Theory to Targeting Island Expedition Rewards
Thanks to the amount of information provided from players, it has been determined that Island Expedition rewards can be targeted based on what you kill during the Island Expeditions themselves. While killing certain creatures does not guarantee you the items themed to that creature, it does enable the
chance for a player to get items related to that creature at the end of an Island Expedition.
Before going on, it is worth mentioning that the amount of rewards that can be obtained from a single Island Expedition varies greatly. On personal experience I've seen up to 5 items rewarded to a single player (2 green transmog items, 1 blue transmog item, 1 quest item and 1 pet) from one Island Expedition win.
It is also unclear if the difficulty level of Island Expeditions has an impact on Island Expedition rewards and chances.
How It Works - Simple Version
Many Island Expedition rewards are themed off the creatures and invasions that occur during Island Expeditions. For example,
Чирик is a mount reward from Island Expeditions that is Pirate themed. If you encounter some Pirate themed rare creatures and manage to kill them, Pirate themed items such as
Чирик may show up on the loot window at the end of an Island Expeditions for one of the participating players.
Another example is
Трофейный клинок королей Севера a popular Vrykul themed transmog sword. Encountering and killing Vrykul themed creatures on an Island Expedition may cause this sword to show up on a player's loot table.
This means if you are looking to collect certain rewards, you will really want to scout out as much of the Island as possible in search of these special enemies. Again, at the very end it still comes down to RNG on if anyone in the group manages to loot items related to the creatures you just killed. But keep at it and you will start to see these results.
How It Works - The Complicated
On the technical side of things, every rare creature (and potentially some elite creatures) on Island Expeditions has a loot table. However instead of being able to loot the creatures directly after killing them on Island Expeditions, the results of those rolls at the loot table is
calculated at the end of the Island Expedition.This means the most effective way to grind special Island Expedition rewards is to seek out named rare NPCs around the Island and also kill a few varying types of creatures (instead of farming the same types of elite creatures). However, due to the score limit, this also means that looting Azerite from chests, mining nodes, or the Unbound Monstrosity elemental event is counter-productive to collecting rare rewards as they only end the Island Expedition faster and give you less time to search out other rare creatures.
When looking to target certain rewards, there are two systems of Island Expeditions that exist to help encounter a lot of a certain type of creature.
- Island Creature Theme: The 3 Islands every week will also come with a creature theme shown on the Expedition Map interface when queueing for Island Expeditions. The creature themes associated with each Island are also shown in the "Today in WoW" section on the Wowhead homepage! This means you will often encounter these types of creatures when on an expedition to that particular Island, giving you many opportunities to get rewards associated to those types of creatures. So when Rotting Mire contains Pirates for the week, expect chances at Чирик after every Island Expedition to Rotting Mire.
- Invasion Events: The 2nd is the Invasion event that occurs during some Island Expeditions which occurs as teams collect Azerite around the Island. An invasion event causes a lot of enemies of a particular theme to spawn on the Island, giving many creatures of a similar theme for players to kill to add a lot of rewards around that theme to their loot tables. So when a Vrykul invasion occurs on your Island, expect a decent chance at many Vrykul themed items such as Трофейный клинок королей Севера.
Note About Invasion Events: Currently, invasion events are much easier to trigger on lower difficulties of Island Expeditions, but it is unclear if the difficulty of Island Expeditions has an effect on the
chance at some Island Expedition rewards. Invasion events are explained in more detail in our
Island Expeditions: Random Events and Invasions.
