Mythic+

Mythic+ is the game's dungeon ladder. You slot a keystone into a font at the dungeon entrance, and that keystone sets the difficulty — a number. Clear the dungeon before the timer runs out and the key goes up a level; miss the timer and it drops. Five players, about 30 minutes a run.

It is the most repeatable content in the game, and the reason most people are in a dungeon on a Wednesday is not the loot at the end. It is the currency.

Each run pays you three separate things, and they are worth keeping apart in your head:

1. A chance at loot when you finish — roughly a 35% chance of an item landing on you personally. 2. Champion, Hero and Myth crests, guaranteed, every run. 3. Progress toward your [Great Vault](/guides/systems/great-vault), which is where the run's real value usually sits.

Rewards do not climb with every key level. They climb in steps, and between steps a harder key pays exactly the same as the easier one. These are the only levels where something changes:

Two things fall out of that table. The vault column is always ahead of the loot column, which is why a run you got nothing from was still worth doing.

And the gear stops climbing at +10. A +12 drops the same 311 and fills the vault with the same 318 as a +10 does. Keys above that are run for currency, for score, and for the challenge — not for the item level.

Once the gear table flattens out, the currency is the thing still improving — and it improves in two separate ways. A higher key moves you into a better crest tier, and then, inside the top tier, it keeps increasing the amount per run.

That last stretch is the answer to "why push past +10 when the gear is capped". A +12 pays 16 crests against 12 at the item level cap — and since 20 crests is one upgrade rank, those extra runs convert straight into item levels on gear you already own.

Below the top tier the opposite holds: find the lowest key that pays the crest you need and run *that*. A key two levels higher is meaningfully harder, takes longer and is likelier to fail, and inside the same band it hands you exactly the same reward.

Your Mythic+ vault row unlocks at 1, 4 and 8 runs in a week. Any key level counts toward unlocking a slot; the *level* of your best runs decides what the slot pays.

So the cheapest good week in the game is 1 run at the highest level you are comfortable with. Everything after that is optional.

If you are going to do 8 runs anyway, do the highest ones first. The vault reads your best runs, so a bad key early is free, while a bad key at the end of the week has cost you the slot it could have filled.

Nothing stops you entering a key below your gear. These are the item levels at which a group will usually take you and the run will usually succeed — a guide to what is realistic, not a requirement.

Below these numbers the run is not impossible, it is just slower and likelier to miss the timer — and a missed timer still pays loot, currency and vault progress, so an honest attempt is rarely wasted.

The rotation is 8 dungeons: Altar of Fangs, Ruby Life Pools, Temple of Sethraliss, Kings' Rest, The Blinding Vale, Voidscar Arena, Den of Nalorakk and Murder Row.

They are not equally quick, and the difference is large enough to plan around. If you are running keys for currency rather than for score, the dungeon you finish fastest is worth more per hour than the one that drops the item you want.

Mythic+ is usually near the top of a plan, and the planner is specific about *which* key. It generates one option per crest breakpoint rather than telling you to push — "+2 for Champion" is a different recommendation from "+9 for Myth", and they are worth different amounts to different characters.

It also charges you honestly for the time. A run is not 30 minutes for everyone — the planner adds the queue you actually face, which is close to nothing as a tank and considerably more as a damage dealer, and that alone can reorder your week.