Death Rising

By Sunday night, I’d run my three Mages, my Warlock, and my Priest through the first week of the Shadowlands pre-launch events and gotten them a 115 weapon from Nathanos. I hadn’t done my Druid yet, but it was late, so I thought, oh, I’ll just do that on Monday night and be ready for the second week of the event to start on Tuesday. Then the second week started on Monday. So Kerisa — or rather, Kaurinka — ended up being the first character to complete the full quest chain and earn the “Death Rising” acheivement. I’m not sure how many of the other five I’ll do the second week stuff with. The final boss of the quest chain was a lot easier to take down than I expected, even for needing to be tuned to be doable as a solo fight. So I guess I’m feeling kind of a lackluster level of threat? Or are Boomkins just OP for this fight, and my Mages will survive on the thinnest of margins?

I’ve collected all of the cloth Argent Conscript’s set. It seemed like the former Azerite slots — helm, shoulders, and chestpiece — propagated most quickly to characters of both factions; other pieces seemed to propagate more quickly to characters of the same faction than to characters of the opposite faction.

I’d been wondering where the zombies were. I’m glad that they’re only going to be disrupting one week of gameplay. I guess I could have kept my Highmountain Tauren Druid down in the Caverns of Time for Trivia Quiz XP all last week, after all.

Time to retire to the safety of my Garrison to do pre-launch housekeeping stuff like cleaning out my bags and being in a “zzz” area to log in on launch day to start building up Well-Rested for questing.

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something is rotten in the zone of Icecrown

I logged in with Kaelinda to do the pre-launch lore questchain as soon as I could. Lor’themar was mobbed. Only by mousing around and very carefully watching how my cursor changed could I even tell that an all-star group of other lore figures was there (and almost all of them women!). I talked to them all, of course. I followed the short questchain in Kalimdor, then went up to Icecrown and did as much as there was to do there. I went to Marris Stead, but I was running back as a ghost when Nathanos died, so I didn’t get any loot. When I’d done all there was to do, I looked around and said to myself, “is that all?”

After seeing the lore with the Horde leadership, I wanted to see the lore with the Alliance leadership, so I logged in with Kaylynda and did the Alliance side up to the point where I got the quest to go to Icecrown and the quest to kill Nathanos. This time, when I arrived at Marris Stead, he was almost dead already; I succeeded in not dying myself and got an ilevel 115 staff. Poor Kaelyla had not yet managed to get a 100+ level staff from Emissaries or World Quests — she kept getting swords, daggers, wands, or off-hands — so I ran her through questchain until she got the quest to kill Nathanos, too… and I got a sword, not the staff. ARGH! Why can I not get a decent staff with this character?

I’d acquired enough tokens with Kaelinda to get a first piece of the Mog set — I started with the robe, of course — and found that somehow I’d already obtained that recolor of the Arathi Warfront set, at least on the Horde side (I’m not quite sure how). After I’d waited out the time for the purchase to become non-returnable, the corresponding Alliance piece popped up in Kaylynda’s wardrobe — and I didn’t have that recolor of the Arathi Warfront set yet on the Alliance side. Guess I’ll have to grind the dailies for the tokens to get the Mog set. Hmm, if I do it with Kaelinda and Kaylynda and Kaelyla, and have each of them grab a piece as soon as they can afford one, I could get it done in a third of the days!

I did not get much Exam grading done tonight…

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in the WoW doldrums

I’ve fallen into a WoW lull over the past several weeks. I’ve got an unusually light course load at school this semester — but a health condition that has developed, and a medication that I’m taking to help with this condition, have made it so that I just can’t stay up late like I used to. When I’m finished with my evening slate of schoolwork, I more and more frequently just go to bed. If the Emissary reward isn’t 2K gold, or I’m not working on outfits for the next Sunday Mog Show, I don’t have much motivation to stay up late in Azeroth.

Are there things I could be doing? Sure. Deaths of Chromie to get the Timelord title and the special Mog set, N’Zoth Assaults and Horrific Visions to get the second upgraded appearance of the Shroud of Resolve, Legion dungeon & raid Mog farming, alt leveling… I just… don’t feel like it. Not even parking alts in the Caverns of Time for quick & easy Trivia Quiz XP.

As for the upcoming pre-launch events, well, I hated the zombie invasion event the first time around, in the run up to Wrath of the Lich King. I didn’t at all appreciate the disruption to my regular patterns of play, especially when I tried to escape the chaos in Orgrimmar by attempting to level an alt (most likely Kerisa) in Stonetalon Mountains and some level 70 jerk deliberately brought the Zombie Plague to Sun Rock Retreat.

