WoW Midnight Prey Guide: Start Hunts and Earn Rewards
A complete WoW Midnight Prey guide: unlocking hunts with Astalor Bloodsworn, the three difficulties, weekly rewards, and a solo-player routine.
By:
John Langan
What Prey Is in Midnight
Prey is the solo and open-world endgame feature added in Patch 12.0.5 "Lingering Shadows." It gives players who would rather not queue for dungeons or raids a steady, repeatable way to gear up: you take a hunting contract, track a target across a Midnight zone, and finish it off for gear, currency, and progress toward a seasonal track. It is one of the activities that feeds the Voidforge bonus-roll system, but it stands on its own as a gearing path.
This guide covers how to unlock Prey, how a hunt actually plays out, what each difficulty rewards, and a weekly routine built around it for solo players.
Key Takeaways
- Prey is a solo, open-world endgame feature in Patch 12.0.5; you unlock it at level 90 from Magister Astalor Bloodsworn in Silvermoon City.
- Hunts run at three difficulties (Normal, Hard, and Nightmare), and each awards repeatable gear one track below the Great Vault slot it fills.
- Nightmare hunts pay Champion-track gear, fill a Hero-track Vault slot, and drop Voidcore components for the Voidforge.
- Nightmare unlocks at Rank 4 of the Preyseeker's Journey track, after the Dark Mending questline.
- Every hunt ends in a chase: drop the prey to 50% health, follow its red blood-mist trail, and Riposte it to finish.
- You can run one hunt per difficulty per zone each week, which works out to up to 12 hunts across the four Midnight zones.
- Remnants of Anguish from hunts buy mounts, transmog, and Player Housing decor from the Construct vendor at Astalor's Sanctum.
Each of those points is covered in full below, starting with the unlock.
Unlocking Prey
Prey opens up once your character reaches level 90 and finishes the Midnight campaign. The feature is run by Magister Astalor Bloodsworn, and you find him at Astalor's Sanctum, his headquarters in Murder Row in Silvermoon City.
Speak to Astalor and complete the short intro questline, "Prey: Astalor's Initiative." That grants access to Normal-difficulty hunts and explains the basics. From then on you use Astalor's Table, a zone map inside the Sanctum, to pick which contract you want to take and where.
How a Prey Hunt Works
Once you accept a contract, the hunt is an open-world activity rather than an instance. You advance it by playing the zone: completing World Quests, killing rare enemies, looting treasures, and disarming traps all focus Astalor's magic onto your target and move the hunt forward.
When the target is ready, it ambushes you. These fights hit hard and reward quick reactions. Once you drop the prey to roughly 50% health it breaks off and flees, leaving a faint red blood-mist trail behind it. Follow the trail, catch up to the target, and deliver a finishing Riposte to complete the hunt.
✏️ Hold your cooldowns until the prey is above 50% health. Once it flees you have to catch the blood-mist trail and land the Riposte, so burst spent on a target that is about to run is burst wasted.
Rewards by Difficulty
Prey has three difficulties (Normal, Hard, and Nightmare), and the reward question that confuses most players is that hunts pay out on two separate channels. Each hunt drops repeatable gear directly, and it also contributes to your Great Vault. The Vault slot a hunt fills is always one gear track above the gear the hunt itself drops.
The two channels line up cleanly by difficulty:
| Difficulty | Repeatable hunt gear | Great Vault slot |
|---|---|---|
| Normal | Adventurer track | Veteran track |
| Hard | Veteran track | Champion track |
| Nightmare | Champion track | Hero track |
On top of gear, hunts also pay Dawncrests for upgrading that gear, Restored Coffer Key shards that carry over into Bountiful Delves, and Remnants of Anguish for the Prey vendor. Nightmare hunts additionally drop Voidcore components for the Voidforge.
The Preyseeker's Journey Track
Difficulty is gated behind progression, not just gear. Hard difficulty opens after you complete the "One Hero's Prey" quest. Nightmare is the bigger gate: you need to reach Rank 4 of the Preyseeker's Journey, a renown-like seasonal track, and then finish the "Dark Mending" questline.
The Preyseeker's Journey fills as you complete hunts and related weekly quests, and ranking it up unlocks perks and cosmetic rewards alongside the Nightmare difficulty itself.
📌 Do not burn all 12 weekly hunts on Normal. The first four qualifying quests each week award 1,000 Preyseeker's Journey; every hunt after that awards only 50. The early hunts, run at the highest difficulty you can clear, are the ones that move the track.
