World of Warcraft Delves Guide: Solo Endgame Content Explained

Delves are the chunk of endgame content in World of Warcraft that you can pretty much do on your own clock. They arrived with the The War Within expansion, and the pitch is simple. Short instanced runs, about ten to fifteen minutes each, that you can tackle solo or with up to four friends. A grumpy dwarf named Brann Bronzebeard tags along and fills whatever role your group is missing. No scheduled raid, no timed Keystone clock breathing down your neck.

If you've ever wanted raid-quality gear but can't commit to a guild schedule, this is Blizzard's answer to that. You earn Great Vault slots, upgradeable loot, mounts, titles, the works. The whole system hangs together in five pieces, and once you see how they connect, the weekly loop basically runs itself.

What delves are and rewards

The short version

A delve is a small private scenario stuck out in the open world. You walk up to a cave entrance, pick a difficulty, and zone in. Inside you'll find a loose mix of trash packs, a couple of mini-bosses, the occasional jumping puzzle, and a treasure room at the very end. Most runs wrap in ten to fifteen minutes. They're built to be role-agnostic, which is a fancy way of saying you don't need a tank, a healer, and three damage dealers to clear one. You bring whatever you've got and Brann covers the gaps.

That flexibility is the whole appeal. A solo hunter, a pair of friends, a full group of five, all of it works. You get the same endgame progression pipeline as dungeons and raids, just chopped into bite-sized chunks that fit a lunch break.

Where to find them

There are sixteen of these scattered across the Khaz Algar zones, places like Isle of Dorn, The Ringing Deeps, Hallowfall, and Azj-Kahet. Each one shows up on your map as a little cave icon, so you can spot them while you're flying around doing other stuff. Walk up to the entrance and a UI window pops up with the delve's name, a tier dropdown, a short objective blurb (free the miners, kill the spider queen, whatever), and a list of what you'll earn.

The reward pile

This is where delves punch above their weight. Finishing one dumps a handful of currencies on you, things like Undercoin (the main delve coin), Valorstones, Resonant Crystals, and a few others you'll use to buy and upgrade gear. The end chest can also spit out actual equipment, and that gear scales with the tier you picked.

The headline reward, though, is Great Vault progress. Each week, the vault wants delve completions, and clearing 2, 4, and 8 of them lights up three slots. Pick the best piece on reset day. On top of that there's a big stack of cosmetics to chase.

• Mounts: the Delver's Dirigible (the airship, from the big meta achievement), the Delver's Mana-Skimmer, and the Ivory Goliathus for finishing the delve achievement list.
• Titles: High Explorer for clearing a Tier 11 with revives left, plus Immortal Spelunker and Seeker of Loot for the completionists.
• Delver's Journey: a seasonal reputation track that unlocks extra vendors, a trinket seller in higher tiers, and faction bragging rights.

So even if you outgear the place, there's usually a reason to keep running it.

Brann Bronzebeard companion setup

Who he is and when he shows up

Brann is the dwarf from about a decade of Warcraft lore, and for the entire War Within era he's your delve buddy. He auto-joins any run where your group has fewer than five players, so solo, duo, all the way up to four humans means Brann is there filling the fifth slot. Fill the group to five real people and he sits out, since his whole job is covering the role you're short on.

He also levels up. Every run earns him experience, and a stronger Brann hits harder, heals for more, and survives longer. His level cap has climbed over the seasons, so the more you run, the beefier your pocket dwarf gets.

Picking his role

This is the part most people get wrong at first, then never get wrong again. Brann has three stances, and you can swap between them any time you're at an entrance or a checkpoint by clicking the Explorers' League Supplies, or by opening the Delves tab with the H key.

• Damage Dealer: his default. He throws steel traps, calls in a gryphon bombardment after you pop a major cooldown, executes mobs under 30% health, and generally adds a steady stream of damage. Pairs well with a tanky player who doesn't need babysitting.
• Healer: he chucks healing potions on the ground, drops a big relic heal-over-time, frees you from stuns and snares, and bails you out with an emergency heal when you drop below 30%. The right call if you're a squishy damage dealer who keeps getting smacked.
• Tank: added later in the expansion. He pulls out a pistol and shield, taunts mobs with a lasso, summons the family bear, and soaks hits so you can stand back and do damage. Great when you're a pure DPS who wants to be left alone.

