Quick review of the issue, affecting all the people I had the occasion to talk to:
Every item with a “use” effect that has been looted or bought in zones higher level than the character trying to use the item are NOT usable, leading to the error “Your level is too low to use that item” (EDIT: The error was “You can’t use that item” before December 7th).
It covers:
pets
crafting recipes
containers/bags of things (bought or looted, not talking about open world chests)
gear token from garrison (like [Munificent Robes])
If you’re of a lower level than the zone in which the item was bought/looted, you can’t use it. And it persists through trade with other people.
It’s not a restriction on the item, but on where it was obtained + level of the user.
This issue appeared on patch 9.0.2, everything was working fine before, on prepatch.
For example a character lvl24 in Netherstorm-Outland (zone lvl25) buying the pet [Undercity Cockroach] won’t be able to use it, but he can use that pet if it was bought in Undercity (zone lvl1).
This post is not meant to - and can’t - replace the use of the Bug Report feature ingame or online. This post is meant to raise awareness on this issue affecting a lot of players, as well as giving a common place where to share more details about the extent of the bug, in order to give more details to the devs when reporting the bug in game.
So if you experienced this issue, please comment on it, and if you faced it on categories of items not listed here, I’ll add it to the list.
Have a wonderful day!
TL;DR: items with a “use” effect looted or bought in a zone of higher level than the character using them can’t be used and lead to the error “Your level is too low to use that item” (previously was “You can’t use that item”), even though the same item obtained in a different zone doesn’t raise this error.
I think that my issue might ffit in here too, I bought the [Dwarven Bunker, Level 2] blueprint in Stormshield which say it requires level 10 (This was done on a level 25 char), but I got the “You can’t use that item” error when trying to use it.
Same issue at level 20, I can’t use any of the blueprints that can be bought in Ashran even tho it’s written requiring level 10.
I also noticed the issue OP describes when trying to buy the PvP honor pets in Boralus (those in reward for honor levels) and can’t use them if bought there, while I can use them if bought in Stormwind.
Selling it and re-buying it doesn’t change anything, still the error “You can’t use that item”
I don’t remember having any issue before in BfA nor during prepatch, so it’s pretty recent …
It does look like we’re seeing some reports of funkiness around using items such as mounts / garrison blueprints that result in the “You can’t use that item” error.
If anyone else finds themselves affected by this, please continue to use the bug report to make sure your report is added to the ongoing investigations.
Update on the issue,
Since the night of Monday 7th December, the error message “You can’t use that item” is not showing anymore, instead the error message “Your level is too low to use that item” is showing.
But it’s still the same issue following the same mechanic as detailed in the original post, the text of the message changed but the issue is the same.
Even items with “Use:” effect having a low level requirement (example with the garrison building plans) display that error message with a character that is over the displayed level required in the tooltip of the item.
It still affects pets that afaik never had any level requirements in order to be learned …
This change might show that the Devs are trying to fix it, I just hope they’re not “finished” with it because it still affects a lot of players …
So, after a bit of look around, I found something interesting that might help understand from where comes the issue.
The bug has been introduced on 9.0.2 same version seeing the release of Shadowlands content.
The original issue “You can’t use this item” affected a new Shadowlands mount Arboreal Gumper as it can be seen in those forum posts:
And on December 7th, date where the original error message “You can’t use that item” got changed to “Your level is too low to use that item”, the following fix was listed on the hotfixes:
Players now receive an understandable error when trying to add the Arboreal Gulper mount to their collection, if they are ineligible.
So it might seem that this problem comes from limitation on some Shadowlands items that shouldn’t be used by lower levels, and which coding weirdly affected “Use:” items from legacy content, in the way described by OP (aka limitation on zone-level from where an item was obtained)
It’s kinda hard to report all that in the ingame bug report feature ^^’
Found another post on the US forums reporting the same issue as here, and extending the list of affected items to unlocked lockboxes and item containers
This all feels like screaming in to abyss without much use. Understandable that current expansion is the priority but there are issues that bothering people. Fix them already.
Will anyone even read this i wonder.
Gear token rewards from garrison table missions do not scale to character level.
Garrison follower armor still unusable at lower levels.
Garrison blueprints still not usable even when you able to do the quest line for it. (why do you even lock level 2 patterns behind spires of arak and nagrand when level 2 garrison is unlocked almost instantly anyway?)
Fishing baits from wod, legion, bfa do not scale to low levels making several quest lines impossible to progress.
Northrend tinker enchantments such as: Flexweave Underlayspell ID : 55002 Nitro Boostsspell ID : 55016
Are unable to be applied to lower level items.
Those tinkers are part of leveling progress of northrend engineering. Not being able to use them is gimping progression of northrend engineering as they are a stepping stone.
Looking for dungeon issues.
Alot of dungeons are missing from lfd finder at character level you able to access them. Mobs, quests and rewards from them scale down to character level, yet they are missing from lfd list.
It is hard to pin point every single dungeon at every level but at least at level 20 players are missing 15 dungeons:
Classic Stratholme - Service Entrance The Temple of Atal’hakkar
TBC The Shattered Halls The Botanica The Mechanar The Steamvault Shadow Labyrinth
Wrath of the Lich King Gundrak Halls of Lightning Halls of Stone The Oculus Utgarde Pinnacle
Mop Mogu’shan Palace Shado-Pan Monastery
Wod Auchindoun
If i would to speculate on what is causing this i would say look in to the way lfd finder considering “dungeon difficulty” and “suggested content” for older expansions. Seemingly lfd tool hasn’t had much changes since its inception and might still marks content as green, yellow, red in background. thus removing any “red” from suggested lfd list that is suppose to be “fitting” to your level.
All dungeons scaling to your level equally anyway. Look it to it.
To answer @Gunpwnder
This thread is to report a bug concerning changes on “Use:” items that happened with the launch of patch 9.0.2 and that were working fine before. Discussing other issues isn’t relevant to that thread
EDIT:
Seems the topic has been closed by moderation, even though the bug is not fixed and requires more people to report it.
So if you see it, make sure to report it in game
