Gear to 308+ in Patch 12.1 — Step-by-Step Guide & Transcript

[00:00] Hey folks, this is Kelani. Patch 12.1 is in full  swing, bringing us much higher item levels from   all content types, but only certain activities  are available in this first week, and some sources  

[00:12] have had their rewards restricted quite heavily  until season 2 starts for real. There are still   some chances to get some great gear upgrades,  though, if you know where to look. So, let's go   over exactly how you can get up to item level 308  gear this week to best prepare your characters for  

[00:28] the start of season 2. Now, before we jump in, be  sure to hit up that like button and subscribe so   you never miss another video. The first thing  you should do before heading out for any gear   upgrades is to pick up the weekly quests in Silver  Moon. There are two main quests of interest. The  

[00:44] Unity Against the Void quest works in the same  way as it did during season 1. You'll have a few   different content types to choose from. So, pick  whatever you think is easiest or what relates to   the content that you'll be running the most. The  other one is from Verissa, right next to Leandrin,  

[00:58] and that one just requires you to gather up  some fading void whispers, which can drop   from dungeons, delves, treasures, and dangerous  monsters. So, if you just like to run dungeons,   for example, this weekly quest offers you a very  easy way to get your spark every week without  

[01:14] being forced into any other content type. The  first weekly quest you complete will give you a   spark of tides, which will be used to fuel some  huge crafted gear upgrades. We can only get one   spark in this first week, so we'll have to wait  until next week to put it to work to get a spark  

[01:29] item crafted, but it's still important to get  your spark this week. So, make sure you complete   at least one of these weekly quests at some point  before reset day. The next stop on our list is to  

[01:41] revisit the renowned benders for each midnight  faction. You'll need to pop by Southrel's Haven   in Eversong Woods to pick up a veteran headpiece.  This quest requires you to complete the Southrel   Suare event and empower one of the runeststones.  Head on over to the Ammanazar village in Zullemon  

[01:57] next. They'll have a choice of veteran necklaces  for you, so pick whichever has the best stat combo   for you. This quest requires you to complete an  abundance event, so make sure you pick up the   abundance weekly quest at the same time. Our next  stop is in Harendar. This rep vendor will give  

[02:12] you a belt after you complete the Legends of the  Haraneer event. So, work your way through one of   those stories and hand the quest in for another  piece of free veteran gear. And then our last   stop is going to be over in the voidstorm. The  Crucible of erratic energies trinket is returning,  

[02:27] which was quite a powerful trinket in season 1.  So, I'll be interested to see how long it lasts   in season 2. This one requires you to complete  the Storm Marian Assault event in the zone. Now,   if you don't have the required renown for these  quests because you either just ignored them in  

[02:42] season 1 or you came back to the game after  a large break, it's probably not worth going   out of your way to farm it in this first week.  You're just going to be a bit behind anyone who   got these reps farmed up in season 1. Thankfully,  there are some other easy sources of gear that we  

[02:58] can use. Now, assuming you've completed the 12.1  story quests, which you absolutely should have,   you should also be able to pick up a pair of  veteran braces for reaching renowned rank two with   Zjara's forces. You'll need to complete a curse  surge event to get your last piece of rep gear,  

[03:14] and you may as well pick up the weekly quest right  next to this NPC at the same time. That one asks   you to complete three curse surge events, and it  rewards another Pinnacle Cash and your Spark of   Tides if you haven't completed the other weekly  quests already. The curse surges themselves don't  

[03:30] offer amazing rewards. It seems like their gear  rewards cap out an adventurer, so you can skip   this weekly quest if you plan on completing at  least one of the others. It's also worth noting   that you can pick up all of these rep items on all  of your characters, even though the renown itself  

[03:46] is accountwide. So, it is a great way to get your  alts some very quick gear upgrades as well. Now,   all of the weekly quests and event quests are  going to reward you with a pinnacle cash. The   first two that you get will contain a random  piece of veteran gear. So hopefully that doesn't  

[04:01] overlap with the other pieces you obtained from  the Midnight Renown factions. Every other cash   will contain crests and other currencies. So  they're still somewhat useful and you should   end up with a lot of veteran crests that you can  put to work. And we want the free veteran gear  

[04:15] from completing these quests anyway. Another easy  source of veteran gear is hard mode prey hunts. In   this first week, we're limited to just normal prey  hunts and hard mode prey hunts will have to wait  

[04:27] until next week to complete nightmare prey hunts  to earn champion gear. The first two hard mode   hunts you complete will reward you with a piece of  veteran gear. So that's two more items to add to   your loot hall. And then the lair boss will be  available on the world difficulty option only.  

