World of Warcraft: The War Within, the 10th expansion for Blizzard Entertainment’s legendary MMORPG, World of Warcraft, has recently launched to the public. It has been met with high praise from fans and critics for its artistically rich beautiful locales, action-packed storyline, awesome new abilities for every Class, mountains of engaging solo and multiplayer endgame gameplay activities, and more.
What’s more is that this is only the beginning because, on September 10, Blizzard will be launching The War Within’s first Season which will introduce tons of challenging endgame content for players to tackle. These include higher tiers of the new single-player Delve dungeons, Mythic+ difficulty levels for the regular dungeons, and the new Nerub-ar Palace Raid dungeon where players will challenge an army of spider-like monsters called the Nerubians led by their vile queen, Ansurek.
With such daunting challenges ahead of them, players are scrambling to upgrade their armor and weapons in preparation for Season 1 by finding the quickest ways to collect Valorstones, a special in-game currency needed for upgrading gear.
Normally, farming for Valorstones is a very time-consuming process as most of the in-game activities tend to reward small amounts of them. However, my guild members have been sharing their preferred and most effective Valorstone farming methods that will allow you to gather stockpiles of Valorstones in no time and earn some gold, crafting materials, and more goodies along the way.
It's all about wax.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Valorstone Guide — What are Valorstones?
First off, let’s go over what Valorstones exactly are. Valorstones (originally introduced as Flightstones in World of Warcraft: Dragonflight) is an in-game currency that players earn from various gameplay activities once their character reaches Lv.80 and completes the World: of Warcraft: The War Within’s main story campaign. These activities range from completing quests, defeating rare boss monsters, completing dungeons, Delves, and Raids, and more.
Valorstones are used to upgrade the item level of endgame gear so that they grant higher stats for the players equipping them. There are other materials required for upgrading gear like the Crests but Valorstones are the most common and the most needed as upgrading Heroic and Mythic tier gear usually involves hundreds upon hundreds of them.
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However, earning Valorstones is not an easy process as most of the regular methods of obtaining them like completing dungeons and killing Rare World monsters etc. yield little amounts of Valorstones ranging from one to ten stones depending on the content. This means it’s going to take you a long time to farm for them.
In addition, World: of Warcraft: The War Within has a cap limit on how many Valorstones a player’s character can hold at a time (2,000 to be exact). This can be somewhat inconvenient as it prevents players from infinitely stockpiling them for future Seasons and potentially causes players to run out of Valorstones too quickly at the worst time once they start spending it on the high-end gear obtained from the Raid Dungeons and Mythic+ dungeons.
Thankfully, there is a unique gameplay activity in World: of Warcraft: The War Within that will not allow you to farm Valorstones faster than the normal methods, it will let you circumvent the Valorstone cap limit and earn you a bit of extra rewards as well. And that method involves, strangely enough, gathering wax for Kobolds.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Valorstone Guide — Quick Farming Guide
Here's the quick overview of how to achieve this method, with more detail in the next section if you're unfamiliar with some of the concepts.
- Progress the main campaign until you unlock Assembly of the Deeps, the major faction within The Ringing Deeps zone.
- Hit Renown level 2 with Assembly of the Deeps. You can check your renown using the button on the mini map.
- At renown level 2 you will unlock a new quest called "Every Day I'm Snuffling," accessed via a Kobold NPC called Gnawbles in the main area city Gundargaz.
- Upon doing his quest chain, you will unlock the ability to uncover patches of Disturbed Earth which drop various items including Valorstones.
- However, what we really want here is wax. Odd Globs of Wax can be found via Disturbed Earth patches but also wax spills found randomly throughout Khaz Algar.
- Turn in the wax to a Middles in Gundargaz will yield 10 Valorstones a piece.
- At higher renown levels, you can end up with piles of wax due to the various mini-games you can perform while gathering wax from wax patches and patches of Disturbed Earth.
- On top of the additional rewards you get from farming wax in the open world, it can also yield various other items, gold, and crafting materials if you stack it with herbalism and mining professions while searching.
- Patches of Disturbed Earth are easier to find in the underground zones in Khaz Algar, and can be even easier to find if you enable highlight mode "high" in the graphics settings, giving them a purple outline.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Valorstone Guide — What is the farming method?
To unlock this method, you will need to progress through the main campaign until you unlock Assembly of the Deeps Faction (a faction consisting of the new Earthen Allied Race and rat-like monsters called Kobolds). Once you unlock the Assembly of the Deeps, you will need to level up your Renown levels with them by completing quests, killing Rare World monsters, finding hidden treasure, and other activities while exploring The Ringing Deeps Zone until you hit Renown Lv. 2.
