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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Gliding through the Dragon Isles

Well, that was easy.
Even with spending a couple of days away from Azeroth while I attended an academic conference last weekend, I still got the Trading Post all done in the first week.

I did go a little out of my way to /love the Dragon Aspects in Valdrakken and /love things at the Trading Post itself — but even if I hadn’t done those things, I’d have picked up the final reward for the month in another week-ish just from going about the activities that I ordinarily do in the game. I think it’s probably tuned about right. I like that there’s such a good variety of things to do that can contribute to getting Trading Post points; that really helps it feel like a reward for just doing whatever you’d be doing anyway — with nudges to do one or two things that are off-routine, just for fun. Having all four of my mains in Valdrakken doing this and that definitely helped the Trading Post go fairly quickly; they all contributed something to it. I approve of the extent to which it is, in fact, an account-wide progression system. I’ve delegated one of my alts who is chilling in Orgrimmar anyway to hang out at the Trading Post and be in charge of picking up currency from the chest and buying things with it.

I’d put the Swashbuckling Buccaneer’s Slops, which are 650, on layaway. I kept being tempted by the Shattered Voidspire seeing it being carried by casters all over Valdrakken. Thinking that it was 750, I thought that maybe I would put it on layaway and just buy the pirate clothes. Then when I went to look again, the Shattered Voidspire was actually just 500, so I decided to just get it. I still have a little over 1100 to carry over to next month.

A downside of the Trading Post being account-wide, however, is that I did have to tell my 5-year-old quite sternly that he is NOT allowed to buy things from the Trading Post. I don’t want him spending all my Trader’s Tender on stuff I don’t want, so that I end up being unable to afford something that I want very much!*

~*~*~

Kamalia is at 12/11/14/13 with the Major Factions and 5/6 with Wrathion.
I am really liking how Reputation-Renown — and Reputation in general — is working in Dragonflight. I am so glad that it is linear — the same increment from one rank to the next — rather than exponential — twice as much work to get to the next rank as it was to get to the previous one.
My other three co-mains have been leveling from gathering, first crafts, and the occasional World Quest with surprising speed; I do want to do at least the Main Storylines again with each of them (I liked them that much!), but I’m getting a bit concerned that I might ding 70 before I manage to set aside the time for serious questing! Kaelinda is level 65** and 2/2/3/2; Kaelyla is level 65 and 1/1/1/3; and Kaurinka is level 64 and 3/1/3/2.

~*~*~

*He plays on my account and has filled up all the remaining character slots with a revolving door of Zandalari Trolls, Darkspear Trolls, Nightborne, Vulpera, Allied Race Death Knights, Demon Hunters, and Dracthyr (I went to un-delete a toon the other day and was astonished at the number of deleted Dracthyr on that realm). Several times, I’ve considered the idea of RAFing an account for my son so that I can get the Renowned Explorer’s transmog set, but I haven’t quite yet been able to bring myself to do what would essentially be paying $180 for a Mog, and so he plays on my account.

**Well, actually, they’d all gotten to level 61 or 62 already doing stuff in Shadowlands by the time I got them out to the Dragon Isles. And yes, though I’d been saying that I was afraid that if I moved on to Dragonflight, I’d never go back and finish my unfinished business in Shadowlands, a couple of things happened. One, Kaelinda completed her Kyrian Cosmetics shopping list, so she wasn’t feeling tied to doing Shadowlands WQs and dailies for Anima anymore. Two, Kaelyla started working on the Kyrian Campaign and almost immediately got stuck on the Spires of Ascension dungeon quest. She was already too high level to LFG queue for it, so she was going to have to level to 70, then come back and see if she could solo it on Normal.

