For about one and a half years we have had the new upgrade system. Crests and Valorstones are required to upgrade items of a certain quality or “upgrade track” to their highest item level. This kind of system has existed in different iterations. The current version is avoiding mistakes of the past, partially when it comes to grind effort. But there are still some aspects with which players have major gripes.
The First Version in Mists of Pandaria
Since the early days of Vanilla WoW the focus of the game had shifted more and more towards the endgame. Over time the leveling and gearing pace increased. During Cataclysm many players just created tons of alts to spend the time since gearing on each character was done rather quickly. On the other hand endgame content saw its difficulty increase a lot compared to the early days.
So in 5.1 the developers introduced the Valor Point upgrade system. Instead of purchasing vendor gear, these points would now be used to upgrade endgame gear. This served the purpose of nerfing content over time through additional character progress and gave an incentive for players to improve their equipment. Upgrading any piece of gear cost 250 VP per step of 4 item levels. The weekly cap of 1000 could be reached by doing all types of PvE content. Acquiring a new piece of gear in the same slot that had been upgraded before would still require spending the same amount of VP again. So new pieces of gear always meant a waste of previously farmed VP.
In 5.2 the added Thunderforged and later Warforged system would only add towards the grinding effort towards BIS gear. Later during the expansion the system would allow for two additional upgrade steps for each item. This meant players would spend 1000 points for each new item. One way to keep people busy in the 13 months of Siege of Orgrimmar.
Removing Deterministic Progress in Favor of a RNG Loot Shower
With the start of Warlords of Draenor in late 2014 there was no more upgrade system. All gear would instead just have a chance to roll a warforged bonus of +6 item levels. This system would then be sent into overdrive with Legion in 7.0. The cap was basically a global value for the current content patch. Any piece of endgame gear could have a minuscule chance of reaching a comparatively ridiculous item level. Testing with a large scale sample size revealed that there was a 40% chance of a 5 item level gain per roll. This means there was a chance of around 1 in 100 to get 25 extra item levels or 1 in 10,000 to gain 50. Players might get lucky on a piece of gear from current high-end content or get such a roll for a low item level world quest reward.
This system was then abandoned in 9.0 with the acknowledgement: Players don’t like heavy RNG.
Reintroduction in Shadowlands
With 9.0.5 a modified version of the 5.1 VP system was brought back into the game. The costs were now varying depending on the type of slot one would upgrade. This would reflect the different gains in performance from different slots of gear. The acquisition was through daily emissary quests and running Mythic+. Any key level would reward the same amount of VP. This led to a massive surge in M+ runs around the time. The focus was mostly on speedrunning low-level keys for quick VP. On the other hand the cap for upgrades was then also based on M+ rating alone. But at least the benefits from reaching certain caps were account-wide. And once again acquiring a new potential BIS item meant re-farming VP for the same slot.
This system carried over into the start of Dragonflight while staying untouched. It was still solely based around gear from Mythic+ and acquired mostly from running keys.
The Latest Version of the Upgrade System
Ever since 10.1 any kind of endgame gear is now included in the upgrade system. The same goes for the sources of upgrade currencies. Players farm their crests in content that is on a similar level to the items they want to upgrade. Valorstones are a second currency that is used for first-time upgrades. Once a slot has been upgraded to a certain level any new item on the same slot would have no crest costs up to that point. And the Valorstone costs up to that point would be reduced by 50% which is also account-wide.
Furthermore, bringing every slot of gear on one character to the highest level of an upgrade track (Mythic, Hero, Champion, etc) unlocks an account-wide discount for crest costs. All types of crests have a cap which increases on a weekly basis until the cap is removed some time in the middle of the major patch cycle.
In addition, crests and Valorstones are used for the crafting system. With the latest patch 11.1 the crest costs for an item are 30, 45 and 60, increasing with their item level range. For this currency it is the equivalent of 2-4 upgrade steps. This seems fine given the item level upgrade range of loot on Champion, Hero and Myth track is similar in most cases. The spark needed for each craft costs another 250 Valorstones. A 2-handed weapon requiring 2 sparks costs 500. Re-crafting an item has no additional requirements of these 2 currencies.
