World of Warcraft players, in the final days of Battle for Azeroth, are looking to wrap up old business before Shadowlands. This includes patch 8.2’s visit to the bottom of the sea, where two societies of gilgoblins and ankoan are struggling against Queen Azshara’s naga. Here’s how to effectively grind rep with the Waveblade or the Unshackled.

World of Warcraft: Waveblade Ankoan/Unshackled Rep Guide

You’ll receive the quest chain that unlocks Nazjatar upon hitting level 120 and visiting Boralus or Dazra’lor. Turn in “The Wolf’s Offensive“/”The Warchief’s Order,” and you’ll be sent on a short series of missions that will end with you in your faction’s settlement in Nazjatar.

Unlike the Rustbolt Resistance, your Nazjatar faction is actually in the emissary quest rotation for an extra 1500 rep per week, and there are a lot of bonus rep items that you can find along the way. In theory, it’s not that hard to hit Revered, which is a required step for the Battle for Azeroth Pathfinder meta-achievement.

In practice, it can be difficult. Nazjatar is one of the “catch-up zones” Blizzard likes to include every so often in WoW, like the Timeless Isle or Tanaan Jungle. In keeping with that tradition, Nazjatar can be a meat grinder for a fresh 120. New players should probably avoid Nazjatar until they’re at or around item level 380, which is easy to do in patch 8.3 with world quests and heroic dungeons, or talk a more geared friend into helping them out via party sync.  The good news is that you can get tons of upgrades along the way, including an ilevel 370 weapon, which is one of the biggest hands up you can get as a fresh level 120.

The Basics

On Mechagon, your reputation grind with the Rustbolt Resistance is typically slow and steady. In Nazjatar, you have the benefit of a relatively long three-part quest series that tells the zone’s story, but outside of those, the available rep slows to a relative trickle. Fortunately, there are a lot of incidental bonuses along the way, including the weekly emissary quest.

Be sure to complete the major storyline quests for a total of 3850 reputation with your Nazjatar faction, leading up to “Queen’s Gambit,” which can be done in Looking for Raid. You should also find a Strange Silver Knife early in your adventures in Nazjatar, which typically drops from a treasure chest at some point early on. Follow the quest to its conclusion to unlock the Curios of Nazjatar passive, which allows you to see and complete treasure-based world quests in Nazjatar. These are puzzle-based (one of which is extremely legally distinct from Bejeweled), often have gold or azerite as a reward, and take very little effort to complete compared to other quests in the zone. They’re handy to have access to just based on the time they take, as you can knock out half the WQs for an emissary by doing two simple puzzles.

Likewise, you should find an item at some point early on that leads you to Mardivas’s Laboratory near the center of the zone. Here, you can fight an elite once a week for 500 rep. You do need to gather and use items here to gradually unlock the Periodic Destruction achievement, but you’ll always get a flat 500 reputation for the weekly quest. PVP fans can earn another 500 reputation by taking part in a successful Battle for Nazjatar.

Finally, every three hours, a boss spawns in the northwestern part of the zone as part of the Summons from the Depths scenario. These bosses are dramatically overtuned and difficult at best to take on solo (the Arcane Manafiend in particular is just outright broken and has been for months), but beating one for the first time in a day rewards you with an extra 150 reputation. If you do so ten times, you get the Back to the Depths! achievement.

Your Bodyguards

You’re introduced to all three of your bodyguards over the course of the “Welcome to Nazjatar” storyline, and leveling them up a bit is a necessary part of proceeding with “Secrets in the Sea.” More importantly, the process of leveling your bodyguards is also one of your most reliable sources of reputation as you drive towards Revered.

You can select one bodyguard a day to come with you into Nazjatar; they won’t leave the zone, and will attack whatever you hit first. Like Legion’s bodyguards, if one of them is reduced to zero health, they respawn shortly thereafter no worse for wear.

Recruiting a bodyguard for the day also makes three daily quests spawn throughout the zone. Each one you complete grants your bodyguard 100 experience, and every 300 experience grants your bodyguard a level. Every time your bodyguard levels up, you get 250 bonus experience, which is a nice steady source of additional rep as you grind towards Revered. When a bodyguard reaches level 5, you get a quest that rewards you with a treasure cache; this can include an item (a Ceremonial Ankoan Scabbard or Vibrant Sea Blossom) that rewards you with 400 reputation on use. At level 20, each bodyguard offers a simple quest that rewards a mount, a pet, or a toy, as well as a slight bonus of 75 rep.

Getting all three bodyguards to level 30 gets you the Aqua Team Murder Force achievement. Done strictly via dailies, this would take about three months straight. Fortunately, there are a number of items you can find as rare drops in Nazjatar which can speed that up to some degree, and most of them also provide some bonus reputation with your Nazjatar faction. Most are drops from mobs throughout Nazjatar; two can show up in the inventory of Mrrl the murloc “shopkeeper,” once you rescue him; and the Naga Deployment Orders are a very rare drop from the Arcane Chests you can unveil by using a Scrying Stone.

Of the items on this list, it’s easiest to go after the Ancient Reefwalker Bark by farming Oronu. This reefwalker rare can be found immobile and untargetable against the northeastern corner of the zone in the Highborne Estates. To get him to activate, purchase a Drowned Hatchling battle pet for 40 Prismatic Manapearls from Feylana the Handler, a ghostly night elf vendor in the Drowned Market (map coordinates: 74, 46) and deploy the Hatchling near Oronu.

Oronu is a tough customer, and you’re going to want some help with him. As with all reefwalkers, Oronu is effectively unkillable unless you can either interrupt or dispel his Coral Growth spell. If it goes off, it heals him for an immense amount every second, easily restoring half or more of his total health pool. Fortunately, it’s a heal-over-time magic effect, which can be Purged, Spellstolen, Consumed, dispelled, or removed via a spirit beast’s Spirit Shock ability. Should Oronu drop his Elder Reefwalker Bark, which seems to be reasonably common (it happens more often than not for me), it won’t drop again for the rest of that week.

The rest of the bodyguard rep items are too rare to count on, but are nice bonuses when they do happen to drop. The Giant Crab Legs are arguably the easiest to farm, as the northwestern part of the zone is home to Nazjatar’s infamous crab cave. The crabs in here respawn quickly, attack in packs, and some are waiting to ambush you from stealth. It’s not a bad place to farm for gold, as their vendor trash can be worth a fair bit, but you’re better off leaving this place alone unless a quest sends you here. Note that all of the bodyguard bonus rep items in Nazjatar are flagged as Unique, so you can only ever have one of them on you at any given time.

In general, the Nazjatar reputation grind is heavily time-gated, as even under ideal circumstances, there’s only so much you can do in any given day. There are a lot of small bonuses to find throughout the zone, however, and they do add up over time. As long as you keep at it, this won’t take as long as it looks like it might.

Check out some of our other World of Warcraft guides, including:

• Still farming gold for “Longboi”? Here are some tips to make it a little faster
• Check out the new WoW board game, “Small World of Warcraft”
• How to level up quickly in World of Warcraft Classic

World of Warcraft’s recent expansions have been big on reputation grinds as artificial time gates. It’s a bit of a bummer, really, although I can sort of see the wisdom in not letting people burn their entire waking lives on the game. Let us know what you think via our official Twitter, @PrimaGames.