The classic combo people swear by is a tanky class with Brann set to DPS. He speeds the run up and you barely notice the damage coming in.

Curios, his loadout

Curios are the items that make Brann actually good, and they drop out of the end-of-run chests. Each curio has four ranks, and looting a higher-rank copy at a higher tier upgrades the one you've got. There are two slots, one Combat and one Utility.

The safe, do-everything combo that's stayed strong across every season is Quizzical Device in the combat slot and Tailwind Conduit in the utility slot. Quizzical Device periodically grants you and Brann a 20% bump to health, damage, or healing based on your roles. Tailwind Conduit gives you a burst of speed out of combat and rewards you for using your defensives. That pair works whether he's tanking, healing, or DPSing, so it's a fine default while you figure out what you like.

Getting him geared

Brann's power scales with his own item level, which climbs as he levels up and as you feed him better curios from higher tiers. If he feels weak, it's usually because he's under-leveled or rocking rank-1 curios. The fix is just more runs. Push into the higher tiers once you can, since that's where the rank-3 and rank-4 curios drop, and a geared Brann turns a rough Tier 8 into a fairly comfortable one.

Delve tiers and difficulty scaling

The eleven tiers

Every delve runs on the same ladder, Tier 1 through Tier 11. Tier 1 is a gentle warmup you can basically sleepwalk in quest gear. Tier 11 is a genuine wall that wants near-best-in-slot equipment and clean play. You pick the tier from that dropdown at the entrance before you zone in.

How the unlocks work

The early tiers are open to everyone, but Tier 4 and above require the War Within Delves: Endgame achievement, earned once on any character on your account. After that, the ladder opens up by clearing the tier below it. Beat a delve on Tier 7 and Tier 8 unlocks, and here's the nice part, that unlock counts for every delve, not just the one you ran. Clear Earthcrawl Mines on Tier 7 and suddenly you can walk into any of the sixteen and pick Tier 8.

The Tier 8 loot cap

This trips up a lot of people. Loot quality maxes out at Tier 8. Tiers 9, 10, and 11 do not drop better gear than Tier 8 does. What they drop instead is upgrade crests (the currency you use to push your gear's item level higher) and progress toward achievements and titles. So Tier 11 is a challenge mode for bragging rights and crest farming, not a loot pinata. If your only goal is the best gear, you park yourself at Tier 8.

Recommended item level and revives

Hover over a tier in the UI and it shows the item level you'll want to clear it cleanly. The numbers climb every season as the gear ceiling rises, but the shape stays the same. As a recent-season reference, Tier 1 sits around 632 and it stairs up about a dozen points per tier, with Tier 8 wanting roughly 684 and Tier 11 wanting around 704. If you're way under the recommendation, expect to bleed revives.

Revives are your safety net. Every delve gives you a set number, and the count shrinks as you push into higher tiers. Burn through all of them and the run ends. The number of revives you have left at the finish also nudges your reward quality, so playing clean on a high tier pays off twice.

Bountiful delves

On top of the tier system, a rotating subset of delves goes Bountiful each cycle. They glow on the map so you can't miss them, and they're the ones that drop the real upgradeable loot. At the end of a Bountiful run you'll find a Bountiful Coffer, and cracking it open takes a Restored Coffer Key. You build those keys from Coffer Key Shards picked up in weekly activities and world content. The short version: regular delves are for fun and vault progress, Bountiful delves are where the gear is, so you always prioritize the glowing ones.

Best classes for solo delves

Why tanks and pet classes run the show

Delves reward classes that can take a hit and keep ticking. There's no healer waiting in a queue for you when you're solo, so self-sustain is king, and anything that gives Brann room to just pour on damage is a win. That's why the top of the tier list is thick with tanks and pet classes.

The top picks

These are the specs that make Tier 8 and above feel almost relaxed.

