legendary craft will be an important part of the final grind in World of Warcraft Shadowlandsand whether you're a craftsman or not, it's worth unlocking the system. As an endgame feature, you'll need to fight your way through the Shadowlands campaign and reach level 60. From there, you'll have quests to do before unlocking access to the runecarver and the legendary craftsmanship.
Legendary crafting in Shadowlands is unlocked after completing the Torghast campaign chapter and farming 1250 Soul Ash.
Once you reach level 60, complete the campaign, and choose a Pact, you begin the next stage of the Shadowlands campaign. The first chapter is essentially a tutorial for your Covenant and endgame systems in Shadowlands, and the biggest obstacle to progressing through your campaign will be the quest to farm 1000 Anima. Although it becomes a weekly task that will increase your fame, it is mandatory at this point if you want to deepen the campaign to unlock legendary crafting.
Once you've deposited 1000 Anima into your Covenant's tank, you'll proceed to the Soulbinds tutorial, then be redirected to Oribos. Bolvar and company will task you with returning to the Maw, which will kick off Chapter 2 of the campaign. This chapter may be titled “Torghast”, but it is also a tutorial for the Maw itself. You'll meet Ve'nari and she'll ask you to complete a handful of quests that will introduce you to your second weekly Renown quest and basic Maw functionality. Don't go crazy just yet and max out your Jailer's Eye, otherwise you'll have to come back another day to fully complete some later campaign quests for Legendary Crafting.
Once you knock them out, she'll direct you to Torghast. You'll have a quest inside, and you'll need to complete at least one layer in one of the available chambers to advance the campaign. You should come across a key to the Runecarver Chamber which is immediately to the right of the entrance to Torghast, and you'll have a quest to venture inside.
Once inside, talk to the Runecarver. You'll need to kill an enemy in the Maw to recover some of their memories, then you'll be tasked with farming 5 embers of the fire 'elementals' in the Cauldron. This is why you'll want to keep your Jailer's Eye low: max it out during the first few quests and you won't be able to complete either of those two quests until the next day. After you return to Ve'nari with the embers, you can buy a quest item from her. Return to the Runecarver and "free" it from at least one of its chains. It will then provide you with two quests, although one isn't required to unlock the legendary craft itself (it provides your legendary crafting component recipes if you're a crafter).
You will then be tasked with farming 1250 Soul Ash from Torghast (“Ashes of the Tower”), and completing this quest will unlock Legendary Crafting in Shadowlands. Until the second set of layers becomes accessible on December 8, it will take you two weeks. Currently, you can only clear the first three layers of the two available chambers, which means you'll cap out at 810 Soul Ash for the week. You can technically farm Soul Ash in small amounts from the Adventure table, but only from high-level missions that you won't have access to for a while. THAT IS TO SAY. clear all 6 available layers if you want to unlock legendary crafting within two weeks of starting Shadowlands.
Once you return to the Runecarver with the Soul Ash, you will unlock legendary crafting. You'll need a base legendary component created by a crafting profession (like the neck and ring crafted by jewelers), you'll have learned a legendary power (these drop all over the Shadowlands, though clean layer 3 of each chamber seems like a solid way to earn two early on), and have the required amount of soul ash for the runecarver to create your legendary.
That's right: you'll need to farm Torghast if you plan on crafting legendaries. Simply interact with the Runecarver to bring up the crafting interface once you have everything and craft the legendary you farmed Soul Ash for. If you're not a crafter, expect to pay a lot of money over time for legendary components. I recommend leveling up a crafting class if you haven't already saved up some gold.