What happens at Renown Lv. 2 with the Assembly of the Deeps is that you will unlock a unique gameplay system called ‘Every Day I’m Snuffling 1’. By completing a small series of Unlock Quests for an NPC Kobold called Gnawbles in Gundargaz, you will gain the ability to detect hidden patches of dirt labeled ‘Disturbed Earth’ throughout all the zones of Khaz Algar and dig them up to uncover various items.
At higher Renown levels with Assembly of the Deeps faction, digging up ‘Disturbed Earth’ can sometimes initiate a mini-game that will offer more rewards (via Renown Lv.5’s ‘Close Encounters of the Snuffling Kind’) and obtain rarer rewards (via Renown Lv. 16’s ‘Every Day I’m Snuffling 2’).
Interacting with ‘Disturbed Earth’ will yield small Valorstones but this is only a bonus for the true reason why we’re here. The item you will be needing the most from this activity is Odd Globs of Wax, which will you need to hand over to an NPC Kobold called Middles in Gundargaz. For every stack of five Odd Globs of Wax you turn over, you will receive 10 Valorstones per stack. With this method, you will be able to farm Valorstones in less time and effort than it will take to farm them through other endgame activities.
Additionally, there’s no cap limit to how many Odd Globs of Wax you can carry other than space in your inventory bags. This means you can potentially stockpile immense heaps of wax and trade them in to refill your Valorstone supply once it runs, essentially giving you the ability to accumulate infinite amounts of Valorstones for not only Season 1, but for future Seasons as well.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Valorstone Guide — Bonus benefits of farming wax
Farming for Odd Globs of Wax isn’t only useful for gathering Valorstones, this activity can also yield valuable items for other gameplay content. For starters, unearthing ‘Disturbed Earth’ will sometimes yield Resonance Crystals, an in-game currency that is used to purchase unique cosmetic items, mounts and gear from Renown Quartermaster Vendors that become available once you reach certain Renown levels of each Renown Quartermaster’s respective faction.
However, if you dig up ‘Disturbed Earth’ in the Azj-Kahet zone, you will receive Kej instead of Resonance Crystals. Kej is a special currency used to buy unique items only available to vendors in the City of Threads and vendors for The Severed Threads faction located in The Weaver’s Lair.
Another benefit of wax farming is that you potentially make tons of gold out of this activity. Digging through piles of ‘Disturbed Earth’ will sometimes yield crafting reagents you can sell at the auction, including the rare ‘Profaned Tinderbox’ crafting material which is currently selling for at least 8,000 Gold at the auction house.
Additionally, if you hand in enough Odd Globs of Wax to fill the Wax Contributation Progress gauge (which can also be filled by every player on the server you're currently playing in), Middles will reward you with one Firelight Ruby Chip. This is another special in-game currency that you can trade in for unique items by handing them over to Gnawbles. These items include unique pet companions and cache items which yield bundles of crafting materials, Resonance Crystals, and even stacks of nearly 2,000 Gold pieces.
World of Warcraft: The War Within Valorstone Guide — Where and how do we find wax?
While patches of ‘Disturbed Earth’ can be found in every zone of Khaz Algar, they appear to spawn mostly on in the underground zones like The Ringing Deeps, Hallowfalls, and Azj-Kahet. Out of the three zones, Hallowfalls has the highest number of spawn points for patches of ‘Disturbed Earth’, especially in the farmlands located Mereldar and Light’s Blooming.
It can be tricky at first to find patches of ‘Disturbed Earth’ as they tend to blend into the environment. However, if you go into the graphics setting within options menu, set Outline Mode to ‘High’, the ‘Disturbed Earth’ will then be highlighted by a glowing purple outline, making them easier to spot.
Are you ready to take on the Nerub-ar Palace Raid when Season 1 launches?
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Now you know the fasted way to farm Valorstones in World of Warcraft: The War Within so you can upgrade your gear for the upcoming challenges that await you in Season 1.
I’ve been using this method myself and it’s worked wonders for me. In five minutes, I was able to gather hundreds of Valorstones in half the time it took for me to farm them from dungeons on Heroic difficulty.
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We hope this method yields great results for you too and helps you prepare for the exciting endgame coming for one of Blizzard’s best PC games on the market. Look forward to hearing from our review of World of Warcraft: The Within's pre-season content in the coming days.
World of Warcraft: The War Within is now available after launching on August 26, 2024, for Windows PC.