So I’m probably not going to be playing much WoW between now and the actual launch of Shadowlands. Sure, I’ll take Kaelinda out to do the pre-launch event story quests in Icecrown and experience that lore at least once. I’ll most likely also put forth the effort to collect the cloth version of the Mog set from the event, because if I don’t, I’ll probably wish later that I had.

Everyone else, however, is going to retreat to their Garrisons — and characters who don’t have Garrisons yet I’ll just not log on.

I do have a special installment of the Sunday Mog Show planned for the 22nd, but things will probably be pretty quiet around here until then.

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BfA: all done but the mog farming and the alt leveling

Since reaching 120, Kinevra has done the Alliance side of things all out of order*. She did Mechagon first, so I could do the Mechagnome recruitment questline. Then Nazjatar, then the 8.0 War Campaign, then the Shroud of Resolve, then the 8.1 and 8.1.5 chapters of the War Campaign, then the second Siege of Orgrimmar and its small follow-up quests. I ended up doing the Pride of Kul Tiras storyline last — I’d heard that it was most excellent, perhaps the best story in all of Battle for Azeroth, so I suppose I was “saving the best for last” — and indeed it was as magnificent and moving as promised.

Having properly saved Jaina, I could finally recruit the Kul Tirans. At last, my roster is complete with a character of every race as Kayliddia the Kul Tiran Mage joins The Blue Team of my major characters.

Kayliddia’s parents were retainers on Lord Norwington’s estate. As a child, she showed promise as a magic-wielder, so when she reached the appropriate adolescent age to be apprenticed for a trade, Lord Norwington sponsored her training as a Tidesage. When her training was complete, she served as a Tidesage in Lord Norwington’s shipping fleet**. When the Horde raided Norwington Estate, one of her parents was killed, and the other parent and one of her younger siblings who was still at home were seriously injured. Kayliddia requested to be released from her service as a Tidesage to care for her wounded family members. When they had recovered, she further requested to be allowed to fight the Horde alongside Kul Tiras’ renewed allies, the Alliance***.

Before I did the Kul Tiran stories, I did the Heritage of the Sin’dorei questline with Kaelinda. I greatly enjoyed it and intend to write an RP story about it for her, like I did with Kamalia and the Heritage of the Shu’halo questline. First, however, I have to figure out where Kaelinda was and what she was doing when the Fall of Silvermoon originally happened.

With these major lore goals accomplished, all that’s left of my rest-of-BfA/pre-Shadowlands to-do list is mog farming and alt leveling:

* obtain the robe and belt of the Normal and Heroic versions of the Kul Tiras dungeon cloth set (the other pieces will be nice to have if I get them along the way)
* obtain the belt, gloves, and boots of the Uldir LFR cloth set (I already have the robe and shoulders)
* obtain the Phoenixfire Staff from the first wing of Dazar’alor LFR

* finish leveling Kaelyla to 120 and prep her for Shadowlands (rank 1 Shroud of Resolve, four rank 3 Essences, ilevel above 430)

* level Kasheena for Highmountain Tauren Heritage Armor

Although I want the Kul Tiran Heritage Armor very much and have all kinds of other Mogging that I want to do with Kayliddia (and I think I might want to take her to the Shadowlands, too), I plan to hold off on leveling her until Shadowlands so that I can do her leveling entirely in Kul Tiras and do all the quests and learn all the Kul Tiran lore that I skipped with Kinevra#.

* if I finish all these other things before the Shadowlands pre-launch events begin, do more Horrific Visions with Kerisa to get the second upgraded appearance of the Shroud of Resolve

The most significant thing to me about having completed my big Battle for Azeroth lore goals, though, is that hopefully now my brain will be able to shift out of “it’s summer and all I wanna do is play WoW” mode and into “Fall semester is coming up fast and it’s time to focus on getting my classes organized” mode.

~*~*~

* In-character, though, of course she would have done all these things in the proper chronological sequence.

** Or that of one of his business partners; it’s not clear if he would have a fleet of his own

*** Hmm… Kinevra, Kaelyla, and Kayliddia all have cause for strong grudges against the Horde, so I’m going to have to think about if/how they can still be able to work amicably with Kaelinda.

# Because the BfA Loremaster achievement is accountwide, Kamalia’s completion of the Zandalar storylines meant that Kinevra didn’t actually have to do everything in Kul Tiras. In fact, because she gained several levels during the WoW’s 15th Anniversary event from the trivia daily, she did little beyond the main storyline of Tiragarde Sound.

