Heirloom Items
Posted on January 4th, 2009 by Lawbringer under Alliance, Efficiency Tips, Faster Leveling, General Tips, Low Level, Twinking, WotLK
When you were leveling didn’t you wish you could get your hands on one, just one, really good piece of gear? And when you did … didn’t you wish it would stay good for more then 2 levels ?
Well, Blizz first gave us the Refer a Friend program, but the bonuses end at level 60. Bummer when you still have 20 levels to go. But they have added a new class of item you might have seen a time or two. Introducing the new Heirloom Items, also known as “Hand-me-Downs”.
The concept is pretty simple and very innovative. It gives players that have reached the end-game content the ability to make the progression of other characters they create (Alts) faster and smoother while setting them apart from the rest in a visually obvious way.
There are quite a few Heirloom items available for purchase, and as of this writing there are only 2 ways to get them. We will cover both in a bit.
Heirloom Items are BoA (Bind on Account). This means that you can mail them between other characters on your account of the same faction (on the same server). So your 80 Warlock can pick up a set of plate shoulder piece and mail it to your lvl 13 Paladin, or even your level 1 Paladin. Your paladin can level as long as she likes and then pass it off to your level 67 Death Knight, and so on.
Heirloom Items’ stats scale to the level of the character wearing them. That means that the same Item would be worth the same thing to any character no matter their level: BLUE, (SUPERIOR) gear, at every level.
This means that Heirloom items will transform based on the type of gear that the character is capable of wearing. That is to say the same piece of “plate” shoulder gear would be “Mail” to the level 13 Paladin but “Plate” to the level 67 DK.
Blizzard obviously wanted to add something to the game for people interested in trying new classes or who just generally love playing alts. One must also assume that they are listening to their subscribers’ feedback since they are bringing back one of the most popular weapons of the old world. Seriously how much more fun would it be to have your Level 1 Warrior or Paladin wield a Bloodied Arcanite Reaper? An updated version of an Old World level 60 crafted item, referred to by some, as the “coolest looking weapon ever”. Bear in mind that 2 years ago (Pre-BC), Arcanite was today’s Titansteel.
Heirloom Items come in 2 types: PvP (with Resilience) and PvE.
PvP gear can be picked up when your faction controls Wintergrasp at the cost of a few hundred Stone Keeper’s Shards.
PvE gear can be purchased via Emblems of Heroism (the new Badges of Justice).
As of this writing, the only items available are the two most noticeable items: Weapons and Shoulders along with Trinkets. How many level 10 characters have YOU seen wearing Shoulder slot items or wielding an Arcanite Reaper?
Ok so here it is broken down for you with links:
PvE gear
Weapons: Ranged (Bow) Dagger One-Handed Mace One-Handed Sword Staff Two-Handed weapon (< ---- Bloodied Arcanite Reaper)
Armor: Cloth Armor Leather Armor: Melee and Caster versions Mail Armor: Melee and Caster versions Plate Armor (Only one version of PvE Plate armor) Trinkets: Melee and Caster versions
PvP Gear:
Weapons: Ranged (gun) Dagger One-Handed Mace One-Handed Sword Staff Two-Handed weapon
Armor: Cloth Armor Leather Armor: Melee and Caster version Mail Armor: Melee and Caster version Plate Armor: Melee and Caster version
Trinkets: Alliance and Horde version
You will note that both the PvP and PvE shoulder armor comes with a 10% experience bonus. After a complete field test, both with and without rested experience, we can conclusively state that the experience bonus from the heirloom items AND rested experience bonus DOES STACK! That’s a 20% xp increase folks. If that doesn’t inspire you to roll a new character nothing will.
Proof by the numbers:
Mob xp: w/o Shoulders: 57 With Shoulders: 63 (57*1.1=63)
Mob Rested xp: w/o Shoulders: 114 With Shoulders: 126 (114*1.1=126)
As far as enchanting goes only enchants that have no level requirements are possible. Runeforging and anything else that would make an item Soulbound will not work. Which makes Crusader one of the better enchants that can be placed on a weapon for melee and Spell Power for casters. For the use the weapon is going to get the mats just may be worth acquiring.
So if you always wanted to level another character but felt the grind was just not worth your time, this may be an opportunity to reconsider that. Up to 20% xp bonus and one of the best weapons available sort of changes things a bit. Not to mention that you get to level (and DOMINATE) in Style!
