DRAGONFLIGHT PATCH 10.1.5 UPDATE: MANY OF THE REQUIREMENTS LISTED BELOW NO LONGER APPLY. THE ONLY REQUIREMENT TO UNLOCK LIGHTFORGED DRAENEI NOW IS TO REACH LEVEL 40 ON A CHARACTER AND VISIT THE STORMWIND EMBASSY TO PICK UP THE RECRUITMENT QUESTLINE STARTING WITH “THE LIGHTFORGED.”
Unlocking allied races from past expansions can be a pain — especially if you are new to WoW. To make things more confusing, unlock requirements have changed, but many guides and forums have not been updated. In this article, I’ll give you the most up-to-date information you’ll need to unlock the Lightforged Draenei allied race fast.
You can unlock the Lightforged Draenei by completing these 2 steps (requires level 45+ character):
- Get the You Are Now Prepared! achievement by finishing the Argus storyline
- Complete the 3 recruitment quests starting at the Stormwind Embassy
If you know your way around the Legion zones, that might be all you need to start. On the other hand, if this is your first time going to Argus, it can be a little tricky. Luckily, you will kill 2 birds with one stone since You Are Now Prepared! is required for the Void Elf unlock as well!
In the rest of the guide, I’ll show you what you need to do to get to Argus and discuss the other requirements to unlock the Lightforged Draenei.
How to get to Argus in Dragonflight
Before you can do the Argus storyline, you obviously need to get to Argus. There are a few requirements to get there, including having a level 45 character. I would recommend you complete the Argus storyline on an alliance character if possible because you will need them for the recruitment quest chain as well.
To get started, you will first need to get to Dalaran on the Broken Shore continent. If you played in Legion, you could get to Dalaran by using your Dalaran Hearthstone or the portal to Azsuna (in Stormwind or Orgrimmar).
For newer players, you can unlock Legion and Dalaran by visiting the Hero’ Call Board in Stormwind and selecting “Fight the Legion.” From there, you just need to complete a short scenario, and you’ll be given your shiny new hearthstone.
Once you are in Dalaran, you can follow these steps to get to Argus:
- Get a level 45+ character (if you haven’t already)
- Check to see if you have been to Argus before. Look for a Lightforged Beacon on Krasus’ Landing (east side of Dalaran). Click on it to go to Argus.
- If you don’t have the beacon: Begin the Argus story by accepting the Uniting the Isles quest from Khadgar in the Violet Citadel.
- Do the Armies of Legionfall quest at Krasus’ landing.
- Participate in the Assault on Broken Shore short scenario.
- Then return to The Violet Citadel and pick up The Hand of Fate.
You will unlock Argus after finishing The Hand of Fate and a few follow-up quests. The Lightforged Beacon, which allows for easy return to Argus, will be unlocked once you finish Rendezvous (12 quests or so into the story).
Once unlocked, the beacon will appear at Krasus’ Landing and allow you to warp to The Vindacaar — a spaceship above the planet of Argus. You can then use the navigation console in the northern end of the ship to teleport to the Argus’ surface.
Complete the Argus storyline
Phew, now that you made it to Argus, it is time to start working on the storyline. To get the You Are Now Prepared! achievement, you will need to complete 3 story chapters that have 20 – 40 quests each. The chapters include The Assult Begins, Dark Awakenings, and War of Light and Shadow.
With so many quests in the storyline, I don’t want to list them out. I found that it was pretty easy to follow the chain, and there weren’t a lot of side quests. If you want a complete list of the quests required, check out Wowhead’s Argus guide.
Unfortunately, you can’t fly on Argus (even with Legion flying unlocked). This means that these chapters will take you a decent amount of time to finish. If I had to venture a guess, it would probably take 6 – 8 hours for most players to complete.
Luckily, the achievement is a shared requirement to unlock Void Elves as I mentioned.
Do the 3 recruitment quests
With the Argus storyline done, you are now ready to recruit the Lightforged Draenei into the Alliance and onto your character creation screen! As mentioned above, you do need an Alliance character at or above level 45 for this step.
The recruitment quests start at the Stormwind Embassy (see map below). You can start the chain by accepting The Lightforged from High Exarch Turalyon or Aysa Cloudsinger. If you completed Argus and the quest isn’t showing, you may have to do the A Choice of Allies quest that has you read the banners in the room first.
After completing The Lightforged, you will receive a quest called the Forge of Aeons which requires you to complete a scenario. During the scenario, be careful not to pull too many mobs and let the guy you are escorting take many of the hits. You will respawn at the start if you die, so do your best to stay alive and let T’Paartos do the work.
Once you finish the scenario, you will receive For the Light!, which can be turned in to unlock the Lightforged Draenei allied race!
I have included a few frequently asked questions below. 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 |
Frequently Asked Questions
You need to be level 45+ to begin the Argus storyline. If you are already level 45, head to Legion Dalaran and accept the Uniting the Isles quest in The Violet Citadel. From there, follow Khadgar to Krasus’ Landing and complete those quests and the scenario.
It will probably take about 6 to 9 hours for most players to unlock the Lightforged Draenei. The most time-consuming thing is completing the Argus story, which is long, and you can’t fly.
