World of Warcraft News and Raiding Strategies

It's time to give back to the children of Azeroth during Children's Week! Take an orphan under your wing and show them what the hero's life is like!

When: 28 April–5 May
Where: Visit Orphan Matron Nightingale in Stormwind, Orphan Matron Battlewail in Orgrimmar, Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath, Orphan Matron Aria in Dalaran, Caretake Padae in Dazar'alor, or Orphan Matron Westerson in Boralus, or Matron in Training Ullna in Khaz Algar and make a child's dream come true!

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What's New in 2025

• Children's Week comes to Dornogal!
• New currency, Well-loved Figurine
• Four new orphans to adopt—Skibbles, Destien, Kitzy, and Threadis
• Three new pets—Argos, Helpful Workshop Bot, and Goggles
• Stormwind and Orgirmmar-inspired weapon transmog sets:
  
  • Arsenal: Arsenal: Children's Stormwind Guard Weapon Set (Painted Wooden Sword, Wooden Stormwind Shield, Painted Wooden Dagger, Painted Fighting Prop)
  • Arsenal: Arsenal: Children's Orgrimmar Guard Weapon Set (Painted Wooden Axe, Wooden Orgrimmar Shield, Painted Wooden Hatchet, Painted Axe Prop)
• New Children’s Week vendors can be found neat the Orphan Matrons in Dornogal (Jepetto Joybuzz, Stormwind (Brundia Braidhammer), and Orgrimmar (Leial Knitterton).

Also new to 2025, players now have the ability to select a new currency as a reward for completing a Children's Week questline. The Well-loved Figurine can be exchanged for any of the Children’s Week pets or transmog items. This currency is Warbound, and will take up a bag slot like the Love Token from Love is in the Air. Similarly, this currency is only redeemable during Children’s Week and once the holiday event concludes, the currency will disappear.

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Pets


Showing your orphaned child around can be beneficial to you and the child. Once you’ve completed the various quests associated with this event, you’ll have a choice of several pets to add to your Battle Pet collection:

• Khaz Algar: Helpful Workshop Bot, Argos, and Goggles
• Boralus and Zuldazar: Mr. Crabs, Beakbert, Froglet, and Scaley
• Dalaran (Northrend): Curious Oracle Hatchling, Curious Wolvar Pup
• Shattrath: Egbert, Peanut, Willy, Legs
• Orgrimmar and Stormwind: Whiskers the Rat, Speedy, Scooter the Snail, Mr. Wiggles

If you’ve collected all these pets through the years you’ll be rewarded with the Pet Care Package which provides a variety of items, including pug costumes, Magical Pet Biscuit, and a Flawless Battle-Stone.

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Achievements

Meta-Achievement: For the Children

Complete the following Children’s Week achievements listed below, and you’ll earn the title reward of Matron or Patron: Home Alone; Daily Chores; Bad Example; Aw, Isn’t It Cute?; and Hail to the King, Baby.

Home Alone (Part of the Meta-Achievement)

Use your Hearthstone while your orphan is with you.

Daily Chores (Part of the Meta-Achievement)

Complete five daily quests with your orphan out.

School of Hard Knocks

Take your orphan into the Battlegrounds and complete the feats listed below:

• Capture the flag in Eye of the Storm, assault a tower in Alterac Valley, assault a flag in Arathi Basin, return a fallen flag in Warsong Gulch

Bad Example (Part of the Meta-Achievement)

Eat the sweets listed below while your orphan is watching.

• Tigule’s Strawberry Ice Cream, Tasty Cupcake, Red Velvet Cupcake, Delicious Chocolate Cake, Lovely Cake Slice, Dalaran Brownie, Dalaran Doughnut

Aw, Isn't It Cute? (Part of the Meta-Achievement)

Obtain one of the Children’s Week reward pets through questing.

Hail To The King, Baby (Part of the Meta-Achievement)

Defeat King Ymiron in Utgarde Pinnacle with your orphan out.

Veteran Nanny

Acquire Egbert’s Egg, Sleepy Willy, and Elekk Training Collar on one character.

• These are the items that unlock the battle pets Egbert, Willy, and Peanut.

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WoW Classic

The WoW Classic version of Children's Week is also available for the giving souls of the Horde and the Alliance to help make orphan dreams true. Talk to an Orphan Matron to pick up a pal you can guide around Azeroth and Outland.

When: 28 April–12 May
Levels: Available to characters level 10 and above
Where:

• Human and Orc: Orphan Matron Nightingale in Stormwind (Alliance); Orphan Matron Battlewail in Orgrimmar (Horde)
• Draenei and Blood Elf: Orphan Matron Mercy in Shattrath

Have fun traveling around the world with your little buddy by your side!

With the Turbo Boost update on May 13, we will update the PvP item level equip bonuses to follow with the other changes being made.

