World of Warcraft Gear Upgrading Guide

Every piece of gear in the come with a tooltip informing you you about the item's track and upgrade possibilities.

To upgrade gear, you must gather Flightstones and crests. You can preview the upgrade costs and how an item improves in power at any Item Upgrades NPC in the game. There is one in Valdrakken, The Forbidden Reach, Zaralek Cavern, and Emerald Dream.

When you obtain gear in Dragonflight Season 4, it will have one of the following tracks — Explorer, Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Heroic, and Myth. Each track has different upgrade levels, upgrade requirements, and item-level ranges/brackets.

Gear Track	Item Level of Drops	Upgradeable to
Explorer	454-463	476
Adventurer	467-476	489
Veteran	480-489	502
Champion	493-502	515
Heroic	506-515	522
Mythic	519-522	528

You can pay the following NPCs a visit when upgrading gear in the game:

• Cuzolth is found in Zaralek Cavern at 56 56.
• Corxian can be found in Valdrakken's Gladiator's Refuge at 44 37.
• Researcher Baneflare can be found in The Forbidden Reach at 35 59.
• Cuzolth is found in Amirdrassil (Emerald Dream) at 49.83 62.82.

• Flightstones — A currency that drops from all types of Season 3 content.
• Awakened Crests, crafting reagents from Mythic Dungeons, Raids, and select Emerald Dream and Dragon Isles weekly activities.

Flightstones are a used to upgrade gear in Dragonflight.

You can hold a maximum of 2,000 Flightstones.

You will receive Flightstones from all types of Season 4 Awakened content. Completing World Quests, clearing Mythic+ Dungeons, completing zone events, weekly activities, and campaign quests will all give you Flightstones.

Awakened Crests are crafting reagents used to upgrade gear and to craft optional reagents for crafted gear. You will need different crests to upgrade different types of gear.

Crests are obtained from Season 4 Awakeened content, including Fated Raids bosses, Mythic+ Dungeons, and outdoor content.

You can obtain 90 crests per type every week, meaning six upgrades per tier per week at most.

• Whelpling's Awakened Crest — Used to upgrade higher-item level Adventurer (ranks 5-8) and lower-level Veteran gear. You can earn whelpling crests from outdoor activities.
• Drake's Awakened Crest — Used to upgrade higher-level Veteran (ranks 6-8) and lower-level Champion gear. You can earn 10 from Dragonflight Mythic 0 Dungeons, as there is no timer to beat. Fated Raids bosses on Normal Difficulty, and select weekly activities in Emerald Dream also reward these crests.
• Wyrm's Awakened Crest — Used to upgrade higher-level Champion and lower-level Heroic gear, or to craft an optional reagent for crafted gear. It is earned from Mythic 2-5 Dungeons and Heroic Difficulty Fated Raids bosses.
• Aspect's Awakened Crest — Used to upgrade Heroic gear to Item Level 519, or to craft an optional reagent for crafted gear. Earned from select Heroic Fated Raids bosses or Mythic +6 and up.

In Season 4, you can exchange low-level crests for higher-level crests. To use Season 3 numbers, players had no more use of Whelpling's Dreaming Crests after reaching Item Level 450 in every gear slot (using the same rules as the catch-up discount uses), Drake's Dreaming Crests at Item Level 463, and Wyrm's Dreaming Crests at Item Level 476. Trade-ups will be available at those thresholds.

Trade-ups will cost a 6-to-1 ratio. Once trade-up is available, players can spend 90 crests to get 15 crests of the higher level. This will count toward both the cap on the lower level crest being spent (since you have to earn them) and the higher level Crest being purchased, so players have no incentive to do lower-level content for crests, though if they are not capped, then they will still be able to get some benefit.

Vaskarn in Amirdrassil, located at 49.79 62.88, lets you exchange Awakened Crests, but you must first complete the quest Awaekend of Crests to be able to downgrade your Awaekend Crests.

• You can buy a Pouch of Whelpling's Awakened Crests for 15 Drake's Awakened Crests.
• You can purchase a Satchel of Drake's Awakened Crests for 15 Wyrm's Awakened Crests.
• You can buy Clutch of Wyrm's Awakened Crests for 15 Aspect's Awakened Crests.

As mentioned above, we have six gear tracks in Season 4. All gear tracks have 8 upgrade levels except Heroic, with 6 upgrade levels and Myth gear with 4 upgrade ranks.

The current gear track and upgrade ranks will depend on the difficulty of content you complete.

Killing raid bosses can grant you partially upgraded gear.

Explorer gear has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 454-476). It drops frequently from Emerald Dream mobs and is a common quest reward. Gear quality changes to Rare (blue) at Rank 3. You will only need Flightstones to upgrade Explorer gear to max rank.

Adventurer gear has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 467-489). It drops from Awakened outdoor activities. Gear quality changes to Epic (Purple) at Rank 3. You will need Flightstones and Whelpling's Awakened Crests for Rank 5-8 upgrades.

Veteran gear in Season 3 has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 480-502). It drops Awakened outdoor actibities, and end-of-campaign quests. You will need Flightstones and Drake's Awakened Crests for Rank 6-8 upgrades.

Champion gear also has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 493-515). It drops in Fated Raids bosses, you can find it in the Great Vault, or weekly bonus event quests. You will need Flightstones, Whelpling's Awakened Crests, and Wyrm's Awakened Crests for Rank 5-8 upgrades.

Heroic gear has 6 upgrade ranks (Item Level 506-522). You will need Flightstones, Wyrm's Awakened Crests, and Aspect's Awakened Crests for upgrades.

Mythic gear follows the Myth upgrade track with 4 ranks ranks (Item Level 519-528) and drops mostly from Awakened Raids bosses on the highest difficulty.

• Myth Rank 1/4 — Item Level 480;
• Myth Rank 2/4 — Item Level 483;
• Myth Rank 3/4 — Item Level 486.
• Myth Rank 4/4 — Item Level 489.

You can still upgrade all Season 3 gear obtained before Season 4 using the old Dreaming Crests and Flightstones.

However, old crests have been turned into gray items and can no longer be earned.

Once you obtain an item with a higher item level in a specific armor slot, the amount of Flightstones needed to upgrade additional items in that slot is drastically reduced. The discount is account-wide.

The same applies to Awakened Crests, but that discount is character-specific and you do not need to spend any crests on upgrading an item.

To learn more about upgrading gear from Mythic Dungeons, check out our detailed Season 4 guide!