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.

The gear upgrading system introduced in Patch 10.1 saw the following improvements in Patch 10.2.

• The Heroic gear track has 6 upgrade ranks.
• The Mythic gear track has 4 upgrade tracks.
• Crest fragments are a currency and no longer occupy valuable inventory space. Fragments will turn into gray items at the beginning of Season 3.s
• Upgrades in Season 3 require 15 crests each.
• In Season 3, players can earn 90 crests per week of each type. This means you can purchase 6 upgrades per tier per week (down from 10 in Season 2).
• Players who have run out of upgrades to purchase with a given crest can exchange their crests upwards.
• In Season 3, players who would earn crests from an activity but cannot because of the cap will instead be awarded the next highest crest they could earn (if any). For example, if a player is 10 crests away from their Wyrm's crest cap and completes a +12 Mythic Keystone dungeon within the timer, they will earn the 10 Wyrm's crests to reach the cap, then get 2 Drake's crests instead of earning nothing as they would have gotten in Season 2.
• PvP gear is no longer upgraded with Honor and uses Flightstones and crests for upgrades. PvP gear upgrades only affect the item level in PvE.

When you obtain gear in Dragonflight Season 3, it will have one of the following tracks — Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Heroic, and Mythic. Each track has different upgrade levels, upgrade requirements, and item-level ranges.

Gear Track	Item Level of Drops	Upgradeable to
Explorer	415-424	437
Adventurer	428-437	450
Veteran	441-450	463
Champion	454-463	476
Heroic	467-476	483
Mythic	480-483	489

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.
• Dreaming 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 3 content. Completing World Quests, clearing Mythic+ Dungeons, completing zone events, weekly activities, and campaign quests will all give you Flightstones.

Dreaming 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 3 content, including Amirdrassil 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 Dreaming Crest — Used to upgrade higher-item level Adventurer (ranks 5-8) and lower-level Veteran gear. You can earn it from Dragonflight Mythic Dungeons below Level 6, Amirdrassil raid bosses on Raid Finder Difficulty, World Quests, Treasures, and activities in Emerald Dream.
• Drake's Dreaming Crest — Used to upgrade higher-level Veteran (ranks 6-8) and lower-level Champion gear. You can earn it from Dragonflight Mythic+ Dungeons between Level 6-10, Amirdrassil raid bosses on Normal Difficulty, and select weekly activities in Emerald Dream.
• Wyrm's Dreaming 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+ Dungeons between Level 11-15 and Heroic Difficulty Amirdrassil bosses.
• Aspect's Dreaming Crest — Used to upgrade Heroic gear to Item Level 480, or to craft an optional reagent for crafted gear. Earned from select Heroic Amirdrassil bosses or Mythic Dungeons from Level 16+.

In Season 3, you can exchange low-level crests for higher-level crests. To use Season 2 numbers, players had no more use of Whelpling's Shadowflame Crests after reaching Item Level 411 in every gear slot (using the same rules as the catch-up discount uses), Drake's Shadowflame Crests at Item Level 424, and Wyrm's Shadowflame Crests at Item Level 437. 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 Dreaming Crests, but you must first complete the quest Dreaming of Crests to be able to downgrade your Dreaming Crests.

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

As mentioned above, we have six gear tracks in Season 3. All gear tracks have 8 upgrade levels except Heroic, with 6 upgrade levels and Mythic gear with 4 upgrade ranks.

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

For example, defeating Fyrakk on Heroic Difficulty would give you one piece of Heroic Item Level 476 gear with 4/6 upgrade ranks.

Explorer gear has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 415-437). 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 428-450). it rarely drops from outdoor Emerald Dream activities. Gear quality changes to Epic (Purple) at Rank 3. You will need Flightstones and Whelpling's Dreaming Crests for Rank 5-8 upgrades.

Veteran gear in Season 3 has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 441-463). It drops from Superblooms, select Emerald Dream activities, and Patch 10.2 end-of-campaign quests. You will need Flightstones and Drake's Dreaming Crests for Rank 6-8 upgrades.

Champion gear also has 8 upgrade ranks (Item Level 454-476). It drops in Amirdrassil, you can find it in the Great Vault, or weekly bonus event quests. You will need Flightstones, Whelpling's Dreaming Crests, and Wyrm's Dreaming Crests for Rank 5-8 upgrades.

Heroic gear has 6 upgrade ranks (Item Level 467-483). You will need Flightstones, Wyrm's Dreaming Crests, and Aspect's Dreaming Crests for upgrades.

Mythic gear follows the Myth upgrade track with 4 ranks ranks (Item Level 480-489).

• 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 2 gear obtained before Patch 10.2 using the old Shadowflame 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 Dreaming 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 3 guide!