Project Ebonhold Guide

Currency and progression

Echoes

Gear and affixes

Quests, groups and instances

The server is playable with any class. But if you want the current context:

Damage, survival and confidence are graded from S (best) to D (worst). Author's confidence does not rate the class but the row itself: a D flags a thinly supported estimate, for lack of seeing enough of them to call it.

1.1 What to take in your skill tree #

Right at the start, your first million Soul Ashes goes into two branches, and two only:

• Survivability: so you do not melt on the first mob pack you meet.
• XP: because everything else in this chapter depends on how fast you level.

Some nodes in this tree are permanent and survive prestige. Leave them alone for now: you start feeding them at mid game, a little at a time, and they become the priority the moment you aim for end game. See 2.5.

1.2 The quests that save you time #

Some quests give a completely disproportionate XP return for the level you take them at. This is not a small bonus to pick up along the way: they replace most of your leveling. The mob grinding in 1.3 is only there to finish the job.

All factions

These are the best ones, because they work whichever side you are on: no more picking a faction based on leveling. Do them in this order, the end of the chain depends on the start.

You need the flying mount, that is the only prerequisite. The first two already do most of the work: if your hardcore is high you can drop off early, otherwise run the whole thing. The rule is just below.

• step 1Learning to Leave and Return... the Magical Way
• step 2The Champion's Call!
• step 3Monitoring the Rift: Cleftcliff Anomaly
• step 4Monitoring the Rift: Sundered Chasm
• step 5Monitoring the Rift: Winterfin Cavern
• step 6Corastrasza
• step 7Aces High!

What it looks like with a stopwatch

A real run, from zero, in Hardcore 5, with every XP bonus. The time shown is elapsed time since the start, not the duration of each step:

Level 63 in 1 min 16 with two quests is the order of magnitude to remember. On that run I pushed the chain to the very end, but in hindsight that is not what I would do again: the last 7 levels cost almost as much time as the first 73.

The rule, once you have digested all that

Alliance only

On the Alliance (A2) side, start with this chain, which is still a huge accelerator:

• The First and the Last
• Honor the Dead
• Flint Shadowmore

Then this one, picked up in Dalaran:

• in DalaranPreparations for War

Horde only

On the Horde (H2) side, take this one, in Dalaran as well:

• in DalaranPreparations for War

1.3 Mob routes for fast grinding #

A route is a zone where mobs are dense and worth your time for your level bracket. "Weak / average / strong" refers to how powerful your character is, not its level: a well-geared character can take a zone far earlier.

A dash does not mean "it does not work": it is a case I did not measure, usually because there is nothing special about it.

1.4 For veterans who do not want to think #

If you do not want to optimise bracket by bracket, just chain these three zones in order. This is the no-brainer route covering 1 → 80:

• step 1Razorfen Battleguard
• step 2Skeletal Flayer, to the north
• step 3Vengeful Taunka Spirit

Run it in Hardcore 1 at minimum if you have unlocked it: mob XP there is roughly 8 times faster than on normal (see 3.2).

1.5 Power leveling #

If you have a big character, or a friend willing to carry you, power leveling runs 1 to 80 in a single zone:

• PL 1 → 80Umbral Brute, there are usually people around.

It is the same zone used for gold farming (see 6.2), so whoever is carrying you is not wasting their time.

2.1 Farming your first millions of ashes #

You have just hit 80. Here is the loop to start immediately, in this order:

1. Your 3 daily dungeons, through the queue. Each one gives a Soul Ashes Crate, and the whole thing takes about fifteen minutes.
2. The callboard once the dungeons are done: the board next to the inns, on the mob-killing quests.
3. The highest hardcore you can hold, because that is what decides everything else (see chapter 3).

2.2 The Echoes system: build, wishlist and orbs #

Where to find optimal builds, affixes and gear

For the builds themselves, go to the official Ebonhold Discord and take the one for your class. You can obviously roll your own and experiment.

This is the question I get asked most, so let us settle it here: class channels are not in the left-hand list. You have to go through Browse Channels, at the very top of the sidebar, then type your class name. The Class Discussion forums come up, and that is where Echoes builds, affixes and gear pieces get shared.

Saving and importing your build

The Echoes system lets you save loadouts. Save your build: once you are 80, getting your setup back in one click changes everything.

A build is imported as a string of characters, like this one:

Example: the Warrior "DeathrageV4" build. It is here to show the format of the string, not to recommend the class: see the intro table.

