higher level Delves — if they’re up to it — with a more powerful Brann.
• Transmog collecting. Finally, all gear you pick up will be accessible to all of your characters as transmog — though current restrictions on which classes can transmog which items remain in place. Currently, doing quests only unlocks the items available to the character who does the quest, but Blizzard intends to change that

New talents with highly thematic Hero Specializations

From levels 71 to 80, you won’t get new talent points, but instead points for your Hero Specialization. Each spec will be able to choose one of two Hero Specializations to tailor their gameplay in certain ways, becoming a Farseer Shaman, a Shado-Pan Monk, or a Lightsmith Paladin.

Each of these new specializations adds unique class flavor in the form of new active and passive abilities — though not too many active abilities, as Blizzard is aware of the button bloat problem some classes already have, so the majority of these abilities are passive.

Here’s a list of every Hero Specialization with links to its talents in detail — check guides on Wowhead and Icy Veins for more details on which specialization to play while you’re leveling (and beyond).

Cross-realm guilds (and more improvements to help you play with friends)

We already have cross-faction guilds, and now we’re getting cross-realm guilds, so we can finally play with our friends without any (or at least not many) barriers.

Cross-faction guilds were added during Dragonflight, but more improvements for cross-faction play are coming later in TWW. Cross-faction queuing will be added in a future patch, which will finally make it possible to do Timewalking, holiday events, and other queue-only activities with friends of both factions.

New Earthen Allied Race in The War Within

The Earthen will be joining the game as an Allied Race for both Alliance and Horde, giving Horde players the long-awaited ability to play a Dwarf (or at least Dwarf-adjacent) character. Also they are very shiny, but if you’re more in it for story than looks, they also have a long history in Azeroth.

This looks to be one of the easiest Allied Races to unlock, as you don’t need to do much more than play through the initial War Within campaign before creating an Earthen of your own, and you can unlock them right now. Here’s what you need to know about unlocking the Earthen.

Will there be other Allied Races in The War Within? Maybe. There are already rumors that the Harronir, a troll-like race we’ll meet in Azj-Kahet, who are could be a future Allied Race.

What’s the story behind The War Within? (And will we finally deal with that sword?)

Azeroth is crying out in a “Radiant Song” some of the world’s heroes have been called by — though Alleria says her visions feature “no radiance, no song.” The main characters of the expansion appear to be Thrall, Alleria, Jaina, and Anduin, who feature in key art and trailers so far.

While the initial War Within trailer suggests Thrall and Anduin are finally planning to do something about Sargeras’ sword (sorry, what sword?), Khadgar, Jaina, and Alleria are trying to learn more about this Radiant Song.

At the end of Dragonflight — in patch 10.2.7, Dark Heart — Alleria is tasked with chasing down a void artifact (the aforementioned Dark Heart). She doesn’t find it, but she does find out that Xal’atath has it.

We don’t know all of the details from there, as Blizzard is keeping cinematics from The War Within under wraps until the expansion releases. But whispers from somewhere are drawing us all into something dangerous, and Xal’atath is the one pulling the strings. Well, I can’t say any of us are surprised.

Beyond the main cast, we will be introduced to Earthen society in Khaz Algar (in advance of being able to roll our earn Earthen after finishing the game’s main story campaign), but the Earthen already have a long history in the game’s story. The Arathi will also feature heavily in the Hallowfall zone.

While we’re first time visitors to Khaz Algar, Xal’atath is not, and we know she’s been stirring things up on the island for quite a while now… things that we’re going to have to deal with throughout The War Within’s storyline. The cinematic above offers a good look at where the Nerubians are as we head down to visit them in Azj-Kahet.

Need to go back a little further to brush up on your Warcraft lore? The video above is a great recap of all the story threads coming together in The War Within.

Originally published June 11, 2024; updated September 15, 2024.