chipping away at Shadowlands goals

I picked up the last item I wanted from the Soulbreaker’s Burnished Vestments set last week. I don’t have the full set, but I do have all the pieces I most wanted for Mogging mix-and-match. So now I am Done with Venthyr Travel Network Broken Mirrors. Hooray!
I only need two more pieces from the Night Fae Korthia set and two more pieces from the Necrolords Korthia set. In other words, I only need a Cosmetics quest to show up one more time for each of those Covenants, because with both Kaelinda and Kaelyla on the job, I can get two pieces each time one of those quests is available.
Kaelinda and Kaelyla paid back earlier gifts of Anima from Kaurinka to help them finish upgrading Covenant Sanctum features, thus allowing Kaurinka to get her Queen’s Conservatory fully upgraded to Tier 5 and to purchase the Queen’s Conservatory recolor of the Oakheart set. Now I just need to push Kaurinka through the rest of the 9.0 Night Fae Campaign…

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Dead Men Tell Some Tales

I finally finished the 9.0 Kyrian Campaign last night.

Bodhi Rana said he thought it was the best, and it was really good. I liked the check-in with Azeroth in which we find out that sure enough, the Scourge are running rampant now that the Helm of Domination is broken. I liked the reciprocal chapter with Maldraxxus. I liked the visits to Revendreth and Ardenweald. I was glad to be in ZM BOE catch-up gear for the trip to the Maw — that would have been so much harder in 9.0! I felt like it dealt with Uther in an okay way. Why Helya was involved, though — from her first appearances in the 9.0 Maw Intro scenario and the Bastion leveling story — seemed kind of shoehorned in (Helya’s gotta be in the Shadowlands somewhere, where are we gonna put her?). Although the Forsworn still have a point, and I still don’t want to be Kyrian, the Kyrian have grown on me over the course of the expansion. Mikanikos is still my favorite.

Overall, I rank my enjoyment of the 9.0 Campaigns as Venthyr = Kyrian > Netherlords > Night Fae. I wouldn’t have thought, at the beginning of the expansion, that Night Fae would come in last, but so it is. The Kyrian have reciprocal chapters with the Netherlords and visit Revendreth and Ardenweald. The Venthyr have recpirocal chapters with the Necrolords and visit Bastion. The Netherlords have reciprocal chapters with both the Kyrian and the Venthyr. The Venthyr and the Netherlords don’t go to Ardenweald. The Night Fae… do their own thing. They don’t make connections with the other realms. Looking back on it, the Night Warrior, Drust, and Bwonsamdi stories feel awkwardly braided together. The story has multiple downer moments, where we try to save an NPC and fail. And there are two trips to the Maw, one of which includes a trip to Torghast… I am not looking forward to replaying that with Kaurinka and Kamalia, though I will have to because I want the Campaign coloration of the Night Fae leather and mail sets.

I would say, On to Korthia and Zereth Mortis!, but now that I’ve reached the “stopping point” of having completed the 9.0 Campaigns, I’ve got to start spending my after-bedtime hours getting my Fall classes prepped. I felt like my Organic Chemistry lecture course needed a refresh, so I’ve switched textbooks, and my lab manual for my Organic Chemistry lab course is a few years overdue for an update.