PvP Item Type	Current S2 iLvl	Turbo Boost iLvl
Base Crafted	652	658
Warmode Tier 1	662	668
Honor	665	671
Warmode Tier 2	675	681
Conquest	678	684

Knowing what tools you have to decorate your home is one thing but knowing how and where to get your decor is another. Step into our showroom as we open our catalogue on Housing rewards and share more information about what you can expect when seeking to outfit your Azeroth home in style.

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Welcome home, Adventurers!

At the end of our previous article, we asked a few questions regarding the source of decorations and how professions fit in. Today, we’re going to answer those questions, talk through our philosophies for Housing rewards, and provide a few more details on the decoration “economy.”

Before starting we wanted to state our usual disclaimer: This is still a work in progress and names and details may change between now and launch, but this is directionally where we’re aiming.

Setting up Our Guiding Principles

We began our discussions by drafting a few guiding principles to inform our design:

• Progressive Journey – Similar to our Housing pillar of Long-lasting Journey, players should expect the collection of decor to be just that, a journey. The collection of the perfect room and house is something to strive towards, not run to a vendor and complete on day one. Furthermore, this journey should be engaging and possible for most players, regardless of how “hardcore” or not they may be. Put another way, getting any single piece of decor should eventually be possible, but getting everything should be incredibly difficult.
• Core Gameplay (With Variations) – Similarly, we want to reward decor through a wide variety of our core gameplay in World of Warcraft. We don’t want decor to come from only housing-specific activities (though some will!), but instead meet you where you are, however you choose to enjoy the game, whether that’s solo questing, crafting decor with professions and using the Auction House, running dungeons with your friends, or raiding with your guild.
• Reverence for the Past – Some of you have been playing for 20 years and we want that time to feel worthwhile. Your past adventures and time spent in Azeroth means your collection will have a leg up and you won’t start from square one when you first purchase a house.

That’s great, but what do these mean in practice?

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It’s about the Journey (Not the … Decoration)

The Progressive Journey principle means that the majority of decor types (e.g., chair, bed, shelf, etc.) are considered commodities and are readily available from vendors, other players via the Auction House (spoiler!), questing, and so on. If you want a wooden chair, it’s very easy and inexpensive to acquire.


Next there’s “investment” decor, which are generally more niche items, in either theming, looks, or appeal, which require more time and/or cost investment. Examples could be a sparkling fountain with particle effects or magical books that flap about on their own.

Lastly, there are what we think of as “Trophies.” These are things that require skillful play, cooperation with other players, and/or larger time commitments. Think along the lines of M+ and raid rewards or long-term Achievements. If you’re looking to mount Onyxia’s head on the wall, you’ll have to defeat her and take it!

One of the powerful aspects of decoration is that since it’s cosmetic by nature, placing hard-to-acquire things throughout the game gives players reach-goals that don’t hamper their character development and they’re free to pursue— or not—just like mounts and transmogs. That said, it should be easily possible to kit out your home on day one to strike the vibe you’re looking for without too much effort. Your decor journey should start out awesome and continue to be that all along the way.

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Variety Is the Spice of Life

When we first were drafting this article, there was a line that read: “Where can I get decor? Yes.” While pithy, it’s not far from the truth either when it comes to our second principle of Core Gameplay (With Variations).


Decor should come from everywhere and everything! We want you to find decor rewards in all sorts of gameplay, not just a single avenue that you feel forced to interact with over and over. For example, while a specific jade-inlaid bookshelf might come from a particular quest in Pandaria, other bookshelves could come from vendors, professions, or other varied forms of content.

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Thanks, Past Self!


Finally, the principle of Reverence for the Past encapsulates a few things:

• All the time spent in Azeroth is worth something! We’re leveraging legacy reputations, professions, and more. If you’ve achieved something in the past, we want to embrace that time spent. If you raised your reputation to exalted with someone, you’ll be able to purchase their goods right away. If you completed an achievement 10 years ago that rewards a NEW piece of decor today , you’ll be granted that piece of decor on login.
• Legacy decor should be well-integrated into the appropriate existing content and not feel crowbarred in. For example, using the local systems and currencies of a piece of related content (such as Mechagon’s Junkyard Tinkering) when it makes sense and as it’s available.
• We’re not going to have the decor equivalent of “transmog runs.” We’re still working through what this means in practice (Is it only available during TImewalking? Is there something more deterministic we can do, etc.), but the thought of someone farming a mount for years across multiple characters every week, finally earning it, and then being told “welp, time to go back and grind for the couch” is rough. We’d like to avoid this.
• Harkening again back to the Long-lasting Journey pillar, we’re going to continue fleshing out decor from past expansions in future patches and they will be earnable via the appropriate content of their expansion.

One thing we’d like to give you a heads up about here is that we intend to offer decor rewards for past expansion “meta-achievements” (A World Awoken, Back from the Beyond, and A Farewell to Arms are the three currently available). If you think you might be a decor completionist, it’s worth starting these in your downtime!