The wishlist: getting guided during the draft

Once a wishlist is imported, the echoes you need are highlighted at the moment you choose. No more knowing your build by heart mid-draft.

Disabling junk echoes

Very important. Once you have a lot of echoes unlocked, some of them are bad and they pollute your build and above all your draft offers. You need to remove them.

A right-click on the echo in your build toggles it between enabled and disabled. The strategy that works: disable everything except the few echoes you actually want, so the draft only ever offers you those.

Orbs of Lost Memories

One of the most recent additions, and a very important one. An orb gives you a targeted reroll on a single echo: you forget a stack of an echo you own and draw a new choice in its place.

This is what turns the luck of a draft into the build you actually wanted. So stack them as high as you can: the day you are chasing a specific build, you will have what it takes to force it.

To farm them, the simplest route is your daily and weekly quests. She hands out orbs in batches of 8. And above all: remember to turn them in, otherwise you get nothing.

The real farming method: 5 players in HC5

Dailies keep you going, but the volume comes from somewhere else. The recipe:

1. Get a group of 5 players together, all in Hardcore 5.
2. Queue Trial of the Crusader on Normal.
3. You collect 5 orbs every run. Repeat.

2.3 Getting some gear: what is best? #

Go run raids: it goes quickly. The most optimal gear sets are often obscure, with pieces coming from Classic and all over the place, but do not get stuck on it.

Those piece lists circulate in your class channel on the official Discord: see 2.2 for how to find it.

This phase goes fast, and above all: it is not the gear that counts, it is the affixes you are going to put on it. Move straight on to the next section.

2.4 Affixes: which ones to focus first #

Very, very important. With decent gear, you can apply a custom server enchant called an affix. This is what gives you all of your DPS and your buffs. An absolutely central part of this server.

To find out which affixes players of your class are aiming for, it is the Discord class channel again: see 2.2.

Where and how

Everything happens at the Enchanted Anvil, in Dalaran.

The rules to know

• One unique affix per gear set. You cannot stack the same affix at the same rank six times: it will only count once.
• But ranks count separately. Stalwart VI, Stalwart V and Stalwart IV are three different affixes, and all three stack. That is exactly what lets you pile up survivability (see 3.4), and it is the detail everyone misses when reading the rule above.
• Green items often cannot be affixed. Classic trap: favour crafted gear.
• Once extracted, an affix is reusable on any item, as many times as you want. That is exactly why this phase is not one to skip.

How to get them

• In hardcore mode, looting from mobs, which is the main source.
• On the auction house, but be warned: some items go for 3 to 8k gold each.
  There is no real reference price: go look at the auction house to get a feel for the moment. Everything looks expensive, but you get rich fast on this server, so do not get stuck on it.
• By asking a generous guild. If you ask for help, hand over the gear pieces to put the affixes on directly, and slip in ~5k gold as a gesture: it covers the application costs and noticeably improves your odds of getting everything.

Finding bases to affix: purple shirts and tabards

Before applying anything, you need something to apply it to. The best ones are not armour pieces: they are epic shirts and tabards. Two slots that normally do nothing, and that here carry real affixes.

They are not found where you would look for them. The method: go hit starting-zone mobs in Hardcore 5. At that difficulty they drop items that were clearly never meant for them, epic shirts among them.

• exampleMana Wyrm, to farm in Hardcore 5.

What to put on when you are starting out

This trio does one thing only: stop you getting one-shot while you are starting out. Once you have more gear and more affixes in hand, build your own combinations or follow a class guide.

2.5 The permanent skill tree, to feed from mid game onwards #

In the skill tree, some nodes are unlocked permanently: they stay yours even after a prestige, while the whole rest of the tree is wiped. They are the only investments that never start from nothing, and therefore the most profitable over time.

Do not throw yourself at it on day one. Your very first ashes go into surviving and leveling fast (see 1.1): a permanent point helps you with nothing until you have a run worth preserving.

From mid game onwards though, once your first millions are behind you, start putting a little in regularly. Not all at once, just a bit each time. It buys you versatility: this is the only part of the tree that stays yours no matter what, so every point placed there is a point you will never pay for again.

Borrowed Power, the node that changes everything

The one to target first is called Borrowed Power. It lets you keep your level 80 gear while you are level 1.

