Considering Covenant Hopping, Again

The implications of unrestricted Covenant swapping once at least one alt has reached Renown 80, combined with RL factors that are pushing me toward focusing on fewer alts, and how very far behind the content consumption curve I am, are leading me to contemplate some rather dramatic changes to my plans for which characters will do what for the remainder of Shadowlands.

Specifically, I am thinking about proceeding through the rest of the expansion with only Kaelinda and Kaelyla, and setting aside all other alts until the end-of-expansion doldrums (though I’ll still bring Kamalia through to the Heart of the Forest).

Kaelinda is at Renown 68 and could get to Renown 80 soon enough if I start doing Return Lost Souls and/or Callings again in addition to Replenish the Reservoir. Kaelyla is at Renown 62 and could also reach Renown 80 fairly soon if I put more effort into obtaining Renown.

Kaelinda is Venthyr, and from having done the Venthyr Campaign, I know that it intersects with/shares a climactic cinematic with the Necrolords Campaign. Kaelyla is Night Fae, and I’ve been spoiled enough to know that the Night Fae Campaign intersects with/shares a climactic cinematic with the Kyrian Campaign.

Kaelinda is Exalted with all of the 9.0 leveling zone factions. The Undying Army have cosmetic backpieces available for Exalted+Necrolords; the Ascended do not have any cosmetics for Exalted+Kyrian.

So, my thoughts are running thusly —
1) Get both Kaelinda and Kaelyla to Renown 80
2) Do Night Fae Campaign with Kaelyla
3a) Covenant swap Kaelinda to Necrolords and do Necrolords Campaign, perhaps as Kaelydia or as a yet-to-be-discovered new Alter Ego
3b) Covenant swap Kaelyla to Kyrian and do Kyrian Campaign as a new Alter Ego who is a never-left-the-Alliance High Elf, using one of the new natural hair color customization options for Void Elves that are coming in Patch 9.1.5
4) Covenant swap Kaelinda and Kaelyla back to their “home” Covenants
5) Do Korthia Campaign with both Kaelinda and Kaelyla
6a) Collect Venthyr and Night Fae sets from Korthia dailies
6b) Get to Exalted with Death’s Advance with both Kaelinda and Kaelyla and obtain the Venthyr and Night Fae sets from that source
7) Covenant swap Kaelinda and Kaelyla to their secondary Covenants
8a) Collect Necrolords and Kyrian sets from Korthia dailies and Death’s Advance
8b) Obtain any 9.0 Necrolords and Kyrian cosmetic items that I am interested in acquiring
9) Covenant swap Kaelinda and Kaelyla back to their home Covenants
10a) Do Ember Court and Broken Mirrors with Kaelinda until shoulders of the associated Venthyr Campaign set recolors have been obtained
10b) Do Queen’s Conservatory with Kaelyla until the associated recolor of the Night Fae Campaign set and the pink/purple version of the moths backpiece have been obtained
11) Round-robin Kaelinda and Kaelyla through the Covenants they haven’t been in yet so as to get access to all Covenant cosmetics
12) Return Kaelinda and Kaelyla to their home Covenants
13) Repeat this process as necessary to collect all Covenant cosmetics from 9.2, etc, until the end of the expansion

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considering Covenant hopping

Like my four year-old who is so excited for Halloween, I “can’t wait” for Patch 9.1.5 because I’m so excited to be able to bring Kamalia to the Shadowlands without having to go through that introductory Maw experience one more time. As I’ve played with my Mages, Druid, Priest, and Warlock, I’ve found myself missing slinging Flame Shocks and Lava Bursts and Chain Lightnings and Earthquakes as an Elemental Shaman. I also just miss being Kamalia because she’s my oldest and “flagship” character.

With Kamalia in the Shadowlands, I’ll have three of the four armor classes there. That makes it tempting to also bring out my Paladin, Karelia. Then I’d want to bring my Tauren Priest, Kaohana, so that I’ll have all four armor classes as Tauren, and because the twins don’t like to be separated. But I know that that’s more alts than I can really manage, so I am telling myself quite firmly that I am only going to advance Kamalia.

I plan to matriculate Kamalia with the Night Fae and then slowly level her with my favorite no or minimal combat World Quests. After Kamalia has acquired all of the Night Fae stuff I’d like her to have, I’ll covenant swap her to the Kyrian to get their gorgeous set — at least the Campaign coloration; I may or may not also go for the Renown coloration — then swap back to the Night Fae.

