Impressive Influence Guide in World of Warcraft

On April 20th, Blizzard Entertainment announced a special one-time event in World of Warcraft. Every character upon logging in receives a buff, Impressive Influence, which increases reputation gains by 100% for many factions in Legion and Battle for Azeroth content. At time of writing, the Impressive Influence buff is planned to last until May 18th. Here’s how to make the most of it while it’s here.

Impressive Influence Guide in World of Warcraft

With Impressive Influence, you receive a flat 100% bonus to any affected reputation you earn, regardless of its source. This bonus is additive, rather than multiplicative; for example, with Impressive Influence, a human who completes an emissary quest earns 3150 reputation. That’s the base 1500, plus 1500 from Impressive Influence, and finally, a 10% bonus to the base rep from the human racial Diplomacy. Presumably, when the Darkmoon Faire is in town on May 2nd through 8th, the buff from riding the Darkmoon Carousel will work the same way.

Before you get your hopes up, however, Impressive Influence specifically excludes several of the grindiest factions in the game. The Fisherfriends of the Broken Isles all use a “friendship” system, rather than the typical reputation meter, so Impressive Influence doesn’t work on them. The same goes for Chromie, so you can’t take this opportunity to speedrun the “Deaths of Chromie” scenario from Legion, and the PVP-focused pseudo-faction Talon’s Vengeance.

In Battle for Azeroth content, Impressive Influence simply doesn’t work on the 8.3 factions, the Rajani and the Uldum Accord. For reasons. You’re going to have to grind those up the old-fashioned way.

It also doesn’t help with the big quest chains in Battle for Azeroth that reward you with a mount, such as the Horde’s Kua’fon’s Harness or Child of Torcali, the Alliance’s grindathon with the Honeyback Hive, or the pseudo-reputation associated with the series of quests to obtain your Shadowbarb Drone mount in Uldum. Those are still stuck at the old, glacial level of progression.

So what is the Impressive Influence buff actually good for?

The first and most obvious answer here is getting the Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder achievements, which require you to reach Revered reputation with every major faction in Kul Tiras and Zandalar. With Impressive Influence, this should dramatically speed up the first and biggest roadblock between you and your flying mounts.

The second big benefit for Impressive Influence is paragon caches. When you hit Exalted with many Legion or Battle for Azeroth factions, you unlock the paragon meter (see above image), where you’re rewarded with a chest of supplies for every 10,000 rep you earn beyond exalted. That may sound like a lot, but between typical quests, mission rewards, and weekly emissary quests, you can usually count on getting a paragon cache or two every week.

You can still earn paragon caches from Legion factions, but the rewards from them have been dramatically nerfed in Battle for Azeroth. They now only contain around 200 gold apiece, in addition to one or two Curious Coins, some Order Hall Resources, and a chance at a Legion legendary item for your class and specialization. It’s not nothing, but it’s not as useful as it once was.

The real reason to pursue Legion factions’ paragon caches in Battle for Azeroth and beyond is if you’re a mount collector. Most of the major Legion factions’ paragon caches have a chance to contain a mount. None of them are unique, although the Nightfallen’s paragon mount is the only way for non-tailors to get a usable flying carpet. If you’re working on that particular set of achievements, though, every mount counts. You can also get a couple of fun toys and pets.

With Impressive Influence, this could be you. I’m on a unicorn.

Battle for Azeroth paragon caches, on the other hand, are extremely lucrative. Each one has a chance to contain a faction-specific toy or pet, but more importantly, they always reward you with 3,800 to 4,200 gold and 500 War Resources. Since Battle for Azeroth doesn’t offer anywhere near as many ways to make easy gold as Warlords of Draenor or Legion did, paragon caches are an easy way to fund your current adventures on Azeroth. Especially if you’ve got a human character at 120, farming BfA paragon drops might be one of the fastest ways to earn gold in the modern state of the game.

The 7th Legion and Honorbound paragon caches are also guaranteed to contain 20 of their faction’s Service Medals. These are otherwise very slow to farm, and can be used to buy heirlooms, toys, or cool mounts from that faction’s vendor. A new mount, the Sandy Nightsaber, was added to these vendors in patch 8.3 for 350 service medals, and is available to any character who’s successfully completed a Darkshore Warfront on Heroic difficulty.