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Adventure Mode unlocked; Kalu’ak in Iskaara

Kamalia finished up the Dragonflight leveling Campaign and unlocked Adventure Mode! Before I bring any alts out to the Dragon Isles, though, I think I’d like to get the four major factions up to Renown 10, so that they can have the rep boost from the get-go. I’m currently at 7 for Dragonscale Expedition, 8 for Maruuk Centaur, 6 for Iskaara Tuskarr, and 7 for Valdrakken Accord.
But as for how to increase that Renown… I am overwhelmed with stuff to do. There are loads of sidequests in Thaldraszus that we haven’t done and may not come back to while playing together. I haven’t done the Dragonscale Expedition Renown quests for Climbing or Ancient Waygates yet, nor the Maruuk Centaur Great Hunt intro quests, nor the Dragonriding Races for any zone except Waking Shores. I’ve leveled and put some knowledge points into my gathering profession, but I’ve barely touched my crafting profession. Our quest logs are bulging with dungeon quests, so we’ll probably spend a play session or two just running dungeons.

~*~*~
I was wandering about Iskaara the other night and happened upon a pair of Kalu’ak tuskarr. Back in the day, I ground out Kalu’ak rep to get the Mastercraft Kalu’ak Fishing Pole, and that is the item I currently have equipped as my Fishing Tool. I was pleasantly surprised by how the Kalu’ak greeted me!

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Kaiuna, Kazithra, and Kjella

Before logging in with any of my Four Mains, first I needed to create the new alts that Patch 10.0 made possible!

Kaiuna was originally a melee Druid alt, and she’s always had Rogue-ish tendencies (see Things My Druid Wears #2).

This Kazithra is Kregga’s niece, named after her grandmother (my sometime Shadow Priest character).

The “j” in her name is pronounced as a “y” sound.

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Current Shadowlands alt priorities

Meanwhile, in Shadowlands…

For awhile, I had all four of my mains in the Night Fae doing the Queen’s Conservatory. Kaurinka recently got hers upgraded to Tier 4. The others waited until they’d gotten their Conservatories upgraded to Tier 2 before beginning to nurture Spirits so that they could use 2x Wildseed Root Grain for every Spirit. Collectively, we’ve gotten the pets multiple times and a few of the other things, but we’re still trying for the Spirit Tender’s Bulb. Kaurinka has restored all of the Spirits she collected before she began actively doing the Conservatory and is only getting new ones from Fair Exchange for a Soul and an occasional Return Lost Souls, so she doesn’t have any active wildseeds right now. Kaelyla and Kamalia both have collections of Spirits that they are actively nurturing, but they’ll run out in another week or two. Kaelinda hadn’t even done the Conservatory Tier 1 activation yet when she was in the Night Fae before, so after she got it going, she only had a few Spirits to nurture. I only really need one Mage to upgrade the Conservatory to Tier 5; while Kaelyla is working on that (recently upgraded to Tier 3), Kaelinda began using the Anima she collected to buy the Renown version of the Faewoven set. Kamalia also began using her Anima to buy the Renown version of the Runewarden’s set; she decided the autumn/fire orange of the Renown version of the set was more interesting to her than the green of the Conservatory version of the set. But having four active characters was exhausting, and having all of them in the same Covenant was, quite honestly, boring. Kaurinka and Kamalia are therefore currently resting; I’m only checking in with Kamalia to turn over wildseeds.

After Kaelinda had restored all of the Spirits she’d gathered (she had only gotten 4/9 of the Night Fae Renown pieces, but she can come back for the rest later — or Kaelyla can get them), she went back to the Venthyr and began doing the Ember Court. And my goodness, the Ember Court is a lot of work!

Kaelinda and Kaelyla are in what I have been thinking of as “Anima Vacuum” mode — trying to get as much Anima each night as I can with both characters — though I don’t do all the available Anima WQs, just the ones I feel the most like doing.

I’m also attempting to get ready for Fall Semester, which will be beginning all too soon. It didn’t take long to get my GE courses ready to go for Fall semester. It’s taken me awhile to get mental traction on reworking my Organic Chemistry course, for which I am doing a substantial overhaul, though. OChem will continue to occupy a lot of time and attention as the semester progresses because I’ll be working on updating my day-to-day course materials as I go along.

