WoW Midnight Dawncrests Guide: Tiers, Caps and Exchange

What Happened to Dawncrests After Season 2 Launched

Dawncrests were the only gear upgrade currency in Season 1 of WoW Midnight. On August 18, 2026, patch 12.1 started Season 2 and five Mistcrests took their place. Unspent Dawncrests do not convert into Mistcrests. Information in this article is current as of 11/13/2026.

The Season 1 system is still worth understanding because Season 2 kept its structure: five tiers, each upgrading only its own gear track, plus a vendor for swapping surplus crests. Learn how Dawncrests worked and Mistcrests will feel familiar.

Three things matter right away. Valorstones were removed at Midnight launch, the crest you need depends on the item's track rather than its item level, and Season 2 kept similar exchange and cap rules with different numbers.

Five Tiers and Their Item Level Ranges

Season 1 had five Dawncrest tiers: Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Hero and Myth. Each matches one upgrade track and one level of content.

Neighboring ranges overlap by design, which smooths the climb from one tier to the next. Two items with the same item level can still need different crests if they sit on different tracks, so check the track name in the item tooltip before you upgrade.

Where Dawncrests Came From: Activities by Tier

Content difficulty set the crest tier. The higher the tier, the harder the content you had to clear.

• Adventurer and Veteran: open-world events and treasures, Heroic dungeons, Raid Finder and low-tier Delves.

• Champion: Normal raids, entry-level Mythic+ keys and higher Delves.

• Hero: Heroic raids and mid-level Mythic+ keys.

• Myth: Mythic raids and high Mythic+ keys.

Raids were the most direct route up. The higher the difficulty, the higher the crest: Normal led to Champion, Heroic to Hero and Mythic to Myth. That is how raids like The Unbinding of Kith'ix and The Venomous Abyss work. If your schedule is tight, you can have a raid cleared for you with a Venomous Abyss Normal, Venomous Abyss Heroic or Venomous Abyss Mythic service. In Season 2, Mistcrests drop on the same scheme, for example from Ula'tek.

If raids are not for you, keys are the alternative: high key levels pay out the upper tiers. The fastest way to stack them is a Mythic+ boost.

The Weekly Cap and Its Removal

At launch, each crest tier was capped at 100 per week. Tiers were tracked separately, so you could farm Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Hero and Myth in parallel. Missed weeks were not lost because the cap accumulated: 100 per tier in week one, 400 by week four.

On May 19, 2026, Blizzard removed the season caps on upgrade crests during weekly maintenance. Only the weekly cap on Myth-track crests from Bountiful Delves remained. Your crest totals and cap progress show in the currency tab.

In practice, from May onward you could stockpile the tier you needed at your own pace without watching a weekly ceiling.

Exchanging Crests: Cuzolth and Vaskarn

Two NPCs stand in the Crest Exchange area of the Bazaar in Silvermoon City. Cuzolth upgrades gear and Vaskarn swaps crests between tiers. Look near 48.6, 61.7, or use /way #2393 48.6 61.7.

• Down the tiers: trading a higher crest for a lower one is unlimited.

• Up the tiers: trading lower crests for higher ones unlocks through gear-level achievements. That stops you from dressing an alt in Myth gear just because your main has a pile of crests.

• Cap: crests obtained through Vaskarn do not count against the weekly cap.

The familiar problem from earlier expansions is having plenty of one tier and needing another. The exchange solves it without extra dungeon runs.

The End of Valorstones

In The War Within, upgrading needed two currencies: seasonal crests and Valorstones. The game often left you with plenty of one and none of the other. Valorstones were removed at Midnight launch, and an upgrade now costs crests of the right tier plus gold.

That shortens the path: you no longer farm stones just to unlock upgrades. Resource management comes down to which content to run for a crest and which item to spend it on.

Mistcrests in Season 2

Season 2 keeps five tiers under the name Mistcrest: Adventurer, Veteran, Champion, Hero and Myth Mistcrest. Each upgrades only its own track. Old Dawncrests cannot pay for new upgrades, so there is no point hoarding them.

According to community guides, one upgrade costs 20 crests of the matching tier. Trading down to an adjacent tier runs 10 for 10, while trading up costs more, around 30 lower crests for 10 higher ones. The weekly cap again rises by 100 per tier each week, and some Mistcrest sources have no cap. Season 2 item levels differ and guides disagree on exact numbers, so rely on in-game tooltips.

If your goal is to reach Mythic-level gear fast, look at ready-made gear sets. If you gear up yourself, the order is simple: take crests where the content is within your reach, trade the surplus and spend it on the slots with the biggest gain.