Patch 11.0.7 brings welcome changes to the higher end of the gearing path in World of Warcraft

By this point, a lot of World of Warcraft players have done a great deal of gearing up during Season 1 of The War Within, but there are still a lot of walls being hit by players at the high end — achievements with some silly requirements, absurd amounts of crests needed to craft the highest tier of crafted item, and overtly punitive crest losses from failing a Mythic+ timer. Well, it looks like Patch 11.0.7 is set to change pretty much all of these, with four major changes coming to the crest system alongside Siren Isle and the rest of the patch.

Blizzard’s view is still that Gilded Crests and Myth-track gear are the pinnacle of the gear in a given season, and are meant to be rare, but in some cases they’re too rare. The fixes they are implementing fall into four broad categories.

Currency rewards for Mythic+ now scale with keystone level, and depletions are less punitive

In 11.0.7, the amount of all currencies — gold, Crests, and Valorstones — dropped in a Mythic+ dungeon will scale with the keystone level. Now, exactly what this means for gold and Valorstones remains to be seen, but a +8 dungeon now drops 12 Gilded Crests if you beat the timer, or 8 if you don’t. That’s another part of this change — rather than losing 7 Crests from your reward if you miss the timer in a Mythic+ dungeon, you now only lose 4. Thia means that (for example) making the timer on a +8 rewards the same amount of gilded crests as missing the timer on a +10, but the +10 will put better loot in your Great Vault if you complete it — meaning that now, even if you aren’t necessarily going to make the timer, players aren’t incentivized to immediately bail on a dungeon that’s going to miss. Considering that Blizzard has recently taken action to stop people from repeatedly leaving keys as a form of griefing, you can see this as both reinforcement along the same line as well as a bone thrown to players who might want that great gear from a +10 but not always feel pressured to complete it in time.

Fewer Gilded Harbinger Crests required to purchase a Nascent Gilded Harbinger Crest

Prior to 11.0.7, if you wanted a crafted item to potentially be item level 636, you needed to purchase a Nascent Gilded Harbinger Crest (to make the Enchanted Gilded Harbinger Crest) for a whopping 90 Gilded Crests. That was a heck of a lot to ask, both in terms of raw resources and opportunity cossts – that’s 6 upgrades of high Hero and Myth-track gear that you’re passing up on to make one item.

In 11.0.7, that price is getting halved to a more reasonable 60 Gilded Crests. Now you’re losing out fewer upgrades to get yourself a great crafted item, and they’re much more within reach for alts, as well.

Trade-up bag costs being reduced to 45 Crests

Speaking of 90 Crests: right now, if you want to upgrade Crests using a “trade-up” bag (such as converting Weathered Harbinger Crests to a Triumphant Satchel of Carved Harbinger Crests), it requires 90 Crests, no matter what level — 90 Weathered to get 15 Carved, 90 Carved to get 15 Runed, and 90 Runed to get 15 Gilded.

In 11.0.7, that cost is being halved across the board to 45 Crests for a trade-up bag. This will make it much easier to buy these bags, especially for characters who may be sitting on plenty of runes they can’t do anything with anymore, or alts who are rapidly outgrowing gear; you can roll things up into better Crests much more easily this way. (Also, if you really wanted to make use of your idle time, you could find a “hyper spawn” of one of those glowing orbs that give you a few Weathered Crests, turn on Steady Flight, and just sit in that orb if you wanted. It’s only 405 Weathered Crests to get 15 Gilded Crests, after all.)

Harbinger of the Gilded requirements eased

Another thing that really will benefit alts is the decreased requirements for Harbinger of the Gilded. Previously, this achievement required some unintuitive activities to obtain it, like rolling on and wearing gear you may not have actually wanted, because it required a high water mark of item level 639 in every slot — which means Gilded Crest crafted gear didn’t even count!

Now, Harbinger of the Gilded will only require a 636 item in each slot, so even characters who have a variety of crafted gear will be able to obtain it.

Changes set a foundation for Season 2

Blizzard has also added in a follow-up blue post that these changes are a starting point for Season 2 of The War Within, as well. It’s nice to see that rather than just hotfixes for the end of the season, these are a new, permanently-tweaked foundation to the gear upgrade system to build upon the next major leg of the expansion.