Job’s Done

I decided I might as well get it over with, so off Kaelinda went to Torghast. I did the first 6 floors of the Twisting Corridors three times in a row, then watched 20 minutes of cinematics and conversations between the faction leaders in Oribos, and now I’ll be ready to skip into the Patch 9.1 Campaign. With the content of these questlines being rather significant lore moments, not to mention required to unlock the next stage of the story, I was expecting their completion to be signposted by Achievements and was rather disappointed that they weren’t.
The cinematics were really very good, and I’m glad now that I’ve seen them for myself, so that I know the whole story — not just the key bits that were summarized in the beginning of the Patch 9.1 trailer cinematic.
~*~*~
So now that I’ve done this, I’m thinking maybe I want to hold off on doing Covenant campaigns with Kaelyla and Keliora and Kalaneia until Patch 9.1 drops and they can all skip Chapter 2. Kaurinka has already done Chapter 2 of the Night Fae campaign and is getting kind of tired of waiting to get started on the rest of it, so I’m thinking I’ll abandon my plan of running Kaurinka and Kaelyla through it in parallel and just get going with Kaurinka. If I can get Kaurinka through the Night Fae campaign and get the other three up to level 60 before Patch 9.1 arrives, that’ll be good enough. I’ll still want to do the other three 9.0 Covenant campaigns before I get into the 9.1 campaign itself, though.

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the sleep from which some will never awaken

Kaurinka felt like she already knew Ardenweald. One winter when she was an adolescent, she had gotten pneumonia and nearly died. She remembered little of her illness, except that it had seemed that while her body lay delirious in her tribe’s longhouse, her spirit had wandered freely over the dark, snowy landscape around the camp. Out of the corners of her eyes, she’d caught glimpses of towering, sigil-scribed trees with swirling, starry canopies, and underneath them, smaller trees, or maybe bushes, laden with glowing blue globes — but when she turned to try to look at them straight on, she saw only the normal, familiar trees. What was that place?, she had wondered many times during all the years that had followed. And now, here she was. If I had managed to find that place, and walk between those trees, she realized, I would have died.

~*~*~

I felt much weaker in Ardenweald than I had in Bastion or Maldraxxus. Enemies were harder to kill and took off more of my health in the process. I was using Regrowth more-or-less rotationally just to stay alive, which makes me rather worried for the survivability of my other characters.

Although I did a couple of side quests in Bastion with both Kaelinda and Kaurinka, I ignored side quests entirely in Maldraxxus. I wanted to know the whole story of Ardenweald with Kaurinka, so she did all the side quests. In the process, I discovered that for each zone, there’s one Achievement for completing the main storyline of the zone and another Achievement for doing all of the side quests* — and that both Achievements are required for each zone to complete the Loremaster meta-Achievement. Unlike Legion and Battle for Azeroth, side quests are not optional for Loremaster**! Fortunately, Loremaster is an account-wide meta-Achievement, so I can continue with my original plan of having the character who will pledge to the Covenant of each zone do its side quests — Keliora will do all the side quests of Bastion, Kalaneia will do all the side quests of Maldraxxus, and Kaelinda will do all the side quests of Revendreth — while all the others just barrel through the main questline.

Between the Rest that I accumulated last week and doing all the side quests, Kaurinka was 58% through level 59 when she finished the main zone storyline. She’ll now slumber in Ardenweald until Kaelinda has activated Threads of Fate, then use Threads of Fate to select the Night Fae as her Covenant and level the remainder of the way to 60.

Lorewise, Ardenweald delivered on the themes of heartbreaking loss and sacrifice promised by its Afterlives short.

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Death Rising

By Sunday night, I’d run my three Mages, my Warlock, and my Priest through the first week of the Shadowlands pre-launch events and gotten them a 115 weapon from Nathanos. I hadn’t done my Druid yet, but it was late, so I thought, oh, I’ll just do that on Monday night and be ready for the second week of the event to start on Tuesday. Then the second week started on Monday. So Kerisa — or rather, Kaurinka — ended up being the first character to complete the full quest chain and earn the “Death Rising” acheivement. I’m not sure how many of the other five I’ll do the second week stuff with. The final boss of the quest chain was a lot easier to take down than I expected, even for needing to be tuned to be doable as a solo fight. So I guess I’m feeling kind of a lackluster level of threat? Or are Boomkins just OP for this fight, and my Mages will survive on the thinnest of margins?