With all of this, I’ve been routinely staying up until about 2 am — which isn’t good for my physical or mental health…

~*~*~

I sorely need a new computer to play WoW. My current laptop has a 256 GB harddrive which is somehow almost completely full, to the point that every night it complains about being out of memory and sometimes I can’t take screenshots or the game crashes. I’ve also been getting an annoying lua error which keeps resetting all the UI tutorial banners on some of my characters. I’m getting tired of turning them off every time I log in. I definitely need a new computer before Dragonflight — and before I do Korthia, Zereth Mortis, or the 9.2.5 Blood Elf questline, so that I can take lots of story screenshots that I will probably never look at again! 😛

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Tentative Dragonflight alt priorities

Thankfully, the Dragonflight Quest armor and Dungeon armor sets are not the same as the PvP armor. I like the both of the Cloth sets, the Dungeon Leather set, and the Quest Mail set, but I don’t find either of the Plate sets particularly inspiring.

Even better, that Dracthyr Battlegear is just the kind of awesome-looking new Mail armor that I was hoping we’d get with a new Mail-wearing class joining the game! Kamalia is really looking forward to wearing it… if it’s not ridiculously exclusive to Dracthyr Evokers, that is.

With that in mind, and keeping in mind that any alt management plan I concoct during the beta phase of a new expansion never ends up being exactly what I actually do with my characters — at the moment, I’m thinking that for Dragonflight, I’ll lead out with Kaelinda. Mages have unparallelled world mobility with their capital city teleport, and Invisibility is a pretty good aggro drop and run away ability. It’s okay for reconnaissance sneaking around, too, on occasion. Kamalia will go next; I missed her too much in early Shadowlands, and I’m excited about the new Mail armor. Then either Kerisa or Kasheena; I love being a Balance Druid AOE Goddess and a sneaky kitty to get from one place to another, but although I like the Leather armor, I want to get the Mail first. Then Kaelyla, to keep my Alliance Main caught up. And then… maybe Kamalisaura the Dracthyr Evoker, just to see how the new Class plays? She will be Alliance, so that I can put her in the “Blue Team” category on my Characters page instead of having to make a new category just for her.

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in which Kasheena rides the Winds of Wisdom to her Heritage Armor

Somehow, my Highmountain Tauren Druid, Kasheena, had managed to make it from her initial Allied Race level of 20 to a post-level-squish level of 42. She’d done the first few chapters of Highmountain, a little bit of the Druid Order Hall Campaign, Mulgore, a few years of Brewfest and WoW’s Anniversary dailies, and a smattering of other stuff.
Although I’d ignored the Winds of Wisdom buff last week because it was World Quest Bonus Week and I was busy with my level 60 characters, this week I suddenly realized that this was my chance to push Kasheena through to level 50 and finally, finally get her Heritage Armor. Finishing up the Highmountain main storyline, plus the Highmountain bonus objectives, opening up Suramar after she dinged 45, and doing some Legion Professions quests (she is an Herbalist/Miner), got her there in two play sessions.


I was very surprised to discover that the totems on the back of the Highmountain Heritage Armor are part of the chestpiece item, not a backpiece item.
~*~*~
Then I went and pre-ordered the Epic edition of Dragonflight and used the Boost on Kasheena; now she’s in Ardenweald with Kamalia and Kaurinka.

Kasheena just needs to get to Honored with Marasmius and Court of Night to be able to use the butterflymoth backpacks; Kaurinka will continue doing All The Things to get the other Shadowlands leather stuff I still want.
I decided to pre-order Dragonflight now and use the Boost on Kasheena (instead of saving it for my Tauren Mage) because I have for a rather long time in the back of my mind been thinking that for the next expansion it would be neat to be able to bring both a Mulgore Tauren (Kamalia) and a Highmountain Tauren (Kasheena, replacing Kerisa/Kaurinka in my roster of Mains) as well as both a Blood Elf (Kaelinda), and a Void Elf (Kaelyla).
~*~*~
(… now I’m so tempted — at this moment, at least — to buy Boosts for all my other sweet Mulgore Tauren girls, though I know that would be a tremendously gross expenditure… and when Shadowlands gets folded into Chromie Time I’ll probably be able to Mog with Shadowlands stuff with them without needing them to be level 60… and it would be better to wait to do Boosts until after the pre-patch goes live and I can roll my Tauren Rogue and Mage, anyhow…)

