Endgame

Cracked Keystone Is 40 Uncapped Mistcrests—Once

A Tier 11 Delve can award 20 Hero and 20 Myth Mistcrests outside the weekly caps. Here is what the required +2 is worth—and why you should not delete the item.

A Tier 11 Delve can produce one of Season 2's stranger bargains: finish a single Mythic+ dungeon at level 2 or higher and collect 20 Hero Mistcrests plus 20 Myth Mistcrests.

Cracked Keystone is valuable because both stacks sit outside their normal weekly crest caps. It is also easy to misunderstand. This is not a weekly handout, the 40 crests are not one interchangeable pile, and the item does not turn Tier 11 Delves into a repeatable Myth-crest farm.

Treat it as a one-time ticket. If your character can clear Tier 11 and one entry-level key sounds tolerable, the quest pays for one Hero-track upgrade rank and one Myth-track upgrade rank without using any of the week's capped allowance.

One warning belongs above every optimization: keep the item and quest. Do not delete the Cracked Keystone or abandon the quest because a group did not form that night. Multiple players this expansion report that the one-time item did not drop again and was unavailable through Item Restoration.

What the quest actually asks you to do

The Cracked Keystone can appear in the chest at the end of a Tier 11 Delve. The run does not have to be Bountiful. Looting the item begins a quest with one objective: complete any current-season Mythic+ dungeon at +2 or higher.

You do not need to bring your own key. Joining somebody else's group works, so the simplest route can be applying to a +2 that fits your role and schedule. If you would rather host and do not have a normal Mythic Keystone, Lindormi in Silvermoon provides the normal way back into the system.

The difficulty pairing is deliberate. Tier 11 is where Delves have moved beyond their main end-chest gear curve and into challenge-and-crest territory; ordinary end-chest loot stops climbing after Tier 8. A +2, meanwhile, sits at the entrance to the Mythic+ ladder. The quest is not asking a fresh solo character to leap directly into a serious push key. It asks a proven Delve character to cross the line once.

Combat may not be the slow part. Early Season 2 comments disagree sharply about low-key availability: some players filled +2 and +3 groups quickly, while others watched a self-listed key sit empty. If your listing stalls, first confirm that it is posted under Mythic Keystone, not ordinary Mythic. Applying to somebody else's low key, trying a busier time, or asking a guild or community can be faster than waiting at the front of an unpopular bracket.

That social friction is a real cost. A player can be comfortable in difficult solo content and still have no interest in organized keys. The reward is lucrative; it is not mandatory. The honest decision is whether two matching upgrade ranks are worth one low key to you—not whether the game has made you a Mythic+ player.

Forty crests does not mean two ranks on one item

The reward arrives in two separate currencies:

An ordinary rank costs 20 crests of the matching tier. You cannot pour the Hero stack into a Myth item, combine both stacks to buy two Myth ranks, or convert the reward into 40 generic crests.

That makes the quest best on a character already holding—or soon expecting—gear on both tracks. The Hero stack might finish a strong trinket or tier piece. The Myth stack can move a high-end Vault or raid item by one rank. If the character has no Myth-track item yet, those 20 crests remain useful, but their value waits for the item.

Crafting gives the same reward another scale. A crafted Hero- or Myth-track piece requires 80 crests of the matching tier, so each 20-crest stack covers one quarter of the appropriate craft. Again, the stacks cannot be merged. The quest advances two budgets.

“Uncapped” describes the counter, not the quest

Season 2 normally limits how many crests of each tier a character can earn in a week. The Cracked Keystone reward does not count against those weekly totals. If you have already earned the week's normal Hero and Myth allowances, the quest can still add 20 of each. If you complete it before the rest of your weekly content, it should not consume 20 points of either cap.

That is the whole meaning of uncapped here.

The quest is once per character. It is not a weekly reset task, and another Tier 11 chest is not a route to another 40-crests payout on that character. The item is also a chance acquisition, not a promise that every character receives it from the first Tier 11 run.

There is no same-week deadline. If the item drops late Monday night, keep it and finish the +2 after reset if that is more convenient. Several players made a permanent problem for themselves by abandoning the quest because they assumed it had to be repaired or refreshed weekly.

A small number of players have also reported the reward appearing to advance the crest cap when it should not. That does not establish a universal current bug. It does justify checking the currency pane before and after turn-in. If the counter advances incorrectly, document the values and report it; do not delete the item or quest in an attempt to reset the state.

Calling the reward “40 uncapped crests” is mathematically true and behaviorally dangerous if *once* is left out. Plan around the extra margin when the item appears. Do not add it to a recurring weekly checklist.

Spend the reward where it changes a decision

Because each stack buys exactly one normal rank, the easiest mistake is upgrading the first eligible item simply to clear a currency notification.

Start with replacement risk. A Hero-track weapon you expect to replace from the Great Vault next reset may not deserve the Hero stack. A Myth-track trinket you will use through the season is an easy candidate for the Myth stack. A tier piece that completes a set or reaches an important item-level breakpoint may outrank a technically larger item-level gain elsewhere.

The two stacks do not need to be spent together. They do not need to be spent in the same week. Their special property is that they arrived outside the caps; waiting for the right item does not erase that value.

A simple priority works:

• 1. Upgrade a long-lived item you know you will equip.
• 2. Favor weapons, rare trinkets, tier pieces, and other slots with low replacement odds.
• 3. Hold the Myth stack if you do not yet own a Myth-track item worth keeping.
• 4. Count a planned craft before spending matching crests on a temporary drop.

The quest does not change good upgrade discipline. It gives that discipline one extra rank on each of two tracks.

Make the completion as ordinary as possible

There is no reward for turning the objective into a push. A +2 completes the same quest as a much higher key. Unless you already planned to run Mythic+, choose a low level, a dungeon you understand, and a group whose expectations match the listing. The key needs to be completed, not timed.

For a Delve-focused player, that may mean hosting a calm completion group and stating its purpose plainly. For an established key player, it may mean leaving the quest in the log until the next scheduled run completes it automatically. For somebody who does not want to enter Mythic+ at all, it may mean walking away from the reward.

The surprising part of Cracked Keystone is not that a Tier 11 player can finish a +2. It is that Blizzard attached a meaningful slice of two endgame upgrade budgets to that handoff and placed the payout outside both weekly caps.

Take the offer if one low key is worth it. Preserve the ticket until you do, and read the payout correctly: 20 Hero, 20 Myth, one character, one time.