How to Craft Shadowlands Legendary Items

Crafting your own Legendary Armor is one of the new features in the Shadowlands expansion. This guide tells you more about the whole process and explains what you need to do to craft your first Legendary item.

Contents

Unlocking Legendary Crafting

To start the questline that will unlock Legendary Crafting, you must:

  • Reach level 60
  • Complete the Main story campaign quests.
  • Complete Choosing Your Purpose by choosing your covenant
  • Complete your covenant's campaign quests. 

Covenant campaign quests

Unlocking Torghast and the Runecarver

After completing your covenant campaign, you can unlock Torghast and the Runecarver NPC by completing these quests.

After you complete the Prison of the Forgotten quest, you will meet the Runecarver at the Runecarver's Oubliette.

Unlocking Runecarving

You are almost done, but you still have to do a few more quests to unlock the Runecarving to craft your legendaries.

Components needed for crafting a Legendary

Before you can craft your first Legendary. You will need four Components to complete the Ashes of the Tower and the follow-up The Final Pieces quests.

You will need the following four Components:

  • Legendary Power
  • Base Item
  • 2 Missives
  • Soul Ash

Below you will find a full description of these components and how to get them.

1. Legendary Power

Legendary Powers (Memory of the Runecarver) determine what Legendary Item Effect you will have on your legendary.

For example, the Memory of Gorefiend's Domination makes your Heart Strike reduces the remaining cooldown on Vampiric Blood by 2 seconds.

Legendary powers are limited to 2-3 gear slots, so make sure to check which base item you need for your legendary power. Using the previous example, the Memory of Gorefiend's Domination legendary power can only be crafted with Legs or Feet base items. (you can read more about base items in the next part of the guide)

Where to get Legendary Powers?

You can check the full list of Legendary Powers and where to get them if you click on the "Loot" tab in your Adventure Guide. (Click on "Home" at the top left corner if the "Loot" tab doesn't show up.)

There are sixteen Legendary Powers for each class. They are obtained from raid bosses, dungeon bosses, PvP, Reputation, Torghast, and the Great Vault (new weekly chest).

You will have to finish the Deep Within and the Reawakening quests for Memory of the Runecarver recipes to drop.

2. Legendary Base items (Rune Vessel)

Legendary Base items (Rune Vessels) determine the slot you are making your armor for, and the item level of your armor.

How to get Legendary Base Items?

Base items are crafted by players with Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring, and Jewelcrafting. They can be bought and sold at the Auction House, so you don't have to have these professions. You can buy the base item.

How to learn the Legendary Base item recipes?

Once you reach 100 in Shadowlands Blacksmithing, Leatherworking, Tailoring, or Jewelcrafting, the Runecarver will offer you one of these quests:

Full list of Base items

How to craft higher ilvl Legendary Base Items?

You will gain experience each time you craft a base item, and once you fill the experience bar, you will learn the next rank. Crafting a higher-rank base item will give more experience.

Higher rank base items also require a lot more materials. A rank 4 item usually costs around 4 times as much as a rank 1.

Rank (ilvl) XP / Craft Total XP for next rank
Rank 1 (iLvl 190) 25 75
Rank 2 (iLvL 210) 50 150
Rank 3 (iLvL 225) 75 225
Rank 4 (iLvL 235) - -

Crafting rank 5, Rank 6, and rank 7 items

To craft higher-rank legendaries, you will need to add an optional reagent when you are crafting the legendary base items.

Vestige of Origins increases the item level of the attached legendary base armor piece by the equivalent of 2 ranks.

Vestige of the Eternal increases the item level of the attached legendary base armor piece by the equivalent of 3 ranks.

Vestige of Origins can be crafted by Blacksmiths, Jewelcrafters, Leatherworkers, or Tailors. The Tome of Origins recipe is sold by Duchess Mynx. Requires an Honored reputation with Death's Advance, and it costs 2000x Stygia.

You can learn the Vestige of the Eternal recipe from Tome of the Eternal, which is awarded at the end of Chapter 5 in the Secrets of the First Ones campaign quests. (Patch 9.2 Campaign).

3. Soul Ash, Soul Cinders, and Cosmic Flux

Soul Ash, Soul Cinders, and Cosmic Flux are Shadowlands currencies that you will need to craft and upgrade Legendary armors.

Where to get them?

You can get Soul Ash and Soul Cinders from completing layers in Torghast.

Cosmic Flux is from Quests, Treasures, Rare mobs, and Daily Quests in Zereth Mortis. You can also get it from Mythic Dungeons, Raids, and higher-level Torghast Layers (13-16).

How many do you need for crafting legendaries?

Rank item level Soul Ash Soul Cinders Cosmic Flux
Rank 1 190 1250 - -
Rank 2 210 2000 - -
Rank 3 225 3200 - -
Rank 4 235 5150 - -
Rank 5 249 5150 1100 -
Rank 6 262 5150 1650 -
Rank 7 291 5150 1650 2000

4. Missives

Missives basically let you choose which secondary stats you want on your legendary. You will need two different Missives. You can't use two from the same stat. (you can't change these later, even when upgrading)

To get the missives, you need Shadowlands Inscription (40) or buy them at the Auction House.

Crafting your Legendary

Once you gathered all 4 components and completed Ashes of the Tower and the follow-up The Final Pieces quests. You will unlock the Runecarver UI.

Talk to the Runecarver and click on "I'd like to craft a legendary item".