Item Levels and Upgrading

Understanding Item Level and Power Scaling

Item level is the easiest way to estimate how strong an item is, but it isn't a perfect measurement. WoW roughly targets around 1% more item budget for every item level. The exact result depends on the slot, the stats, rounding, and whether the item has a special effect.

The important bit is that this growth compounds. If we use 1% as an example, an item 100 levels higher has 1.01¹⁰⁰ = 2.70 times the budget of the starting item. That's roughly 170% more, not just 100% more.

This is why power starts to feel like it explodes later in an expansion. The percentage increase stays similar, but the absolute amount of stats added by each step keeps getting bigger.

The chart uses a simplified 1% model. It is there to show the compounding effect, not to calculate the exact value of a real item.

The Midnight Season 2 Upgrade Tracks

Midnight uses five upgrade tracks. Each normal track has six ranks, and every rank is upgraded with the Mistcrest that matches that track.

Track	1/6	2/6	3/6	4/6	5/6	6/6
Adventurer	266	270	273	276	279	283
Veteran	279	283	286	289	292	296
Champion	292	296	299	302	305	309
Hero	305	309	312	315	318	322
Myth	318	322	325	328	331	335

The rank pattern is +4, +3, +3, +3, +4. Moving an item from 1/6 to 6/6 adds 17 item levels and costs 100 of that track's Mistcrests.

Myth has three extra reward levels above the normal track:

Myth equivalent	Item level
Myth 7/6	338
Myth 8/6	341
Myth 9/6	344

These are not three extra upgrades you can buy after reaching Myth 6/6. They are special reward levels used by things like eligible Very Rare items, the last two Mythic raid bosses, and later-season systems. Normal Myth-track upgrading still ends at 335.

Venomous Abyss Item Levels

The Venomous Abyss has four loot bands. Most difficulties follow the first four ranks of their normal track. Mythic is the exception at the end: The Coiled Altar and Ula'tek drop eligible items at the Myth 9/6 equivalent instead of the normal fourth rank.

Bosses	Raid Finder	Normal	Heroic	Mythic
Nek'zali the Soulcoiler	279	292	305	318
Entombed Sentinels, The Lost Explorers	283	296	309	322
Vashnik, Sszorak, The Twin Fangs	286	299	312	325
The Coiled Altar, Ula'tek	289	302	315	344

The 344 items are special rewards. This is not the next normal step after 325. Standard Myth gear still upgrades through 328, 331, and 335.

Tidebound Grotto is its own one-boss loot pool. Nymrissa drops 279 on World difficulty, 292 on Normal, 305 on Heroic, and 318 on Mythic.

How Mistcrests Work

Each track has its own crest:

• Adventurer Mistcrests upgrade Adventurer items
• Veteran Mistcrests upgrade Veteran items
• Champion Mistcrests upgrade Champion items
• Hero Mistcrests upgrade Hero items
• Myth Mistcrests upgrade Myth items

Every paid rank costs 20 Mistcrests, so going from 1/6 to 6/6 costs 100. The seasonal cap increases by 100 of each type every week. If you fall behind, you can catch up to the current total later. Valorstones are gone, although the upgrade itself still has a small gold cost.

The big change from older upgrade systems is that a Hero item never starts asking for Myth crests near the end. Hero Mistcrests take it all the way to Hero 6/6. Spending Hero crests doesn't eat into the Myth crests you need for actual Myth gear.

Track Overlap and Slot Watermarks

The tracks overlap:

• Champion 6/6 and Hero 2/6 are both 309
• Hero 6/6 and Myth 2/6 are both 322

The game remembers the highest item level you have reached in each equipment slot. When another item in that slot is below that watermark, its crest cost is waived until it catches up. You may still pay the small gold cost.

For example, if you already reached 322 with Hero gloves and later get 318 Myth gloves, the Myth item still drops at 318 Myth 1/6. It does not get changed into Myth 2/6 automatically. When you visit the upgrader, the step to 322 does not cost Myth Mistcrests because the slot already reached that item level.

People sometimes call this converting Hero crests into Myth crests, but nothing is actually converted. You used the lower track to establish a slot watermark, then the higher-track item benefited from that existing progress.

What This Means for Loot

A higher track is still valuable even when its starting item level looks lower than the item you already wear. It has more room to grow and uses a different crest budget.

That doesn't mean every lower-track item is useless. A Champion or Hero upgrade can help progression now, establish a useful watermark, or stay equipped for a long time if the alternatives are bad. The mistake is treating the track name as the whole answer.

Look at four things:

1. The item's current level
2. The maximum level of its track
3. Your existing watermark for that slot
4. Which Mistcrest budget the upgrades will use

This is also why late Mythic raid loot is so efficient. A standard 335 Myth 6/6 item needs no normal Myth upgrades. An eligible 344 item sits above the normal track entirely.

The next chapter goes deeper into when spending those Mistcrests is actually worth it.