Done, and not so Done, in the Shadowlands

I finished the 9.0 Night Fae Campaign with my Druid last night, at last! Now she is Done with the Shadowlands!

The second time through, the Night Fae Campaign still felt awkward and disjointed. The NPC losses were still downers, but I guess I “got” a little better how they raised the stakes this time. The things that made playing through it a LOT better the second time through were 1) Prowl is awesome for not having to fight through everything, 2) flying is awesome for not having to fight through everything, 3) being able to ride and not having to worry about the Eye of the Jailer made the Maw sections so much easier, and 4) having OP gear made the necessary fighting so much easier (iLevel 252 Primal Storms stuff, which I didn’t begin replacing with Kamalia until she was about level 65).

Except for Prowl, those things will also make replaying all the Campaigns easier for my Mages. As I’ve mentioned before, Kaelinda, who originally did the Venthyr and Kyrian Campaigns, decided that she needed to do the Night Fae and Necrolords Campaigns so she can do each Covenant-story-advancing chapter of Korthia (which has been on hold since the Primal Storms phase of the pre-patch went live) as a member of the appropriate Covenant. But then Kaelyla, who originally did the Night Fae and Necrolords Campaigns, decided that she needed to do the Kyrian and Venthyr Campaigns. Kyrian, because Kaelinda chose the sword and I decided that, actually, I do want to have the staff as well. Venthyr, because Venthyr was my favorite the first time through, so how can I replay all the others and not replay that one? Also, I want to see if Kael’thas says anything special to Void Elves once he’s installed in the lower level of Sinfall (if you know, don’t spoil me please!).

I do still want to finish the story Campaign for Korthia, get Exalted with Death’s Advance, and grind the necessary Stygia to acquire the Night Fae set as well as both Venthyr sets. Seeking to minimize the time I still have to spend in Shadowlands, however, I looked up how far I’ll need to get in the Zereth Mortis Campaign to begin using the Creation Catalyst to make Sepulcher of the First Ones raid items. Upon finding out that that occurs in Chapter 4, I decided that that is as much of ZM as I’m going to do. I looked up and spoiled myself on the rest of the ZM Campaign story. After I’ve finished Chapter 3 of ZM with Kaelinda and unlocked the skip for alts, I’ll probably bring Kaelyla, Kamalia, and Kaurinka out there for a brief look around so that they have it as an available location for Mog photoshoots, just in case.

But all of those things will have to happen when I’m not busy doing stuff with Kamalia in the Dragon Isles!

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in which we do not want to have to be the ones to decide between the black dragon brothers

BTH and I finally finished up The Waking Shores last night, dinging 64 in the process.
Every time we have to fight elementals, BTH teases me about how as a Shaman, Kamalia should be upset about having to put down these elementals instead of trying to save them by solving the problem that is making them be all riled up.
When we went through the quests involving the return of Sabellian, BTH groaned aloud, “Don’t make ME choose who gets to be the new Aspect!”
Kamalia doesn’t want to choose, either. Although she knows Wrathion better, Sabellian and his followers do have some good points — and it was Sabellian’s actions that allowed the Ruby Oathstone to be restored.
I am starting to get itchy to bring Kaelyla out to the Dragon Isles. At the same time, I don’t want to rush her ahead of Kamalia, because I want to save the delights of first discovery of all the things in the Dragon Isles for Kamalia and playing with BTH.
When they eventually get there, Kaelinda will choose Wrathion, because of greater familarity, and Kaelyla will choose Sabellian, because she feels a wisp of kinship between his experiences in Outland and her experiences with the Void.
Meanwhile, Kaurinka is still considering going back to Uldum & the Vale of Eternal Blossoms after she finishes the Night Fae Campaign to work on getting the second upgraded appearance of the Shroud of Resolve and the Black Dragonscale Backpack (but do I really want to grind that? really and truly?).

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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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What I’m trying with my Patch 10.0 Talents and UI, for now

After a couple of hours (cumulative) of fiddling around with my UI and Talents, here’s what I’ve settled on for now. This might last for all of Dragonflight, or it might last only until next week. Click on the scaled images to see the full-size images.

Elemental Shaman

Balance Druid

Whenever Kaurinka manages to move on from Ardenweald, she’ll rearrange her talents to grab the Talent version of Convoke the Spirits. As long as she’s still there, however, the original Covenant version will be superior.

Fire Mage

Frost Mage

Arcane Mage

I’m happy to see Radiant Spark in the Mage Talent trees, but I would rather have had Mirrors of Torment in there, too, instead of Shifting Power.

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Arkelios’ Solace: Are you Safe or Speedy?

