Zandalar completed!

This weekend, I finally managed to get Kamalia through the last side quests in Vol’dun. Despite the seemingly endless chaining of the side quests, Vol’dun ended up being my favorite Zandalar zone. I liked how the windsculpted white dunes and black rocks, with red at the base of the black rocks, are similar to Frostfire Ridge, only with sand instead of snow. I liked how it has the half-buried Troll ruins of Tanaris, only with the upgraded graphics of Uldum. I liked the cacti and other vegetation in different parts of the zone. I liked the variety of microclimates within the zone, from the salt basins to the Whistlebloom Oasis (another similarity to Frostfire Ridge) to the red and black rock formations around the landside edges to the more lush Tortaka Refuge and Temple of Kimbul area in the north to the marshes and other coastal biomes around the beach edges. I liked the Vulpera a lot (and would love to roll one if they ever become an Allied Race), and the (friendly) Sethrak more than I expected to.

I also did the Zandalar Forever scenario… and then I felt like there should have been some kind of follow-up about what that purple blast was all about. I vaguely remembered from Nazmir zone questing that the meaning of “The Final Seal” has something to do with G’huun and Uldir. It seemed like there should have been someone (Talanji, perhaps?) being very alarmed about the loss of the Final Seal and sending me to assemble 24 of my best friends to go get the situation at Uldir under control. Maybe that only pops up after finishing the 8.0 part of the War Campaign?

Finishing the War Campaign (both parts) is my next goal, followed by doing the Fate of Saurfang questline. At that point, Kamalia will probably take a rest from doing BfA content so that I can get my Mage, my Druid, and my Paladin started on Zandalar questing.

Then there’s the whole Alliance half of the story; I’d like to get at least my Human Mage and my Night Elf Druid out to Kul Tiras sometime soon-ish.

I discovered recently that because of Kamalia doing Zandalar questing, Kjerstin has the corresponding Kul Tiras quest reward appearances available in her Wardrobe. Thus, if my Horde Paladin does Zandalar questing, my Alliance Paladin will get the appearances of the Kul Tiras gear. If a Horde character wants to wear the Kul Tiras styles (or an Alliance character wants to wear the Zandalar styles), however, they’ll have to buy the greens with those appearances off the AH. Speaking of which, I have loved that, starting in Warlords, the random drop greens have just been the same appearances as the quest set gear rather than being different styles or a separate recolor of the quest set gear. This feature means that either one can ignore the random drop greens and vendor/AH/DE them, or one can use random drop greens to fill in items that one might not have from a set due to not having completed all of the quests that give that set (as might easily happen with an alt who is picking and choosing quests rather than doing everything).

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Lovely Luck Is On My Side

Last year, I was feeling miffed that I’d have to re-collect all the holiday clothes to be able to Mog with them. I’m not particularly fond of the Lovely Dresses anyway, so I didn’t bother to try to get them. This year, however, doing the Crown Sampler daily is a good source of XP for my wee Void Elf Mage, so I set her (and a handful of other alts) to collecting Lovely Dress Boxes at the rate of one every four days. With multiple alts obtaining the boxes, I picked up the three brightly colored versions of the dress relatively quickly. And then I got a nice surprise —

So here’s a kit to go with it:

Little Black Dress

Forever-Lovely Rose, Lovely Black Dress, Stonecloth Britches, Silver-Thread Gloves, Sorcerer Slippers, Clear Crystal Rod*/Diamond Tipped Cane

And here’s a variation for a higher level character:

Forever-Lovely Rose, Lovely Black Dress, Cournith Waterstrider’s Silken Finery, Black Mageweave Gloves + Runespeaker’s Cuffs, Kurkenstoks

Now if only I could wear this to the Auction House Dance Party…

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crossing things off the list

This has been a good week.

* Kamalia dinged 120 in Vol’dun. Having gotten distracted by what turned out to be not just a node but a full-blown hub of sidequests, she still has to do the last two major storyline chapters of the zone. I plan to try to complete Vol’dun before tackling the rest of the War Campaign and all the other stuff there is to do now that she’s reached the level cap…

* The three classes whose complete Order Hall sets I most wanted — Paladin, Druid, and Monk — have all managed to reach Exalted with Suramar. Those three characters are also Exalted with Highmountain, so they’re now ready to roll out to Dazar’alor.

* My Demon Hunter, Rogue, and Warlock are also done with Legion stuff. I don’t intend to level in Zandalar with them anytime soon, though, so I’m not sure whether I want to send them to Dazar’alor anyway, leave them in New Dalaran, or take them “home” to Silvermoon.