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Necrolords Campaign notes

I finished the 9.0 Necrolords Campaign last night. Doing this in ilevel 229 Zereth Mortis BOE gear from the AH sure made it easier than it would have been at the beginning of the expansion. There’s some value to being behind the curve 😛
When I was in the Necrolords with my Horde Mage, I upgraded the Travel Network all the way and concluded that it was useless for World Questing. I hadn’t managed to do any of the Campaign, however.
When I joined the Necrolords with my Alliance Mage, I originally thought I’d just ignore all Sanctum upgrades. I was determined to do the Campaign with this character, though. After I did Chapter 3 of the Campaign and got the first quest to start Chapter 4, I realized that the place I’d need to go to start Chapter 4 was right where the portal was for the first stage of the Travel Network. Hmmm…. Maybe it would be a good idea to do the Travel Network, even if I didn’t do anything else with this Sanctum…. So I put continuing with the Campaign on hold until I’d gotten the Travel Network completely upgraded. The Necrolords Travel Network locations are somewhat more relevant to the Campaign storyline than the Travel Network of the Venthyr or Night Fae; I have yet to do the Kyrian (whose Travel Network I find to be the most useful for World Questing).
The chapters about Bastion and the defeat of the House of Constructs were fantastic. I really appreciated the follow-up to the leveling story. The part with Alexandros at Agthia’s Repose, well, it answers some questions about why certain souls get sent to certain realms — and raises others.
The chapter in the House of Rituals was silly fun, and I totally wasn’t expecting the platforming vehicle quest — which frustrated me a fair few times before I finished it.
It was also fun to see the chapters that overlapped with the Venthyr Campaign from the other perspective.
Overall, I enjoyed this Campaign — and this Covenant — quite a bit more than I initially expected to. I still really dislike the aesthetic of Maldraxxus and the Netherlords, though, so now that I’ve finished the Campaign — and also my Necrolords Renown Vendor shopping list (which wasn’t very long) — I kind of want to leave and never come back. Except for my favorite WQs in the zone — Abombing Run, Mixing A Mess, Just Winging It, Drawing Out the Poison, the sneaking one in the House of the Chosen that I can’t remember the name of right now, and Amateur Night — and the Necrolords follow-up chapter in the 9.1 Campaign — and maybe collecting the Necrolords Korthia WQ set, I guess.

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I’m burning out on 9.0 and I just wanna go do 9.2

I’m just not feeling the Renown grind this week. I look at the base zone WQs — what can I do for Anima? what can I do to complete Callings? — and I don’t feel like going out and doing them.

I want to go to Zereth Mortis. I want to explore and scout the place out for pretty locations for Mog photoshoots. I want to do the 9.2 Campaign. I want to get whatever the most easily-obtained coloration of the zone set is. I want to do whichever category of Cipher of the First Ones research it is that gives buffs for world activities, and whichever one opens up the Zereth Mortis puzzle minigames — I enjoyed the puzzle minigames in Legion and Battle for Azeroth — and ignore all the other categories.

But I haven’t yet gotten the breadcrumb quest to even start Zereth Mortis. I think it’s because I’m currently in Covenants for which I haven’t completed the 9.0 Campaigns and because I haven’t done the opening chapters of the 9.1 Campaign. I should go do the opening chapters of the 9.1 Campaign because I’m getting tired of being ground-bound; it would be nice to be able to fly again. And I just read on Wowhead that there’s been a hotfix that “Each of the four original Covenant campaign questlines now reward a total of 20 additional Renown.” So I should do the Kyrian Campaign with Kaelinda and the Necrolords Campaign with Kaelyla, because those are the Covenants that they aren’t maxxed out in Renown already with. Which is all scrambled up from my original plans, but at this point, eh, whatever….

The Zereth Mortis zone set reminds me of the Vulpera aesthetic, so I tried it out on Khariba, and sure enough, it looks super cute on her:

Choral set with Shadowmoon Cowl and Mok’Morokk’s Beat Stick

Why is it that the LFR coloration of raid sets always seems to be the green one?

They all have silly hats; the Warlock hat is thankfully not offensive anymore, but is rather the silliest of the lot. The Warlock shoulders, robe, and belt are the most interesting. The other two robes are handsome enough, I guess, but feel… plain, somehow. Still, if I can get Kaelinda and Kaelyla’s iLevels up enough, I might eventually go do Sepulcher of the First Ones LFR. Fortunately for me as a Mage, the Priest robe, Warlock shoulders, Warlock robe, and Warlock belt all have lookalike pieces– but the Mage robe does not have a lookalike piece.

~*~*~

Even though I don’t intend to do anything with her in the Shadowlands for a long time yet, I brought Karaelia out to Bastion for the sake of having a character of every armor class positioned to prep for 10.0 — and wherever Karaelia goes, her twin Kaohana goes, too. Both of them have activated Threads of Fate and pledged to the Kyrian.


Karaelia has been wearing her outfit since November of 2020, and Kaohana has been wearing her outfit since February of 2021! They are both rather anxious for some new clothes!

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pushing through the Shadowlands, one little goal at a time

In the past few weeks, I’ve really been pushing questing with my Warlock to get through Maldraxxus — Threads of Fate’d into the Necrolords — to Level 60 — formally inducted into the Necrolords — through Chapter 1 and past the Chapter 2 skip of the Necrolords Campaign, ready to begin Chapter 3. I finished that up on Monday — easy XP from Hallow’s End helped a lot!

