Intro to Mythic+

Long-time WoW players often say that the game begins at maximum level. If it’s your first time playing at maximum level, you might feel inundated with how much there is to do! The first steps of your journey will often be to find the transmogrification vendor better gear than what you have so you can conquer the mightiest of foes. The most common way to obtain gear is through world quests. Before venturing out, make sure to grab the weekly quest in the current expansion hub city. It often ties in with world quest activities and provides a substantial reward at the end. Wow made it easy to grab from the adventure guide.

After a couple of days of completing world quests and a weekly, you might need to raid the Auction House to supplement higher item level pieces that you didn’t get from world questing. If gold is tight, you might need to wait a couple days for another round of world quests, queue for Heroic dungeons, or find a way to make gold, such as herbalism or mining, so you can afford it. This can slow you down, but it’s all about the journey, right? 

There’s no hard rule on what item level you should be, but we generally target the highest ilvl greens and/or most affordable blues from the Auction House for each slot before delving too deep into Mythic+ for the first time. On your second or third character, you can probably get away with less gear once you have the experience necessary to overcome the mechanics in dungeons.

Thanks to the new talent system introduced in Dragonflight, the combinations of builds are endless. We recommend heading over to our resources page and finding your class Discord. Class Discords are where the brightest theorycrafters (aka number crunchers and bean counters) gather to process the latest data each season for your preferred class and specialization. They will have recommended builds that are kept up to date. 

That said, implementing a build and then deciphering how to play it are two different animals. Using the starter build, or whatever you concocted while leveling, is likely going to be good enough until the second affix (keystone level 7). Another caveat with recommended builds is that they often assume you have the current season’s tier set bonuses, and are selecting talents that synergize with it. In some cases, this could actually spell a performance loss, but shouldn’t be such a performance loss that it would hinder you from having a good time up to about keystone level 7.

There are two ways to get your first Mythic+ keystone. The first is to complete a single Mythic 0 dungeon. The second is to join somebody else’s Mythic+ group via group finder (or friendship) and complete the dungeon. There is no wrong way to do this, and both may require some patience to find a group. Depending on how deep into the season you are getting started, finding groups for Mythic 0 dungeons might prove challenging since the large majority of players are doing Mythic+. But finding groups for low Mythic+ can also be challenging due to the unfortunate byproduct of alts, meta groups, unsubstantiated ilvl requirements, and inflated egos. That’s where we recommend utilizing a community like Casual Friday that is chock full of players that love to guide people through their Mythic+ experiences!

The default keybind to open the group finder menu is I. Then you can navigate to Premade Groups and then Dungeons. Utilizing WoW group finder is easy, but will require some patience.

Once you have obtained your first keystone, you can list it via group finder, or listing it in the Mythic+ community you definitely joined after my recommendation in the prior section. We recommend listing your own keystone because it might fill faster than trying to wade through group finder to join other people’s groups. Your group composition should be 1 tank, 1 healer, and 3 damage dealers. You can try to cover having 1 blood lust/heroism (mage, shaman, evoker, most hunters) and at least 1 battle resurrection (death knight, druid, paladin, warlock), but it’s not the end of the world if you don’t while running under keystone level 7. Blood lust can be supplemented by a lesser version via an item on the Auction House. Just search “drums” and purchase the one with the highest number quantity, which should be the most relevant to your current expansion. Battle resurrection cannot easily be supplemented, so you might have to deal with the bitter taste of an agonizing and embarrassing death without it.

Depending on how deep into the season you are getting your start, you may think that keys are going much more easily than expected. This phenomenon, we affectionately call “key blasting,” is a byproduct of experienced players running new or high item level characters through content they out gear or already know. While it reduces the risk of failing a key, it dramatically reduces the potential learning you can do when these keys are made easy by veterans. That’s why we recommend trying to time every dungeon under level 7 before progressing too far. If you are using your own keystone, you can visit the keystone NPC near the dungeon portals to downgrade your keystone if it ever gets too high. 

Another reason we recommend running all of the dungeons below level 7 is so that you do not get overwhelmed by the second and third Mythic+ affixes introduced at level 7 and level 14. Mythic+ affixes are a modifier made to the dungeons to increase their difficulty, adding a new layer of complexity that can influence how you conquer a foe and build your group. The first affix is at level 2 and alternate each week between Tyrannical and Fortified. Tyrannical makes boss enemies deal more damage and have more health, so there is high risk in fighting those. Fortified makes non-boss enemies deal more damage and have more health. For a full breakdown of affixes at level 7 and 14, read our Intermediate Mythic+ Guide when you think you’re ready!

World of Warcraft is all about rewarding you with something big based on your efforts. They currently do that via a weekly vault. It is the ritual of many WoW players to check their vaults every Tuesday, rewarding them for efforts from the prior week. The current iteration of weekly vaults has the following reward structure in PvE content (as of the September 9th, 2023 patch in Dragonflight):

Be careful! You can only choose 1 option in your entire vault. Doing more simply gives you more options to help against RNG (stands for Random Number Generator, but has become the phrase used for bad luck in gaming).

Vault items from Mythic+ will reward items that are demonstrably higher item levels than the dungeons you were completing. Keeping this in the back of your head may motivate you to run one more dungeon in a week to improve your odds of finding an upgrade in your vault. If you do not feel like you have viable options for your vault, you can select a currency that can be traded for a variety of items at a nearby vendor. Generally, the currency is intended for people at the high end that rarely get vault upgrades, thus they are content with marginal upgrades like adding a gem socket to an item. Our Intermediate M+ Guide will have more advanced gearing topics that might help you choose a vault item. 

Selecting an item from a vault also rewards you with a Mythic+ Keystone appropriate to the highest level key you timed or completed. If you timed your highest level key the prior week, you will get a keystone for that level. If you only completed your highest level key, you will get a keystone that is one level below that. Missing weeks of Mythic+ will gradually reduce the keystone that is given to you in future weeks.

Now that you have begun your journey into Mythic+, it’s time to start making friends and exploiting their knowledge for your own personal gain. As convenient as group finder can be, the ebbs and flows of the game can be very visible in the speed you can fill a group. The best way to consistently find a group and improve your play is to find people that will go through the journey with you, help you learn from your mistakes, and be there to applaud your victories. You can add players you vibe with to your friends list by right-clicking their name in the in-game chat. You can also join a community like Casual Friday that is purpose-built to deliver a wholesome, inclusive, and entertaining environment around Mythic+!

Once you feel comfortable with your first steps, jump into deeper waters by viewing our Intermediate Mythic+ Guide. It will help you navigate adding 2 more affixes and some more advanced gameplay mechanics while you hone your skills.