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Larias's Raider's Survival Guide for 10.1
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Raider's Survival Guide for 10.1

Last Updated 5/8/23 2030

Created by Larias#0001(Discord)

Special thanks to Preheat, Saeldur, and Silverprism of Wyrmrest Temple, Ruck and paoanii of Peak of Serenity, and FCTFCTN of Brez on Trash and busy with ur dad. Also check out Dratnos’s excellent video guide here that also has a link to a great spreadsheet.

New Upgrade System

The upgrade system has been massively reworked and it can seem overwhelming at first glance. This guide breaks it down so it’s easy to understand and ends with a step by step process to get fully Mythic geared by week 3. Also check out the 447 crafting advice below the weekly recommendations.

First, Valor has been replaced with a Crest system that allows you to upgrade all gear in the game including raid gear below Mythic ilvl. Because this is a raider's guide, I'm going to skip the LFR stuff that doesn't matter and focus on the Normal, Heroic and Mythic stones. The currencies to upgrade gear are:

Second, these upgrades effectively upgrade the slot of the piece you are upgrading. For example, if you upgrade a cloak to 441 ilvl and later get a different cloak that you want to use instead, the new cloak does not cost Crests and instead only costs 50% of the Flightstones it would Normally cost to upgrade. This encourages players to not wait for a BIS item to drop before spending your Crests. It also means it's ok to upgrade pieces in set piece slots because if you get a set piece you'll be able to instantly upgrade it for just Flightstones.

Update 0630 5/3 - To add to the above information, it will be useful for raiders to collect Drake stones and use them on Tier and “very rare” items from the raid on Normal difficulty the first few weeks. Dratnos has posted an excellent spreadsheet here. The caveat here is that you want to stop upgrading them when they start requiring Heroic Crests. You can save several Crests per item by waiting to get a 431 drop from M+ in that slot. After the first few weeks this won’t matter but Crests will be a limiting factor early on. RAID LEADERS: Do not sleep on Normal. It is an excellent source of set pieces and giga trinkets that can be upgraded to ilvl 437.

Third, the reduced cost also applies to pieces you acquire in keys and raid bosses. For example, if you get a 441 ilvl helm from a raid boss then all future helms will be upgradable using only the reduced Flightstones cost.

Fourth, crafted pieces require Crests to reach their full potential. 447 is the highest you can craft an item and it requires 4 Mythic Crests to do so. Go to the new segment below the weekly track to read the updated requirements for crafting a 447.  This means you do not want to do any middle ground crafting. You don't want to spend Heroic Crests on a crafted item just to replace it a week later using 4 Mythic Crests.

Finally, you spend fewer Crests upgrading if you start with higher ilvl pieces. For example, upgrading from a 431 ilvl weapon costs 2 Heroic Crests and 1 Mythic Crest while upgrading from a 428 ilvl weapon costs 3 Heroic Crests and 1 Mythic Crest.

With this information, we are able to put together a strategy that should get you ilvl 441 items in every slot by week 3.

Update 0630 5/3 - Adding information about Drake Crests, moved old track 1 to bottom of document as it seems too unnecessary with the new information. Still keeping it there for the more cautious folks. Also added information about Heroic clear.

Week 0 - Patch Launch - Week of May 2nd

- Farm generic Flightstones. You can hold up to 2000 and with nothing much going on, this is the perfect opportunity to stock up. To prevent being short the next few weeks, I highly recommend you focus on this during week 0. You can leave one time sources unclaimed and unopened to be used when you’re short the following weeks.

- If you are going to swap from a two-hander to a one-handed crafted item, you might want to start looking for an offhand to use.

-Blizzard has clarified that the first spark is now available on week zero. Make sure to get your spark immediately. If you plan on crafting a one-handed weapon week 0, you can go ahead and hold off until you get your Mythic Crests.