• Vengeance Demon Hunter (tank): nuts mobility, strong area control, and self-healing off Soul Fragments. Probably the safest pick in the game for pushing high tiers. Pair it with DPS Brann and things melt.
• Blood Death Knight (tank): almost unkillable thanks to Death Strike healing, and it just gets better the longer a fight drags on. Slower than the demon hunter but tankier.
• Beast Mastery Hunter (DPS): your pet tanks while you shoot from range. You can toss Misdirection onto the pet to hold aggro, and Feign Death is a get-out-of-jail card if something turns on you. Very low stress.
• Shadow Priest (DPS): damage-over-time pressure with self-healing off Vampiric Touch. Layers beautifully with Brann's healer curios.

A restoration druid is the pick if you'd rather play a healer. Their hots keep everything topped while they chip in damage, and a geared one turns runs into speed clears.

Solid but a little situational

A tier down you've got specs that are still great, just with a sharper edge.

• Protection Paladin: strong defensives, off-healing, and a real interrupt. Wants careful cooldown timing but rewards it.
• Demonology Warlock: durable with steady damage and a pet pulling weight. Can get punished on heavy-movement fights.
• Retribution Paladin: a hybrid toolkit with healing and strong burst. Short on ranged options, which matters on a few bosses.

The squishy damage dealer problem

Pure, glass-cannon DPS specs can absolutely clear delves, they just lean harder on Brann. Set him to Healer, pack your own defensives, and be honest about your gear. A fury warrior or a frost mage in thin gear will eat dirt on a Tier 8 boss. The same class with better item level and a healer Brann? Totally fine. Nine times out of ten, the "bad" delve class is just an under-geared one with the wrong companion role.

Gearing up through delve loot

Regular versus Bountiful loot

Here's the core rule that shapes your whole week. Regular, non-Bountiful delves drop gear that can't be upgraded. In the launch season that was item level 554 equipment, full stop, no matter how high a tier you ran it on. Bountiful delves, on the other hand, drop upgradeable gear that scales with the tier, all the way up to the Tier 8 cap. So if you're chasing gear, you're really chasing Bountiful runs plus your weekly vault.

The gear track ladder

WoW sorts upgradeable gear into tracks, and delves hand out the bottom three plus a crack at the fourth.

• Adventurer is the entry track, the stuff you'll see out of low-tier delves.
• Veteran shows up in the middle tiers.
• Champion is the ceiling for end-of-run delve loot, which lands at Tier 8. In the launch season that was Champion-track gear around item level 603.
• Hero is the top track, and the only way delves touch it is through the weekly Great Vault.

The raw item levels climb every season as the expansion rolls on, so the exact numbers above are a snapshot. The structure, though, is locked in. Regular delves cap low, Bountiful delves cap at Champion on Tier 8, and the vault is your ticket to Hero.

Coffer keys and crests

Two currencies do the heavy lifting here. Restored Coffer Keys are how you crack open Bountiful Coffers, and you build them from Coffer Key Shards gathered in weekly world content. They aren't capped, which is great, so a busy week means a lot of opened coffers. Crests are what you spend to push a piece of gear up its track. You'll pull Adventurer crests out of low treasure rooms, Veteran and Champion crests scale up the ladder, and the top crests come out of Tier 8-plus Bountiful chests and the Tier 11 Gilded Stash. Every crest you spend is one step closer to the item level ceiling on that slot.

The weekly loop

Once it clicks, the routine is honestly pretty relaxing. Knock out your Bountiful delves first, since those are where the upgradeable loot lives. Aim for eight Tier 8 Bountiful clears across the week to fully light up your Great Vault, because a Tier 8 vault slot is the one that can roll Hero-track gear. Fill the gaps with regular delves if you want more vault progress or just enjoy a particular one. Spend your crests to upgrade the best pieces you pulled, buy curios and the odd trinket from the delve vendors with Undercoin, and call it a week.

The thing worth remembering is that the Tier 8 Bountiful clear is the single most valuable thing you can do for your character out of this whole system. Everything else, the higher tiers, the crests, the titles, is gravy on top of that one weekly habit.