[04:43] You can join a group and head into the special  shared instance or just walk in by yourself and   the system will create a group for you. The boss  is very easy to kill even with just a handful of   players. And these lair bosses have been designed  so you don't need quite as many tanks or healers  

[04:58] as you might expect from a standard raid boss.  The lair bosses can drop veteran gear on the world   difficulty and there are quite a few interesting  items in the loot table. So keep your fingers   crossed and you might walk away with another  piece of loot. So, that's at least nine pieces  

[05:12] of veteran gear you can get your hands on, and up  to 10 if you get lucky with the lair bots, and at   least five are guaranteed to be in different gear  slots. Hopefully, you get lucky with your rewards,   and they don't overlap too much, but the best gear  available in the first week of patch 12.1 mainly  

[05:30] comes from running Mythic dungeons. We can't do  Mythic Plus just yet, so we're limited to just   Mythic Zero dungeons. But each boss you defeat in  a Mythic Zero dungeon has a chance to drop a piece   of item level 292 champion gear. That gear can be  upgraded all the way to item level 308 if you can  

[05:46] find enough champion crests to fuel your upgrades.  That's going to be much easier next week. So,   for now, just clear each dungeon to maximize  your chances for some big loot drops. During   the first week, Mythic Zero Dungeons will have a  weekly lockout, meaning you can only clear them  

[06:02] once in the preseason. After season 2 starts on  August 18th, the lockout drops back down to daily,   but by then, you'll probably have moved on to  farming Mythic Plus. So, clear each dungeon   on Mythic Zero once this week if you want to nab  some champion gear. If you want to increase your  

[06:18] chances of getting some gear, I would recommend  you run as many dungeons as you can with the same   group, preferably with as many players with  the same armor type as yourself. For example,   you can run a full group of plate wearers to  ensure all gear drops are plate. That way,  

[06:32] if a player gets two pieces of loot for the same  slot, they will hopefully offer that extra piece   to the other players in the group, sharing the  loot, so every piece is put to good use. There's   nothing worse than running a dungeon and seeing  a piece of gear drop that isn't useful for the  

[06:46] player who got it, and there's no one else who can  make use of it. Now, I know not everyone can do   this as it requires a large time investment, and  it's much easier if you have an active guild or   some friends, but even doing two or three dungeons  with the same group could improve your chances of  

[07:01] getting some loot for yourself. There is one other  source of champion gear in this first week. Down   in the vault of you, you can pick up an important  quest that introduces you to the various events in  

[07:13] this underground mini zone. That quest rewards you  with a venom cursed fragment. And when you combine   two of them together, you'll get a piece of random  champion gear. On the PTR, we were able to pick up   the toxic tour quest as well as the purging the  vaults weekly quest at the same time. And they  

[07:29] both reward you with a venom cursed fragment. So  that should give you another piece of champion   gear if both quests are up. There's a chance  the dev team pushes the weekly quest back to   the start of season two, in which case you'll  only be able to get one fragment this week,  

[07:42] but that does set you up to earn another piece  of champion gear right as the season starts,   which should help you take on harder seasonal  content. Now, you may be wondering if you can skip   over all of the veteran gear and just go straight  into farming mythic zero dungeons for that sweet,  

[07:57] sweet champion loot. And you absolutely can.  But the veteran gear is more valuable than you   might realize. Even as we head into the start of  season 2, every piece of veteran gear you get will   make mythic zero dungeons easier, which is always  nice. But more importantly, when you replace that  

[08:13] piece of veteran gear with a piece of champion  gear in the same slot, you can use the veteran   gear to upgrade your champion gear once, more or  less for free. After looting the champion gear,   upgrading a piece of veteran gear in the same slot  will be free up to five of six. And then you just  

[08:29] have to spend 20 veteran crests to get it up to  six of six. That will then make your champion gear   free to upgrade to two of six. So you can spend  20 veteran crests to upgrade your champion gear  

