Transmogrification 101

With Patch 4.3, we’re getting one of the most exiting cosmetic changes ever introduced into World of Warcraft, transmogrification. Fortunately, the WoW community have christened this “Mogging” because quite frankly the word transmogrification is a horrible word to say. When I first heard it I though that it was a term invented by the folks over in Irvine, CA, but apparently it’s been around for a while and the earliest recorded use of the word according to the Oxford English Dictionary was way back in 1656.

Unsurprisingly the word simply means:

So, technically druids transmogrify!

But of course we’re not here to consider that we want to make our characters unique little snowflakes and look cool at the same time by changing the appearance of our armour to look like another piece of armour. But the big question being asked is how do I get my lovely T12 stuff to look like my uber cool piece of armour? Hopefully this quick guide will help you do just that!

Before we look at the what, where and how I’ll just list a few of the very basics that are currently known about mogging.

• Items being mogged must be the same armour class as the original;
• The items must be of the same type eg boots/swords/axes;
• The exception to the above is guns, bows and crossbows;
• Main hand weapons cannot be used to transform off-hand weapons (and vice-versa);
• One hand items can be used to transform main hand weapons and off-hand weapons but NOT vie-versa;
• Only uncommon (green), rare (blue) or epic (purple) items may be transmogrified;
• Legendary items (orange) cannot be used as either the donor or the target of mogging;
• There are exceptions as some items (like fish) have been deemed inappropriate;
• Heirloom items cannot be the target item (it is unknown if you can use it as the donor);
• PVP gear can be the donor and the target;
• You can reverse the mogging process;
• Standard glow effects on donor items will not transfer to the target item;
• Items that have been mogged has its tooltip modified to show “Transmogrified to: Item Name”
• If you cannot equip the item you cannot use it as the donor to mog an equipped item;
• Using an item to mog your equipped items will make it soulbound if it isn’t already;
• You can mog more than 1 item using a single donor;
• On use abilities from the donor do NOT transfer;

The information above was taken from various sources and was correct at the time it was compiled (8 October 2011). As with everything on the PTR, things are subject to change. (eg I know that Blizzard are looking into making it possible to use legendary items as the mog donor)

Step 1: Finding the Cool Stuff

Before you can start to think about changing the appearance of any armour you need to find something to change it to. Now the coolest kids in town will be the paladins who are all gonna look like retro raiders in the T2 Judgement sets but lets face it soon they’ll all be bored of looking the same as every other paladin and go for something different. There are way too many looks to go for for me to cover here but some ideas are old Tier set pieces, old PVP sets, crafted sets but possibly the best way is to compile your own sets from some of the random armour items that WoW has thrown at you in the past. 

This last option is sort or a labour of love due to the insane number of items available and 2 invaluable sources of assistance here are Wowhead and my favourite, a little addon called MogIt, which can be downloaded from Curse, here.I’ll not cover the details of how to use MogIt as it is quite simple to use but if you need an overview, the guys at WoW Insider did a good review.