The next expansion, Midnight, is scheduled to go live on March 2, 2026 at 3PM Pacific time.
The Midnight pre-patches are up on the PTR for testing.
If you want, you can spend an extra $40 and get early access to Midnight starting at 3PM Pacific time on February 26th.
There will be a
pre-patch for Midnight on January 20th and I suspect that that is when we'll experience the class changes that are noticeable in the PTR.
Here's some suggestions for the
talent builds.
It would be a good idea to clean out your bags before January 20th and get rid of gear that you don't need as the
gear vendor prices are going down in keeping with a major item level squish.
As an example of the item squish, one of my characters went from item level 713 to 153 when copied to the PTR.
Here are the new ranges of item levels for the different types of gear:
Veteran: 108 - 131
Champion: 121 - 144
Hero: 134 - 157
Mythic: 147 - 170
Note that, at least until the week prior to March 2nd, you can expect that running Delves, Raids and Dungeons will result in the same type of gear drops and Vault awards (Heroic, Mythic, etc.}.
Also, while our item levels were squished, I think our dps and other abilities have improved in the pre-patch. For example, it's now just as easy to do an heroic raid as it was to do a normal. So, take that into consideration during the pre-patch. Note that mythic raids remain a challenge as the mechanics are harder.
I expect that we will lose our Valorstones and all of our Crests at some point, but maybe not until the expansion goes live. So, try to spend your Crests and Valorstones soon. They've also announced that Valorstones are going away in Midnight, so gear upgrades will only require small amounts of gold and crests (now called Dawncrests).
When Midnight goes live, you will be able to level up to level 90. Note that you don't have to be level 80 to play Midnight. Early on you'll pick up some
Bottles of Mysterious Water which can be used while you're below level 80.
To help with leveling, you may want to visit the Darkmoon Faire the week of March 1st and exchange some of your Darkmoon Prize Tickets for Darkmoon Top Hats which give you 10% experience and reputation gains for 1 hour. But don't buy too many as they only last while Darkmoon Faire is up. The Top Hat vendor is Gelvas Grimegate @48, 65.
Check out the
2026 Roadmap.
Some
things to do before the arrival of Midnight. And don't forget to clean out your bags!
Here are the Season 1 item levels for gear currently shown on the Beta:
Adventurer: 220 - 237
Veteran: 233 - 250
Champion: 246 - 263
Hero: 259 - 276
Mythic: 272 - 289
Note that this gear requires level 90 to equip and, while you can run normal dungeons at a lower level, the gear drops for Normal are only 139.
And here are some zone
maps from the Beta.