In other words: you prestige, you restart at level 1, and you are fully geared from the first mob. It is the direct answer to the stat wall in 4.4, and what makes the prestige loop fast instead of a chore.

3.1 How to unlock it #

How it works

In a capital city, or in a starting zone before level 10, click the mode shown (Normal) just above your ash counter. That opens the world difficulty window.

The raids to do

Each tier is unlocked by clearing a raid in the previous tier:

1. Naxxramas in 25 normal or heroic to be done on Normal
2. Ulduar in 25 normal or heroic to be done in Hardcore I. The server's real bottleneck, and nobody wants to run it
3. Trial of the Crusader to be done in Hardcore II
4. Icecrown Citadel to be done in Hardcore III
5. The Ruby Sanctum to be done in Hardcore IV

3.2 Why it matters #

The higher your hardcore tier:

• the bigger your ash multiplier;
• the more callboard quests pay, and that is where most of your income comes from (see chapter 5);
• the more XP mobs give. The gap between Normal and Hardcore I is roughly 8×. For that reason alone, leveling in HC1 is a genuine help;
• the more you loot: +1 loot per tier, so 6 times normal loot in Hardcore V.

3.3 Finding people #

Join world chat with the /join world command, then wait for raid callouts.

Carries are usually advertised as LFM (looking for members): it means there is a big player able to solo the raid. The linked achievement tells you what is being run:

Sometimes the raid name is linked instead. So it is not a 100% reliable rule.

Reply inv in a whisper and you will almost certainly get an invite.

3.4 What you actually need to keep up #

To get carried: surviving, that is all

There is no minimum gear to be taken along on a carry. And if you die, you still keep what has been completed: that is not the problem.

The problem is that you can no longer chain runs. Dead, you become a hassle for the group, and nobody is going to wait for you. Unless you are in a guild, your evening ends there. Which is why staying on your feet matters:

• 70,000 HP minimum. Below that, you will not hold.
• 5 to 10 million ashes invested. Without that, surviving generally gets difficult.

To run the raids yourself: the DPS wall

Once you are no longer being carried but actually contributing, your damage decides which tier you can reach:

How long it takes

With a guild running them back to back, the full HC1 → HC5 unlock takes 2 hours. Without an organised group, count on several sessions and a few hours.

4.1 The mistake not to make #

This mode was not designed to speed up a beginner's progress, but to extend the game for people who had already finished everything.

4.2 When to start #

The rule: all four of the following boxes must be ticked. Without that, it is a bad idea.

1. Have gear with decent to optimal affixes (see 2.4).
2. Have a strong Echoes page, one that hits hard and keeps you from struggling.
3. Have passed the 100 million ashes mark.
4. Have unlocked every hardcore tier, so Hardcore 5 (see 3.1).

4.3 Why prestige at all #

Because it is a very strong mode: it permanently raises your ash collection percentage, up to a maximum of 10,000%. Which is BROKEN.

Concretely, at +20% per prestige done at the minimum threshold (see 4.4), that cap represents 500 prestiges. In other words you have plenty of room: there is no reason to ration.

This percentage does not account for the % added through achievements. Before prestige arrived, achievements were the only way to get a favourable %; now that this has changed, there is no need to do them.

4.4 Traps to avoid & how to farm #

The loop

Once you are in:

1. Level up as fast as possible (see chapter 1).
2. Farm the 10,771,440 ashes (the famous "11M") with the level 80 callboard quests in Wintergrasp.
3. Kill yourself, then start a new prestige.

What prestige takes away from you

This is the question everyone asks before committing, and the answer is scattered all over the place. Here it is at a glance:

The exact multiplier formula

This is the point everybody misses, and it is entirely calculable. The multiplier gain depends only on the ashes you burn at the moment of prestige, and it follows a square root: every extra ash pays less than the one before.

Conclusion: on paper, always prestige at threshold, at 10,771,440 ashes. Piling up hundreds of millions before prestiging is not an aggressive choice, it is simply less profitable, and past 400M it is pure waste.

The raid variant: one raid, one prestige

Spamming at threshold wins if your time is elastic. It assumes you can chain 20-minute cycles back to back, and it eventually gets tedious: you gain a prestige level every 20 minutes without ever feeling anything.

The other path goes through Hardcore 5 raids. A raid quest pays ~31M in my case, three times the threshold. The rule fits in one sentence: each raid funds exactly one prestige, and you trigger it straight away.