Week 1 - Season 2 Launch - Week of May 9th

- Get your 10 Heroic/11-15 Crests (you get 100 from a full Heroic clear, so you would need 4 timed and one untimed key to reach cap this week)

- Get your 10 Mythic/16+ Crests (requires 13x timed keys)

- Craft your BiS Spark Item to 447(4x Mythic Crests)

- Collect Mythic +19/20 gear(ilvl 431) and Heroic Raid Gear(ilvl 431+) and upgrade only 5 of these pieces. (10x Heroic, 5x Mythic Crests)

-Collect Normal mode set pieces and “very rare items” and upgrade using Normal Crests. I do not recommend upgrading past Normal Crests as you can remove the Crest cost of an item slot by getting a drop in M+. For example, if you have a 424 Normal mode set chest and get a 431 chest from M+, you can upgrade that set chest to 431 without using any Crests.

Assuming no final Heroic bosses:

Heroic Crests spent: 10/10

Mythic Crests spent: 9/10

Total 441/447 pieces: 6 plus one vault piece

Week 2 - Week of May 16th

- Get your 10 Heroic Crests. This will be a bit more annoying. If you don’t want to upgrade before the raid, you can do Heroic for 100 of the fragments then finish off with keys. However, you can also get a 5 stack and quickly run 8 12s and then use the last 5 runs to upgrade the key to a 17.

- Get your 10 Mythic Crests.

- Craft your second BiS Spark Item to 447(4x Mythic Crest)

- Collect Mythic +19/20 gear(ilvl 431) and Heroic Raid Gear(ilvl 431+) and upgrade 5 more of these pieces. (10x Heroic, 5x Mythic Crests)

- Downgrade 2 Mythic Crests. This will let you upgrade 1 additional item to 437.

Assuming no final Heroic bosses:

Heroic Crests spent: 20/20

Mythic Crests spent: 20/20

Total 441/447 pieces: 13 plus two vault pieces and a 437 piece.

Week 3 - Week of May 23rd

- Get your 10 Mythic Crests.

- Upgrade any remaining 431 slots. Depending on your RNG with vault and loot drops from bosses, you may need to clear Heroic for 100 more fragments to upgrade your last slots.

Congrats, on week 3 you have all pieces at the item level of the first 3 Mythic bosses.

Should I upgrade this item?

Season 2 “How do I craft my 447 gear” guide

To craft a 447 piece, you need an Enchanted Shadowflame Crest of the difficulty you wish to craft it at. The materials for the Mythic version, the Enchanted Aspect’s Shadowflame Crest, requires 80 Chromatic Dust, 15 Vibrant Shards, 4 Resonant crystals, and, most importantly, 2 Dracothyst.

Dracothyst are the wild cards. There are two ways of obtaining them but we only know one way - a transmute with alchemy. The other way is from combining BoP shards that did not drop on the PTR and we do not know their source. While it’s safe to assume they have some sort of reliable generation, the transmute indicates that they will probably be somewhat rare.

Dracothyst are also used in a variety of other recipes, including the new raid phial cauldron, two PvP embellishments, the popular new Adaptive Dracothyst Armguards, the cauldron that acts as an Altar of Decay and a new Engineering tinker. Alchemists who wish to make money should hop on the train as fast as possible and start transmuting these. They will be in extremely high demand over the next two weeks as people craft 447 gear on May 9/10 and again on May 16/17. If you read this guide, you may also want to consider buying them now rather than when the general populace learns of them on Tuesday. After the initial burst of people crafting 7-10 of them with their stored transmutes, the production will slow to a trickle.

In addition to your Enchanted Shadowflame Crest, you also need to get a Spark of Shadowflame. Then, just like in S1, you send in your work orders and pray for that Inspiration proc.

Aberrus Sets

There are three major changes to acquiring set pieces in 10.1. The first is that the final boss will drop an omnitoken that can be used by any class for any slot. This can be used to offset bad luck in case your raid lockout gets very few tokens of a certain type. The second is that upon reaching one of three criteria a player will be able to purchase a set piece of Heroic ilvl for themselves. You have to either complete the raid on Heroic difficulty, acquire 2000 Mythic rating, or reach 1650 in Arenas. Finally, as the raid progresses, Blizzard will be reducing the number of tokens that drop per boss and offsetting that with more gear. Imagine, for example, that instead of getting two useless tokens from Broodkeeper, you got three Grieftorches instead.

Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible

Aberrus, the Shadowed Crucible has nine bosses. Blizzard is bringing back the scaling item level based on the difficulty of the encounter and they are also bringing back special very rare items with increased item levels. There is a table at the bottom of the document that has the item levels for every boss.

Bosses 1-3: Kazzara the Hellforged, The Amalgamation Chamber, Assault on the Zaqali

Bosses 4-5: The Forgotten Experiments, Rashok

Bosses 6-7: Zskarn, Magmorax

Bosses 8-9: Echo of Neltharion, Scalecommander Sarkareth

Set drops from the following bosses:

Legs: Rashok - 444 Mythic ilvl

Hands: The Forgotten Experiments - 444 Mythic ilvl

Chest: Zskarn - 447 Mythic ilvl

Helm: Magmorax - 447 Mythic ilvl

Shoulders: Neltharion - 450 Mythic ilvl

Any slot: Scalecommander Sarkareth - one token for any slot at appropriate ilvl (thanks Hursti!)

Special very rare items:

Screaming Black Dragonscale: Trinket with primary stat, crit. Leech for all classes. 447 Mythic ilvl.  Drops from Kazzara.

Djaruun, Pillar of the Elder Flame: Agi 2h polearm for monks, druids, and survival hunters. 450 Mythic ilvl. Drops from Rashok.

Neltharion’s Call to Chaos: Trinket with Crit and a primary stat proc. 457 Mythic ilvl. Used by Warrior, Paladin, Demon Hunter, Mage, and Evoker. Drops from Neltharion.

Neltharion’s Call to Suffering: Trinket with Vers and a primary stat proc. 457 Mythic ilvl. Used by Rogue, Priest, Death Knight, and Druid. Drops from Neltharion.

Neltharion’s Call to Dominance: Trinket with Haste and a primary stat proc. 457 Mythic ilvl. Used by Hunter, Shaman, Warlock, and Monk. Drops from Neltharion.

Voice of the Silent Star: cloak with special stat stealing proc for all classes. 457 Mythic ilvl. Drops from Scalecommander Sarkareth.

Crafting Changes(embellishments, phials, potions etc.)

There are new consumables and embellishments, changes to existing ones, and some new crafted items in 10.1. The changes are quite extensive but the TLDR is that Lariat is nerfed at the beginning of the season, items that provide stamina give more stamina, items that have damage procs were increased (some significantly), and potions are no longer BoP. Look at your spec’s updated sims because your embellishments are very likely to have changed. A full list of balance changes can be found here while a full list of new crafted items can be found here.

Great Vault Changes

10.1 brings a couple changes to the Great vault. With the raid containing one more boss, the number of bosses required to unlock slots in the Great Vault has changed slightly. It now takes 3 bosses to unlock the first slot, 5 bosses to unlock the second slot, and 7 bosses to unlock the third slot. Additionally, there is no more cheesing of vault slots. Killing a boss on a difficulty will unlock all previous bosses loot for that difficulty. For example, if you kill boss #6, it automatically unlocks bosses #1-5 loot for your vault slots.

Mythic Keystone Dungeons

Blizzard is changing the way that dungeons scale and is also removing the seasonal affix. There are several new affixes being added to the rotation and others are being removed. Additionally, all the old dungeons are being removed from the rotation and 8 new ones are taking their place. You can find information on the new dungeons and affixes here.

Zaralek Cavern and the Loamm Niffen

For raiders who are only concerned with player power, the new 10.1 zone doesn’t offer much. After the Season 2 starts you won’t spend much time here other than to collect flightstones between keys. However, during that lull in Week 0, you should spend as much time here as possible farming 2,000 flightstones. Any one time rewards (weekly quest reward bag, rep rewards) you should leave unopened and unclaimed until you need them. If you’re interested in the very cool cosmetic rewards (snails!), a guide to Zaralek Cavern can be found here and a guide to the Loamm Niffen can be found here.

Tables for Reference

Table Source

Additional Source: this excellent itemization guide by Amasoful of EU-Stormreaver. It has a list of every item from Season 2 content broken down by ilvl, stats, etc. I highly recommend perusing it.

