Farseer Kamalia; Fist of Ra-den & Doomhammer

I finally finished Kamalia’s Order Hall Campaign on Thursday night. I could kind of predict where it was going by the time I picked up the third set of Champions, but that wasn’t a bad thing. I enjoyed the story, and by the time I finished the campaign, I was feeling quite a bit more comfortable with the Farseer role.

Tonight (Friday), therefore, I went and collected Kamalia’s other two Artifacts. I pulled my Demon Invasions mace and Salvage Yard shield out of the bank so that I could do the Elemental quest chain as Elemental. Then I did much of the Enhancement quest chain as Elemental, too, only switching to Enhancement about halfway through. Then I had to spend several minutes selecting talents and setting up my bars, as I hadn’t tinkered with that spec at all yet — and I had to equip my Finkle’s Skinner in my off-hand so that I could have two melee weapons to make some of my abilities work😛

I enjoyed both of the stories. I had been thinking that it was wierd and backwards for Shaman to get their fist weapon from Xuen in Pandaria while Monks get theirs from the Tol’vir. The story of Highkeeper Ra as told by Xuen made the Shaman fist weapon make more sense — but I still need to level my Monk and see how their fist weapon story plays out before I will be fully satisfied on that account. The Enhancement story made me feel even more fond of Stormcaller Mylra — and I’m glad to see Thrall experiencing some consequences from the way he dealt with Garrosh. That ending cinematic from Warlords!Nagrand bothered me so much that I skipped it entirely on the two or three other occasions that I actually completed the storyline of that zone.

I’d been stockpiling small Artifact Power items to pour into my Elemental Artifact as soon as I got it. A few large AP items from doing some world quests later, I had my Elemental Artifact up to level 12. I’ll leave it there for now. Small AP items can go into my Enhancement weapon, while large AP items need to go into my Resto weapon until it is fully powered (it is currently level 15).

I’ve found that for all of the Shaman Artifacts, I like either the basic appearance or the first upgraded appearance (from finishing the Order Hall campaign), in the first color, the best. Maybe later in the expansion I will want to mog over them because I will have some shibby keen idea for a mail Transmogrification kit — but for now, I’m quite happy to use them just the way they are.

Despite my sense that the Heart of Azeroth would be perpetually damp and chilly and slippery and rimed with salt, I’ve come rather like the place, and I almost always leave Kamalia logged out there.

The Shaman experience all around gets a big Bravo, Blizzard! from me.

~*~*~

Now I’d like to get started on the Order Hall journey of another character — perhaps my Demon Hunter, because she’s already gone to the Broken Isles, acquired her first Artifact, and established her Order Hall? or maybe my Blood Elf Mage or my Druid, because I love to play them? — but Kamalia still has much to do. I need to do Leatherworking and Archaeology so that I can get the white and spectral moose mounts. I need to do Fishing so that I can eventually figure out how to get the Artifact Fishing Pole (hey Blizzard, can you please make fishing poles moggable to other fishing poles?). I’ve just been doing enough world quests to keep my Emissary quests cleaned out, and I think I’ll keep managing world quests in that way until I’ve reached Revered with all the factions for Pathfinder. I need to follow up with Khadgar about Light’s Heart. I haven’t been very diligent about collecting Order Resources, and I’ve been prioritizing Artifact Knowledge over the Order Hall upgrades — and I’ve still got a long way to go on both of those tech trees.

And then there’s Suramar… the zone is breathakingly gorgeous and I’ve been delighted by all the little details in Suramar City itself and some of the quests that I’ve done so far in the zone have been tremendously fun and amusing — I just haven’t gotten very far into it. Now that I’ve finished my Order Hall campaign and gotten my other Artifact weapons, I ought to be able to focus on Suramar.

