I’m new to the current expansion and recently started raiding with a guild. I’ve been upgrading my gear from Veteran to Champion, now to Hero level. But I’ve hit a frustrating wall: I can’t upgrade some of my Hero gear because of a cap on Runed Undermine Crests. This is really holding me back from improving four gear slots and makes swapping some of my older higher ilvl Champion gear for new Hero gear kinda pointless since I can’t upgrade the new pieces. I joined the season a few weeks late too, so keeping up feels even tougher. I’m trying to understand if there’s a good reason for this cap or if it’s just an annoying barrier. For context, I’ve already used all 540 of my runed crests but many slots aren’t fully upgraded to 658 yet. Also, I made some crafting mistakes early on and wasted a few enchanted runed crests when I meant to make enchanted gilded crests. Overall though, I’m really enjoying raiding — my ilvl is at 659 and we’ve killed 7 of 8 bosses on Heroic. Would appreciate any insights!
5 Answers
You might be overthinking the gearing process. The cap on Runed Undermine Crests is there to manage progression early in the season. You’ve already hit ilvl 659, which is more than enough to comfortably run Heroic and early Mythic content. The upgrade caps just pace you so you don’t fully max out all gear slots right away. Plus, that cap increases as weeks go by. So just chill and upgrade as you get more crests. Also, many players get stuck early on because of the gilded crest cap, so you’re not alone.
The cap on runed crests basically acts as a weekly stamina system: you get 90 crests per week to spend, which keeps you engaged without being overwhelmed. It can feel annoying, but the idea is to slow down the full upgrade grind and encourage gradual progression. For new players, it can seem like an unnecessary barrier, especially if you didn’t min-max early on. However, the cap increases as the season progresses, so catching up is definitely doable. Dual-spec gearing can be tricky under this system, but it’s all about prioritizing your main slots for upgrades and then swapping when you can do so without crests.
The general rule is: once a gear slot reaches a certain item level, you don’t need runed crests to upgrade other pieces in that slot to that ilvl, only valor stones. So, if your boots are at 658 ilvl, and you get a new pair at 652, you can bump those up to 658 using only valor stones. The system is designed to prevent crest waste on switching gear, but it also means you should avoid upgrading gear unnecessarily if a better base item is coming your way soon.
Heads up: You wasted some runed crests on crafting enchanted runed crests when you meant to make enchanted gilded crests. That happens to the best of us! The crest caps are designed to slow down the upgrade flood—so players don’t fully upgrade every slot super early and set crazy item level expectations. Joining the season late isn’t much of a disadvantage overall. Think of the crests as slot upgrades rather than upgrades on specific gear pieces. If you get a better item later, upgrading it is free in terms of crests, just costs valor stones. Learning this early will make gearing less stressful going forward.
The key thing to know is once you’ve upgraded a particular gear slot to a certain item level—for example, your chest to 658 ilvl—you’ve effectively unlocked that ilvl for that slot. That means if you later get a different chest piece with better stats but a lower ilvl, you can upgrade it to 658 without spending any more runed crests, just valor stones. So it’s the slot that counts, not the individual piece.
That makes a lot more sense now! So if I get a Vault drop with 662 ilvl trinket for instance, I could upgrade my other trinket from 645 up to 658 without needing crests just by having that high ilvl trinket? Sounds like aiming for a couple high ilvl pieces for each slot might be the trick to save crests.