An Earthen dwarf stands in his heritage armor in front of Orgrimar
Image by Destructoid

How to unlock the Earthen Allied Race in World of Warcraft

Get off to a rocky start with our new Allied Race.

While there’s no new base playable races or classes in The War Within, there is an unlockable race you can add to your roster. Sure, the Earthen aren’t new to World of Warcraft. However, this particular kind we find have been hidden away from the rest of the world for a few millennia. Now they’re ready to join the ranks of both the Horde and Alliance, and this guide will show you how.

Recommended Videos

What are the requirements for unlocking The Earthen Allied Race?

The key requirement for this new group of playable characters involves a heavy investment into The War Within‘s story. There are four specific elements that needed to get an achievement called “Allied Races: Earthen.” Once you have that achievement, the new race is yours.

These achievement elements are going to be the main story campaign, as well as specific side quests focusing on the lives of the Earthen race. These requirements are:

  • The War Within‘s campaign: Each of the four zones have a specific set of Campaign quests to finish, and a fifth set of quests exists at max level. It’s a lot of story content to go through. Fortunately, it’s very easy to identify exactly what quests you need to streamline the main storyline as fast as possible.
  • Mourning Rise: A side quest chain in The Isle of Dorn starts with a quest titled “Before I depart,” and ends with “The Weight of Duty.” It’s a bummer of a storyline, but it gives a lot of emotional depth to who the Earthen truly are.
  • Broken Tools: This set of quests takes place in The Ringing Deeps. You’ll be working with Machinist Kittrin on the quest “Discarded and Broken.” You’ll be through with this once you’ve completed “Reforged Purpose.”
  • Merrix and Steelvein: This is a series of quests that starts in Dornogal with “How Scandalous.” It ends in the Ringing Deeps with “Bad Business,” and is a great look at the political side of Earthen culture.
The achievement interface for World of Warcraft showing the requirements to unlock Earthen
Image by Destructoid

What are The Earthen’s abilities?

Though they look like Dwarves, these new friends are more accurately described as “Living Constructs.” They’re made of stone and metal, but have plenty of free thoughts and emotions. A lot of these traits are reflected in their racial abilities.

  • Azerite Surge: An empowered spell attack that is more powerful the longer you hold it. “Draw upon your inner strength. RElease to invoke the power of Azerite on a cone in front of you, dealing Fire damage.” Rank 1 deals Fire damage, Rank 2 Heals allies hit by the effect, and Rank 3 deals additional Fire damage to the highest health enemy hit.
  • Hyper Productive: Increases Finesse by 2%. That increases your chance of gathering additional materials when gathering. This a particularly strong race if you want a character who gathers materials for your alts or selling on the auction house. They CAN drink potions and flasks for additional benefits and healing.
  • Ingest Minerals: You are always considered “Well Fed,” because you cannot eat. This means you are unable to use normal food, and will require Mage Food to heal outside of combat. Bandages may still work.
    This ability allows you to instead consume a cut Khaz Algaar gem and change what your Well Fed benefit grants you. Raw gems will not work.
    • Amber = Stamina
    • Emerald = Haste
    • Onyx = Mastery
    • Ruby = Critical Strike
    • Sapphire = Versatility
  • Titan-Wrought Frame: Base armor from equipped items is increased by 10%. This obviously benefits Plate wearers the most. Of course, there’s something to be said about being a rogue with the best armor bonus.
  • Wide-Eyed Wonder: When you gain experience for exploration, gain an additional 200%. This could help with faster leveling in new zones. It seems that you can still use The Warband Guide to Everywhere All At Once toy to uncover the map, but you still get discovery exp for actively being in each location. Still, it’s probably easier to keep track of where you’ve been without it.
A Gruffhorn hunter pet on the hunter stable UI
Image by Destructoid

As for classes, the Earthen have access to a fairly standard set at creation. You can choose from Hunter, Mage, Monk, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, or Warrior. If you’re interested in being a Hunter, you’ll get a unique starting pet of a Gruffhorn.

What are the Earthen’s special features?

The Earthen come with a special starting racial mount, the Slatestone Ramolith. Like all allied race mounts, it’s a ground-only mount.

An Earthen player sits on his Ramolith mount in the city of Dornogol.
Image by Destructoid

Earthen also have a unique Heritage armor upon reaching Level 50. Only Earthen can wear it, and there’s three color tints to choose from. Note: the old restriction that prevented you earning Allied Race Heritage Armor by race/faction changing a character has been removed. If you don’t want to level a new character, race changing to Earthen will get you the new heritage armor.

An earthen is wearing her heritage armor.
Image by Destructoid

Destructoid is supported by our audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a small affiliate commission. Learn more about our Affiliate Policy
Author
Image of Randy Marr
Randy Marr
Contractor Writer - Randy is an avid fan of collecting things in video games and immediately forgetting that he owns them. That includes the games themselves, too. It's probably why he's spent so much time over the past two decades writing about World of Warcraft and Nintendo games.