All of the rewards from Manaforge Vandals in the Manaforge Omega raid renown track

In patch 11.1, we got our first look at Blizzard’s new plan for progressively rewarding continued raiding as well as making raids easier over time in the form of our first raid Renown track — the Gallagio Loyalty Rewards Club. Running a whole twenty levels, this Renown — which could be advanced exclusively by defeating bosses, and to a lesser extent named trash minibosses — inside the Liberation of Undermine gave a wide variety of rewards. These ranged from convenience (various crafting tables, an auctioneer inside the raid lobby, and a sorta-hearthstone to the raid’s central hotel) to cosmetics, as well as actual power; the Loyal Customer buff would bump up automatically at specific levels, granting your whole Warband 3% more damage and healing inside the raid once earned.

It appears the experiment was a success, as raid Renown is returning for Manaforge Omega in patch 11.2, with a new Renown called Manaforge Vandals. It’s shorter than the Gallagio Rewards track, at only fifteen levels, and shifts some familiar rewards around so that they’re available earlier than in Undermine — in some cases a lot earlier, like the Renown 18 reward from the Gallagio, an auctioneer, being available almost immediately in Manaforge Omega.

Let’s take a look at what’s available at each rank with the Manaforge Vandals.

• Renown 1
  • Meet the Vandals: Vendors and an auctioneer are available at Shadow Point. This makes an auctioneer available much sooner than in Undermine, convenient if you just need to pick up a few flasks, an enchant, or some food.
• Renown 2
  • Head Hunting: Loom’ithar: Loom’ithar, the second boss of Manaforge Omega, will now drop a Loombeast Silk. Since you have an artifact cloak for patch 11.2, the Reshii Wraps, there are no cloak drops in Manaforge Omega. However, there are still matching cloak appearances for all the tier sets. Trading your Loombeast Silk to Ba’choso in Shadow Point will reward you with an ensemble that matches all four levels of your tier set, such as Ensemble: Breeze of Fallen Storms.
  • Weave of Absence: Loom’ithar will also have a chance to drop additional Loombeast Silk on future kills, enabling you to pick up additional cloak ensembles.
• Renown 3
  • Speed Siphoner I: 15% extra out-of-combat movement while inside of Manaforge Omega. This really came in handy in Undermine, and I expect it to be good quality-of-life in Manaforge Omega too.
  • Manaforge Hacking I: “Gain access to Arcane Flow Control for the Cultivation Chambers and The Unbound Vault, allowing you to weaken non-boss enemies nearby.” This sounds like nerfing the trash for two separate sections of the raid, which is an interesting addition to one of these raid Renowns — repeated trash clears are the most tedious part of running a raid every week!
• Renown 4
  • Beam Me Up: You are rewarded with a Shadowguard Translocator, this raid’s equivalent of the Gallagio Loyalty Rewards Card. This one works differently, though — while the Rewards Card actually teleported you back to the center of Undermine, the Translocator projects your soul back to Shadow Point for a short period of time and then rips you back to your body. This makes that auctioneer from Renown 1 really convenient, since you can Translocate out, pick up whatever you need, and then get teleported back to where you were!
  • Behind Enemy Lines I: The first of the raid buff levels, this adds 3% healing and damage to your Warband while inside Manaforge Omega.
• Renown 5
  • Shadow of the Warp: The raid skip comes very early this time; if you have defeated Nexus-King Salhadaar (the second-to-last boss) on your current difficulty at least once, you are now able to teleport from just after the first boss directly to Salhadaar again, meaning only two bosses (Plexus Sentinel and Nexus-King Salhadaar) will stand between you and Dimensius.
• Renown 6
  • Attuned to the Aether: Speak to Ba’choso at Shadow Point to cause your Reshii Wraps to further increase the effectiveness of your enchants and mana oils, but only while you are inside Manaforge Omega. I’m curious how this will apply to weapon stones from Blacksmithing, or classes like Shaman and Paladin that use their own temporary weapon enchants that do not stack with mana oils.
• Renown 7
  • Behind Enemy Lines II: Your raid buff now increases to 6%! These increases come at the same rate as they did in Undermine, so expect to feel these effectiveness buffs at roughly the same rate as you did there.
