Where in many past expansions, extended story content was locked behind reputation, Shadowlands has created a new system that avoids one of the larger problems with reputation. Of course, while it may not cause the late-start problems that reputation did, Renown requires new understanding for players who were previously used to how Rep worked.

The biggest upside to your Covenant Renown is that it only has a maximum limit based on the week, not any sort of daily restrictions. While modern reputation has almost always had a daily cap to how much you can earn, renown can be taken to the current maximum in a dedicated grind if you wanted to. This makes the system forgiving for late adopters, with the weekly maximum (usually two to three more than the previous week) allowing the delay in content Blizzard wanted at the outset. It ultimately works out better for the players, though it doesn’t completely remove time gates from the expansion.

What is Renown?

Renown is rewarded as an item, but tracked like a level. Thinking of it as your character’s level for their covenant, is a good shorthand. It provides player power, access to content, and unlocks cosmetic rewards. In this way, it largely replaces reputation as the primary ‘level bar’ of endgame. While gear is still by far the leading source of power, renown provides a steady stream of new content and the majority of the cosmetic rewards.

Things like your alternate Covenant mounts, Weapon and Offhand Transmog options, and the much sought after alternate back transmogs are all available for Anima purchases once you’ve earned the correct renown level.

Keep in mind that your renown level is specific to the individual covenant. If you choose to swap, you’ll enter your new covenant at whatever renown rank you have earned with that particular covenant, or zero if it’s your first time joining it on that character. This is a bit different from reputation, where you could maintain and improve your reputation with multiple factions simultaneously. You do retain your renown, but it cannot be improved, or otherwise used, while not part of the covenant in question.

How do you earn Renown?

The most immediate, in your face ways to earn Renown are the pair of weekly quests. If you’ve been keeping up with Renown every week, this is going to be your only repeating source. There are also one-off sources of Renown available through the covenant campaign, which you do have to complete to get the maximum level by the end.

Remember to subtract them when considering how many repeatable emblems you can get, if the current maximum were 24 and you could get 5 emblems from your campaign, then 2 would come from the weekly repeatable quests and 17 from general repeatable sources. Keeping this in mind is important to getting your hands on your maximum level of renown.

Once you’ve gotten your weeklies out of the way and accounted for once-only Covenant Campaign rewards, all remaining renown is then available from repeatable sources. The game does a bad job of making clear that you can get any outside of these quests, much less everything you’re missing. Completing Callings, Dungeons, or PvP matches all have a chance to reward an emblem if you’re behind the curve currently.

This functions as a catch-up mechanic for renown, allowing you to keep pace on alts or just late starts. This is a serious improvement over permanently being behind on alts as some mechanics have created in the past. Spamming your endgame content of choice can get you caught up on a new character.