With Shadowlands launch fast approaching, knowing how to handle your options when you hit max level is a huge boon. There’s a lot to do this time around, with several activities you might think of as being the sort of content we get in post-launch patches being part of the initial launch line-up you’re gonna need to be on top of things if you want to knock out your lockouts beginning on week 1. Almost everything you’re familiar with is back in Shadowlands. Existing endgame activities are all intact, but many have seen a change in their reward structures.
What you do in the endgame of WoW Shadowlands is the new activities; Torghast, the Maw, and the returning but redesigned legendary system. These systems take a lot of inspiration from previous patches or older expansion mechanics, so they might seem a bit familiar if you’re a long-term player. However, they also feature a lot of new twists that need to be accounted for.
The Maw
While the marquee feature of the new endgame systems is Torghast, the Maw bears speaking about first because it is where Torghast is located, so you’ll need to make a trek through it to get to the tower. The Maw is structured in the same fashion as past expansions’ middle patch catch-up zone. This means you’ll be doing small slices in the area for a special currency, stygia. The catch here is that the Maw has a time limit on it. Once you enter you attract the attention of the jailer. From there, you’re trying to finish as many mini-quests, world events, and rare enemies as you can before the debuffs from the jailer stack up to such an extent that you need to leave for the day. Dying also causes you to leave 20% of your current stygia on your corpse, which you’ll need to recover or lose permanently.
All of this ties into Ve’nari, the NPC vendor who provides the introductory quests for the Maw. Performing these various activities will boost your reputation and in turn unlock more items to purchase with stygia, ranging from Torghast upgrades to cosmetics. Ve’nari also offers weekly quests that send you to the Maw and offer more stygia and reputation but with a serious increase to your Jailer level for the day. It’s ultimately a relatively simple concept that leans on open-world gameplay but one of your trips to the maw will earn you access to Torghast, which is a lot more involved.
Torghast, Tower of the Damned
Torghast is at the center of the new endgame progression for Shadowlands. Not only is it a sizable chunk of content by itself rewards that make you stronger in it are common from the Maw, and it is your sole source of the currency you need to craft legendaries. Torghast is at the heart of your weekly lockouts since legendaries are such an important gear piece. Understanding how it works is important for that reason.
More in-depth information is best suited for collecting after we’ve gotten full access to the live version which will be unlocking slowly over the opening weeks. Until then, it’s best to understand what it is and how much it works, getting down the exact nature of anima powers and other specific mechanics will be hard while we’re in the ramp-up phase and not every part of the tower is available.
Torghast is a rogue-like dungeon experience that scales for solo players and small parties, that is affected by your permanent character progression and features per-run boosts like most roguelikes. Many of Torghast’s items and “anima powers” are extremely powerful and meant to be huge parts of your performance on an individual run. If you’re familiar with games like The Binding of Isaac or the recently released Hades you know what you’re in for. Much like dedicated roguelike titles, on a standard run you have a target, and completing that floor of the dungeon will earn you your full allotment of Soul Ash, the legendary currency for the week. Each week will change the general theme of the floors on offer, but individual floors, the various items and powers you’re offered, and general challenges are randomized. If you’re operating from particular old information, don’t worry, the cost to start a run has been removed, so you can get as many attempts as you need and shouldn’t fall behind on legendary progress because of unlucky runs.
Legendaries and the Runecarver
If you played Legion you may remember its legendary system in a number of ways. While the items, in general, went over well, their acquisition method was panned. Blizzard has taken the spirit of Legion Legendaries as the basis for the Shadowlands retooling of the system but shifted the acquisition into player control. Instead of randomized drops that come from any content with little rhyme or reason to them, in Shadowlands you craft legendaries. They form the final crowning reward for multiple other activities. Crafters participate by creating the basic ingredient items, Torghast provides the currency you need to pay to the Runecarver, and most other endgame content provides legendary memories which are a flavorful name for crafting recipes.
Understanding those sources is the hard part, with almost every profession providing something to the input items between enchanted cloths and ingots made into base armors and scribes providing stat guarantees so you don’t have to roll your stats randomly means there is a lot to keep track of. Once you’ve gotten all the items in order, though, the system is simple, head to the runecarver in Torghast and select the power you want to apply to an item and the base item you want to apply it to. From there, you can optionally guarantee which secondary stats your legendary will have, given the high item level of Legendary items, it’s a good idea to invest in those. If you choose not to use them, the item will have two random secondary stats placed on it. Notably, since jewelry is defined by secondary stats you can use legendary jewelry to handpick one of your most swingy item slots. It’s not going to be worth picking a worse power just because it can go on a ring or neck, but if the power you wanted can go in one of those slots anyway, you get to knock out a pesky slot nearly forever thanks to Legendary item levels.