In thinking about what kind of Covenant hopping I might want to do with my other characters, I began to think about which characters I might want to bring ahead to 10.0. Which characters will need to cycle through all the Covenants so that they’ll have access to all the things to Mog with in the future? Over the past few expansions (Shadowlands included), I’ve figured out that I can handle about four active characters at a time. The four characters I want to keep actively playing for as long as I keep playing WoW are Kamalia, Kerisa, Kaelinda, and Kaelyla. Kamalia only wants Night Fae and Kyrian stuff, and Kerisa only wants Night Fae stuff. It’s just the Mages who really want stuff from all four of the Covenants. So, after Kaelinda has reached 80 Renown and unlocked unlimited Covenant hopping, and after I’ve completed all of the 9.0 Covenant Campaigns with the designated characters, I’ll want Kaelinda and Kaelyla to each take turns with all of the Covenants. I’m imagining having them work together to collect the sets from the Korthia daily quests…

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The best thing about Patch 9.1…

…is the Spectacles, of course!


Several years ago, I drew Kamalia wearing glasses.

None of This Nonsense, Please



Dazzling Spectacles, Black Velvet Robes, Shadow Council Boots, Tower of Theramore
Patricia C Wrede is my favorite author; The Enchanted Forest Chronicles are my favorite of her works; Morwen is my favorite character in that series. I was thirteen or fourteen when I first met Morwen, and I wanted to be like her when I grew up (spoiler alert: I’m not as much like her as I thought I wanted to be). When I was first venturing onto the internet over twenty years ago, I used “Morwen” as my screenname. So somehow it was no surprise that my primary Mage character ended up with an appearance very much like Morwen’s description. The Dazzling Spectacles are what I needed to finally complete that look!

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must… have… moar… Anima…

Kaelinda finished acquiring the Renown recolor of her Covenant armor set this week. She doesn’t want any more of the Venthyr Anima collectibles, so she’s Done. She doesn’t need to clear the map of all the Anima WQs she’s willing to do anymore. She can rest and relax and be satisfied with 1000 Anima per week — half of it just from rescuing 20 souls from the Maw — until I’ve finished the other three Covenant campaigns and am ready to start playing the Ember Court.
I’ve been farming Anima so intensively with her for the past however many weeks that it’s being a bit hard to resist wanting to take her out to clear those Anima WQs, though…

Meanwhile, I’d given Kaurinka the task of acquiring all of the Night Fae backpieces that are available from various vendors. There are seven in all: one from the Wild Hunt, two from Marasmius, two from Renown, and two from the Court of Night. I’ve been slowly ramping up her Anima farming, and she’s now got five of the seven; she just needs the two from the Court of Night. When she’s got those, she’ll start saving up the 25K Anima to get the Winterborn recolor of her Covenant armor set from the Court of Night; the Renown recolor is my least favorite version of that set, whereas the Winterborn recolor might be my most favorite. I’d also eventually like to get the Renown recolors of the staff and harp, but perhaps Kaelyla can work on acquiring those. Anyhow, now that Kaelinda is Done, Kaurinka will have first dibs on going out to do WQs each day, and her Anima farming will go faster.

Well, I guess Kaelinda can’t completely take a break. She’ll want to keep running the Blood From Stone wing of Castle Nathria LFR until either the Stone Generals themselves or the Great Vault cough up the robe version of the chestpiece. And she does still have to go to Torghast a few more times to get through the questchains that will be required to unlock the Patch 9.1 content. At least once she’s done that, the rest of the crew will be able to skip that stuff!

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sklonklish in the Shadowlands

I first heard the word “sklonklish” in a movie starring teenage Shirley Temple that my family watched when my sisters and I were teenagers. It became part of my family’s lexicon immediately because it perfectly describes that feeling of being vaguely irritated and out-of-sorts with the world. It’s sort of like ennui, only with a bit more of a disgruntled edge.

~*~*~

Kaelinda and Kaurinka have each finally finished reinforcing the fourth stream for their Anima Conductor; since I don’t intend to upgrade the Anima Conductor to stage 3, I am now Done with it, which is something of a relief. With my remaining three characters, I’m thinking that I’ll just do stage 1 of the Anima Conductor and just reinforce the stream to the Treasure, since that’s the activity that I have done the most consistently with the first two.
The Travel Network is likely to be the only Sanctum feature that all five characters will fully upgrade.

Kaelinda reached Exalted with Bastion last week. She kept grinding away at Maldraxxus, trying to do one or two WQs in Maldraxxus each day. This week’s WQ rep buff, plus a string of Maldraxxus Callings, allowed me to finally finish that off, too. Phew! I intensely dislike Maldraxxus as an environment, so now I can mostly ignore Maldraxxus with everyone except Kalaneia (my designated Necrolords character)*.

