World of Warcraft

February 21st, 2022

A robotic figure made of simple geometric shapes, humanoid in form, stands ominiously in the middle of a large open amphitheater. The overall geometry of both the figure and the room are extremely rudimentary, as if made from children's building blocks, yet the shapes are made of extremely polished metal– implying that despite the simplicity it is an extremely technically advanced creature.

Lazy Guide to The Enlightened Reputation – Shadowlands Patch 9.2

The launch of patch 9.2 brings a new zone, Zereth Mortis, and with it a new faction to gain reputation by the name of The Enlightened. This new faction will be the main reputation grind at the start of this patch as well as the source for obtaining the Runecarver Memory for our second legendary.

Minimal Grind Required

The good news is that unlike the previous patch’s Korthia grind, the reputation for The Enlightened will not require hours of grinding every day to unlock meaningful player power. The developers have blessed us by nerfing the reputation gains from rare farming and now they’re completely optional. This means that you will not be spending hours running around killing rares or finding hidden chests in order to reach Exalted as fast as possible. You’re still welcome to kill every rare and loot every chest daily, but over the course of two months this will only save you a few days and the power gains over those who abstained from the grind are minimal.

One of the biggest things to be aware of is that the first instance of “player power” with this reputation is the ability to craft a high ilvl second Legendary through the Memory of Unity, which requires Revered in order to access along with Chapter 7 of the Zereth Mortis campaign. The second part is the important one, since Chapter 7 doesn’t open until Week 5 (March 22nd for Western servers), meaning that if you grind your face off every day you still can’t get the second, high ilvl legendary until March 22nd. This time-gating is good because it means you can spend the additional time doing non-reputation-focused content, such as leveling alts, Mythic+, farming/crafting, etc.– without the implicit fear of falling behind in the reputation race.

If you truly want to be on the cutting edge for gear, then your only goal is to hit Revered before March 22nd.

Note:
Memory of Unity (the Runecarver’s Memory allowing you to craft your own Covenant Legendary in any slot you want, at any item level) is different from the Belt of Unity, the default, low-ilvl belt that the game will reward you with as part of the campaign. Revered with The Enlightened is only required for the Memory, not the Belt.

An image showing a 4-column research tree, each with associated titles and costs. The costs grow the deeper into the tree you go.

Cypher Research

There’s a new research tree called Cypher Research coming which gives you omnipresent buffs, access to additional world quests and the ability to craft pets and mounts. I won’t get into it too much, but the main things to know is that you can actively gain progress on multiple columns of research at the same time since they’re independent of each other. For reputation gains we’ll use the following order:

Metrial > Aelic > Cachial (under Metrial) > Altonian (under Aelic)

This order will give you access to one additional World Quest and Daily Quest every day, which are small reputation increases but do add up over time.  As a reminder, you can also continue to progress Daelic and Trebalim columns’ research independent of the reputation-focused path, so just keep research rolling at all times and you’ll be fine.

The Enlightened Reputation Grind

If you do want to grind The Enlightened‘s reputation and complete it as soon as possible, there’s relatively minimal setup needed and most of it will be done simply by doing activities around Zereth Mortis. I’ve compiled the sources of reputation from highest to lowest reward and generally I’d recommend working your way down this list, with both Dailies and Rares being optional if you run out of time.

  • Campaign quest(s) for the week
    • Week 1: 2,100 reputation
    • Week 2: 450 reputation
    • Weeks 4, 5, and 6: 500 reputation each
  • Weekly Quest: Patterns within Patterns
    • Available every reset day, worth ~1250 rep
  • World Quests
  • World Boss “Antros”
  • Daily Quests
    • Two available by default, these have a chance to give a 75 reputation reward (viewable in the rewards section when talking to the quest giver).
    • Third available once Altonian Understanding is researched
  • Hunting Rares
    • There are 29 rares in Zereth Mortis you can kill every day, only giving 10 each. There are four special rares which give 15 rep each instead, for a grand total of 310 rep if you manage to kill all of them.
    • Rare farming is optional, but if you happen to see one near you it’s worthwhile still since it does add up over time.

Good luck out there in Zereth Mortis! If you have any feedback, questions, or comments feel free to drop me a line on Twitter or swing by the stream.

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