(Mostly) Less Waste
Compared to previous versions, players aren’t wasting their (primary) upgrade currency as much as in the past. There is still the scenario of getting a piece of Hero track gear on 1/6, upgrading it to 4/6, and then getting a new item with better stats at 3/6. Upgrading this doesn’t cost any more crests but if the player had had it before the crests for the first 2 upgrade steps wouldn’t have been spent.
Another issue would be getting the Myth track account-wide bonus. Bringing 2 trinkets to the track cap requires a lot of vault RNG, mythic raid loot luck, or crafting a rather worthless alchemist stone. But outside of these edge cases, players know that at some point they have fully upgraded any of their slots. And for that character, any future loot no longer requires any crests at all. And this brings us to the issue of Valorstones.
The Problem with Valorstones
This second upgrade currency has a cap but can be farmed with no limit. Unlike crests, the costs (amount) for an upgrade vary between slot types and upgrade tracks. During the early days of gear progression, the focus is on acquiring crests, and getting the required Valorstones feels more like a byproduct of the process. The different sources for Valorstones don’t really stand out amongst each other. Higher raid difficulties reward more currency just as higher key levels do. Players are no longer speed running the lowest key levels to farm their crests as well as Valorstones. But looking at a sheet for all of the upgrade prices reveals some major differences.
Looking at the Numbers
Players have to spend the entire cap of 2,000 Valorstones to upgrade a 1/6 Myth track 2-hand weapon to 678 if they get it from the vault or as mythic raid loot from the first few bosses. Meanwhile, a crafted weapon brought to item level 675 at once only costs 2×250 Valorstones. And if the crafted weapon was an upgrade straight from 636 in Season 1 the cost of just 500 Valorstones pales in comparison to up to 4,700. That is what it takes to bring different looted weapons from 636 up to 678.
This is quite the extreme comparison since in one scenario players are sticking to a low item level weapon until they re-craft a better version. But getting just 60 gilded crests and 500 Valorstones isn’t that much effort. And re-crafting the weapon to different stats costs none of these currencies. It could be up to 1,000 Valorstones to re-upgrade a new Myth track 2-handed weapon with better stats.
And now we get to the biggest problem: Why does an upgrade always cost 15 crests (pre-discount) but the Valorstone cost varies from slot to slot? The effort spent acquiring crests for any item upgrade is always similar. But once we get to re-farming the Valorstones – even with the 50% discount – it just feels bad to upgrade big armor slots or any kind of weapon. And especially the comparison between crafted items and upgraded loot is massive when it comes to Valorstones. Any first time crafted item outside of 2-handed weapons always costs 250 Valorstones. Something that for Myth track items is only matched by re-upgrading a small slot from 1/6 to 6/6.
One Suggestion for the Solution
Feedback from players usually varies between removing Valorstones entirely, increasing the cap or the amount from any source, or reducing the cost. The first scenario would be the most drastic measure and is more a consequence of no major changes happening so far. Increasing the cap and the dropped amount would just be the inverse of reducing the cost. If players could farm and hold twice as many Valorstones it would be no different to just cutting the costs in half. And reducing the cost in general would still leave us with the major differences in costs per slot.
The combination of universal crest and Valorstone costs and requiring twice the amount of Valorstones for 2-handed weapons should be a guideline for a new model. Ideally, any armor upgrade would always cost 15 crests and a fixed amount of Valorstones. The Valorstone cost for each track (Myth, Hero, Champion, etc.) doesn’t need to go up. The factor from track to track is rather small but it is more likely that more upgrade steps have to be taken with loot from higher tracks. And once the account-wide crest discount is reached, the Valorstone cost should also be reduced by one-third. In general, the cap should not exist as a yardstick for the highest possible upgrade cost but as a buffer to max out several items without taking a detour of farming Valorstones.
In Conclusion
The current system is a decent compromise that doesn’t force a re-grind of 100% of the currencies for every replacement. It also works well on an account-wide basis. It does not incentivize rushing through trivial content while denying PUG members that are “undergeared” compared to the group. However, Valorstone costs should be normalized for all armor slots. Single-item upgrades should never reach the extremes of consuming the entire cap.