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venturing into Horrific Visions

The Horrific Vision was Orgrimmar, which is generally believed to be the less challenging of the two. The guide from Blizzard Watch suggested that at lower gear and particularly early Titanic Research Archive levels, stealth classes have an easier time because they can skip all the trash except the guards outside the boss room. I therefore took Kerisa through the rest of the 8.3 questchain. Along the way, I fortuitously collected enough of the 8.3 currencies for several Horrific Vision attempts.
I didn’t have much trouble with the guards or with Thrall — though if I hadn’t been able to sneak through all the trash, I’m not sure I would have had enough health and sanity for those fights — and soon I’d gotten Kerisa’s Shroud of Resolve to rank 5. I discovered then that the appearance change doesn’t happen until rank 6. I took a deep breath and tackled the Valley of Spirits. I used all three charges of the Sanity Orb getting through it, and the boss fight at the end of the wing was a very near thing indeed — I died just moments after the boss did — but the boss died first. Now I have the first upgraded appearance of the Shroud of Resolve. Hooray, another goal checked off of my rest-of-BfA/pre-Shadowlands to-do list!
Will I go back to push for the second upgraded appearance, which occurs at rank 12? Perhaps. It was rather exhilarating. Not anytime soon, though. At the moment, I’m not feeling up to the grinding for various currencies to fund more attempts or to get more of the Titanic Research Archive filled out before I make more attempts.

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Victory in Darkshore

This time and the last time that the Alliance was on the offensive in Darkshore, I ran it as many times as I could with Kinevra — at least once per day in the previous cycle, once during naptime and twice after bedtime for the past couple of days during this cycle. My goal was to obtain the Moonpriest’s Vestments and Sentinel’s Branch. I got the last couple of pieces of the armor set that I needed early in this cycle, and on my third run of the day yesterday, I finally got the staff.

Hooray, now I’m done! That marks off one of my remainder-of-BfA/pre-Shadowlands goals!

Along the way, I also picked up the Sentinel’s Spellblade and the cloaks for all three of the other armor types.

Looking at the Apothecary Spellstaff, the Horde counterpart of the Sentinel’s Branch, I think I might actually use it, eventually. I’m envisioning my Warlock using it with the Necrolords stuff from Shadowlands.

I’ve so far ignored the Arathi Warfront, as that set can be obtained in other ways. Maybe next time the Alliance is on the offensive there, though, I’ll do it once just to see how it compares to Darkshore.

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15th Anniversary event report

The only 15th Anniversary event activity that I did was the Trivia Quiz daily for virtually free XP.
I did it with seven characters — three Mages, three Druids, and a Paladin. I only missed one day, in the middle of Finals Week when I was frantically trying to work through my enormous pile of neglected lab report grading.

Kaylynda began at 115 and ended at 119.
Kaelinda began at 114 and ended at 117.
Kerisa began at 111 and ended at 116.
Karaelia began at 111 and ended at 115.
Kerithian began at 111 and ended at 114.
Kaelyla began at 36 and ended at 58
Kasheena began at 28 and ended at 46

The two high-level Mages also did the BfA Rank 2 Herbalism quests (except Akunda’s Bite) and Professions quests at the December Darkmoon Faire. The other two high-level Horde characters did a little bit of Zandalar gathering and Professions quests at the Darkmoon Faire, too. Kerithian didn’t do any gathering or Darkmoon Faire.

Kaylynda will still have a lot of Kul Tiras storyline questing left to do when she dings 120. Ah, well, she’ll need the reputation if she wants to get those pretty Kul Tiras horses.

I’d originally thought that I might try to play Kaelyla through all of the Night Elf zones of Kalimdor for her leveling from 20 – 60. She’s done so much alternative leveling, though, that now she should really just go on to Outland and/or Northrend. Maybe it’ll be Keriluna who eventually gets to see the Kalimdor Night Elf stories, after all.

Between Christmas and New Years, I also managed to eke out some time to run Circle of Stars LFR with Kamalia, so that I could then go do the 8.2.5 “Where’s Wrathion?” questline. I particularly enjoyed that questline for its appropriate use of older locations. The weaving in of new Dragonflight stories with the Chamber of Heart story has become one of my favorite strands of BfA lore. Kamalia is almost to Heart level 70… and I very much hope that the new Dragonflight lore in 8.3 (which I know is present, but about which I have not spoilt myself) is NOT gated behind further Heart levels, because I sure am tired of chasing Azerite champion missions and Humming Azerite Heart Emissaries.

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preliminary thoughts about Shadowlands

The story concept of Shadowlands isn’t hooking me any more than the story concepts of Warlords of Draenor or Battle for Azeroth originally appealed to me. Warlords had some great characters & character moments (I love Draka in Warlords!), though, and the Alliance-side leveling story story, being unified by the meteoric trajectory of Yrel, felt more cohesive than the Horde-side leveling story. I’ve also found myself much more engaged by the stories of Battle for Azeroth than I initially expected to be. So I am tentatively optimistic that Shadowlands will also have characters, moments, and locations that I will discover that I like very much indeed.