Lightforged Draenei can play as one of 6 different classes in World of Warcraft, including:
Death Knight
Hunter
Mage
Paladin
Priest
Warrior
Lightforged Draenei cannot play as demon hunters, druids, monks, rogues, shamans, or warlocks.
Lightforged Draenei have 2 active racial abilities. The first one is called Light’s Judgment and allows you to summon a pillar of holy energy to damage enemies in a small radius. Their second ability allows them to summon a forge that can be used for blacksmithing and is called Forge of Light.
In addition to their 2 active racials, Lightforged Draenei have 4 passive racial skills, including:
Demonbane: Grants 20% more experience when killing demons
Light’s Reckoning: When you die, you deal damage to enemies and heal allies within 8 yards
Holy Resistance: Takes 1% less holy damage
Once you unlock the Lightforged Draenei, you can start working on getting their heritage armor. You will need to earn the Heritage of the Lightforged achievement, which requires you to reach level 50 on a new shiny Draenei.
As an important note, you can’t earn the armor if you use a level boost, race change, or recruit a friend levels.
Final Thoughts on Lightforged Draenei
Unlocking the Lightforged Draenei in Dragonflight requires you to complete the Argus storyline. To get to Argus, you need to be level 45+. Since you will need an Alliance character to complete the recruitment scenario that follows, I would recommend you complete the Argus quests as Alliance if you are starting from scratch and have few/no leveled characters.
Thanks for reading, and enjoy your brand new shiny Draenei and Lightforged Felcrusher!
You can now play Monks as Lightforged Draenei as of patch 10.0.7
This has been an incredibly frustrating set of quests to get started, thank you so much for the guide!
Thanks for the reminder! I’ll make sure to get all the possible classes updated soon 🙂
Two important parts were skipped regarding UNITING THE ISLES:
1) You won’t have any quests in Suramar until you unlock the secret town. For that, you need Magic Message quest given by Archmage Khadgar in Dalaran. (There is an entire questline for that.)
2) There aren’t many quests in Stormheim either. There will be a single NPC giving you completely random stuff, but do it until you go through Greymane’s Gambit and, finally, start gaining Reputation in the area.
Honestly, it takes a long, long time to get these things done despite 1-hit-KOing all mobs. Get ready to suffer.
Useful extra info I needed as a Shadowlands-era player:
If you haven’t done Uniting the Isles before, you’ll need to get Friendly Rep with the 5 main factions of the Broken Isles.
1. The Court of Farondis and Dreamweavers are easy, just turn up to their flight location (flying from Broken Isles Dalaran) and grab the nearest quests, quest until Friendly.
2. The Highmountain Tauren and Valarjar require unlocking your class hall in the Legion story, and then going to the mission board and picking one or the other. I picked Valarjar, quested with them til Friendly, then went back to my hall and switched via the mission board. One of them requires doing a story instance, so just follow the quest you’re given from the board.
3. The Nightfallen are unlocked to quest with by accepting “Khadgar’s Discovery” in Broken Isles Dalaran, which leads into “Magic Message” and a few other quests. After a while, you’ll unlock some quests following the Nightfallen in Suramar. These extra elements weren’t clear to me at all as a Shadowlands player, so it took me a while to work each step out.
Once you’ve gotten Friendly with each faction, there’s no need to keep questing with them (unless you want to unlock Nightborne and Highmountain Tauren). Just go turn in Uniting the Isles.
And after you’ve done the Assault on Broken Shore scenario, you can go back to Broken Isles Dalaran and accept “Hand of Fate” from Khadgar in the Violet Citadel – it probably won’t appear on your map, as he holds a few other quests, you’ll need to just walk up to him and ask for the quest.
It took me 2 hours of piloting my lv 60 character around the Broken Isles to get all 5 factions up to “Friendly” while watching Youtube. Another 30 minutes of scenario quests, and I’ve just unlocked Argus, which is going to take a while. Unlocking Lightforged Draenei is not for the time-poor… so annoying. I’m probably going to unlock Highmountain Tauren and Nightborne with this character too since I’ve already started the process for each of them.
Thanks for the comment Miri! I appreciate you sharing the details on Uniting the Isles. I added that detail to the guides for other Legion races like Nightborne but need to add it here as well.
Best of luck on wrapping up LF Draenei and picking up HM Tauren and Nightborne!
Andoris
I have completed all the step-by-step quest that you have outlined, right to Forge of Aeons. I show the Assault Begins under Are You Now Prepared as being completed. I am still not able to unlock Lightforged Draener and Void Elf. What am I missing? I am not finding anymore quest to do, not even recruitment of them in Stormwind at the Embassy. Help is needed if you can.
Hey Robert, I hate when it feels like you hit a dead end on the quest chain. Without knowing each piece that you have completed it is tricky to say what you should do next exactly. I would recommend that you download the BtwQuests and BtwQuests: Legion addon. It is a great addon that lists all questlines for each expansion and allows you to hover over boxes to see what the requirements are. From there, you should be able to see what you need to do to start the next quest you need!