The Detailed WoW Item Restoration Guide from Blizzard

Why Do You Need the WoW Item Restoration?

First thing first – you need to restore the accidentally sold or deleted items in WoW. Knowing how to do the WoW item restoration is not just about convenience, it is more like a lifesaving situation for the accounts with leveled-up characters. Imagine that you’re in the middle of a raid, trying to clear some space in your bag, and you accidentally sell that lethal sword or precious collectible loot. These things cost you time, gold, and nerves (maybe even friends ☺).  What to do?

Fortunately, Blizzard Entertainment understands your suffering like no other. While you read that new WoW gold farm guide, do not forget that Blizzard officially allows you to restore the items that you’ve thought as lost forever. Yes, leave that gold for other cool items, and learn in WoW how to use item restoration.

Why Is WoW Item Restoration Essential?

For most hardcore gamers, WoW is not just a game, but an adventure, a meetup, a way out, a hideout – call it as you like. To lose an important item is not about losing something useful for the battle, it is like losing the memories of your friends who helped you to receive this item or wasted time you’ve spent to get it. There is something heartwarming that you can always return what you liked or lost by accident. 

For the Blizzard team, it is an important aspect of achieving the player’s satisfaction and reducing the possibility of ruining the gaming experience. They are interested in delivering you the smoothest ride and purest fun while you are playing WoW Classic or War Within.

How Does the WoW Item Restoration Work?

Well, we need to clarify that this guide will do for both the item restoration in WoW Classic and War Within. However, we’ve personally checked how it works in War Within. The good news – it is easy to restore lost, deleted, or sold items. Basically, you just need to click a few pages and wait for some time to restore the valuable item. Here is what you should do in WoW item restoration.

While playing the game or visiting the official website of Blizzard, go to the Support Section.

Find the button and click the “Item Restoration” page. Sign in under your active Blizzard account and you will see the list of your active characters connected to this account.

Choose the character that “lost” your valuable item. This character can be your major hero or the support. It doesn’t matter – Blizzard can check all the inventories that you need.

After picking the character you will see the list of all the items available for the restoration. Scroll through the vast list of items set in chronological order.

Choose all the items you see in the list and confirm the Restoration. The notification about the restored item will appear in your in-game mailbox. Go back to the game to have it back!

Important notice! This was the last step if you have deleted the item accidentally. But if you want to restore the sold item then you need to buy it back after the restoration process. Go to the nearest vendor and find the necessary items. Click on the item and then “Buy it back”. At least, this is how item restoration in WoW works. 

Do you still have problems with WoW item restoration? Then make sure to watch this video from a devoted fan who showed the whole process step by step.

What Items You CAN’T Get Back During the WoW Item Restoration?

The item certainly helps, but, unfortunately, there are certain limits you need to keep in mind. Let’s start with the time limitations.

You can restore only one character or one time every 7 days. Standard items can be returned within a few minutes or 1 day. But the epic gear may take up to 30 days before being restored to your account. Generally speaking, that’s good enough for most people, but if you’re the kind of person who constantly revises the inventory, be sure to schedule your restorations beforehand.

There are a few items you can’t restore: 

• Quest items because of the obvious reasons;
• Pet and mounts that were already added to the stable;
• Any items sold via the Auction House – when you’ve bid something it becomes the property of another player;
• Any consumable items;

It also takes a few minutes to update the restoration list after logging out so don’t be too quick if the missing gear doesn’t show up on the list immediately after getting the notification.

Challenges in The War Within Compared to the Classic WoW Item Restoration

WoW’s most recent expansion, The War Within, promised new adventures, new stories, and brand new high-powered equipment. And they delivered us the promised but with painful headaches too. The patch 11.0.2 fixed a small guild bank bug. As a result, many players updated the game and… lost some of the most valuable items due to the patch! Some players lost only trifles but the others were in grief because of losing the rarest stuff. The reason? A mysterious cross-realm guild issue.

How the Community Reacted To the WoW Item Restoration Changes?

The community response to the problems of War Within compared to the smoother WoW Classic item restoration was quick. And wasn’t approved by any bits. The game-related forums and social media burst with the players where expressing their frustrations about the loot loss and slow replies.

The guild bank losses weren’t really about the stuff — they were about memories, the profits of many raids and hours of cooperation. Blizzard confirmed the issue and said they’d fix it, though things were slow and fixes weren’t always complete. Many guilds still miss out on their treasures because of the huge expansion, the others received only part of the lost items. Blizzard is mostly silent…

This system that goes from the process of Item Restoration in WoW Classic has a few drawbacks to think about. Check how this Reddit user tried to make useful suggestions that Blizzard should definitely listen to.

Frequently Asked Questions

How to restore a character in WoW? 

Log into your WoW account and go straight to the “Character Selection” screen to recover a deleted character. Find the “Character Undelete” button – usually, it is located at the bottom of the character panel. You will see what characters have been deleted recently, and you can select one to restore.

Only some characters can be restored and only every 7–15 days per character, depending on your account. 

Update! Unfortunately, in 2024 this guide is useful only for WoW Classic. Temporarily the latest patch of War Within broke the system of restoring your characters. Hopefully, they will fix this problem very soon and we will see a great update for WoW just like it was with the recent Hearthstone patch notes. 

What is the fastest way to restore items in WoW? 

If you are on the clock and want to go through the WoW item restoration ASAP, visit the Blizzard’s Item Restoration page. Sign in, select the character that lost the item, and view the restorable item list. Select your items and Blizzard will mail the notifications about their restoration to your in-game mailbox. Just keep in mind that the restoration process is available only once every 7 days per character, and some items can’t be restored.

How long does WoW take to restore items? 

The standard items are usually restored within minutes, depending on the level of loading on servers. First, you need to get the notification to your in-game mailbox. But recently sold or disenchanted items may take a few minutes to appear in the restoration queue. If you don’t instantly see your restored items after the notification, it’s worth checking out and logging out for a few minutes.

Will Blizzard restore the sold items? 

If they do not belong to the limitations, then you can buy them back after using the standard process of Item Restoration in WoW. After receiving the notification about the restoration from Blizzard, go to the nearest vendor and choose the item. Then click the “buy back”. It takes some time. If the item no longer shows up in the buyback list, go to Blizzard’s item restoration page to see if it can be restored. Keep in mind that you can restore only one character or one item per week. The schedule is very limited.

Why does my item not show up after the restoration in WoW? 

There are a few reasons why your item might not be on the restoration list. Quest items, mounts, pets, and Auction House items are not available for the WoW item restoration. And even very recently sold products can be redeemed only through the buyback from a vendor. Also, the restoration process of items can take a few minutes to show up on the restoration list after logging out, so wait a bit before trying again.

Conclusion

This is our detailed guide to WoW item restoration via the official website of Blizzard. Surely, you can buy the lost items from other players or third-party websites (though, it is in a grey area). Make sure to follow our blog where we post news, guides, and reviews related to video games. Join our family!