Dragonflight 10.1 Ultimate Gearing Guide Up to Ilvl 447 - Best Ways to Gear Up in Season 2 WoW Dragonflight

Today we are going to be showing you the updated patch 10.1 ultimate gearing guide for Season 2, featuring the new upgrade system and many different ways to gear up to 440+ in WoW Dragonflight 10.1.

Dragonflight 10.1 Ultimate Gearing Guide up to Ilvl 447 - Best Ways to Gear Up in Season 2 WoW Dragonflight

With the start of Season 2 of Dragonflight, there are so many different options for gearing up. And thanks to the new upgrade system, almost all sources of gear can be upgraded further from their initial item level, giving you way more control over how to gear up and increase your character's overall power potential. But with so many options, it can be hard to keep everything straight. So we're going to break down every gearing option, how far you can get, what's worth your time investment and which sources of gear are the easiest to chase after. So here's the WoW Dragonflight Season 2 gearing guide and how you can get up to ilvl 447. Thanks to SignsOfKelani for sharing this guide. 

New Upgrade System in Season 2 

There are 3 major parts to the upgrade system, the gear itself, a new currency called Flight Stones and a new upgrade item called Crests. Every piece of gear that drops from any PVE source in the game, whether it's the new zone, dungeons or raid, it will always come with a tag and an upgrade level. So this piece of gear from a weekly event is item level 415, it has the champion tag and its upgrade level is 1/8, that means you can upgrade this piece of gear 7 times to a max of 8/8, increasing its item level and stats as you go. The system is set up so that these tags actually overlap. Here’s the chart to better illustrate this and give you a visual.

Flightstone Currency

The flightstone currency is incredibly easy to obtain, pretty much every activity in the game will reward you with flightstones. So whether you're doing story quests, world quests, completing events, killing rares, winning dungeons over and over, pretty much everything you do will drop at least some flightstones. You can only hold 2000 flightstones at a time, so if you get to that 2K cap, maybe a look at upgrading some of your gear.

Crests & Where to Get

The last thing we need are the crests. There are 4 types of crests you can obtain and the higher item level gear you are trying to upgrade, the higher tier of crest you will need to get. More often than not, you will get fragments while doing various kinds of content which combine together to form the actual crests. 15 fragments equals 1 crest and you can only get 150 fragments of each crest type per week, which means you are limited to 10 crests of each type per week as well for the most part. This cap is cumulative, so if you swap character later on or want to work on an alt, your cap will be quite high indeed to see how many fragments you can currently earn just hover over the fragment type in your inventory and it will tell you how close you are to your current limit. 

- Whelping Crest/Fragments: World Quests, Treasures, Rares, Mythic+ keys 2-5, LFR Bosses

- Drake Crest/Fragments: Weekly Events, Weekly Quests, Rare Elites, Fyrakk Assaults, Mythic+ keys 6-10, Normal Bosses

- Wyrm Crests: M+ Keys 11-15, Heroic Bosses 

- Aspect Crest/Fragments: Mythic+ 16 keys or higher, Mythic Bosses

Easy Way to Upgrade Gear in Season 2

To see what you need to upgrade and where you can get those items, just take your gear to any upgrade vendor, slap the gear in that you want to upgrade, select whichever upgrade level you want and it will tell you exactly what you need, how many flight stones and which kinds of crests. If you then hover over each crest, it also tells you where you can get that specific one. 

Alts & Catch Up

One amazing part of the new upgrade system is that it actually has a catch-up baked into it, it will track the highest item level piece of gear you have for each slot. And if you're upgrading an item that is below that highest item level, you will get a massive discount on both flightstones and crest costs. So if you get a better item either due to stats or special effects, but it's a lower item level when compared to your current gear, upgrading it should be very quick easy and cheap. These discounts also apply to your alts as well, so gearing up all through the upgrade system is going to be a breeze. 

Note: This upgrade system does not interact with PVP at all, so the PVP gearing options still use on or on conquest as they did during Season 1. 

Dragonflight Patch 10.1 Gearing Options for Everyone

Now that we understand how to upgrade gear in Season 2, let's check out some of the gearing options that every player will have access to in Season 2.

- To start with progressing through the story quests will give you a lot of low explorer gear around the 370 to 390 mark, so if you're brand new to the game or trying to gear up a fresh level 70, these could be a half decent way of getting some quick gear especially if you're going to go through the story quests anyway. 

- After that, you'll gain access to world quests. These will also offer Explorer gear around the 380 item level mark, so pretty low in the grand scheme of things. But if you need to fill in some gaps, always check your world quests. You never know when you'll see the perfect item to fill your last lower item level slot. World quests are also a great source of other items you might be interested in like reputation, flightstones and crests. 

