Blizzard has published its full explainer on the Legacy system, the account-wide progression layer that sits on top of everything else in WoW: Forever. It lays out all 65 Legacy Challenges, every perk in the three Legacy trees, the spending cap that keeps the system from running away with itself, and the four cosmetic rewards available at launch on 4 November.
The pitch is horizontal progression: you earn points by doing a broad range of things across Azeroth, not by getting stronger in raids. Blizzard is explicit that the system rewards levelling alts and picking up different tradeskills, but that alts are optional. Everything a character can unlock is reachable on that one character.
Unlocking the system
The Legacy window opens as soon as you earn your first Legacy Point. For most players that happens when their first character hits level 25, but reaching 150 in a non-gathering primary tradeskill or exploring the entire world map also does it. Once it is unlocked, you open it from the shield icon on the menu bar or with the default hotkey, Y.
Legacy
- Professions7 perks
- Adventure11 perks
- Progression7 perks
Legacy Challenges
Challenges work much like achievements in other versions of the game, but they are focused on character progression. There are sixty-five in total across six categories, and each one is worth exactly one Legacy Point. Points are shared across your Battle.net account and available to every non-Hardcore character.
Classes (27 points)
- Level milestones: for each class, reach level 25, level 45 and level 60. That is three points per class across nine classes.
Tradeskills (18 points)
- Skill milestones: for each non-gathering primary profession, reach 150, 225 and 300 skill. Three points each across six professions.
Player vs. Player (12 points)
- Honor ranks: reach ranks 3, 7, 10, 13 and 14, for 5 points.
- Battleground reputations: reach Exalted with each Battleground reputation, for 4 points.
- Field of Honor: complete the quest for week 4, week 7 and week 10 in the Field of Honor PvP Season's Journey, for 3 points.
Adventure (2 points)
- Explorer: explore the entire world map on the same character.
- Lord Valthalak: complete the Lord Valthalak dungeon set questline.
Dungeons (3 points)
- Defeat the final boss in all level 15 to 25 dungeons.
- Defeat the final boss in all level 26 to 45 dungeons.
- Defeat the final boss in all level 46 to 60 dungeons.
Raids (3 points)
- Defeat Onyxia in Onyxia's Lair.
- Defeat all 13 Hyjal Summit bosses.
- Defeat all 8 Barrow Deeps bosses.
The split is telling. PvP is worth 12 points, more than dungeons and raids combined, and every one of those points can be earned on a single character. Players who never queue for a battleground can still hit the cap, as the maths below shows, but PvP is clearly the most efficient single-character route.
Legacy Perks and the 16-point cap
Points are earned account-wide but spent per character. Each character buys its own perks from three trees (Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness), and those choices are completely independent. Your gatherer can specialise in harvesting while your main spends everything on wipe recovery and reputation.
The important limit: at launch, each character can spend at most 16 points. Blizzard gives two reasons. New players will not fall so far behind veterans that catching up is hopeless, and 16 is reachable on one character, so nobody is forced to roll alts. By Blizzard's count, a single character can earn 3 points from levelling, up to 6 from tradeskills, 12 from PvP, 2 from Adventure and 6 from Dungeons and Raids, for up to 29 points without a second character.
That cap matters more than any individual perk. With 16 points and three trees to spend them in, every character will be a build, not a checklist, and the interesting decisions will be what you leave out. Exact point costs and ranks per perk are not in the article, so you can browse the trees on our Legacy page as builds settle.
Professions
- Working Overtime: increases your chance to gain a skill point in all tradeskills, including class-specific ones such as Lockpicking.
- Bountiful Harvest: helps you find additional Scarce resources when mining, herbing or skinning.
- Bartering: reduces the gold price of items bought from vendors.
- Performance: sometimes grants increased Merchant's Favor from the Azeroth Commerce Authority (Alliance) or Durotar Supply and Logistics (Horde). Blizzard describes these two new factions as a major source of new tradeskill activities.
- Master Chef: gives cooking recipes a chance to produce additional results.
- Luremaster: gives a chance to fish up extra fish.
- Dedicated Study: a daily cooldown that helps you raise tradeskills faster, or grants free Elemental Essences once all of them have reached 300 skill.
Adventure
- Well Rested: raises the rested experience cap and makes rested experience accumulate faster.
- Thrill of Adventure: restores a small amount of health and mana after every non-trivial kill.
- High Alert: increases stealth detection outside of battlegrounds.
- Field Guide: reduces the 1-hour cooldown on placing camping features.
- Field Medicine: shortens the Recently Bandaged debuff, though not in dungeons, raids or battlegrounds.
- Talented: lets you unlock talent points up to 5 levels earlier than normal.
- Frequent Flier: makes flights cheaper and faster.
Talented and Well Rested together look like the natural pick for anyone planning to level a lot of alts, since the first point you earn already comes from reaching level 25 on a character. High Alert being disabled in battlegrounds is a sensible line: it helps against world PvP gankers without turning rogues into a joke in Warsong Gulch.
Resourcefulness
- Gourmand: increases the duration of food buffs.
- The Quick and the Dead: dead players run back to their corpse faster, and party and raid buffs are free after resurrecting, which speeds up recovery after a wipe.
- Reinforce: reduces durability damage from death.
- For Great Honor: increases Honor gains from PvP.
- Permanence: increases the duration of party, raid and camping buffs.
- Diplomat: increases reputation gains.
- Reagent Economy: class abilities no longer need purchasable reagents, and tier 1 camping features need no materials to craft.
Reagent Economy is the quiet star here. Anyone who has carried stacks of candles, powders and runes for buffs, portals and resurrections will know exactly how much bag space and gold this saves over a few months.
Legacy Rewards
Separately from the perk trees, your total Legacy Points on the account unlock rewards along a track. Four are available at launch, and Blizzard plans to add more with each content update.
- Replica Ironforge Air Rifle: a toy for shootouts with other players. The guns stun other players and even keep score.
- Spectral Bear Cub: a new pet exclusive to the Legacy system, inspired by the dwarven hunter and his companion in the WoW: Forever cinematic.
- Spectral Bear Tabard: a new tabard exclusive to the Legacy system.
- Reins of the Spectral Bear: a new spectral mount exclusive to the Legacy system.
The article does not say how many points each reward needs.
Hardcore rules
Hardcore will not be available at launch, and it will treat Legacy differently when it arrives. Challenges completed on normal rulesets do not carry over into Hardcore, but anything earned in Hardcore counts on every other ruleset. Because PvP challenges cannot be completed in Hardcore, Blizzard will add 12 new Hardcore-specific Legacy Challenges for the Hardcore launch, which conveniently matches the 12 PvP points Hardcore players would otherwise miss.
More challenges, perks and trees later
Blizzard calls the system "in its infancy". Every content release is planned to bring new Legacy Challenges, new perks in the existing trees for now, and eventually entirely new trees. Hardcore-specific challenges and perks are also planned, and the rewards track will grow with more cosmetics and toys as new points become available. Whether the 16-point cap rises alongside those additions is not stated, and it is the number that will decide how much the system grows in practice.