On the one hand, I’m glad to have gotten the last of my original five Shadowlands Crew characters to level 60 at last. On the other hand, it feels kind of superfluous to have done so, with Patch 9.1.5 arriving tomorrow and my plan for doing everything from here on out with only Kaelinda and Kaelyla.

Getting Kaelinda and Kaelyla both to Renown 80 was the first thing I wrote on that list. However, Kaelinda, starting last week at Renown 73, and Kaelyla, starting last week at Renown 66, both only got 1 Renown from Replenish the Reservoir — although they did Return Lost Souls and a few Callings, they didn’t get any Renown from those activities. Thus, getting to Renown 80 will still be several weeks out unless I get them to Korthia sometime soon-ish. Furthermore, although I had been fine with still being ground-bound, lately I’ve been starting to really want Flying (oh yeah, and Riding in the Maw, too). That means doing at least the first three chapters of the 9.1 Campaign. So I guess my next push goal should be to get Kaelyla through the 9.0 Night Fae Campaign because of how the very first chapter of the 9.1 Campaign takes place in Ardenweald.

After Kaelinda and Kaelyla do the first three chapters of the 9.1 Campaign and get to Renown 80, then they’ll want to Covenant hop and do the 9.0 Necrolords and Kyrian Campaigns, respectively. Then, the next steps will end up being more nuanced than the Plan I laid out a week or so ago. I recall reading during the 9.1 PTR that there’s special stuff in the 9.1 Campaign chapters focused on the progression of each Covenant’s story for the members of that specific Covenant, so instead of doing the 9.1 Campaign as the same Covenant all the way through, I’ll be wanting to doing some Covenant swapping in the middle. Kaelinda will want do the “Army of Bone and Steel” chapter as a Necrolord — and then she’ll want to switch back to Venthyr for the “Unseen Guests” chapter. Kaelyla will want to be Night Fae for the “Power of the Night” chapter — and then she’ll want to be Kyrian for the “A New Path” chapter. Then they’ll want to be in their Home Covenants for pushing to Exalted with Death’s Advance. I will have plenty to do in the Shadowlands for plenty of time!

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Kalaneia and the Blade of the Primus

For all that she detested the physical environment of Maldraxxus, by the time she had completed the restoration of the Blade of the Primus and opened the door to the Seat of the Primus, Kalaneia knew that the Necrolords were the Covenant where she belonged.
Also, WTB cosmetic Blade of the Primus that can be Mogged over any and all weapon types.

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Go Home, Go’el! — and miscellaneous musings

Got Thrall out, overheard the Jailer and Sylvanas making nefarious plans for Anduin. I suppose I’ll go do that last bit of the current Torghast questline at some point before Patch 9.1 drops, because we’ll probably need to have completed the 9.0 Torghast questline to be able to do whatever questline 9.1 has that will pave the way for us to eventually free Anduin from the Jailer’s subjugation.

~*~*~

Kaelyla finished Maldraxxus this weekend. She’s level 57, and the end of her Rested state is visible on her XP bar. Before I continue into Ardenweald with Kaelyla, I’m considering pushing Kalaneia and Keliora through Bastion and Maldraxxus* — and then activating Threads of Fate to get them into their Covenant Sanctums — just so that I can be “done” with Maldraxxus. Well, done with leveling there, at least. Although there are a few WQs there that I’ll do if they have rewards which I consider valuable, I really don’t like being there and generally avoid going there. Yes, of course Kalaneia is going to do the Necrolords Campaign — but I’m ready to have her be the only character who has to spend any more time in Maldraxxus.

~*~*~

I’ve decided to get the final upgrade to the Travel Network, then the second upgrade to the Anima Conductor, and then activate the Special Feature. Kaurinka has about 12K Anima, but I did the maths and she’ll need to keep 5350 Anima in reserve for upgrading her Covenant Armor set**, so she still needs to save up for a few more weeks before she can get the third stage of her Travel Network. Kaelinda has around 7K Anima, so she’ll need to save up for a few more weeks, too.

~*~*~

* Kalaneia will complete Maldraxxus — I want screenshots of her collecting all the runes for the Blade of the Primus! Keliora, however, will only do Maldraxxus through the first two chapters and then the House of the Chosen chapter to rescue the Kyrian survivors from the House of Constructs.