So ask your guild what they need most Tanks or Healers and see if you can fill that gap and make a difference where it counts for your guild/team. Get out there and DOMINATE
Heya bro, might wanna check the links for the items. Some appear to be broken *such as how I’m seeing the arcanite reaper for all of the weapons in the first list*
Otherwise thanks for the layout, I’ve been trying to figure out some of this stuff to get my alts, good to know the whole useable gear type is thrown in there. Had been wondering about that as well.
This has been Fixed. Thank you for pointing it out …
Can the shoulders 10% xp bonus work with your leveling guide?
Good info and a clever idea from Bliz. The only thing is that they’re a bit of a hassle to get unless your gear is better than the other level 80 vendor gear simply because, personally, I’d rather gear up my 80 first than my alt. So I guess you just have to pick what you want to spend your shards/emblems on first. If you’re running heroics and/or raiding a lot or pvping a lot, then these would probably be less of an additional grind to get.
I love the idea of these items, mainly cos I love playing alts
Though I reckon theres a lack of feral druid weapons, I’ve always fancied levelling a druid but not really as a balance or resto one 
Isalan, as of 3.0.8 this will make no difference. Read the patch notes.
This is, in my opinion, is by far one of the coolest recent features in the game. It’s nice that Blizz included a way to make leveling alts a bit easier without having to pay for another account for the Refer-a-friend thing. Granted, it provides nowhere near the same advantage, but it’s still a neat feature that doesn’t cost anything (in real-world currency, anyway…)
Er, additionally, though this is a little off-topic, how could anyone consider the Arcanite Reaper to be the “coolest looking weapon ever”? I mean, it’s as though Blizz couldn’t decide between Gothic skulls and Aztec skulls and picked a poor compromise between the two…
I wondered how my lvl 80 guildemate was leveling up his hunter so fast. He showed me his bind on account items but wouldn’t tell me how he was passing the items around. Thanks for the info. Very nice article.
These things are great… one thing that bugged me about BC badges was that once you had everything, you just sort of sat around buying gems or nether vortexes and selling them… yeah, money is awesome, but I love leveling alts, so this idea was so sweet.
I already have all the badge gear I need for my druid, so I hooked up my shaman alt with some shoulders and the Aurastone hammer… I’ve been leveling with someone who doesn’t have the heirlooms and the exp difference is pretty noticeable. He had to spend an entire day instancing just to catch up at one point.
what you didnt add is there are other purposes to these items. The trinkets and shoulder hierlooms are fantastic for level 19 twinks. However most of the items past the lvl 10-19 bracket are not as good.
This means that Heirloom items will transform based on the type of gear that the character is capable of wearing. That is to say the same piece of “plate” shoulder gear would be “Mail” to the level 13 Paladin but “Plate” to the level 67 DK.
So if i buy one of the cloth items and send it to my warrior it will become plate?
No, the items will only downgrade themselves, not upgrade. Cloth will always be cloth for every toon. This isn’t such a bad idea, however. By purchasing the cloth shoulders, you will be able to use them on every toon you create, whereas with the plate and mail stuff, only those classes which can wear those item types will be able to use them.
I wish they were easier to aquire. Not everyone has end game characters to get the shards and emblems. I have about 14 characters but none above level 70. Seems like I was left out of the deal
I understand completely where you are coming from, having 12 characters on 3 different server at an average level of 57.
I have to tell you however that you are missing out on the real content of the game you love. You pay a monthly fee for a game you love but never get to experience the end-game content.
If you have so many characters, you could try to pick one that suits your play style most and focus more of your attention on that one. it really doesn’t take that long to get a character to 80 if you are focused …
Gavin’s Horde Leveling Guide can’t hurt either … (I went from 70 to 80 in just over 3 days of “/played” )
Good luck
Does this only apply to lvl 80s able to purchase the gear or can lvl 70s purchase them as well? If only 80, gives me one more reason to update my windows 2000 to XP or vista to install the xpac.
By definition Emblems of Heroism and Stone Keepers shards can only be acquired in level 80 dungeons.
(brw: XP is a better Bang for your RAM buck if you actually have a choice)
You’re welcome to join us on Fenris if you like, our guild doors are always open.
Thanks for the info and the offer, I just might consider switching from Stonemaul.
the “ranged gun” is aka a dagger atm lol kinda hard to shoot things with them
Wellrest and these shoulders are 20% increased exp?… You realize well rest is 200% exp on it’s own right?..And also I think you should look the programming behind the stacking of these two effects.