And since 10-man and 25-man are two separate lockouts, each raid gets run twice: six prestiges per cycle, for a single reset paid (see 7.4).

The same work, two and a half times the result, simply because you did not wait. The square root curve is what produces this: six small prestiges crush one big one.

Alternative method: eternal elementals

There is another approach: farming eternals (fire, water, earth, air, shadow, life) to land the callboard's crafting quests.

You want 200 of each, having all of them is essential, and you should budget 20,000 gold to reroll quests on a loop until the crafting ones show up.

• lifeThornvine Creeper
• shadowShadow Revenant
• waterWater Revenant
• earthEarthbound Revenant
• airTempest Revenant
• fireFlame Revenant

5.1 Early game: dungeons, across several characters #

At the start you need your first millions and some gear. You are still very weak, so the simplest route stays queued dungeons.

The first 3 dungeons each day give a Soul Ashes Crate. That is the backbone of early income, and it wraps up in about fifteen minutes without pushing.

The absolute beginner's method: throwaway characters

If you are truly at the very start, you cannot hold a level 80 run yet. There is a loop that sidesteps the problem entirely, and it is the most efficient one for climbing out of the hole:

1. Create a new character, ideally a paladin: it queues as DPS, tank or healer, so its dungeons pop far faster.
2. Take it to level 15 with quests, which goes very quickly.
3. Queue 3 dungeons and open the crates: 3 × 40k ashes, so 120k for that character.
4. Kill yourself, then start over on a new character and repeat.

Repeat until 500k to 1M ashes, so 5 to 6 characters. By then you have enough to buy the XP bonuses and above all some resistance, which is what makes you sturdy. From there, a level 80 run becomes viable.

The normal routine, once you are level 80

Take the chance to pick up some gear along the way. And if you level several characters, you collect the crates as many times as you have characters: it is the simplest lever for multiplying this daily income.

It is perfectly fine to not bother and skip straight ahead.

5.2 Mid game: dungeons then callboard #

Do your dungeons for the day, then move to the callboard: the board next to the inns.

From it, take the world wide quests, meaning the ones where you have to kill mobs. The number of ashes you get depends directly on two things:

• your ash multiplier;
• your difficulty tier (Hardcore I to V).

Always set the highest tier you can hold. The higher your multiplier and the higher your active hardcore, the faster it climbs. So if you can: go Hardcore 5.

If you are willing to put some money into the game, you can buy the summonable callboard and place it wherever you want. It also shows up on the auction house sometimes for 200k to 300k gold.

5.3 Late game: callboard then HC5 raids #

The loop: run the basic callboard to get some ashes going (10 to 50M with a bit of gear), then happily get carried through Hardcore 5 raids. This is by far the biggest earner.

The only 3 quests to do

Pick them up beforehand if you can, or ask for a share inside the raid.

• easiestNaxxramas, the easiest raid to get carried through. Even with very little health you cannot die, which is not true of the others.
• technicalMalygos, tip: to get out of the raid once you are stuck on the drake, fly high into the sky, dismount, and teleport away (to Dalaran) during the fall. If you mistime it, you die.
• riskySartharion, tip: be reasonably sturdy, you may well die. The affix set that is enough is in 3.4.

Finding the group

Watch /world for LFM HC5 callouts, they come up very often.

Reset and start over

Once your lockouts are used up, you can reset every raid and start over: press o → Raid tab → Clear IDs.

6.1 What you need #

The best setup for these farms is having access to Hardcore 5 and autoloot.

You also need to be able to sell without running back and forth: ideally the summonable vendor, or at minimum the vendor mammoth.

6.2 Mob routes that pay #

Several routes work well because they are dense in mobs. Run them at the highest hardcore you can: the loot multiplier does all the work (+1 loot per tier, so ×6 in HC5).

• Bonestripper Vulture
• Umbral Brute, usually people around.
• Trapdoor Crawler, more relaxed, doable in small mob packs. The drop to aim for is Iceweb Spider Silk, which sells very well straight to the vendor.

6.3 The callboard & raids #

The simplest method: run the callboard. Each quest gives a few hundred gold, and a Hardcore 5 raid pays 2,000 gold.

Chained together, these quests push the counter up very fast, and you are making gold at the same time as the ashes from section 5.3. It is the same loop, there is nothing extra to do.

7.1 Step 1: bootstrapping with throwaway characters #

Goal: 500k to 1M ashes, without ever going past level 15.