[08:41] instead of having to spend 20 champion crests,  which just lets you upgrade your gear much faster   overall. So veteran gear is still very useful in  this first week, even if the main goal is getting   as much champion gear as possible. The same thing  can be said about champion gear as you start your  

[08:56] season 2 gearing up adventures. For every piece  of champion gear you have, it can save you 20 hero   crests in the exact same way when you start to  replace your gear. So, make sure you keep your old   gear and take advantage of this crest upgrading  trick. It can set you weeks ahead of where  

[09:12] you would be otherwise. After you're done with  everything else, there's one last source of gear   upgrades in this first preseason week. The field  accolade vendors in Silver Moon had their wares   upgraded to season 2 adventurer and veteran track  gear. You can buy adventurer gear for 200 field  

[09:28] accolades, but at this point that's probably not  worth your attention. Veteran gear boxes will cost   you 500 field accolades, but those will contain a  random piece of gear, so there's a high chance you   won't get an upgrade from those if you've done  everything else in this video. But you can also  

[09:43] buy specific pieces of veteran gear for 750 field  accolades. Now, that is by no means cheap, but if   you are smart and saved your field accolades from  the end of season 1, you may have a nice stockpile  

[09:55] to buy a couple of pieces of gear. You can use  these gear boxes to fill in your gaps and upgrade   your lowest item level pieces. If you really want  to, you can go back to the 1207 zones to farm some  

[10:07] more field accolades, which could be worth it  if you're close to buying another piece of gear,   or you can just wait it out until the rest of  the gearing options become available next week.   Another easy way you can replace your lower  item level pieces is with crafted gear. We  

[10:22] can only get one spark in this first week.  So, we can't get any spark crafted gear made,   but you can use adventurer and veteran crests  to fill in some gaps instead. When crafting with   lower quality recipes in your professions, so any  of the blue recipes really, you can use adventurer  

[10:38] crests to increase the item level up to 279 or  veteran crests to bump the item level up to 292.   The adventurer crafts are particularly useful here  if you do have some very low item level pieces of  

[10:50] gear because you probably won't be using them  to upgrade your gear anyway. Crafting veteran   gear does come at more of a cost though. You'll  want veteran crests to help upgrade your champion   gear using the upgrade trick we just talked  about. Now, personally, I would recommend not  

[11:05] using veteran crests to upgrade veteran gear, at  least right away. Even if you're a solo content   focused player, you should be able to start  earning champion gear next week very easily. So,   I would hold on to your crests until you've used  up all of your restored coffer keys and completed  

[11:20] the nightmare prey hunts at the start of season  2. It's also worth considering making two pieces   of veteran gear for the crafting embellishments  if you don't have high item level crafter gear   already. These embellishments provide a decent  boost of power, and they're very easy to acquire.  

[11:36] You just slap them on as an optional crafting  choice when making your gear. You can only have   two embellishments active at a time, so just be  aware of that. If you're curious about the other   gear sources available in this first week, you can  get adventurer gear from world quests on the coil  

[11:51] aisle, from killing rares or completing cursed  surges in the new zone, from completing normal   prey hunts, and from running heroic dungeons.  This content might be worth considering if you   need to fill in some lower item level gaps,  if you didn't gear up that much in season 1,  

[12:05] or if you just don't want to run mythic dungeons.  It's also worth noting that delves are limited to   adventurer gear and veteran crest rewards this  week. Even though all 11 tiers are available   to unlock and play, so even if you do a tier 11  delve, you still can't get higher than adventurer  

[12:22] gear until the season starts for real. Delves  can be a good source of veteran crests, though,   so you can farm them to get some easy upgrades for  your gear or to get enough crests for some crafted   gear. But that's how you can get up to item  level 308 gear in the first week of patch 12.1,  

[12:36] so you're as strong as you possibly can be  when the season starts up next week. What are   you going to be focusing on in this first week of  the patch? And what are you most looking forward   to in season 2? Leave all your thoughts in the  comment section below. A big thank you to all  

[12:49] of our supporters over on Patreon and all of our  members here on YouTube. You can see their names   on screen. If you're interested in supporting the  channel, you can find links in the description or   click the join button just below the video. If you  enjoyed the video or found it useful in any way,  

[13:02] make sure to subscribe and ring that notification  bell so you're always kept up to date. Thanks for   watching, folks. Good luck and have fun.  And as always, I will see you next time.