How to Craft Legendary items in Shadowlands: A Runecarving Guide

• The Runecarver now offers to destroy an existing Legendary and refund all of the Soul Ash and/or Soul Cinders that were spent to create the item.
• The drop rates of Runecarving recipes found in dungeons have been increased to 100% on all difficulties.

Multiple Legendary Powers have been updated in Patch 9.1.5.

Welcome to our guide to crafting Legendary Armor in the Shadowlands. All classes in the new expansion will get access to a vast array of Legendary Powers that you gradually unlock one by one, but you can only have 1 equipped at a time.

You can find out more about Legendary Powers in our separate guide.

In the individual sections of the guide, we explain how to unlock Runecarving, forge Legendary Items, upgrade them, and go through restrictions of the system.

The Runecarver is a mysterious figure locked away in the very depths of Torghast. You must first unlock Torghast and complete a short quest in The Maw to unlock the Runecarver. Once unlocked, you will be able to call on the power of the Runecarver to carve ancient runes on your armor and imbue it with Legendary powers.

You must complete the Deep Within, Ashes of the Tower, and The Final Pieces quests to unlock the Runecarver in Shadowlands.

• Deep Within requires you to simply talk to the Runecarver.
• To complete Ashes of the Tower, you must collect 1,250 Soul Ash in Torghast.
• To finish The Final Pieces, you must acquire a Runecarver Memory, an Armor Rune Vessel suitable to your class, and 2 different Missives.
• Reawakening (Optional Quest) requires you to go to the Maw, kill a creature and recover a Runecarver's memory. The quest is not mandatory and if you collect a memory from elsewhere, you will be able to start crafting and upgrading Legendary Armor just by completing The Final Pieces.

Enter Torghast at Ve'nari's Refuge in the Maw. The portal is located at the far back of the area.

The Portal to the Runecarver's Oubliette is located to the right as you enter the Torghast Antechamber.

Here is the map of the Runecarver's Oubliette. You must visit the area anytime you want to craft Legendary Armor.

You can return back to the Torghast Antechamber through the exit portal.

You need to gather a few materials first, before you can craft your Legendary:

• A Base Item. These items are created by Blacksmiths, Jewelcrafters, Leatherworkers, and Tailors, and serve as the vessel for Legendary Powers. They are not soulbound, and can be acquired from other players, alts, or bought in the Auction House. There is no requirement that a character has to have a crafting profession to make Legendary Armor. Crafting Legendaries is open to all players as long as you have collected all the necessary reagents.
• The Legendary Power of your choosing. You must collect the recipe first.
• Two Missives that dictate the secondary stats (Critical Strike, Haste, Mastery, and Versatility) of the crafted Legendary.
• Soul Ash. This is a new currency found in Torghast that you receive from completing the Twisting Corridors intro questline and various Layers of the two Torghast wings that are active each week.
• Soul Cinders. A new currency introduced in Patch 9.1 that comes from the new layers.

The crafted Legendary Armor piece will have fixed Primary stats (Intellect, Agility, Stamina, and Strength), based on your class/specialization.

Base Items are blank armor templates to which you can add Legendary Powers through Runecarving.

Blacksmiths, Jewelcrafters, Leatherworkers, and Tailors can create Base Items for the following armor slots — Head, Shoulder, Back, Chest Wrist, Hands, Waist, Legs, Feet.

Base Items have 4 Ranks. The higher their Item Level, the better stats the Legendary Armor piece will have. You can use Vestige of Origins to upgrade Legendary Armor pieces to Rank 6 in Patch 9.1.

For more information about Base Items, please refer to our Base Items Guide.

You will be able to acquire Legendary Power recipes from various sources in Shadowlands. You can find more information in our Legendary Powers guide.

To select specific secondary stats of the crafted Legendary, you will need the following Missives created by Scribes:

• Missive of Critical Strike — Ensures that the crafted weapon or piece of armor will increase the wearer's Critical Strike.
• Missive of Haste — Ensures that the crafted weapon or piece of armor will increase the wearer's Haste.
• Missive of Mastery — Ensures that the crafted weapon or piece of armor will increase the wearer's Mastery.
• Missive of Versatility — Ensures that the crafted weapon or piece of armor will increase the wearer's Versatility.

The Torghast currency acts as a fuel for crafting Legendary Armor. You can obtain Soul Ash from the Twisting Corridors intro questline, from the available 12 Torghast layers, Covenant Adventures, and more.

There is no catch-up system implemented for Soul Ash, so make sure to complete your weekly goals to maximize your Soul Ash gains.

You will find exactly how much Soul Ash you will receive from all the different layers on our page linked below.

Soul Cinders is a new Torghast currency obtained from Layers 9-12, used to upgrade Legendary Armor pieces to Rank 5 and 6 in Patch 9.1.

The exact amount of Soul Ash you receive for clearing the new wings is explained on a separate page.

You can read more about where to obtain Soul Cinders in our separate guide.

Crafting Legendary Armor pieces at higher ranks or upgrading them progressively costs more Soul Ash, up to Rank 4. At Rank 5 and 6, you will also need Soul Cinders in addition to just Soul Ash.

• Rank 1 costs 1,250 Soul Ash.
• Rank 2 costs 2,000 Soul Ash.
• Rank 3 costs 3,200 Soul Ash.
• Rank 4 costs 5,150 Soul Ash.
• Rank 5 upgrade costs 5,150 Soul Ash and 1,100 Soul Cinders.
• Rank 6 upgrade costs 5,150 Soul Ash and 1,650 Soul Cinders.

You can further upgrade existing Legendary Armor at the Runecarver or craft higher ranks directly. Once upgraded, your Legendary item will have better stats, but the Legendary Power effects will not change. It is important to note that you can skip ranks, meaning you can go from Rank 1 to 4.

You need three things to upgrade a Legendary item:

• A higher rank Base Item;
• The existing Legendary item you want to upgrade;
• Additional Soul Ash from Torghast, based on the rank of your current item and the upgrade. Upgrading from a lower rank will give you a discount on the upgrade, but will still cost the same amount of Soul Ash. For example, if you are upgrading from Rank 3 to 4, you already spent 3,200 Soul Ash crafting the Rank 3 Legendary, so the upgrade will only cost 1,950 Soul Ash.

Legendary Items have 6 ranks in Patch 9.1:

• Rank 1: Item Level 190;
• Rank 2: Item Level 210;
• Rank 3: Item Level 225;
• Rank 4: Item Level 235;
• Rank 5: Item Level 249;
• Rank 6: Item Level 262.

All newly-crafted Helm, Neck, Bracer, Belt and Ring Runecarving armor pieces in Patch 9.1 come with an empty socket.

Upgrading a Legendary item does not remove the socket.

In Patch 9.1.5, you can talk to the Runecarver, who now has a refund option, allowing you to scrap an existing Legendary item, refunding you with all the Soul Ash and Soul Cinders you spent to craft it.

This section contains restrictions that apply to Legendary Armor.

• Base Items do not exist for the Weapon, Off-Hand, and Trinket slots.
• You can only wear one Legendary Armor piece at a time.

The most important aspect of Runecarving is to use the best Legendary Powers for your spec, so you know what to apply to your Legendary items. To help you with that, we have a Best Legendaries guide for all of the specs: