Similar to World of Warcraft Dragonflight season two, season three has one gear upgrade system that you can use to upgrade both your PvP and PvE gear. Given the fact that the gearing system can be quite confusing, I’ll tackle the ins and outs of gearing in season three.
Blizzard introduced Shadowflame Crests and Flightstones at the beginning of season two as a way to unify all different currencies under one banner. This system is being expanded on in season three, and will essentially work in a similar way just like in the past season.
Here’s everything you need to know about the gearing system in Dragonflight season three.
How gearing works in WoW Dragonflight season three
In a nutshell, gearing in season three is quite similar to season two. You have different types of gear—Explorer, Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Hero, and Mythic, and you can upgrade it using Flightstones and Crests. But there are a couple of important quality-of-life changes you need to know before you jump straight into season three content.
Type of gear
Gear in season three will still have the same tracks—Explorer, Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Hero, and Mythic, but the Hero and the Myth track will now be one upgrade bigger. Instead of having only four upgrades, Hero gear will have five tracks, and Myth gear will go up from three to four.
PvP gear
In season three, PvP gear will entirely abandon Honor as a way to upgrade gear, and will only be improved by using Flightstones and Crests. This means that PvP activities will now drop these two currencies, and the more demanding activities you complete, the better the Crests will be.
This means players will have one unified system for both PvP and PvE, and it won’t be such a pain switching between Arenas and Mythic+ dungeons. Besides that, you will have more freedom on what you want to spend your Flightstones and Crests.
Crests
Shadowflame Crests are getting replaced with Dreaming Crests. Dreaming Crests will come in four different forms—Whelpling’s Dreaming Crest, Drake’s Dreaming Crest, Wyrm’s Dreaming Crest, and Aspect’s Dreaming Crest.
On top of this, fragments are entirely retiring and you will get entire crests when you complete activities across the Dragon Isles.
The best piece of news of them all is that crests will no longer take up bag space and will go immediately to your currency tab, meaning you will have eight more slots to work with.
Enchanted Shadowflame Crests, the currency used to upgrade crafted gear, will be replaced with Nascent Crests. Again, this will be only usable by Enchanters, but you can always order them via Crafting Orders.
In Dragonflight season three, you can get up to 360 Crests every week. Given you have four different types of Crests, this means you can earn only 90 Whelpling’s Dreaming Crest, 90 Drake’s Dreaming Crest, 90 Wyrm’s Dreaming Crest, and 90 Aspect’s Dreaming Crest. This translates into roughly six gear upgrades every week. This will increase every next week, and you don’t have to cap out Crests to get more the following week.
Finally, when you cap out one type of Crests, activities across the Dragon Isles will award you the next available Crest. If you cap out Wyrm’s Dreaming Crest, you will get Drake’s Dreaming Crest.
Trading Crests
Starting with season three, you can trade your Crests upwards. This means if you have too many Whelpling’s Crests, and you need Drake’s Crest, you can exchange at the six-to-one ratio. 90 lesser Crests will turn out to be 15 Crests of better quality and it will count toward the cap for both types of Crests.
Item levels
Normally, from season to season, Blizzard increases item levels by 26, but this time around it will be 39. The reasoning behind this is most likely to stop players from rushing through content and having the best-in-slot gear only a month after the season starts.