You can also make use of Impressive Influence to unlock the various Allied Races for play on your account. Each of the 10 Allied Races that are currently in the game require you to reach Exalted reputation with a certain faction on at least one character, in addition to completing at least one series of quests and/or lengthy achievement.

However, for several of these, it does take a lot longer to hit exalted with the relevant faction than to burn through a questline, so Impressive Influence can be a massive time-saver there. This is particularly relevant with Battle for Azeroth factions, many of which are deliberately time-gated (particularly Rustbolt Resistance), and the long grind for Nightfallen exalted.

There are also a handful of less obvious benefits from getting each faction to exalted, such as purchasable mounts from reputation vendors, unique tabards, and some classes’ hidden appearances for their artifact weaponry.

Legion Reputations and Rewards

To unlock the Lightforged Draenei and Void Elf Allied Races for the Alliance, you must have a character at Exalted with the Army of the Light and the Argussian Reach, respectively, as well as an Alliance character at level 110 or above. Please note that those do not have to be the  same character; for example, you can achieve Army of the Light exalted on a Horde character, then do the introductory quest on an Alliance character to unlock the Lightforged as a playable race.

Similarly, to unlock the Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren Allied Races for the Horde, you must have a character at Exalted with the Nightfallen and the Highmountain Tribe, respectively, as well as a Horde character at level 110 or above.

Even if you don’t intend to play any Allied Race, you do get a cool mount and a 10-point achievement for unlocking the option thereof.

Battle for Azeroth Reputations and Rewards

Unlocking the Battle for Azeroth-specific Allied Races is a little more involved than it was for the ones that were made available in Legion, but not as far as reputations are concerned.

To unlock the Kul Tiran Allied Race, Alliance players must complete the Pride of Kul Tiras storyline, as well as attain Exalted reputation with the Proudmoore Admiralty.

Dark Iron Dwarves become available for Alliance players who finish their faction’s War Campaign, as well as getting to Exalted reputation with the 7th Legion.

To play your very own Zandalari Troll, a Horde player must complete the Zandalar Forever storyline and reach Exalted reputation with the Zandalari Empire. (Then, for maximum irony, get your new Zandalari up to speed and go farm Throne of Thunder until your eyes bleed.)

A Horde player can also unlock Mag’har Orcs as an Allied Race by completing the Horde’s War Campaign and getting to Exalted reputation with the Honorbound.

Patch 8.3 introduced two more Allied Races. For the Alliance, you can unlock Mechagnomes by completing the Mechagon storyline, which requires you to hit Revered reputation with the Rustbolt Resistance and complete a series of quests that ends with “The Mechagonian Threat.” Unusually for Allied Races in Battle for Azeroth, you can do everything you need to unlock Mechagnomes on a Horde character, then switch to a level 120 Alliance character and finish the introductory quests.

Finally, the much-requested Vulpera can join the Horde if you complete the Secrets in the Sands achievement for completing all the story quests in Voldun, as well as hitting Exalted with the Voldunai. This was extremely grindy before, but it’s just about attainable now with Impressive Influence.

The announcement of Impressive Influence came alongside the announcement that the Winds of Wisdom buff, a special event spurred by the COVID-19 lockdown measures in the United States, will now officially last until the debut of patch 9.0, whenever that happens to be. With Winds of Wisdom, any character below level 120 has a 100% bonus to all earned experience points. Your neglected alts now have a bullet train to the level cap, should you choose to ride it.

We’ve actually got a lot of Warcraft content on Prima to show you, especially with a new expansion waiting in the wings. Check out our WoW game hub for articles like:

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While World of Warcraft is starting to show its age, November will see the game’s 16th anniversary, and its latest expansion, Shadowlands, is still planned to make its debut before the end of 2020. Are you still playing World of Warcraft, did you switch to the old-school flavor of the official Classic servers, or did you never actually start? Let us know via Twitter at @PrimaGames.