I have also been actively farming Anima with Kaelinda. I don’t try to clear the map of Anima-rewarding WQs, but I’ll often do as many of the available ones as I find tolerable to do. She has gotten both of the Venthyr Renown backpieces and has been spending Anima as fast as she gets enough of it on acquiring the rest of the Renown recolor of the Venthyr Covenant armor set, after which she will be Done with Covenant collectibles (at least until Patch 9.1). She needs 11000 more Anima to accomplish this goal.

I’ve been pushing hard to finish these reputation and collection goals because I’m wanting to just be Done with Kaelinda — to be able to put her/the Venthyr on the bench for awhile** and move on to the campaigns of the other three Covenants. I intend to do Night Fae first, then Kyrian, then Necrolords.

Since the news from the Patch 9.1 PTR is that the Korthia extension of the Covenant campaigns brings them all together right from the beginning, making them all essentially the same except with variations in the window dressing, I’m thinking that I want to get all of the 9.0 Covenant campaigns completed before I jump into the new Patch 9.1 content — even if that means that Patch 9.1 will have been out for quite some time before I finally get there.

Anyhow, the result of pushing rep and Anima with Kaelinda so hard recently is that I am feeling a bit burned out and can barely bring myself to do much of anything with Kaurinka (even though there is a lot more Night Fae stuff that I want than Venthyr stuff). As I’ve mentioned before, though, part of that feeling of burnout is spillover from RL right now. It’s the penultimate week of the semester, and I am feeling greater than usual end-of-semester weariness.

~*~*~

* Well, Keliora has to complete the House of Constructs storyline in Maldraxxus before she turns on Threads of Fate because saving Kyrians. But after that, Kalaneia will be the only person who has to be in Maldraxxus.

** I do want to play the Ember Court (and the Queen’s Conservatory) before Shadowlands ends, though. I’ve learned that if I don’t do an activity while the expansion it debuted in is current, I’m not going to come back to do it later (e.g., Deaths of Chromie). I can worry about gathering Anima for those upgrades, however, when I’m ready to actually do that content.

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more Anima? it’s a drop in the ocean — but yes, please

Yesterday, Wowhead reported a hotfix that gives increased Anima income for having activated all four of the Sanctum Features, then another increase when they’re all upgraded to stage 2, and final increase when they’re all upgraded to stage 3. The first level, at least, seemed worth spending a couple thousand Anima on before I purchase any more Anima cosmetics, so Kaelinda and Kaurinka have both invested in the first stages of the Command Table and the Ember Court/Queen’s Conservatory. Having done so, I will henceforth continue to ignore the Command Table completely, and the Ember Court/Queen’s Conservatory until I’m ready to sink the time into them that they apparently demand.

This also changes my plans for my remaining three characters. I’d been planning to activate stage 1 of the Anima Conductor, then to activate and fully upgrade the Travel Network, then to upgrade the Anima Conductor to stage 2. Now, I’ll be spending their first 4000 Anima on activating all four of the Sanctum Features. After that, I’ll probably continue with the original plan.

Kaelinda and Kaurinka both already had fully upgraded Travel Networks and stage 2 Anima Conductors. The investment of 2000 Anima (4000 Anima for my remaining characters) to get the first achievement definitely felt worth it. The investment of 10000 Anima (20000 Anima for my remaining characters) to get the Command Table and Special Feature to stage 2 doesn’t seem like it will really be worth it, considering the small increment of the Anima income, but I’ll probably do it anyway. The investment of 30000 Anima (40000 Anima for my remaining characters) to get the Anima Conductor, Command Table, and Special Feature all to stage 3 definitely will not be worth the additional small increment to Anima income, particularly since I have no interest in the Command Table at all, no interest in the actual benefits of the third stage of the Anima Conductor, and my interest in the Special Feature varies by Covenant (yes for Ember Court and Queen’s Conservatory, maybe for Path of Ascension, nope for Stitchyard).

In other Shadowlands progression…

I got another couple of chapters of Ardenweald done with Kaelyla and she is now about 30% through level 58. She’s getting really bored of her current outfit, but she needs to keep wearing it until she’s all the way through the Ardenweald main storyline because Ardenweald has multiple nifty on-quest visual effects that this outfit was specifically created to coordinate with. I already have an outfit idea in mind for proceeding into the first chapter of Revendreth…

I decided to stop trying to push Bastion and Maldraxxus rep with both Kaelinda and Kaurinka and just focus it down with Kaelinda. I’m almost done with Bastion and am about halfway through Revered with Maldraxxus.

