Optional difficulty modifiers you can pledge to at the Shrine of Challenge to reshape your leveling journey.
For players who like their adventures with a sharper edge, Challenge Modes let you twist the
rules of Azeroth to your liking. At the Shrine of Challenge, found near every starting zone graveyard,
fresh characters can pledge themselves to one or more special difficulty modifiers. Each challenge reshapes
the leveling journey into something a bit more ruthless, a bit more tactical — and a lot more memorable.
Available Challenges
- Hardcore: Death is final. A fallen hero becomes a ghost forever, unable to return to the world of the living.
- Self-Crafted: Only equipment crafted by your own hands may be worn. If you didn’t make it, you can’t use it.
- Normal Gear Only: You may only equip items of Normal or Poor quality. No fancy stuff.
- Slow XP Gain: Experience earned is reduced to 0.5×, making each level a longer climb.
- Very Slow XP Gain: For the truly patient: XP is reduced to 0.25×, turning leveling into a marathon of grit.
- Quest XP Only: The only way to gain experience is through quests. No grinding mobs, no dungeon spam — pure questing.
Activation & Restrictions
Challenges can only be enabled on level 1 characters (or level 55 for Death Knights), and once chosen, they define that character’s entire journey.
Combining Challenges
Multiple challenges can be active at the same time, as long as they don’t directly contradict each other.
For example, XP-based modes (Slow XP, Very Slow XP, and Quest XP Only) cannot be combined with one another,
while modes like Hardcore or Self-Crafted can be stacked freely.
Forge your path, test your limits, and see how far you can push a character under the harshest conditions.
After all, glory tastes better when you’ve had to crawl for it.