  • Manaforge Hacking II: You can now weaken the trash in a third area, the Technomancers’ Terrace, with your sweet hacking skills (or something like that).
• Renown 8
  • Tools of the Trade Secrets: Ba’choso now expands his wares to include new Enchanting and Inscription recipes. When it was initially datamined, this level also indicated new Engineering recipes would be in the works, but Blizzard’s official preview of the Manaforge Vandals excludes Engineering, so I guess Engineers should hang onto your hats goggles and see if something new arrives.
  • Manaforged Instruments: Forgeweaver Araz, the raid’s fourth boss, now has a chance to drop Manaforged Instruments, a necessary implement to craft the Manaforge-related recipes that Ba’choso sells. Again, hopefully these have a better drop rate than the Gallagio’s counterfeit chips, or those recipes will be rare and expensive to craft.
  • Glide or Die: You can now purchase the Vandal’s Gearglider mount, a silver and blue version of the familiar Broker flying disc from Shadowlands, from Zo’turu at Shadow Point.
  • A Curious Companion: Zo’ya, a curious purrkin at Shadow Point, has decided to become your new pet. Lucky you!
• Renown 9
  • Head Hunting: The Soul Hunters: The Soul Hunters, the intriguing optional boss whose very existence is sparking speculation of a new Demon Hunter spec, now will drop three Soulgorged Augment Runes; these last for an hour and increase your primary stat, but unlike previous Augment Runes this expansion, these persist through death. (They also can’t be auctioned. Sorry, people who have been hawking their Augment Runes every week from Undermine for easy gold!)
  • Climbing the Ladders: The Soul Hunters will also have a chance to drop three more Soulgorged Augment Runes on future defeats. You’ll probably want to stock up on these for tough bosses.
• Renown 10
  • Speed Siphoning II: Your out-of-combat boost is buffed to 30%. Now you have the zoomies while out of combat in Manaforge Omega.
  • Behind Enemy Lines III: Your raid healing and damage buff also increases as this Renown level, up to 9%.
• Renown 11
  • Manaforge Hacking III: You can now weaken the trash in the Shadow Docks area of the Manaforge. Considering this is the last of these rewards, we can safely assume you’ve made most of the trash in Manaforge Omega manageable by this point.
  • Head Hunting: Horrors of the Forge: Our first non-boss-related Head Hunting Renown reward, you can now defeat named elite enemies inside Manaforge Omega (usually just hard trash mobs) to have a chance to get Warbound items each week.
• Renown 12
  • Head Hunting: Nexus-King Salhadaar: Nexus-King Salhadaar will drop an Ethereal Essence Sliver when defeated, which will allow you to buy a cosmetic item of your choice — likely of weapons or unique appearances only, not armor, if this works like in Undermine. Also, should we be trading actual pieces of Salhadaar’s sanity for dress-up items? Really?
  • Heavy is the Crown: Nexus-King Salhadaar will also have a chance to drop additional Ethereal Essence Slivers on future defeats. Hopefully these have a better drop rate than the transmog tokens from One-Armed Bandit in the Gallagio; anecdotally, my raid got this as soon as it was available and we have yet to see even one counterfeit token from the slot machine boss.
• Renown 13
  • Behind Enemy Lines IV: Another increase to your raid healing and damage buff, this time to 12%.
  • Looker Gaz’kreth Jr.: I don’t know who Watcher Gaz’kreth is, but their offspring — Looker Gaz’kreth Jr. — is now available from Zo’turu at Shadow Point. Whether to follow you around, or to seek revenge, is unclear.
• Renown 14
  • Alpha and Omega: You earn the title Star Savior, which is frankly a very cool title. Interestingly, the Renown level mentions you “repelling Dimensius” — is it possible that this Renown level is locked behind actually defeating Dimensius? Or is it just that it’s assuming you have done so by the time you’ve reached this penultimate level of Renown?
  • The Bone Freezer: You can also talk to Zo’turu at Shadow Point to now obtain the frankly unpleasant-sounding Bone Freezer as a mount.
• Renown 15
  • Behind Enemy Lines V: Your raid buff caps out here, at the maximum level of 15%.
  • Into the Infinite: You can teleport to Manaforge Omega anytime you like (well, as long as “whenever you like” is every eight hours). The spell will be in your spellbook as Path of the All-Devouring. As I mentioned in the Gallagio article, it’s very cool that these are not linked to Mythic raiding or “victory lap” seasons anymore, and are available simply via persistence and progress.