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taking the Castle Nathria tour

This weekend, I finally got myself into Castle Nathria LFR. I did Leeching Depths and Blood from Stone on Saturday night, then Reliquary of Opulence and Audience with Arrogance on Sunday night.

Those are some pretty hectic, crazy fights even on LFR! I can’t even imagine how much crazier Artificer Xy’mox and Sire Denathrius must be on Heroic or Mythic! Doing these fights made me miss raid healing with Kamalia a little bit. Not enough to go through the introductory Maw experience again, though, or to add one more character to my leveling, etc queue… at least not until a skip for that intro experience gets patched in… and not until I’ve completed my primary expansion objective of playing through all four of the Covenant stories.

I held onto the quest from defeating Sire Denathrius until today, so that I could turn it in after reset and get Kaelinda’s 1K Anima quest for the week done in one fell swoop.

Having done a full Castle Nathria clear also meant that I could loot the Great Vault today!
These were my choices:

I took the trinket, because it was an upgrade and I already have an ilevel 194 weapon.

Although I’ve said previously that I’d probably only do Castle Nathria LFR once, I’d like to go do the Reliquary of Opulence at least one more time. I failed the Dance Intermission because I didn’t recognize what I was supposed to be looking for to find my place — for some reason, I was looking for ordinary raid markers to pop up, or something — so I’d like to give it another try and do it right this time. I’ll also be running Blood from Stone again, likely for some weeks to come; I’ve decided that I want to have the robe version of the chestpiece, which drops from the Stone Legion Generals, for the sake of having something from every raid set (or its PVP recolor) — though maybe it will be my Warlock who wears it, not my Mage! And hey, that’ll give me more chances at Great Vault loot, too!

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gratuitous art post: Kaelinda’s study group

Clockwise from lower right: Kaelinda, Ianestin, Kaelyla and Ishaleron (newlyweds, but not completely insufferable about it). Tigerlily the cat is a library resident who has adopted this group of students; she was adopted in turn by Ianestin after the fall of Silvermoon.

My Void Elf Mage, Kaelyla, has been one of Kaelinda’s friends since their Academy days. After some initial tension, their friendship survived the disruptions of the expulsion of the group who would become the Ren’dorei from Silvermoon following the near-disaster of Alleria Windrunner’s visit to the Sunwell and the subsequent migration of the Ren’dorei into the Alliance.

Only Kaelinda’s clothing is meant to evoke an in-game item; it is a less skimpy version of the Light Silk Robe.

I drew this picture as an illustration for a story that I’m writing. I’m posting it on its own, though, so I can more easily link it on my “Drawings” page.

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ambling through the Shadowlands

The past week or two, it hasn’t felt like getting 1000 Anima was quite so hard to do. Maybe I’ve just gotten comfortable with the rate at which I acquire Anima just by doing World Quests and what I’ve come to think of as my “little Covenant dailies” — the Anima Conductor activities. It’s helped, too, that I discovered that the Amateur Night WQ at the Theater of Pain in Maldraxxus isn’t at all difficult to do because there are usually plenty of other folks around wanting to do it, too — and the mini-bosses are omni-tag, so it doesn’t even require making a formal group. So now I check to see if that’s up, and if it is and has the 250 Anima reward instead of something else, I go do it. That helps alot with getting to 1000 Anima more quickly! It’s also seemed that the Large Lunarlight Pod is rewarding Anima more frequently — maybe I just had a run of bad luck in the first couple of weeks? Kaurinka is still avoiding the Star Lake Ampitheater, but there have been a few times during the past week or two when her Anima acquisition has actually been ahead of Kaelinda’s. Since Kaelinda has been progressing in her Covenant campaign and upgrading her Covenant armor pieces as she goes along, Kaurinka now has more Anima in her Sanctum Reservoir than Kaelinda does.

Last weekend, Kaelinda did both Chapter 6 and Chapter 7 of the Venthyr campaign. Chapter 6 was a fun jaunt to Bastion which, thankfully, didn’t require any interaction with holier-than-thou blue Kyrian, just beating up purple Forsworn Kyrian, and palling around with my favorite denizen of Bastion, Forgelite Prime Mikanikos. Chapter 7 was the Kael’thas chapter, and, as a Sin’dorei character, it was really quite satisfying.

At the moment, my plan for what’s next is as follows: finish the Venthyr campaign with Kaelinda, do all four wings of Castle Nathria LFR once to fully complete the Venthyr/Revendreth storyline, rescue Jaina from Torghast with Kaelinda, level Kaelyla and get her through the Torghast chapter of the Night Fae campaign, then progress Kaurinka and Kaelyla through the rest of the Night Fae campaign in parallel.

