How to Prepare for The War Within Guide

The release of World of Warcraft’s The War Within is drawing near, and preparing for it involves more than just exploring the beta, leveling alts, or following the usual advice. Here are some additional activities you can do right now to get ready:

1. Clean Out Your Bags and Bank
   In addition to active preparations, you can also do passive ones, like organizing your bags and bank. If you use multiple alts for trading, some of them may have accumulated excess materials.

   This could be junk you offloaded from your main character, investments that haven’t paid off yet, or items purchased for resale. If you use your guild bank, it might also be overflowing. For example, at one point in Dragonflight, Shadowlands legendary blanks became suitable for transmogrification, and some players mass-crafted them for sale. Unsold or forgotten items can easily be stuck in an alt’s bank or bags.

   If you bought a large batch of herbs but never milled them, now is the time to process them or sell them to a vendor and cut your losses. Maybe you’ve been sending locked boxes to your rogue from all your characters but haven’t opened them yet. Or perhaps you have green items from those boxes that you haven’t decided what to do with—sell as cosmetics, disenchant, or vendor. There’s no point in hoarding personal items; sell them to a vendor without regret. Some materials might be worth converting into something more useful.

2. Accumulate as Much Clean Gold as Possible
   This follows the previous point. By the expansion launch, you should aim to level professions quickly and acquire rare recipes. This will be costly in the early days of the expansion. For example, in the early days of Dragonflight, the Luminous Titan Sphere cost several thousand gold, while now it sells for 40–50 gold.

   One of Dragonflight’s gold-mines was the Arcana of the Elements recipe. Even traders who paid a lot for it still profited over time—the demand was high. Something similar might happen in The War Within, and you’ll need cash to purchase a recipe that could make you rich and return your investments.

   Early in an expansion, people often don’t fully understand the market or new items’ uses, so they may misprice things. For example, after Dragonflight’s release you could buy single Awakening elements, combine them into Awakened ones, and sell them for a profit—Awakening Fire might cost 5 gold, while Awakened Fire sold for 100 gold.

   This also applies to direct resales. If you monitor price trends and know an item’s real selling price, you can buy goods below market value and resell them. Of course, you need gold for that, since even if your listing sells quickly, you might not receive the money immediately.

   Another consideration: your efficiency as a trader depends on the profit/cost ratio. For example, if a crafted bag brings 50 gold but costs 300 gold to make, you’d need to create many to profit substantially. Some niches can be profitable but have a high entry threshold, so the larger your gold cushion, the more options you can pursue.

   Specific targets vary by player. Some aim for 100,000 gold, others need much more. Assess your needs and inventory your potentially sellable items to estimate how much gold you can raise.

3. Get Rid of Dragonflight Goods
   This summarizes the first two points. Many everyday and less-common Dragonflight items will lose value when The War Within launches. For example, this applies to flasks and potions. If you have a stockpile of consumables, it may be wise to sell them while they still fetch a good price.

   If you plan to take a break from the current version and switch to Remix: Mists of Pandaria or Cataclysm Classic, return to Dragonflight and sell potential goods from this expansion if you don’t plan to use them. You might also have materials bought for resale that haven’t reached the desired price point—if you don’t sell them soon, your losses could grow by the time The War Within arrives.

4. Complete All Boring and Routine Tasks
   This applies to earning gold and finishing Dragonflight content. Now is the best time to clear up unfinished business—complete quest chains you started, finish transmog sets you’re partway through, or obtain mounts and pets that require repetitive activities.

   Some items remain relevant after an expansion and can even increase in price. For example, bags from earlier expansions are still bought by players starting new characters, so Dragonflight bags may sell after the expansion ends. The same goes for Dragonflight toys, mounts, and pets, which will become collectible.

   If some recipes are locked behind reputation, work on them now and increase your renown with the corresponding factions. Precious dragonlings deserve special mention—these jewelcrafter-crafted pets, like the Onyx Dragonling, have recipes that are hard to obtain and require gem clusters and materials that drop rarely from chests and Disturbed Dirt piles on the Dragon Isles. It’s unlikely many players will farm these after Dragonflight ends, so dragonling prices are expected to rise with The War Within’s release.