** The total cost for fully upgrading Covenant Armor is quite different between the Covenants because each Covenant gets different armor pieces, and different numbers of armor pieces, at each step of the Campaign. Night Fae, as I mentioned above, is 5350. Kyrian is 7600. Necrolords is 6950. Venthyr is 7350.

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What do YOU ride in the Shadowlands?

As I’ve been bopping around in the Shadowlands with Kaelinda and Kaurinka, I’ve discovered that I have specific mounts that I prefer for each zone. In Ardenweald, of course I’m using the Wildseed Cradle. In Bastion, since I’m not anywhere close to being Exalted with The Ascended and being able to get the Gilded Prowler, I’m using the Winged Guardian. In Maldraxxus, I like my Gilded Ravasaur because I think it expresses primal might and apex power while also being pleasing to look at. In Revendreth, Kaelinda prefers her Creeping Carpet, while Kaurinka has chosen the Crimson Direhorn*, and Keliora and Kalaneia will use the Swift Red Hawkstrider. Kaelyla has chosen the Fossilized Raptor for Maldraxxus and the Smoky Charger for Revendreth.

Have you chosen mounts to fit the ambiance of the Shadowlands zones, or are you just continuing to ride your old standbys?

~*~*~

Update, March 2021:
After Kaelinda reached Exalted with the Court of Harvesters and purchased the Court Sinrunner, she tried it out for awhile, then went back to her Creeping Carpet for riding around Revendreth. Keliora and Kalaneia still plan to use their Swift Red Hawkstriders, but Kaelyla and Kaurinka have switched to the Court Sinrunner for Revendreth. I’ve switched everyone to the Fossilized Raptor for Maldraxxus — it’s far and away the best fit for the place of the mounts I already have. And everyone is still using the Winged Guardian for Bastion and the Wildseed Cradle for Ardenweald. Someday I’ll get to Exalted with the Ascended and get the Gilded Prowler for Bastion; the Wildseed Cradle for Ardenweald isn’t likely to change, ever.
end of Update

~*~*~

A question in a recent Blizzard Watch Queue asked if the Queue writer of the day/Queue commenters were spending their Anima on Sanctum upgrades or Covenant Armor upgrades. The Queue writer answered that she’d been spending it on Covenant Armor upgrades, and hadn’t upgraded any of the Sanctum features to stage 2 yet. That sounds like a rather good idea, actually, since with my very slow, meandering playstyle, Covenant Armor upgrades will be the path of least resistance to improving my gear. Of course, that means I have to actually finish my Covenant campaigns and get all of my base Covenant Armor sets…. Kaelinda is still stalled out at the beginning of Chapter 4 of the Venthyr campaign. I finally managed to push Kaurinka through Chapter 2 of the Night Fae campaign, though. By now both of them have their Renown more or less high enough that they could get to Renown 22 and access the final chapter of their Covenant campaigns just by powering through all the other chapters — so perhaps I should prioritize/focus on that for the next couple of weeks.

I’ve noticed — as I’m sure everyone else has by now — that the Calling each day is the same the for all of the Covenants. Everybody gets “Fill the Bar in Ardenweald”, or “Do 3 World Quests in Maldraxxus”, or whatever. I’ve also noticed that Callings tend to “stack” — one day will be “Fill the Bar in Zone A” and the next day will be “Do 3 World Quests in Zone A”, or something similar. I’ll often do Callings in my Covenant zone — Revendreth for Kaelinda and Ardenweald for Kaurinka — immediately, but wait for Callings in other zones to stack before I go do them.

Kaelinda has been having an easier time of finishing the 1000 Anima weekly lately, it seems. She’s got her Anima Conductor channel to the special treasure permanently activated and has been doing the special enemy channel (SMASH BAD BAT!!) for about a week. Kaurinka just permanently activated her special treasure channel; I’m looking forward to activating the special enemy channel, since I’ve read that for Night Fae, it’s encore performances at the theatre.

Now that I’ve run the easymode version of a Torghast wing in which Baine is found for Chapter 2 of the Covenant campaign twice, I’m not worried about getting through it with any of the rest of my characters. I still think I’ll only pursue the full Torghast quest chain from Bolvar with one character, though. Kaelinda does want to rescue Jaina, at least — eventually. I think my difficulty with both Torghast and the Maw is that I find them to be… tedious.