UPDATE: This evening, I did Chapter 8 and Chapter 9 and finished up the Venthyr campaign! I guess I got a sneak peek at the conclusion of the Maldraxxus campaign, too.

Kaelinda also managed to finish the WQ set from Maldraxxus — now she’s just waiting for the robe of the Revendreth version and the robe & shoulders of the Bastion version to show up as WQ rewards.

Bloodsilk Raiment


Bloodsilk Raiment with Lakali’s Spire of Knowledge
This set is collected from World Quests and dungeon drops in Maldraxxus.

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poking along in 9.0

I did Chapter 5 of the Venthyr campaign with Kaelinda this weekend — halfway done! The storytelling is well done, and it’s been generally enjoyable, but somehow other things, like Anima farming and schoolwork and sleep, keep getting in the way. I’m holding off on doing the rest of the Night Fae campaign with Kaurinka until I’ve completed the Venthyr campaign with Kaelinda.

I abandoned the Torghast questchain. I’ll come back to it, at least long enough for Kaelinda to rescue Jaina*, after I’ve finished the Venthyr campaign. With Kaurinka, I did the Torghast quest that rewards an ilevel 171 cloak**, but I didn’t pick up the next quest.

I spend most of the school nights of the week doing Callings, prioritizing Anima reward WQs, until I’ve collected my 1000 Anima. I know I could collect the 1000 Anima faster if I did the World Boss*** and the dungeon quests from the Brokers in Oribos every week… but I don’t. After I’ve Replenished the Reservoir, I’ll usually pick up the Callings, but I may or may not get around to doing them. I’ve decided to not even pick up the “Storm the Maw” Calling, though, because I know that I’m not going to do it. Tuesday night is Maw night, but I only spend as long in the Maw as I need to fill up my Soulkeeper, and then I’m outta there.

Kaelinda typically finishes the 1000 Anima quest sooner, and has more Anima in her Sanctum Reservoir overall, than Kaurinka does. The Greater Greedstone and the Bad Bat always drop Anima tokens#. The Large Lunarlight Pod only rarely contains Anima tokens — usually just money, sometimes gear — and the first few times I attempted the Star Lake Ampitheater, the bosses mopped the stage floor with my feathery Boomkin body, so I don’t even try them anymore. Although the Night Fae Travel Network dailies offset this a little bit, overall, Kaurinka’s Night Fae Anima acquisition rate is slower than Kaelinda’s Venthyr Anima acquisition rate.

Both Kaelinda and Kaurinka have both channels of their stage 1 Anima Conductor reinforced by now. I haven’t purchased any more Sanctum Upgrades, however, because I’m saving the Anima for upgrading their Covenant armor sets. I suppose I could do the arithmetic for how much Anima I’d need for that and purchase other upgrades when I’ll be able to keep that amount in reserve. I haven’t quite decided yet, however, whether I’d rather do the second stage of the Travel Network or the second stage of the Anima Conductor first. On the one hand, the second stage is as far as I intend to go with the Anima Conductor, so then I’d be done with that##. On the other hand, I already feel like I have too many things to do, and having more Travel Network locations available may be more useful. With that in mind, I’ve decided to save activating the Special Feature Game for each Covenant until after I’ve finished its campaign.

I’m starting to be quite curious what the treasure and encounter from the stage 1 Anima Conductor channels for the Kyrian and the Necrolords are, so that I can compare their Anima yields and difficulties to the Venthyr and Night Fae versions (please don’t tell me, I want to find out for myself!). I’m starting to see casual references to the endings of the 9.0 Covenant campaigns, too. These things make me want to spend time leveling Keliora and Kalaneia…

And then there’s Blizzcon hovering on the horizon, and the expectation of a Patch 9.1 announcement. With how slow my progress has been so far, I doubt that there will be enough time between now and the launch of Patch 9.1 for me to manage to complete all four 9.0 Covenant campaigns by then, but I at least ought to be able to proceed into the 9.1 extension of the Venthyr campaign.

~*~*~
* I might just go ahead and spoil myself on the rest of it, including that Anduin and Sylvanas cinematic

** that was too much of an upgrade to pass up, and I will do at least that much of Torghast with my remaining alts, as well

*** maybe I’ll do the World Bosses more often when I can fly to the boss location instead of having to run through all that hostile territory to get there from the nearest flight point…

# one or the other of them frequently drops a shiny for Ta’xera, too

## after spending another 500 Anima over 20 days to reinforce the third and fourth channel locations, that is

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