I read on WoWhead today that the final quest for the Good Suramaritan achievement requires going into the Emerald Nightmare to kill Xavius. I didn’t LFR in Warlords due to burnout and no tier in LFR and being able to get raid gear from Garrison follower missions and lack of interest in the story aspect of those raids… but I’d been thinking I might want to LFR again in Legion. Work is keeping me busy enough, though, that LFRing is going to have to be a play activity that I sacrifice, so I probably won’t visit the Emerald Nightmare until I get to the point in the Suramar questline where I have to do so.

/unignore In-Game Holidays

After the Underpowered Death Knight finally dinged 100 during Pilgrim’s Bounty last year, I decided that it was time to take a break from the in-game holidays. Of course, I did need to do a little bit of the Draenor Winter Veil stuff — just enough to get decorations for Kamalia’s Garrison and to stash away a set of decoration boxes for the Alliance Mage to use when she finally reached level 100. Since then, however, I’ve been quite successful at ignoring the in-game holidays.

Yesterday, though, it occurred to me that it would be appropriate to observe Pirates’ Day by taking the Rogue out to get the Outlaw Artifact. Alas, real life interfered in the form of a pile of GenChem exams that needed to be graded*. By the time I got the exam scores totalled and recorded, it was late and I had a nasty headache. I did take the Rogue to Booty Bay to get Petey, emergency pirate disguises, and the book of pirate insults, but getting her Artifact will have to wait for another time.

Today, Brewfest begins. A few years back, Kamalia joined the Brew of the Month club just to finish up the Brewfest meta-achievement so that my Monks could use the Brewmaster title. I’m getting tired of having my mailbox cluttered up with brews, so this year, she needs to do Brewfest so that she can obtain the Angry Letter and leave the Brew of the Month club.

Then when Hallow’s End comes, the Death Knight will want to do one day of the Draenor Hallow’s End quests so that she can leave her Garrison permanently decorated with glowing pumpkins. She’s still giving the Alliance Mage crusty looks for taking the pumpkin box that I had originally saved for her.

With new crafted Winter Veil clothes in the offing, I need to think about getting one or the other of my Tailors out to the Broken Isles and leveling up her skill before that holiday rolls around.

And the Underpowered Death Knight has been hinting that as long as she’s still going to be featured with a portrait on my Characters page, because of her special coloration and all, she wants to be leveled just to 101 — just enough to pull her above the crowd of my other Retired alts who don’t get their portraits on my Characters page anymore — which means doing fishing & cooking dailies in Thunder Bluff and making the rounds of the holidays….

* I make a point of getting exams graded and returned as quickly as possible, and my students definitely appreciate it. Lab reports, however, are another story…

Sunday on the Promenade 4

Because I tend to spend Sunday afternoon and evening doing Transmogrification photo shoots, picture processing, and posting to character outfit pages, I might as well make a general post the same day of any outfits that aren’t part of some themed Transmogrification collection that I’m working on.

Now that I’ve finished the leveling zones of the Broken Isles, I’ve collected all of the quest reward mail sets. I think the style is quite handsome, and I like how the four different colors coordinate well enough that replacing a piece from one zone with an upgrade from the next zone doesn’t make the overall effect look horrid. I’m still working on the dungeon set.

Runed Stonehide




The light brown Seaspray coloration of this set is obtained in Azsuna.
The dark brown Thornbrace coloration of this set is obtained in Val’sharah.
The light blue Whitewater coloration of this set is obtained in Highmountain.
The warm grey Stormborn coloration of this set is obtained in Stormheim.

Bonestorm

Heaving Plates of Protection, Iceguard Breastplate & Leggings, Greatbelt of Living Waters (LFR), Flash Freeze Gauntlets (N), Treads of Savage Beatings, Engineer’s Cloak*, Bryntroll, the Bone Arbiter
This is an idea that I toyed around with while I was making Kregga’s Bryntroll kit. The Underpowered Death Knight suggested that it would look even better on her.