- There are also plenty of rares to kill in Zaralek Cavern. Rares are going to serve 2 purposes, they can drop gear on the explorer track or the adventurer track which gives you an upgrade potential of item level 411. But they can also drop Drake Crest fragments to fuel some of your upgrading needs. So hunt down any rares you see while out and about in Zaralek Cavern. 

- The new weekly event in Zaralek Cavern is a bit weird, but it might end up being worth your time. Right in the middle of the zone, you should see a horn for Researchers Under Fire, this event is on a timer and it tells you how long is left until the next event starts. The event mainly consists of running around the immediate area and completing short tasks. The more tasks you complete, the better your end reward will be, the highest tier of rewards seems to include a piece of gear at or above item level 405 in the veteran track. You can only get the big reward once per week by the looks of things, so another weekly activity to add to your list. 

- The new Sniffenseeking minigame also seems to be able to reward you with some halfway decent loot.

- The new weekly quest over loamm to earn reputation with the niffen is also a great source of gear, called A Worthy Ally and rewards you with a bag of goodies. The bag contains some gold a nice chunk of flightstones, a lost dig map for the Sniffenseeking game as well as a piece of item level 402 gear. This gear is one of eight veterans, so it has some good upgrade potential. This weekly quest is also one of your sources for the splintered sparks.

- There are also the new Fyrakk Assaults. There are some opportunities to earn a variety of lower end item level gear. The first time you kill the mini boss in the Fyrakk Assault will get you up to item level 415 gear which is also a 1/8 champion piece giving you a lot of upgrade potential. You can easily find the Fyrakk Assault on the world map and you just need to stick around until the energy bar at the top gets to 100% and the mini boss should spawn pretty soon after that. Kill him and loot him and that's all you have to do.

- There is another weekly activity that you may have missed but can give you some huge gearing opportunities. in Valdrakken, there's a building with yet another weekly quest, but this one is for five heroic dungeons. If you complete five heroic dungeons, you get a random piece of animal 415 gear or a Drake Crest. Being able to get a one of a champion item just for doing 5 heroic dungeons is crazy, you'd be able to upgrade that item all the way to 437, giving you some very easy to acquire gear with huge upgrade potential. 

- There's also a new world boss down in Zaralek Cavern, the Zaqli Elders. You can kill them once per week for a chance of loot and they drop item level 421 gear at 3/8 Champion. So you can upgrade that on the Champion track to boost your item level. With it being so quick and easy, you can just kill the world boss on any character you're wanting to try and gear up. 

Season 2 Gearing Up Through Crafting

Another very powerful gearing avenue that everyone has access to is crafted gear. Crafting gear works in the exact same way as it did in Season 1. There are two levels to this, the lower tier of crafted gear and the higher tier of crafted gear. 

Lower Tier Crafted Gear

From the lower tier, you can very easily and quickly craft item level 395 or even item level 408 gear. Both of these options rely on enchanting because there are two new item level increasing options that enchanters can craft, a Titan Training Matrix V and an Enchanted Whelpling’s Crest. Both of these items work in the same way, you can craft the lower to your crafted gear which is usually the blue recipes that start around item level 330 and then use the optional upgrade item to increase its item level. So a Titan Training Matrix V can take that up to item level 395 and then the Enchanted Whelpling Shadow flame Crest can take that up to item level 408. The Titan Training Matrix V costs 10 chromatic dust 1 vibrant shard and 1 empowered flightstone to create. The enchanting materials are super cheap, but the empowered flightstone can only be purchased from an enchanting vendor for 150 flightstones. The Enchanted Whelpling Shadowflame Crest requires 30 dust, 5 shards and one resonant crystal. The crystal can be a bit more expensive but shouldn't be too bad this far into the expansion. You also need 1 Whelpling Shadowflame Crest. Seeing as both of these items are crafted by enchanters, you'll either need the enchanting profession, know an enchanter or just create public work orders to get these items crafted. This might be one of the easiest and fastest ways to gear up to item level 408 in Season 2 for any new characters or fresh alts. 

Higher Tier Crafted Gear

For the higher tier of crafted gear, you can craft much higher item level gear and upgrade it even further, providing you have a few key materials. The first one is a new spark the spark of Shadow flame, this is the main required ingredient and it's also going to serve as our time gate. We can only craft high item level gear as quickly as we can earn Shadowflame Sparks. 

How to get Spark of Shadowflame in Dragonflight 10.1?

There's only one way to get a spark by collecting and combining two splintered sparks. You can get a splintered spark once per week from completing either a niffen weekly quest A Worthy Ally in loamm, or by completing one of the weekly PVP quests in Valdraken whichever you complete first you will get a splinter in your reward bag. So after two weeks of quests you can then combine two splinters together to form a spark. That means we can only get one spark every two weeks. 

There is a one-time quest in loamm that rewards you with an extra splinter for the first time you get a splinter. So you can make a spark with just one weekly quest completed. So be sure to pick up that quest before you do your weeklies. And then there is also a capture mechanic available here, if you ever get behind in sparks or splinters, they will have a chance to drop from any end game activity until you are caught up. So it doesn't matter if you start the season late or swap characters later on, you can always catch up with your sparks. 

