WoW TWW Season 1: How to Gear Up in Delves

As The War Within launches its inaugural season, World of Warcraft adventurers are embracing the innovative Delves system as their primary pathway to character enhancement. These dynamic PvE encounters merge exploration with intense combat scenarios, creating diverse opportunities to acquire powerful gear and strengthen your hero. Following MrGM’s comprehensive YouTube analysis, we’ll explore proven tactics for maximizing your gearing efficiency through this new endgame feature.

What is a Delve?

Delves represent a groundbreaking open-world PvE endgame activity engineered to deliver both challenging gameplay and substantial rewards. They operate without timers or participation restrictions, accommodating solo adventurers or groups of up to five players, with each party benefiting from NPC companion support.

The system features eleven progressive difficulty tiers, with tiers 1-3 accessible during the pre-season period. Season commencement unlocks tiers 4-11, requiring sequential completion of preceding tiers while preserving revive charges. Beyond tier 3, each Delve imposes a five-revive limit per instance, meaning your team can only resurrect five times before the encounter registers as technically failed. Exhausting all revives doesn’t terminate your run but significantly diminishes final rewards. Crucially, progression achievements apply universally across all twelve Delve locations—unlocking tier 5 in one automatically grants tier 5 access throughout the entire system.

When surveying your map, you’ll encounter two distinct Delve classifications: the perpetually available Regular Delves and the premium Bountiful Delves that rotate daily.

Regular Delves remain continuously accessible without cooldowns, permitting unlimited repetition according to your schedule. All eleven difficulty levels yield Valorstones and Crests—fundamental currencies for gear enhancement. Crest distribution correlates directly with tier completion: tiers 1-5 provide Weathered Harbinger Crests, tiers 6-7 award Carved Harbinger Crests, while tiers 8-11 grant Runed Harbinger Crests, representing the pinnacle Crest obtainable through Delves. Similarly, Valorstone quantities scale with Delve complexity, reaching their maximum at tier 8.

While Regular Delves do include gear drops, the equipment caps at item level 554 upon reaching tier 3, making them suboptimal for primary gearing objectives. However, they remain valuable for accumulating upgrade materials, Crest acquisition, or cosmetic item pursuits.

Bountiful Delves serve as the principal source for high-tier equipment acquisition. These specialized instances deliver premium rewards and exclusive achievements while rotating on a daily schedule. Each features an additional end chest requiring a Restored Coffer Key for access. Restored Coffer Keys constitute a novel currency introduced in The War Within, obtainable either by collecting 100 Coffer Key Shards for combination or through weekly quest completions that yield caches. Players can secure up to four weekly caches containing Restored Coffer Keys through dedicated questing.

Bountiful Delves receive distinctive map markings as glowing entrances, complemented by golden portals at the Delve threshold, ensuring unmistakable identification when active. Four Bountiful Delves appear daily—one within each major zone. Completing one consumes a single Restored Coffer Key, necessitating strategic deployment on your highest attainable tier for optimal reward quality.

Upon Delve completion, you’ll encounter two chest varieties. The standard blue chest opens without key requirements and distributes assorted Crests and Valorstones, mirroring Regular Delve rewards. The premium Bountiful chest demands a Coffer Key for unlocking, with gear quality corresponding directly to your completed tier level.

For superior loot acquisition, targeting tier 8 represents the optimal strategy, yielding impressive 603 Champion gear. Importantly, equipment obtained from tiers 5-11 becomes eligible for tier set conversion once the catalyst activates, enabling transformation into Season 1 tier sets using available charges.

Within the Great Vault interface, three World row containers track your weekly Delves progress. Filling these doesn’t mandate exclusive Bountiful Delves completion—any Delve variant qualifies. Even exhausting all revives still qualifies for rewards provided you complete the Delve instance.

The progression requirements are: complete two Delves for the first container, four for the second, and eight for the final reward. Consequently, your weekly objective involves finishing eight Delves at the highest feasible difficulty, with tier 8 representing the reward ceiling. Below displays the potential gear selections from your Great Vault earnings.

If tier 8 execution feels overly challenging, tier 7 remains viable since both operate on the Hero upgrade track, allowing subsequent gear enhancement if desired.

Another significant reward source emerges through hidden caches, which function as Delver’s Bounty items with rare drop rates across all Delve tiers. Acquiring a Delver’s Bounty from a tier 8 completion, once activated, guarantees a hidden cache at your subsequent tier 8 Delve conclusion. These special caches contain substantially superior item levels compared to standard bountiful chests. The maximum equipment obtainable from a tier 8 hidden cache reaches 610 Hero quality—an exceptional gearing opportunity for dedicated adventurers.

Weekly Planning Framework: Structure your Delves engagement around key reset days, prioritizing Bountiful Delves for your limited Restored Coffer Keys while using Regular Delves for material farming during downtime.

Group Composition Optimization: While solo play remains viable, coordinating with 2-3 skilled players typically yields the most efficient clears while managing revive allocations strategically.

Common Strategic Errors: Many players mistakenly use their Restored Coffer Keys on lower-tier Bountiful Delves, missing significant gear upgrades. Always reserve keys for your personal maximum tier completion rather than convenience runs.

Time Investment Estimates: Completing 8 weekly Delves typically requires 2-3 hours for established players, while newcomers should allocate 4-5 hours for learning mechanics and progression.

No reproduction without permission：OnLineGames Guides » WoW TWW Season 1: How to Gear Up in Delves Master World of Warcraft's Delves system to efficiently gear up and maximize rewards in The War Within Season 1