The WoW Forever Legacy System explained

Completing a Legacy Challenge earns one Legacy Point. Points belong to your Battle.net account, and each character spends them separately across three trees: Professions, Adventure and Resourcefulness. At launch there are 65 challenges, so 65 points to earn, and a character can spend 16 of them.

That 65-to-16 ratio is the design in miniature. The spending cap is per character and the earning is per account, so an alt does not start from nothing: it spends the points your other characters have already earned. Points beyond the sixteen are not wasted either, because your total also drives a separate track of cosmetic rewards.

• 65 Legacy Challenges at launch, one point each
• 16 points spendable per character; Blizzard has said the cap rises with later content
• Three trees: Professions, Adventure, Resourcefulness, each holding up to 25 points
• Points carry across Normal, PvP and Roleplaying
• Hardcore progress flows out to the account, but points cannot be spent on a Hardcore character

When this guide was first written Blizzard had published six category names and nothing under them. The beta's Legacy window now lists every challenge, and the totals add up to the 65 Blizzard announced.

Three things in that table are worth a second look. Gathering and secondary professions earn nothing: mining, herbalism, skinning, cooking, fishing and first aid are not on the list. Reputations earn nothing either, except the four battleground factions, which is a change from the way the system was first described. And the dungeon points are for whole tiers, not single dungeons, so one clear of Hall of Thanes is a step towards a point rather than a point.

The list is public, so the arithmetic is simple, and it is more useful than any seller's estimate. The cheapest challenges are the first step of each ladder: level 25 on a class, 150 in a crafting profession, honour rank 3. There are nine classes and six crafting professions, which means fifteen points are available from early milestones alone, before anyone has reached level 60 on anything.

1. Level 25 on each of nine classes: 9 points, each a small fraction of a climb to 60
2. Skill 150 in each of six crafting professions: 6 points, spread across three characters at two professions each
3. Honour rank 3: 1 point, and the sixteenth

That is a full sixteen-point character without a single raid, a single rank push or a second level 60. The expensive end of the list is rank 14, the three raid clears, and level 60 on every class, and those points are worth exactly the same as the cheap ones. The order you earn them in is the whole of the strategy, and it is why buying a fourth alt to level 25 now makes sense in a way it never did in Classic.

Each tree holds a handful of perks with one to five ranks apiece. These are the perks as they appear in the beta; the numbers may change before launch, and the beta deliberately hides two perks in each tree.

Two are worth knowing by name. Talented, in the Adventure tree, starts your talent points at level 5 instead of level 10, which changes how an alt plays for its first twenty levels. For Great Honor, in Resourcefulness, adds 2% honour per rank up to 10% — small, but it multiplies every battleground you play afterwards, so it is worth taking before a rank push rather than during one.

Separate from the trees, your total number of points unlocks cosmetics, wherever you have spent them. Four rewards are in the first season: the Replica Ironforge Air Rifle, a toy; the Spectral Bear Cub, a pet; the Spectral Bear Tabard; and the Reins of the Spectral Bear, a mount. In the beta they unlock at 15, 25, 40 and 55 points.

Worth knowing before buying anything: these come from your own account's progress rather than from drops, so nobody can farm one and hand it to you. A seller helps by getting your characters to the milestones, either playing alongside you or playing the character for you, and the second of those means sharing your login. In a game with no flying, where a rare ground mount is genuinely visible, that is the difference between a farming order and handing over your credentials.

Hardcore arrives after launch with no date. When it does, points earned on a Hardcore character will count for the rest of your account, but points earned elsewhere cannot be spent on a Hardcore character. Blizzard has also said Hardcore gets its own challenges in place of the PvP ones, and its own reward track. None of that changes what to do in November: the three launch rulesets share one pool.