With update 10.2 “Guardians of the Dream”, World of Warcraft has received the latest and last really big patch for Dragonflight. Part of that: a new reputation faction. But anyone who played too early or simply “normally” now has a disadvantage.
Why am I lagging behind?
How could you play “wrong”? Right when Patch 10.2 was released, you could do a little trick: if you simply played a second character instead of your main one, you could reach fame level 18 within the first week and then reach the maximum of fame level 20 in week 2.
To do this, however, your twink had to reach fame level 10 on the day of release. This was quickest as a human (+10% reputation) and during the Darkmoon Fair, which was still running (also +10% reputation).
What this time makes the trick possible for everyone without any problems: thanks to the announcement of The War Within and the pre-sales that are already underway, character boosts can be purchased directly for level 70. So everyone could easily buy a twink for fame.
Once a character reaches fame level 10, all other characters receive +100% reputation up to this level. So if you only played your main afterwards – and during the fair – you were able to roughly reach level 16-18 straight away, depending on how much effort you wanted to put in.
Subsequently, in week 2, WoW’s 19th birthday kicked off with another 19% reputation. Anyone who has saved their reputation tokens here and redeemed them now will benefit from another big bonus and will be at fame level 20 by Thursday, November 16th at the latest.
So it was “wrong” to simply play the new patch as normal, which means completing the new campaign, story and quests with the main character.
WoW: Guardians of the Dream – Launch Trailer
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Reputation brings useful upgrades and can provide advantages
The fact that a number of players have jumped directly on reputation is because there is a strong improvement at least beyond fame level 18. Here you get a new rune that gives you +87 to your main attribute for one hour and can be used indefinitely.
There are also upgrade currencies for the new equipment and, at level 20, a new optional crafting material with which you can upgrade a crafted item up to level 476. This item is then better than anything you could get before 10.2.
If you haven’t used the “trick”, you should now be roughly at fame level 11/12 or 13/14, depending on whether you have already completed the raid or not. However, MeinMMO demon Cortyn also has a trick up his sleeve: with a contract and world quests outside of the dream, you can achieve fame 18 even without the reputation bonus at the start.
Even if the circumstances were particularly special in this case, you can proceed similarly when releasing an update in the future if you want to save time or be particularly efficient. However, the next update probably won’t bring a new faction:
WoW: The “last big patch” is not the end of Dragonflight – Blizzard shows what’s to come