How to craft gear?

To craft a piece of gear, all you need to do is get a spark and collect the required crafting materials. If you don't have the profession yourself, you'll need to set up a crafting order in Valdrakken. So collect all of your materials for the piece of gear you want crafted, slot in your spark, set a minimum rank if you're sending a personal or guild order, and there's someone available to craft it. 

How to get 424 to 447 gear?

The baseline spark gear starts on item level 411 if you get it crafted at rank 1, but it can go all the way up to item level 424 if you get an experienced crafter to make it at rank 5. So you can craft a new piece of 424 gear every two weeks which can help you gear up super easily. You can also upgrade this crafted gear up to item level 447. To do so, you're going to need a different set of Enchanted crests. The Enchanted Wyrm’s Shadowflame Crest can upgrade your crafted gear to 337, but that one requires you to get 3 Wyrm’s Shadowflame crests. And then the Enchanted Aspects Crest can upgrade your crafted gear to item level 447, but it does require 4 aspect crests. 

Season 2 Gearing Up Through Raiding

Season 2 also introduces a new raid, Aberrus the Shadowed Crucible. The raid can offer you some of the best gearing options available especially with the new upgrade system. The gear rewards also scale higher and higher as you progress through the raid and kill the harder bosses towards the end. So LFR starts dropping item level 402 or 1/8 veteran gear from the first boss and the end boss drops item level 4/11 or 4/8 veteran gear. On normal mode, you're looking at item level 415 or 1/8 champion gear from the first boss that scales up to item level 424 or 4/8 champion gear from the last boss. On heroic mode, the first boss dropped item level 428 gear which is 1/5 hero gear. Hero gear has more restrictive upgrade pass and that scales up to item level 437 from the last boss. And Mythic gear is 441 at the start of the raid scaling up to item level 450 from the last boss in the raid. The new raid is also the only place that the new season 2 tier set tokens can drop reliably, so if you want to rush your 4 set bonus, you have to be hopping into the raid. The last boss also drops a special item called the Void-Touched Curio. This can be turned into a vendor for any tier piece of your choice on the difficulty you killed the boss. So that will help you fill in any gaps. One of these items drops for every 10 players in the range from the looks of things. So a full rated 30 people will get 3 of these items which are also bonus loot. So it's completely separate from the loot that gets rolled out. 

Season 2 Gearing Up Through Dungeons

Now that we're in Season 2, normal dungeons drop item level 382 gear, heroic dungeons drop item level 389 gear and Mythic dungeons drop item level 398 gear. So even doing those cued or basic Mythic dungeons can be very rewarding, and all of this gear can be upgraded. 

As you progress through the keystone, levels you will also get higher tiers of fragments and crests.

• Key level 2-5 = Whelp

• Key level 6-10 = Drake

• Key level 11-15 = Wyrm

• Key level 16+ = Aspect

You should try and run at least 1 key a week to make sure you have at least 1 reward in the weekly vault waiting for you on reset day. Something else you will want to consider eventually is the weekly token reward just in case you don't actually want any of the great vault items. If you take the tokens, you can spend them at the nearby NPC for Flightstones, Drake Shadowflame crests, Wyrm Shadowflame crests, a chester gold or a new Season 2 socket item. 

Season 2 Gearing Up Through PVP

PVP is the only major end game gearing path that does not tie into the new upgrade system, so they're off on the side doing their own thing. You can farm honor and buy the unranked gear that start item level gear 366 and can be upgraded up to item level 392. And then you can also hop into rated to earn conquest to buy the rated PVP gear, that's going to start at item number 408 and can be upgraded further using honor. PVP gear still has the higher item level when you're in PVP combat or instances and upgrading most PVP gear only increases its PVE item level, not its PVP item level. 

An addition for the season are the new crests of honor and conquest. You can buy these from the honor and conquest quartermaster and they can be added into crafted gear to give it the same PVP item level boost while in PVP content. So you can also craft season 2 PVP gear which can be useful for filling specific slots.

Season 2 Gearing Up Through Tier Token

The last important gearing option we have in season 2 is a new achievement that guarantees you a piece of tier gear. If you complete the season 2 master achievement, you'll be given the draconic mark of mastery that can be turned into any piece of tier gear around the heroic raid item level. To complete this achievement, you need to get a Mythic+ score of 2000 or above, clear the raid on heroic or earn the rank of challenger 2 in rated PVP. So whether you do raids, dungeons or PVP, there's one piece of guaranteed tier gear for you to strive towards. later on in the season on June 13th the Revival Catalyst will fire up, and you'll be able to create your own tier set gear. You should be able to turn any Mythic+ raid or PVP gear into tier set gear using the Catalyst.