Cautious Track for Reference, recommend using the one above

Week 1 - Season 2 Launch - Track 1

- Get your 10 Heroic/11-15 Crests (should be easy cause of the -9 key reduction)

- Get your 10 Mythic/16+ Crests

- Collect Mythic +19/20 gear(ilvl 431) in as many slots as possible. Do not upgrade immediately.

- Craft your BiS Spark Item to 447(4x Mythic Crests). Check your class discords but this will most likely be a 1h weapon for most specs. You get a second spark on week two so you may want to consider holding for that.

- Do your weekly raids.

- If possible, upgrade items from the final 2 bosses of Heroic raid (ilvl 437) with Crests to 441 (1x Mythic Crest per item)

- If possible, upgrade items from bosses 6-7 of Heroic(ilvl 434) with Crests to 441 (1x Heroic Crest and x1 Mythic Crest per item)

- Hold upgrading until after you’ve opened your week 2 vault. Upgrade as many ilvl 431 pieces to 441 as you can. This will take 2 Heroic Crests and 1 Mythic Crest per item. You will be able to upgrade a minimum of 5 items to 441 ilvl, with more being possible if you're lucky with Heroic drops.

Assuming no final Heroic bosses:

Heroic Crests spent: 10/10

Mythic Crests spent: 9/10

Total 441/447 pieces: 6 plus one vault piece

Week 2 - Track 1

- Make sure you did the final step mentioned above.

- Get your 10 Heroic Crests. This will be a bit more annoying. If you don’t want to upgrade before the raid, you can do Heroic for some of the fragments then finish off with keys. However, my recommendation is to get a 5 stack and quickly run 8 11s and then use the last 5 runs to upgrade the key to a 16. This is the last week you’ll need to farm Heroic Crests.

- Get your 10 Mythic Crests.

- Craft your second BiS Spark Item to 447(4x Mythic Crest). Check your class discords for best embellishments

- Collect Mythic +19/20 gear(ilvl 431) in as many slots as possible.

- If you have a 431 or higher item level piece waiting for every slot, you can start upgrading immediately. If you do not, I recommend only upgrading a maximum of three items to make sure you’re able to get all slots by week 3.

- Do your weekly raids.

- If possible, upgrade items from the final 2 bosses of Heroic raid (ilvl 437) with Crests to 441( x1 Mythic Crest per item)

- If possible, upgrade items from bosses 6-7 of Heroic(ilvl 434) with Crests to 441 (x1 Heroic Crest and x1 Mythic Crest.)

- If you didn’t upgrade items on the previous step then on Tuesday, after opening your week 3 vault, upgrade as many ilvl 431 pieces to 441 as you can. This will take 2 Heroic Crests and 1 Mythic Crest per item.

- Downgrade 2 Mythic Crests to Heroic Crests. This will let you craft one additional piece to 437.

Assuming no final Heroic bosses:

Heroic Crests spent: 20/20

Mythic Crests spent: 20/20

Total 441/447 pieces: 12 plus two vault pieces and a 437 piece

Week 3 - Track 1

- Make sure you did the final 2 steps mentioned above.

- Get your 10 Mythic Crests.

- You don't need to wait for raid this week. You should be able to craft all remaining slots to 441 as you earn the Crests. Downgrade Mythic Crests as needed.

Congrats, on week 3 you have all pieces at the item level of the first 3 Mythic bosses.

Changelog

4/28/23 0600 - first published.

4/28/23 0630 - alternative upgrade method added.

4/28/23 0800 - clarified that omnitokens drop at default piece item level. Thanks Hursti!

4/28/23 1855 - Blizzard clarified that you will obtain a spark on week zero and a second spark on week two. I have updated the guide to reflect that information. It doesn't really change that much.

4/30/23 0600 - Updated the free set token to reflect the correct requirements. Added link to Dratnos video.

5/03/23 0730 - Moved track 1 to the bottom of the document but recommending the old track 2. Added very important information about dracothysts. Added recommendation to raid leaders to run normal. Added full information on why Drake crests are important (Thanks Dratnos!).

5/08/23 2030 - Added a simple flow chart on when to upgrade an item.