How to Unlock the Dark Iron Dwarf Allied Race

Allied Races Overview

Legion Intro Guide

Dark Iron Dwarves

Mechagnomes

Mag’har Orcs

Heart of Azeroth Guide

Lightforged Draenei

Kul Tiran Humans

Nightborne

Zandalari Trolls

BFA Intro Guide

Void Elves

Highmountain Tauren

Vulpera

Earthen Dwarves

This guide is going to go over how to unlock the Dark Iron Dwarves that is friendly towards players with no relevant experience with the content when it was current — the intention is to make it simple and easy to follow.
There will be a few steps required:

• Lv 60 or higher will be the safest level to start working on unlocking the race: Uniting Kul Tiras quest, one of the prerequisites, has a lv-60 requirement as of Dragonflight launch.
  • While certain parts, like the beginning of the war campaign, can be started at lv 35, you’ll soon hit quests that are level-gated to 40 and 50.
• Get to Boralus and unlock the Alliance War Campaign quests:
  • Refer to our How to Unlock the Battle for Azeroth War Campaign & Portal Room guide for a step-by-step for this part.
• It is recommended to get the Heart of Azeroth from the start, as it is required to make the latter half of quests available:
  • Refer to our How to Get the Heart of Azeroth guide for comprehensive information to obtain this item.
• Complete the first part of the Alliance war campaign up to the Ready for War achievement unlock.
• Accept the recruitment quests at the Alliance embassy and finish the quest chain to make Dark Iron Dwarves playable.

The Alliance War Campaign

There are two distinct parts required to get the Ready for War achievement.

1. The first is establishing the three footholds in the major zones of Zandalar for the Alliance.
2. The second part would be continuing the main quest for the war campaign which will unlock after the three footholds are established.

This will also give you a head start if you decide to try to unlock the Kul Tiran allied race, since Kul Tiran unlock requires the entirety of the Alliance war campaign to be completed as one of its components.

How to Unlock the Zandalar Footholds

There are three footholds to choose from, and the order in which you complete them is up to you. It should be noted that after the second foothold is established you will need to do the introduction for Island Expeditions with the quest The Azerite Advantage, available on The Wind’s Redemption. Only the tutorial quest for expeditions is required, and after completing that the third foothold will be available to pursue.

Can’t Unlock the Foothold?

If you’re having trouble getting the option to start a foothold, it has been reported that some characters may need to complete The War Cache quest first, which simply requires you to gather 100 “War Resources”. Halford Wyrmbane offers the quest, as well as the quests to start the Zandalar campaign, aboard The Wind’s Redemption.

The currency was introduced in BFA and obtaining 100 of it should be a fairly simple task of finding some treasure chests spread throughout Kul Tiras (or, if you have world quests unlocked, they also offer the currency). If you want an easy way to find treasure chests I’d recommend the Handynotes addon + BFA Treasures plugin for it. Your map will now display the locations of all static treasures and even include notes if there are special ways of opening or getting to them!

Below are the quests for each foothold listed:

How to Get “Ready for War”

If at this point in time you have not gotten your Heart of Azeroth yet, you should — it will be necessary to proceed. We have a guide on how to easily get it in just a few minutes: How to Get the Heart of Azeroth.
After you have your Heart of Azeroth and all three footholds are completed, two things will happen:

1. The Uniting Kul Tiras quest will be available to pick up now.
2. The main war campaign chapter called “Blood on the Sand” will lead off with a quest Overseas Assassination.

Is Uniting Kul Tiras Required?

It is required to continue on to the next set of quest chains. That being said, there are mixed reports on how this quest functions as of Dragonflight. There are a couple definite factors:

1. You must be level 60 to have this quest show up or to turn it in if you had it in your quest log already, as of Dragonflight launch.
2. The requirements for it can be met account-wide, so completing it on one character will allow you to complete it on any alternate characters immediately.