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Trust Me, I’m a Profession(al)

We’re not going to bury the lede here: decor will be crafted by ALL existing non-gathering primary professions instead of creating a new profession solely dedicated to it. Each profession will be able to craft a few pieces of appropriate decor from each expansion using that expansion’s version of the profession (e.g., to craft something from Mists of Pandaria, you will need the relevant Mists of Pandaria profession at the appropriate level.)


To craft something, players will need not only the required recipe and skill level, but they will also need to gather a new type of decor-crafting specific reagent per-expansion as well as any required reagents from that expansion.

In general, like most profession-made goods, crafted decor can be traded to other players or sold on the Auction House.

Some examples of what some professions will be able to make:

• Blacksmithing creates decor made primarily of metal.
• Enchanting creates magical decor like floating books or glowing orbs.
• Jewelcrafting creates decor like gems and gem-studded objects as well as being the designated stoneworking profession.

Two of the points above should be underscored: Your professions and their levels from past expansions matter and so do some of the reagents from those expansions. You know, just in case you were looking for something else to do between now and the launch of Housing . . .

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Some Light Housekeeping

We want to mention a smattering of related but smaller things as well before we wrap things up:

• Decorations are only placeable if you have enough of them, based on how many you’ve collected. If you want to place four chairs, you’ll need to collect four chairs. Furthermore, collected decorations are shared across your entire Battle.net account, so anything you collect on any character on any of your game accounts is shared across all of them. If you have four fountains and place three of them on the lawn of your Alliance house, your Horde house will have only one available to place.
• On the flipside, there’s a concept of “unique” decor that you can only place once, no matter how many copies of it you may have. It doesn’t make sense, for example, to place 9 copies of Onyxia’s Head on your wall (despite how many times you may have killed her).
• You’ll note a mention of “housing-specific” activities earlier. That might be better worded as “neighborhood-specific” activities. . .
• We’re committed to an ongoing release of new decorations, going both backwards into previous expansions as well as forward with new ones. What do you want to see?

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Thanks so much for reading! We have plenty more to cover and as usual, please keep sending your feedback both about rewards as well as what you’re looking forward to hearing more about. We’ll be at PAX East on May 9 for the Warcraft 30^th Anniversary celebration. Hopefully, we’ll get to see some of you there!

We’ve been closely following your feedback on our recent announcement of the upcoming Turbo Boost event. We understand that while most of the benefits of the event - such as double drop rate on Warbound-Until-Equipped gear from dungeons, or extra upgrade tiers available on all existing items - will be available immediately, the prospect of waiting three additional weeks to purchase select Liberation of Undermine items from Consultant Wrexxle is a frustrating one.

In light of that, we’re changing the structure of the quests for Puzzling Cartel Chips, so that the first week’s quest will now reward 3 Chips, enough to purchase one item immediately. The 6-quest progression will continue as planned after that, allowing each character to earn up to 9 Chips (up from 6) and purchase up to three Liberation of Undermine items.

We also want to take a moment to offer some context on the goals of the Cartel Chip currency, and how they compare to past experiments such as the Dinar system in Shadowlands Season 4, a natural point of comparison for many players.

In Shadowlands and Dragonflight Season 4, there was a very compressed season timetable that rotated through multiple raids, making it extremely unlikely for any player to get a particular raid drop. We introduced the Dinar system as a primary means of acquiring specific chase items that would otherwise be unobtainable for most players. Those seasons also weren’t about progression, but rather “farm from the start,” letting players re-experience familiar content from earlier in the expansion with updated rewards. And of course, they came at the very end of their respective expansion, with a full power reset just on the horizon, and little need to worry about the long-term implications of giving players access to gear with a power level several tiers above their normal rewards.

The middle of The War Within Season 2, however, presents a very different situation. Puzzling Cartel Chips were designed primarily as bad luck protection, allowing players who’ve been chasing specific raid items without success to have a guaranteed path to earning them. They also provide a path for players who have only done the Normal version of the raid to get a few guaranteed Hero items, without undermining a core motivation for the challenge and coordination required in Mythic raid progression. We also need to be mindful of how we will transition into the next season. Giving players who don’t normally engage in high-end content access to Item Level 680+ trinkets would essentially obsolete those slots for Season 3.

We understand that players who don’t raid, or who have no interest in Mythic raiding, are disappointed that they can’t get Myth versions of these desirable items. The Puzzling Cartel Chips system will still allow someone who only does Normal mode of Liberation of Undermine to earn, for example, a House of Cards trinket at Item Level 672 once it is fully upgraded. We hope that will be an exciting prospect for many players.

This event is an experiment on our part, aimed at giving a wide range of players a boost towards achieving their progression, collection, or power goals as we move into the second half of the season. Your feedback is deeply appreciated, and we’ll be listening and watching closely to inform any future plans.

–The WoW Development Team