* My Monk had reached ~175 World Quests completed since obtaining the Hidden appearance for her Brewmaster Artifact, so I took an evening to clear the map of World Quests and get the 200 World Quests tint for the Hidden appearance.

* My Demon Hunter got the last Mission Table mission that she needed to reach Exalted with the Army of the Light. Now I can go do the Lightforged Draenei recruitment scenario and find out what all the fuss about T’Paartos was about back when Patch 7.3.5 was new (Having spent my tweens and teens reading Star Trek novels, however, I can’t help but think that T’Paartos sounds like a name for a Vulcan woman, rather than a name for a Draenei man…).

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What’s NOT in the Bucket anymore?

The point of making a To-Do List is to feel a sense of progression, achievement, and accomplishment by crossing things off of it when they are completed, yes?

It’s the end of the year, so now it’s time to revisit the “Bucket List” that I posted at the beginning of the year, with all the stuff that I actually managed to accomplish crossed off.

* Complete the Good Suramaritan (27 January) and Suramar Insurrection (15 March) storylines with Kaelinda

* Level Hunter (April 20), Druid (May 4), Paladin (May 12), Warrior (May 28), Priest (June 3), Death Knight (June 11), Monk (June 14), Warlock (July 1), and Rogue (July 2) to 110

* Complete 7.0 Order Hall Campaigns for Druid, Warlock, Rogue, Hunter, Monk, Warrior, Priest, Paladin, Death Knight (last Order Hall Campaign completed on 28 July)

* Do enough of Broken Shore with each character to obtain their Legionfall Champion

* Do Argus campaign with Kiralaira

* LFR Emerald Nightmare with Kerisa

* Do the Blacksmithing questchain with Keija at least until she can craft the Demonsteel set

* Level Kaylynda to 110 (May 28)

* Recruit Nightborne, do Void Elves, and Highmountain Tauren

* Kerisa needs to be Exalted with Dreamweavers. Keija needs to be Exalted with Valarjar. Karaelia wants to be Exalted with Valarjar because Valarjar tabard is pretty and has colors suitable for “I wanna be SHINY!” Mogs. Kaohana needs to be be Exalted with Valarjar to be able to obtain the Hidden appearance for the Holy Artifact. All Tauren will want to be Exalted with Highmountain (still working on this…).

* Continue Paragoning Highmountain with Kamalia and Suramar with Kaelinda until moose and flying carpet mounts have been obtained (I abandoned Paragoning for Highmountain because the moose mount for recruiting the Highmountain Tauren Allied Race is cooler looking anyway, but I am still stubbornly plugging away at Suramar with Kaelinda)

These objectives were not achieved, and I may or may not get around to doing them because I’m getting itchy to just move on to Battle for Azeroth content already

* Do enough of Broken Shore with Kaylynda to see the Anduin-retrieves-Shalamayne cinematic

* Do the Xe’ra’s Revisionist History Of Illidan questline with Kiralaira

* Do the Deaths of Chromie scenario with Karaelia to earn the bronze version of the plate dragon head shoulders

I didn’t accomplish everything on my list, but I’m pretty happy with what I did accomplish!

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new allies for the Alliance from the shadows in the shadows

Last week, Kiralaira finally reached Exalted with Argussian Reach.

At last, Kaylynda and Alleria Windrunner could go in search of the renegade Magister Umbric and his followers…

I have played through the Ghostlands many, many times on my Horde characters — it’s one of my favorite level 10 – 20 zones — so it felt both familar and strange to be there with an Alliance character. I had to remind myself to go around Tranquilien instead of through it.

While we were in the Ghostlands, naturally I had to take Alleria to see her sister. I couldn’t quite figure out where to stand to put Alleria right next to Vereesa, though.

Did Dawnstar Spire always have this upper level, and I never saw it because I never looked up, or is this a new addition? It’s so pretty… If a Void Elf comes back to Dawnstar Spire on the ground, can they see and use the teleportation console to get up here?

Telogrus Rift itself doesn’t impress me much. It’s another scrap of a fallen world, like Niskara or Mardum or Dreadscar Rift, that looks like it should be airless and very, very cold — only with purple void goop instead of green fel goop. My new Void Elves were happy when they finished Alleria’s training and were able to return to the warmth and sunlight of Azeroth again. They will probably not go back to Telogrus very often, if ever.

These characters have stories, or fragments of stories, at any rate, which someday perhaps I will get together enough to be able to tell.

I chose the skin tone that appeared the most pink to me for Kaelyla and the one that seemed the next-most-pink for Kishalla. I find it a bit ironic that in this expansion where Sylvanas is public enemy number one of the Alliance, it is Alliance players who can most closely mimic Sylvanas’s appearance by being a Void Elf with the darkest blue skin tone and the silver hair.

