May is here!

It’s nice this month that Children’s Week is early enough in the month that doing Holiday activities will actually be a significant contributor to collecting my Trading Post currency for the month, rather than being things I do after I’ve finished it off just for the fun of it.

I’ve already picked up the Wanderer’s Snowy Trappings and the pretty High Priestess’s Ceremonial Drape. The Lost Crown of the Arcane was an immediate must-have, too, seeing as how it is a recolor of one of my all-time favorite Mail Tier helms, the Crown of Flame from Firelands. I have the Magenta Cloud Serpent frozen from last month. I could get it this month if I choose not to get the Trial of Valor cloth set recolor or the Stormheim Vrykul leather set recolor. Knowing that stuff I’ve passed on will eventually come around again makes me feel less fretful about that decision.

As far as Children’s Week goes — I think I’ve done both the Classic and Cataclysm versions for both factions (because I seem to remember noticing the differences the first time I did the new versions); I’ve done the Burning Crusade quests for both factions; I’ve done both of the Wrath of the Lich King neutral options; but I was feeling burned out on Holidays during Battle for Azeroth and haven’t done the newest Children’s Week quests yet. So to do Children’s Week activities for the Trading Post, I guess I’ll start with the Zandalari and Kul Tiran orphans; to get the most out of that, I should go do them with characters who need XP, maybe my Druid and Human Mage. Then I think Kaelinda ought to go take Salandria to see her future self, and I haven’t quite decided which orphan to choose to round out the four for the Trading Post activity. My six characters who are doing the Wrath Dalaran fishing dailies in hopes of getting a Battered Jungle Hat have all chosen orphans to accompany them, to make the Trading Post activity for turning in dailies while accompanied by an orphan very easy to complete.

Here are my plans for Patch 10.1 tomorrow: BTH has an obligation on Tuesday nights, so while he’s out, I’ll log onto his account with his alt who is in my me-myself-and-I guild and invite my Void Elf Mage and my Dracthyr (who is Alliance to keep my Characters page more neatly organized :P) into the guild. I managed to finish up the lore questline in the Forbidden Reach (which I always want to call the Forgotten Reach, a name which is equally appropriate) in the past couple of weeks. I’ll probably do the first quests to go into Zaralek Cavern and fly around picking up all the new Dragonriding glyphs — and then I’ll set it aside for awhile. I’m still working on Dragonscale Expedition and Valdrakken Accord Renown and haven’t unlocked all of their 10.0 story content, and I think I’d like to complete that before I do the Zaralek Cavern lore questline.

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Quest text? Who needs that, anyway?

My oldest has been doing well in kindergarten. He’s gotten good at figuring out a word by putting together the letter sounds, and he knows most of the “high frequency” words in the caterpillar that’s been growing on our living room wall. He can read words in simple stories.
He is by no means literate enough yet to read quest text*…
He discovered Transmogrification, but his lowbie toons didn’t have any money. I told him he needed to do quests to get money. I taught him the elementary skills of questing: talk to the person who is sparkling**, pick up things on the ground that are sparkling, loot your kills, the silver arrowhead on the minimap is you and the yellow arrow is pointing where you need to go and when you get to the right place the arrow turns into a yellow dot. I’ve given him occasional help with specific quests that have trickier requirements (such as the one to /wave at the ogre chef in Exile’s Reach).
I’ve been amazed by what he’s managed to figure out how to do on his own.
He can get all the way through Exile’s Reach, the Demon Hunter starting zone, the Dracthyr starting zone, the Warlords of Draenor Dark Portal to Garrison introductory scenario, the Legion Broken Shore introductory scenario, the Battle for Azeroth rescue of Talanji from Stormwind introductory scenario, and the Shadowlands escape from the Maw introductory scenario.
Without reading***.
I’ve shown him how to take the skips for the expansion introduction scenarios, but he likes to play through them. He plays through them over and over, deleting a character he already has# to roll up yet another new Zandalari Troll or Nightborne to do it again. He peppers me with questions about the characters and the storylines (I am so tired of answering questions about Sylvanas…) and I tell him, “kid, you know that better than I do by now.”

~*~*~

*Or, thankfully, city chat channels. I ought to teach him to leave city chat channels whenever he comes into a capital city for the first time with a new alt now, so that he’s already in the habit of automatically getting out of them by the time he’s literate enough to know what they’re saying….
**I don’t use Outline mode because I’m too lazy to turn it off and then back on again when I want to take Sunday Mog Show screenshots. I still have to contend with sparkles in my screenshots, but I think they’re less distracting.
***He doesn’t go out and do any regular zone questing, though, so perhaps it might be better to say that one doesn’t need reading to do an on-rails scenario questing experience.
#My account only has about 8 slots that aren’t filled with my own toons, so I had to teach him how to type “delete” soon after he started wanting to make his own characters instead of just playing with my Night Elf Druid and the Orc Hunter I’d created for him when I first began allowing him to play WoW.

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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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Zandalari Balance Druids

Image from Wowhead
I am not sure whether to be jealous that they get a High Arakkoa-like form, or to be horrified by how it looks like a bizarre hybrid of High Arakkoa, Falcosaur, and Elekk…

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