5 ways to prepare for World of Warcraft The War Within

World of Warcraft The War Within will be released in August, so it’s time to consider how you can best prepare for it. Unlike Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail, there’s significantly less work to do before you head into a WoW expansion. One thing worth mentioning is if you’re grinding Mythics, or anything competitive, make sure to get your ratings done before the current season ends, or you’ll lose out on that chance forever. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of time for that.

If you have access, it’s also worth checking out the War Within Beta test, which is now available. This is more to familiarize yourself with the various changes and updates coming to the game. World of Warcraft The War Within is almost here, so here are some ways to prepare yourself.

Note: This article is subjective and reflects the writer's opinions.

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How to prepare for the upcoming World of Warcraft The War Within expansion

1) Level any characters you want to play ahead of time

WoW Remix is an amazing place to get easy level 70s (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Not everyone plays the same character from Day 1 to Day 1,000 in World of Warcraft, and you may want to change it up in The War Within. I’m still not 100% sure if I’m going to keep playing my Retribution Paladin, but it will likely remain my main character for some time to come.

However, there is an amazing way to get a character leveled up ahead of time, and that’s WoW Remix: Mists of Pandaria. Those characters you level to 70 will remain after the event ends - though their overpowered gear and gems probably will not.

Another tip is to go ahead and make an Evoker and get it to your capital city. In the expansion, these will start at level 10, but if you make one now, you’ll have it at level 58, minimum.

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2) Gear up your main character (and alts if you have time)

While it's not necessary to be 490, it sure doesn't hurt (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

This isn’t such a big deal, because let’s be honest - a few quests into the expansion, your gear will probably start to become out of date. However, having good gear will make your start much easier to manage, I can promise you. If you’re going to gear up your main character or alts in World of Warcraft ahead of The War Within, it’s very easy to do.

Do your Weekly quests in Valdrakken, and take the time to head to the Emerald Dream, and do the daily/weekly quests there. In just about two hours, I gained so many gear upgrades, I didn’t know what to do with them all. Then, I headed into the Awakened Raids, and before I knew it, I had 490 item level. This isn’t a hard requirement, but it will certainly make life a bit easier going into the expansion.

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3) Determine your Warband members

Having a prepared Warband will make things a bit easier (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

Warbands offer World of Warcraft The War Within players an unprecedented ability to share resources, equipment, and crafting materials with each other. You get four characters in a Warband. While you can change them whenever you want, it’s important to have a good idea of who you want to focus on first in that group.

Players will have access to a Warband bank where they can easily share materials, and there’s even Warbound equipment (Warbound until Equipped). This makes it much easier to get equipment for your alts as you play through the new zones in World of Warcraft The War Within.

Also read: What are Warbands?

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4) Level your Tradeskills in your Warband

As you can see, I slack pretty hard on trade skills (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

This does admittedly go hand-in-hand with the above piece, but there’s more to it. Having your Tradeskills (Crafting/Gathering) ready to go in your Warband means that while you’re leveling, you’ll be able to work on the new patterns/gather the new materials that will show up in the new zones of World of Warcraft The War Within. It will also make it easier for you to make more complicated patterns, since everyone is working towards one goal, with one shared inventory.

In addition, there is almost always going to be some ridiculous new way to make money with professions - in Dragonflight, it involved Jewelcrafting and Prospecting. A fellow guildmate made more than a million gold at the start of Dragonflight, just from buying the market out early and prospecting. Keep a balanced group of tradeskills on hand and you can make tons of gold.

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5) Farm gold - it's a resource that never goes out of style

There are plenty of ways to make gold in WoW (Image via Blizzard Entertainment)

While I know I did just talk about farming gold, this is a little different. It’s not as easy now to abuse the trade skill market as it was at the start of the expansion. That said, it’s also still very easy to make a fortune if you want one.

The easiest way is to just do your dailies/world quests, things of that nature out in the Emerald Dream. There’s lots to see and do in the Emerald Dream, such as collecting treasure chests, but you should take the time to do Daily/Weekly quests and the open-world events.

Another solid way to make money in World of Warcraft ahead of The War Within is to do the old-world raids. Clear your inventory and grind through ICC, and whatever other raids you’d like. Selling off all that old gear really stacks up. There are always great ways to farm money in WoW, though.

If you want to sell items, Bind on Equips, and other things, get the addon "WorthIt: Know Before They Do!". It values your gold farms by taking the averages you receive from a gold farm, and prices it towards server prices, to give you a good idea of if grinding a dungeon is worth it.

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World of Warcraft The War will be released on August 26, 2024. There will be a pre-patch before that as well. It brings a whole new series of zones to explore, dungeons to tackle, and secrets to uncover.