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1 week until BfA

Kiralaira finally went to Argus. The story drew me in; I played it over three nights and it wasn’t hard to keep going until I hit the achievement that marked the end of each part. I took 2429 screenshots along the way. Though I don’t care for the fel-ravaged visuals of Krokuun and the Antoran Wastes, Mac’Aree is hauntingly beautiful. Vigilant Quoram’s tests were somehow not as difficult as I’d been expecting them to be — even the first room of the Test of Tenacity was not as frustrating as the shifting rune maze in the pre-Mage Tower part of the Karam Magespear questline. I am ridiculously amused by how even after a thousand years of living with the Lightforged, Turalyon still has a gringo accent when he says the Draenei greetings.

During this week, my Monk and Paladin will be running selected dungeons to get to 8 different dungeons completed and earn their Order Hall set pants.

My Paladin got her official Legionfall Champion while I was pushing through Order Hall Campaigns — but Paladins can also get a 10th Champion, Maximillian of Northshire. I haven’t done that questline yet, so maybe I’ll do it this week — or maybe I’ll let it wait until later.

These past few weeks of being so focused on the major goals of completing the 7.0 Order Hall Campaigns and doing the Argus Campaign have left me way behind on my prep for Fall Semester. That’s part of why I’ve decided to leave playing through the War of Thorns until the night of August 12th. Doing that, however, means that I’m having to mentally bookmark a backlog of reaction and analysis posts on blogs and Wowhead and Blizzard Watch about The War of Thorns, Warbringers: Sylvanas, Old Soldier, Elegy, and A Good War.

Oh, and the conference I went to? Amazing! I only wish it had been earlier in the summer, so that I could have had more time to figure out how to restructure my courses to implement some of the ideas that I learned about.

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2 weeks until BfA

After finishing up the Warrior campaign, I did Priest & Paladin in parallel, alternating between them. Despite the dire circumstances, the twins were delighted to be able to work together for their Order Hall Campaigns — and the members of their orders observed and recognized the special synergy between them. Then I pushed through the rest of Death Knight because I just wanted to be done already with Order Hall Campaigns. I got spoiled on how the DK campaign ends long ago — one reason why I was saving it for last — and it was as epic… and troubling… as advertised.

I’m feeling kind of burned out on WoW now — having a 5-day break while I attend this chemical education conference is actually rather refreshing!

My Priest also picked up the Hidden appearance for her Disc Artifact. So far, I’ve gotten the Hidden appearances for Arcane Mage, Fire Mage, Frost Mage, Brewmaster Monk, Holy Paladin, Enhancement Shaman, Beastmaster Hunter, and Guardian Druid.
Interestingly, though Kamalia hasn’t obtained the base Hidden appearances for Elemental or Resto, she has the 200 WQ tint of those appearances available for her to use.
I’ll have to come back at level 120 to farm the dungeon drops for the Hidden appearances for Balance Druid and Holy Priest.
I’d thought about getting the Feral Druid one for Kerisa, but I decided instead to get it with my Highmountain Tauren Druid.

Niskara, Niskara, Niskara… Marksmanship Hunter, Blood Death Knight, and Holy Priest all go there at the very beginning of things to get Artifacts. Warlocks go there for Chapter 2 of their campaign. Paladins and Priests have an intersecting storyline there near the end of Chapter 3 & beginning of Chapter 4 of their respective campaigns. Demon Hunters and Warriors conclude their campaigns there. From a meta perspective, I recognize that this place is a hub to answer the common complaint about art resources being created that only a small fraction of the playerbase will ever see (locations such as Kezan, the Broken Isles, Gilneas-before-the-Cataclysm, and the Wandering Isle, for example) and to reduce the load on the art team. From an in-universe lore perspective, though, why is this scrap of a world such a central location? Might that have been explained in some bit of quest text that I have long since forgotten?

I was greatly relieved to read Gnomecore’s report that the gear from the Darkshore WQs uses the new character selection screen/Boosted/Warlords Salvage Yard models — I have all of those already, so no need for me to run myself ragged trying to collect them. Between missing 5 days of play time and wanting to finally do the Argus campaign when I get back, I may end up doing all three chapters of the War of Thorns back-to-back with just one character per faction on the night of August 12th. On the Alliance side, it will be Kerithian the Night Elf Druid, of course. On the Horde side, I’m thinking it will be Kelisanna the Rogue, to observe and report on Sylvanas’ operations for Regent Lord Theron.

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