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…and now I wanna be a Feltotem Destro ‘Lock, too

Now there’s a sentence I never thought I’d write!
With Mages and Rogues becoming available to Tauren in Dragonflight, that leaves only Warlocks and Demon Hunters as Classes unavailable to Tauren.
I’m cool with Demon Hunters remaining exclusive to Night Elves and Blood Elves.
But there’s precedent for Highmountain Tauren becoming Warlocks, and I can imagine a “reformed” one wanting to rejoin the herd, so to speak…
Destruction is my favorite Warlock spec, but a Highmountain Tauren Demonology Warlock surrounded by a flock of Wild Imps would look pretty awesome.
And if they could have that fel-green hand, hoof, and horn-glow that male Feltotem NPCs have as a Class-specific toggle option (kinda like the Nightborne hand-glow toggle) — and hey, while we’re thinking about that, how about a fel-green hand-glow as a Class-specific toggle option for all Warlocks, hmm? — that would be fabulous!
Now I’m thinking about all the Warlock-wannabe Mogs I’m going to want to make for my Highmountain Tauren Mage (who is going to have to be Fire)…

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Tauren can be Mages!!! (and Rogues)

A new interview with Brian Holinka dropped the tidbit (recapped here by Wowhead and here by Blizzard Watch) that starting in 10.0, all races will be allowed to be Priests, Mages, and Rogues. I am so excited!
I have been arguing ever since Cataclysm that if Tauren Druids could develop into Priests and Paladins, then Tauren Shamans should be likewise allowed to develop into Mages.
My Blood Elf Mage runs Fire, my Void Elf Mage runs Frost, and my Human Mage runs Arcane… but I never got my Human Mage out to Shadowlands, in part because I could never quite decide which Covenant would be the best fit to be her “home” Covenant. Awhile ago, I started imagining that if Tauren could just be allowed to be Mages, I could have a Blood Elf Fire Mage, a Void Elf Arcane Mage, and a Tauren Frost Mage…
Now the question is, should she be Mulgore Tauren or Highmountain Tauren? Well, actually, I’ll probably create one of each, because that’s just the way I roll. And she’ll probably end up being Boosted. I’ll want to have her in the Dragon Isles alongside Kaelinda, Kaelyla, Kamalia, and Kerisa. Furthermore, given how long it’s been taking me to get my Highmountain Tauren Druid leveled the conventional way so as to earn that Heritage Armor, I am just not into the leveling lowbie alts game these days.
As for Rogues, I think I see a Race Change coming my Rogue’s way…

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six at sixty

Here’s Kamalia, level 60 and all decked out in Zereth Mortis BOEs from the AH. She’s my sixth, and perhaps last, level 60 for this expansion. Having used a Broker Mark of Distinction to set her Renown with the Night Fae to 40 immediately after activating Threads of Fate, she reached level 60 already at Renown 65.

Anthem of the Elements

Anthemic set with Dazzling Spectacles, Turncoat’s Cape, Tihan (LFR), and Felbark’s Shin

I want to get Kam at least the Night Fae Campaign set and the pretty dark red & dark blue Korthia Campaign quest set. Maybe I’ll manage to get her the Night Fae Renown and Queen’s Conservatory sets and the Kyrian Campaign and Renown sets, or maybe not. I am getting weary of the Anima grind, though Gnomecore has reported that once in Korthia, the Anima accumulates faster. I’m not interested enough in the Sepulcher Shaman Tier set to go grind Sandworn Relics and Cosmic Flux in Zereth Mortis for it.
Though I’ve brought Karaelia and Kaohana out to Bastion, the thought of actually leveling them seems very wearying, at least at this moment. Instead, my next leveling project will be to get my Highmountain Tauren Druid, currently at level 41, to level 50 so that I can finally, two expansions later, get that Heritage Armor. I am contemplating the notion of using the Boost that will come with purchasing 10.0 to Boost her to 60 — so I can take a Mulgore Tauren, Farseer Kamalia, and a Highmountain Tauren, Archdruid Kasheena, to 10.0. My Mulgore Tauren Druid, Kerisa, would then be retired — at least until I start really missing her…

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