You have nothing, so you cannot hold a level 80 run. We sidestep the problem with characters we throw away:

1. Create a character and take it to level 15, as fast as possible. Roll a paladin: it can queue as DPS, tank or healer, so its dungeons pop far faster than anyone else's. That is where most of the time is won.
2. Queue the dungeons to collect your 3 crates, so 3 × 40k ashes.
3. Kill yourself, then start over on a new character and repeat.

Repeat until 500k to 1M ashes. Spend them immediately on two things and nothing else: the XP bonuses, and enough to be sturdy (see 1.1).

7.2 Step 2: the real character, and the first millions #

Goal: level 80, then a daily income that runs on its own.

1. Get to 80 with the XP bonuses bought in step 1, the rest of the Dalaran quests (see 1.2) and the mob zones (see 1.3).
2. Your 3 daily dungeons, every day: this time the crates are worth 800k each, so 2.4M a day thanks to the beginner bonus (see 5.1).
3. The callboard for your first millions: the mob-killing quests, at the highest hardcore you can hold (see 5.2).

7.3 Step 3: unlocking hardcore and gearing up, at the same time #

Goal: HC5 unlocked, a decent Echoes page, affixes applied.

These five workstreams move forward together, not one after the other. That is the most important point of this step: each one feeds the others.

• Look for groups constantly to unlock HC1 → HC5, even while weak. There is no minimum gear to get carried, and you pick up good gear along the way (see chapter 3).
• Echoes come on their own from the raids you are chaining. As soon as you like your page, save it (see 2.2).
• Affixes: ask people around you, or buy them. That is what turns decent gear into a real character (see 2.4).
• HC5 raids whenever one forms, and above all Naxxramas, which runs at pretty much any time. Take the HC3 or HC4 quests too as soon as you can hold them.
• The permanent skill tree: put a little in every time you have ashes sitting idle (see 2.5). Nothing urgent, except Borrowed Power, which has to be in place before step 4.

7.4 Step 4: the prestige loop, one raid equals one prestige #

Entry requirements: 100M ashes passed, acceptable gear and an acceptable Echoes page.

From here on, everything runs on a short loop. The principle: every HC5 raid funds exactly one prestige.

All of it is done in Hardcore 5: the 10 and 25 refer to raid size, not world difficulty. The order between raids is free, what matters is running six before paying for a reset.

7.5 The mistakes that cost the most #

8.1 AutoCallboard #

What it saves you: hours of rerolling the callboard by hand.

The principle: you tick the quests you want, hit start, and the addon rerolls on its own until it lands them. That is exactly the loop described in 4.4, with its 20,000g reroll budget, except you are no longer sitting there clicking.

Along the way it records every quest it sees (title, type, rewards) and sorts them by category: dungeon, raid, open world, profession. That is what makes the best use of it possible: you build a "profession quests" list once and from then on you only ever target those.

What else it does

• Named lists, organised into groups, and shared across all your characters.
• A difficulty tier per list, applied automatically.
• Current instance mode: inside a recognised dungeon or raid, it only rerolls for that instance's own quest.
• Gold tracking: total spend, current session spend, and the cost of the last quest obtained. Handy for knowing where you stand against your 20,000g.
• In a group: it automatically re-shares your last accepted quest, and can accept those shared by another AutoCallboard.
• Import/export of the quest catalogue from one install to another by simple copy-paste.
• A small 3-slot Echo bar to check and switch builds without leaving the panel.

8.2 SkillTreeAutoLoad #

What it saves you: putting your whole tree back in one click instead of rebuilding it node by node.

It takes a snapshot of the tree as it stands, as many times as you want, each with its own name. One click to bring one back, and every node is re-selected for you at the right rank.

This is what makes the post-death routine bearable: your usual XP set (XP bonus, health, a bit of damage, regen) goes back in with one action. See 1.1 for what belongs in it. Essential as soon as you chain characters, and above all in the prestige loop.

How to use it

1. Open the Soul Tree and select your nodes as usual.
2. Click ... → New save, and give it a name.
3. Later on, click Activate on the save you want.
4. Press Apply Changes. Without it, nothing is committed.

What else it does

• Unlimited saves, named, and organised into groups you can rename, move and delete.
• Live cost in Soul Ashes, updated as you earn them, with the exact shortfall on hover.
• Shared across your whole account: every one of your characters sees the same list.
• Four languages, following your game client.