DRAGONFLIGHT PATCH 10.1.5 UPDATE: MANY OF THE REQUIREMENTS LISTED BELOW NO LONGER APPLY. THE ONLY REQUIREMENT TO UNLOCK DARK IRON DWARVES NOW IS TO REACH LEVEL 40 ON A CHARACTER AND VISIT THE STORMWIND EMBASSY TO PICK UP THE RECRUITMENT QUESTLINE STARTING WITH “BLACKROCK DEPTHS.”
Unlocking the various allied races in Dragonflight can be confusing. Since all of the races were introduced in past expansions, they require you to complete old content to unlock them. If you didn’t play that content, you might not even know where to begin. Hopefully, this guide can help you as I cover every requirement to unlock the Dark Iron Dwarf allied race.
Overall, there are two things you need to do to unlock Dark Iron Dwarves in Dragonflight.
- Complete the first part of the Alliance war campaign to earn Ready for War.
- Do a short series of recruitment quests (requires level 50+ Alliance character).
Things need to be done in that exact order. To begin the recruitment quests, you need to have finished the 1st part of the war campaign. Additionally, you cannot start the war campaign until you reach level 35 and have traveled to Boralus Harbor in Kul Tiras.
How to get to Kul Tiras (Boralus Harbor) in Dragonflight
Suppose you have been to Kul Tiras and Boralus Harbor before. In that case, you can get back by taking the Boralus portal from the Mage Quarter tower in Stormwind. To unlock the portal, you will need to pick up a quest called The Tides of War in Stormwind’s Trade District.
You can also get to Boralus Harbor by taking the southernmost ship from Stormwind harbor. However, if you take the boat without first doing The Tides of War, there won’t be any quests when you arrive.
Horde players can get to Kul Tiras in Dragonflight by doing the Horde war campaign starting at level 35. This will allow you to set up footholds on Kul Tiras that you can reach by taking the ship from the docks in Dazar’alor. If you don’t have the portal to Dazar’alor (from Orgrimmar), you must complete the Mission Statement quest first.
The War Campaign
Footholds – Level 35+
To begin the war campaign, you will want to have a level 35+ Alliance character. You can start the campaign at level 35, however, some of the later chapters are gated behind a level 50 requirement. Whether you want to get started on it while leveling or waiting is up to you.
You can begin the campaign on the boat in Boralus Harbor at /way 70, 27. If you aren’t sure how to use coordinates and waypoints, check out the guide I wrote on the TomTom addon.
As long as you are level 35, you should see an orange exclamation point on the boat to start the war campaign. The first 3 chapters of Ready for War require you to set up footholds behind enemy (Horde) lines. You can set up the first 2 at level 35 and the last one after reaching level 40.
Campaign Storylines – Level 50+
Once you have all 3 footholds, you will need to reach level 50 to continue the campaign. The next portion of the campaign begins with the Overseas Assassination quest offered by Halford Wyrmbane on the same boat.
If Halford isn’t offering the quest (and you are level 50+), you will need to first obtain The Heart of Azeroth (a legendary necklace). You can do this by completing the A Dying World quest chain, which should pop up once you reach level 50 and visit Boralus Harbor.
If it doesn’t pop up, you can grab it from the Earthen Guardian who is found near the Scrap-o-Matic machine in the Boralus.
Once you have your legendary necklace and Overseas Assassination, you can follow that quest chain to earn Ready for War. Here is a little graphic that lists all the storylines and starting quests to help you out.
With that done, you are ready for war and ready to start the Dark Iron Dwarf recruitment questline!
Do the recruitment quests
Now that you are done with the first part of the war campaign out of the way, it is time to recruit the Dark Iron Dwarves into the noble Alliance (and onto your character creation screen).
The first quest in the recruitment chain is called Blackrock Depths. It can be picked up from the Stormwind Embassy. Picking up the quest requires a level 50+ Alliance character, which shouldn’t be a problem if you have completed the war campaign.
From there, simply follow the chain and take the portals to travel between objectives.
There are 6 quests in the recruitment chain, but several have old dungeons or raids requirements that can be skipped by talking to the quest giver again.
For example, you can speak to Moira in the embassy again after completing the Blackrock Depths to receive an option to skip the MOTHERLODE!!! quest. From there, just click on “I entrust you to handle this mission <Skip the dungeon quest>.”
Once you finish the recruitment chain, you can now create your own Dark Iron Dwarf complete with a Dark Iron Core Hound mount.
Frequently Asked Questions
If you have BFA flying unlocked, it will take around 3 – 4 hours to unlock Dark Iron Dwarfs. Without BFA flying or a level 50 Alliance character, it could easily take you anywhere from 6 – 8 hours or longer.