Meanwhile, I’ve also gotten distracted by collecting the armor sets from World Quests not for their potential to improve my item level but rather for their appearances. Just as with the leveling gear, each zone has its own recolor of the World Quest/Dungeon gear. With Kaelinda, I’m trying to get all of them, but with Kaurinka, I’m only going to get the Ardenweald set.

~*~*~

* These are the mounts that Kaurinka uses when she’s not Prowling in Cat Form, that is. She tends to spend most of her ground travel time in Cat Form, unless she’s going a relatively long distance along a road.

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on the Shapes of Souls in the Shadowlands

In Bastion, Kaelinda had been dismayed that becoming Kyrian meant taking on a new form, even if that form was beautiful to look upon. The waiting Aspiring Souls, at least, had retained recognizable forms; well, the ones from Azeroth had been recognizable; souls from other worlds had appeared as blurry, generically humanoid shapes.

She recalled that she had observed the same phenomenon during her initial, relatively brief, sojourn in the Maw. When she and Jaina and Thrall had liberated souls from the Tremaculum, souls from Azeroth had appeared in their own shapes, whereas souls from other worlds had been featureless ghosts.

Kaelinda wondered if souls from other worlds saw their fellows from their own worlds as recognizable individuals and Azerothian souls as blurs.

In Maldraxxus, the forms of the inhabitants were horrific — how could any soul be satisfied to spend the eternities in such shapes? — and she saw no blur-shaped waiting souls. She wondered how the few individuals whom she recognized from Azeroth whom she had met in Maldraxxus had maintained their own forms. Would a soul from Baron Vyraz’s world see Baron Vyraz in his own form as she saw Baroness Draka in her own form, and see Baroness Draka in the generic female Chosen warrior form as she saw Baron Vyraz in the generic male Chosen warrior form?

In Ardenweald, ordinary souls — those who were not great nature spirits of their worlds, placed into wildseeds to be regenerated and returned — took on the forms of animals, apparently of their own choosing. Yet the Night Fae claimed to see so many races from so many worlds that they didn’t immediately recognize her race or her world origin. When she helped Choofa restore animal forms to his friends, Kaelinda saw their souls in the same blurry forms that she had observed in Bastion. It seemed, therefore, that when ordinary souls originally arrived in Ardenweald, they appeared in their own forms until they chose their animal shapes. If only she could see a newly-arrived soul from Azeroth! And then, somewhat to her surprise, she did. At Hibernal Hollow, she saw Night Elf souls, seemingly come from the burning of Teldrassil*, still in their own forms.

In Revendreth, Kaelinda saw many suffering souls in the same blurry form that she’d seen elsewhere. Occasionally, however, when confronted, some of them transformed into shapes she recognized — Orcs, Hozen, even Arakkoa — which she’d only seen on Outland or Draenor. Curious.

It seemed to be a general property of the Shadowlands that an individual could only see souls from their own world — or maybe worlds they had visited? — in their own shapes, and all other souls would appear in a shape governed by the particular sub-realm of the Shadowlands to which the Arbiter had assigned them.

~*~*~

From an OOC standpoint, of course this is what the developers are doing. It would be extremely labor-intensive to create hundreds of new character models and dialogue flavor text to explain a little about the dozens of worlds that they are from. It’s still fun, though, to think about an in-character rationalization for the phenomenon, and to ask some of the questions that might arise from trying to figure it out.

~*~*~

* But how did they get there, instead of being funneled into the Maw? Had they been rescued from the Maw somehow… by Tyrande, perhaps?

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movin’ through Maldraxxus

I went through Maldraxxus quite slowly with Kaelinda; for various reasons, I averaged about one chapter in a sitting. Kaurinka burned through it in two sessions (maybe because it was the weekend?).

The second playthrough of the zone went a lot more quickly and smoothly than the first because I knew where to find the quest objectives, what I needed to do for some of the less obvious quest objectives, better ways to path through things. This is, of course, how it goes in every expansion. I found myself wondering, should I send someone else through Ardenweald first, so Kaurinka can have a smoother run? I quickly dismissed that thought — the most valuable part of the first playthrough is that the story is completely fresh and new and full of surprises, and I want to be learning the Ardenweald story fresh and new and full of surprises with Kaurinka.

To allow Kaurinka to Rest awhile before she continues her journey onward to Ardenweald, however, I’m going to spend the next few nights bringing Kalaneia, Keliora, and Kaelyla through the Maw to Oribos.

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