Brackenskull

Bloody Visage of the Laughing Skull, Brackenshell Shoulderplates (N), K’Vlar Vest, Sha-Trapper Waistguard, Jeweled Legguards, Fireskin Gauntlets (N), Treads of the Past, Waraxe of the Horde Vanguard
Meanwhile, Kregga decided that because she’d done two kits — one as DW and the other as 2H — with the blue Laughing Skull hat, she ought to do a second kit with the red Laughing Skull hat — as DW because the first one had been as 2H.

If any of you, my dear readers, have kits that you’d like to share, I’d be happy to add you to the show! Just email me your picture(s), along with a list of the items in the outfit. I don’t regularly check my blog email, though, so if you’ve sent me an outfit, please make a comment on the most recent Sunday Mog Show post so that I know to check my blog email for your contribution.

decisions, decisions

What, Kamalia wondered, is the most important thing to do? And is that the same as the thing I would most like to do?

Her to-do list includes:

* starting the Suramar questline

* going to Highmountain to learn about Leatherworking

* crafting leather & mail bracers for the Obliterum Forge questline — and then getting my Tailoring and Blacksmithing alts out to the Broken Isles and working on their professions for the cloth & plate bracers

* getting the Elemental and Enhancement Artifacts

* unlocking the secrets of Light’s Heart

* doing World Quests to progress in the Shaman questline

* obtaining Blood of Sargeras to progress in the Shaman questline — something that would probably be most quickly done by running dungeons, as I got one from every boss in the last dungeon we ran

Of these things, the most important is probably going to Suramar, because I can’t do World Quests until I’ve done that. The things I most want to do, though, are getting the other Artifacts and doing the Leatherworking quests in Highmountain.

So off I went to Suramar…

wandering around the Broken Isles

Last night, BTH wanted to run some Heroics with his guildies, so I went off to finish the Loremaster achievement in Stormheim. Or was it the other way, around, that I wanted to finish the Stormheim Loremaster, but BTH had already done it on his own time, so he went off to run Heroics with his guildies while was doing that, and then just kept going? Either way, we ended up playing independently last night.

Now I know what Sylvanas was UP TO in Stormheim. No wonder Eyir is upset (to put it mildly)! I also feel quite badly about how we treated Ashildir. As much as I dislike and distrust Sylvanas, I’ll probably do that questline with my Priest anyway because she is keenly interested in the Val’kyr and their origins. There are definitely some dangling threads at the end of that questline, though, and now I’m wondering if they’ll be tied up in the Patch 7.1 questline that leads into the raid, or if they’ll be addressed in a later patch.

After I got the Loremaster achievement for Stormheim, I looked around and decided to go exploring. I wanted to finish up the leveling zone Exploration achievements and get all the leveling zone flight points. I wandered around in Stormheim for awhile, thoroughly enjoying the scenery and discovering multiple side-chains that we’d totally missed. Trying to get to the Weeping Bluffs in Stormheim, I wandered up into Highmountain. So then I explored all the places we hadn’t quite gotten to in Highmountain before returning to Stormheim. After that, I hopped over to Azsuna and visited the Isle of the Watchers. Talking to a flight master there, I discovered that there was a flight point in an area of the map that I’d already discovered that I didn’t actually have. So I went and got that, too. I travelled to Val’sharah, but then it was bedtime, so I logged off at Bradensbrook. This morning, before work, I hopped on and headed toward the areas of the zone that I didn’t yet know. I had to check Wowhead, though, to find Mistvale. It’s up so close to the border of Suramar that I wasn’t sure if that area of the map was Val’sharah or Suramar, and I couldn’t clearly see any roads that I thought I ought to run up.

I found so much stuff in the leveling zones that I’m curious about now. I assume that I’ll probably get sent to some, if not all, of those little places eventually by World Quests.

