Everything you need to know about Delves in The War Within Season 2

The addition of Delves as soloable end game content in The War Within has been largely welcomed by the playerbase, so it’s no surprise that we’ll be getting some new Delves, refreshes on old Delves, and other tweaks and improvements when patch 11.1 drops on February 25.

The new Delves are Sidestreet Sluice, which will take us through the vivid green sewers of Undermine, and Excavation Site 9, which appears to be an area where some enterprising individuals are attempting to harvest black blood. There will also be some tweaks to existing Delves and mechanics. One of the changes I’m most looking forward to is adjustments to sporebits in Fungal Folly — I am pretty fed up with those exploding virus-mushrooms, thank you very much.

The behind-the-scenes-code for which Delves are bountiful has also been altered to ensure that each instance gets its turn. This should reduce the number of times that players see the same Delve in a particular zone offer the best rewards for what seems like several days in a row.

There will also be some tweaks to the consumable map items that drop at the conclusion of a Delve and increase the rewards for the next one. The drop rates on these caused many players to suffer from RNG whiplash, so you’ll now be capped at one per week but each Delve you run will have an increased chance of rewarding one.

Get out of the way, Brann…again

Our intrepid spelunking partner, Brann Bronzebeard, is back for season 2. This time he’s ready to absorb some damage, as you’ll be able to assign Brann to a Tank role in addition to the Healer and Damage roles that he could take on in season 1. The huge, game-breaking issue that I have with this is that he will be tanking with a shield and pistol, and there is currently no avenue for me to do that too. In any case, healer players should now have a much easier time completing Delves without committing an enormous chunk of time to facepalming at Brann’s antics.

All of our intrepid dwarf co-spelunker’s curios have been destroyed, so you’ll need to collect all new goblin-themed ones from Delve treasure rooms. I can’t decide if my favorite of these is the Comically Large Magnet or the Automatic Footbomb Dispenser.

Brann’s level cap is being increased to 80, but you won’t lose your progress — he’ll start season 2 with the same level you’ve raised him to in the first round of delving. If you didn’t quite hit the season 1 cap of 60, the amount of experience needed to earn those levels will be reduced once we head to Undermine so you’ll have an easy time catching up.

Delving for new shinies

If your main motivation for running Delves is the rewards, then good news — there’s a treasure trove of new stuff to collect in season 2. The new mount, the Delver’s Gob-Trotter, is essentially the Delver’s Dirigible with a barn-red paint job. You will be able to collect a series of customizations for it, just like the dirigible, so let’s hope that we see some new and interesting ways to make this mount distinct from the previous iteration. You won’t need to do anything special to earn the mount, as Brann will hand you the keys as part of your initial catch-up conversation once patch 11.1 goes live.

There is a new track for the Delver’s Journey currency that is awarded from completing Delves. The rewards are similar to last season — mount customization schematics, the ability to purchase discounted Coffer Keys — but the final reward is one of the new Warband Campsite items that allows you to change up your login screen and assign your characters to a home base in Nightfall Sanctum.

Given that one of the major motivators for delving is the high-end gear, there are some tweaks and resets to the difficulty and rotations. Everyone will be starting back on Tier 4, and your Restored Coffer Keys won’t carry over. Delves above Tier 3 will be more difficult, and Delves above Tier 8 are no longer just for achievements and bragging rights — they will drop increasingly more higher-level upgrade currency in the form of Runed Undermined Crests and Gilded Undermine Crests.

The Great Vault will still max out at Tier 8, so you won’t have to sweat running the most insane difficulty Delves each week to get the best chance at bonus gear. Any Delves Tier 7 and above qualify for a piece of 649 Hero-track gear. There were rumors of the number of Delves necessary to unlock Great Vault slots getting adjusted in the past few weeks, but those rumors were unfounded and you’ll still open up the slots at 2, 4, and 8 Delves.

One very interesting and brand-new reward is a toy that unlocks at the seventh level of the Delver’s Journey reward track, the Delve-O-Bot 7001. With a one-hour cooldown, you can call on a mechanical chauffeur to whisk you to a Bountiful Delve. Which particular Delve is random, but if you’re simply interested in opening up a Bountiful Coffer and grinding Brann’s level then you’re not too concerned about which Delve you arrive at anyway. Even with the Dornogal-Azj-Kahet portal and the speed of Skyriding, you better believe I’m excited for any item that offers faster transport around Azeroth.

What it’s all about

While we spent the first part of The War Within chasing down Zek’vir, an associate of Xal’atath, this season we’ve got a new nemesis: The Underpin. He’s described as one of the meanest, craziest goblins in the Undermine and, worst of all, he has stolen Brann’s hat. That’s right, we are adding ‘headgear retrieval‘ to the list of things that the heroes of Azeroth distract themselves with when they tire of saving the universe. There’s even a Feat of Strength achievement for finding enough power-up headgear for Brann and requesting he change it enough times.

We will once again need to face off with our nemesis in a secret hidden Delve with ? and ?? difficulties. Defeating The Underpin while not in a group will reward you with multiple achievements and perks, depending on the difficulty, including a gleaming gold skin for your Delver’s Globe-Trotter.

Speaking of achievements, there are the usual ones that you’d expect when new content gets added. For example, you’ll need to collect the Sturdy Chests and experience each story variant for the two new Undermine Delves. Some of the previous achievements get another tier, so you’ll need to collect more Mislaid Curiosities and complete more puzzles.

Delves have been a welcome way for casual, mostly-solo players such as myself to reach unprecedented gear levels, and with the changes to high-level tiers, I plan on pushing my gear score higher than ever next season with the help of my silly-hatted buddy.

Originally published February 17, 2025. Updated February 25, 2025.