Let’s start with something simple and straightforward: When you hit level 110 in World of Warcraft: Legion, you aren’t done. At all. Even if you have no interest in raiding whatsoever, you have a ton of further stuff to do, plenty of content awaiting you, and a lot more going on than just sitting and waiting for dungeon queues. You’re arguably not even done leveling.
All of that is good information. But once you hit the level cap… what are you supposed to do? You’re suddenly barraged by several quests, all of which seem to have equal priority and none of which screams “do me first to advance storylines and be helpful!” You wind up just sort of staring blankly, aware that you’ve got a bunch of further stuff to do but unclear on how to prioritize it.
I don’t think I have the absolute answer for what to do, but I’ve done this before, and I have a pretty good idea. So why not take a metaphorical walk with me as we examine what you should be doing once you hit the big 110, roughly in order.
Start researching your artifact
If there’s a single must-do when you hit the level cap, it’s this. Pop right over to your class hall and put in orders for artifact knowledge research. The second you hit 110 if at all possible. Don’t even look at the auction house first; you want this right away.
Why? Well, once you’ve unlocked 13 traits on an artifact, you’ve probably noticed that the next trait costs… more. A lot more. An extraordinarily lot more. The 14th trait you unlock costs more than the first 13 combined, and those piddly little 100 Artifact Power items aren’t even going to make a dent in it. So how are you ever going to actually unlock more stuff in your primary artifact?
That’s what Artifact Research is for. The first level of the trait is a 25% increase to power gained; the second level is 50%. The third level is 90%. Then it starts going… much higher. By the time you cap out Artifact Knowledge, you’ll be getting thousands of AP from even the random little green items that drop from treasure chests.
Of course, like most major projects, researching a new rank of knowledge takes several days, so the sooner you start, the better. Also note that the ranks affect future items gained, not existing gains. So don’t stockpile your AP items, just use them as you get them; you’ll always have a continual stream of more of them, and as you finish research on your artifact, you’ll get more out of each new one. Start that work order right off and get ready for the benefits to start rolling in later on.
Unlock world quests (and start Suramar)
This would be the second thing to get started on. Hitting 110 automatically awards you the quest to unlock world quests, but first you need to hit Friendly with five factions across the Broken Isles. That’s a faction for each zone, and if you know this ahead of time it’s incredibly easy to already have Friendly for each of the leveling factions by the time you hit the cap (or at least be close to it). That’s no big deal.
The Nightfallen, however, won’t even give you the time of day until you hit 110, starting with a quest from Khadgar to investigate an odd magical message. Hitting Friendly with the Nightfallen will take a little bit of doing following the Suramar storyline, but it should definitely be your first priority. Once you’ve hit Friendly with them and can start picking up world quests, you can divert yourself in other directions once again; the Suramar storylines are lengthy and you’ll have plenty of reason to go back.
So why do you want those world quests open? Well, the next two items on this list both involve world quests in abundance, but they also form the bulk of the open-world endgame at the level cap. And they’re awesome; they blend together tons of different content types, offering you content based not just on combat but also upon your crafting and gathering professions as well as light puzzles. They also offer scaling rewards in the form of gear, so as your overall item level climbs, they offer better and better equipment. It’s a slow climb upward, but it means that you’re going to be getting upgrades, even if you only rarely peek inside of dungeons.
You won’t want to start doing those quests right away, though; move on and at least pick up the next stage of things before you start doing them.
Finish your class campaign
Every class has a specific storyline that’s running through the class hall from the very start. It’s usually pretty well suggested right away, too; Shaman players are tasked with uniting the elemental forces of Azeroth, Paladins are fighting against the predations of the Legion, Warriors are earning glory in battle, and so forth. The campaign doesn’t finish up until you hit 110, though, and will usually require a couple of dungeon runs, some missions, a pile of Blood of Sargeras, and several world quests.
This is one of the reasons I said you should hold off on doing the world quests right away – after all, you’ll need to do a bunch of them to advance your campaign anyway, might as well kill two birds with one stone. (You could start up with your class campaign when you start your artifact research, for that matter.) Finishing your class campaign is slightly less vital than other goals, though, insofar as your rewards for it mostly come down to part of your class order armor set. Which is nice, but it’s not earth-shattering. Still, you’ll get a pile of artifact power and resources along the way as well, not to mention a new artifact appearance, so it’s worth doing the legwork.
Follow your emissary quests
Once you unlock world quests, your map will have a little display in the lower corner of the screen displaying your emissary quests. Emissary quests are rotated through on a daily basis; each day, you get a new emissary quest on the usual reset cycle, and you can have up to three active at once. They’re also auto-accepted; you don’t have to do anything to get a new one.
Each Emissary quest tasks you with completing four world quests for a specific faction. The factions found in the various zones each ask you to clear quests in their respective zones, obviously; clearing the Highmountain emissary quest requires doing world quests in Highmountain. The two “oddball” factions are the Wardens and the Kirin Tor, as world quests for those factions can show up in any Broken Isles zone, with both labeled appropriately. Fortunately for you, world quests that are in a specific zone still count for that zone’s emissary regardless, so a Warden world quest in Val’sharah would count toward Warden and Dreamweaver emissary quests at once.
If you need help finding appropriate quests, click on the emissary icon in the emissary display; world quests which fulfill that emissary’s requirements are helpfully highlighted.
Emissary quests have three big advantages. First of all, clearing the Emissary quests is the main way to earn reputation for each faction; while you get a bit of reputation for every world quest you clear, an Emissary quest rewards you with 1500 reputation instead of the 50-150 you get from normal world quests. (Kirin Tor emissaries award you with reputation items for other factions, since the Kirin Tor faction is from back in Wrath of the Lich King and isn’t terribly relevant.) Second, you get a nice shot of order resources or gold and a big AP item for clearing them. Third, you have a decent change to get Legendary items from the reward boxes, as well as various other gear upgrades.
Once you’ve unlocked world quests and you’re in on emissaries, you’ve got your core “daily” loop unlocked and ready to go. You log in, check on your emissary options, clear those out, and wind up with a mess of stuff on top. So now you’ll be doing world quests for both emissary quests and the individual scaling rewards. What’s next?
Finish storylines and work on Pathfinder
Broken Isles Pathfinder, Part One is in the game right now. You might need a little extra time to complete it (it includes a Suramar story that wasn’t in the game as of this writing), but you can make progress toward clearing it out. That means getting revered with all of the Broken Isles reputations, fully exploring every map… and clearing every zone’s story. That last one is still worth doing at 110, thanks to scaling rewards and just the general thrust of each storyline.
Obviously, this is a long-term project rather than something that you’ll be done with in an afternoon. But it’s a good long-term project to be focused upon, because it means that you have a pretty clear idea of where to go next. You know that you’ll have a lot of further exploring to do in Suramar even after you hit Friendly. There are clearly lots of things to do to advance your reputation in each zone. There’s a lot of stuff out there to see, and none of it becomes irrelevant because you’re at the level cap.
From here, you’re in a position to start moving forward and seeing what more the game has to offer. There’s a lot of stuff in Legion, and hitting the level cap is just the start of that journey. Sure, it’s a little overwhelming at first, but I hope this gives you a good picture of where to start and how to move forward.