When you’ve finished picking up Arkelios’ foci, which path do you take back up? The safer, but longer, path over the bridge (marked in green) — or the shorter, but more dangerous, path up the root (marked in red)?
I usually take the root — but I’ve learned that I have to be on a fairly small mount to be able to judge the turns correctly. Even the Wildseed Cradle is a little too wide — I almost always fall off the root when I try to use that mount!

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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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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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Stuff I’m doing in Shadowlands that’s NOT advancing the Kyrian Campaign…

My Horde Mage is supposed to be working on the Kyrian Campaign. She’s done Chapter 3 — and is horrified by the implications of Scourge presence in Lakeshire. I keep thinking “tonight I’m going to do Chapter 4”, and then I keep doing other things instead.

As soon as she’d finished up the Necrolords Campaign, my Alliance Mage went back to the Venthyr. When she was in the Venthyr earlier, she’d hardly touched Sanctum upgrades, only doing the Stage 1 Anima Conductor and reinforcing the Greater Greedstone. Upon returning to Sinfall, her first objective was to upgrade the Anima Conductor to Stage 2 and reinforce Darkwing Drills. When that was done, she recruited Laurent and got to work on activating and upgrading the Mirror Network all the way to Stage 3. After I’ve been to Korthia and gotten flying, I want to put both Mages in Venthyr and get working on doing Venthyr Travel Network Broken Mirrors with them until I’ve obtained the Soulbreaker’s Burnished Mantle & Sash. She’s just gotten the Mirror Network up to Stage 2.

Meanwhile, Kaurinka and Kamalia decided that they didn’t want to wait until they’d done the Night Fae Campaign to start working on the Queen’s Conservatory. After doing the introductory quests and reading the Wowhead Guide, I decided to backburner it with Kamalia until she gets her Mushroom Network — recently advanced to Stage 2 — fully upgraded. Kaurika, however, has now upgraded her Queen’s Conservatory to Stage 2 and is farming catalyst seeds while she gathers Anima for further upgrades. The main reward I want from the Queen’s Conservatory which has to be farmed — to my relief, the recolor of the armor set is not RNG-dependent, but can simply be bought for 12.5K Anima after fully upgrading the place — is the Spirit Tender’s Bulb, which is one of the possible rewards from Untamed Spirits with two Wildseed Root Grain catalysts active.

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in which Kamalia goes to the Shadowlands at last

The first thing I did on Tuesday was bring Kamalia to Oribos and then to the Heart of the Forest. At level 50 and 1 Renown, I am delighted that she can wear her covenant’s Renown 60 cosmetic armor! She had been wearing her Eternal Traveler outfit for almost a year, so she was very ready for a new outfit!

Next, Kasheena visited the Barbershop in New Dalaran to check out the new customizations for Highmountain Tauren.

She came out with some super cute beaded braids in her hair and a fun tail decoration. She decided it was about time for a new outfit, too.

Then it was time to visit the Barbershop with Kaelinda and Kaelyla to establish some new Alter Ego appearances.

When my Blood Elf Mage is Necrolord, she will be Kateleina:

When my Void Elf Mage is Kyrian, she will be Kaelyra, a High Elf who never left the Allliance:

I am very pleased with the tentacles in some Void Elf hairstyles now being an optional toggle! I’ll have to remember to think about changing up Kaelyla’s hairstyle in addition to her outfit from time to time 😀

I can now also do this “Kaelyla AU Alliance” look with my Void Elf Mage —

— what she looked like while she was still Quel’dorei, before the Fall of Quel’thalas.

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Kaelyla in Ardenweald

This weekend, I finished leveling Kaelyla. By the time she’d seen the vision of Ysera’s death and done the next two quests, she was 98% through level 59. At that point, I took her to Oribos and activated Threads of Fate. After completing next couple of quests to talk to Lady Moonberry, she was so close to dinging that I just went and did a little gathering to push it over instead of working on the “Aiding Ardenweald” fill-the-bar quest. I got her through Chapter 1 of the Night Fae campaign; now she’s gathering Renown, Souls, and Anima and waiting for Patch 9.1 to arrive so that she can not have to go to Torghast.

One reason I chose the Night Fae for Kaelyla — or Kaelyla for the Night Fae — is because of the aesthetic similarities I saw between the Void Elves and Ardenweald. I created her “Full of Stars” outfit (#37) to highlight those aesthetic harmonies —

— and specifically to coordinate with the animacone backpack that is an on-quest visual effect for the quest “Tending to Wildseeds” at the Tranquil Pools adjacent to Tirna Vaal.

There are a number of other nifty on-quest visual effects during the Ardenweald main storyline, so I ended up taking many, many screenshots of this outfit. I’ve put the ones from “Tending to Wildseeds” in the outfit listing on the appropriate “Things My Void Elf Mage Wears” page. To keep that page from getting overcrowded, I’ve gathered the rest of my favorite pictures of this outfit in this gallery — click through the cut to see them all!

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