How to get and spend Puzzling Cartel Chips during patch 11.1.5’s Turbo Boost

With the advent of WoW patch 11.1.5‘s Turbo Boost, players will finally be able to get their hands on the most coveted and controversial parts of Undermine(d): Puzzling Cartel Chips. Originally part of the Gallagio Rewards Renown track before being shuffled around and then going missing for a while, they finally arrived in The War Within on May 13 — although maybe a little differently from how players originally thought they would work.

The good news is that you’ll be able to use those Chips to snag a coveted piece of loot, as long as that coveted piece of loot is a weapon or trinket. The bad news is that it might not be as powerful as you’re hoping due to some restrictions on what you can purchase.

How to get Puzzling Cartel Chips

After the Turbo Boost goes live, you’ll be able to pick up the quest Ultra Prime Deluxe Turbo-Boost: Powerhouse Challenges. This quest is pretty straightforward, but might be daunting for some, like, say, alts: you need to kill four bosses in Liberation of Undermine on any difficulty, or do four Mythic dungeons. (The quest text claims that you need Normal difficulty or higher if you’re doing raid bosses, but LFR is giving people credit; be prepared for this to change at any time, as it may be unintentional.) The first time you complete these quests, you’ll immediately get three Puzzling Cartel Chips, enough to immediately buy a piece of loot! Every subsequent completion of the quest on following weeks will net you one Chip per week, maxing out at a total of nine Chips per character (or three pieces of loot).

This timing means that — assuming you get your Chips as soon as humanly possible each week, probably by jumping into LFR and smacking around four easy bosses — you’re looking at getting your first item on May 13, second on June 2, and the final item on June 23. Of course, because of the restrictions on what you can buy, you may find yourself waiting around a few weeks, or holding onto some Chips, until later into the Turbo Boost event.

How to spend Puzzling Cartel Chips (and what you can spend them on)

Once you’ve got your Puzzling Cartel Chips burning a hole in your pocket, you’ll want to head down to Consultant Wrexxle just outside the bank in Dornogal. There you’ll find a variety of loot available for purchase — namely every weapon, off-hand, shield, and trinket from the Liberation of Undermine, as well as items with special effects like Test Pilot’s Go-Pack or The Jastor Diamond. You’ll also find a full selection of the trinkets from The War Within‘s Season 2 Mythic+ dungeon pool, like the Carved Blazikon Wax and Improvised Seaforium Pacemaker. This is all the same no matter what character you’re playing, so grab that thing you’ve been salivating over.

What level you can buy them at is what’s going to vary from character to character. If you want to buy a Hero track item, whether it’s a Mythic+ trinket or a weapon from the raid, it will cost you 3 Puzzling Cartel Chips and that’s it — Hero track items have no requirements at all beyond the currency cost. However, if you want Myth track gear, there is an additional requirement depending on the source of the item.

• If you want to buy a Myth track raid item, you will need to have beaten that boss on Mythic difficulty — so, for example, if you want a Myth track Best-in-Slots, you will need to have beaten the One-Armed Bandit on Mythic difficulty.
• If you want to buy a Myth track Mythic+ trinket, you will need to have beaten every Mythic+ dungeon in Season 2 at a keystone level of 12 or higher, unlocking Resilient Keystone 12. Want that Myth track Entropic Skardyn Core? Get ready to put in a lot of work.

Some unsolicited advice: realistically, unless you’re raiding at the cutting edge and are this close to downing one of the endbosses of the raid, or pushing super-high keys but somehow don’t have all 12s, waiting until you can buy a Myth track item is not going to be a gain for most people, whereas buying a Hero track version of a really good item like House of Cards could be the little bump you need to succeed at whatever you’re doing now.

My advice is to grab that thing you’ve been wanting and don’t look back.