With four different endgame campaign stories to play in Shadowlands, I’ll want to have at least four characters at level 120 by the end of Battle for Azeroth. Three of those four characters will be Kaylynda, Kaelinda, and Kerisa; who the fourth will be, I’m not sure yet. Kerisa will of course Covenant with the Night Fae of Ardenweald. Kaylynda will probably choose the Kyrian of Bastion. Kaelinda is the most likely candidate to choose the Venthyr of Revendreth because the concept art for that faction suggests that their gear will coordinate nicely with the Sin’dorei Heritage Armor for Mogging mix-and-match and also because Kaelinda would like another chance to poke Kael’thas in the eye. That leaves the Necrolords of Maldraxxus… If I want to send a clothie there, the most logical choice from an RP-standpoint would be my Warlock, Kalaneia. The Vulpera Mage that I’ll be creating as soon as Patch 8.3 goes live could also be a good alt to team up with the Necrolords — the Vulpera have that scrappy fight-for-survival attitude and, thinking of Nisha and her maps and battle plans, could work with the “spy” angle of the Necrolords.

Kamalia will be retiring for Shadowlands. During Legion and again in Battle for Azeroth, I was more interested in doing end-game activities — specifically LFR for Transmogrification shinies — with my cloth-wearing Mages and leather-wearing Druid than with my mail-wearing Shaman. Because Kamalia had leveled first, however, she had a huge lead on story and reputation progress toward the Pathfinder achievements, so I felt like it would be better to keep going on those things with her than to play catch-up with another character. In Shadowlands, I want to have the character(s) who I’ll actually want to do end-game activities with be the first one(s) to level.

In-character, Kamalia finally met her match in Haitou Rivermane (one of Jale Rivermane’s sons) and will be getting married and settling down to attempt to give her parents some grandcalves before she gets any older. Kerisa, meanwhile, spent the latter part of Legion and the first year of Battle for Azeroth being pregnant with her second child, then nursing the infant. She weaned her son, allowing her to return to active service with the Cenarion Circle, just in time for her to help with repelling the Void assaults on Nordrassil and the Emerald Dream.

I’m most likely going to purchase the Heroic Edition because of the special armor set — and the level 120 boost will go to Karaelia so that I can have a character of each of the four armor classes prepared to move into Shadowlands. However, I will most likely not level Kamalia and Karaelia in Shadowlands until the end-of-expansion lull.

I am relieved that there isn’t a new Class. That would be another alt that I’d definitely want to play, but considering that I haven’t even got a second character to 120 in Battle for Azeroth yet, when would I find the time and energy for it?

I’m excited for more character customization options! Kjerstin will be getting herself some Wildhammer tattoos. I wonder what new customization options Tauren and Blood Elves will get?

I’ll probably roll up a Pandaren (or maybe a Void Elf) Death Knight to check out the Bolvar Needs More Minions starting zone, but that character won’t be a permanent addition to my roster. I’ll need another temporary toon to explore the new 1-10 tutorial zone, as well.

I’ll continue to work on leveling my Allied Races characters (Highmountain Tauren Druid, Void Elf Mage, Kul Tiran Mage, Vulpera Mage) for their Heritage Armor. The level squish and ability to level from 10 – 50 in any previous expansion’s content (Wowhead, Blizzard Watch) will help a lot with that, I hope!

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a few thoughts on Patch 8.2.5

On Tuesday night, I needed to put together an organic chemistry exam. I also really really wanted to play the finale of the War Campaign. So I did both, and didn’t get to bed until 2 am.

Before I talk about my thoughts on the War Campaign (such as they are), here are some before-and-after pictures of my Goblin and Worgen Mages to give those of you who are still trying to avoid spoilers some buffer space to click away.




When the first round of model updates came out with Warlords, I had to change the faces of my Gnome and Night Elf. Eventually I will take these gals to the Barbershop to look through all the updated faces. I’ll probably end up keeping the same face for the Goblin — though I liked the old version better. It’s more likely that I’ll change the face of the Worgen; I liked the extent of the white pattern on the muzzle better on the old model. I also liked the more subtle gray in the hairstyle of the old model better. *sigh* Now I understand the feelings of people who were disconnected from their characters by the previous model changes better (something that seemed, among the bloggers I read, to be most prevalent for Night Elves and Draenei).

So, about that conclusion of the War Campaign…

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Saving Baine & Heritage of the Shu’Halo

On Monday, I got through enough of Nazjatar for the 8.2 War Campaign to unlock. So today I went and did it, and then I did the Tauren Heritage Armor scenario.
They were awesome — very much worth the effort of pushing to get to them! The kids are waking up, so I’ll have to be brief — and although I won’t be talking much about the overall story, some of the details I mention might be considered spoilery if you haven’t done it yet, so I’ll put the rest behind a cut tag.

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