I’ve collected all of the cloth Argent Conscript’s set. It seemed like the former Azerite slots — helm, shoulders, and chestpiece — propagated most quickly to characters of both factions; other pieces seemed to propagate more quickly to characters of the same faction than to characters of the opposite faction.

I’d been wondering where the zombies were. I’m glad that they’re only going to be disrupting one week of gameplay. I guess I could have kept my Highmountain Tauren Druid down in the Caverns of Time for Trivia Quiz XP all last week, after all.

Time to retire to the safety of my Garrison to do pre-launch housekeeping stuff like cleaning out my bags and being in a “zzz” area to log in on launch day to start building up Well-Rested for questing.

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the only ding that really matters

When Shadowlands shifted from alpha to beta, I began to feel an increased sense of urgency to get Kaelyla leveled. By August 9th, as can be seen in that installment of the Sunday Mog Show, she’d blazed through Legion and obtained her Heart of Azeroth. This past week, with the pre-launch events arriving on the PTR, that sense of urgency got even stronger. So despite the imminent start of Fall Semester and being in crunch time to get my courses ready to go live on my college’s learning management system, I pushed through Kul Tiras* and establishing footholds in Zandalar and this happened on Sunday night:

She’s obtained her rank 1 Shroud of Resolve, and she’s got Nazjatar opened up for World Quests (including the Mardivas mini-games). Although she still has a lot of World Questing to do to upgrade her Heart of Azeroth and other gear, I’m more or less ready for Shadowlands.

* First I did the Heartsbane storyline in Drustvar through Arom’s Stand; then all of the Tidesage storyline in Stormsong Valley; and, getting to Tiragarde Sound last, turned in the quest to say hello to Cagney and then dinged in the Shrine of Storms dungeon before I got any further in Tiragarde Sound questing

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in which I struggle to get out of the summer mindset

Three weeks later, I continue to have an incredibly difficult time disciplining myself to focus on schoolwork rather than noodling around in WoW.

I spent about a week and a half doggedly queuing for Kul Tiras dungeons until I got the robe and belt of both the green (Normal) and blue (Heroic) versions of the Kul Tiras cloth dungeon set.

I took Kinevra back to the Broken Isles to finish her Order Hall Campaign and earn the Archmage title.

I took Kaelinda back to Nazjatar and completed the Nazjatar Campaign mostly for RP reasons.

I took Kaelinda back to the Broken Isles and completed the Legionfall Campaign so that she could then get the Mage Class Mount — the Archmage’s Prismatic Disc is the only one of the Class Mounts that I’ve been really and truly envious of when I’ve seen other people riding it around.

Inspired by Gnomecore, I toyed with the notion of pushing Kaelinda through the Balance of Power questline. She already has the necessary Azsuna and Suramar quest progression and Azsuna, Stormheim, and Suramar reputation. I’m mildly interested in the Balance of Power appearance for Aluneth, but I don’t much care for the Balance of Power apperances for Felo’melorn or Ebonchill. So maybe I’ll come back to that sometime in Shadowlands.

While hanging out in the Hall of the Guardian, I saw a couple of other Mages wearing the cosmetic reward set for beating Deaths of Chromie and thought, O, I should go give that a try — and then I thought, nah, I don’t have that kind of time right now. That’s another thing that maybe I’ll come back to sometime in Shadowlands.

I’ve more or less given up on the idea of gathering any more stuff out of BfA LFR; I can’t afford to spend naptime or my nighttime hours idling in a 1-2 hour DPS LFR queue.

What I would still like to accomplish before the Shadowlands pre-patch arrives is A) get Kaelyla leveled and geared and ready to go and B) do some more Horrific Visions with Kerisa and get the second upgraded appearance for the Shroud of Resolve.

But for the next two or three weeks, I’ve really got to be disciplined and do schoolwork.

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Ten Years of Kamalia et alia

On March 9, 2010, I made my first post as a WoW blogger.

Wrath of the Lich King was winding down and Cataclysm was on the horizon; that first post mentions plans I was making in anticipation of the coming changes of Cataclysm.

