World of Warcraft Shadowlands has been out for a few months now and that means most players have already maxed out their mains and are now looking to gear up some of their alts. Unlike some of the previous expansions, Shadowlands is surprisingly alt friendly. Blizzard has implemented several catch up systems that you can use to max out multiple characters in a relatively short amount of time. Even more importantly, it’s quite easy to quickly acquire gear for your alts in Shadowlands provided you know how. If you don’t, there’s no need to worry because we’re going to teach you all the best methods in this step-by-step guide.

Timewalking Campaigns

If you want to level up an alt from scratch you’ll want to take advantage of the new leveling system introduced in World of Warcraft Shadowlands – Timewalking Campaigns. This system lets you go from level 1 all the way to level 50 while questing in a single expansion. Simply visit Chromie in the capital city of your faction and choose your favorite expansion to get started.

Although you can choose any expansion you want, we recommend going with Warlords of Dreanor if you want to level up as fast as possible. Meanwhile, Legion is a bit slower but is arguably the most enjoyable expansion to level in. All the other expansions are either too slow or not very fun for leveling, but the choice is ultimately up to you.

Although timewalking campaigns are designed to take your character up to level 50, you can actually access Shadowlands content starting with level 48. We recommend not wasting any time and picking up the quest that sends you to The Maw as soon as you hit level 48. There aren’t any good opportunities for gearing in The Maw so simply follow the story quests until you reach Oribos. Once there, it’s time to choose your Covenant.

Leveling Up in The Shadowlands

The first time you play through the new campaigns added in Shadowlands you need to visit each zone and interact with each Covenant in a particular order. If you’re playing an alt, however, you don’t have to worry about that thanks to the Threads of Fate system. This is another new system introduced in Shadowlands and it allows your alts to pick a Covenant at the start of their journey, rather than at the end. Using Threads of Fate is optional but we highly recommend taking advantage of it because it will make things a lot easier.

With Threads of Fate activated, you don’t have to worry too much about replaying Covenant quests because the bulk of your experience will come from World Quests and Dungeons. Expect to gradually receive an important quest from each of the four Covenants that can be completed by doing various activities associated with that particular Covenant. The best way of going about is to grind as many Dungeons as you can while completing World Quests in the meantime.

Prioritize World Quests that drop gear and expect to receive more items from Dungeon bosses. Doing a few activities that grant anima is also helpful because you’re going to need it later on. You can also work towards leveling up professions if you want to craft some gear yourself, but that’s not really necessary because you’re going to replace all your leveling gear shortly after you reach level 60.

Gearing Up at Level 60

The Auction House

Once you reach level 60 the real fun begins. You should have acquired a few thousand gold passively while leveling up so it’s time to put it to good use. Go to the auction house and grab some ilvl 151 items for all the slots that you can. At this point in the expansion, these items should only cost between 200 and 1000 gold a piece.

If you have a lot of gold at your disposal, you can buy much higher ilvl gear from the auction house, which would speed things up significantly. Alternatively, If you want to buy WoW gold we recommend checking out LootWowGold. You can even buy items directly from there.

Covenant Set

Completing your Covenant campaign has many benefits and is a fantastic way of gearing up your alts. You will be awarded with increasingly better pieces of gear as you progress through the campaign, culminating with an ilvl 197 item and a token that you can exchange for an ilvl 187 weapon. Even better, once you finish the campaign will you be able to upgrade all the Covenant set items to ilvl 197. The only problem is that you’ll need a lot of anima to upgrade all the items. Make sure to complete World Quests that grant anima to speed up the process, especially the rare ones that give 250.

Craft Your First Legendary

This step is pretty self-explanatory. You’ll want to visit the Runecarver and get started on your first legendary as soon as possible. Depending on your spec, this may require you to do specific types of content for a chance at getting the best Memories. However, since you’re playing an alt, you should already have some Memories that were acquired on your main. You can get a few other easy ones from Torghast, which you need to do anyway for Soul Ash. You won’t be able to upgrade your legendary item past rank 1 during the first week but you can go for rank 2 the following week.

PvP Gear

It’s extremely easy to get high level gear in Shadowlands if you do a lot of PvP. More importantly, you can buy items for the specific slot you want using Honor and Conquest points. Conquest points are a bit difficult to acquire at first but you can get a lot of Honor points by simply doing Battlegrounds and completing the weekly PvP-related quests. Similar to Covenant gear, Honor gear can be upgraded up to ilvl 197 while Conquest gear starts at ilvl 200 and requires you to reach a certain rating before it can be upgraded higher.

Final Thoughts

If you’re someone who plays World of Warcraft Shadowlands every day you can easily take a freshly maxed out alt up to around ilvl 200 in a little over a week. Once there, you’ll need to go for more challenging types of content like rated PVP, Heroic/Mythic Castle Nathria or Mythic+ in order to keep improving your gear.