THE WOW FOREVER COLLECTION · GUIDE · RESEARCH CHECKED SEPTEMBER 24, 2026
Short answer: Legacy is WoW Forever's account-wide side progression. You complete Legacy Challenges (level a class to 25, take a crafting profession to 225, kill Onyxia) and each one gives your whole account a Legacy Point. Every character then spends those points on its own perks, from 50% off flight paths to talent points five levels early. The system switches on when your first character reaches level 25. At launch a character can spend 16 points, and one character can earn 29 by itself, so you do not have to level alts to fill the cap. None of the perks add combat power.
Blizzard published the full rules on September 23 in "Get to Know the World of Warcraft: Forever Legacy System." The BlizzCon Deep Dive and the demo build had shown the trees before that. This guide puts the official post and the demo's rank data side by side. Beta characters are capped at level 20 until the level 30 phase, so nobody has touched the live system yet.
How you unlock it
The Legacy window opens when you earn your first Legacy Point. For most players that happens when their first character reaches level 25. Blizzard names two other ways in: take a non-gathering primary profession to 150, or explore the entire world map. The window sits behind the shield icon on the micro menu, and the default hotkey is Y.
This is also why the beta has not shown it yet. The beta cap is level 20, and the September 18 known-issues list includes Legacy window errors below level 25.
The 65 Legacy Challenges
Every challenge is worth one point, and points belong to the account. Here is Blizzard's full list:
| Category | Points | What counts |
|---|---|---|
| Classes | 27 | Reach level 25, 45 and 60 on each of the nine classes |
| Tradeskills | 18 | Reach skill 150, 225 and 300 in each non-gathering primary profession |
| Player vs. Player | 12 | PvP ranks 3, 7, 10, 13 and 14 (5); Exalted with each battleground faction (4); weeks 4, 7 and 10 of a Field of Honor season journey (3) |
| Adventure | 2 | Explore the whole world map on one character; finish the Lord Valthalak dungeon questline |
| Dungeons | 3 | Defeat the final bosses of the level 15 to 25, 26 to 45 and 46 to 60 dungeons (one point per bracket) |
| Raids | 3 | Kill Onyxia; kill all 13 Hyjal Summit bosses; kill all 8 Barrow Deeps bosses |
That is 65 in total. A few notes the table leaves out:
- Tradeskills are crafting only. Six crafting professions at three milestones each gives 18. Mining, Herbalism and Skinning do not count, and neither do Cooking, Fishing or First Aid.
- The raid challenge confirms boss counts. The post puts 13 bosses in Hyjal Summit and 8 in Barrow Deeps. Blizzard had not published those numbers before, and they match what dataminers pulled from the beta client on September 19.
- Lord Valthalak is back. In Classic he was the summonable boss behind the Dungeon Set 2 questline in the Blackrock Spire dungeons. Forever makes that questline an Adventure challenge.
- PvP makes up almost a fifth of the list. Rank 14 is the old High Warlord and Grand Marshal rank, and it gets its own point.
One character can earn 29 points
This was the most-asked question after BlizzCon, and Blizzard answered it directly. A single character can earn 3 points from its own class, up to 6 from its two professions, 12 from PvP, 2 from Adventure and 6 from dungeons and raids. That adds up to 29, which is 13 more than the 16 a character can spend at launch.
Most players will not earn those points in that order. Here is a realistic path for one character in the first months:
- Level 25 and 45: 2 points while levelling.
- Two crafting professions to 150 and 225: 4 points, most of them before 60.
- Map exploration: 1 point, and it comes naturally if you quest across both continents.
- The three dungeon brackets: 3 points. Blizzard has not listed which dungeons sit in each bracket, but the new Ruins of Lordaeron (15 to 20) is an obvious fit for the first.
- Level 60: 1 point.
- Both professions to 300: 2 more.
That is 13 points before you set foot in a battleground or raid. Onyxia makes 14. Three Field of Honor season weeks make 17, one over the cap.
An alt makes this faster. Level any second class to 25 and 45 and the account gets 2 more points, which every character can spend.
The three perk trees
Perks are spent per character. In Blizzard's words, each character on your account can spend its points "differently and completely independent of each other." Your Hunter can load up on Adventure perks while your crafting alt takes the Professions tree, and they draw on the same pool of points.
Blizzard's post describes each perk but gives no ranks. The ranks and numbers below come from the BlizzCon demo build tooltips, which we logged when the professions page went up. Each tree has 23 ranks in the demo, so a full tree costs more than a launch character can spend. At 16 points you can max roughly two-thirds of a tree, or cherry-pick across all three. The demo tooltips show the value of a single rank, so for perks with several ranks the full effect is presumably the number shown multiplied by the rank count. The Talented text supports that reading: level 9 at one rank lines up with Blizzard's "5 levels earlier" at five.
Professions tree
| Perk | Ranks | Demo tooltip (one rank) |
|---|---|---|
| Working Overtime | 5 | +4% chance to gain a skill point from any tradeskill |
| Bountiful Harvest | 5 | 20% more Scarce materials from Mining, Herbalism and Skinning |
| Performance Bonus | 5 | 5% chance of double Merchant's Favor on a crate turn-in |
| Master Chef | 5 | 10% chance for an extra cooking result |
| Luremaster | 2 | 25% chance of an extra fish while a lure is active |
| Dedicated Study | 1 | Once a day: +1 skill in your lowest tradeskill, or 2 to 4 Elemental Essences if all are maxed |
| Bartering | ? | Lower vendor prices (in Blizzard's post, not in the demo export) |
Blizzard calls the Merchant's Favor perk "Performance." The demo tooltip said "Performance Bonus," and the rank counts disagree too; our Merchant's Favor guide covers that. Bartering is new since the demo. The demo tree had two slots marked "To be added in future patch content," and Bartering probably fills one of them.