The waters do get a bit muddy about whether you need to actually have friendly rep with the 3 factions at all to progress past this quest, though. There are reports by those who claim to have never done any BFA questing nor have the reps at their “Friendly” stature being able to pick up and complete the Uniting Kul Tiras quest.

The important bit is completing this quest so you can move on, though, so if you happen to be lucky and the quest lets you complete it regardless of your status with certain factions, then so be it!

If you aren’t so lucky as to have the quest take care of itself, then simply use the Scouting Map to select one of the starting zones for BFA questing and get to it. Each zone will give you rep with one of the factions, starting at “Neutral” and requiring you to go one step up to a “Friendly” status.

This will likely not require you to finish all the story quests in each zone, but if you have any plans to unlock the Kul Tiran allied race then you will need to complete all of the story quests in each zone anyway.
The three factions to keep track of are:

• Proudmoore Admiralty
• Storm’s Wake
• Order of Embers

Continuing the War Campaign

At this point you should have your Heart of Azeroth, Uniting Kul Tiras should be finished, and all 3 footholds should be completed.

Your Ready for War achievement should appear something like this:

Overseas Assassination is going to be the starting point to the rest of the War Campaign, so make sure to check The Wind’s Redemption for the breadcrumb quest to move forward. Then you’ll need to sail to Vol’Dun and continue with The Vol’Dun Plan. There will be several sidequests along the way, but make note that only the quests with an orange exclamation point are part of the main story for the war campaign.

Each quest from here on out should cleanly lead into the next, so I’ll list all required quests in order divided by their chapter:

After handing in An End to the Killing to Anduin in Stormwind, you’ll have your Ready for War achievement completed. With this done, you can move onto the final step, which will be an easy jaunt through some lore-filled fun!

Recruiting the Dark Iron Dwarves

The hard part is out of the way, but there’s still a little more to do. First, head on over to the embassy in Stormwind to pick up the quest that will start your journey to recruiting these fiery dwarves to the Alliance’s cause.

You’ll be headed to an instanced solo scenario in the Blackrock Depths to use the Black Anvil’s unique properties to forge some azerite. Follow the directions, slay anything that gets in your way, and breeze through until you need to get back to the anvil itself. Once completed, it’ll teleport you back to the Stormwind Embassy and you’ll need to speak to Moira Thaurissan in the embassy to continue.

At this point you’ll be asked to do a BFA dungeon, “The MOTHERLODE!!”, but it’s extremely important to know that you can now skip doing this by talking to Moira again and selecting the dialogue option that says: “I entrust you to handle this mission”.

This will make it so that all content can be done easily from the embassy and also without any help from other players. After skipping that dungeon the next part will teleport you to the Molten Core to go get a piece of the core to bring the Black Anvil up to spec again. The vehicle you’re put in will make it quite a fast journey to the center, and once there you’ll just need to fight a mini-boss to attain the piece of primal fire. After that you’ll be transported back to the embassy once more.

Next stop is going to be Firelands where you’ll be asked to get Ragnoros’ autograph to empower your new bit of molten core with the big man’s fiery might. Of course there are going to be some groupies in your way to take out first, but it shouldn’t pose an issue. Note, do not try to go across the fire bridge that forms before it is fully cooled off and ready for walking on. Otherwise you’ll take a bit of a fall and have to release and walk back.

After defeating the leader of the rebellious cultists and getting the power you need you’ll be transported back to the embassy once again. The last part is going to send you back to the Blackrock Depths for the final time, to make use of a now fully functional anvil. Not to worry, there is no more combat and it’s simply a matter of clicking on the anvil and listening to Moira for a minute.

After this you’ll speak to Moira, complete the quest, and pick up the recruitment quest that will get you the achievement Allied Races: Dark Iron Dwarf. Once you’re back at the embassy just hand it in and you’re done! The Dark Irons are now a force for the Alliance and you can make a new character with that race.