I had a few long-term WoW goals back then, and, over the past decade, I’ve accomplished them. I raided (in LFR) with a healer of every healing class during Mists. I got a Horde character of each of the existing classes to the level cap in Mists, Warlords, and Legion. I pushed an Alliance character to the level cap at the end of Cataclysm so that I could play the Alliance side of the pre-Mists events at Theramore; that character continues to be the only Alliance character that I actively play.

The introduction of LFR and Transmogrification in late Cataclysm revolutionized my WoW game. The upgrade of Transmogrification with the Appearances collections in late Warlords changed it further. The “Things my [Class] Wears” and “Sunday on the Promenade” series of posts have become this blog’s core content.

Once upon a time, I thought that when this big milestone occasion arrived, I’d put together something elaborate and special. Real Life has gotten in the way of that, however.

I landed my dream job; BTH and I bought a house and adopted two children. My blogiversary is now greatly overshadowed by its proximity to my older child’s birthday. The past couple of academic years have been rather rough and I’m running on the edge of burnout in my job — and that general exhaustion has propagated a feeling of being on the edge of burnout in keeping up with the “Sunday on the Promenade” series here on the blog, as well. So this small post of simple acknowledgement will have to do.

Here’s to TEN YEARS!

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A Sound Plan

Kinevra finally finished the Loremaster plotline of Tiragarde Sound. She’s left almost all of the side quests undone — the Roughriders, the Tortollans at Norwington Estate, the hunting lodge, the steam springs resort, the guard tower, the Explorer’s League camp, what else? My plan is to go through Drustvar and Stormsong Valley doing just the Loremaster questlines as well, ignoring anything that’s obviously a side quest. I’ll come back to the side quests if I haven’t reached 120 by the time I finish the Loremaster questlines.

With the War Campaign no longer being gated by 7th Legion rep, I think I’ll have Kinevra contract for the Proudmoore Admiralty first after she reaches 120 — the sooner to be able to recruit the Kul Tirans.

As much as I conceptually like playing a Mage, however, I die so much when I’m playing one of my Mages! My Balance Druids feel more robust…

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not so exhausting after all

Even with a rapidly approaching deadline and ideas burning holes in my brain for things I needed to do to finish getting my classes organized, the 50% extra reputation from WQs from WQ Bonus Week was too good to pass up. I did my Mechagon quests every day last week, and by Reset Day, I was at 9970/12000. The end was in sight!

Having gotten so close, I wanted to just get BfA Pathfinder Part 2 over and done with. So I did less work than perhaps I could or should have for another day or two, and went and did it.

But will I stick around in Mechagon to grind out Galvanic Oscillators from the daily WQ to buy the upgraded Adventurer Augments or the Targeted Purification Protocols Essence? Not likely, at least not anytime soon. Now that I have flying, Kamalia is going to rest until Patch 8.2.5 brings the next chapters of the War Campaign and the Chamber of Heart storyline, and other characters will level.

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exhaustion is a good word for it

I got to Honored with Mechagon today. I got the jetpack blueprint yesterday — no more wasting half an hour camping for Rustfeather! Finding three rares to kill for today’s Mechagon WQ was much easier with the jetpack to zip about!

Mechagon wants to be fun. It is trying so hard to be fun. Sometimes I even catch myself geniuinely having fun while I’m running around there.

But it suffers from what Kaylriene calls “the Curse of the x.2 Patch”

In Coffee Cakes & Crits’ guild, they’ve “swap[ped] exalted with exhausted” when referring to maxing out reputation with a faction — especially the 8.2 factions.

In a recent edition of The Queue, Blizzard Watch columnist Liz Harper writes, “I’m tired too, though at this point I think I’d be tired if we were dealing with daily quests or with world quests. Sure, world quests have more variety and rotate more often, but they’re very much the same idea as a rotating set of daily quests. They’re a chore that you must do every day, and they feel like a chore, too…. Whether it’s daily quests or world quests, whenever I log on now I feel like I have to do dozens of quests in order to progress in the game. And then the same again tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It’s not a game at this point: it’s a chore.”

There are days when I log in, look at what there is to be done in Mechagon, and just feel so immediately tired that I log right back off. That happened in Nazjatar, too.