Adventure tree
| Perk | Ranks | Demo tooltip (one rank) |
|---|---|---|
| Well Rested | 5 | Rested XP builds 4% faster and the rested cap is 4% higher |
| Talented | 5 | Talent points start at level 9 instead of 10, still capped at 51 (level 5 with all five ranks) |
| Thrill of Adventure | 5 | 1% of max health and mana over 10 sec on each non-trivial killing blow, outside instances |
| Field Guide | 3 | 8% shorter cooldown on adding camp features |
| High Alert | 2 | Stealth detection as if you were 1 level higher, not in battlegrounds |
| Field Medicine | 2 | Recently Bandaged 5 sec shorter, outside instances |
| Frequent Flier | 1 | 50% off every flight path and 20% faster flights |
Resourcefulness tree
| Perk | Ranks | Demo tooltip (one rank) |
|---|---|---|
| Gourmand | 3 | Food buffs last 33% longer |
| Reinforce | 5 | 8% less durability loss when you die |
| Diplomat | 5 | +2% reputation gains |
| For Great Honor | 5 | +2% Honor |
| Permanence | 2 | Group buffs like Fortitude and Mark of the Wild last 50% longer, and so do camp buffs |
| The Quick and the Dead | 2 | Faster ghost run, and free buffs for a minute after you are resurrected |
| Reagent Economy | 1 | No vendor reagents for class abilities, and tier 1 camp features are free to build |
The numbers will move. The demo was a BlizzCon build and Blizzard's post has none, so treat every percentage above as a starting point.
What to buy with your first 16 points
Two perks are close to must-buys, and both cost one point.
Frequent Flier halves every flight path and makes flights 20% faster. You will fly for the rest of the character's life, and nothing else pays back one point that well.
Reagent Economy removes vendor reagents from your class abilities. For a Mage (portals, Arcane Brilliance), Priest (Prayer of Fortitude), Druid (Rebirth, Gift of the Wild), Paladin (Greater Blessings, Divine Intervention) or Shaman (Ankh), that is a gold and bag-space saving every day. It also makes tier 1 camp features free, which helps every class.
After those two, pick by what the character does. Here are three starting builds.
Levelling your second character (16): Talented 5, Well Rested 5, Frequent Flier 1, Reagent Economy 1, Thrill of Adventure 4. Talented is the standout. Talent points from level 5 means your fifth talent point lands at level 9 rather than 14, which makes an early-game character noticeably stronger. It stops mattering at 60, so it is wasted on a main that is already capped.
Raiding main at 60 (16): Frequent Flier 1, Reagent Economy 1, Gourmand 3, Permanence 2, Diplomat 5, Reinforce 4. Permanence makes your group buffs last longer, which raid leaders will notice. Gourmand makes raid food last longer. Diplomat speeds up the reputations that gate crafted tier sets (dataminers found a Guardians of Hyjal requirement for them).
Crafter or gatherer (16): Bountiful Harvest 5, Working Overtime 5, Performance Bonus 3, Dedicated Study 1, Frequent Flier 1, Reagent Economy 1. Scarce materials are what the new recipes ask for, and Bountiful Harvest is the only way to get more of them per node.
You can respec perks, but Blizzard's post does not describe how or what it costs. We will add that when the system opens in the beta.
Legacy rewards: the Spectral Bear
Legacy has a cosmetic reward track too, with four items at launch:
- Replica Ironforge Air Rifle, a toy. Blizzard says it lets you have shootouts with other players, with a brief stun and a scorekeeper.
- Spectral Bear Cub, a pet based on the bear from the Forever cinematic.
- Spectral Bear Tabard.
- Reins of the Spectral Bear, a mount.
The post does not give point thresholds for each reward. Since the track pays out from total points earned rather than points spent, the mount is presumably at the far end. Blizzard says more cosmetics and toys will be added over time.
Hardcore has its own rules
Hardcore arrives after launch, and Legacy works in one direction there. Challenges completed on Hardcore count for your whole account, on every ruleset. Challenges completed anywhere else do not count on Hardcore, so a Hardcore character starts its Legacy pool from zero.
There are no PvP ranks on Hardcore, so Blizzard is adding 12 Hardcore-only challenges to replace the 12 PvP points. Warcraft Tavern reported on September 21 that Hardcore will have its own reward track as well. Blizzard has not said what the 12 challenges are.
What Blizzard has not said yet
- Perk values. The post has none, and the demo numbers may already be outdated.
- Respec rules. Whether reassigning points is free, costs gold, or has a cooldown.
- When the 16-point cap rises. Blizzard only says new challenges, perks and trees will arrive "in every new content release." The cap presumably rises with them, but the post does not say so.
- Reward thresholds. How many points the Spectral Bear takes.
The level 30 beta phase, which Blizzard has said comes "a couple of weeks" after the September 17 start, is the first time testers can reach 25 and open the window. That is when the numbers above get checked. If you are planning a character now, the talent calculator shows how many extra points Talented would give you at each level, and the professions page keeps the full Professions tree with icons.
Sources: Blizzard, Get to Know the World of Warcraft: Forever Legacy System (September 23, also reposted by MMO-Champion); perk ranks and values from the BlizzCon demo build via the talentsforever.com export (CC BY 4.0); Wowhead, How do Legacy Points Work in WoW: Forever?; Warcraft Tavern, Legacy rewards will be separate on the Hardcore ruleset (September 21); the WoW Forever Beta Known Issues, September 18 list.