Solo old raids on Normal or Heroic with a max-level character — nearly everything from Legion and earlier drops appearances in one run. Plate farms best in Cataclysm and Warlords raids plus old PvP vendors. Mail is the scarcest type, concentrated in Vanilla and Burning Crusade raids and Mists dungeons. Leather is the easiest, appearing across almost every solo-able tier.
Quick facts before you start
- Loot rule: soloing old raids drops loot for all armor types, not just your own — you do not need a plate character to farm plate, but you do need one to try the pieces on.
- Lockouts: the oldest raids are weekly per character; most later ones you can rerun the same day. Alts multiply your weekly attempts on the locked ones.
- Difficulty: pick the highest difficulty that still dies fast. Different difficulties of the same raid often use different color variants of the same set.
- Check first: the in-game Appearances tab (Shift+P) filters by armor type and shows which sources you are still missing — always sort there before picking a route.
- Dungeons over raids for mail: mail's best density is in dungeon drops and questing greens, not raid tier.
Where does plate transmog drop?
Plate is the best-served type for spectacle. Cataclysm and Warlords of Draenor raids give you the heavy, oversized silhouettes most plate mogs are built around, and they clear in minutes at modern gear levels. Wrath raids add the cleaner, knightly look.
Do not skip old PvP. Season vendors and legacy honor gear carry plate sets that never appear as raid drops, and they cost currency rather than luck — a guaranteed unlock instead of a drop chance.
Why is mail transmog so hard to farm?
Mail is genuinely the thinnest armor type in the game's appearance pool. For a long stretch of WoW's history only two classes wore it, so far fewer sets were made, and much of what exists is scattered across Vanilla and Burning Crusade raid tiers rather than clustered in one convenient expansion.
The practical answer: farm Mists of Pandaria dungeons and Burning Crusade raids for mail, and lean harder on questing greens and world drops than you would for the other types. Expect more runs per unique piece.
What is the fastest route for leather?
Leather has the widest spread — almost every raid tier from Vanilla through Legion drops usable leather, so the efficient move is not hunting a specific expansion but running whatever raid you can clear fastest and taking the leather along the way.
If you want a target: Legion raids drop the densest modern leather sets, and they solo quickly. Vanilla and Burning Crusade cover the classic rogue and druid looks people actually search for.
Do weapons follow the same routes?
No — weapon appearances are not tied to armor type at all, so a plate farmer and a leather farmer chase the same weapon sources. Weapons are usually the bottleneck in a finished mog: single drops off specific bosses rather than five-piece sets, which means far more repeat runs for one appearance.
If the weekly lockout math is the part you would rather skip, PewPewShop's vetted human players can grind the routes with you or run coaching sessions on efficient solo clears — Legacy Tier Set Farm from EUR 25, Weapon Appearance Hunt from EUR 54, and a Full Transmog Project from EUR 70. No bots, no cheats, just people who have run these raids a few hundred times more than you have.