As we quested through the zones, I found Earth Shrines in each zone. A couple of zones had two! At these Earth Shrines, an earth elemental was in trouble, and when I rescued it, it gave me 50 Artifact Power. I didn’t discover any new Earth Shrines when I was wandering about yesterday evening — it’s still possible that there are more to find, but I’m not ready to ask Wowhead for the list yet — but I did discover, on a tiny island off the western coast of Val’sharah, a Wind Shrine. Because I was cramming in a little WoW before work, I didn’t take the time to help out the wind elemental right then. I’ll have to remember the spot and come back to it later. I’ll also now be on the lookout for Wind (and Water and Fire) shrines in other zones as I revisit them for World Quests and my professions. The +50 Artifact Power is nice, but what I’m really wondering is if something cool happens if I manage to find all of the elemental shrines, like maybe the Hidden appearance for my Artifact weapons? If you know, though, please don’t tell me — it’s still early enough in the expansion that I want to try to find it for myself!

Update: I went back to the Wind Shrine at lunch. It was a different type of challenge than the Earth Shrines were — those were just combat; this was avoiding tornadoes, which I have always been bad at… It gave me 60 Artifact Power when I beat it, and it was difficult enough and frustrating enough — it took several attempts — that I hope there aren’t as many of these as there were of the Earth Shrines.

Anyhow, now that I have completed the Exploration achievements for and obtained all the flight points in the four leveling zones, I can go to Suramar!

I thought there were supposed to be *five* of these things…

… but I guess the devs had to leave some of the Plot for us to do after reaching level 110😛 I guess the last one is probably in Suramar?

I was quite impressed by all of the stories and very much enjoyed playing through them. In Azsuna, Val’sharah, and Highmountain, we got the zone Loremaster achievement at about the same time that we obtained the Pillar, so I assumed that just doing the Pillar questline would get it. When we got the Pillar for Stormheim, though, we didn’t get the Loremaster achievement. Looking through all the Loremaster achievements, I saw that some of the side-quests we’d done in other zones had been part of the Loremaster for those zones, after all. I’m just missing one questline in Stormheim — that Forsaken questline at Dreadwake’s Landing. I’d been hoping it was a side-quest and thinking that if so, I’d send the Warlock to see what its story was; my Tauren in general really dislike working with the Forsaken and I, as the player, side with Gilneas in the Forsaken-vs-Worgen conflict. Oh well, I guess that means I’ll find out just what Sylvanas was up to in that one spooky part of the zone, and why Eyir in Halls of Valor thinks us little people can’t be trusted (I’ve seen it hinted that that’s Sylvanas’ fault) sooner rather than later.

So I should do that, and I really need to go to Suramar and start working on Nightfallen rep. I also have quite a bit of map exploration and several flight points yet to discover in the leveling zones. I assume that some of that will come with World Quests, though, as there are fairly large areas of some maps that the zone questing didn’t take us to.

And I should really go get my off-spec Artifacts, too, and I need to finish the Shaman Campaign and follow up on the Light’s Heart questline and work on my professions… not to mention starting to bring out alts and begin exploring their Artifact and Order Hall stories.

There is much to do! This is good!

Oh! I dinged!

Tonight, BTH and I went to finish off the main story questline of Highmountain. We have the quest for Nesingwary’s camp, but knowing that it is completely a side-chain, we chose to ignore it (for now) in favor of pursuing the Pillar. When we got to the dungeon at the end, we managed to duo it up to the third boss, which was too much of a DPS check. So we hopped into the LFG queue, and, being a Tank+Healer combo, immediately got a group. We had to re-start the dungeon, but it was still faster than trying to duo the rest of it would have been.

I started the evening at maybe 75% from 108 to 109. When I went to turn in the Pillar at Aegwynn’s Gallery, this happened:

I hadn’t been paying attention to my XP bar very much, so I was totally surprised and a bit startled. I only managed to not be too caught off guard to get screenshots because I was already poised to screencap the little RP event that I knew would happen when I turned in the Pillar.

Then of course I got bombarded with new quests. I accepted them up, but doing them will have to wait. It’s bedtime. Khadgar can chill out (he’s good at that, right?).

We still have to do Stormheim, to get the Pillar and to get friendly with the zone faction for World Quest unlocking purposes, so that will be our top priority for the next day or two.