Shadowlands Preview: Forge Your Own Legendary Items

In the Shadowlands, you’ll need every advantage afforded to restore balance to the afterlives. Locked within the Tower of the Damned, you’ll discover the Runecarver—a powerful entity chained within Torghast’s unhallowed halls. Together, you’ll forge legendary items infused with otherworldly powers that will give you a fighting chance against the Jailer and his minions.

Forge Instruments of Death

Once you reach level 60 and pledge yourself to a Covenant, you’ll receive a quest, “Prison of the Forgotten,” and begin a chain of events that leads you inside Torghast to help the Runecarver restore his forgotten memories. Once unlocked, the Runecarver will help you forge potent legendary items that you’ll be able to infuse with otherworldly powers. To create and customize these legendary items, you’ll need to scour the Shadowlands for a range of components.

Resources Required

Legendary gear pieces are comprised of several components: a Shadowlands crafted legendary base item, two Missives, Soul Ash, and a Memory of the Runecarver. Your base item and Missives can be created with Professions, Soul Ash comes from clearing layers within Torghast; and Memory of the Runecarver recipes can be unlocked through a variety of content in Shadowlands.

For a legendary piece, you’ll need to start off with a specific base piece of armor or jewelry that can be empowered by the Runecarver. Characters with Tailoring, Leatherworking, Blacksmithing, or Jewelcrafting professions will be granted the recipe to create base pieces as part of the storyline with the Runecarver. These pieces can be crafted by players and can be traded or can be purchased from the Auction House. Each time a crafter creates a base piece, they will earn experience and over time they will be able to create those base pieces with higher item levels. There are four levels each recipe can reach, and creating higher level base pieces will require more resources to complete.

You’ll also need two Missives, which are used to empower the piece with two different secondary stats of your choosing. These Missives can be made by players with the Inscription profession and can be traded or sold on the Auction House.

Vanquishing Torghast's unhallowed halls will reward you with Soul Ash—a crafting material that tempers the base item into a masterpiece worthy of its legendary-quality rating. You can earn Soul Ash weekly by clearing layers within Torghast. Each week two wings are available to enter, so make sure to complete these trials—for the rewards are splendid!

Imbue your legendary with the powers of Death by collecting Memories of the Runecarver, known as Powers. These memories are obtainable by doing a variety of content, including raiding, Mythic Keystone dungeons, and player vs. player activities. You can view all Powers along with how to obtain them and which base items you can Runecarve them on by opening up your Adventure Guide (hotkey: Shift-J).

Over time you may craft more than one legendary but, just as in past expansions, a character can only equip one of these items at a time so choose wisely!

Legendary items abilities and crafting requirements are still in development, so be sure to check back for periodic updates on worldofwarcraft.com as we approach the release of Shadowlands.