It’s not all the game’s fault, though — it is now T minus two weeks to the start of Fall Semester, so although I have made rather good progress with my course prep so far this summer, I’m starting to get into I AM NOT PREPARED! anxiety mode. Getting ready for the first day & exam unit of my classes and making progress toward flying are competing for my mental bandwidth, and there are days when I really and truly just want to work.

So for now, I’m hoping that I’ll manage to reach Revered with Mechagon before Patch 8.2.5 drops.

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swept along in the storytelling current

This week, I forsook trying to work on preparations for next semester during my kids’ midday naptime in favor of catching up with Azeroth.

I decided to see Talanji crowned first. That was a very well-done piece of story, though I do wonder how the word got out of Rastakhan’s bargain with Bwonsamdi. My inner thirteen year-old is totally shipping Talanji and Rokhan. My grown-up self scoffs at the idea of Talanji needing or wanting a consort or an heir anytime soon, and is pleased with how many women are in meaningful positions of power in Zandalar (and in Kul Tiras, from what I’ve seen of the Alliance story so far). It seems to me like Blizzard is trying to make up for the debacle following the initial announcement of Warlords of Draenor.

Intrigued by seeing the spirit of Vol’jin at the Golden Throne following Talanji’s ascension, I decided to do the Shadow Hunter questline next. I thought the revisiting of the events at the very beginning of Legion was nicely done. The visits with the Lich King and Eyir, and Bwonsamdi’s description of them as his rivals for the claiming of souls, and the hints that there are other rivals that we may not have yet met were great because they made the world of Azeroth feel more connected and coherent. Between those interactions and the unresolved ending of the storyline — we still don’t know what entity whispered to Vol’jin to make Sylvanas the next Warchief, or what entity sent his spirit back, or if those are the same entity or two different entities — I now understand better the speculations about 9.0 being the “death” expansion!

Then it was time to go help Baine save Derek Proudmoore from being brainwashed. I must admit, with my dislike of the Forsaken, it was very satisfying to beat up all those Forsaken mooks on Sylvanas’s big scary flagship! The cinematic was amazing, and I look foward to seeing it again from the Alliance side when I do that War Campaign with Kaylynda. But did we actually save Derek in time? I appreciated Boss Mida getting a cameo at Warsong Hold. I didn’t notice if I could talk to all the gathered leaders before the cutscene. I’ll have to try to remember to look for that when I do the War Campaign with Kaelinda/Kerisa. When I talked to them after the cutscene, only Gallywix and Geya’rah approved of Sylvanas’s actions.

Next, off to Nazjatar. Perhaps the most awesome aspect of Azshara’s power in using the Tidestone of Golganneth to open up Nazjatar is how it also instantly adapted all of those creatures to being air-breathing instead of water-breathing and to the sudden decompression of no longer being under the immense pressure of all that water… Chuckling at the Horde shipwreck being “The Hungry Riverbeast” — the name of the first ship constructed at the Warlords Garrison Shipyard. I’m glad to be working with Lor’themar again. I remember him being awesome in the Domination Offensive and Isle of Thunder storylines in Pandaria. Occuleth continues to be my favorite of the Nightfallen leadership trio. I like Neri Sharpfin, but I’d rather have Vulpera than Gilbins as an Allied Race to correspond to Goblins.

As soon as we get a portal back to Zandalar stabilized, look who should show up but Magni with some news about MOTHER and the Heart Chamber! How convenient! The Heart Chamber is looking much better now. Very crowded, though… I thought someone said they glimpsed Wrathion during this trip to Neltharion’s Lair? I must not have been looking around enough; I didn’t see the crafty young dragon. Anyhow, with the Heart of Azeroth upgraded, now we can return to Nazjatar.

I’m liking Nazjatar well enough so far, though I’m probably only going to keep pushing hard through it until I unlock the 8.2 War Campaign, which of course is followed up, for me, by the Tauren Heritage Armor questchain. After that, I’ll have to put WoW on the back burner again at least until I’ve finished getting OChem ready to go for Fall. At this point, I’m thinking that I’ll do the new zones & reputations in series, instead of trying to do them in parallel — stay in Nazjatar until I’ve reached Revered with The Unshackled before I go to Mechagon at all.

It feels good to be playing in the freshest current content again instead of lagging behind!

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