Dark Iron Dwarfs can play as 10 of the 12 classes in World of Warcraft. They cannot play as demon hunters or druids. The classes they can play include:
Death Knight
Hunter
Mage
Monk
Paladin
Priest
Rogue
Shaman
Warlock
Warrior
Dark Iron Dwarves have 2 active racial abilities and 3 racial passives.
Their first active ability is called Fireblood. This is a simple 2-minute cooldown that removes debuffs (like poison, disease, etc.…) and increases your primary stat for 8 seconds.
The second racial ability is even more interesting. It is called Mole Machine, and it allows you to summon a drill anywhere which can teleport you to many different zones in the game (on a 30-minute cooldown).
Their racial passives include:
· Dungeon Delver– Moves 4% faster indoors
· Forged in Flames – Takes 1% less physical damage
· Mass Production– Increases Blacksmithing skill and speed
To add a teleport location to your Mole Machine racial, you need to first find them in-game. There are well over a dozen to find, but you can use it for rapid travel once you add it to your collection. You can find a list of every known mole machine in the game below and the TomTom addon command you can enter in chat to get directions to them.
You can enter these line by line or use an addon called Paste to put multiple in at once. To use Paste, you just need to install the addon and then open the Paste window with /paste show. Now you can paste multiple lines in at the same time!
Eastern Kingdoms
/way Ironforge 61.29 37.18 Ironforge
/way Stormwind 63.33 37.34 Stormwind
/way Blasted Lands 61.97 12.80 Nethergarde Keep
/way The Hinterlands 13.53 46.80 Aerie Peak
/way Searing Gorge 24.63 74.5 The Masonry
/way Shadowforge City 61.44 24.35 Shadowforge City
Kalimdor
/way Un’Goro Crater 52.88 55.76 Fire Plume Ridge
/way Mount Hyjal 57.18 77.11 Throne of Flame
/way Southern Barrens 39.11 9.3 The Great Divide
Outland
/way Hellfire Peninsula 53.15 64.89 Honor Hold
/way Shadowmoon Valley:Outland 50.77 35.30 Fel Pits
/way Blade’s Edge Mountains 72.42 17.64 Skald
Northrend
/way Icecrown 76.97 18.66 Argent Tournament Grounds
/way Dragonblight 45.35 49.92 Ruby Dragonshrine
Pandaria
/way Kun-Lai Summit 57.68 62.81 One Keg
/way Valley of the Four Winds 31.51 73.59 Stormstout Brewery
Draenor
/way Gorgrond 46.69 38.76 Blackrock Foundry Overlook
/way Nagrand: Draenor 65.75 8.25 Elemental Plateau
Broken Isles
/way Highmountain 44.66 72.90 Neltharion’s Vault
/way The Broken Shore 71.69 47.99 The Broken Shore
Once you have unlocked Dark Iron Dwarves, you can begin working on acquiring their heritage armor. To do this, you need to earn the Heritage of the Dark Iron achievement. This requires you to reach level 50 on a new dwarf.
As an important side note, you will not earn the achievement if you reach level 50 by using a level boost, race change, or recruit a friend levels to unlock the armor.
Final Thoughts
The process of unlocking Dark Iron Dwarves has 2 major requirements — completion of the first part of the Alliance War Campaign and a short recruitment quest chain. Beginning the war campaign requires a level 35+ Alliance character; however, later chapters are gated behind a level 50 requirement. Because of this, you can choose to start working on the campaign while leveling or wait until level 50.
If you are working on unlocking other allied races, here is my quick allied race unlock overview and links to detailed guides for every race.
| Alliance | Horde |
|---|---|
| Dark Iron Dwarf | Highmountain Tauren |
| Kul Tiran Human | Mag’har Orc |
| Lightforged Draenei | Nightborne |
| Mechagnome | Zandalari Troll |
| Void Elf | Vulpera |
Can you get back to the Firelands from this quest chain?
Can’t seem to get Blood on the Sand to appear. I’m level 55 and I have the heart. Is it locked behing reputation or something?
Hey Chad, shouldn’t be any reputation locks anymore. One of the best ways to see what is stopping you is to download the BtWQuests and BtWQuests: Battle for Azeroth Addons. That will add a dungeon journal-style window for your quests and show you what the prerequisites are for Blood on the Sand. The requirements for these unlocks can get really tangled and those addons are extremely helpful!
Thanks for the reply. I got it figured out – turns out it’s a level 60 requirement now instead of 50.
Ah, good to know, I’ll look into getting that updated.
Could have used some help on how to get a dungeon queue for The MOTHERLODE!! at level 60… Trade chat is quite useless.
If you are still stuck on The MOTHERLODE!! you can go back into the embassy and talk to Moira again to skip the dungeon 🙂