Affixes and Open-World Challenges
Higher difficulties layer modifiers onto the hunt. Hard adds three affixes: Torment, Hunter's Momentum, and Seeping Gore. All three raise incoming damage and change how the target behaves. Nightmare keeps those three and stacks on two more, Echo of Predation and Bloody Command, for five affixes total.
On top of the affixes, the open world throws random ambushes, area damage, and roaming threats at you mid-hunt, which is what stretches a Nightmare hunt well past the length of a Normal one.
⚠️ Nightmare layers all five affixes onto an already-mobile target. Going in undergeared turns a five-minute hunt into a twenty-minute attrition fight, so treat a Nightmare wall as a signal that your gear, not your skill, is the thing to fix first.
Players who keep stalling at that wall sometimes close the gear gap with a Midnight Season 1 gearing run before returning to push Nightmare on their own.
Currencies and Vendors
The seasonal Prey currency is Remnants of Anguish. You earn it from completing hunts, and you spend it at the Construct vendor inside Astalor's Sanctum. The vendor stock leans cosmetic: mounts, transmog ensembles, and Player Housing decor. Prices swing from a few hundred Remnants for a transmog piece up to several thousand for the mounts, so it pays to decide what you actually want before you spend.
Many of those items only unlock for purchase after you have cleared specific targets on the higher difficulties, so the vendor doubles as a record of what you have beaten.
A Weekly Prey Routine for Solo Players
Prey rewards a focused weekly pass rather than endless grinding. A workable loop looks like this.
- Run four hunts early in the week at the highest difficulty you can comfortably clear, since that is where the 1,000-point Preyseeker's Journey awards and the best Vault progress sit.
- Spread those hunts across different zones so each one counts, since the cap is one hunt per difficulty per zone.
- Bank the Restored Coffer Key shards and use them to run the Bountiful Delves weekly for extra gear.
- Spend Dawncrests on upgrading the gear the hunts dropped before chasing more drops.
Followed through, that loop fills the world slot of your Great Vault and keeps a steady stream of gear coming in without ever stepping into a group.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I unlock Prey in WoW Midnight?
Reach level 90 and finish the Midnight campaign, then visit Magister Astalor Bloodsworn at Astalor's Sanctum in Murder Row, Silvermoon City. Completing his intro questline, "Prey: Astalor's Initiative," unlocks Normal-difficulty hunts.
How do I unlock Nightmare Prey hunts?
Nightmare is gated behind the Preyseeker's Journey track. Reach Rank 4 of that track, then complete the "Dark Mending" questline. Hard difficulty, which you should clear first, unlocks earlier through the "One Hero's Prey" quest.
What gear do Prey hunts reward?
Each hunt pays out on two channels. Normal hunts drop Adventurer-track gear and fill a Veteran Vault slot; Hard drops Veteran and fills Champion; Nightmare drops Champion and fills a Hero-track slot. The Vault slot is always one track above the gear the hunt itself dropped.
How many Prey hunts can I do per week?
You can run one hunt per difficulty in each zone every week. Across the four Midnight zones that works out to up to 12 hunts, though the first four qualifying quests are the ones that pay the full Preyseeker's Journey reward.
What are Remnants of Anguish used for?
Remnants of Anguish are the seasonal Prey currency. You spend them at the Construct vendor in Astalor's Sanctum on cosmetic rewards: mounts, transmog, and Player Housing decor. Some of the higher-end items become available as you clear tougher prey targets.
Do Nightmare Prey hunts help with the Voidforge?
Yes. Nightmare hunts drop Voidcore components used by the Voidforge bonus-roll system, so a player working toward Voidforge upgrades has a direct reason to push Prey to Nightmare difficulty.
What affixes do Prey hunts use?
Hard hunts add Torment, Hunter's Momentum, and Seeping Gore. Nightmare keeps those three and adds Echo of Predation and Bloody Command, for five affixes in total, alongside the open-world ambushes every hunt can throw at you.
Is Prey worth doing for solo players?
For a player who prefers solo and open-world content, yes. Prey gives a predictable weekly gearing path, contributes to the Great Vault, and pays currencies that carry into Delves and the Voidforge, all without needing a group.
Final Word
Prey is the clearest answer Midnight gives to the "I want to gear up without grouping" player. The unlock is short, the weekly cap keeps it from becoming a grind, and the two-channel reward structure means every hunt pushes both your bags and your Great Vault. Clear Hard early, work the Preyseeker's Journey toward Rank 4, and Nightmare opens up as your gear catches up. For the full publisher breakdown of contracts and rewards, the Wowhead Prey guide tracks every target.
Maintained by WowCarry's World of Warcraft team. Last reviewed 2026-05-20 against Patch 12.0.5 "Lingering Shadows."